Amanda Lester and the Purple Rainbow Puzzle

by Paula Berinstein

  “I saw something,” said Amanda.

  “What?” whispered Eustace, taking a cue from Amanda’s hushed tone.

  “Just come on,” she said.

  But when they got to where she had seen the zombie, it had disappeared. These zombies, or whatever they were, certainly were elusive.

  “Nuts,” she said. “Lost ‘em.”

  “Lost what?” said Eustace.

  “The zombie.”

  “What? Are you kidding?”

  “I’m not kidding, but it might have been a homeless person. Or an actor. The thing is, we keep seeing these zombies but no one can get close enough to see what’s going on. Of course that was in Windermere. Not here.”

  Eustace gave her a sidelong look. “If there were zombies, it would be the coolest thing ever, but come on, Amanda. You know it was just a homeless person. There are tons of them around. Not just in Windermere either.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “But there’s something about these guys. I’m not the only one who’s noticed.”

  “Like what?” he said.

  “They’re not just rumpled. Their coloring . . .” What was their coloring anyway? It was so nondescript that she couldn’t picture it. Professor Sidebotham would not be pleased.

  “Have you got a picture?” he said.

  “Unfortunately no. That would help, wouldn’t it?”

  “Next time you see one of these guys, don’t worry about following them. Just take the picture.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “From now on, I’m keeping my camera at the ready.”

  “Good,” he said. “Let’s get back to the crime scene.” She could hear him giggling. Obviously he thought she was crazy.

  When they returned to Crocodile’s flat they discovered that everything was locked up tight as expected. Amanda desperately wished Clive had come with them and brought his acoustic levitator, which would probably have got them in in about thirty seconds, but unfortunately she hadn’t thought of that. The device, which allowed Clive to lift things without touching them, had come in handy on more than one occasion.

  “Wait a minute,” she said, suddenly getting an idea. “What kinds of locks are on the windows?”

  “They’re pretty basic,” said Eustace. “All you do is turn the handle and the little bar goes up and down into and out of the latch.”

  “Perfect!” cried Amanda, and whipped out her phone. She pressed an icon and waited a moment. While this mysterious behavior was occurring, Eustace peered into the flat.

  “It’s pretty messy in there,” he said.

  “Clive,” said Amanda into the phone. “Oh, sorry. I forgot how early it is. But please can I talk to you for a second? Thanks. Listen, do you think your acoustic levitator would work over the phone? Yes, I know you have to put that foil behind the thing but . . . a window lock. Yes, I know it’s breaking and entering but . . . take pictures through the windows and enlarge them? I don’t think that will work. I’m not sure what we’re looking for. Just information about Crocodile’s connection with Blixus or Wink. We’re trying to find Blixus. I think Crocodile’s computer is still there. Eustace, is there a computer inside?”

  “Yup,” said Eustace. “You don’t think we can read it from outside, do you?”

  “Scapulus?” said Amanda, turning back to Clive. “I don’t think even he could do that with the power off. You could ask him. Oh, sorry. I could ask him. Do you think if you were here in person you could get the acoustic levitator to open the window lock? We could come back and get you. Yes, Eustace.” She turned to Eustace. “Clive says hi.”

  “Hi, Clive,” said Eustace. “How’s that head?”

  “He says it’s almost completely better,” said Amanda. Clive had been hit by a rock at the quarry, but the nurse had seen to him and he was doing well. “Hang on a minute. What if we could turn the computer on remotely? Remember when Simon charged up Scapulus’s tablet with the crystals at the quarry? Why couldn’t we use a beam of energy to do that? The password. Oh, right, that. Scapulus could do that, though, couldn’t he? Yes, I suppose I should call him. Or would you like us to come get you and your acoustic levitator? Yes, we’d still have the password problem—unless the thing is actually on and signed in. The crime scene people wouldn’t leave it like that, though, would they? Didn’t think so. Okay, I’ll call Scapulus.”

  “I got the gist of that,” said Eustace when Amanda had hung up.

