Uncovering Sadie's Secrets (4 page)

I saw her pause for maybe a nanosecond as she decided whether to share any information with me. Then, she finished polishing her right toe nails, capped the bottle, and spread her feet in front of her as they dried.

“Bianca, part of being a private investigator is keeping people’s business private.”

“Come on, Connie. If she called and left a message, you haven’t even had a chance to talk to her. So, it’s not really private yet.” Strange reasoning but enough to do the job.

“Okay,” she said. “Yeah. Some gal named Bobbie called today. But she didn’t leave a number. She just said she’d call back.”

What a sleuth I was! I just found out something—that I already knew! Sherlock Holmes, watch out.

“Well, I didn’t tell you but she said this friend was being framed for murder,” I said.

Connie leaned back in her chair and got serious. “Murder? That’s nothing to fool around with. And that would be in the police reports, in the papers. That’s not something that goes unnoticed.”

“I thought it was kind of odd myself.”

“What’s your friend like? The one who said her friend is being framed?” Connie asked.

“She’s new to school this year. And she’s different. Keeps to herself mostly. Really skinny. Nobody knows much about her.”

“Maybe you should get to know her,” Connie said, and I perked up immediately. Wow. Connie was asking me to help on a case.

“Yeah. That would help. I could find out stuff.”

Connie frowned. “No, you dufus. I meant maybe you should get to know her because she’s new and it would be nice for somebody to reach out and make her feel at home.”

“Oh. Yeah. I was getting to that,” I said. In the distance, the phone rang. I ran down the hall to grab the extension in my room before Tony could pick it up.

“Bianca! I’m so glad I got you,” Kerrie said breathlessly on the end of the line. “Nickie just called and told me the most incredible news. . .”

“What? What?”

“She said she saw Sadie going over to Doug’s house.”

My heart sank. I sat down on the bed and pretended not to care, and listened while Kerrie told me the whole gruesome tale.

B
Y THE time Monday morning rolled around, I had imagined a hundred different scenarios for why Sadie Sinclair, Woman of Mystery, would be visiting Douglas Patterson, My Own True Love, on a Saturday night.

The Saturday night after the afternoon in which he had punched me in the shoulder and called out my name.

Unfortunately, none of the scenarios was really good for me. They ranged from torrid romantic liaison to secret science project cloning the school’s star basketball player.

So, I wasn’t in such a great mood when I showed up at St. John’s at eighty-thirty a.m. in my perky plaid jumper and white Peter Pan blouse. As I rolled the dial on my locker lock, Kerrie came up to me. We had already exchanged numerous calls and email messages throughout the weekend filled with speculation on the reason for the Sadie-Doug rendezvous, and she had promised me she would find out for sure by Monday morning.

“Hi,” I said, trying to keep myself from grabbing her, shaking her by the shoulders and screaming out—
What did you discover? Tell me, for goodness sake! Tell me!

“So what’s up?” I asked.

“I tried Marsha twice last night and couldn’t get her,” she said, trying not to look me in the eye. Marsha was a junior who was friends with Adam. She and Kerrie had been on Student Council together the year before and still talked from time to time. Marsha was very popular and knew everything about everybody. But you had to be careful talking to her because she would reveal what she heard about you as easily as she would reveal what she heard about others. It was just as well if Kerrie hadn’t been able to get hold of her. Talking to her twice in one weekend about Doug and me would surely switch the rumor mill into overdrive.

“That’s okay,” I said, grabbing my morning books and putting my lunch bag in my locker. “I’ll figure out what’s going on. It’s not like Doug and I are going out, anyway.” Did Kerrie roll her eyes when I said that? I couldn’t tell.

The morning bell rang and we went to our respective home rooms. It would be lunchtime before we were able to catch up with each other again.

But I was true to my word. I spent the morning trying to “figure out what was going on.” Whenever I passed Doug in the hall, he smiled at me, a big open smile even in front of his friends.

