Minerva Clark Gets a Clue (18 page)

“Hi, Tiff, I was wondering if … I wanted to talk to you about what's going on with Jordan and why she was so mad at me the other day when I saw you guys after Rose Princess practice. I mean ambassador. You know what I mean.”

“Who is this?” she asked.

“Oh! It's Minerva Clark.”

She laughed. “You don't always need to say your last name, Min. I don't know any other Minervas.”

I laughed, too. I was out of breath from walking so fast. A woman talking on her own cell phone while pushing an enormous baby carriage looked at me hard as we passed each other on the sidewalk.

It felt good to be laughing with Tiffani. Maybe there
was another reason she called Emma Larson and the Hightower people. Maybe she wanted to warn them that when they actually did do their criminal background check thingy, they should ignore it because it was a mistake.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“Where am I?” Why didn't I want to tell her where I was? It was a simple question.

“At the library, researching a paper.”

“Wow, you still have papers due this late in the school year? Middle school must have gotten a lot harder.”

“Yeah, it's on the Boston Tea Party.” Liar! You are not at the library. You are not researching a paper. And you haven't even started the Boston Tea Party report.

Crap! I'd forgotten to wait for Reggie. I spun back around and retraced my steps back down 23rd. I walked faster and faster. I almost tripped over one of those little green metal tables that sit outside coffee places in this part of town.

“Why don't you stop by here? I'll be taking lunch in half an hour.”

Lunch? It was four thirty. What was she talking about? Why was I suddenly so wigged out? I pulled a piece of hair out from behind my ear and starting tugging on it. Ack! I was turning into Quills, with his mad hair tugging. I stopped, retraced my steps, and sat at
the green metal table I'd nearly tripped over. I tried to catch my breath.

“Isn't it late for lunch?” I asked.

Tiffani laughed again. She was a much bigger laugher than Jordan, who was a more serious girl altogether. “I'm working at Nordstrom now. In the mall. Meet me at the food court, at Panda Panda, in half an hour. I'll buy you an egg roll.”

I said okay. I had used the Emergency Only phone for a nonemergency. I had lied to Morgan about my whereabouts. I had stalked off without waiting for Reggie, whom I'd dragged across town with me. I had dishes at home, piles and piles of them. I was so busted. I was so dead. Still, I said okay.

AFTER I HUNG UP I WENT
to the nearest Starbucks to ask for directions to the mall. It wasn't that far, but it was over one of the bridges that connects the two halves of our city. One barista dude asked another, who asked another. Eventually one of them told me what bus to take. Within twenty minutes I was standing in front of Panda Panda, cracking my knuckles and wondering whether this was what it was like to go insane.

The food court was packed with teenagers, mostly couples where the girls looked all hot and done up in their low-rise slacks and high-heel shoes, makeup perfect, hair perfect, and the boys looked like they just came from doing yard work. All the food court smells swirled
together—french fries, melted cheese, spicy Chinese, chocolate chip cookies. Ugh. I felt sick.

Tiffani showed up just as I was thinking of calling Morgan or Quills and begging them to come get me. She was dressed up herself, which is part of working at Nordstrom. She wore a black skirt and blouse and a pair of really strange black suede platform clogs with a buckle and the thickest wooden sole ever. I stared at them as she clomped up to me.

“Aren't these cute?” she said, turning and lifting up her heel so I could admire them.

“Sure,” I said. “Aren't they, uh, hard to walk in?”

“Not at all,” she said, looking up at the menu over the counter. “They're totally comfy. I could get you a pair if you want. They'd be awesome on you.”

“They'd make me about eight feet tall,” I said. Why were we talking about these stupid clogs?

“Tall
rocks
, though. I wish I was taller. Five-ten at least. You and Jordan are lucky being tall. I'm just a little shrimp. It sucks. So what are you eating?”

“Could I just have a Sprite? Please.”

“Still so polite! Even when you were a little kid you always said ‘peas.' Do you remember that? How you used to say ‘peas' instead of ‘please?'”

