Amanda Lester and the Red Spider Rumpus

by Paula Berinstein

  Nuts. Amanda wasn’t surprised but she was crushed. She knew Eustace would be beyond disappointed. She just hoped he’d recover quickly.

  SEARCHING

  Now that the kids knew why Lovelace Earful had created the Bible in the first place, and now that Banting Waltz possessed two pages, they decided they needed to step up the search for the remainder of it. If two pages could survive, the rest could too. The problem was that they’d looked and looked and had failed to find anything. But now they had a secret weapon and Holmes wanted to use it: the peacocks.

  The Windermere peacocks absolutely loved the Bible. In fact it was like catnip, or peacock-nip, to them, and if anyone could find it they could. However it wasn’t possible to watch them all the time, so Holmes suggested that they find a way to track the birds and watch for patterns of behavior that might signify that they’d found it. But how? At a minimum they’d have to band them with GPS trackers. Ideally they would attach tiny cameras too. But that would require getting them to sit still, and there was only one way to do that: Nick.

  Nick was the only one who could calm the birds. For some reason they loved the sound of his voice and would do anything he wanted. No one else had his gift, and that put the kids in an awkward position. It put Holmes in an awkward position. Scapulus Holmes would rather die than have to depend on Nick Moriarty. He did not want to give his archenemy credit for anything and would have given up on the idea had it not been for Simon and Clive.

  Simon Binkle and Clive Ng were two of the most practical people on the planet. If they had to ask Nick for a favor in order to accomplish something important, they would. But of course that put Nick in a position of power and he might exploit it and say no.

  But when Simon discussed the matter with Amanda, she assured him that Nick would absolutely say yes, no matter what, and she was right: Nick agreed immediately, no questions asked.

  Amanda and the two boys skated into town and met Nick on his boat. For obvious reasons Holmes had declined to go. Even without him, however, the meeting was awkward, as the boys, especially Clive, were not sure they wanted to have anything to do with Nick. But when they saw him work his magic on the birds they forgot about their reservations and chattered like mynahs.

  “How do you do that?” said Simon, watching Nick carefully. “What’s the trick?”

  “No trick,” said Nick, laughing. Amanda was glad to see him happy. “I just talk,”

  “Do you say anything special?” said Clive. “Make bird sounds or something?”

  Nick was patient and not at all condescending. He obviously didn’t see his ability as a big deal. “Not really. I just show them that I like them. In English.”

  “I’ve tried that,” said Simon. “They just run away.”

  “Do you actually like them?” said Nick. “I think that helps.”

  “Sure. I love animals. Don’t I, Amanda?”

  “Yes, I can vouch for that,” said Amanda, thinking of the way Simon pampered Nigel. “But I don’t think that’s enough. I love them too but they don’t hold still for me.”

  “A regular peacock whisperer in our midst,” said Simon. “Cool. But I wonder if there’s something about the timbre of your voice. Do you mind if I record it?”

  “Be my guest,” said Nick with a grin.

  Simon dug in his pocket and produced not only his phone, but the GPS trackers and miniature cameras they wanted to attach to the peacocks. He held his phone out and pressed record. Nick pointed to one of the gizmos and said, “Why don’t you give me that?”

  Simon passed him the tracker and Nick put it around the peacock’s neck. Amanda couldn’t believe a wild bird would hold still for such a thing, but Nick kept cooing and it didn’t flinch. Then he repeated the maneuver for the other four peacocks and stood back.

  “Voila,” he said, regarding his handiwork. “I hope they find something.”

  “You and me both,” said Simon. “Thanks, Nick. I’m going to analyze this audio and see what I can tell. I, uh, I’ll let you know.”

  Clive squirmed. “Yeah, uh, thanks.”

  The boys moved away and Amanda said, “Thank you. You didn’t have to do that.”

  Nick winked and said, “Yes I did.”

