Harriet the Spy, Double Agent (8 page)

This was a seven-page day, at least. Maybe she’d set a new record.

“Stand clear of the closing doors,” a conductor warned. The double doors hissed shut and the train gathered speed. Harriet stood still and watched till its taillights left the station. Then she turned and walked toward the train that would bring her back uptown, and home.

Chapter 7

Harriet woke up the next day with her mind full of questions. She looked at the flashlight on her night table, which the night before had flashed its usual nine-thirty semaphore, just as if nothing were different.
Everything’s
different, she thought. Her parents had been upset with her lengthy midday disappearance (though not as upset as they would have been if they’d known where she had gone, she consoled herself). Harriet had had enough presence of mind to place a call to Janie, urging her to say, if and when questioned, that they’d been together.

“Where were you really?” Janie had asked.

“That’s classified. Urgent spy business.”

“Oh.” Janie’s voice flattened. “That.” But she had agreed to hold up the story, so Harriet’s only transgression was not having let her parents know in advance where she’d be for three hours. For this, she’d been grounded, and had to spend all day in her house doing homework, no TV, no phone calls. It would be a dull Sunday.

Good time to catch up on my notebooks, she thought. Sometimes Harriet liked to sit down and reread a volume or two to see if she’d failed to report anything of significance. Now she resolved to go all the way back to the first time she’d met Annie, aka Rosarita Sauvage.

Harriet brushed her teeth, dressed, and went down to the kitchen for breakfast.

Morning light slanted in from the street-level windows in front and the snow-covered garden in back. She poured cornflakes into her favorite bowl and reached into the fruit bowl for a banana. On the counter beside it, she spotted a letter in Ole Golly’s unmistakable back-slanted handwriting, with the dark and light strokes of a chiseled calligraphy pen. It must have arrived in yesterday’s mail, she thought. Why didn’t anyone
tell
me? She ripped the envelope open and read.

Dear Harriet
, Ole Golly had written,

I can no more explain falling in love than I could explain how to breathe. Both
are involuntary and both are essential. Poets have pondered the subject for centuries
.

Mr. H. L. Mencken edited a superb dictionary of quotations, grouped by topic
rather than author. The entries for love run a full sixteen pages. I will leave you with just
this one, from Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “Whoever lives true life, will love true love
.”
As ever,

Catherine Golly Waldenstein

P.S. Promise me that you won’t grow up too fast. I want our baby to meet you
 
when you’re still my Harriet
.

Harriet read the letter three times before she poured milk on her cornflakes. That’s really no help, she thought, lifting her spoon to her lips. It certainly doesn’t explain Annie’s older man.

Annie met her the next morning in front of her door. “I called you yesterday and your mom wouldn’t let you talk. What’s up with that, H’spy?”

“I forgot to leave her a note when I went to Janie’s on Saturday.” Annie shrugged. “At least she was worried about you. My mother wouldn’t have noticed that I was gone. She’d be too busy writing some play.” Harriet’s jaw dropped. “Your mother’s a playwright?”

“I just said so, didn’t I?” Annie snapped.

Harriet looked at her sidelong. Now there were
two
topics she was dying to broach. Which was less likely to set Annie off, she wondered, her mother’s career or the older man? Annie stepped up on one of the wrought-iron rails that fenced off the trees on the sidewalk and balanced along its length. “Follow my steps, H’spy. First to fall off is a double-
l
loser,” she said, in her best imitation of Marion Hawthorne.

A thick, swirling snowfall began at the end of the school day. Mr. Grenville was reading a scene from the end of act three of Romeo
and Juliet
, and worked himself into such a frenzy as Juliet’s furious father that the teacher next door, Miss Munson, knocked on the wall and yelled, “Quiet!” The whole class dissolved into giggles.

Mr. Grenville looked affronted. He stretched out his arm and read, “Hang thee, young baggage! disobedient wretch!” in more modulated tones. The bell rang and the students tumbled noisily out of their chairs. Mr. Grenville sighed the deep sigh of the misunderstood.

