The Tutor (31 page)

“How about if you and me go up there right now,” Ruby said, “and join in the search?”

“What a cliché that would be,” said Julian.

Cliché? Wasn’t
cliché
some unimaginative way of saying something, like stubborn as a mule? “How do you mean?” Ruby said.

“Simply the idea of amateur rescuers bumbling around in the snow,” Julian said, “possibly getting in difficulty themselves.”

“Oh.” All at once, Ruby didn’t feel so good; maybe it was the cigarette smoke. She sat back down at the table.

“Are you all right?” said Julian.

“Yeah.”

“Perhaps a glass of water,” he said, going to the cooler, pouring a glass, setting it in front of her, holding his burning cigarette in the same hand. How finely shaped his hand was, although the top third of the nail on his middle finger had been torn off, and there was a little purple bruise.

Ruby drank half the glass.

“How’s that?” said Julian.

“Good,” said Ruby. “Thanks.”

He took one last drag, tossed the cigarette out the window, closed it. “You’ve been full of questions this morning,” he said.

“I have?”

He laughed. “There’s another. Is turnabout fair play, Rubester?”

“Turnabout?”

“I’ve got a question or two myself.”

“About what?”

“Brandon,” Julian said. “The fact is, I’m a little worried about him.”

“How come?” said Ruby.

“On the way to New York yesterday he told me a rather disturbing story.”

“Oh?” said Ruby.

“I wonder if he told you as well.”

“Depends on the story,” said Ruby.

He looked at her, then reached in his pocket. Another cigarette already? She’d had no idea. But he came out empty-handed. “This story concerns a search of his school locker.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Ruby. “He said something about it.”

“What, precisely?” said Julian.

Ruby gazed at him, not a gaze in the sense that it lasted a long time—it was hard to look into Julian’s eyes for a long time, because he was so smart, no fault of his—just in the sense that hers was a deep look, that
precisely
sounding so strange. At that moment, just before she turned away, Ruby remembered what she’d said to Brandon last night when she’d been sick; maybe she was still sick, but not like last night. Last night, she must have been in some kind of altered state because what she’d said then now sounded so grown-up in her mind; still her, still Ruby, but an older version, if that made sense. She’d told Brandon,
Whoever it is may come to you. But it’ll be in a sneaky way.

“Are you cold?” Julian said.

“I’m fine.”

“Feverish?”

“No.”

“You shivered.”

“I’m okay.” The cases all started twisting around in her head. She had to think.

“It’s just that I’m concerned about Brandon,” Julian said. “Naturally anything you say will fall under the terms of the fireplace precedent.”

Fireplace precedent? She got it. “Meaning you won’t tell.”

“Correct.”

He’d been so good about that, when she’d almost burned down the house. Ruby did feel hot all of a sudden, was probably messing things up in her mind, like a bad drug trip. But what about the Italian problem? Was it possible she was confused about that? Maybe; but then what about his smoking? She couldn’t get past that; totally crazy, on her part. “There really isn’t anything to tell, Julian. Brandon said locker searches happen all the time.”

“Searches that involve cutting linings out of jackets?”

“That was mean,” Ruby said.

“So he told you?”

“Yeah.”

“Did he give you any idea what they were after?”

“Had to be drugs.”

“What drugs?”

Ruby shrugged.

“You do recall our conversation in Starbucks?”

“Yeah.”

“When you brought up this crack issue yourself.”

“Right.”

“Of your own volition.”

“Yeah.”

Silence, except for the TV: the stock market numbers were flowing by; two guys were talking about cement.

“What puzzles me,” said Julian “is why they had such a specific target. Do you think there ever was any crack sewn into that lining?”

Julian did look puzzled, an expression she’d never seen on his face. On any other face, she would have called it anger.
Puzzled:
the word stuck in her mind, she’d used it herself so recently.
That person would be pretty puzzled right now, wondering what had gone wrong with the plan.

Ruby took another sip of water; not feeling well, for sure. And certainly all mixed up about Julian, who always treated her well—except for that remark about not thinking before she spoke—who made her laugh, who appreciated Sherlock Holmes, who talked to her like an adult.
Yes, there was crack in the lining,
she wanted to say.
I found it and took it out. Help us figure out who put it there. What’s going on, Julian?

