by Eoin Colfer
“Fletcher,” she said. “You came. I was just coming to check.”
It was generally acknowledged that May Devereux was the nice one of the pair. She was dressed in full Irish dance costume, including hard shoes. Gold and green were the prominent colors. This, I have to admit, was a surprise.
“Practicing?”
She grimaced. “Yes. I want to do better this year in the school talent show. Only a few days to go.”
“I’m sure you will,” I said kindly. May’s chances of doing well in any show were about as promising as mine of going on a dream date with Bella Barnes. It was well known in our class that May was the worst dancer in this universe and perhaps any parallel ones. When May tapped out a hornpipe on a wooden floor, it was like listening to a toddler trying to crush a spider with a hammer.
“Nice costume,” I said.
“It’s my lucky dress,” said May. “Nice shirt.”
Mom wouldn’t let me out of the house dressed completely in black; she felt I would be broadcasting negative vibrations. So I agreed to wear a Hawaiian shirt given to me by an uncle who didn’t really know me as a person.
I shrugged apologetically. “My mother . . .”
May nodded. No further explanation was needed. Everyone in Lock knew about my mother’s flamboyant taste in color.
May’s father appeared behind her, in full gardening regalia, including leather kneepads and thorn-proof gloves. He was tall and lean with a farmer’s tan. In fact, he looked exactly how TV said a father should look, right down to the checkered sweater. He seemed the perfect dad and husband. My mother and her art appreciation group had been genuinely shocked when May’s mother had walked out on the family a few months earlier.
“Mr. Devereux,” I said, extending a hand. “I’m Fletcher Moon.”
May’s father shook the hand, smiling. Perfect white teeth, of course.
“Call me Gregor. Ah, yes, the young detective. May tells me you have qualifications.”
“That’s right. I’m certified to practice in the U.S. Washington, to be precise, when I’m twenty-one.”
Mr. Devereux nodded seriously. “That’s very impressive, Fletcher. Maybe you can help April and May solve this crime of theirs. Or you could, if the girls weren’t completely loopy and imagining the whole thing.”
May’s father winked at me, rotating his index finger by his temple. International sign language for completely loopy.
“Dad,” said May, elbowing her father in the ribs.
Mr. Devereux groaned theatrically, clutching his side. “Okay, okay. There is a big conspiracy. Everyone else is loopy, except the two cute cousins.”
May grabbed my hand. “Come on. April is in the Wendy house.”
I was happy to find myself dragged through a garden by a pretty girl from the pink set, but I wasn’t quite as enthusiastic about sitting in a Wendy house. That’s the kind of thing that can get you killed if it leaks out to the boys in school. We followed the path past a seashell fountain complete with frolicking cherubs, which looked like it hadn’t worked in decades. But this Wendy house was no plastic hut crammed with dollies and toy tea sets. This was an actual mini-house with electricity, Internet access, and running water.
When we entered, April was at a laptop, poring over a world economics Web page. It was a nice system, linked up to a scanner, printer, and digital camera.
“Fletcher’s here,” said May.
April started, then shook a tiny fist at the computer. “Just a sec. I’m trying to check out the latest red carpet gossip, and this educational junk keeps popping up. Honestly, market strengths in Asia. Like, who cares?”
“A few billion Asians,” I said.
April scowled at me. I was starting to feel very unloved. That didn’t bother me much. Detectives had to get used to negativity. One of our main functions is to bring bad news.
April shut the computer’s lid and faced me. If she had been pink in school, now she had gone into pink overdrive. She was wearing so much pink that it cast a glow onto the walls.
“Pink!” I blurted.
I was treated to a twirl. “I know. Isn’t it fabulous? Us girls love pink. It’s the essence of femininity.”
I was starting to feel that at least some of this pinkness was for my benefit.
May took two bottles of chilled water from the fridge, handing one to me.
“Nice place,” I said.
“Dad built it for me so that I can practice my dancing. He really wants me to win a medal or something.”