“I don't think that was me.”

“Well, whatever!” she said gaily.

After she ordered we found a table and sat. “So you're looking hot these days. Is it just growing up, or what?”

“I don't know,” I said. “I'm using a new shampoo.”

Tiffani laughed and clapped her hands. “Yeah, that's it.”

I said, “How is my cousin? I'm worried about her.” This seemed as good a place as any to start. One of the things I was learning is that sometimes you just needed to start talking, and what you needed to say would come to you.

“I'm worried about her, too!” said Tiffani. “You know, she's gotten even thinner. I wish I could lose some weight. How do you think she does it? I don't think she's bulimic or anything. I mean, that's the kind of thing a best friend knows, you know?”

“Uh,” I said. How on earth did we get talking about this? I had this strange feeling about Tiffani. She was so nice, but there was something else. It was the way you opened the refrigerator and smelled something going bad, but you couldn't find what it was.

The boy behind the counter at Panda Panda called out “Yo!” to Tiffani and waved her over to pick up her tray.

“Be right back!” she said.

But she wasn't right back. She stood and talked to him, shifting her weight from one foot to another,
playing with her hair. She was about to take the tray, then it looked as if he'd forgotten the drinks, and there was another giggling exchange about that. He turned and took two cups from the stack near the soda machine.

I slouched in my seat. I bounced my leg. I waited.

Tiffani picked up the tray, tossed a giggle over her shoulder, and just as she started back to our table, turned around yet again. She'd forgotten the straws.

I sat up straight when I saw her coming and accidentally kicked her purse, which was sitting on the floor between us. It was a big leather bag that yawned open at the top.

Inside, winking up at me, was one of the glittery eyeglass cases from Under the Covers. I stared and stared at it. I was shocked to see it, but there was something else. It wasn't just any case, but the one that was more purple than blue, the one Jupiter had chewed the day Jordan and I had stopped at Under the Covers on the worst day of my life. All of a sudden I felt dizzy, like I'd just gotten off the Tea Cups at Disneyland.

“Sorry!” Tiffani sang out as she clomp-clomp-clomped back over to her seat across from me. “That guy is just such a hottie, don't you think? Or are you too young for that still?”

“That's a cool case,” I said, looking down at her purse. I was sure she could hear my heart slamming around inside my chest.

“Wha—Oh that. Yeah, I love it. I get a lot of compliments on it.”

“Is it for sunglasses, or what?”

Tiffani stopped, her plastic fork full of noodles dangling in midair. She looked at me as if she were trying to figure something out. She put her fork down, reached over, and pulled the glittery case from her purse. She turned it over, this way and that. “It is pretty cool, isn't it?”

“Where'd you get it?”

“You know, I can't remember. Maybe it was a present.”

We both gazed at it like idiots. It was just a stupid eyeglass case. Of course, it wasn't just any eyeglass case. I could see a mangled spot on one end.

“What happened to it?”

“Where?”

“There.” I pointed to the end, where it looked as if a puppy had gotten ahold of it.

A puppy.

Or as I knew, a ferret.

Pansy Burrows said Jordan came to Under the Covers every day, and every day Dwight passed Jordan a glittery eyeglass case. Dwight was obviously also passing eye-glass cases to Tiffani. But why? What was in the cases?

“You done admiring?” said Tiffani. One corner of her mouth crept up in a tiny smirk. She couldn't know I
knew, because the truth of it was, I didn't know I knew. This was harder than any rebus I could ever think up.

“Yeah, I just got an idea for a new rebus. I've been writing a book of rebuses. Just for myself, you know.”

I teased a napkin from under the edge of her paper plate, fished a pen out of my pocket, and wrote:

Clam storm

Tiffani turned the napkin around, chewed for a minute, then said, “The clam before the storm?”

She gave me a big fakey wink.

Oops! I scratched out “Clam” and wrote “Calm.”

