The North Star

by Shepherd

  “And more importantly, if he’s not teaching, then how can he afford to drive this car?” Vishal asked, jingling Evan’s keys.

  “Good question,” Zach said. “Keep looking.”

  Sophia dug through the cluttered bookshelf. She poked aside a pile of threadbare sweatbands and a dusty cassette recorder. “Seriously. Does this office have a single thing from this decade? Or even this century?” A stained golf ball rolled off the shelf and fell to the floor. She stooped to pick it up, and her eyes fell on something that froze her in her tracks. “You guys, we may not have found any evidence that Evan stole the North Star yet, but I can definitely prove he’s a thief.”

  CHAPTER

  19

  Sophia pointed to an expensive gold wristwatch. “The inscription on the back says ‘To Harold.’”

  Zach looked thoughtful. “It definitely seems suspicious, but, I don’t know. Maybe Harold was his grandfather or something.”

  Sophia’s expression was triumphant. “I didn’t read the rest of the inscription. ‘To Harold, Happy Fiftieth. Love, Mar.’ As in, my great-aunt Marguerite. Harold was her husband. He died about five years ago.”

  “Whoa!” Zach said. “That’s weird. Any chance your great-aunt might have given it to him for some reason?”

  “No way,” Sophia said emphatically. “She adored my great-uncle; she still talks about him all the time. She would never give his watch away.” Sophia used her phone to take a photo of the watch on the shelf before dropping both the phone and the watch in her purse.

  “Sophia, what are you doing? You can’t take that,” Evie said. “It’s stealing.”

  “He’s the one who stole it from my family. How can it be stealing if I’m just taking it back?” Sophia asked. “Besides, it’s evidence.”

  “Remember what happened the last time we brought evidence to the cops?” Evie asked. “It didn’t go so well.”

  “It’s not for the cops; it’s for my great-aunt. When I show her this, she’ll finally see Evan for who he really is: a gold-digging leech and a thief. I’m sure it’s not the only thing he’s stolen from her. And when she reports it to the cops, maybe they’ll finally start investigating him for the North Star, too. I mean, he’s got to be the thief for sure now. It all makes sense.”

  “I don’t know,” Zach said. “What about the phone call we overheard? It sounded like he was accusing someone else of stealing, didn’t it?”

  Sophia shrugged, unconcerned. “Maybe he was talking about something else. That conversation might not mean anything.”

  “Yeah, but if it was about the North Star, then it could mean everything,” Zach said. “When my mom’s working on a lead, she always says you can’t just tell a story; you have to let the story tell you. Look at everything and see where it leads. If you pick only the evidence that fits your narrative, then you might miss the real story.”

  Sophia shook her head. “Well, my mom always says that if it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, then it’s probably a duck. Evan’s a proven thief, and he was at our house the night the necklace was stolen. It’s not that hard to connect the dots.”

  “Let’s see if we can find any more clues,” Vishal ­suggested. “Maybe we can find some more stolen stuff, or figure out who he was talking to on the phone.” He dropped to his knees and crawled beneath the desk, searching the underside. Evie felt along the bottom of the rug.

  Just then, they heard footsteps approaching. “Someone’s coming!” Zach whispered.

  “What do we do?” Vishal asked. “There’s no place to hide.”

  “Yes there is,” Evie said, pointing. “Come on!”

  CHAPTER

  20

  Evie grabbed the handle of the trapdoor under the rug and pulled it open. The kids scrambled down the ladder and closed the trapdoor, pulling the rug over the handle just in time. They crouched in the darkness, listening to the footsteps overhead. They heard the desk drawers opening and closing and someone rummaging through Evan’s gym bag. A tennis ball bounced along the floor. Was someone else searching his office, too?

  The sounds continued above for only another minute or two, and then the office door closed and the footsteps faded away. Whoever it was had been in a hurry. “Do you think it’s safe to go back up?” Evie whispered.

  “Let’s wait another minute or two, just in case they come back,” Zach whispered back. The kids sat in anxious silence, waiting for any sound that would signal the searcher’s return, but they heard nothing.