  After that, monitoring the peacocks was easy. The problem was that it became so addictive that Simon and Clive couldn’t tear themselves away. They checked results and tuned the software obsessively. Pretty soon they were so engrossed you couldn’t talk to them. From time to time Holmes would look over their shoulders and make a suggestion, but with all that analysis they didn’t see one thing that could help them, although they did get some interesting glimpses of the denizens of Windermere, including a few that might be used for blackmail had the boys been less scrupulous.

  As far as Simon’s analysis of Nick’s voice was concerned, he couldn’t come up with one provable hypothesis. Amanda sure liked watching him try though. Every time she passed him she could hear Nick’s voice coming out of his computer.

  The peacock tracking mission was going so well that the boys decided they could handle another project: looking for Professor Snaffle, who had disappeared from the battle at Dandy Castle. Of course that was easier said than done. No one had seen her go, and no one had any idea whether she’d been kidnapped, left of her own accord, or met with an accident. They’d searched the area but found no sign of her, and since it had been raining heavily at the time, there wasn’t likely to be one—unless her body turned up. The teachers had searched too but hadn’t come up with anything. Still, there were so many possibilities that the boys thought it wouldn’t hurt to try again.

  Amanda was sure Eustace would be perfect for helping them, but considering his current state of mind she wasn’t sure he’d be interested. She hadn’t spoken with him since Thrillkill had given him the bad news. Anyway she felt guilty always asking him to drive her places. He was so much more than a set of wheels, but she’d never told him how important he was to her and now with him being turned down, asking him for a ride again might seem in poor taste. Maybe there was another way to trace the professor.

  “Can we work backwards?” she said to the boys and Ivy. “Figure out the why and then the where?”

  “We’ve kind of already done that,” said Simon. “You weren’t there.”

  “Did you come up with anything?” said Ivy, who was still annoyed because of the whole Salty thing. Amanda could tell she was trying hard not to show it though.

  “We thought Snaffle might have run off to wherever the metadata is,” said Simon.

  As keeper of Legatum’s secrets, Professor Snaffle was also in charge of the metadata that made them usable. As far as the kids were aware, she was the only one who knew where it was, although they were pretty sure Thrillkill had an idea.

  “Why would she do that in the middle of a battle?” said Clive. “Just run off like that.”

  “Maybe someone took her,” said Amanda. “Isn’t that the logical conclusion?”

  “To make her give them the metadata?” said Simon. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

  “In the middle of a fight?” said Clive. “They’d have to have known she was there. Who did?”

  “The other Punitori,” said Simon. “They knew they were coming.”

  Amanda was skeptical. “It seems like their plans would have been secret, though, because we didn’t know they’d be there. I almost fell over when I saw Professor Also.”

  “So that’s a possibility, then,” said Simon. “Feeney or Peaksribbon or someone like that.”

  That didn’t sound right. Why would the Punitori kidnap one of their own? “But they wouldn’t have taken her,” said Amanda. “They’re on our side.”

  “As far as we know,” said Simon.

  “Oh please,” said Amanda. “Not more traitors.”

  “You never know,” said Simon.

  “But if they wanted information from her, they could have gotten it in Scotland,” said Clive.

  “It does seem farfetche
d,” said Ivy.

  “It could have been one of Taffeta’s thugs,” said Amanda. “They would have seen her there. It might have been an opportunistic thing.”

  “Wouldn’t we have seen though?” said Clive. “They would have come out of the castle. There was no place to hide. They’d have to have walked right in front of us.”

  “Maybe there’s a tunnel,” said Amanda. There were an awful lot of Neolithic tunnels underneath Britain. There almost always was one nearby.

  “Maybe,” said Simon, “but with all that rain it would have been flooded. They would have had to scuba dive to get through it.”

  “Hm, you’re right,” said Amanda. She didn’t want to think about that anyway. It reminded her of what had happened to Darius. “She might have gone off by herself, of course.”

  “In what?” said Simon. “She came in Professor Also’s car. It wasn’t exactly hiking weather.”

