CHAPTER 26

The next morning, on the way to my piano lesson, I stopped by the bookstore to say hi to Aunt True and Belinda. Well, that and to rustle myself up some free mini blueberry donut muffins. I was barely through the door when I spotted a poster propped on the table at the front of the shop. I stopped short and stared at it, horrified.

“What is THAT?!” I screeched.

Aunt True, who was standing by the cash register, looked up in alarm. I pointed wordlessly at the poster.

She frowned. “Um, it’s an advertisement for a book signing?”

“I can’t believe you invited her to do a book signing at our store!”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Aunt True looked baffled.

Time to spill the beans, I decided, figuring my friends would understand.

My aunt’s eyebrows rose higher and higher as I explained about everything that had happened on Cape Cod. I showed her the passages I’d found in Saga of a Ship and told her my theory on Dandy Dan. I told her what had happened at the Brewster Store book signing and about the finders keepers law and how oddly Dr. Appleton had reacted to Mackenzie’s question.

Aunt True was quiet when I finished. One of the things I loved best about my aunt was that she always took me seriously. She didn’t waste time arguing with me that my theory was improbable or a “stretch,” as Hatcher had called it. She read the passages in the book I showed her, then sighed.

“Here’s the thing,” she said. “I can’t uninvite her. That would be rude and unprofessional. Plus, the best way to figure out what she’s up to—if she’s really up to something—may be to spend time with her and hope she lets something slip. The book signing will give us the perfect opportunity.”

I hadn’t thought of that. My aunt was not only a marketing whiz, she was also a genius.

“We can talk about strategy later,” she added, crossing back to Cup and Chaucer and grabbing a handful of mini blueberry donut muffins. She passed them to me and shoved me out the door. “For now, though, you’d better get going or you’ll be late.”

I was still so rattled by this development—Amanda Appleton? at Lovejoy’s Books?—that my piano lesson was pretty much a disaster. My fingers stumbled all over the keyboard, and everything I tried to play sounded horrible.

“Is everything all right, Truly?” Ms. Patel asked finally.

Her voice was soft and had a slight lilt to it. Mourning dove, I thought automatically.

“You seem nervous.”

I folded my hands in my lap and nodded. That was as good an excuse as any. “I usually play a lot better.”

“So I see.” She flipped through the folder of sheet music and piano exercise books I’d brought along to show her. “These are fairly advanced pieces.”

I sat there miserably, feeling like a musical failure.

She regarded me for a moment, then smiled. “I’ll tell you what—how about we spend the rest of this lesson playing some simple duets—fun ones that are way too easy for us, just to loosen up and get acquainted a bit, musically. When I was your age, it was always a big deal to change piano teachers.”

Things went a little better after that, and I was genuinely enjoying myself by the time we finished. I could tell I was going to like Ms. Patel.

ON MY WAY! I texted my friends as I left her apartment. I had my cell phone back, thanks to my mother.

“If you want Truly out at night working on stage crew, she might need it,” she’d insisted to my father at breakfast this morning. He’d grumbled, but finally agreed.

My friends were waiting for me on the front steps of the town library. Inside, we found Mr. Henry in his usual spot upstairs in the children’s room. For once, though, he wasn’t wearing his signature red and white. Or if he was, it was hidden under a pair of painter’s coveralls.

“To what do I owe this pleasure?” he asked from where he was perched on a ladder, paintbrush in hand. The walls were empty of bookshelves and books and the Charlotte’s Web statue was covered with drop cloths, as was the floor. The old carpet had been ripped up, and rolls of the new carpet were waiting in the hallway, covered in plastic.

Something else was different too. I frowned, trying to put my finger on it.

“How do you like the new skylight?” Mr. Henry asked. “It was installed over the weekend.”

I glanced up. That was it! Light streamed in, brightening what was formerly a cozy but somewhat dim room.

“It’s going to be brilliant, don’t you agree?” He winked. “Literally as well as figuratively.”

I smiled. “Mr. Henry, if someone wanted to find out about our town’s history—and about some of its early residents—where would they start?”

He climbed down from the ladder and placed his paintbrush on one of its rungs, then wiped his hands with a rag. “Funny you should ask that question. A woman came in just yesterday wanting to know the same thing.”

My friends and I looked at each other in dismay. Dr. Appleton had beaten us to it!

We followed Mr. Henry downstairs to the reference room, where he showed us a shelf of books about the history of Pumpkin Falls and a drawer full of old maps.

“If you really want to go way back, I believe the Lovejoy papers are in the archives over at the college,” he told us. “They would most certainly contain information about the town’s early history.”

My ears perked up at that. “Papers? Like newspapers?”