Ruby came real close to saying all that. But she couldn’t. Why not? In the end, it wasn’t the Italian—she was no language expert, was familiar with only two, after all, English and Bahamian. It wasn’t even the smoking—what did that have to do with her? It was something else, one tiny detail, a detail that might not even have mattered to Sherlock Holmes:
Do you ever think before you speak?
He’d hurt her feelings. For the first time, she grasped the idea of forgiving but not forgetting.

30

“N
ope,” Ruby said.

“Nope?” said Julian, like it was from a foreign language. He rubbed his shoulder as though he’d felt a twinge.

“No crack,” Ruby said. “No crack in the lining at any time.”

She looked Julian in the eye, or tried to. He wasn’t buying it. “Maybe at Starbucks I exaggerated the crack thing a bit,” she said, shooting a bunch of words into his gaze, like fighter planes in a war movie. “Turns out Brandon’s not into crack at all. Or any other drugs. It was a once or twice kind of thing. Peer pressure.”

“Is that what he told you?” Julian said.

“I believe him.”

“He’s your brother.”

“That’s only part of it,” Ruby said. “Look how well he’s starting to do in school. Is that what you’d expect from a crackhead?”

“A crackhead with my assistance,” said Julian.

That one stunned her too; so many things wrong with it. “You think Brandon’s a crackhead?”

“Of course not,” Julian said. “Do you have a monopoly on exaggeration?”

“No,” said Ruby; maybe she’d misinterpreted. She rose, cleared her place and her mind at the same time. “So since we’ve both been exaggerating, let’s stop worrying about Brandon.” She loaded her dishes in the dishwasher, catching sight of Zippy’s water bowl in the corner, half full. His DNA was in there; maybe one day they’d be able to clone him just from that. What a big effort that would be, and all for nothing: she would always want the real Zippy.

“Done,” said Julian, behind her. She heard the clink of cup and saucer. “So what are your plans?” he said.

“Plans?”

“For the day.”

“Go back to bed, I guess,” said Ruby.

“Good idea.”

She turned to him. “I’m okay by myself, if you’ve got things to do.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Julian said.

Ruby went upstairs, closed her door, lay down. Her mind was up to something. She tried to picture it, tried to get some idea how it worked. The brain was easy to picture: there were pictures of the brain all over the place. The mind wasn’t so easy. It had to have shifting parts, for one thing; Ruby could feel them now, unstable and threatening to move, like those geological layers or whatever they were that caused earthquakes and volcanoes.

All those cases: The Varsity Jacket, part one—the disappearance and reappearance, part two—the planting of the vials; The Anonymous Caller, also with parts one and two; the Italian Mix-Up; Zippy; Jeanette. One link could give you the whole chain. She felt big blocks shifting in her mind, but way down deep, out of sight, and no earthquakes came.

How about going back to the original case, The Mystery of the Varsity Jacket, especially since she now knew what had happened to it in the first place? Brandon had left it in the woods after a party. Lost it, in his mind. Then Ruby got home from school, and it wasn’t on the peg. Next came the fireplace adventure, Julian’s timely arrival, 37 Robin Road saved. After that, she’d taken Julian on a tour of the house, including the mudroom, where she’d spotted the jacket, now on the hook, and called Brandon’s name up the stairs. Then Mom arrived, snowflakes in her hair, smelled smoke. Julian covered up for her, saying he’d lit a fire. Finally Brandon walked in, wearing nothing on top but his Unka Death T-shirt. Mom had asked why he wasn’t wearing his jacket. Brandon had lied, saying he’d left it at school. Mom had pointed it out, hanging on the peg.

That was it, the whole story, not even especially complicated. This one didn’t require Sherlock Holmes. Anyone with half a brain should be able to figure it out. “Don’t I even have half a brain?” she said to Beamish. He gazed back with his broken eyes, no substitute for Zippy. Zippy was her Dr. Watson, as Mrs. Stromboli had said. She missed him so bad.

Lost jacket.

Empty peg.

Fire.

Timely arrival.

Mom.

Jacket on the peg.

Brandon.

Correction: timely arrival, jacket on the peg, then Mom and Brandon. Julian’s timely arrival.

Ruby sat up. Julian’s timely arrival, and the timing, when it came to the jacket, was right. She got up, looking out the window toward the woods, but not really seeing. Julian? Julian used the woods as a shortcut, she’d seen the tread of his fat tires in the snow, coming back from her encounter with Sergeant D’Amario. Ruby could feel the earthquake coming now: Julian had brought the jacket back from the woods. Who else could have done it? Maybe one of Brandon’s friends, but none of them would have known the right peg, most likely would have left it on the steps outside or tossed it in the garage. Julian fit, maybe not beyond a cockamamie doubt, but surely beyond a reasonable one. She had solved The Mystery of the Varsity Jacket!

