Ben Winters - The Mystery of the Missing Everything

“I’m going to keep her in the pile.”

“Whatever,” said Tenny.

Bethesda and Tenny worked their way through their suspect cards, debating possible motives, passing the Sock-Snow notebook back and forth, laughing at Bethesda’s father’s occasional Wellington Wolf–related interjections, bouncing wadded-up paper napkins off each other’s heads. “Oh! Wait,” Tenny said suddenly at one point, and attached his iPod to the stereo with a little cord. He cued up a playlist he’d made of classic crime-solving-related rock and pop songs, from “Watching the Detectives” by Elvis Costello to the ridiculous “Private Eyes” by Hall and Oates.

Some cards they annotated with green for motive, like Mr. Darlington’s (“revenge for not being able to display Mary Bot Lincoln”) or Guy Ficker’s (“mad that Pamela was allowed to use the gym instead of him”). Lisa Deckter’s motive was triple-green-underlined: as Bethesda explained to Tenny, Lisa came in second in the gymnastics tournament. Not a bad showing, unless the other competitor from your own team places first . Some had purple for alibi: Mr. Ferrars’s card, for example, said “was at play practice”; Natasha’s said “at Pilverton Mall?,” since Bethesda had heard her say she was heading over there to get her nails done after school that day—and Natasha rarely went to the mall for less than three hours at a time.

Finally, at about 12:30, as Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane” segued into Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal,” Bethesda leaned back and stretched, as Tenny flipped over the last of the suspect cards. It was labeled kevin mckelvey, but the Piano Kid’s card otherwise remained blank. They didn’t know if he had an alibi, and neither of them could imagine any motive for mild-mannered Kevin McKelvey to steal a trophy.

“Whoa, I gotta jet,” Tenny said suddenly. “Chester Hu asked me to record a guitar solo for some sort of video project he’s doing.”

Bethesda walked Tenny out to his bike, sprawled haphazardly on the lawn. “Oh, hey, so you never told me what happened,” Bethesda said, as Tenny corralled his hair under his silver-black bike helmet decorated with AC/DC stickers.

“What happened with what?”

“At St. Francis Xavier. Why are you back?”

“Oh.”

Tenny looked away. But in the split second before he did, Bethesda thought she detected a look of distress glinting in her friend’s eyes, a look suggestive of some deep and mysterious truth buried like pirate’s treasure. Then he shrugged, climbed onto his bike, and pointed it down Chesterton Street.

“It’s a long story,” he said. “I’ll tell you another time.”

“Oh. Okay. Well, see you soon.”

He was already in motion. Bethesda waited as her co-detective pedaled unevenly away, then retreated into the house. Her father was shuffling around in the kitchen, opening and shutting cupboards. “Tabasco… Tabasco… where art thou, Tabasco?”

Bethesda told herself it was no big deal, that Tenny was entitled to his privacy. But his weird silence (“It was weird, right?” she asked herself, replaying the moment and categorizing it definitively as weird) stung a little. Master Detective Bethesda Fielding returned to the kitchen and served herself a bowl of chili and a big hunk of cornbread, feeling increasingly like she had two mysteries on her hands, instead of one.

While Bethesda Fielding and Tenny Boyer were working their way through their list of suspects, Marisol Pierce was in her bedroom, the windows thrown open to let in the cool autumn breeze, painting trees. She had unrolled a long piece of butcher paper from the roll she’d bought at the art supply store, and taped it up so it covered one whole wall of the room. Slowly but surely, her brush dipping deftly in and out of golds and greens and browns, she filled the paper with a long, lovely line of pines and firs.

Outside her door her little cousins, visiting from Puerto Rico, cavorted noisily in the hall, shooting each other with water pistols. “Got you!” “No you didn’t!” “You’re all wet!” “No I’m not!”

It was rude not to be playing with them, but Marisol tuned out the noise and focused on her trees, carefully adding a cluster of russet leaves to a copse of young oaks. Marisol was, as her grandmother always said, “rather a solitary soul.” In the two years since they’d moved to this area, she still hadn’t become terribly close with many kids at Mary Todd Lincoln; frankly, she had no idea why Chester Hu had invited her to be part of this video project. But he had, and she was secretly delighted. Marisol was happy for any excuse to do some painting. She loved making art, loved the intense focus it required.

The tricky part was the people. Chester and the others had decided that the backdrops for the video should be filled with people: People playing, people climbing ropes, people looking through binoculars and building fires.

“Of course,” Marisol had said, not wanting to disappoint the group. “I can do that.”

But the truth was, when she drew people, they had these stubby little limbs and faces, like sea turtles standing on their hind legs. Marisol sighed and stepped back from her work in progress as her grandmother cracked open her door. “Excuse me, Madame Artiste? I am taking your cousins for ice cream. Are you coming?”

“No, thanks. I really need to finish this.”

“Well, it’s incredible so far, my darling. I love the little sea turtles.”

When her grandmother closed the door, Marisol put down her brush and picked up her phone. There was another girl in the eighth grade whose artwork she had admired, but Marisol barely knew her. The idea of calling a person she barely knew, out of the blue, made Marisol so nervous that the roof of her mouth got all dry, like it was coated with the dust from the bottom of a jar of peanuts.

But this was important. This was Taproot Valley.

Lisa Deckter was out walking her dog when her phone started vibrating her in pocket.

She froze. Henry tugged at the leash.

The phone vibrated again.

It’s her, thought Lisa, feeling the chill of a cool autumn breeze as it snuck under the collar of her jean jacket. It’s Pamela. She knows.

The phone vibrated. Lisa remained still. I should just answer it. Just get this over with. Admit the whole thing.

Henry barked, straining toward an inviting pile of red and orange leaves at the other end of the park. The phone vibrated again, and finally Lisa dipped her hand into her pocket, took a deep breath, and looked at the display.

Oh. Phew.

It was a number she didn’t recognize. She flipped the phone open, allowed Henry to lead her to the leaves. “Oh, hey, it’s Marisol Pierce,” said the voice on the other end. “Um, can I ask you—are you good at drawing people?”

A few weeks earlier, Braxton Lashey had been simultaneously doing the dishes and buying movie tickets over the phone when the cell phone slipped out from under his ear and fell in the garbage disposal.

He fished it out, but now some of the buttons didn’t work anymore, and the autofill function was kind of out of control. So when Braxton texted his buddy Ellis Walters, at about four thirty on Saturday afternoon—right as Marisol Pierce was hanging up with Lisa Deckter—to say can you help me find a place to rent a bear suit, Ellis got a text that said can your hemispheric placebo bear fruit?

Ellis texted back that makes no sense.

Braxton started to type a reply, then opted to just call. “Yo. Chester’s making this video to save Taproot Valley, and I need to dress in a bear suit and fall down a flight of stairs.”