On the Case (From the Files of Madison Finn, 17) (7 page)

But whoever it was who had been speaking had vanished. And there was no time to look anywhere else.

The second class bell was about to ring.

Madison gasped and leaned against the wall. She was beginning to feel as if the person she had heard in the library the day before had been merely a figment of her imagination.

But that didn’t matter. Madison knew that Major DeMille would never have given up when tracking a suspect. And so, she wouldn’t, either.

Crime Time


Okay. Everything I loved about Hart and his beautiful brown hair (yes it IS beautiful and soft looking, and I can’t help staring at it) and his cool new sneakers and his brains and the way he talks and calls me Finnster and the way he doesn’t seem ever to mind when I embarrass myself--all that means nothing right now. Hockey stinks. Boys stink. Right now Hart and the rest of the world seem like a HUGE mystery to me.


And what’s with Aimee? After the whole lunchroom thing, I sat with her in Mr. Gibbons’s English class and she was blowing off all my questions. She was blowing ME off. I asked why she wouldn’t go to Drew’s and she said she had dance class AGAIN. Then she said that detective movies like Curse of the Diamond are dumb. That really bugs me. I don’t go around saying how much I hate things SHE likes. Do I?


Rude Awakening:
Sometimes I feel like my friendship has sailed--and I’m left behind, sinking.


Madison quickly hit
SAVE
when she saw Fiona, Aimee, and Lindsay walking down the hall toward her. She clicked her orange laptop shut and jumped up from where she’d been sitting on the hall floor. The halls at FHJH were filling fast with kids from all three grades.

“There you are!” Fiona cried. “I thought we were all walking to school together this morning. It’s Friday! Where were you?”

“Oh, no,” Madison said. “I forgot.”

“That’s because you’re not thinking of your friends anymore. All you think about is mysteries,” Aimee said with a smirk.

Madison stuck out her tongue. “That’s
so
not true, Aim.”

She turned to Fiona. “I’m sorry I spaced about the morning walk. I feel like such a lame-o,” Madison said.

“Oh, whatever,” Fiona said with a wide smile, quickly accepting the apology.

“Speaking of mysteries…” Lindsay started to say. No one was really listening at first, but then she said, “I heard there’s a school mystery going on and it’s already under investigation.”

Madison pricked up her ears when she heard the words
mystery
and
investigation,
but she tried to play it cool in front of Aimee. She wasn’t in the mood for another lecture on being obsessed—and she definitely was not in the mood to reveal anything to her friends about the scrap of paper from the library.

“How do you know so much?” Aimee asked.

Lindsay’s voice got low. “I have connections,” she said with a wink—and then she laughed. “The truth is, I was eavesdropping just outside the teachers’ lounge.”

Fiona covered her mouth. “I can’t believe you did that!” she squealed.

“I can,” Madison said with a giggle. “You were a spy in a former life, Lindsay, I swear.”

“Anyway, I heard someone say that some precious object had been stolen,” Lindsay continued. “Whatever that means…”

“Which teacher said that? Do you know?” Madison asked.

“I think it was one of the language teachers… or maybe Mr. Olivetti,” Lindsay replied. “He had an accent.”

“Mr. Olivetti!” Madison exclaimed. “My flute teacher?”

“What does ‘precious object’ mean?” Aimee scoffed. “Sounds like a bunch of hooey.”

“A bunch of
what
?” Fiona said.

They all started to laugh.

“Hooey,” Aimee repeated, trying hard herself not to laugh. “Hooey! I don’t know. My dad says that all the time. It’s a cool word.”

“It sounds like something my gramps would say,” Fiona said.

“Anyway,” Lindsay continued, “the teachers sounded really worried, like there was a thief in the building. Everyone sounded scared that their classroom might be next. And they think the thief could be a student, or a couple of students, working together.”

“Wow, that sounds serious,” Fiona said.

“Come on,” Aimee said. “Don’t you think if there was a major theft in the building that we’d hear about it?”

