Remarkable (26 page)

“Aye. It took me two years to earn me teaching certificate before Mayor Doe could offer me the job. I be indebted to her for giving me the chance to try to start a new life—the kind of life that me parents might take some pride in. But respectable citizenry seems to be beyond me sometimes…”

“Then why don’t you return to the sea?”

Ms. Schnabel sighed. “Because I made a promise to me parents not to go back to pirating. It was in exchange for getting busted out of the brig, but now I can see that the brig would be preferable to the life I’ve chosen.”

“Interesting,” Detective Burton Sly said. “I was not aware that your parents were pirates.”

“Har. That’ll be the sunny day,” Ms. Schnabel said. “They wouldn’t be caught dead having anything to do with piracy.”

“Perhaps I’ve been misinformed, then,” Detective Burton Sly said. “My understanding was that pirates only have to keep promises they make to other pirates.”

“Aye,” Ms. Schnabel said. “That be part of the Pirates’ Code.”

“Then I guess I don’t see what’s stopping you from going off to lead the life you love. Surely not a promise made to a bunch of landlubbers.”

Ms. Schnabel gave Detective Burton Sly a suspicious stare. “How is it a great detective like yerself seems so invested in getting me to return to me life of crime?”

“Ma’am, without great lawbreakers, there would be no need for great detectives.”

Ms. Schnabel sighed and stepped away from the weather machine. “Ye might as well let the mayor destroy it,” she said sorrowfully. “As much as I’d like to hightail it back to me life at sea, a captain ain’t worth much without a crew.”

“I could see how that might pose a problem. But as it so happens, I might have a solution for you. And it is a solution that helps me rid Remarkable of three troublemakers who have no appreciation whatsoever for great detective work.”

He was thinking of Ebb, Jeb, and Flotsam, of course. He told her where to find them, and even lent her the money for their bail. By the next day, Mad Captain Penzing the Horrific, the weather machine, and her new pirate crew had disappeared.

A
town like Remarkable only has happy endings. The big storm might have seemed like a disaster, but actually, it left many good things in its fearsome wake. With the bell tower gone, Lucky was now safe—which made Grandpa very happy. Mrs. Peabody was happy, because the town was now almost entirely free of pirates. She decided she didn’t mind Captain Rojo Herring so much because he was such a good customer and was also so polite.

Lucinda Wihelmina Hinojosa was happy, because while she was trapped under the bandstand during the storm, she’d met Johnny November, the band’s drummer, and had fallen in love with his perfect
sense of rhythm. And if Johnny November didn’t share her passion for locating Ysquibel, he never let her know.

This didn’t exactly make Anderson Brigby Bright happy, but at least he gave up trying to impress her with his singing, which made everybody else in town ecstatic. He’d decided to be in love with Anastasia Elise Ellenton instead, who was a champion roller skater. Anderson Brigby Bright was as terrible at roller-skating as he was a singing, but at least with this new hobby, he was only hurting himself.

Grandmama Julietta Augustina was perhaps the happiest of all. Not only had Lucky’s brief foray out of the lake given her the evidence she needed to prove to the Scottish Parliament that Lucky was the superior lake monster, but she’d also learned that Dr. Pike had decided to stay on as Remarkable’s dentist, which meant she got to call Mayor Kate Chu and give her the bad news.

“It’s just how things worked out,” Grandmama said into the phone in a voice dripping with false sympathy. “Better luck next time and all that.”

The reason that Dr. Pike had decided to stay was because of Captain Rojo Herring. “There’s a year’s
worth of tricky dentistry in that mouth,” she said dreamily, staring at his receding gums. Captain Rojo Herring looked dreamy, too—but that’s because he was in love with Dr. Pike and not really thinking about the extractions, root canals, implantations, and cleanings he was about to face.

Of course, the reason that Captain Rojo Herring had decided to stay was because he thought his secret was safe. And the reason he thought his secret was safe was because Jane decided not to reveal his true identity. Normally, she might have taken some pride in this fact, and might have even enjoyed knowing that some of the lovely things that were happening in town were because of her. But Jane was too sick to feel much of anything beside feverish and sneezy. She’d caught a miserable, horrible cold as a result of spending the night in the drafty mansion.

