Minerva Clark Gives Up the Ghost (15 page)

I turned to see Quills standing in my bedroom door, tugging on a hunk of his crayon-yellow hair, his mouth a grim line. “Dude, you better get down there.”

“Is Mrs. Dagnitz here, ready to throw an omelet at me or something?”

Quills just looked at me. It was as if we'd never made ourselves hysterical with our assault-with-a-deadly-entrée
jokes the night before. Quills was two years younger than Mark Clark, but sometimes he seemed much younger. Morgan was more like Mark Clark—made tough by their serious view of the world—and Quills was more like me, the little sister with the wayward hair. He reminded me of a boy in my class who was six-three and had already spent most of his life being mistaken for a basketball player when really, he was a musical prodigy, a violinist. Quills seemed all rock-and-roll cool, but he was a sweetie pie.

“She's here, but so is some detective dude. Last night someone set your school on fire.”

There must be many regular detective dudes in our city, but not many detective dudes who specialize in investigating suspected arson cases, because who do you think was standing in our living room, sipping a mug of chai tea, freshly brewed by Mrs. Dagnitz?

Yes. Robotective Huntington, he of the flat voice and glass Eye of Doom, wearing the same suit he was wearing the day I met him at Corbett Street Grocery. Was it the same suit? Or did he have a wardrobe of suits that were all the same?

He raised his robobrows just a smidge.

I could tell he was as surprised to see me as I was to see him.

Mrs. Dagnitz perched on the edge of the sofa, also sipping tea. My mother wore a pair of baby-blue linen
pants, strappy gold sandals, and a long-sleeved aqua T-shirt. She looked like she was going somewhere, and then I remembered she
was
going somewhere. Shopping at the mall. With me. For shoes or undergarments or something. That was my second surprise of the morning—that she would imagine that after last night I would actually go anywhere with her, especially a place where there was a food court.

“Here's Minerva,” said Mrs. Dagnitz. Ned, that traitor, had been sitting on her foot. When he saw me, he trotted over and sat down on my foot. I reached down and scratched the top of his head.

“Aren't you Angus Paine's friend?” said Robotective.

There was no point in saying I was or I wasn't, I could tell by the look on his face that he knew I was. “The one who's intrigued by fires?” he continued.

I remembered the day I'd met Detective Huntington, poking around the debris in the grocery with Angus. It was the day Angus had told me about Louise, and about how Detective Huntington was on the verge of declaring the fire an accident. “I'm not intrigued by fires,” I said, trying hard to keep the tone out of my voice.

“Wasn't that you I saw sitting on the curb day before yesterday?”

I didn't say anything. This looked bad.

“I'm sure you heard there was a fire last night at Holy Family, where, I believe, you're going to be in eighth
grade?” He looked at a small yellow pad of lined paper where he'd scribbled some notes.

“Quills just told me. What happened?”

“We're not going to go into that right now,” said Robotective.

I knew from watching detective shows that he wasn't going to give any details in case I said something to trip myself up. It was an old detective trick. The detective says, “Sarah was murdered!” and the killer says, “Oh no! Who
stabbed
her?” And the detective says, “I didn't say
how
she was murdered! How did you know she was stabbed?”

“Is my school still
there
?” I asked, suddenly panic stricken. Where would I finish middle school? Would they make me go to public middle school? I'd wanted to go to public middle school since I'd found out the difference between private and public school. Now the thought of Holy Family burned to the ground made me dizzy.

“Yes, honey, yes, it's still there. It was just slightly damaged. It looks as if the fire started in the art room. By the time school starts in the fall, I'm sure it'll be—”

“Please, ma'am,” said Detective Huntington.

“There's no need to frighten her,” said Mrs. Dagnitz. I heard that familiar edge creep into her voice. You go, Mrs. Dagnitz. “Allowing her to think the worst.”

“I'll tell you why I'm here, Minerva,” said the detective. “Someone called in a tip saying you were at the school fairly late last night.”

“Yes,” I said. I tried to look as blank as possible. Kids who have gardeners for parents learn how to grow roses and kids who have artists for parents learn how to draw a box and kids who have lawyers for parents learn when to shut up, and when you're talking to law enforcement, that is exactly always.