On a scale of one to ten, with one being “don’t want to be seen dead with her” and ten being “setting a date with the minister,” those smiles qualified as a solid five. Maybe even a five point five, depending on how you looked at it. Meanwhile, I didn’t see him send one grin Sadie’s way. Of course, I couldn’t see them together all morning.

That changed at lunchtime. The cafeteria was in the basement of the old school building. Shock-therapy bright with white tiled floor and white walls and fluorescent lighting, it was as noisy as the inside of a drum at the end of the William Tell Overture. The sound of 100 kids chattering and clinking silverware and ripping open paper bags was enough to put any rock concert to shame.

I headed for my usual table, near the door that led to the auditorium hallway, where Kerrie and Nicole were waiting for me. Carmen Smith was with them and so was Hilary Stone. Carmen was a black girl from Liberty Heights, and Hilary was from somewhere near the Pennsylvania border. She was absent a lot when the weather was bad. We all hung together in a loose group. We liked to think of ourselves as the “anti-clique clique” because, although we stuck together as shoulders-to-cry-on when things got tough, we didn’t always eat lunch or hang out together as a lockstep unit. In other words, we played well with others.

“Hilary wants to know if we want to be in the school play,” Kerrie said, rushing past me to get in line to buy her lunch. She always bought her lunch while I always brown-bagged it.

“Try-outs are this afternoon,” Hilary said, coming over to me. “And I thought we could be like moral support for each other.”
Translation:
Hilary wanted really badly to try out but she was afraid to do it on her own.

“What’s the play?” I asked. “And what do you have to do?” I plopped my lunch on the table and started to open my bag. Peanut butter on whole wheat (thanks to Connie), apple, granola bar, bottled water. I started eating.

“It’s a musical,” Carmen volunteered. She was already eating what looked like a ham sandwich with tomato and cheese and lettuce. Wow, it looked good. “
The Mikado
.”

“Gilbert and Sullivan,” Nicole said, nodding her head. “Don’t you have to sing something in the try-out?”

“Yeah, but anything you want. Nothing special,” Hilary said. I suspected she had an audition piece she’d been working on for months. Hilary was really bitten by the stage bug. She even looked like an aspiring actress, with auburn hair in a pixie cut framing perfect features that (against school rules) she highlighted each day with mascara and eyeliner and a touch of rouge. She was so skillful with the make-up brush that she never got caught. “Mrs. Williston said we should try to get as many people to try out as we can. She needs choristers. And especially guys.”

Hmmm. Guys. That was a good excuse for revving up the old conversation machine with Doug. Might be worth a try. I scanned the room looking for him. On Mondays and Wednesdays, he had lunch at the same time I did.

“You could sing just a Christmas carol or something, or even the National Anthem or a verse from one of the songs we sing in chorus,” Hilary pleaded. “If we don’t get enough people, we can’t do the show.”

“Look, I don’t mind coming to give moral support, but I can’t commit to a rehearsal schedule,” Carmen said. “Williston will have you there every night the week before the play, and I promised my mother I’d be home more this year after doing band all last year.” Carmen had deliberately cleared her schedule so she could have time for Advanced Placement courses. She was taking AP History this year and counting on going into AP Physics next year. She wanted to be a rocket scientist.

I noticed Doug entering the room from the opposite side. He was laughing and talking with Adam and some other guys I didn’t know well.

“All right,” I said with a shade too much enthusiasm. “Come on, Hilary, let’s round up some men for Mrs. Williston. I’m game!” I grabbed her arm and pulled her with me down the length of the lunch room, passing a puzzled-looking Kerrie juggling a food-laden tray. “It’s showtime!” I said to her by way of explanation as we passed.

Spontaneity is a good thing. If it hadn’t been for the idea of roping in some guys to try out for the show, I never would have screwed up the courage to talk with Doug that day, or probably any day after it.

