“I can’t believe Hatcher did that to you!” Mackenzie’s shocked face looked out at me from my laptop screen.
Disaster had struck after the wrestling meet.
As we were heading to the lobby, Hatcher came bounding over and slung a sweaty arm around my shoulders. He knows I hate this, which of course makes him do it even more.
“Eew, get off!” I cried, shoving him away. “Go take a shower!”
“What’s the matter?” he teased. “Just trying to share the love.” He hoisted his elbow in the air and fanned his armpit in my direction.
“Mom, make him stop!” I protested.
My mother shot him a look.
Hatcher dropped his arm. “Jeez, Drooly, can’t you take a joke?”
I froze. Scooter Sanchez was standing directly behind him. At first I thought maybe I was in the clear, but then I saw a slow smile slide across Scooter’s face, and I knew he’d heard my brother, and that I’d be hearing about it too, for as long as I lived in Pumpkin Falls.
I ran up to my room when we got home and slammed the door. Miss Marple whined to be let in, but I ignored her. Flinging myself on the bed, I shoved my head under my pillow to muffle the noise as I let out a howl of rage and humiliation. Angry tears spilled over, and I let them.
“Go away!” I hollered a little while later when someone knocked on my door. It was probably Hatcher. He’d tried to apologize in the car on the way home, but I wouldn’t listen. I didn’t plan on ever speaking to him again. Scooter would never let this go.
“I don’t know what to do,” I wailed to Mackenzie.
“Maybe your parents will let you come live here with us,” she replied. “You know, like the witness protection program or something.”
“Fat chance.”
“Well, you’re going to have to deal with it, then.”
She was right. I needed a plan. The problem was, I couldn’t think of one.
The next day at school I tried to keep my distance from Scooter, but, of course, that didn’t work. Somehow he managed to pop up at every turn, with the same stupid grin on his face that had been there at the gym last night.
“Truly Drooly,” he sang to me softly in math class.
“Could you pass me that beaker, Truly Drooly?” he asked in science class.
“Pardon me, Truly Drooly,” he said when he bumped into me on purpose in the lunch line.
Things took a turn for the worse during our ballroom dance class, when he started calling me “Drooly Gigantic.”
I stomped on his foot then, hard. Unfortunately, Cha Cha’s father saw me. He frowned. “Miss Lovejoy? Pumpkin Falls manners, please.”
The heck with Pumpkin Falls manners, I thought bitterly and stomped again the second Mr. Abramowitz’s back was turned.
“What’s your problem?” Scooter whispered angrily.
“You know exactly what my problem is!” I whispered back.
Somehow, I managed to make it through the day. At least I had the Pumpkin Falls Private Eyes to look forward to.
Nearly twenty-four hours had passed since we’d all met at the college library. My parents had left for Boston early this morning, so my tutoring sessions had been canceled for the rest of the week. My father was finally ready to get fitted for a more permanent prosthetic arm, and Aunt True was going to look after my brothers and sisters and me while he and my mother were away.
Dad would actually be coming home with two new prostheses: a flesh-colored silicone one that’s strictly for show, and a high-tech one made of black titanium and polymer that’s controlled by electrical impulses sent from his brain. It’s the latest technology, and unlike the one he’s been wearing, there’s no harness; it’s held on by suction and is supposed to be much more comfortable. Mom showed us a video of it online, and it looked pretty awesome. Hatcher and Danny have already dubbed it “The Terminator.”
Ever since that day in the bookshop, all of us had been calling his temporary prosthesis “Captain Hook.” Dad rolls his eyes when we do, but Pippa thinks it’s funny, so he puts up with it. We can tell he’s relieved he doesn’t have to hide it in a gym bag anymore.
I had the house to myself until dinnertime. Hatcher and Danny were at their wrestling practices, Lauren had gone up the street to visit Belinda Winchester and her menagerie, and Pippa had a playdate with Baxter over at the Abramowitzes’.
Even so, my friends and I still wound up in Lola’s art studio. It was beginning to feel like a clubhouse of sorts. Calhoun came too, tagging along behind us on the walk home from school. Even though curiosity won out in the end, he was careful not to get too close so people wouldn’t think we were together. He wanted to make it clear that we were the dorks and he was still the cool one.
“You are not seriously calling yourselves the Pumpkin Falls Private Eyes, are you?” Calhoun said when I called the meeting to order.
I could feel my face flush. Calhoun was almost as infuriating as Scooter Sanchez. “So do you want to see the first letter we found or not?” I snapped.
“You don’t have to bite my head off,” he said. “And, yeah, I do. I wouldn’t have come otherwise.”
I passed the envelope to him, explaining how I had found it at the bookstore.
He scanned the letter. “This is from Much Ado too,” he told us. “ ‘February face’—cold and stormy, get it? Whoever is writing the letters is trying to get someone not to be mad at them. They’re trying to say they’re sorry.”
My friends and I looked at each other. Who was this guy, and what had he done with Calhoun?
“So why make up some elaborate scavenger hunt? Why not just pick up the phone and call, or send flowers?” asked Cha Cha.
Calhoun shrugged. “Don’t look at me. I didn’t write the letters.”
“Um, so B and B are nicknames, then, right?” said Lucas, who was sitting scrunched up on the floor, as far away as possible from Calhoun.
We all nodded.
“That means they could be just about anybody.”
My friends and I looked at each other. Lucas was right. Making a list of people with B names hadn’t narrowed down the field at all.
“We don’t stand a chance of solving this,” I said glumly.
“Don’t give up yet,” said Cha Cha. “We still know what year the stamp was issued. That makes a difference, doesn’t it?”
“And figuring out this clue’s gotta help too,” added Jasmine. “What did it say again?”
I recited it from memory. “ ‘Wednesday the third, B-4.’ Anybody have any ideas?” I glanced around the room. Nobody raised a hand, not even Calhoun this time.
So much for the Pumpkin Falls Private Eyes. We were back to square one: completely clueless.