“I’m sure you will. Someday.”
How could I say that? What a phony.
April changed the subject. “We should talk about my case. How much of your valuable time do those ten euros buy?”
This was it. The big time. “I charge a fee of ten euros per day. Plus expenses. But because this is my first real case, I’m going to waive the expenses. And because of school and homework, it generally takes me about three days to put in a full day’s work. So I’m all yours until Sunday.”
April took out her wallet and peeled ten euros from a roll. If she became a regular customer, my rates would have to go up.
“Now I own you for a week.”
I had to think about this for a moment. April was not the noble kind of client I had always imagined. Her father was not a kidnapped professor, nor was she searching for a missing orphanage fund. But on the plus side, this case was about the Sharkeys, and she did have a big roll of cash.
I took the money and slipped it into my breast pocket. Now I could buy my own chocolate, instead of accepting it as payment. The money felt good in my pocket. It made me feel like a real private detective.
“Okay. That’s the formalities out of the way, now what do you want investigated?”
April opened her mouth to answer, but May spoke first. “Are you sure, April? You know, Fletcher is not a bad person. He could get in trouble.”
April glared at her. Her glare was so intense that you completely forgot she was wearing pink.
“Of course I’m sure, cousin. Why don’t you go and do your Riverdance thing, and let me worry about Fletcher? He’s supposed to be this great big detective.”
“April is right,” I said reassuringly to May. “Trouble goes with the badge.”
April and May stared each other down for a long moment, like two Manga girls about to throw lightning bolts. For some reason, May didn’t want me involved. Maybe she thought I was stupid, or maybe she was actually worried about me. Whatever the reason, I was more intrigued than ever.
Once their eyeballs dried up, April and May called off the staring match and settled for not talking to each other. May continued to irritate April by taking off her hard shoes and drumming them on the desktop.
April waited for a break in the shoe tattoo before starting her story.
“The Sharkeys are major pains,” she began. “They must have stolen a million things from people, which is totally illegal.”
A million and one, I thought.
“I don’t care about this usually,” continued April. “’Cause it happens to other people who are not me. But a couple of weeks ago, the Sharkeys stole something from moi.”
I pulled a small spiral notebook from my pocket. “How do you know it was the Sharkeys?”
April’s eyes widened and I noticed she was wearing pink eye shadow. “’Cause I know, okay, Half Moon?”
I shook my head in a wise sort of way. “Just knowing isn’t evidence, April.”
April wasn’t in the mood for wisdom. “I don’t have video evidence or anything, but I just know. Plus, don’t take that tone with me, like I’m a baby or something. You may be older than me, but I am cooler than you times infinity, so that cancels out the years.”
I was about to argue further, then I remembered that I just knew Red had taken my badge.
“Okay. Tell me what happened.”
“I bought a lock of Shona Biederbeck’s hair on eBay.”
I swallowed a smirk. Had April
just used the words bought and hair in the same sentence?
“It’s laminated and the plastic is autographed. It meant more to me than anything.” April hugged an imaginary lock of hair to her heart.
I wrote down what she said, trying to be non-judgmental. I mean, who would actually pay money for some pop star’s cast-off follicles?
“You think Red Sharkey stole this . . . ah . . . hair sample?”
“Definitely. He asked me for a look at it, begged me. And I told him sure, as soon as he could list the tracks on Shona’s last CD in order, from memory. So he storms off, saying how he’s gonna get a look at the hair one way or the other, and the next day it’s one hundred percent gone.”
The facts of the case lay before me, and I wasn’t impressed. I was already feeling low over the theft of my badge, and now my big case turned out to be a missing curl. This was not a good career day for Fletcher Moon, ace detective. I closed my notebook.
“Listen, April. I think you better take your money back. I’m a detective. Missing hair isn’t really my strong suit. Diamonds, relatives, even pets. But hair? I just can’t. I’m trying to put together a reputation. It’s just hair, and it’s probably behind the sofa.”
