The Case of the Missing Mascot (A Sherlock Shakespeare Mystery Book 1) (10 page)

Drew's hand fell from the door to his side at my words. He stared at me for a few serious seconds before his face dissolved in laughter. "You're right, that is a funny story."

"I'm being serious. Your aunt has a problem with the high school using a live animal as a mascot and she's been trying to stop the school since the llama died. She'd never hurt an animal, I know that, so we still have plenty of time to safely return him to the school before Homecoming."

His laughter slowly faded. "You're really serious about this? But why are you searching here?"

"Because I didn't find anything at the house yesterday."

I hadn't meant to say that.
 

"You searched my house?"

"Well... sort of."

He folded his arms over his chest. It was strange; this might be the longest I'd seen him stay in one place without moving in years. "You actually think she'd be able to keep something like this hidden at the house without me noticing."

"Not exactly."

The realization of what I was saying washed over his face, followed by the tensing of his jaw muscles. "Are you saying you searched my room too?"

This was awkward. "Sort of."

"Either you did or you didn't."

"It's not like I found anything awful in there." I thought about that for a second. "Except the sheet music. Please tell me you're not auditioning for—"

"So you think I'm in on this?" He shook his head and a bitter note entered his voice. "You should really know me better than that."

I didn't like this turn in the conversation. Hurting Drew was the last thing I ever wanted to do. This kind of thing was probably why Sherlock Holmes had been such a loner. Dealing with the fallout of a case wasn't fun.

"Drew—"

"Just... don't talk to me right now." He opened the door and stepped out of the storage room. "Wait here."

It didn't occur to me that now was the best possible time to sneak out until after Irene appeared at the door. She didn't look angry, but her expression wasn't one of amusement either. She didn't even appear to be all that concerned that I was onto her.

Really, she just looked disappointed.

"Drew said we needed to talk about the mascot."

I had no idea how I was supposed to tactfully accuse my best friend's aunt of stealing a pig, so I just said it. "What did you do with Champers after you stole him?"

She let out one of those long-suffering sighs, similar to the one I heard from my mother whenever I asked why I couldn't have a TV in my bedroom. "I didn't take Champers."

"But you tried to organize a rally to protest the new mascot this summer, right?"

"Yes."

"And you think the school keeping a teacup pig as a mascot is an animal rights violation?"

"Of course. You would too if you heard Drew talk about the little stunt they're going to do with the pig at halftime."

"And..." I get that the little things were important in an investigation, but when I heard how little evidence I'd pieced together against Irene, I wasn't sure what to say next. Sherlock Holmes usually had an admission of guilt at this point. All I was getting was a slightly amused expression shot in my direction.

"Sherlock, I can see why you might suspect me of freeing Champers from the school, but I didn't have the opportunity to take him even if I'd wanted to."

"What do you mean?"

She glanced at something behind me and slightly to the right before she turned her full attention back to me. "I didn't have a moment to myself all weekend. I worked here from open to close on Saturday and then joined some friends for an, uh, outing in the woods overnight. I delivered a cake for the church luncheon on Sunday morning and found out the pig was missing when I came in on Sunday afternoon."

That was a lot of people who could all verify where she was if I wanted to make more of a fool of myself and check. The only part of her story that sounded sketchy was the overnight woods outing. I heard rumors about people dancing naked in the woods every so often. That sounded like just the sort of thing Irene would do and then have trouble telling me about afterward.

"So you don't have any idea where Champers is, do you?"

She shook her head, momentarily distracted again by something behind me and to the right. Seriously, what the hell was so fascinating back there? Did I have a parade of ghosts following me around or something?

Ghosts. Wrong thought to have after the early morning weirdness in my room Monday. I shivered just thinking about how I thought I saw a woman's face in the bathroom mirror.

"I wish I did. I may not agree with the way the school is using him, but I was able to confirm that he was at least being well taken care of by one of the teachers. Wherever he is now..." Sadness tinged her words. "I really don't know how that poor little pig is right now."

"I'm... sorry." This whole thing was too embarrassing. "I should probably go."

I moved past her, but she lightly touched my arm to stop me from leaving. "Honey, it's a good thing you're doing. You're just doing it in the wrong way."

"How do you mean?"

Her face softened into an expression that was decidedly more maternal than like what you'd get from a childless woman in her early thirties. "You should've included your friends. Secrets have a way of hurting the people you care about."

"I know."

"I know you do. Don't forget your juice on the way out."

I nodded and hurried out of the storage area, completely embarrassed. Drew was behind the counter, leaning against the cash register. I grabbed the cup off the counter with one hand while fishing for some money in my pocket with the other.

"Just take it," he snapped at me.

"Drew... I'm sorry."

"I don't care." He pushed away from the counter and moved around it. "I've got a cookout to get to."

Not sure what to do to make things right, I followed him out of the cafe. "Look, I know I messed up, but—"

"But what? You messed up by not pressing me for an alibi? If I'm on your suspect list, why haven't you asked me where I was?"

"Because you were never really—"

"Ask anyone, if I wasn't up here or with the cheerleading squad or search party, I was asleep. Oh, but I guess that's not good enough, right? I mean, with Irene gone Saturday night, I could've gone anywhere and done anything overnight."

"I believe you. I didn't mean to—"

"Stop. Just stop already." He glared down at me and suddenly being average height made me feel very small. "You don't get to search my house like I'm some kind of criminal and then smile at me the next day like everything is cool with us."

My hand shook and I nearly dropped my cup. "Are you saying we aren't friends anymore because I made a mistake?"

