Ben Winters - The Mystery of the Missing Everything

But what on earth was he playing now?

“Once upon a time… there were some kids who had a dream!” Kevin sang in a high, warbling voice, his fingers gently caressing the keys. “A dream sweet and delicious… as a bowl of peach ice cream.”

Bethesda couldn’t bring herself to interrupt. Maintaining the soft vamp with one hand, Kevin reached up with the other and flipped a page of the blue spiral notebook balanced on the top of the piano.

“The dream we had was so unique… to sleep in bunks, climb some trees, and not shower”—Kevin’s voice jumped into a comical falsetto—“for a weeeeeeeek!”

Bethesda yelped with laughter. Kevin jumped in his seat and turned around.

“Sorry, sorry…,” Bethesda said between giggles. “That is awesome .”

“It’s getting there, uh, you know. It’s getting there.” Kevin held up the spiral notebook. “Rory wrote the lyrics. My job is just to, er, to make it sing. Make it sound pretty.”

Bethesda exhaled the last of her laughter, stepped inside, and settled down in Ms. Finkleman’s chair. Principal Van Vreeland’s announcement that morning, galling as it was, had only reinforced her determination. She and Tenny were going to work their way through the suspects and find this thief. No doubt about it.

“So, Kevin,” Bethesda said, keeping her voice nice and light. “You still play in here a lot after school, right?”

“Uh, yeah. Sure. I’d say about, maybe, half the time. When I play rock at home, my father refuses to come out of his room, and my mother makes all these faces.” He demonstrated, screwing up his mouth like he was sucking on a lemon. “So I end up practicing in here a lot. Sometimes Ms. Finkleman is here, grading papers or whatever, and sometimes I’m alone.”

“And you use the key Mr. Ferrars gave you?”

Kevin looked up, alarmed. His fingers hovered uncertainly above the piano. “Um… well…”

“It’s okay,” she said, reassuringly. “You promised you wouldn’t mention it. Forget I asked.”

Bethesda tipped him a wink, plucked a sharpened #2 pencil from her pocket, and opened the Semi-Official Crime-Solving Notebook in her lap. “Now, then,” she began. “Two Mondays ago, on the afternoon of the twentieth. Were you here after school on that day?”

“What?”

Kevin’s entire body grew completely still. He met her searching gaze with eyes wide, his mouth hanging slightly open. She searched his face for a glimmer of guilt, for a telltale flicker of anxiety in his eyes.

But Kevin didn’t look guilty. He just looked hurt. “You, um… you think I stole the trophy?”

Bethesda flushed and reached up to fuss with her glasses.

“Well… I mean…”

“You do! You think I stole the trophy!”

“I didn’t say that. You’re, um, you’re one of a number of possible suspects, that’s all.”

“A number of possible suspects,” Kevin echoed, his wounded expression now hardening into something more like anger. He snapped shut the wooden housing of the keyboard, leaned back stiffly, and crossed his arms over his chest, the sleeves of his blue blazer bunching up at the elbows.

“It’s just… you know,” Bethesda stammered feebly. “ Somebody stole it.”

“Undoubtedly,” Kevin said. “But, also, a lot of people didn’t steal it. Why aren’t I on that list?”

The truth was, Bethesda and Tenny had no motive for Kevin, and he definitely didn’t sound guilty. On the other hand, if he was guilty, that’s exactly how he would want to sound! Bethesda rubbed her eyes under her glasses with her index fingers and tried to concentrate. “Let’s take a step back. I just need you to tell me if you saw or heard anything unusual around here after school that day.”

“All right. Hold on.” Shaking his head with annoyance, Kevin hunched over on the bench and dug around in the red-and-black messenger bag, stenciled with the logo of the Sydney Municipal Orchestra, that he lugged around instead of a backpack.

“Where is it?” he asked himself quietly.

Bethesda felt the same rushing sensation in her bloodstream that she had just before Mr. Ferrars told her about the keys. Her foot danced on the crisp mauve rug beneath Ms. Finkleman’s desk. There was a clue in that fancy bag of his. She could just feel it.

“Here we go,” Kevin announced, when at last he resurfaced clutching a small, thin black notebook, its white pages filled with Kevin’s careful handwriting. “My practice diary. I, uh, I know it sounds—whatever—but I write down exactly what I work on every day, and for exactly how long.” As Kevin riffled through the little book, Bethesda felt a keen flash of envy, not only for Kevin’s incredible talent, but for his dedication.

“Oh, right,” he said suddenly. “I actually didn’t practice here two Mondays ago.”

Bethesda’s heart sank.

“I was going to,” Kevin continued. “But someone else was using the room.”

“Ms. Finkleman?”

He looked up. “No. A kid. Two kids, actually.”

Bingo. Bethesda rolled herself a few inches closer to Kevin on Ms. Finkleman’s spinny black desk chair. “Two kids were in here? Kevin, who were they?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“Geez, Bethesda, take it easy. When I heard someone was in here, I turned around and went home. That’s called minding your own business.”

She ignored the swipe. “You’re sure it was two kids?”

“I heard two voices. A girl and a boy. And they were singing.”

Bethesda’s feet rat-a-tatted on the floor like drumsticks. Her gaze jumped from one end of the Band and Chorus room to the other, as if she could force this mysterious pair to materialize from the room’s darkened corners. Two kids. A boy and a girl. Singing!

“So, what were they singing?”

“Oh, it was sort of a goofy thing. Let’s see…” Kevin tilted his head toward the ceiling, summoning back the song, and Bethesda watched his hands. His fingers were thinking, too, arranging themselves in little clusters on the keys, trying and rejecting possibilities, conjuring a melody remembered from a couple weeks ago. “The boy was doing most of the singing, as I recall, with the girl just kind of chiming in.” Kevin tried out a chord, paused, shifted his fingers, tried another. “There we go.”

He began to sing.

“Locked up too long! You been locked up too long! And that’s wrong, so wrong!”

As always, all the hesitancy of Kevin McKelvey’s speaking voice disappeared when he sang, and he belted the silly little lyrics clear and strong. Kevin’s fingers bounced through the simple, three-chord pattern. “Turn to me! Turn to me!” he sang. “And I’ll set you free!”

His voice popped up an octave for the big finish. “Oh you sweet thing… I’m gonna set… yooooooooou… freeeeee!”

Then, just like that, Kevin stopped singing and shrugged. “Then I left.” Bethesda refrained from pointing out to Kevin that, for someone minding his own business, he had heard an awful lot of the song.

“So, detective?” he asked. “Am I free to go?”

After Kevin left, Bethesda took his place at the piano bench. She plunked at random keys, singing lightly to herself, wondering what it all could mean.

“Turn to me… and I’ll set you free…”

Whoosh!

In one easy, graceful movement, Guy Ficker crouched, sprang, took to the air, pumped his legs, and sent the basketball swooshing noiselessly into the net. He snagged his own rebound, twirled on his heels, and bounced the ball over to Tenny Boyer.

“Ow,” said Tenny, flinching, as it sprang up from the blacktop and stung his palms.