Minerva Clark Gets a Clue (20 page)

“So you think Tiffani was trying to get back at Jordan for …,” asked Mrs. Snowden.

I looked at Pansy, who raised her eyebrows.

“We don't really know.”

“And you don't know what was in these eyeglass cases everyone is apparently passing back and forth?”

“Well, I would feel really stupid if they were, uh, glasses,” I said, trying for a joke.

Mrs. Snowden laughed. “I don't think we know quite
what's going on, but it doesn't sound as if we're talking about glasses here.”

“There's one other thing,” I said. “The guy at the bookstore, Dwight? He was murdered last week. The police arrested a homeless man who used to hang around outside …” My voice trailed off. Hearing me say it aloud to an adult was horrible. Talking about it with Reggie or Pansy was like talking about a movie. It was like talking about what if you found a bag in the street with a million dollars in it, or what if you found a skull buried in your backyard.

“Oh, that Dwight. I thought it sounded familiar,” said Mrs. Snowden. “I remember reading about that in the paper.”

I told her about Clyde's withered right hand and how Dwight had been hit on the left side of his head, and how, given that, Clyde would never have had the strength with his right hand to hit Dwight hard enough to kill him. “And I don't think I'm being a drama queen about this, but I think it may have been Tiffani who killed him.”

Mrs. Snowden released a small smile then, and I knew we were doomed. I think the word is “patronizing.” She said, “You two are quite the detectives, aren't you?”

“There are a lot of teenaged boy murderers,” I said. “Why can't there be teenaged girl murderers?”

“Detective
and
feminist!” she said.

I didn't know what that was.

“All right. All right.” Then Mrs. Snowden pulled a small black leather notebook and pen from her bag. “The name of the bookstore is Under the Covers?” She wrote it down. She had nice handwriting, not too round and loopy, but sharp and confident.

“It's on Northeast Broadway.”

“I don't know what you girls have here. I'll see if there's any connection with customers from our bank who've been the victims of checking account fraud and this bookstore.”

I exhaled, slumped back in my chair. I didn't realize I'd been holding my breath. How can you talk and not breathe at the same time? This was good. Now Mrs. Snowden would fix things. She'd be able to use all her high-powered bank executive techniques to connect Jordan and Tiffani and the glittery eyeglass cases to Jordan's identity theft and Dwight's murder. She'd find out why Tiffani had called the Hightower Scholarship office after Jordan had been arrested, and maybe, maybe she'd be able to come up with some evidence that Tiffani was guilty of Dwight's murder.

Then I could go back to being Minerva Clark. Although I doubted I would be going back to the same Minerva Clark I was before I was electrocuted, before I
discovered that if you walked through the world thinking you were just fine the way you were, people would treat you that way.

I glanced over at Kevin, who'd made an origami box out of the schedule he'd been carrying around.

Mrs. Snowden closed her notebook. “I appreciate your telling me about this, ladies. It's good information to have.”

Good information to have? That didn't sound as if she were going to fix things. I looked over at Pansy. She bugged her pale eyes out a little, making a “what are you going to do?” face.

“Aren't you going to call the police or something?”

For the first time Mrs. Snowden smiled in that way adults do when they find you amusing. “I don't think there's really enough here to involve the police, do you?”

“Is it because we don't know what they've been passing back and forth in the eyeglass case?” I asked. I could hear the pleading in my own voice. Kevin even looked up from his folding.

“For starters, yes.” Then she turned to Kevin. “You ready, Kev?”

She stood up; then he stood up. As they walked towards the exit he turned around and gave me a dorky-cute salute.

I felt tears surge into my eyes. I hadn't cried in so long,
and I wouldn't cry now. I gave Kevin the dorky-cute salute right back.

It was pretty clear that Mrs. Snowden had found us … entertaining … but she wasn't going to fix anything.

Now what?

AS PLANS GO, IT WASN'T A
great one, but it was all I could think of.

The next afternoon, Sunday, I scooped up Jupiter from his hammock and popped him into the pocket of my hoodie. It was another sunny day, and I didn't need a sweatshirt, but Jupiter traveled best in that front pocket. It would be easy to let him go and tuck him back in.

