Ben Winters: The Mystery of the Missing Everything

“Gotcha.” She turned to the Alcove, but Janitor Steve stopped her.

“Hey. Kid. You hear anything weird in this duct?”

“Sorry?”

“Anything kinda unusual?” He peered up at the air duct, scratching his neck. “Like little noises or something?”

“No,” said Bethesda, impatiently, ready to get to work. “No, I don’t hear anything.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, me neither. Forget it.”

The custodian lowered his broom and leaned against the wall, and Bethesda at last got going. On her hands and knees she crawled methodically through the Achievement Alcove, inch by inch, hunting for clues. After what felt like an eternity of careful searching, across the floor of the alcove and up and down and inside the broken trophy case, Bethesda’s jeans were covered with bits of fuzz and dirt, her back ached, and her eyes felt all pinchy from squinting.

She looked at her watch, a gift from Tenny Boyer; like Tenny’s bedroom clock, it featured a picture of Pete Townshend, the legendary guitarist from The Who, executing his signature windmill guitar maneuver. Sadly, Pete’s hands told her that time was almost up; even more sadly, the Sock-Snow notebook contained a pathetic two clues.

Clue #1. The drops of blood

Bethesda couldn’t say for sure they were drops of blood. But they were definitely bloodred, the eleven little red blotches she had discovered staining the glass of the case, all around the hole where it had been smashed. These minute drips, red and long dry, actually looked like they could have been left by cherry cough syrup, or a strawberry lollipop. But somehow “cough syrup stain” or “lollipop residue” wouldn’t look as cool in a semi-official crime-solving notebook as “drops of blood.”

Clue #2. The teeny tiny screw

Bethesda had a strong suspicion that this wasn’t really a clue at all. The little screw probably had tumbled from somebody’s overstuffed pocket, or taken a ride to school in the treads of a sneaker. But it was way too early in her investigation to discount any possible clue too hastily. So the teeny screw went into her eyeglasses case for safekeeping, and was duly recorded in the Semi-Official Crime-Solving Notebook.

Two clues. Not the most promising start to her investigation. Bethesda shouldered her backpack, nodded to Janitor Steve, and then turned to take one last look at the crime scene.

Her jaw dropped.

The bell rang.

The hallway filled with the bustle and yelp of the post-lunch rush, and suddenly Bethesda had less than five minutes to get to her locker, ditch the Sock-Snow, and grab The Last Full Measure , her book of Civil War primary sources, which she would need for Mr. Galloway’s sixth period. But she just stood there staring past the shattered trophy case at the three little letters, written in tiny black print on the back wall of the Alcove itself.

She tilted her head, squinting to make out the tiny writing. IOM.

“Bethesda?” warned Violet Kelp, her pigtails bouncing as she raced by. “You do not want to be late for Galloway!” But Bethesda ignored her. She stepped back into the alcove, taking one last careful look at this new clue. Was it actually I zero M? Was it an upside-down WOI?

Bethesda flipped back open her notebook and scribbled wildly on a fresh page. She punctuated this new piece of evidence with a cluster of exclamation points, like a little forest had sprung up at the end of the sentence.

Clue #3. IOM!!!!!!

Finally, and with great reluctance, Bethesda left the crime scene behind.

That Thursday afternoon, at precisely 4:47 p.m., an unremarkable woman with mousy, shoulder-length brown hair, clad in a simple brown dress, brown sweater, and sensible brown shoes, examined the dusty sleeve of an old LP record and shook her head patiently.

“No, young man. I’m looking for the first Clash album. The one with ‘Police and Thieves’ on it.”

“Oh. All right. Hold on a sec, lady.” The record store clerk gave the woman a tight-lipped, irritated smile and strolled lazily to the back of the store.

Ida Finkleman flipped through the racks while she waited, pulling out a Jawbox album and running her finger down the track listings, trying to remember if this was the one she had already. The drive to this record store was quite long, and the clerks were preposterously rude, especially considering that Ida was frequently the only customer. But it couldn’t be helped. Once upon a time, all Ms. Finkleman listened to was classical music—Tchaikovsky and Haydn, Brahms and Bach, and especially her beloved Mozart. But that was before last semester. Before the Choral Corral and the Careless Errors; before Bethesda Fielding used a project in Mr. Melville’s class to dig up her punk rock past and broadcast it to the world.

In the aftermath of these extraordinary events, Ms. Finkleman had, to all outward appearances, returned to her former role in the Mary Todd Lincoln landscape: the boring and unremarkable Band and Chorus teacher, walking briskly through the halls with her head down and her violin case clutched to her chest. Except Ida had not come away unchanged, not really. What she had gained—besides a keen determination to avoid student projects of all kinds—was a newfound passion for rock and roll.

“Say,” Ida asked the returning clerk, gesturing to the in-store stereo system. “This is the Flaming Lips, right?”

The clerk grunted in the affirmative and handed her the Clash album she’d asked for.

Ms. Finkleman rarely had a chance to drive all the way over here and indulge her new obsession; she was not terribly pleased, therefore, to feel the insistent vibration of her cellular phone. She was even less pleased to discover on the other end a nervous female voice she didn’t recognize.

“Hello, is that Ida? It’s Tracy.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Tracy Fischler? From the math department? I’m here with some of the other teachers. Ida, we, uh…”

“Yes?” She ran her finger over the record, checking for nicks and scratches. “What?”

“We need your help.”

On Friday morning her trophy had been gone for four days, and Isabel Van Vreeland decided it was time to get serious. It was time, in other words, for some classroom visits. All morning she prowled the hallways, selecting classrooms at random, throwing open their doors and sweeping inside.

“Who stole my trophy?” she hollered, pointing an angry finger at whatever student she found suspicious. “Did you steal it? Did you?” Principal Van Vreeland’s criteria for suspiciousness were somewhat nontraditional: for some reason she seemed to distrust really tall children, left-handed children, and those with purple backpacks.

“Was it you?” she demanded, bursting into Ms. Aarndini’s Home Ec. room midway through fourth period, violently emptying the purple backpack of a sixth-grade girl named Heather Long.

“Oh dear,” said Ms. Aarndini helplessly. “Oh dear.”

But the result was the same in Ms. Aarndini’s room as it had been in every other room, all morning long. All the children denied it, and Principal Van Vreeland hissed and huffed and finally slammed the door, leaving behind a mightily flustered Ms. Aarndini and a room full of rattled, restless students, their hands trembling too much to safely use craft scissors.

“Why can’t I simply seize these children and shake them by the lapels until they confess!” she demanded of poor Jasper, who raced down the hall at her heels, barely keeping up as she stomped toward another classroom.

“Well—that is—” he stammered. “I don’t think children really wear lapels….”