This would have been my big chance to out my mother as the hot-food hurler that she was. I could have said, Yes! I had nowhere else to go! My mother drove me out of the house with her bad temper and bubbly mozzarella! But there was no way I was going to give him any more information than I had to. I twirled a piece of hair around my index finger, shifted my weight from one foot to the other, and waited.

He didn't say anything.

I didn't say anything.

I looked over his shoulder out the big living room window. It looked like the people across the street were getting a new front porch.

“Do you mind telling me what you were doing there?” asked Robotective.

“Sitting on the slide, talking to my boyfriend,” I said. I was shocked to realize that I sort of meant Angus, instead of Kevin. Technically, I had talked to Kevin, though he hadn't talked to me.

“For how long?” he asked.

“A few hours.”

“And you just sat on the slide? Did you see anyone around the building?”

“I saw a lot of people on the playground. Some boys playing basketball and a little girl with a dog.” Suddenly, I remembered Daniel Vecchio and his loathsome posse of fifth graders riding their bikes down the street. “Was the person who called in the tip a kid? Because a lot of times with arson, the one who smelt it, dealt it.”

“Yes, I think I've heard that before,” said Robotective. Was he being sarcastic?

I told him about Daniel Vecchio, my fifth-grade nemesis, and how I had caught him stealing toilet paper out of the supply cabinet at school and reported him to Mrs. Grumble, the strictest teacher at Holy Family. I said that when Daniel Vecchio discovered it was me who'd ratted him out, he'd said he was going to get me. I told how only a few days earlier he'd egged our house and TPed it, too. “There's still paper in some of the branches,” I said.

Detective Huntington had made a note of Daniel's name, then clicked the end of his pen and returned it to his shirt pocket. He hadn't written down a word I'd said.

“Why aren't you writing that down?” I asked.

He folded his hands in front of him and looked at me.

“She's not a suspect, is she?” asked Mrs. Dagnitz. Suddenly, I felt a rush of something other than pure loathing for my mother. She was not addicted to detective shows. She watched the cooking channel and
American Idol,
which made her a little slow.

“Let's just say she's a person of interest,” said
Detective Huntington. “The caller didn't just place Minerva at the scene, they said they saw her start the fire.”

Detective Huntington placed his mug on the mantel and said he would be in touch. He would most definitely be in touch, and we should most definitely not plan on going anywhere. As Mrs. Dagnitz walked him to the door, the heels of her little sandals slapping against the hardwood floor, she told him that actually soon we were headed to New York, where I would be part of an exciting world neurological conference. Certainly he'd read the nice profile of me in the paper? I was a special girl, a
very
special girl, a sensitive girl with special powers. Had he read the nice article about me in the paper? Did he know who Minerva Clark was? And, that, well, her father was an attorney?

I stood in the middle of the living room scratching my shin with the bottom of my foot, watching Mrs. Dagnitz say too much. Like always she started out okay—although bells went off in my head at her use of the word “we.” Mark Clark was taking me to New York, not Mrs. Dagnitz—but then, she never knew when to hit the brakes. Did she really need to say I was special twice? Did she really need to remind Robotective that Charlie was a lawyer? Well, maybe that wasn't such a bad idea. It was never a bad idea just to remind people who wouldn't mind seeing your life ruined that you have an attorney in the family.

Robotective appeared to listen to her, but otherwise
said nothing. He looked over at me briefly before the door shut behind him and said, “I hope your tickets to New York are refundable, because I don't think you're going anywhere.”

The minute the front door closed, Quills appeared. He'd been lurking in the computer room.

“What was that all about?” he said, cracking his knuckles, one after the other.

“Michael, don't do that,” said Mrs. Dagnitz.

We stood in the entryway. Mrs. Dagnitz rubbed the crease between her eyebrows, looked over my shoulder, and frowned. “Is there a reason for that?”

I turned and saw her studying our lifesize cardboard James Bond in his tuxedo. I think it was the James Bond before the brand-new James Bond.

“Other than it's just one cool item?” asked Quills. For some reason he could get away with being borderline snotty and I couldn't. Unfair unfair unfair.

