Minerva Clark Gets a Clue (9 page)

Homeless man arrested in bookshop clerk's murder
Portland police arrested a 49-year-old homeless man, Clyde Bishop, in connection with the murder of Dwight Paskovich, 28, assistant manager of Under the Covers bookshop on Broadway Avenue. Bishop was apprehended late Friday night at a parking lot near the bookshop. The motive appears to be robbery. Officials would not release details of the homicide case pending Bishop's arraignment.

I got the chills, remembering how I'd walked past Clyde Bishop and stopped to pet his dog, and how he'd reached out suddenly and I'd thought he was going to grab my ankle. He had given me a friendly, slightly mad look. Who knew it was a robbery-and-murder-planning look?

Except there was something weird about this. What was it? I put down my fork. I bounced my legs madly. Something just wasn't right about this.

“Min, I forgot the syrup. Could you get it?” asked Mark Clark.

“Could you nab the orange juice, too?” asked Morgan.

“Oh, and while you're in the kitchen, could you just give the floor a quick mopping?” said Quills.

“I think there's something wrong with the garbage disposal, too. Want to take a peek under the sink while you're there?” said Mark Clark.

“Doesn't the entire sink need to be replaced, come to think of it?” said Quills.

This old joke never failed to crack the brothers up. They'd ask me for a simple favor—get someone a fork, close a window, pick up my books off the table—and they'd keep adding bigger and bigger “favors” until finally I was replacing the roof on the house or digging a hole for an in-ground swimming pool all by myself. Har!

Normally, I laughed along with the joke, but I just stared at Mark Clark for a minute; then, without saying a word, I went to the kitchen for the Log Cabin. Back in the dining room, I stood just inside the door, my fingers hooked through the bottle's handle. I closed my eyes, trying to remember what I'd seen at the crime scene.

Dwight's head was sticking out from behind the counter, his face turned toward the bookshelves behind
the counter. I'd clearly seen the wound, which meant it was on … I turned my head slightly, trying to conjure up the image of Dwight … the
left
side of his head. That meant Clyde Bishop would have had to hit him using his right hand, right?

“Minerva?” said Mark Clark. “You okay?”

“Could you stand up a minute?” I asked.

Mark Clark wiped his mouth with his napkin and stood up. Slowly, I swung the syrup bottle up toward the left side of his head, the only side that made sense, given that I'm right-handed. To hit Mark Clark on the right side was impossibly awkward; I'd have to cross the front of my body, and I wouldn't be able to even reach the right side unless he turned his head at the last minute. But Dwight's wound was on the left. I was sure of it. And I was sure that for Clyde Bishop to clock someone in the head hard enough to kill him, he'd need to be right-handed, too. But wasn't Clyde's right hand his useless, shriveled hand?

“Earth to Minerva,” said Quills.

Morgan scoffed. “
Earth to Minerva
? Soon you'll be saying ‘groovy.'”

“I already say ‘groovy,'” said Quills. “It's ironic.”

They yakked for a while about this, but I wasn't listening. I handed Mark Clark the syrup and sat back down. I wasn't hungry.

I reread the newspaper article aloud.

Quills said the true tragedy was that Clyde Bishop probably killed Dwight just to get cash to buy some cheap red wine. Morgan said, “Well, if that made it easier for the guy to get through the night, then whatever.”

I said, “But it happened in the morning. In broad daylight!” What did Morgan know? He wasn't
there
. I was there. I was there, and so was Detective Peech and all those other detectives, and I was pretty sure they had arrested the wrong guy.

“It's an expression,” said Morgan. “Whatever gets you through the night.”

“Oh,” I said.

He reached over and patted my head. I hated when he did that. I took my plate into the kitchen and let it clatter in the sink. It was a pink-and-blue plastic plate with Jasmine from
Aladdin
on it in her stupid harem pants and big cow-eyed look. Why did my brothers still think this was my plate? It was a stupid baby plate. I took it outside and threw it in the garbage can.

On Saturday mornings I was supposed to clean my room. I shoved everything that would fit under the bed and took all the clothes on the floor and stuffed them into the laundry chute at the end of the hall.