The sidewalk was white with an inch of new snowfall. Annie and Harriet tried out different gaits, leaving strange-looking footprints by dragging one foot in a zigzagging line or walking on tiptoe. At one point they walked back to back with their arms linked, leaving twin rows of chevrons, like this:

“Let’s go to the tree stand and see what Balsam and Douglas Fir do when it snows,” Annie said.

“They get snowy,” said Harriet.

Annie poked her. “You know what I mean. Do they put up tarps? Take in the trees? We haven’t been there all weekend.”

“We couldn’t,” said Harriet, sensing an opening. “You had to go to that Hanukkah thing with your aunt and uncle.” Her tone was distinctly pointed.

“And
you
went to Janie’s,” said Annie.

Is she calling my bluff? wondered Harriet. She tried a different approach. “Are you buying a Hanukkah gift for your older man?” Annie looked appalled. “I would never do anything so cheap and obvious. That would be tacky.” She swept off down the street. Harriet followed. She didn’t like the idea of spying on Balsam and Douglas so soon after Balsam had caught them, but she wasn’t about to let Annie get away without answering some questions. As they crossed the street toward the Koreans’, she noticed a column of smoke rising out of a trash can. Balsam threw in some cut branches, and Douglas upended a large metal trash can. Flames leaped through the can’s perforations.

Annie grabbed Harriet’s arm. “Look!” she whispered. “They’re burning the evidence!”

“What evidence?”

“Aha,” Annie said. “That’s the mystery.”

“I think they’re burning the wood chips and paper bags.”

“Shows what you know. The Dumbwit’s a document forger. You think he sits on that stool reading his book all day long, but he’s grinding out phony savings bonds right in the back of that truck. Myong-Hee’s the connection. They’ve opened an offshore account in the Bahamas.”

Harriet rolled her eyes. “Could we please stick to the facts?”

“Facts”—Annie spit out the word—“are a bore.”

Not in my world, thought Harriet. I’m going to find out the facts about
you
.

“Did you notice the Dumbwit’s jeans?” Annie said as they walked to the Feigenbaums’. “The knees are so ripped you can see the ripped long Johns. I tell you, H’spy, these are desperate men. They’re losing the farm and the only way out is a life of crime. Balsam is going to run off to Las Vegas to marry Myong-Hee and Douglas will be so upset that he’ll go on a killing spree. We’ll read about it in the
New York Post
.

‘Christmas Tree Massacre.’”

“Have you seen a lot of massacres?” Harriet asked shrewdly.

“Dozens,” said Annie.

She’s not going to give me a straight answer, ever, thought Harriet. Trying to conjure up Mr. Grenville’s dramatic skills, she let out a big phony shiver. “My feet are like ice. Let’s go inside and make cocoa.”

“Food’s better at your place.”

She’s trying to steer me away, thought Harriet, more determined than ever to spy on the Feigenbaums. She pulled a face. “I was stuck in my stupid apartment all yesterday.

I need a change of scenery.”

“If you must,” said Annie, and led her inside. The Feigenbaums’ receptionist looked up from her desk and smiled at them. Harriet’s eyes swept the waiting room as they walked past to the private part of the house. The tall man rubbing his knees was a Morris, for sure; the too-thin woman with bulging eyes could go either way. Probably a Barbara, Harriet thought, with a hormone disorder, or trying some test-tubey way to get pregnant.

Or, she thought, both well-disguised Mafiosi. After the men in the seafood restaurant, anything was possible. She followed Annie down the back stairs.

Annie made them both cocoa, which, Harriet noticed, had sugar and marshmallows this time around. There were even some packages of cookies. Annie’s exerting her influence over the Feigenbaums, Harriet thought. Might be significant.