April was horrified. “Just hair!” she whispered. “That’s like calling pink just a color. Are you insane, Half Moon? That curl from Shona Biederbeck’s very own head is much more than just hair. It was the centerpiece on my project on culture. I had all these little photos and arrows pointing in at the curl. What are they going to point at now? A blank square? And for your information, Mr. Detective, behind the sofa was the first place I looked.”
She had a point. But not one I particularly cared about. This must have shown in my face, because April gave me a look so piercing it could have bored holes in sheet steel.
“Red and Herod control our school like some kind of mini-Mafia, running around stealing whatever they want. Then they bring it home to their pig of a father, and he fences it, or whatever the word is. Here you are, a nerd calling himself a detective, too grand to take the case.”
“Red’s not so bad,” said May, in a quiet voice. “He’s never been caught stealing.”
“He’s never been caught,” agreed April, then looked pointedly at me. “Until now, right, Fletcher?”
April made a strong case. I wasn’t just looking for a lock of pop star hair. I was trying to bring down an entire crime family. The Sharkeys had made one enemy too many when they stole from April Devereux. And of course, I was pretty certain that Red had stolen my badge.
I reopened my notebook. “Okay. I’m hired. Tell me what happened.”
April’s mood instantly lifted. She was once again all white teeth and pink eye shadow.
“We keep all our cool stuff right here in the Wendy house. The morning after I brought the Shona curl to school, someone took it from my love heart strongbox.”
“Could Red have known where the hair was?”
April frowned for a second. “All the girls knew. It would’ve been easy for him to find out. You know Red, always sweet-talking the ladies.”
“Wasn’t the Wendy house locked?”
“Yes. But we keep a spare key under the unicorn statue. The unicorn is my personal symbol, by the way. Maybe Red found it and put it back afterward.”
There wasn’t much to go on. No evidence, not even circumstantial. Just a couple of hunches, and as Bernstein said: No one was ever convicted on a hunch.
“Here’s what I am going to do. First, I need to dig into the Sharkey family history. I also need to initiate surveillance, concentrating on Red as the main suspect. If we can catch him in some criminal act, then perhaps we can pressure him into returning your keepsake and the . . .”
I stopped short, unwilling to tell April about my badge. I was embarrassed about the incident; but also knowledge was power, and the more I talked to April the less I wanted her having any power over me.
May looked sharply at me.
“Returning the what?”
“All the other stuff he’s taken,” I said. “Some of it, at any rate.”
April was too excited to pick up on my near-mistake.
“God, Fletcher, this is a totally new you. It’s like you know what to do or something. It’s really CSI.”
CSI? I wished. All I had was a notebook and some brains. Not an electron microscope in sight.
“Shouldn’t you dust for fingerprints?”
“I could do that,” I said gently, eager to avoid sarcasm with a paying client. “But then I’d have to print everyone who’s ever been in here, and even if I did that, those prints would be useless unless we actually found the laminated curl, by which time we’d probably already know who took it.”
April sighed. “The police wouldn’t dust for fingerprints either; they wouldn’t even come to the house.”
“The police are busy with stuff like bank robberies and fugitive hunts. Missing hair cases are best left to a private detective.”
“Like you.”
I snapped my notebook shut. “Exactly.”
If you’re outside the system, then you need a contact on the inside. I had a special relationship with a police officer in Lock going back over three years. So far all the information had been going one way, from me to him. Now it was finally time to reverse the flow of traffic.
I phoned him from the pay phone outside the station on my way home that evening. We met on a park bench fifteen minutes later.
“Nice shirt, Fletcher,” said Sergeant Murt Hourihan. “You looking for a job in a surf store?”
Being a law enforcement agent, Murt felt he had to begin every conversation with a smart comment.
Hourihan laughed at his own joke, then got down to business.
“What do you have for me, Fletcher?”