I tried to stop thinking about Clyde Bishop and his
wilted flower hand cradled in his lap. I sat on the edge of my desk chair and flipped open my rebus notebook.

I made this one:

ban ana

Banana split. It wasn't one of my better ones.

Weirdly, I was excited about going to the water park. I didn't care that I had to wear the extra long red Speedo with the yellow flowers. It was just a swimsuit, and it didn't have Baby Elmo or Simba on it or anything. It did have that horrible shelf-bra thing, but, what do you know, now my boobs filled it out pretty well, and I didn't think I looked dorky at all.
And
it was still too long! I had to keep pulling at the waist so the leg holes wouldn't droop around the top of my thighs. I wanted to tell my mom, “
Ha
! See, I didn't grow!” But of course my mom was in Santa Fe, teaching yoga. I tried not to feel too sad about that. Instead, I thought about the next bathing suit I would get, which would be a two-piece with board shorts.

When Quills dropped me at the water park on his way to work, Hannah and Julia were already there, hanging on the snack counter, waiting for Devon-or-Evan to show up. The park smelled strongly of chlorine and steamed hot dogs. It was crowded with kids holding big presents, all arriving for birthday parties. We were too old to have birthday parties here now.

“Minerva,” shrieked Julia. “Hannah said you weren't coming!” Julia had bigger brown cow eyes than the Jasmine on my plastic plate.

“Really?” I thought I'd told Hannah I was coming, that I'd only said “no way” in my head. Anyway, here I was. I just couldn't pass up that steep red slide that shot into the deep end.

“Hey, Minerva,” said Hannah. “How ya doing?” She came over and slung her arm over my shoulder. She wore a blue flowered bikini top and matching board shorts. “Should I get a cookie? They have awesome chocolate chip cookies here. Or will it go straight to my ass?”

I stood back and looked at Hannah. I did not think the chocolate chip cookie would go straight to her ass, because that just wasn't possible, but I did notice her shorts looked tight. “I don't know. But if your stomach's full it will make your shorts feel even tighter.”

Hannah made a show of shoving me away. “Like you're one to talk!”

“I'm not the one asking about eating a cookie,” I said.

Hannah tucked her black hair behind her ears carefully. Hannah was beautiful. Her mom was from Thailand. Her hair hung down the middle of her back like a satiny cloak. I used to spend a lot of time thinking about what it would be like to have that hair, but now I
liked my hair. You could stick a pencil in it and it would
stay in
.

Julia giggled. “Minerva, you're supposed to say, ‘But, Hannah, your ass is so perfect, you don't need to worry about cookies!'”

“Yeah yeah yeah. Whatever,” I said.

We stood at the snack counter for about three weeks, but no one showed up. We made jokes about how we could just reach around the side of the Plexiglas box on the counter and take as many cookies as we wanted. Probably, if Quills were there, he would do that, just to see what happened. Hannah insisted that Devon-or-Evan worked on Saturdays. She'd even called and checked.

But the person who finally came out of the back room was a girl with a name tag on that said Sam. She wore her hair slicked back in a high ponytail and an irritated expression. Her expression was so irritated it put Hannah off from asking if Devon-or-Evan was even working.

Julia and I ordered a slice of cheese pizza and a Pepsi. Hannah wanted a hot dog and was stuck waiting while Ponytail Girl steamed one up for her. Julia and I went to nab a table before they were all taken.

The huge wave pool had been turned off, like they always do between open swim sessions, so the lifeguards can check to see whether there were any dead bodies
drifting around the bottom, or to see if any little kids may have pooped.

“So who do you think will get elected Rose Festival Queen?” asked Julia, taking a sip of her drink. I'd forgotten that Julia's sister, Alison, was also on the Rose Festival Court.

“No clue,” I said.

“Probably not your poor cousin. I feel so sorry for her!”

“It turned out to be no big deal,” I said. They had the worst cheese pizza here, greasy roof-of-the-mouth burning cheese on cardboard.

“You mean they're going to give Jordan the High-tower Scholarship after all? Alison said the committee or whoever decided to give it to Zoe McBride. Do you know Zoe? Her little sister is in my tae kwon do class.”

“What are you talking about?” I tried to take a bite, but dropped the cardboard wedge back on the plate.