“Maybe,” Madison said. “But maybe not. The teachers could want to keep the problem under wraps so they can trap the criminal…”

“The
criminal
?” Aimee interrupted. “Maddie, you sound like one of those mystery shows you watch.”

“So?” Madison asked. “This is a mystery, isn’t it?”

“Maybe you can solve it,” Fiona said.

“Yeah, the teachers should come to you for help,” Lindsay added.

Aimee rolled her eyes. Madison saw it.

“You don’t think I can figure this out, do you?” Madison said to Aimee directly.

Aimee shook her head. “Whatever. Do whatever you want.”

“Why are you so negative all the time lately?” Madison asked. “It’s really beginning to bug me.”

Fiona and Lindsay backed off a little. At first they’d been joking, but now Madison and Aimee were staring each other down.

“I just think you’d better be careful, Maddie,” Aimee said. “All this mystery stuff has you sticking your nose into everyone’s business and asking too many questions.”

“Too many?” Madison said. “What, is there a limit on questions or something?”

“I just think you should watch your back,” Aimee said.

“Wow, Aim,” Lindsay said. “Don’t you think you’re being a little hard on Maddie?”

“Why does she have to watch her back?” Fiona asked. “Is someone following her or something?”

Madison crossed her arms. “You’re just mad,” she blurted out, “because I might get noticed for this and I have a guy who likes me and…”

She stopped in midsentence.

Aimee looked down at the ground.

Madison felt a knot in her chest. She wanted to take back what she had said. She
needed
to take it back.

Fiona and Lindsay stood there, not saying anything.

Kids rushed all around the four of them as they stood there, dumbfounded.

“I have to go to class,” Aimee finally said. She reached into her book bag and pulled out a tube of lip gloss, carefully applying some to her lips.

“Aim,” Madison stammered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say—”

“Forget it,” Aimee said, puckering her lips again to distribute the lip gloss evenly. She slung her bag over one shoulder. “Just forget I said anything, too.”

With that, Aimee turned and headed in the opposite direction, toward her next class.

“Wait!” Fiona called out. “Aim, I have the same class as you!” Fiona took a deep breath. “Want me to talk to her?” she asked Madison.

“About what?” Madison said. “The fact that I just said the dumbest thing ever?”

Fiona shrugged. “Don’t worry so much. She’ll get over it. See you guys at lunch?” she said.

“Bye, Fiona!” Lindsay called out. She moved closer to Madison. “Don’t worry about Aim right now,” she said. “You have a mystery to solve, remember?”

Madison smiled. “I guess.”

“We should go to social studies class,” Lindsay said. “If we’re late, Mrs. Belden will throw a fit.”

The day passed quickly.

Aimee had dance practice and didn’t show up in the cafeteria at lunchtime, so Madison had no chance to apologize or talk or make things right in any way between them. Maybe it was just better to let things blow over, Madison decided, so she didn’t leave any notes in Aimee’s locker. She also didn’t make plans to e-mail Aimee or see her later.

At the end of the day, Madison went up to the library again to wait until it was time for her flute lesson with Mr. Olivetti.

She sat in the same carrel where she had been the day she’d heard the squeaky voice. But no mysterious people showed up in the library this time. It was just Madison and a couple of other seventh graders working on book reports.

Madison tried to work on a revolutionary-war time line that had been assigned for weekend homework in social studies class, but she couldn’t keep her thoughts straight. Mostly, she was still steaming about the fight with Aimee. But Madison had other things on her mind, too.

Today’s date was the same as the one that had been shown on the slip of paper she’d found two days before. Should she investigate it? Maybe she could stop off at Marquette Street on the way home after her flute lesson. She could scope out the location. That’s what Major DeMille always talked about. It was one of the things real detectives needed to do.

Madison got up and walked around the library. She hoped another clue to the growing mysteries at FHJH would magically appear.

Instead of a clue, however, Madison got the enemy.