The sergeant hid behind his newspaper as he spoke, as though we weren’t talking. Just two people who happened to be sharing a bench. Murt did this for my benefit. He thought we were playing a little game.
“I charted all those auto thefts from that case.”
“I tried that, Fletcher. What do you think, you’re the only one with a brain around here? There was no obvious pattern.”
I pulled a printout from my jeans pocket. “There is a pattern. Look.”
I slid the printout along the bench. Sergeant Hourihan picked it up, unfolding it behind his newspaper. A smile spread across his face.
“There are two groups of thieves,” he said finally.
“That’s right. When you realize that, then there are two clear centers of activity. If I were you, I’d look for chop shops near the old bridge and south of the Red Hen Tavern. Watch out for teenagers in BMWs.”
Hourihan pocketed the page. “I already did. We have a car at both locations.”
I was surprised. “I’m surprised. Is this some kind of test?”
Murt folded the printout, sliding it into his jacket pocket. “I’m just helping you to be all you can be. It’s a valuable lesson. Sometimes when you can’t find a pattern it’s because there is more than one. Nice work, Moon. See you next week.”
“Wait, Sergeant. I need a favor.”
Hourihan’s smile widened. “What? Do you need more chocolate already?”
This chocolate thing was getting out of hand. I was acquiring a reputation. “No. I’ve got chocolate all wrapped up. I want information.”
“Information? You sound like a real detective, Fletcher.”
Of course I was a real detective.
“I need to see anything you have on the Sharkeys.”
Murt folded the paper. “The Sharkeys? Papa Sharkey and co. Those Sharkeys?”
“Those are the ones. I’m following a few leads.”
Murt rolled his paper into a tube and pointed it at me like a baton.
“Now listen here, Fletcher. I’m all for you having a look at old cases, even letting you have a look at the odd Investigations map. I enjoy our little chats. But the Sharkeys? That’s different. Papa isn’t th
e sort of person you want to get involved with. He’s smart, too. Never done a day in prison, unlike most of his relatives. No, you stay well away from the Sharkeys. The last thing you want to do is become a blip on Papa’s radar. If he finds out who you are, or worse still, where you live, then life could become very uncomfortable for you.” Murt gave me a stern stare, perfected by years of interrogating suspects. “Do I make myself clear, Moon?”
Murt had given me the stare before, so I wasn’t too intimidated.
“What if you gave me a look at the Sharkey file, and if I figure anything out I tell you straight away?”
Murt chortled. “God, you’re a chancer, Fletcher. You have more neck than a herd of giraffes. First of all, you wouldn’t be able to carry the Sharkey file it’s so thick, and secondly that file is very active. I’d have to get a written presidential order before I could let you look at an active file. I like you, Fletcher, but I’m not prepared to be stationed on some island off the west coast for you.”
I sighed. “Okay, Sergeant. I’ll forget about the Sharkeys.”
Murt closed one eye, focusing the other on me. “You’re not lying, are you, Fletcher? My policeman’s eye always knows.”
“No, Murt. I’m not lying.”
Of course I was lying.
I ran home, and managed to make it into upstairs without the third degree from Mom and Dad. My sister, Hazel, was waiting on the landing chewing on a pencil.
“Fletcher, what’s another word for rejected?”
I thought for a second. “Em . . . How about unwanted?”
Hazel jotted it down. “Good. And how about a rhyme for pathetic?”
That was a bit harder. “Ah . . . would prosthetic do?”
“I could work it in.”
I paused by my door. “What are you working on, anyway? Something about you and Stevie?”
“No,” said Hazel innocently. “An epic poem about your date with April Devereux.”
I scowled at her, but realized there was no percentage in answering back. God only knew how long Hazel had been waiting for me to come home. She would have all her bases covered.
Inside, I sat on my office chair, rolling over to the desk. A quick tap on the track pad woke up my iBook laptop. I stared at the FBI wallpaper on the screen and thought about what I intended to do.