"I'm saying that if we were ever really friends, you would've known better, Sherlock." He stalked off down the sidewalk. "I really thought we were better friends than this."

Now I remembered the real reason why Sherlock Holmes didn't have any friends aside from his sidekick. No one liked to be accused of a crime. The things you had to do while in the midst of an investigation rarely went hand in hand with the stuff of friendship.

Go after him.

"Shut up!"

When I realized I'd actually just shouted at the voice in my head, in public, in broad daylight, I hurried to the solitude of the store. Maybe we had a book on mental illness I should read. I didn't know what was going on, but I was starting to think that something was very wrong with me.

I was still trembling even after I got to work and settled in to study while every potential customer was headed to the cookout instead of buying books. Every time I took a sip of my juice, I remembered the contempt with which Drew had looked at me when he told me to take it. Finally, I threw it away. It wasn't like I needed a reminder of how bad I messed up.

Drew was right; I should've known better.

If I were a better friend and even a halfway competent detective, I would've gone to Drew first with my suspicions about his aunt. Irene may be his family, but knowing someone for your entire life had to count for something too. He would've been straight with me about whether I was onto something, probably would've even searched Irene's room for me if I'd had any kind of real evidence instead of speculation and wild conjecture.

I tried to force my mind away from Drew and back to the textbook open in front of me. It wasn't like he'd stay mad at me forever. He never did. By lunch tomorrow, things would be normal between us again. They had to be.

But I couldn't concentrate. Every time I thought I was starting to get the hang of this whole macroeconomics thing, I'd remember that I was back to square one with my investigation. Tonight was the cookout, tomorrow was the parade and Friday was the big game. Homecoming week was quickly drawing to a close and I was no closer to finding Champers than I'd been on Sunday when Drew first told me the mascot was missing.

Worse still, I'd hurt my best friend for nothing.

The door flew open and Watson came running in, clearly out of breath. He'd probably run all the way here from school. I tried that once when I was running late and fell over with a monster leg cramp before I was even out of sight of the school.

I still needed to work on that. Knowing I'd had to zig into a dead-end alley because I couldn't outrun gangbangers with their pants around their ankles was a serious wake-up call about my level of fitness.

Watson was doubled over in the middle of the store with his hands resting heavily on his thighs as he struggled to catch his breath. Between mammoth gasps of air, he said, "I need... some... cash."

"Then go home and raid your piggy bank," I snapped. "The store isn't your personal ATM."

He glared up at me. "Dad... already... said so."

That didn't surprise me. While our mother may've run the bookstore like a true business, Dad let us take what we needed out of the register as long as we wrote it down on the petty cash log. He always said that he'd take it out of our earnings, but he never did. It was probably a good thing they both had tenured teaching jobs and didn't have to rely on income from the bookstore to pay the bills—especially since there were many days where they paid me more to man the empty store than they made off the sale of books.

I guess this was just what happened to a family of book geeks. Normal people might've realized that they'd been hoarding books for years and donated them to the library. Not the Shakespeares. We turned our hobby on steroids into a real business... sort of.

At least we were the only bookstore in town, so we could get away with keeping the store open only when it fit our school and work schedules.

"Fine." I opened the register and pulled out the log. "How much do you need?"

Watson straightened, his breathing finally slowing to a more normal pace. "Thirty."

"Thirty? How much are they charging for hamburgers and hot dogs at this cookout?"

"I don't know. A couple bucks each, probably." He glared back at me when I didn't say anything or pull the cash from the drawer. "I'm going out with the varsity guys afterwards."

It was probably a good thing everyone on the team loved having Watson as their equipment manager so much. If Champers never turned up, they could order a costume for my brother and he'd probably gladly fill the role. I could almost hear the band playing the theme song from
The Golden Girls
instead of our fight song whenever we scored.
 

I pulled thirty dollars out of the drawer, making sure he had plenty of ones to pay with at the cookout, and handed it to him. "Have fun."

"Why are you such a grump today?" he asked, counting the cash as though I couldn't be trusted to count to thirty on my own. "Still the Tom thing?"

"Not exactly."

He glanced up. "What happened?"

"That lead I was following up on didn't pan out. That's all."

My tone was unconvincing even to my own ears.

"Yeah, but you don't care about Champers. What really happened?"

Briefly, I filled him in on my suspicions about Irene and what had happened with Drew. He listened to everything I said without interruption, which was decidedly weird for my little brother, and then made a pity face at me when I was done.

"Do you want me to talk to Drew for you at the cookout?"

I shook my head. The last thing I needed was for my infinitely cooler little brother to start fighting my battles for me. I was already pathetic enough. "No thanks, Wats."

"I'm sure Drew will come around." We were both quiet for a few seconds and he added, "So, you're out of leads now?"

I was relieved that he wasn't making me dwell on the Drew situation or pressing me for what else was wrong. Admitting that I was now destroying friendships in search of a pig I didn't care about was bad enough; talking about voices in my head and hallucinations was unthinkable. "Pretty much. If it's not the rival football team and it's not the only animal rights activist in town, I'm out of ideas."

Watson nodded more to himself than to anything I'd said while he folded the cash and stuffed it into the pocket of his khaki shorts. He pulled his 'Batter the Bulldogs' shirt back down over his waist and smoothed it. For a moment, I wondered whether he'd painted his own shirt or if he'd found someone to make an original for him. Of all the spirit shirts people had worn this week, his was the only one I remembered wanting to batter the opposing team this Friday.