For the next week and a half, Jane stayed in her room, going downstairs only to make herself soup and tea when the rest of her family forgot to bring her any. Grandpa John came over a few times with figgy doodles and told her all about his long and secret friendship with Lucky, and Grandmama Julietta Augustina sent Stilton over with an extra-big box of Kleenex.

Jane pulled out a tissue, blew her nose, and then got back into bed so that she could watch a TV show about dog grooming. But as she was getting settled under her covers, the most extraordinary thing happened. A large rock hit her bedroom window and shattered it into a million pieces.

“I told you that rock was too big!” came Eddie Grimlet’s voice from outside.

“And I told you not to throw it so hard,” Melissa yelled back at him. There was a scuffling sound, and Jane knew that they had started one of their kicking fights.

She dragged herself out of bed and looked through the new hole in her window.

“Achoo!” she sneezed pitifully. Eddie and Melissa stopped fighting long enough to grin wickedly at her.

“Jane! Jane! You have to come with us right away!”

“I can’t,” Jane sniffed. “I’m sick.”

“Who cares,” Eddie said. “A package is coming for you today down at the post office!”

“A package? For me?” Jane found this so implausible that she immediately suspected the Grimlet twins were trying to play some kind of a trick on her. “No
one ever sends me mail. And even if someone did, how would you know about it?”

“Dearest Jane,” Melissa said, “we make it our business to know all kinds of things we’re not supposed to know. But that’s not what’s important. What’s important is that the package is from Mad Captain Penzing the Horrific.”

Mad Captain Penzing the Horrific. Jane had told the Grimlet twins about Ms. Schnabel’s real identity right after she left town. Eddie swore he’d suspected it all along, and Melissa claimed that it was obvious to anyone paying attention, but Jane could tell that they were both as astonished by the news as she was.

“But why would Ms. Schnabel—I mean Mad Captain Penzing the Horrific—send me a package?” Jane wondered.

“That’s what we thought,” Eddie replied. “I mean, she barely even noticed you. We think the package must actually be for us.”

“We think she’s decided to send back our weather machine,” Melissa explained.

Jane was too tired to care if they got their weather machine back, but the Grimlet twins would not be ignored.

“We offered to sign for it after it arrived,” Melissa told her, “but for some reason, the postal employees didn’t trust us to bring it to you.”

“So we need you to come,” Eddie said. “We’d prefer it if you came quietly, but if you won’t, well, we have our methods.”

“Oh, fine,” Jane grumbled as she went to get dressed.

Three minutes later, she was walking to town with the Grimlet twins. Even though her nose was dripping and she was feeling light-headed, Jane knew that she should enjoy her time with the twins while she could. She would not be seeing them nearly as much anymore. They had been unexpectedly re-enrolled at Remarkable’s School for the Remarkably Gifted. The esteemed Dr. Presnelda had decided that it would be easier to reinstate them than to admit that public school kids had beaten her superior students at the science fair.

“How do you like being back at the gifted school?” Jane asked them.

“It’s mind-numbingly horrendous,” Melissa said as she tried to trip Eddie with a sharp stick. “Worse than I remember.”

“Dismally abysmal,” Eddie complained as he grabbed the stick away from Melissa and tried to poke her in the eye with it. “But don’t worry. We’re planning on getting expelled again soon. It’ll be harder this time, but we have a few ideas that are much, much worse than the blue bomb.”

Jane decided she didn’t mind if it took them a while to figure it out. Having a life that was quite ordinary didn’t seem so bad anymore.

When they arrived at the once-again plain post office, Jane sat down with the Grimlet twins on the bench outside to wait for her package to be delivered. Eddie and Melissa pulled out a large stash of straws and began shooting wrappers at everyone who walked past.