  “Where are we, anyway?” Vishal asked quietly. “Is this some kind of storeroom?”

  Zach waved his arm over his head. “Hold on. I think I felt something earlier.” His hand found a string. He pulled it, and a bare bulb clicked on overhead. The kids blinked their eyes, adjusting to the sudden light.

  When they got their bearings enough to see what was around them, Sophia’s eyes sparkled. “Oh. Em. Gee. You guys, we found Evan’s secret lair.”

  Vishal scoffed. “Settle down with the drama, James Bond. It’s not a secret lair. It’s just a . . .” He looked around more closely. “Oh, man. I think you’re right. We are actually standing in a full-on secret lair right now.” He prowled around the room, excited. “That is so awesome!”

  The windowless storage room had been turned into Evan’s second office, but this one was much more interesting than the one above. A long, expensive-looking metal dining table had been pushed against one wall and converted into a desk. A desktop computer with a huge silver monitor sat on one side next to a high-end printer and an open box of manila envelopes. A row of black-and-white composition notebooks were neatly organized between two crystal bookends at the other end of the desk. An array of expensive cameras and recording equipment sat on a shelf mounted to the wall. There were stacks of old issues of the local tabloid paper, the Twin City Tattler, piled on top of a row of fireproof filing cabinets on the other side of the room.

  “What is all this stuff?” Evie asked. “Is Evan, like, a spy or something?”

  “I don’t know,” Zach answered. He picked up one of the composition notebooks and leafed through it. “This has a bunch of initials and dates in it. It looks like most of them are from a few years ago. And then there’s a column where he wrote ‘paid’ or ‘won’t pay’ after each entry. See?” He held out the book to the others. The notebook was filled with neat rows of columns meticulously filled out in black ballpoint pen.

  “The initials have got to stand for people,” Vishal said. “Could these notebooks be for his tennis lessons?”

  “I doubt he’d need a secret lair for his old tennis lesson calendars,” Sophia said. “Besides, look how many people wouldn’t pay. I mean, Evan’s obviously a creep, but there’s no way that many people would refuse to pay their tennis coach. Even a bad one. If his students hated him that much he’d be fired, for sure.”

  Evie ran her hand along on one of the filing cabinets. “Maybe these filing cabinets will tell us something.” She pushed her thumb against the catch and pulled on the handle. The drawer slid open.

  Sophia rolled her eyes. “Typical Evan. I mean, why put all this effort into building a secret lair if you don’t even bother to lock your filing cabinets?”

  “I guess he wasn’t expecting anyone to find it,” Zach said.

  “And that’s what makes him so second-rate,” Sophia said. “He’s too lazy to do anything right.”

  “Well, I’m just happy he is. Definitely makes it easier for us,” Evie said. She thumbed through the files. “It looks like they’re alphabetical. Hey, Zach, what’s one of the sets of initials you found in that book?”

  Zach looked down at the book. “Can you find a GF in there?” He put the open notebook down on the table.

  Evie pulled out a manila file with the initials GF on the tab. She opened it up and spread the contents across the table next to the notebook. Four heads bent over the contents.

  “You guys, I think I know what Evan’s game is,” Vishal said.

&
nbsp; CHAPTER

  21

  “Evan’s been blackmailing people,” Vishal said. He pointed to the file. “Look. GF is obviously Gwendolyn Fairbanks. He caught her lip-synching during one of her performances, and I think he tried to blackmail her. He held up the tabloid. “When she wouldn’t pay, he sold the story to the Tattler a few weeks later.”

  “Gwendolyn lip-synched some of her performances? Wow! I guess that explains why she’s retired,” Evie said.

  “And why she’s always in such a bad mood,” Sophia added. She picked up the other composition notebooks and quickly leafed through them.

  “What are you looking for?” Zach asked.

  “I want to see if my great-aunt’s in here,” Sophia said. “He must be blackmailing her about something. Why else would she let him sponge off of her the way he does?” When she didn’t find her aunt’s initials, she tossed down the composition book in frustration and walked over to the filing cabinet. She opened the drawer marked L and pulled it open. “She’s got to be in here!”