When we made it to his table, he looked up and smiled at me again. A huge neon sign flashing “
five, five, five
” in my brain nearly blinded me and sent me reeling, but Hilary was on a tear so she covered for me easily.

“Mrs. Williston really needs guys to try out for
The Mikado
,” she said and I swore I saw her bat her eyelashes. Hilary was one of the few students who actually looked good in the uniform. Heck, she looked like a model for the uniform. “If she doesn’t get enough, she doesn’t want to do it. She doesn’t want to use a lot of girls dressed up as guys.”

The guys all started looking down and around—in fact, everywhere but at Hilary—and it was clear that this idea was going over like the proverbial lead balloon. But then she added some deal-sweeteners. “There’ll be a huge cast party at the end of the show, and Mrs. Williston is getting passes out of first bloc classes for everybody on the day after the show, plus she said she might need to schedule some rehearsals during the day and she’d make sure it was all right with the other teachers.”

It was as if little bells were ringing in each guy’s head. Ping! No first bloc Algebra? Sounds good. Ping! I could get out of old Rathbone’s History of Civilization? Sounds good. Ping! Cast party with music and girls and. . . Heh-heh.

I was nearly deafened by all that mental pinging.

One of the boys spoke up. “What time are the auditions?” he asked nonchalantly.

“Three. Right after school. And she promised it wouldn’t interfere with any athletic schedule.”

“Are you going to try out, Bianca?” Doug asked me. He talked to me! Yippee skippy! I did a little dance.

Well, not really. I smiled.

“Yeah. I thought I’d give it a shot,” I said. “Maybe get in the chorus.” I had no desire to be a leading lady. Too much pressure. Although I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to be, I had ruled out Star of Stage and Screen as well as rocket scientist.

“Come on, Doug, Bill, Ryan,” Hilary pleaded. “It’ll be fun.”

“Okay. Maybe I’ll try,” Doug said at last, and I thought it was significant that he was the first to speak after I had volunteered my own intentions to try out. I could see a causal relationship between the two.

“Three o’clock!” Hilary said, triumphant.

As we turned to go back to our lunches, I caught sight of Sadie. She was coming into the lunchroom late and she looked as if she had been crying. That had to mean she was detained by a teacher or called into the office for something.

In addition to her binder and books, she held a note in her hand. It must have been an office visit, with the principal or assistant principal or guidance counselor. Her nose ring and earrings were gone, and she had pulled her hair back into a stubby pony tail at the nape of her neck. When she saw me, she smiled and I remembered Connie’s admonition to make friends with her. Given that I was on an information-hunt, it seemed like a good idea.

“Sadie! Come on down to our table,” I said to her, and she accepted the invitation with the same enthusiasm as a lost traveler in the desert taking an offered glass of water. As she passed Doug’s table, he called out a cheery hello and I forced myself not to think of where it fell on the scale.

If Kerrie was surprised when I showed up at our table with Sadie in tow, she didn’t show it. She just scooted her books out of the way so Sadie could sit down, and went back to finishing her cream of chicken soup.

“I better hurry,” Sadie said to us before heading off to the food line. We only had fifteen minutes of our lunch period left. As soon as she took off, I looked longingly at the books she had left behind. There, smack on top, was the piece of paper she had been carrying, folded over. I couldn’t just unfold it and read it. That would be outright nosiness.

So I accidentally bumped her books close to the edge while moving my stuff around to make room, and before I knew it, her things were on the floor.

“Bianca, you’re such an oaf!” Kerrie chided me.

“I’ll get it, don’t worry,” I said, bending over to pick up the fallen items. Quickly, before raising my head above the table, I scanned the note. It wasn’t a detention or disciplinary letter at all. It was a short typed note from the principal, Mrs. Weston, to “Amy Sinclair” notifying her that her daughter Sadie was showing exceptional progress in math and computer skills and that her teachers were recommending she be advanced to the next level.