All the brothers were home when I left for the mall. Morgan was in the third-floor study, slouched in the big red leather chair, drinking green tea and writing in a notebook. Quills was in the basement with the drummer from Humongous Bag of Cashews—one of the guys whose names I could never remember—trying to fix
his amplifier. Mark Clark was playing EQ and talking to someone on the phone at the same time.

Here's something I learned: When all the brothers were home, each thought one of the other ones was the BIC. I made sure all the dishes were done, turned up Green Day loud but not too loud in my room, closed my door, walked downstairs and straight out of the house. I would be back before anyone knew I was gone.

I hopped on the 77 bus and was at the mall in ten minutes. I'd already called ahead and found out that Tiffani was working that day. Luckily it was in Brass Plum, the department I would shop in if I ever went shopping.

Brass Plum was crammed with round racks of T-shirts, blouses, and skirts. Piles of jeans and cotton sweaters sat folded on a row of tables beneath a television on which a music video I didn't recognize played. The same video played on a huge screen behind the counter. There were tall racks of sunglasses and smaller racks of earrings, trays of earrings, bracelets, all kinds of sparkly girl junk that Jupiter would have gone crazy for, if he weren't dozing in my pocket.

I was already sweating.

Tiffani was replacing dresses on a rack. She looked different—she'd restreaked her hair, or maybe it was the low pigtails she wore. She looked trendy-hippie in a
white peasant blouse and pink-and-blue patchwork skirt. She was frowning, and when she looked up and saw me, her thin mouth deepened into a bigger frown before switching into a fakey nice smile that was almost a sneer.

“Look who's here,” said Tiffani. She gave the dresses on the rack a big shove to make room for the ones she was returning. “Can I help you?”

“Just looking,” I said.

“Anything in particular?” she said. “Here's something that would look totally adorable on you.” She held up a hideous lavender mini made of some crinkling material, with a big ruffle around the hem. It was the type of dress S Cubed or one of the Chelseas would wear. So totally not Minerva Clark, and she knew it.

“Sure,” I said, staring straight back at her. “I'll give it a try.”

“This is a two. You probably don't wear a two,” she said.

“Probably not,” I said. “Have anything else totally hot and adorable?”

She stared hard at me. She couldn't figure out what I was doing there, I could tell, but she knew it couldn't be anything good.

Luckily, at that moment a tall, skinny girl with hip bones that looked straight out of some documentary on dinosaurs and the lowest low-rise pants imaginable
tapped Tiffani on the arm and asked about a shirt in another size and color. Tiffani smirked at me and went in search of the shirt.

I moved towards the counter and picked up one of the stupid charm bracelets on a pink velvet tray near the cash register. They were silver, with hearts and crescent moon charms.

I felt Jupiter stirring in my pocket. I stood up on my tip toes and peeked over the counter. I was counting on the fact that Tiffani was still carrying the same purse and that she hadn't gotten the zipper fixed. Behind the counter were cubbies filled with boxes and bags and the white tissue paper for wrapping your purchases.

My heart thumped in my chest. It felt way too big and powerful for one seventh-grade girl's nervous body. I didn't see Tiffani's bag anywhere. Maybe there was a place for employees to keep their things somewhere else in the store. I started feeling as if I'd gotten all worked up over nothing, as if this was yet another idea that had seemed terrific in the middle of the night when I'd thought of it, but was bad-movie stupid in the light of day.

I moved over to the side of the counter and glimpsed Tiffani's bag yawning open. Lucky, lucky day. And there it was, as I'd hoped, the glittery eyeglass case, the gnawed-on one that was more purple than blue, winking
against the black lining of the bag. The one that proved Tiffani had been to Under the Covers to see Dwight after Jordan and I had left that afternoon but before Dwight's body had been discovered the next morning.

Tiffani was still on the other side of the department, checking tags for the girl with the hip bones.

It was now or never.

In one motion I pulled Jupiter out of my pocket, leaned behind the counter, and dropped Jupiter inside Tiffani's purse. He's a good boy: He went straight for the case, hauled it up and out of the bag, and scampered back to me.