  The others watched her with worried expressions. Sophia slammed the drawer shut and began opening random drawers, searching with a vengeance. “Where is it? Where’s Marguerite’s file?!”

  Evie gently cleared her throat. “Sophia?” Sophia ignored her, and Evie spoke louder. “Sophia.” Finally, Evie raised her voice. “Sophia, stop!” Sophia paused and turned to Evie, waiting. “Maybe your great-aunt isn’t in here.”

  “What do you mean? She has to be!”

  “Maybe your great-aunt just, you know, likes Evan.”

  Sophia scoffed. “Hardly! I mean, Marguerite’s not stupid. The guy’s a total loser! And now I finally know why she’s wasting her time with him.”

  Vishal and the twins looked at one another helplessly. Finally, Zach spoke. “Okay, fine. We’ll help you look.” The three searched through the drawers and notebooks, but there was no file for Marguerite LaFarge.

  Evie bit her lip and looked at her brother. “What do we do?” she whispered.

  Zach tapped Sophia gently on her shoulder. “You know what? I bet he took the file home with him. We should get out of here, though, before Evan gets back. We don’t want to tip him off that we’re onto him.”

  Sophia’s eyes brightened. “Good point. We want to catch him red-handed. Evan Masterson: thief and blackmailer. He is gonna go down!”

  Zach nodded. “The cops need to question him for sure. Because if he didn’t steal the North Star, I bet he knows who did.”

  After Sophia took some photos for evidence, the four teens made their way through the trapdoor and snuck out of the office. Sophia led them out of the staff area and into a comfortable lounge with elegant sofas, floral-print easy chairs, and a crackling wood-burning fireplace. Evie pulled out her phone. “We should call Detective Bermudez,” she said.

  “In a minute,” Sophia said. She walked over to a carved wooden cubby near the front door where a uniformed receptionist sat behind a front desk. After a brief conversation, she returned to her friends. “My great-aunt’s upstairs. Come on.” She led them up a staircase into a pink-and-green room with a wall of windows that overlooked the country club grounds and the lake beyond.

  The room was full of old women sitting four to a table, intently focused on piles of white rectangular tiles clustered in the middle of each table. “What are they doing?” Evie whispered.

  Sophia looked at Evie in disbelief. “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of mah-jongg,” she said.

  Evie was baffled. She looked at the two boys, both of whom looked like they had just walked onto a foreign planet. “Have you ever heard of mah-jongg?” she whispered. The boys shook their heads.

  Sophia sighed. “It’s a game,” she said with exagger­ated patience. “Sort of a combination of dominoes and gin rummy.” When the others still looked confused, Sophia lost patience. “Why are you acting so weird? It’s really fun!” She walked over to a white-haired lady in a pink sweater set. “Looking good, Elody. You think you’re going to win?”

  The old lady smiled at Sophia. “I’m going to take quarters from every one of these old hags!” The other women cackled.

  “In your dreams!” one of her tablemates said.

  “That’s the spirit,” Sophia said. “Have you seen Marguerite?”

  Elody pointed to a table of three. “She must be in the bathroom.”

  Sophia nodded and patted the old woman’s shoulder. “Thanks!”

  Just then, Marguerite LaFarge appeared in the doorway of the Ladies’ Card Room like a queen preparing to greet her subjects. Her helmet-like hair was dyed red, and her skin looked like marble. But in spite of her wrinkles and drawn-on eyebrows, it was clear she had once been a great beauty. She wore an expensive wool skirt and black silk blouse, and she was dripping with jewels.

  “Sophia, my pet! What a lovely surprise!” The grande dame swept over to Sophia and embraced her, air-kissing her on both cheeks. “What brings you here?”

  “I need to tell you something,” Sophia said. “About Evan.”

  Marguerite sat down at her table and clucked her tongue. “Oh, that sweet rascal. What’s he been up to now?” She plucked a tile from the middle of the table, looked at it, and traded it for a tile from the row in front of her.

  Sophia knelt by her aunt’s chair and pulled out her phone. “You need to stay away from him, Marguerite. He’s bad news. I think he’s blackmailing people!” She scrolled through the pictures she had taken of Evan’s lair.