  She didn’t want to call Holmes in the worst way, especially so early in the morning. Was there anything else? “Wait a minute. Maybe that key Wink had opens this door.”

  “What key?” said Eustace.

  “Oh, but I don’t have it. I could ask Simon to send me a picture and we could get a duplicate made, though.”

  “I don’t think any locksmiths are open yet,” said Eustace. “What key?”

  “The key Wink Wiffle swallowed before he died.”

  “Oh, tasty,” said Eustace. “What does it look like?”

  “It’s small and—hang on. I’ll draw you a picture.”

  She took her Kangaroo Egg Film Society membership card out of her bag, turned it over, and made a quick sketch.

  “Nope,” said Eustace. “That isn’t for this door. It’s not for a door at all.”

  “You know about keys?”

  “Oh yeah. My dad’s an ironmonger.”

  “A what?”

  “You guys call it a hardware store, I think. He’s got one. I know all about that stuff.”

  Amanda grabbed him and planted a big kiss on his forehead. “Eustace, you’re a gem,” she said. “We can get into this place easily. Why didn’t you say?”

  “I thought you had a plan,” said Eustace.

  “Unfortunately no,” said Amanda. “So what do we do?”

  Eustace looked around. There was no one nearby. “Pick the lock,” he said, grinning.

  Amanda was beginning to see that Eustace would make a great detective. He knew gadgets better than Simon did. Different types of gadgets to be sure, but incredibly useful ones. After checking again to make sure they weren’t being watched, he got them into Crocodile’s flat in about a minute. Amanda pulled him inside and slammed the door.

  Eustace was right. Crocodile was a slob. He didn’t own much, but what he did possess was thrown about so carelessly that it was a wonder he could find anything. For all she knew, he couldn’t.

  The computer seemed the obvious place to start. The problem, of course, was that she couldn’t get in without Holmes’s help—unless the thing wasn’t password-protected, which was a remote possibility. She pulled on a pair of latex gloves so as not to leave fingerprints and switched it on. It sputtered a bit, and for a moment the screen was completely dark. Then it started painting Crocodile’s desktop! There was no logon screen. Boy, the guy was dumb. Or maybe he didn’t keep anything worthwhile on his computer. If that was the case they’d be disappointed.

  They were. There was very little on the computer at all. In fact, it seemed disused except for the Web browser. In the history Amanda found that Crocodile had been particularly interested in bees and King Arthur, two topics she never would have associated with him. Whether these might have anything to do with Blixus she didn’t know. It was difficult to see how, but she made a few notes so she could follow up.

  She shut off the computer and made her way to Crocodile’s card table, which seemed to do double duty as a dining area and workbench. A thin accordion file lay there with its corner off the table. Crocodile didn’t seem to go in much for information, either in digital form or hard copy. Inside were a few sheets of rumpled paper. One of them had a bunch of numbers on it, some of which had been crossed out and corrected. Another showed a list of UK addresses, and a third contained a phone number. That was it. Amanda snapped pictures of each sheet and put them back carefully.

  “What do you suppose all that is?” said Eustace.

  “I don’t know,” she said, “but you can check that phone number right now.”

/>   Eustace pulled out his phone and thumbed a search.

  “I don’t know what this means,” he said, “but it’s a number for a truck rental place in Birmingham.”

  “I wonder what he wanted with that,” she said. “We’ll check that out later. The numbers don’t make any sense as far as I can tell, but we can look up the addresses. Want to do that while I nose around some more?”

  “Sure,” said Eustace, who seemed beyond happy to be contributing. He took Amanda’s phone and looked at the picture of the list she’d made, then thumbed away.

  In one of the closets, Amanda found a safe. It had been left open, presumably by the crime scene investigators, and was empty. She extracted a swab from her evidence kit and took a sample swipe, although she didn’t expect to find anything. Whatever had been there was probably cash or jewels or something of that nature and wouldn’t have left residue. Still, it didn’t hurt to try.

