“I’m really, really glad you went with Captain Hook tonight, Dad,” I said later, when we were safely back at the Town Hall. The music had stopped and people were milling around everywhere. They’d burst into spontaneous applause when the rescue vehicles finally pulled up out front.
“Me too, honey,” he replied, putting his good arm around me and kissing the top of my head.
The rescue was a bit of a blur. My father held on to me until the fire department arrived and pulled me to safety. I was shoeless, of course, and practically blue with cold, and I’d gotten pretty bruised and scraped up too. But at least I was alive. The firefighters bundled me into blankets and made me take off what was left of my wet, tattered dress so I wouldn’t get hypothermia, and then they took me directly to my mother.
She started to cry when she saw me. “You’re safe!” she kept repeating, hugging me tightly as if to assure herself that I wasn’t going to go flinging myself from another bridge at any moment. “My brave girl!”
I shook my head, which was buried in her shoulder. “It was Dad,” I told her. “Dad’s the one who’s brave. He didn’t let go, and neither did Calhoun and Lucas.”
I smiled at my two friends, whose faces were pink from all the praise they’d been showered with. Lucas’s mother had him in a death grip, though. The poor kid would probably never be allowed out of the house again.
My mother kissed the top of my head. “What were you thinking, sweetheart, going down to the bridge like that?”
“We were looking for something,” I told her.
“This,” said Cha Cha, pulling the duct-tape-covered envelope out of her jacket pocket.
Erastus Peckinpaugh, who had been hovering at the edge of the crowd that surrounded me, looking more stork-like than usual, suddenly froze.
My mother’s forehead puckered. “That trash was worth risking your life for?”
“It’s not trash; it’s for Aunt True,” I told her. “From Professor Rusty—I mean Professor Peckinpaugh.”
At this, Pippa, who had barnacled herself to my leg the second I climbed out of the fire truck, finally let go. “Punkinpie! Punkinpie! Punkinpie!” she chanted, twirling, and the people gathered around us started to laugh.
Cha Cha took out the envelope and passed it to my aunt.
“You really should read the other letters first,” I told Aunt True. “But they’re back at home.”
We explained about finding the envelopes, and the quotes that were on the letters. Calhoun recited a few, and when he stumbled, his dad stepped in to help him. Aunt True listened silently as we told her how we’d followed the clues, casting a glance up at Professor Peckinpaugh now and then.
“Astounding,” she said when we were done. “You did this all on your own?”
My friends and I nodded.
“Please read the last letter to us,” begged Jasmine. “We have to know how the story ends.”
“Why not?” said Aunt True. Opening the envelope, she drew out the faded piece of paper inside. “ ‘For B,’ ” she began. “ ‘When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.’ ”
“Is that it?” asked Cha Cha. “Just another Shakespeare quote?”
“No, there’s more. It also says, ‘True, will you . . .’ ” My aunt’s voice trailed off. She looked up at Professor Peckinpaugh, her eyes wide with surprise.
“True, will you what?” I reached for the letter, but Aunt True clutched it to her chest. Wait a minute, had Erastus Peckinpaugh just asked my aunt to marry him?
Aunt True shot to her feet. “Why didn’t you say something, Rusty?” she demanded, advancing on the bushy-haired professor. “After I left town you never wrote, you never called—I never heard from you again!”
“I thought you’d followed the clues and found the letters, and you weren’t interested,” he protested, taking a step back.
“How could I possibly have followed the clues?” Aunt True sputtered. “You hid them in a book that didn’t belong to you, and that I never found! What were you thinking, Rusty?”
Erastus Peckinpaugh looked miserable. “I was trying to be clever,” he told her. “I knew that Charlotte’s Web was your favorite book, and when I saw it lying there on the floor that day at the bookshop it seemed like a good idea. You were always the one who tidied up at night; I figured you’d find it right away.”
Aunt True shook her head. “You should have just mailed the letter to me. At least I’d have gotten it that way.”
Professor Rusty sighed. “I was planning to. I’d even picked out a stamp to remind you of all those Civil War reenactments I dragged you to.”
Cha Cha and I exchanged a glance. Another piece of the puzzle solved.
“The point is, I didn’t even see the stamp!” Aunt True snapped.
He glanced at her ruefully then hung his head. “I just assumed you would, just as I assumed you’d put two and two together.”
“What, and get five?” Aunt True threw up her hands.
Dr. Calhoun winked at my friends and me. “ ‘There is a kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and her,’ ” he quoted in a whisper. “ ‘They never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit between them.’ ”
Aunt True and Professor Peckinpaugh were still bickering as we gathered our things to leave. On the way out, we passed Ella Bellow, who was collecting her coat from the big rack near the door.
“Hold on a minute, what’s this doing in there?” she demanded as a fuzzy white head poked out from one of the pockets. “This doesn’t belong to me!” Ella’s voice rose in alarm. She spun around, sweeping the crowd with her eyes. Her gaze narrowed when she spotted Belinda Winchester. “Did you put this creature in my pocket, Belinda?”
“Don’t look at me; it isn’t one of mine,” Belinda replied. Turning away from Ella, she gave Lauren and me a mischievous smile. “And that’s not a lie,” she murmured. “Technically speaking, it isn’t one of mine. I didn’t give birth to it.”
My sister and I giggled.
In the end, Ella Bellow went home with a kitten, and the rest of us went home with both mysteries solved at last.