  “Good point,” said Amanda. “So let’s see where we are. She couldn’t have gone off by herself because she didn’t have transportation. She couldn’t have been taken by one of Taffeta’s guys without us seeing. That leaves another of Taffeta’s goons who wasn’t in the castle, or she wandered off on foot, or some Punitor kidnapped her—”

  “Or just drove her somewhere,” said Clive. “It might have been voluntary.”

  “Yes, I suppose that’s possible,” said Amanda.

  “Or some other kidnapper who somehow knew where she was,” said Simon. “But not someone from Legatum because no one knew she would be there.”

  “Could Taffeta have alerted someone?” said Ivy.

  “It’s possible,” said Simon. “Likely, even.”

  “Maybe she fell in a hole,” said Clive.

  That cut a little close to home again and everyone fell silent. No one had forgotten what had happened to Darius. Then Amanda said, “Are we agreed, though, that if she didn’t have an accident she was headed for the metadata?”

  “That seems the most likely thing,” said Simon. “Maybe the rain was threatening it, or something else happened and she was trying to save it. Or someone wanted to force her to show them where it is.”

  “Maybe she had appendicitis,” said Clive.

  “Then why haven’t we seen her?” said Simon.

  “I don’t know,” said Clive. “The person who found her didn’t know where she belonged and she died?” Amanda gave him a look. “What? It’s possible.”

  “If we knew where the metadata was we might have a clue,” said Ivy.

  “Thrillkill knows and he hasn’t found her,” said Amanda. “And I will bet you he’s checked all the hospitals between here and there. Farther maybe. And of course he’s tried her phone, so that won’t help.”

  “Good points, all,” said Ivy. “So where does that leave us?”

  “Kind of lost, I’d say,” said Amanda.

  “We absolutely have to find the metadata,” Simon said later.

  “And The Detective’s Bible,” said Clive. “And the two pages Banting Waltz took. And Professor Snaffle. And Blixus.”

  “We get the point,” said Amanda. “We’re overwhelmed, as usual. But it doesn’t hurt to try to reason out where the metadata might be.”

  “It’s a waste of time,” said Clive. “It could be anywhere in the world.”

  “I don’t agree,” said Simon. “I think we can come up with some likely places. We need to think strategically.”

  He plopped down on a wooden bench that was part of the day’s ski lodge décor. Nigel jumped up, circled, and lay down with his head in Simon’s lap. Simon reached out to Ivy, who was standing nearby, took her hand, and guided her to the bench. She squeezed in on the other side of the dog.

  “Fact one,” said Amanda, examining a pair of skis. Now that she knew what they were about, she was quite interested. “Professor Snaffle knows where the metadata is.”

  “You’re not going to propose that we build a mind reading machine to probe her brain, are you?” said Clive.

  “Fact two,” said Amanda, ignoring him. “Taffeta needs the metadata.”

  “Yes,” said Ivy. “That’s important. She has some of the secrets. She would need it more than anyone.”

  “Fact three,” said Amanda. “Taffeta doesn’t have the metadata.”

  “Hang on,” said Simon. “How do you know that?”

  “Because if she already had it, she wouldn’t have had to—”

  “Kidnap Professor Snaffle!” Ivy finished the sentence. “That’s what happened to her. It had to be Taffeta.”

  “Yes,” said Simon. “She didn’t have to know the Punitori were coming. She could have notified someone to come kidnap her as soon as she saw her. Which means that whoever it was was pretty close by.”

  “That is logical,” said Clive. “But it doesn’t tell us where the metadata is.”

  “It does answer one question though,” said Ivy. “Obviously one of Taffeta’s thugs got Professor Snaffle.”

  “So we do know something more than we did a minute ago,” said Amanda. “I told you we should work backwards.”

  “How would we know if Taffeta had got the metadata?” said Ivy. “Because this kidnapper, whoever he is, obviously would have tried to get Professor Snaffle to take him to it.”