  “This is weird,” called out Eustace. “These addresses all seem to be farms. They’re all over the Midlands.”

  “Farms?” said Amanda. “What would he want with those?”

  “There might be something they have in common,” said Eustace. “Can’t tell from the addresses or the images.”

  “We’ll look at it back at Legatum,” said Amanda. “Maybe we can find a pattern.”

  “I’d be glad to take a gander,” said Eustace, who really did seem to want to become a detective. He was getting keener by the moment.

  “The safe is empty, the refrigerator’s full of beer, and there isn’t much else,” said Amanda. “A few items of clothing, some paper cups, that kind of thing. What a life this guy must have had.”

  “Ready to go?” said Eustace. “I have to get to work.”

  “Yup,” she said. “Let’s roll.”

  When Eustace dropped Amanda off at Legatum, the first thing she saw was a bunch of teachers arguing heatedly. She caught the words “Moriarty,” “Earful,” and “Jarndyce” before the teachers saw her and shut up abruptly. She wondered if Earful referred to the school’s founder, Lovelace Earful, but she knew exactly what Jarndyce was: the horrendous lawsuit in Charles Dickens’s book Bleak House, which dragged on so long no one could remember what it was about. The teachers were obviously upset about Celerie Wiffle’s suit and the threat of another one from Andalusia Sweetgum. As they should be, she thought. This was serious stuff.

  “Good morning, Miss Lester,” said Professor Feeney. “May I have a word?”

  Uh oh. Amanda had never taken a class from the criminals and their methods teacher, so whatever she wanted had to be about something bad—the Bible, most likely, but maybe Wink Wiffle’s murder. She steeled herself and stopped in front of the professor.

  “I’m going to be giving a summer seminar on brainstorming techniques,” said the teacher. “There are enough students on campus to make it worthwhile.” Actually, the school had filled up with quite a few students who had returned to work on the murder mystery and a variety of other issues. It wasn’t a bad idea. “I would like to invite you and your friends to attend. We start Friday morning at 9:00. We’ll be covering topics like how to think your way out of a tight spot, what to do when you’ve run out of leads, that sort of thing.”

  This wasn’t what Amanda had been expecting and she was overjoyed. Not that she had the time to attend a class, but it was an excellent idea. She could have used that very knowledge earlier when she and Eustace had faced Crocodile’s locked flat.

  “Yes,” she said. “That sounds great. I’ll tell them.”

  Professor Feeney smiled—the first time Amanda had ever seen her do so. She had bad teeth. “Brilliant,” she said. “See you then.”

  As Amanda continued down the hall to the dining room (she’d forgotten to eat breakfast and was dying for a cup of tea), she felt a sense of relief. At least something normal was going on around the school. Maybe there was hope after all. If Professor Feeney was planning on teaching when no one usually did, that must mean that she and the other Punitori—the militant group of teachers who wanted to hunt down whoever had stolen the Bible and “neutralize” them—weren’t planning on dissolving the school anytime soon.

  But before she could get her cuppa, Amanda ran into Professor McTavish, the police procedures teacher, whom she also didn’t know well.

  “Oh, Miss Lester,” he said in his Scottish brogue. She loved hearing him talk and could even understand much of what he said. “A word?”

  “Certainly, Professor.” She wasn’t quite as nervous now that Professor Feeney had been so nice.

  “I’m going to be giving a seminar on Mondays at 4:00 p.m.,” he said. “Topics we don’t always have time for during the year, such as how to use public records, chat up witnesses, and turn observations into action. I call it Companion to Procedures. I would like to see you there. It’s informal—no uniforms—and you may bring a snack if you wish. But please do attend, and alert the other first-years.”

  Another seminar? Wow. Things really were looking up. Amanda breathed a sigh of relief. “Pleasure, Professor,” she said. “See you then.”

  Then she ran into Professor Kindseth. Figuring that he too would be teaching a summer class she said, “What time shall I be there, Professor?”

  “Be where, Miss Lester?” said the teacher.

  “Your summer seminar,” she said.

