Amos Gets Married (4 page)

“And unless I miss my guess, you just happen to have one, right?”

Dunc nodded.

“And it involves me doing something totally stupid and making a fool out of myself, as usual, I suppose?”

“No. This one barely involves you at all.”

“That’s good, because I promised Melissa we’d go Rollerblading after school tomorrow.”

“I didn’t know you could Rollerblade.”

“I can’t. My sister Amy is going to teach me later today.”

“That was nice of her.”

“Nice? Amy doesn’t know the meaning of the word. I had to promise her my allowance for six months, wash the dishes on her night, clean her room, and pretty much wait on her hand and foot for the rest of my life.”

“That seems like a lot. Do you think learning to Rollerblade is worth it?”

A dreamy look came over Amos. “For Melissa, I’d swim an ocean full of sharks, climb the highest mountain, walk on hot coals, cross a—”

“I get the picture.” Dunc took a note pad off his desk. “We need to make a list of everything in your locker.”

Amos blinked. “My locker?”

“Yeah. We need to make a list so that when Ralph takes something, we’ll know what it was.”

“Out of all the lockers in school, what makes you think Ralph is going to choose my locker?”

“Because you’re going to leave it open.”

“Uh-uh. I never leave my locker open.
Not since that time Jimmy Farrell put Mrs. Leach’s ferret in there and it tried to eat the left half of my body.”

“This time you’re going to leave it open on purpose so Ralph will take some of your stuff and we can catch him in the act.”

Amos started to throw another dart. He stopped. “Wait a minute—why does it have to be my locker?”

“I thought about using my locker, but it’s not messy enough. A good thief would figure that I would be able to spot something missing right away. You, on the other hand, might not notice something missing from your locker, well—ever.” Dunc made columns on the note pad. “Okay. Try as hard as you can to remember everything in your locker.”

Amos thought about it. “My notebook is in there. My gym clothes, math book, a banana peel, pencils, worms, English book, a few old—”

“Hold it.” Dunc quit writing and studied him. “Worms?”

Amos looked at the floor.

Dunc moved closer. “Worms?”

Amos shifted. “I sort of borrowed the earthworms from the science lab.”

“Amos, you can’t go around taking things from the science lab. That’s—that’s stealing.”

“I told you. I didn’t steal them—I borrowed them. I thought later I would kind of let them run free.”

Dunc raised one eyebrow. “Worms? Run free?”

“Hey,” Amos said, “I’m saving lives here.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing.” Dunc looked down at the note pad. “All right, where were we? Do you have anything else in your locker?”

“Let’s see. There’s a sweatshirt with one sleeve missing—from the ferret incident—about two pounds of trash, my science book, a half-finished report on the external anatomy of a short-horned grasshopper, and a couple of soda cans I was saving to recycle later.”

Dunc catalogued each item. “Is that it?”

“That’s everything since Christmas vacation. Before that, I’m not sure.”

Dunc moved to his desk and picked up a clear plastic bag with light pink powder in it. He held it up. “This is going to help us make sure Ralph doesn’t get away.”

“What is it?”

“It’s invisible ink powder. I learned how to make it from my latest issue of
Junior Scientist.
We’ll sprinkle it on all the stuff in your locker, and a few minutes after Ralph touches it, the ends of his fingers will be smeared with black ink. It doesn’t wash off. It has to wear off. That way, even if he denies taking the things in your locker, we’ll still have the proof we need to turn him in.”

“Get your foot out of my face.”

“Hold still, Amos. I can’t see anything when you move around like that.”

“Why don’t we trade places? I’ll stand on your shoulders and look through the vent in the door. Better yet, let’s get out of this closet and watch from someplace that doesn’t smell like something was buried in it recently.”

“Shh. There he is!”

“Who?”

“Ralph the custodian. And he’s almost to your locker.”

“I hope he gets there soon. My shoulders are starting to go numb.”

Dunc put his foot on Amos’s head. “He’s
looking around. He’s standing right in front of it. Oh, no!”

“What happened? Did he take something?”

Dunc scrambled to the floor and opened the closet door a crack. “That’s strange. He didn’t seem to notice that your locker was open, and now he’s leaving. Come on—let’s follow him. He’s probably going for a locker at the other end of the hall.”

The boys tiptoed down the hall a few yards behind him. Ralph turned around twice. The first time, they ducked behind a garbage can. The second time, they weren’t as lucky. Dunc grabbed Amos’s shirt and pulled him into the nearest room.

The teachers’ lounge.

Two of the teachers were at the coffee machine. Another one was running off photocopies, and a couple were sitting on the sofa eating doughnuts and discussing their night jobs. When they spotted the boys, the conversation stopped. Every teacher turned and stared.

Amos took a good look around. “So this is what it looks like. I always wondered what they did in here.”

Dunc elbowed Amos in the ribs, then grabbed him, and made for the door. “Excuse us. Wrong room.”

“You two hold it right there.” Mr. Grossman, the gym teacher, barred the door. “What are you doing out of class? Don’t you know that this is a restricted area?”

Dunc fumbled in his pocket for his pass from the principal. “Ms. Fishbeck gave us permission to be a few minutes late to class. We’re the new custodians’ helpers.”

“Ooh, how nice.” Mrs. Pittbottom stood up. “I think that’s wonderful. You boys can start in here. This room never seems to get cleaned properly.”

“Uh”—Dunc looked at his watch—“we’d love to clean in here, we really would. But we have to get to class right now. Come on, Amos. We better hurry.”