“There will never be a better James Bond than Sean Connery,” sighed Mrs. Dagnitz. Then she pointed her blue gaze at me. “So, are you going to tell me about setting the school on fire?”

I felt like I needed a lawyer with
her
. “I don't know about setting the school on fire,” I said carefully. “This is the first I've heard about it.”

Mrs. Dagnitz sighed. “Is this because I've remarried? Is that what all this is about?”

“Huh?”

I glanced at Quills. He was cracking the fingers of his other hand and biting his lips. Quills could play the most smoking Led Zeppelin tunes of anyone I knew, but he was hopeless when it came to dealing with our mother. I wished Mark Clark was there, but he'd had to go back to work that day.

“I didn't set any fire, and nothing has anything to do with you being remarried,” I said.

“Surely you don't think I believe you,” said Mrs. Dagnitz. “I know you think I'm just some stupid middle-aged lady who doesn't have a clue, but I do know that you've turned into quite the little fib-teller.”

“I am not a fib-teller,” I said. Not exactly true. I was a fib-teller. Everyone was a fib-teller. Didn't Mrs. Dagnitz just tell Robotective that I was a sensitive girl? I wasn't a sensitive girl with special powers. It was a little fib told so that Robotective might go easy on me. Realizing this, I tried to stop-and-be-calm, like we were taught to do in the conflict management section of health class last year. I took a deep breath. “I'm telling you the truth.”

“Is this like the truth you told just the other day? When you said you'd been at your friend Chelsea's house, when really you were doing God knows what with Kevin?” said Mrs. Dagnitz. She'd sidled up closer to me.

I twirled a lock of hair. When had I lied about being with Chelsea when I'd really been with Kevin?
Think, Minerva, think
. The only time I'd ever hung out with Kevin anywhere else but here at Casa Clark was when
he'd just returned from fly-fishing in Montana and his mother invited me over to dinner. She'd made barbecued chicken and coleslaw with purple cabbage, then Mark Clark had picked me up and we'd stopped on the way home for Baskin-Robbins ice cream.

“I never lied about that,” I said.

“Minerva, please. Stop now while you're ahead.”

“I'm not lying,” I said.

“The day we were late for the appointment with Dr. Lozano? And you came speeding up on that … whatever that thing was, that scooter? I held my tongue. I didn't even want to know where you got that thing. Are you a thief, too?”

“That day,” I said. “I wasn't with Kevin. I was with Angus Paine.” The words were on their way out of my mouth and I knew I'd made a monster mistake. It was like the time I helped my friend Hannah clean her goldfish bowl. I kept watch over Romeo and Juliet, swimming around in the bathroom sink, their temporary home, while Hannah scrubbed out the bowl in the kitchen. After she was finished, and had replaced the rocks and the pink plastic seaweed, and Romeo and Juliet were ready to be returned to their bowl, she'd called out “Done!” and for reasons I will never understand, I hit the stopper and the plug opened.

The instant Angus's name left my lips, I felt that same sick way I had watching poor Romeo and Juliet swirl down the drain to their deaths.

“Angus Paine, Angus Paine. Would that be the same Angus Paine you promised me you'd have nothing to do with?”

“I didn't promise, I said ‘fine,' and I never said I was with Kevin that day.
You
said I was with Kevin,” I said.

“Do not,
do not
insult me by splitting hairs about your lies, Minerva Clark.” She wagged her finger in my face. Then she fluffed her bangs and cleared her throat. She was now leaving the planet of the purely POed and winging her way to the land of the long-suffering. I could tell. I'd been reading her signs for almost fourteen years. “All right,” she said. “I suppose we should get your father on the phone. You're going to need good representation.”

“Mom, I'm not going to need representation. I didn't do anything.”

“And you're also going to need something decent to wear in court. I know you resisted getting your hair straightened, but to a jury you'll look more trustworthy if you have nice smooth hair. I've read studies.”

“Oh, for God's sakes, Mom!” Quills blurted out. “Are you on crack? Min's not going to court, and she's not straightening her hair. Morgan was walking the dog last night and saw her sitting on the slide talking on her cell, just like she said.”