Absolutely Truly (33 page)

Who happened to dance by just then with Augustus Wilde. She'd traded the shorts I'd seen her wearing earlier for jeans and a red plaid flannel shirt. A plastic bag was looped over one of her wrists. I watched, incredulous, as Captain Romance gallantly dipped and twirled the former lunch lady, his red cape and silver hair streaming behind him.

Are you kidding me?
I thought.

“Truly?”

I turned around. It was Calhoun. “Hey,” I said.

“Would you like to dance?”

My mouth dropped open for the second time that evening. “Uh, sure,” I managed to squeak out.

“You snooze, you lose,” said Calhoun, his dark eyes gleaming in triumph. This time he wasn't talking to me, though. He was talking to Scooter, who was standing behind us with two cups of punch and a shocked look on his face.

Across the room, Aunt True beamed and gave me two enthusiastic thumbs up.

No
, I wanted to tell her,
it's not what you think!

Or was it?

The music shifted to a waltz, and Calhoun swung me smoothly into the
one, two, three
rhythm. I focused intently on not stepping on his toes. I really didn't want to step on his toes, for some reason.

We passed my brother and Cha Cha, and then almost bumped into Ella Bellow, who was dancing with Lou from the diner.

“It shouldn't be much longer before I can move in,” she told him loudly, so that he could hear her above the music. “It's the perfect spot for my new shop.”

Wait, what was Ella Bellow talking about? I steered Calhoun a little closer.

“I feel badly, of course,” she continued. “You never like to see someone's business struggle. But it's certainly worked in my favor.”

I came to an abrupt stop. Ella was talking about Lovejoy's Books!

I pulled away from Calhoun and marched over to her. “You're the one who took it!”

Ella Bellow looked at me in surprise. Then she stopped dancing too. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“
Charlotte's Web
! I overheard you just now, and you
practically admitted it!” I told her, my voice rising. The couples around us spun to a stop. “You had us special order that book about starting a new career in your retirement, and you've been prowling around the bookshop for weeks now, snooping. You're just waiting for us to fail so you can take over our space!”

“I most certainly am not!”

“You took it!” I shouted at her. “You need to give it back!”

Ella looked shocked. “How dare you accuse me of such a thing!” she sputtered.

My parents and Aunt True were making their way toward us through the crowd now.

“What's going on?” asked Belinda Winchester, dancing by with Augustus Wilde.

Ella pointed to me. “She just accused me of stealing from the bookshop! As if I'd ever do such a thing!”

The music had stopped by now, and everyone in the room was staring at me.

“Stealing what?” said Belinda.

“
Charlotte's Web
!” I replied.

Belinda looked puzzled. “How could anyone steal
Charlotte's Web
?” she said. “It's bolted to the wall.”

It took me a minute to realize she was talking about the bronze sculpture in the library.

“I'm talking about the
book
,” I told her. “The autographed
first edition that was in the cabinet in our shop.”

“Oh,” said Belinda. “No one stole that. I have it right here.” She reached into the plastic bag she was carrying and pulled it out.

A gasp went up from the crowd. My father stepped forward.

“Where did you get that?” he demanded.

“From Andy,” she replied mildly. “He gave it to me for my ninth birthday.”

“Wait a minute, you're the ‘Bee' in the inscription?” said Aunt True.

Belinda Winchester nodded.

“Who's Andy?” asked my father, his head whipping back and forth as he tried to keep up with the conversation.

“E. B. White,” said my sister Lauren. “It was in my book report, remember?”

“See? I told you I didn't steal anything,” Ella Bellow said triumphantly. She turned to me. “And just in case you're wondering, Miss Think-You-Know-It-All, I have absolutely no designs on Lovejoy's Books. Bud Jefferson is going to rent out half his space for my new shop.”

Once again, I'd gone and put my big foot in my mouth. I was Truly-in-the-Middle-of-a-Mess.

“Truly, I think you owe someone an apology,” my father told me sternly.

My shoulders slumped. “Yes, sir,” I said. I turned to face
the postmistress. I'd been so sure she was the thief! “I'm really sorry.”

Her mouth pruned up. “As well you should be.”

“Show's over, folks!” my father announced. He took me by the arm and hustled me over to a corner of the room, near where Annie Freeman was being interviewed by a
Patriot-Bugle
reporter about winning yesterday's spelling bee.

“And then this boy from West Hartfield messed up on a trick question,” Annie told him. “The
P
is silent in P-T-A-R-M-I-G-A-N. Which is a bird.”

One that happened to be on my life list. I'd been lucky enough to spot it when we lived in Colorado.

It took us a while to get everything straightened out. Once Belinda explained that she'd grown up in Maine, and that her family lived on the farm next door to E. B. White, it all made sense—the lunch-lady entry in the yearbook that talked about lobsters, the news report about her trip back to the seacoast to visit her sister, the cats named after Fern and Avery Arable in
Charlotte's Web
. Only two things still puzzled me.

“How did you manage to lose the book in the first place?” I asked her.

Belinda shrugged. “Things go missing,” she said. “And things get found.” She rummaged in her plastic bag again, emerging this time with a kitten and a half-eaten vomit bar. She took a bite—of the vomit bar, not the kitten.

The other thing I didn't understand was how Belinda
could possibly not have known that we all thought the book was stolen. It had been all over the news.

Except she didn't own a television, and she never read the newspaper. Plus, she had her earbuds in most of the time, listening to her music. Somehow, she'd managed to miss the whole thing.

The mystery was solved, at least, but not in a way that was going to help the bookstore. No way could my father and Aunt True use the book to pay off the bank loan now.

