It took two days for the police laboratory in Toronto to report back on the piece of metal that had turned up in Nish’s pocket. It was side stripping from a car, all right. The car would have been a Chevrolet, but there were two different models it might have come from, and those models had been in production for three years. In other words, there were tens of thousands of cars the piece of metal could have come from. Dozens around Tamarack alone.

“They say the car might not even have come from here,” Mr. Lindsay told Travis and Nish.

Travis sighed deeply. “What are they going to do?” he asked.

“They’ll check similar cars in the area,” Mr. Lindsay said, “see if one of them’s missing some stripping from up around the front left side–but don’t get your hopes up too high, boys. Travis’s grandfather drives a Chevrolet. So does Mr. Dillinger. It’s almost too common a model to do us any good.”

Travis and Nish tried to play video games to pass the rest of the day, but Nish claimed he couldn’t play up to his usual high standards with a cast on, and after a while they simply paused the game and talked.

“It can’t be from out of town,” Travis said.

“How do you know?” asked Nish. “It could have been driven here from anywhere. It’s a car, after all.”

“Yeah, but don’t forget the day. It was so slippery, cars couldn’t get anywhere. No one would drive any distance that day.”

Nish was only half listening. “Maybe.”

“And don’t forget where he was. The back streets. No one would drive up here from Orillia or someplace like that and be driving around our back streets drunk, would they?”

“Probably not–but who knows what a drunk will do?”

“And that’s significant, too,” Travis almost shouted. He was excited; his brain was really working.

“What’s significant?”

“He was drunk.”

“Obviously.”

“But he had to get drunk first.”

“Obviously again.”

“So, think of the direction he was headed.”

Nish thought for a moment. “Towards Main Street, I guess.”

“Exactly! Which means he was coming from…?”

Nish looked at Travis, bewildered. “I don’t know. There’s nothing much up Cedar beyond the curling rink and the baseball diamonds…Mr. Turley’s farm…a few houses on the other side of the road…”

“An out-of-towner wouldn’t come along that way. But somebody who lives up here would. Or maybe somebody who was at the curling rink, drinking.”

“There was a bottle that fell out, remember. He didn’t have to go to the curling rink to get drunk.”

“Yeah, you’re right. But maybe it was an old bottle, already empty. Or maybe he was already drunk and then continued drinking in his car. There’s a good chance he was either someone from around here, maybe even up Cedar Street, or someone who’d been at the curling rink.”

“That’s not much to go on,” said Nish, unimpressed.

“But we have something else,” Travis protested.

“What’s that?”

“The Chevrolet. We can find out who drives one who also lives out that way. Maybe even who has one and belongs to the curling club.”

“Didn’t you listen to your father?” Nish said, absentmindedly. “He said there were dozens of them.”

“There are,” said Travis, grinning with satisfaction. “But only one is missing a strip of metal.”

Nish looked back at Travis, finally prepared to admit Travis might be right. “Let’s get some help,” he said.

 

 

They raised whatever Owls could be located quickly by telephone calls and knocking on doors. Sarah was there. And Jenny, Lars, Andy, Fahd, Dmitri, and Liz. Travis outlined what it was they were looking for: a mid-sized Chevrolet at least three years old but no more than six years old, colour uncertain.

“I can’t tell one car from another,” said Sarah.

“Don’t worry,” said Travis, “we can wipe off the snow until we see if it’s a Chevrolet or not. And if it is, it’ll just take a second to check the driver’s side near the front for missing stripping. That should be simple enough.”

They marked out an area of approximately six blocks, plus the curling rink, plus the new houses across from Turley’s farm. Then, setting out in pairs, they arranged to meet back at the curling rink in an hour.

Travis and Nish found two Chevrolets that fit the description, but one was Travis’s own grandfather’s–and Harold Lindsay had never touched a drop of drink in his life–and the other was in perfect shape, its stripping as good as new. Sarah and Liz found three. One of them had a bashed-in side, but the damage was on the passenger side. The other two were in perfect shape, trim intact. Andy and Dmitri found only one, but it belonged to Mr. Dickens, who owned the Shell station at the corner of River and Main and who had coached most of the Screech Owls in atom. Like Travis’s grandfather, he was one of the most respected men in town, and anyway, there was no damage on his car. Jenny and Fahd found none.

Six cars, and no suspects. But they still had the curling-rink parking lot to do.

“What if someone catches us?” asked Fahd, who was always worried about something.

“We’ll pretend we’re having a snowball fight,” suggested Sarah. “Get your snow off the backs of the cars–that way you can check the make out.”

“No fair!” complained Nish. “I can’t pack.”

Sarah rolled her eyes. “It is not a real snowball fight, Nishikawa. We are pre-tend-ing.”

Sarah’s idea worked brilliantly. They packed snowballs and checked for Chevrolets. They ducked down and, while they were hidden between cars, checked for missing metal stripping. One man even came out of the curling rink, saw them, and started laughing at their game. Little did he know he had just walked into the middle of a criminal investigation.

Finally the Owls had worked their way through all the rows and all the cars. They were snow-covered and exhausted.

“Four Chevrolets,” said Travis, summing up, after they had all reported.

“And nothing missing,” said Andy, dejected.

“Well…,” mumbled Fahd, seeming to search for the right words.

“You found something?” Travis asked.

“Not really, but–”

“But what?” Nish said impatiently.

“I think we need to look at one of them again,” said Fahd.

He led the seven other Owls along one of the rows of cars, dipped between two of them, and in the next row found the one he wanted.

Andy checked carefully along the driver’s side.

“It’s in perfect shape,” he announced.

“But,” said Fahd, swallowing, “that’s the point.”

“What’s the point?” Nish asked in a challenging voice.

“It…it’s too perfect,” Fahd mumbled. “This is not a new car.”

They all leaned closer around Andy. Travis took his glove off and rubbed it along the side of the car. Andy knocked the snow off further along. He wiped the metal clean, so it shone.

“This guy’s had bodywork done,” said Andy.

“And recently, too,” said Travis.

“We’ve got something,” said Sarah.

A second clue.