Chapter 5
Three Little Letters

Exactly six and a half minutes later, Bethesda stood at the Achievement Alcove, her Semi-Official Crime-Solving Notebook clutched to her chest, while Janitor Steve read the note from Mr. Ferrars.

“All right,” he said at last, shrugging. “Looks good to me.”

And just like that, the guardian of the crime scene stepped aside and gestured Bethesda Fielding in. Having the assistant principal as her man on the inside was already working its magic.

Bethesda had been in the Achievement Alcove plenty of times before, of course. It was a nook, five feet by five feet square, recessed off the Front Hall just a few steps from the door to the Main Office. The Achievement Alcove was where the triumphs and successes of the student body, no matter how small, were proudly displayed. The walls of the alcove, as always, were decorated with all sorts of congratulatory posters: there was Marisol’s charcoal drawing of a fruit bowl, which Ms. Pinn-Darvish had given a prize, calling it the best student work she’d ever seen; there was a perfect-attendance citation for a seventh grader named Milo Feldberg; there was a congratulatory note to Coach Vasouvian, for three years and counting of no one getting concussions in gym class.

And there, standing in the center of the alcove, was Mary Todd Lincoln’s first-ever trophy-display case, which had been hastily constructed by Mr. Wolcott’s Industrial Arts class on Monday morning, specifically to house Pamela’s trophy. It was a wobbly wooden stand, topped by a tall, rectangular glass cabinet. The glass case bore a jagged hole where the trophy thief had smashed it.

Bethesda examined the case and narrowed her eyes. Something was wrong.

“Wait. What happened to the glass?” she asked.

“All swept up, kiddo,” answered Janitor Steve. He was leaning against the wall just outside the alcove, for some reason tapping his broom handle insistently against the air duct that ran along the ceiling of the Front Hall. “Principal told me to leave everything how it was, and I did, to a point. Maybe Janitor Mike, over at Grover Cleveland Middle School, would stand for a bunch of glass all over the floor, but not me.”

“Gotcha.” She turned to the Alcove, but Janitor Steve stopped her.

“Hey. Kid. You hear anything weird in this duct?”

“Sorry?”

“Anything kinda unusual?” He peered up at the air duct, scratching his neck. “Like little noises or something?”

“No,” said Bethesda, impatiently, ready to get to work. “No, I don’t hear anything.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, me neither. Forget it.”

The custodian lowered his broom and leaned against the wall, and Bethesda at last got going. On her hands and knees she crawled methodically through the Achievement Alcove, inch by inch, hunting for clues. After what felt like an eternity of careful searching, across the floor of the alcove and up and down and inside the broken trophy case, Bethesda’s jeans were covered with bits of fuzz and dirt, her back ached, and her eyes felt all pinchy from squinting.

She looked at her watch, a gift from Tenny Boyer; like Tenny’s bedroom clock, it featured a picture of Pete Townshend, the legendary guitarist from The Who, executing his signature windmill guitar maneuver. Sadly, Pete’s hands told her that time was almost up; even more sadly, the Sock-Snow notebook contained a pathetic two clues.

Clue #1. The drops of blood

Bethesda couldn’t say for sure they were drops of blood. But they were definitely bloodred, the eleven little red blotches she had discovered staining the glass of the case, all around the hole where it had been smashed. These minute drips, red and long dry, actually looked like they could have been left by cherry cough syrup, or a strawberry lollipop. But somehow “cough syrup stain” or “lollipop residue” wouldn’t look as cool in a semi-official crime-solving notebook as “drops of blood.”

Clue #2. The teeny tiny screw

Bethesda had a strong suspicion that this wasn’t really a clue at all. The little screw probably had tumbled from somebody’s overstuffed pocket, or taken a ride to school in the treads of a sneaker. But it was way too early in her investigation to discount any possible clue too hastily. So the teeny screw went into her eyeglasses case for safekeeping, and was duly recorded in the Semi-Official Crime-Solving Notebook.

Two clues. Not the most promising start to her investigation. Bethesda shouldered her backpack, nodded to Janitor Steve, and then turned to take one last look at the crime scene.

Her jaw dropped.

The bell rang.

The hallway filled with the bustle and yelp of the post-lunch rush, and suddenly Bethesda had less than five minutes to get to her locker, ditch the Sock-Snow, and grab The Last Full Measure, her book of Civil War primary sources, which she would need for Mr. Galloway’s sixth period. But she just stood there staring past the shattered trophy case at the three little letters, written in tiny black print on the back wall of the Alcove itself.

She tilted her head, squinting to make out the tiny writing. IOM.

“Bethesda?” warned Violet Kelp, her pigtails bouncing as she raced by. “You do not want to be late for Galloway!” But Bethesda ignored her. She stepped back into the alcove, taking one last careful look at this new clue. Was it actually I zero M? Was it an upside-down WOI?

Bethesda flipped back open her notebook and scribbled wildly on a fresh page. She punctuated this new piece of evidence with a cluster of exclamation points, like a little forest had sprung up at the end of the sentence.

Clue #3. IOM!!!!!!

Finally, and with great reluctance, Bethesda left the crime scene behind.