“Erastus Peckinpaugh, do you want to ask me something or not?” Aunt True said suddenly. Startled, I looked over to see the man in the green jacket—only tonight he was wearing an ordinary suit—hovering behind her.

“Punkinpie?” said Pippa. “That'th a funny name.”

My mother turned around too. “Professor Rusty! How nice to see you here.”

The man in the green jacket—the stork—was Professor Rusty? And Professor Rusty was Erastus Peckinpaugh? I felt something in my brain stir and come to life. Where had I seen that name before?

“Out with it already!” Aunt True put her hands on her hips as she turned to face him, tapping the toe of one of her red cowboy boots. “I'm tired of you creeping around like some silly high school boy. Do you think I haven't noticed you lurking outside the bookstore these past few weeks?”

And then Annie spoke up again behind us. “Finally, I got
the winning word,” she told the reporter. “ ‘Thespian.' T-H-E-S-P-I-A-N. It means actor.”

Snick! The last puzzle pieces fit together as neatly as a sudoku puzzle. I leaned over to my friends.

“I know where the final clue is,” I whispered.

We ran straight to the bookshop.

“There's something I need to check on,” I told my friends as we clattered up the stairs to Aunt True's apartment. The key was still under the mat where she always left it, and I unlocked the door and led everyone inside. “Don't let Memphis out.”

“Thespian” had been Annie Freeman's winning word, and Aunt True and Erastus Peckinpaugh had both been in the Thespian Club back in high school! I'd seen it in my aunt's yearbook.

The scrapbooks were still piled on the coffee table, where Lauren and Annie had left them. I started leafing through them, and it didn't take me long to find what I was looking for. “Ha!” I said triumphantly, showing my friends the program for
Much Ado About Nothing.

“Hey, that's the show my parents starred in,” said Calhoun, spotting their names. “My mom has a copy of that program too.”

“Yes, but check out their understudies,” I said, pointing to the cast list, which confirmed my suspicions.

My friends' mouths fell open when they saw the names: True Lovejoy and Erastus Peckinpaugh.

“My aunt and Professor Peckinpaugh—Professor Rusty, the guy in the green jacket—were Beatrice and Benedick too. Unofficially, of course.”

I pointed to the prom picture on the opposite page. “Now check this out—”

“Whoa, that's some hair,” said Scooter.

“Whose, her aunt's or her date's?” asked Calhoun.

“Both of them,” said Lucas, and everybody laughed.

“Erastus Peckinpaugh is my aunt's old boyfriend,” I said, pulling out my cell phone. “Don't you get it?” I scrolled through the pictures on it, hoping I hadn't deleted the one I'd taken on our field trip to the covered bridge. Nope, there it was. I enlarged the bit that showed the graffiti on the rafter. “See there, inside that lopsided heart? Where it says ‘E and T Forever'? That's got to be Erastus and True! That's the exact place she chose for her yearbook picture, and I think it's their meeting spot.”

My friends stared at the program and the picture, digesting all this information. Then Scooter looked up and grinned.

“What are we waiting for?”

Two minutes later, we were running down the road that led out of town, the only light to guide us the full moon above
and the faint beams below from the flashlight apps on our cell phones.

We heard the river before we saw it. It was flowing freely again, thanks to the thaw, and as we approached we heard a loud
CRACK
, followed by a tremendous splash, as a great chunk of ice crashed from the falls into the water.

“Cool,” said Scooter, aiming his light in the river's direction. “It's like the
Titanic
or something.”

We jogged through the mouth of the covered bridge, our footsteps echoing in the dark as the sound bounced off its wooden floor and walls.

Jasmine giggled nervously. “Spooky,” she said.

I shone my light up at the rafters, trying to remember where I'd been standing when I'd seen the graffiti. “It was somewhere in the middle, I think,” I told my friends. “Can you guys all shine your lights up here too?”

They did, and it didn't take long to spot what I was looking for. “There it is! See? That heart with ‘E and T Forever' inside? This has to be their meeting place.”

“The envelope's probably taped to the top of the rafter, just like it was in the steeple,” said Lucas.

“I'll take a look.” Scooter climbed up onto the railing.

“Watch out!” cried Jasmine, grabbing her twin's lower legs to steady him. The X-shaped crosspieces along the wall of the bridge left too many wide gaps for comfort.

Scooter batted her away. “Relax, Jazz, I've got it.”

Grasping a crosspiece with one hand, he stretched his other up toward the rafter. I glanced down at the moon's reflection in the river and shuddered. It would not be fun to take a nosedive into that dark, frigid water.

“I can't quite reach,” Scooter said finally. “I'm not tall enough.”

“I'm the tallest,” I said as he hopped down. “Let me try.”

“No, Truly, don't,” begged Cha Cha. “Please.”

“I'll be careful,” I assured her. “Don't you want to know if it's up there?”

I hoisted myself onto the railing. The soles of my new heels were slick, and I edged my way cautiously along until I was standing directly under the graffiti. A sharp gust of wind made my coat and dress billow around my legs. I shivered. The tights I was wearing offered little protection, except perhaps for keeping Scooter from singing any more ditties about my underpants.

Holding tight to a crosspiece, I stretched up on tiptoe and reached for the rafter, just the way Scooter had done.

“There's something here!” I said after a moment of fumbling around.

“Is it an envelope?” Jasmine's voice was shrill with excitement.

“I think so—hang on a sec.” I took off my mitten with my teeth and picked at the edge of whatever it was with my fingernails. “Got it!” I mumbled triumphantly a moment later, my mouth full of wool. “It's an envelope!”

I waved my duct-tape prize in the air in triumph, then handed it down to Jasmine. The others crowded around as she held it under the beam of Cha Cha's flashlight app.