  “What summer seminar?”

  “You’re not teaching a special class?” said Amanda.

  “I wasn’t planning to,” said Professor Kindseth. “Would you like me to?”

  “Well, uh, I thought—”

  Professor Kindseth burst into such hearty laughter that Amanda took a step back to avoid being spit on. “I see what’s happening here,” he said. “Since you’re here anyway you thought you might as well get your money’s worth. Nice idea.”

  “No, it wasn’t that,” she said. “I don’t care about the money—I mean, I would never do such a thing. That is, unless you wanted to, but even then I would never—I mean, sorry, Professor.”

  “Not a bad idea, though,” he said, looking thoughtful. “A special class in 3D printing perhaps?”

  This was definitely tempting. Simon and Professor Kindseth had cooked up a variety of useful gadgets on the 3D printer. Why not go for it?

  “Sign me up,” she said before he could protest.

  “Very well, then,” he said. “Shall we say Thursdays at noon?”

  “We shall,” she said. “I’ll tell the others.”

  “Yes,” he said, walking away. “Brilliant idea.”

  Wow. This was great! Amanda would have liked a class on secrets, but apparently Professor Snaffle wasn’t in the mood or was otherwise occupied. Not that she was sure what a class in secrets might consist of, but it sounded extremely interesting, and considering that Ivy had made progress with the trove, useful. Oh well. You couldn’t have everything.

  But when she got to the dining room, Amanda received two nasty surprises. First Harry Sheriff was helping himself to a cup of tea with about twelve spoonfuls of sugar in it, and when he saw her he looked up brightly and grinned at her again. Then he did something even worse: he made a kissing gesture. This so unnerved her that she dropped her empty cup on the floor, which sent him into guffaws.

  Now she was mad. She turned to him and said, “What is the matter with you?”

  He just kept grinning and said, “You’re quite a lovely specimen, you know that?” Then he poured his tea into a paper cup and walked off, leaving the dirty china for someone else to bus.

  The second surprise was that Amanda caught sight of Scapulus Holmes sitting at “their” table at the far end of the room. It was the place they’d settled on for working on their films and other projects.

  Amanda thought it strange that he would still sit there, considering how he seemed to have gone off her. She didn’t know whether to smile, go over, or ignore him, but when she saw him looking indignant, she decided she’d better talk to him.

  “That
guy is a boor,” said Holmes. “If he does that again I’m going to deck him.”

  This didn’t sound like the Holmes she knew. It was more the kind of thing Nick would say.

  “I’ll deck him myself,” she said. “I don’t understand why he’s acting this way. He seems to have developed a weird thing about me.”

  Holmes was silent, although Amanda got the distinct feeling that he was debating what to say. At last he said, “We need to get started.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Sorry I’ve been so busy. Thrillkill gave me a list of tasks and they all seem to be urgent.”

  “No worries,” he said. “When are you free?”

  “Any time.”

  “Now?”

  Being with Holmes at that moment was just about the last thing she wanted, but she didn’t have a good reason to postpone. “Sure.”

  But just then Simon ran into the dining room and said, “Hey, you two, can you come here for a minute? I want you to see something.”

  Amanda and Holmes got up and followed Simon into the Holmes House common room next door.

  “There,” said Simon, pointing outside. “Does that rainbow look weird to you?”

  “The colors are out of order,” said Holmes.

  “Yes,” said Simon. “That’s exactly what I thought.”

  12

  Saving the World

  Amanda had never paid that much attention to rainbows. Not scientifically, anyway. She loved to look at them, but that was about it. She wasn’t sure she’d have realized the colors were out of order if Simon hadn’t said something.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “What does it mean?”

  “Dunno,” said Simon. “But it isn’t right.”

  “What’s it supposed to look like?” said Amanda.

  “The colors go from one end of the visible spectrum to the other,” said Holmes. “Red on the outer part, then orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. In a double rainbow the order is reversed because the light is reflected twice. But I’ve never heard of a rainbow where the colors weren’t in spectrum order.”