They edged around Mr. Grossman and ran down the hall.

Dunc stopped running when they turned the corner. He was breathing hard. “Made it. Now let’s see if we can spot Ralph before it’s time for us to be in class.”

“Wait until I see that Donny Wilson,” Amos said.

“Why?”

“He said the teachers have hundreds of little shrunken heads and they keep them on this long string in the teachers’ lounge. He said they belong to former students. And when they have teachers’ meetings in there, they’re really holding secret ceremonies to decide on their next victim. I didn’t see one shrunken head in there. Did you?”

“Amos, I can’t believe you’d pay attention to anything Donny Wilson says. He still claims Michael Jordan pulled up to his house in a white limousine and asked if he could come in and use the bathroom.”

“That didn’t happen either?”

“Amos.”

“Well, it’s possible.”

Dunc held up his hand. “Here comes Ralph, and it looks like he’s hiding something. Quick—act nonchalant.”

“Non-what?”

“Casual. Act casual.”

“Oh.” Amos put his hands in his pockets and pretended to be reading the bulletin board. Ralph had something hidden behind his back. When he passed the boys, he moved it around to his front.

“We’ve got him now,” Dunc whispered. “He went into that rest room. All we have to do is catch him with the goods.”

“Wait. I’m not so sure about this. Maybe we should get reinforcements. After all, Ralph is a pretty big guy.”

“Come on, Amos. It’s now or never.”

“I vote for never. What’s a few notebooks and pencils, anyway?”

“Melissa.”

“What does Melissa have to do with this? Ralph didn’t take her notebook.”

“If you were to solve this case, Melissa would be so impressed, she’d adore you.”

Amos straightened his collar. “In case you haven’t noticed, Melissa already adores me.”

“Yeah, but that’s because she got knocked in the head. I’m talking about permanent adoration, even after she comes back to her regular self.”

“You mean you think she’ll wake up, remember that I saved everybody’s school supplies, and love me forever after all?”

“Something like that.”

“Okay. But if I’m going to get the credit, let me do the talking.”

Dunc followed him to the door of the rest room. Amos squared his shoulders and stuck his chin out. He put his hand on the door and pushed. “All right, Ralph. This is a citizen’s arrest. We’ve caught you red-handed … smoking?”

Ralph quickly threw his cigarette in the toilet. “I’m sorry. I’ve been trying to quit. I know it’s against school rules. Please, please—don’t turn me in. I need this job.”

Amos glared at Dunc. “One moment, Ralph. Let me confer with my assistant.” Amos pushed Dunc up against the sink. “I thought you told me he was stealing school supplies. I didn’t know we were busting him for breaking the school no-smoking policy.”

“We’re not busting him.” Dunc looked under Amos’s arm. “Sorry, Ralph. We’ve made a tiny mistake here. We’ll just be on our way to class now. You, ah—you really should do something about that habit though. See ya.”

The boys quietly backed out the door.

“I can’t believe we just did that,” Amos said. “We made a grown man cry.”

Dunc looked at his watch. “I can’t believe
we’re twenty minutes late to class. Do you have your math book?”

“No. I was hoping Ralph would take it, and then I’d have an excuse not to bring it to class anymore.”

“Hurry up and get it. I’ll wait for you by the water fountain.”

“Duunnc!”

“What is it, Amos? We don’t have time to mess around.”

“I think you better see this.”

Dunc moved around the bank of lockers. Amos was standing in front of his. The door was hanging wide open.

The locker was empty.

“Do you mind if we stop by Melissa’s house on the way home? She said she has a present for me.”

“No.” Dunc straightened his handlebars and concentrated on the road.

“Is something bothering you?”

“It’s the case. I was
sure
Ralph was guilty. I guess someone else must have put that stuff in the custodians’ closet. I don’t have another suspect now that Ralph is out of the picture.”

“I told you, we’ll go to school early tomorrow and look for somebody with ink-stained fingertips. It’ll be a cinch.”

Dunc sighed. “I know. It’s just that I was
so sure it was Ralph. How could I have been so wrong? I’m sorry about all your stuff.”

“I’m not. Now I don’t have to bring any books to school. I just hope whoever took the worms takes good care of them. I kind of started to like them. I named some of them and thought maybe I could train them to come, or heel …”

Amos pulled up in Melissa’s driveway. Dunc stopped at the curb.

“Aren’t you coming in?” Amos asked.

“No, I’ll wait out here. You two are enough to make anybody throw up, with all those dumb names you call each other.”

“Hi, honey-muffin!” Melissa waved at Amos from the upstairs window.

“See what I mean?” Dunc said.

Amos spread his arms out. “Can I help it? The girl’s crazy about me. Be right back.”

The front door opened, and Amos disappeared inside. In a few minutes he was back out carrying a big white box with a red bow tied around it.

“What did she get you?”

“I don’t know. She said not to open it until I get home.”

Dunc stepped on one pedal and pushed off. “Come on—I’ll race you.”

First Amos tried to carry the box under his arm. Then he tried to balance it on his lap. He finally had to get off and carry the box with one hand and push his bike with the other.

Dunc was waiting for him on the front porch. “What kept you?”

Amos ignored him. He dropped his bike on the lawn and headed for the front door. Dunc followed him into the living room.

Amos ripped the top off of the box. Inside was a brand-new pair of Rollerblades, a fluorescent green sweatband, and a wristband to match.

“Wow!” Amos pulled the blades out of the box. “She’s
really
crazy about me!”