  “There is another issue though,” said Amanda. “The secrets are in code. So even if Taffeta got the metadata, she wouldn’t be able to read them. I don’t see how she would have the expertise to crack the code.”

  “I’m not so sure,” said Simon. “She did go to the school for criminals. They must teach that kind of stuff there.”

  “What do you know about that, Amanda?” said Ivy. “Did Nick . . .”

  Amanda did not want to talk about Schola Sceleratorum, and she did not want to talk about Nick’s association with it. She did, however, know that they had indeed offered such a course. Which meant that even if Taffeta wasn’t any good at codes, she probably knew someone who was.

  “I think we can assume she has access to codebreakers,” said Simon, rescuing Amanda. She nodded at him ever so slightly. He didn’t miss the gesture.

  “So, if she got the metadata she’s been able to use the secrets,” said Ivy. “Are we all agreed on that?”

  “I think it’s safe to assume,” said Simon. “But it’s possible Professor Snaffle didn’t capitulate.”

  “She’s a tough cookie,” said Amanda.

  “Yes, but so’s Taffeta,” said Clive. “I think she’s been able to decipher the secrets.”

  “You’re giving up too easily,” said Amanda. “I’m not ready to concede that.”

  “If that’s the case,” said Simon, “then where is the metadata?”

  “I think she had it surgically implanted in her body,” said Clive. Amanda shot him a look. “You don’t think that’s possible?”

  “That’s so comic book,” said Amanda. “Detectives don’t do things that way.”

  “No,” said Clive. “I guess they don’t.”

  “If I were going to hide metadata, what would I do?” said Simon. “It would need to be close enough to be accessible.”

  “Yes, good point,” said Ivy.

  “Guarded in some way,” said Amanda.

  “Well, secure in any case,” said Simon.

  “But obscure,” said Clive. “So no one could guess where it was.”

  “Close by, secure, and guarded,” said Amanda. “And obscure. You don’t think it would be in the library in the rare book cage the way the Bible was, do you?”

  It had been a while since anyone had mentioned that. It was an uncomfortable subject. “Putting all the critical information in the same place doesn’t sound very wise,” said Ivy dismissively.

  “But it’s the same idea of hiding things in plain sight,” said Amanda. As uncomfortable as the subject was, they’d have to deal with it. “No one believes the teachers would store something that valuable in the exact same place as another critical object. Not that they did the first time. It was Dav
id’s idea to put the Bible in the library.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Simon. “If the metadata is in the library, the kidnapper would have to get into Legatum to retrieve it. No one has breached the school’s security lately.”

  “Do you think he killed Professor Snaffle and is still trying to figure out how to get in?” said Clive. “Now that he knows where it is, I mean.” He paused for a moment, then seemed to think of something. “Or she.”

  “Oh, I don’t like that,” said Ivy. “That’s creepy.”

  “We need to look and see if it’s there,” said Amanda.

  But when the kids got to the rare book cage, they were disappointed. Same old same old.

  “Nothing,” said Clive.

  “Nope,” said Simon. “It would have been too easy.”

  “Nuts,” said Amanda. “I quite liked the idea.”

  “You’re sounding English,” said Ivy. “Next thing you know you’ll lose your accent.”

  “I don’t have an accent,” said Amanda.

  “Cut it out,” said Clive. “This is important. Do we think the metadata could be elsewhere in the library?”

  “Don’t you think we should figure out what it looks like before we go searching?” said Simon.

  That got them. No one said a word for at least ten seconds. “Ooooooh,” said Ivy after that. “Another good point.”

  “We don’t even know that we’d recognize it if we saw it,” said Simon. “We’re still flailing.”

  “Maybe we should try to find Taffeta and get her to talk,” said Clive.

  “You’re not serious,” said Amanda.

  “Not really,” said Clive. “I’m just stumped. We’re pretty sure Taffeta took Professor Snaffle—or one of her thugs did—but that’s all we really know. We don’t know who or what his vehicle is or where they went or even what we’re looking for.”