Both of the patients were gone by the time the girls went upstairs to Annie’s room. It was a guest bedroom, layered with old Oriental rugs and painted a dim shade of russet, with still lifes and zoological etchings in frames on the walls. No visible effort had been made to redecorate it for a twelve-year-old girl, but Harriet’s sharp eyes immediately landed on two items she hadn’t seen before. The first was a well-worn sock monkey tucked next to the pillow. The second, which made her pulse race, was the lavender box the curly-haired man had thrust into Annie’s hands as she’d gotten into the cab on Saturday. It’s a love gift, thought Harriet. I
have
to find out what’s inside.

It seemed like a very long time until Annie got up to go the bathroom. As soon as she heard the door click, Harriet sprang to her feet and took off the top of the box, covering her fingers with her sleeve so as not to leave fingerprints. Inside was a handwritten note and a long, narrow ticket envelope. She scanned the note feverishly. It read
Here’s Mr. Monkey. He missed you. So do I. xx, P
.

Harriet’s heart took a lurch at that
xx, P
. She had an initial! And everyone knew that
x’s
meant kisses. Someone whose name started with P had sent Annie kisses—and, of all inexplicable things, a childish sock monkey that didn’t, on closer inspection, appear to be all that clean. Whoever P. was, his idea of what one should give to a sophisticated twelve-year-old girl was wildly off base.

She lifted the note in one sleeve-covered hand and picked up the envelope in the other. It wasn’t that easy to open it without the full use of her fingers, and before she was able to wiggle the ticket out so she could see it, the toilet flushed down the hall. Harriet scrambled to put the note and envelope back and replace the lid. She was still standing up when she heard Annie’s footsteps outside the door, so she looked out the window to cover.

“It’s snowing a
lot
,” she said. “Maybe they’ll cancel school.”

“I used to love snow days in Boston,” said Annie, her voice sounding mournful for just a split second before she bounced back with “I bet they get plenty of snow days up north in New Hampshire. Not that that matters to dropouts.” The week flew past. Each day, the Feigenbaums twisted another bulb into the electric menorah in their front window. The girls at the Gregory School were buzzing with Christmas vacation plans, and one teacher after another plastered the walls with seasonal cutouts. Harriet wondered if there was some kind of holiday vest rule: it seemed that every teacher and even the school nurse, Mrs. Kelder, came in wearing a vest embroidered with holly or candy canes.

Harriet had decided to buy a calligraphy pen like Ole Golly’s and make her parents a limited-edition collection of her favorite poems. She asked Annie if she’d like to make a Saturday afternoon pilgrimage to Jasmine’s Art Supply, but Annie demurred, saying she already had plans.

I bet you do, Harriet thought. Plans with P. She resolved to keep her eyes glued to the Feigenbaums’ house on Saturday. Right after school on Friday, she went to the bank with her mother and made a withdrawal, “for certain upcoming expenses.” As expected, Harriet’s mother smiled at her fondly and took the bait, saying, “As long as you know that the most special presents are always the ones you make yourself.” It wasn’t entirely a lie, Harriet reassured herself; although most of the money would go directly to her new Emergency Spy Fund, she did plan to buy the calligraphy pen for making her parents’ gift.

It took her a full hour to pick out just the right pen and paper at Jasmine’s Friday afternoon. There were all sorts of creamy linen and textured rice papers, and deckle-edged cardstocks in every hue. Finally she selected five sheets of a handcrafted paper with small flecks of marigold petals. While the clerk rolled them into a tube, Harriet’s eye roamed a shelf of bound sketchbooks and landed on one with a marbled blue cover. That’s gorgeous, she thought. It’d make a great journal. Not a spy notebook, but something more elegant: notes from a grand tour of Europe, for instance. She picked it up, checking the price. Underneath was a second book, just like the first, except that the marbled design was in shades of deep red. I bet Annie would like that for Hanukkah, Harriet thought. Or for Christmas. Or both.

“Will that be all?” asked the clerk, a slim Japanese girl with sculptural earrings.

Harriet paused. She would have loved to buy both of the books, but they cost too much. “And this,” she said, handing the clerk the red sketchbook.