“The term usually refers to a broad range of items,” Mr. Henry explained. “For an author, it might mean manuscripts and research material and correspondence with an editor or publisher, that sort of thing. In this case, it may mean letters, diaries, account books, deeds, and more. And yes, newspaper clippings as well.”

He looked over at Calhoun. “You’ll have to get special permission to visit the archives. Perhaps your father can get you access, R. J.” He turned to me. “Or you might try asking Professor Rusty. The fact that you’re a Lovejoy should work in your favor.”

This sounded promising. Dr. Appleton wasn’t a Lovejoy, and she didn’t have a father who was the college president or a soon-to-be uncle in the history department. Maybe we could still stay a few steps ahead of her.

“By the way, how’s the case of the missing trophy going?” Mr. Henry looked at us expectantly.

“Um, slowly,” I replied.

Scooter pulled out his cell phone and scrolled to the picture of the woman at the finish line in the red-and-white-striped sundress. “We were wondering if you knew this person.”

Mr. Henry took one look and burst out laughing. “My sister Sarah? Yes, in fact I do know her.”

My friends and I exchanged sheepish glances.

“The thing is,” I continued, “we had to ask. Just because we recognize somebody or know them doesn’t mean we can automatically eliminate them as a suspect.”

Mr. Henry nodded soberly. “Just doing your due diligence,” he said. “I understand.” He placed his right hand over his heart—or where his heart would be under his painter’s coveralls. “What is it your father always says, Truly? Cross my heart and hope to fly, my sister did not take the trophy.”

I made a show of pulling my notepad out of my backpack and crossing her off our list.

“I suppose you heard about the special town meeting that Ella Bellow called while you girls were away,” Mr. Henry told us. “Some folks are fired up to go ahead and have a new trophy made, but most of us voted to wait a bit longer. We’re still hoping that the original will turn up.” He winked at my friends and me. “Keep up the good work! Everyone in Pumpkin Falls is counting on you. Well, everyone except, perhaps, Officer Tanglewood. I for one hope you solve this before he does.”

Mr. Henry went back upstairs. I looked at my friends. “Divide and conquer?”

Each of us took a stack of books from the shelf and started flipping through the pages, looking for information about Nathaniel Daniel, aka Dandy Dan, any mention of pirates, or anything else that might prove useful.

After half an hour, though, we came up empty-handed. Well, except for the fun facts that my ancestor won the town’s very first Halloween pumpkin toss in 1769, the same year he founded the town, and that his wife Prudence was “possessed of a greene thumbe and civick spirit,” as one newspaper of the era put it.

If we’d been hoping to discover a long-lost treasure map, that didn’t happen either. The drawer that Mr. Henry had pointed out proved almost as much of a dead end, yielding only a topographical map of the Lake Lovejoy area that included MacPherson’s Island, aka Cherry Island. Scooter took a picture of it with his cell phone for future reference.

“I have to get back to the bookstore,” I told my friends, glancing up at the clock. “My father will notice if I’m gone much longer.”

“We’ll stop by the bookstore if we hear anything about the other suspects,” Calhoun told me. “Otherwise, see you tonight at the Grange.”

I nodded. I was stuffing my notebook into my backpack when I heard a sharp intake of breath from Jasmine. I looked up to see Amanda Appleton standing in the doorway of the reference room.

“Hello, kids.” She cocked her head, a puzzled expression on her face. “Wait a minute—I recognize you girls! You were at the book signing on the Cape!”

Cha Cha and Jasmine and I nodded cautiously.

“Nice to see you again.” Glancing at the open map drawer behind us, she pursed her lips. “What brings you all here?”

Her question caught me off guard. “Research,” I blurted, and instantly could have bitten my tongue off. “For the play we’re all in, I mean,” I added quickly.

“Really? What play is that?”

“The Pirates of Penzance.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Pirates? How interesting.” A smile flitted across her lips. “Well, happy hunting!” She walked briskly back across the lobby toward the bank of computers by the front desk.

“What was that all about?” Calhoun whispered.

“That was Amanda Appleton,” I whispered back. “I shouldn’t have told her anything.”

“Do you think she suspects?” asked Cha Cha.

I lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know. I hope not.”

I was still wondering when I turned onto Main Street a couple of minutes later. Glancing across the street at the Starlite Dance Studio, I read the sign in the window: WINNER OF THIS YEAR’S PUMPKIN FALLS FOUR ON THE FOURTH ROAD RACE! But the pedestal in the middle of the display was empty.

Between the missing trophy and Dr. Appleton, the Pumpkin Falls Private Eyes certainly had their hands full. If there was one thing I knew for sure, we weren’t giving up just yet on either account.