It was a remarkably fine day again, as it would continue to be, since the Grimlet twins had lost possession of their weather machine. In the distance, Jane could see Dr. Bayonet crashing through the bushes with his butterfly net. Once he’d calmed down, he decided he’d rather rebuild his butterfly sanctuary than return to dentistry. Dr. Bayonet ran past Grandpa John, who was walking to Lake Remarkable with a fresh packet of figgy doodles.

An hour went by with no sign of any deliveries. Then, just as Jane was starting to think that she wasn’t getting a package after all, a big mail truck pulled to a stop in front of the post office, and a mailman unloaded a plain brown medium-sized box.

“It’s too small for the weather machine,” Melissa said glumly.

“And the weather machine wouldn’t need air holes,” Eddie said. They could see that someone had punched small openings in the top of the box in the shape of a skull and crossbones.

“One of you kids named Jane Doe?” the mailman asked.

“That’s me,” Jane said.

“Sign here.”

Jane signed her name, and the mailman put the box at her feet. For a moment, Jane was almost afraid to open it. It was bound to contain something boring—like a sweater, or a puzzle with missing pieces, or maybe even some homework Ms. Schnabel had forgotten to give her before leaving town. Then all the fun of anticipating getting a truly exciting gift would be gone.

“You’d better hurry up,” Eddie told her. “If you
keep us in suspense much longer, we’re going to be inclined to steal that box and open it ourselves.”

Melissa handed Jane a small dagger she kept hidden in her sock, and Jane used it to cut through the packing tape on the top of the plain brown medium-sized box. She lifted off the lid and looked inside. And inside, she saw the most marvelous plain brown medium-sized puppy. The puppy looked up and yawned at Jane sleepily as she reached in to pick him up.

He was a very ordinary dog—perhaps the plainest, most ordinary dog that ever lived.

“Oh,” Jane said. “Oh, isn’t he the most beautiful dog ever!”

Melissa raised a crooked eyebrow at her while Eddie dug around in the box and found a note from Ms. Schnabel.

“Hey,” he said happily. “This note’s addressed to me!”

“It’s addressed to both of us,” Melissa said.

“Well, my name’s first, so I’m probably supposed to read it first.”

“Interesting, but wrong,” Melissa said as she made a grab for the note in his hand. Eddie dodged her grasp, but she managed to get a hold of the back of
his shirt. They scuffled over it for a good ten minutes until Melissa managed to pin Eddie to the ground with her foot and pry the note out of his fingers.

“Dear Melissa,” the note read. “I’m going to assume that Jane is too busy with her new puppy to read this note, and that you managed to best Eddie in whatever battle the two of you got into. I’m gone and I won’t be coming back. Being a pirate is so much more gratifying than teaching fifth graders (no offense). But on my travels, I discovered this puppy. Actually, he was on
The Wild Three O’Clock
for a whole week before I even noticed him. A pirate ship is no place for a dog, so I thought I’d send him to Jane, seeing as how Jane has always wanted a dog of her own.

Yours at sea,

Captain Penzing the Horrific.

P.S. The dog’s name is Dirt.

P.P.S. The weather machine has been immensely helpful. Much more so than Ebb, Jeb, and Flotsam, who are the three most worthless pirates I’ve ever met, excluding the three of you.

P.P.P.S. I am NEVER EVER giving the weather machine back, so there.”

“The nerve of her,” Eddie said self-righteously.
“Treating other people’s property with such a lack of respect.” Melissa ripped Captain Penzing’s note into shreds and scattered the pieces across the post office lawn. Then the Grimlet twins fixed their attention on Dirt, who was wriggling in Jane’s arms and giving her excited puppy kisses.

“He’s not so bad,” Melissa said. “For such a plain dog.”

“I suspect he might even be useful,” Eddie added. “Useful to us, I mean.”

Jane was too busy with her new puppy to notice that they were talking to her. The Grimlet twins weren’t used to having Jane ignore them, and they didn’t like it one bit.

“You know, Jane,” Eddie said loudly. “There are a lot of crime-fighting dogs in the world. But I’ve never heard of a crime-causing dog. If you let us work with him, we could turn him into the world’s first canine criminal mastermind.”