It
was
the calm before the storm, and I was sure it was Tiffani who'd sent me the death threat rebus. I was also sure that Tiffani had framed Jordan and killed Dwight. I just didn't know how. I hadn't thought about the part where I'd have to prove it.

It was close to six o'clock when I got home. The back door was locked, the garage door closed. I was glad it was nearly June, when it could be late and still not look late, when the sun lounged around in the western sky, as if it couldn't decide whether to set or just hang around for a few more hours. I prayed madly to the angel who watches over seventh-grade Nosy Parkers that no brothers would be home.

I closed the door quietly and then scooted straight to the kitchen to attack the piles of fake dirty dishes. Just as I reached the sink, I heard Mark Clark pull into the driveway. Thank you thank you thank you.

I turned on the hot water, squirted a small drop of lemon-fresh Joy into each one of the fake dirty drinking glasses lined up on the counter.

Behind me, I heard Mark Clark drop his keys on the counter. The warm water felt good on my hands. I was so relieved.

“What's new?” he asked.

“Notta lotta,” I said.

“Say, I meant to ask, how'd your computer project turn out?” He took a glass out of the cupboard, poured himself about an inch of cranberry juice, then set the glass on the counter.

“What computer project?”

He poked me in the side. “The extra credit project I helped you with? Tracking the IP address?”

“Oh right! It was great. It really helped. With my grade. And everything.”

He paused behind me but didn't say anything. He walked out. Then I heard the whirr of his computer booting up in the other room.

I didn't realize I'd been holding my breath.

* * *

Upstairs, I turned on my computer and logged on to MontgomeryHighChat.com. I didn't even try to see if Reggie was on. Even though he was my best friend, and even though he'd listened as I yattered on and on about the puzzle of who'd stolen Jordan's identity, something told me he wasn't the one who could help me put it all together. He didn't have the interest, for one thing, nor did he have a clue about how the minds of girls worked.

Ferretluver
: If QT_PIE865 is around, could you send me an e-mail at [email protected]? It's super important.

Almost before I could even finish typing “important” an IM box popped onto my screen.

Grlreporter:
Hi, Minerva Clark. What's the haps?

Ferretluver:
Pansy? How did you know it was me?

Grlreporter:
Just guessed. Don't know anyone else with a ferret. What's up?

Ferretluver:
When you used to see Jordan at Under the Covers? Was Tiffani ever with her?

Grlreporter:
Hollingsworth? Sometimes. Sometimes Tiffani would show up by herself.

Ferretluver:
And would Dwight give her one of those eyeglass cases?

Grlreporter:
Yup yup. That I saw anyway. Why?

I typed up a fierce storm of explanation. How I first thought Toc, who had a thing for Jordan, had stolen her identity to punish her for not loving him back. Then how I thought it was her, Pansy, because of the flame. I told her about my tea at the Hightower Scholarship office with Emma Larson, and my Sprite at the food court with Tiffani. I told her about Tiffani having the eyeglass case that my very own ferret had munched on that day at Under the Covers. I thought I'd typed everything I could think of. Then I remembered something.

Ferretluver:
Toc told me that Dwight had a scheme going where he stole the checking account numbers of the little old ladies who bought books at Under the Covers. He would steal the numbers, order new checks using a different name—

Grlreporter:
And then buy stuff for the next week or so, until the poor woman got her bank statement.

Ferretluver:
How did you know?

Grlreporter:
It happened to my aunt! Someone
printed checks on her account and spent about $25,000.

Ferretluver:
:-O

Grlreporter:
I'm thinking Jordan and Tiffani have something to do with it.

Ferretluver:
Like they're all in it together???? It's impossible!

Grlreporter:
But what were they passing back and forth in the glasses case? Did you get a peek inside the one Tiffani has?

Ferretluver:
No =(

Grlreporter:
And there's also, like, the very real possibility it wasn't the homeless man who killed Dwight, but someone involved in this.

Ferretluver:
He didn't! I figured it out. The person who killed Dwight had to have been right-handed, but Clyde Bishop had a withered-up right hand. There's no way he could have done it.