But Julian? He was so nice, except for that one little thing, when he’d hurt her feelings. Maybe she was making a big deal about nothing. After all, bringing back the jacket was a nice thing. Then why wasn’t she having nice feelings about it? That was simple: because he hadn’t told Brandon, had left him in the dark. The next thing Ruby remembered was Brandon, last night:
Are you telling me whoever brought the jacket back planted the crack?
Were all her cases connected, like a super Musgrave Ritual?

Big blocks were rumbling around in Ruby’s mind now: she understood one link in the chain, although maybe not thoroughly enough. Sherlock Holmes said she should now know what had gone before and what came next, and she didn’t.

What did Holmes do when he didn’t understand a case thoroughly enough? He hunted for more evidence. In “The Speckled Band,” for instance, he had searched Dr. Roylott’s chamber, where he’d found the saucer of milk and the dog lash. Dr. Roylott was an obvious villain. You knew that from the way he’d tried to scare Holmes off with the poker-bending bit, never mind that quibble about how he could do that while holding his riding crop at the same time. Julian wasn’t an obvious villain; in fact he was nice, except for that one little slip. He wasn’t a villain at all, more of a big help in fact, saving the house, raising Brandon’s grades, giving Mom the La Rivière idea. So why was she taking care to open her door very quietly?

Ruby stuck her head out into the hall. She heard music, saxophone music, drifting up from downstairs: “It Don’t Mean a Thing.” For a moment or two, she thought it must be a CD, but there were no other instruments, and besides, she knew the sound of her own alto. So it had to be Julian. He was so good, playing really fast and softly, almost like he was just running through it in his mind. The only thing she didn’t like was the way every time he came to that E, where “swing” was, he played a whole ugly crash of notes instead. She closed the door behind her, turning the knob so there wouldn’t even be a click. Then she went down the hall to Adam’s room, bare feet silent on the carpet.

The door stood open. Ruby walked in, the sound of “It Don’t Mean a Thing” fainter now, but still audible. This wasn’t going to take long. She wanted to check out that leather-bound notepad, with the poem inside. First Ruby tried the desk. On top lay the green SAT folder, several college guides and a letter from A-Plus Tutorial addressed to Julian at 840 Trunk Road, Old Mill. In the desk drawers, nothing. She tried the bureau, found two neatly folded shirts, two pairs of briefs, two pairs of socks. She opened the closet. A blazer hung from the rod and a pair of sneakers lay on the floor. She checked the pockets of the blazer. No notepad, just a book of matches from a restaurant called Suharto’s in London.

Ruby went back to the desk, picked up the letter. He’d already opened it. All she had to do, not that it was right, although Holmes never hesitated about this kind of thing, was stick the tips of her thumb and index finger inside like this and pluck out the letter.

Dear Julian:

Enclosed please find your last check, excluding a final accounting with the Gardners. Good luck with your novel. I’m sure you’ll be famous one day, but if you ever want to get into tutoring again, the door is always open.

Warm regards,

Margie

He was working on a novel, no surprise there. Ruby refolded the letter, slid it back in the envelope. The notepad might be in his pocket; the pages of a novel were harder to carry around. She really wanted to see that novel. Maybe he kept it under the bed, under the bed being an obvious place to try anyway, probably at the top of Holmes’s checklist. Ruby took a step in that direction before realizing that something was wrong. A moment or two passed before she figured out what it was: he’d stopped playing. The house was quiet.

Ruby glanced out into the hall. Empty, but did she hear a footstep on the stair? Probably her imagination, but on the other hand her senses were acute today, and—

The next thing she knew she was running down the hall, on tiptoes, silent. Yes, footsteps, quiet footsteps, coming up the stairs, and quickly. Was there time to reach her room? No. She ducked into the bathroom, leaving the door open, and turned on the tap.

“Ruby?”

Ruby glanced up from the sink, where she was busy splashing cold water on her face. Julian stood in the doorway.

“Yeah?” she said.

He glanced around the bathroom. “Everything all right up here?”

“Huh?”

“You’re feeling okay?”

“Pretty good,” said Ruby, and did some more face splashing, the picture of a plucky kid home sick. After a second or two, she didn’t feel his presence anymore, like there was more breathing space. Ruby turned off the tap, dried her face, went into the hall. The door to Adam’s room was closed now. She heard a drawer open, the desk or maybe the bureau. Ruby went into her own room and shut the door.