“You didn't hear?” said Julia. “Alison said the people who give out the Hightower did a background check on Jordan or something and found out she'd been picked up by the cops. So they took it away and gave it to the second girl in line. Zoe.”

The Hightower Scholarship was a big famous scholarship awarded every year to one senior girl in the state to go to the college of her choice. She could go anywhere in
the country, and she got a full ride. The girl was always a fine young woman who got straight A's and excelled in a sport. It was a huge deal. I know about it because Morgan's girlfriend got it a couple years ago, decided to go to Brown over on the other side of the country, and kicked Morgan to the curb before she even got moved into the dorm. Or that's Morgan's heartbroken version anyway. I knew Jordan was going to go to Stanford. Or wasn't going, if what Julia said was true. Jordan's dad had departed the scene when Jordan was little, and her mom, my aunt Susie, had two jobs. I doubted Jordan would be able to go to college without the Hightower.

“But that's so unfair. Jordan didn't even do anything. The arrest was a mistake.” I wasn't going to tell Julia that the thought had crossed my mind that my favorite cousin might be a teen murderer.

“They probably don't even like that it
looks
as if she's done something wrong. There are tons of other girls who applied for the scholarship who didn't get arrested, by mistake or
not
by mistake. Know what I mean?” said Julia.

“I was there. The cop took her in, but it was someone else who'd been arrested and gave them Jordan's name.” I explained how identity theft worked, but I could tell Julia wasn't listening. I saw how it was with people. In sixth grade we learned that in a court of law you're
innocent until proven guilty. But in the minds of everyday people, just having had the bad luck to be mistakenly arrested made you guilty of something. It was so unfair.

“So what's with you today?” asked Julia out of the blue.

“With me? I don't know. This pizza sucks.” I'd taken off my hoodie and jeans and piled them on an empty chair. This stupid Speedo wasn't too bad. I still had my purple high tops on, since walking around barefoot at this place was a sure recipe for athlete's foot.

“I don't know,” she said. “You seem different.”

“I was electrocuted at Mark Clark's art opening on Thursday night,” I said.

“I thought people, like, died from being electrocuted,” she said.

“Yeah, I say electrocuted, but I mean electric shock. I was shocked, that's all.”

“Well, yeah, it would be shocking,” said Julia, then laughed at her own joke.

Then Hannah showed up with her hot dog, took my clothes off the empty chair, and dropped them on the floor.

“That's really kind of a hideous bathing suit,” she said to me. “As your friend, I'm just trying to be honest.”

“Yeah? As your friend I'm telling you that's pretty crappy, talking to a friend like that. Just being honest.” I
pushed the leg of Hannah's chair with my foot. “When did you get so mean?” I asked her, point-blank.

Hannah giggled, as if I'd said something funny. Then she shrugged, ripped off a piece of the spongy hot dog bun, and stuck it in her mouth. “If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?”

The Change Game was an old game we've played since forever. You say what physical feature you'd change and why. So, for example, I'd say, “I'd change my nose because it looks like a turnip.” Then you'd say what famous person's nose you'd rather have instead. The game keeps going until you can't find one thing left to change. It's like Monopoly, though, because like Monopoly, the Change Game can go on and on. In all the years Hannah and I have played it, we've never run out of things we'd change about ourselves.

Hannah started and said she'd change that little dip between her nose and her upper lip.

“It's called a philtrum,” I said.

“Well, whatever,” said Hannah. What was her problem? Maybe she was irritated because Devon-or-Evan wasn't around. “Maybe we should start with you, Minerva. Since you probably have bigger things you'd like to change than your
philtrum
.”

Julia giggled. “I'll go,” she said. “I'd change how my eyes are uneven. Have you noticed how one is higher
than the other? I'm like, who's that painter guy, Picasso. I'm like one of his paintings. Instead, I'd like eyes like Michelle Branch.”

“She's so over,” said Hannah.

“But she still has gorgeous eyes,” argued Julia.

Had this game always been so lame? And boring? Julia knew she had gorgeous eyes. Even Sister Patrice, the crabby nun with the huge ears who ran the computer lab at school and who thought we were all Satan's spawn, remarked upon Julia's beautiful eyes.