Here's where I made the mistake that seemed deadly at first but turned out to be good. In that way it was a lot like the worst day of my life, when I'd made an idiot of myself at Tilt, saw my favorite cousin get arrested, and was electrocuted in front of a bunch of people while having a fractal made out of my brain waves.

I should have just tucked Jupiter and the eyeglass case back in my pocket and left, but I couldn't help myself. What if after all this there
were
only glasses in the eyeglass case?

It took two hands to pry it open. Inside, folded up to fit, were three copies of something official looking … a form of some kind … At the top I read “Nordstrom Credit Card Application.”

“Hey!” Tiffani yelled from the other side of Brass Plum.

I looked up so fast I thought I'd broken my own neck. Tiffani was staring right at me. She'd seen everything.

I started walking fast, weaving my way between the racks, the bass line of the music video pounding in my ears, trying to refold the credit card applications with one hand while holding the eyeglass case with the other, and keeping Jupiter, who was now awake and raring to play, inside my pocket with my elbows.

I fast walked out of the department, past children's shoes. I could hear Tiffani clomping after me in her suede platform clogs. I think I heard her say, “You won't get away with this,” but she wasn't yelling too loud. She wasn't making a scene. We even fast walked past a security guard, who was flirting with another salesgirl.

I realized then that I could have stopped and just handed over the eyeglass case to the security guard. Clearly, it was what it looked like. Tiffani was stealing the information off of credit applications. But I just kept thinking about Mrs. Snowden and how she needed more information, and, okay, I admit it, how it would be a good excuse to see Kevin again. Plus, when someone's chasing you, even at a fast walk, all you think about is getting away.

I plunged into the mall and started jogging. Jupiter
was going nuts. Snatching the eyeglass case had been tons of fun for him. I had to keep both sides of my hoodie's pocket closed, but that required both hands. I tried to slip the eyeglass case into my pocket but there wasn't enough room. Why hadn't I brought a book bag?

I jogged past Pacific Sunwear and Hot Topic. An African-American girl with a headful of beaded braids gasped and grabbed her friend's chubby brown arm: “I swear that girl had a rat in her pocket.”

The mall was loud. Music blared from inside each shop, and Pumbaa's theme from
The Lion King
blared from the ice-skating rink at the mall's center.

I thought I'd lost Tiffani. I turned to look while at the same moment jogging past a vendor who sold glass wind chimes. Jupiter poked his head out, took one look at the wind chimes, and sprang from my pocket. I grabbed at him, but he squirted out of my hand like toothpaste. Hanging beneath the wind chimes were rows of glass animals, delicate horses and giraffes, elephants and fish. I lunged after Jupiter and cleared the shelf of glass animals. They made a high tinkling sound as they shattered on the floor. The vendor, an Indian man smaller than me, started shouting.

Then I saw Tiffani clomping after me, probably swearing, fists clenched.

I spied a plain beige door and lunged for it, hoping it
would eventually lead outside. The door slammed behind me. A long hallway extended in either direction. It smelled like new clothes, perfume, and stale fried food, the regular mall smell, only stronger. I didn't know which way to go, but it didn't matter. I took two steps in one direction before the door from the mall swung open.

It was Tiffani, only somehow she'd gotten shorter. She bared her teeth, called me a name seventh graders aren't supposed to say. She held one of her platform clogs above her, and before I could make a sound, she brought it down on my head. My final thought before I fell was not to squish dear Jupiter.

THIS TIME WHEN I OPENED MY
eyes—or eye, I should say, because one of them was swollen shut—people who all looked sort of familiar were standing over me. A security guard, the angry wind chime vendor, and a bald cop whose arms were as thick as my legs, whose legs where thicker than my body and who reeked of too much aftershave. Detective Peech? What was he doing here?

There was also his partner, Ol' White Teeth, gripping Tiffani's arm.

“You … ?” I said to Detective Peech. It was all I could get out. I meant, “What are you doing here?” I meant, “How come every time I turn around, there you are?”