She spotted Poison Ivy in a corner of the library, with her nose buried in an encyclopedia. Considering the fact that Ivy hardly ever studied, the chances of Madison running into Ivy up there were about a hundred to one.

And yet there she was.

The suspicious side of Madison thought it must be a sign of something. It was hard not to shake the notion that Ivy was a part of the torn-paper mystery. Otherwise, why did she keep showing up? Madison wondered if Ivy was also responsible for the theft at school. Ivy was known to do anything to get her way. Maybe the “precious object” that the teachers were talking about was a test. Once, in science class, Ivy had cheated on a quiz by copying Madison’s paper. It didn’t take much of a leap to imagine Ivy stealing a test to get a better grade.

“What are you staring at?” Ivy yelled across the library.

Madison realized that she had, in fact, been staring—and she’d been caught. She wanted to kick herself. Major DeMille would never have let himself be spotted that way while gathering evidence.

“Sorry,” Madison said dumbly. “I was just—”

“Where’s Hart?” Ivy snapped. “Oh, look. He’s not with you! What a surprise—”

“How should I know where Hart is?” Madison retorted. “He’s probably playing hockey. What do you care?”

Ivy gathered her books together and stood up. “I have nothing else to say to you, Madison Finn.”

Madison didn’t know how to respond. Ivy was good at leaving her speechless.

Madison sat down on a bench by the large library windows and gazed out onto the back lot behind the school. Way out beyond the teachers’ parking lot there were wide, open fields and a forest. The land looked like a quilt of color; it curved and dipped.

Those were the far hills of Far Hills.

They looked inviting from way up here, Madison thought.

She wondered how many mysteries were hidden in those hills.

Madison looked up at the clock on the wall; it read 3:02. Realizing she was late for her lesson, she sped out of the library and down the staircase to Mr. Olivetti’s room. For the first time maybe ever, he wasn’t late. Mr. Olivetti was waiting, tapping his conductor’s baton on his desk as he read through a pile of papers.

“Sorry!” Madison cried as she burst through the door, flute case in hand.

Mr. Olivetti looked up, a sad expression on his face. “Oh!” he said, surprised. “Sit-a-over there,” he said.

There was something different about the way he was acting, Madison thought instantly. He kept dropping things. And he was chewing on his nails, a nervous habit that Madison had only noticed in him once or twice before.

Later, out of the blue, somewhere in the middle of her practicing scales, Mr. Olivetti sat down on a chair and declared, “I cannot go-a on.”

Madison stopped playing. “Are you okay?” she asked.

His eyes darted from one side of the room to the next. “Yes, I’m-a… I’m-a-fine, Miss Madison.”

Madison didn’t believe him. She remembered what Lindsay had said about possibly having overheard Mr. Olivetti in the teachers’ lounge. She couldn’t resist the opportunity to ask him about it.

“Are you absolutely, positively sure you’re okay?” Madison asked again.

“I have a lot on-a-my mind, that’s all,” Mr. Olivetti said.

“Did you hear anything about a robbery at school?” Madison asked.

Mr. Olivetti’s eyes grew wide. “Robbery?” he echoed. “What about robbery?”

“I heard that there was a robbery somewhere,” she responded matter-of-factly.

“I don’t-a-know what you are-a-talking about,” Mr. Olivetti said.

His stare landed on Madison, and she felt as if he were looking right through her, boring little holes in her with his dark eyes. Madison wasn’t sure what was going on, but it made her squirm a little.

Did Mr. Olivetti have something to do with the robbery?

After that, he stared at the clock and rubbed his chin as Madison completed her exercises. Watching him made it nearly impossible for her to focus on the flute.

He acted the way Madison imagined a guilty person would act, all strange and sweaty. What if all of the blame for the school theft were placed on a student when, really, the one responsible for the crimes was a teacher…
her
flute teacher!

When the lesson ended, Madison hoped Mr. Olivetti would say more about the robbery—or give himself away in some other manner.