  Marguerite waved her hand at her impatient grandniece. “Slow down, darling.” She reached into her designer purse and pulled out a pair of gold-rimmed reading glasses. She turned to the other ladies at the table. “I’m sorry. You know young people and their phones!” The other ladies chuckled in understanding. “Everything’s just so important to them these days!” She turned to Sophia. “Now what were you saying, dear?”

  Sophia spoke louder. “Evan Masterson, Marguerite. I think he’s been blackmailing people.” She reached into her pocket. “And he’s a thief!” She put the wristwatch onto the table, facedown so that Marguerite could read the message on the back. “Look!”

  Marguerite picked up the watch. “My Harold!” she cried. “Where did you get this?”

  “From Evan’s office. He obviously stole it from you, Marguerite! We need to tell the police!”

  Marguerite reeled. “He stole my Harold’s watch? Are you sure?”

  Sophia nodded. “Yes, I’m sure. And it gets worse. We think he knows who stole the North Star!”

  Marguerite stood up unsteadily. “Good heavens! If this is true, we must alert the authorities!” She gestured to a server carrying a tea tray. “Moira! Please escort me to the lounge so that I may telephone the police station.” The server nodded and took Marguerite’s arm. When she saw Sophia following behind her, Marguerite called over her shoulder. “Where is Evan now? We mustn’t let him get away!”

  “He headed out to teach a tennis lesson about half an hour ago,” Sophia said. “We’ll see if he’s still there!” She darted to the stairs, her friends following behind. They raced through the lobby and out the back door in the direction of the tennis courts.

  When they arrived in the parking lot, the kids stopped in their tracks. “Oh no,” Zach said. “We’re too late.” Evan’s car zoomed onto the street, tires squealing. It cut in front of a minivan, causing the other driver to slam on her breaks and honk the horn. The black sports car peeled out and disappeared.

  “Evan must have figured out we were onto him,” Sophia said. “His car was moving pretty fast out of the parking lot.” She threw up her hands in exasperation. “Shoot! How did he figure it out?”

  “I bet it didn’t have anything to do with you taking his watch,” Evie said sarcastically.

  “I told you; I wasn’t taking it—I was returning it to Marguerite!”

  “Yeah, I get it,” Evie said. “But I’m pretty sure he would notice it was missing, don’t you think?”

  Sophi
a wilted. “I didn’t consider that.” She looked helplessly around the parking lot. “What should we do now? Wait for the police?”

  Vishal made a face. “Detective Bermudez was crystal clear he didn’t want us investigating. If we stick around here we could get in trouble. Maybe we should, you know, lie low a little bit and see how things play out.”

  The others nodded in agreement. “Do you guys want to come over to my house?” Sophia asked. “That way if my great-aunt calls we’ll be able to know what’s going on.”

  “Great idea,” Zach said.

  Sophia called her driver, and the black SUV pulled into the parking lot a few moments later. Before they could climb in the back, Edgar hopped out of the driver’s seat and hurried around the car, opening the back door with an exaggerated bow. He was wearing a black chauffeur’s hat.

  “Oh, hey, wow!” Vishal said. “Thanks!”

  Edgar winked. “Didn’t want you to miss out on the full experience.” Vishal laughed and climbed in with the others.

  It wasn’t long before the black SUV arrived at the ornate iron gates of the Boyds’ estate. Edgar parked in the circular driveway, and the kids climbed out of the back. Vishal turned and waved before they went inside. “Thanks, Edgar!” Edgar grinned and gave him a quick salute.

  Sophia led her friends to the kitchen at the back of the house. Late-afternoon sunlight streamed through the windows that looked out onto the pool and the grounds beyond. The white marble countertops and copper pots hanging from the ceiling gleamed. Sophia opened the refrigerator. “You guys want a snack?”

  Zach looked at the others. “Sure,” he said. “Can I help?”

  Sophia shook her head. “I got it.” She set a container of hummus and some cut-up vegetables on the counter and pulled out a big glass bottle of sparkling water. She handed the bottle to Zach and grabbed four glasses from one of the cabinets that lined the walls.