She sat on her bed, listening. After a while, Adam’s door opened and closed. Footsteps in the hall, approaching, pausing outside her door, moving on and down the stairs. Ruby jumped up, logged on, went to MapQuest. Under
from
, she punched in
37 Robin Road,
under
to
,
840 Trunk Road.
She wanted to see that novel.
A crackhead with my assistance:
make that two bad things he’d said.

Ruby printed it out: 6.3 miles, which seemed like a lot, but not too complicated, all the directions fitting on one page. She folded it, stuck it in her pocket and went downstairs. No sign of Julian. She put on her blue jacket with the yellow trim, her yellow hat with the blue stars, wrote a note—
Gone looking for Zippy, back soon
—left it on the table and went into the garage. Ruby was disentangling her bike from the lawnmower when she spotted Jeanette’s Post-it note on the floor. She read it again:
Here’s your ride, Rubester—use with care. J.
P.S.
That means a helmet.

The first time she’d read that, Jeanette hadn’t been missing. Not quite true: no one knew she was missing. So she hadn’t given it much thought, just good old Jeanette, bringing back the bike. But when had she done it? Not before they left for Atlantis on Friday, so it had to be between them leaving for the Bahamas and Jeanette leaving for Killington. When had that been? Friday afternoon? Saturday morning? Probably no later than that, because she’d canceled archery for Saturday and Sunday, no point in canceling if she was going to be around anyway. But Ruby would have bet on Friday afternoon. Jeanette would want to squeeze every second out of a ski weekend. It was even possible she’d dropped off the bike on the way. And therefore? Ruby wasn’t sure. She hit the button and the garage door slid up.

Julian was standing in the driveway, facing her. He had her note in his hand. Ruby stuck Jeanette’s Post-it in her jacket pocket, felt Zippy’s tag in there too.

“I thought you were sick,” Julian said.

“I’m feeling better all of a sudden,” Ruby said. “Ten times better.”

“Your parents wouldn’t think this was a good idea.”

“I’ll be right back,” said Ruby. “I’m only going around the block, maybe try Indian Ridge again.”

“To what end?”

“I’m not going to stop looking, Julian. He’s my dog.”

He stepped aside. “Half an hour,” he said. “It wouldn’t be responsible of me to let you out any longer.”

“Thanks,” said Ruby, pedaling past him. When she got to the street she paused, looked back. He was watching her, snowflakes landing gently in his hair. Maybe it was the snowflakes that reminded her, snowflakes being some distant cousin to salt, at least visually. She remembered getting on the bus the day she started “The Speckled Band”—must have been the same day Brandon got his SAT results, come to think of it, hard to forget the scene that night with Dewey’s mom—and how she’d glanced back like Lot’s wife. Had Mrs. Lot—Ms., no doubt, since she obviously had an independent streak—seen someone like Julian? Probably not. People back then must have been pretty gross-looking, what with the lack of grooming products, and Julian was very handsome.

Ruby felt another one of those shifts in her mind. Friday. They’d been running late. He’d driven them to the airport. Then what? It raised a question, like one little volcano popping off.

“Hey, Julian,” she said.

“Yes?”

“Did you happen to see Jeanette on Friday or Saturday?”

Too far away to see some tiny reaction on his face, and if there was a big one, she missed it. “Jeanette?” he said after a moment or two. “I don’t understand.”

“That’s when she must have brought my bike back,” Ruby said.

“I didn’t see her,” Julian said. “But I wasn’t around much.”

“No?”

“I was out looking for Zippy.” He sounded a little offended.

“Oh, yeah.”

Ruby pedaled off, following the MapQuest directions. Once she took off her mitten, felt in her pocket for Jeanette’s Post-it and Zippy’s tag: her two biggest cases, in there together.

J
ulian watched till Ruby had turned up Indian Ridge, vanishing around the corner. He went back in the house. The bike. He’d forgotten all about it, worse, hadn’t even seen it as a point of vulnerability. No doubt the police were trying to trace Jeanette’s movements, discover who had seen her last, plodding through their checklist. Would they be interested in this visit? Oh, yes. But the police didn’t know. Only the girl knew. Was she smart enough to understand the importance of the bike, to act upon that understanding? Julian didn’t know. Until recently, he’d have said no. She was just a little girl, often annoying, independent, perhaps, but not especially clever. But now, just this morning, he wasn’t sure.