He took out the letter and handed it to Amelia.
‘This is addressed to Brian,’ she said.
Brian was monitoring her reactions closely. ‘It’s all right – you can read it.’
She opened the letter and read the contents. Her face turned pale. Either she was a fantastic actor or Brian had been wrong about her.
‘Did you get a letter like that?’ Chris asked.
‘No, I didn’t,’ Amelia said.
She looked both worried and confused.
‘None of us did,’ Hannah said.
‘Who do you think wrote it?’
‘We have no idea,’ Chris said. He looked over to Brian. ‘We should draw up a list of suspects and . . .’
Amelia noticed Brian wasn’t looking at her. His head was down, as if he couldn’t bring himself to look up in case he caught her eye. And then it dawned on her.
‘Wait a second,’ she said.
The other Misfits suddenly found their feet very interesting too. She’d figured it out. She really had. She was smart, all right.
‘You don’t think I wrote this, do you?’ Amelia asked.
‘Yes,’ Brian said.
‘But why would I do something as sneaky as that?’
‘I don’t know, Amelia. Why would you have a stolen necklace in your bag? A necklace that was once in the attic in the cottage in the woods.’
Sam gasped. ‘Sorry, that was far too dramatic. Carry on.’
‘I found it,’ Amelia said.
‘You found the necklace? Really? And where did you find it?’
‘At the party last night. At Sam and Chris’s house.’
‘And you expect me to believe that? If you found it, why didn’t you tell anyone?’
‘I did. I told Hannah.’
Brian turned to Hannah. ‘Did—’
‘Yes, she did. I was about to tell you this morning when my mother came into the room and I started singing. We decided to wait until we were all together to talk about it.’
‘Oh.’
That changed things quite a lot.
‘So you thought I was in on it? That I was one of the thieves?’ Amelia said.
‘Yes.’
‘But why? Why would you think that?’
Brian stuck his chin in the air and looked her squarely in the eye.
‘OK, well . . . first of all, you told us you came here to look after your grandmother. She does not need someone to take care of her. She’s really healthy and strong. I saw the way she swung that sledgehammer.’
‘That’s it?’ Hannah said.
‘No, there’s more,’ Brian said.
He was starting to feel uncomfortable. It had all made sense when the adrenalin was flowing and he was shouting his suspicions at Chris. Now that he was calmer, it sounded, well, a lot more feeble.
‘And I saw you on the couch last night. You smiled at me.’
Hannah tried to suppress a smile of her own. ‘That does sound like a criminal thing to do. If you smile, you’re definitely guilty.’
‘Shut up,’ Brian said. ‘It was a strange smile, all right. Like you were up to something.’
‘Was that after I broke the plates? When I sat on the couch?’ Amelia asked.
‘Yes.’
‘That’s when I discovered the necklace. It was stuffed under one of the cushions. I was excited, but I didn’t want to let anyone know. I tried to look as normal as I could. Guess I failed. Was there anything else, Brian?’
‘Yes. No?’ Brian was confused now. She had an answer for every question. ‘Wait, there was – something else I had to say, about . . . you and your family being . . . evil geniuses . . .’
To everyone’s surprise, Amelia didn’t storm off or sulk or shout or throw something. Chris assumed she’d be extremely insulted by the accusation, which is why it took him a moment to realize she was laughing. Her whole body shook and then fat tears of laughter rolled down her face. None of them had ever seen her like this. They’d barely seen her crack a smile before.
‘You’re an idiot, Brian,’ she said. ‘You really are an idiot.’
His great big theory sounded so stupid now. He was an idiot. ‘I know, I—’
‘I mean, you-you-you . . . heeeee, thought I –’
She leaned forward over the steering wheel of the lawnmower, trying and failing to control herself.
‘I told him he was being a wally,’ Chris said.
‘Why? I mean . . . heeee . . . what reason would I have for . . . heee.’
‘All right, I might have got it wrong. Can we just move on from it?’ Brian said. The back of his neck was tingling with the embarrassment of it all.
‘We will for now,’ Hannah said, ‘but we’ll come back to it later. We’re not going to forget this in a hurry.’
‘Wait,’ Chris said. ‘Are we sure it’s the same necklace?’
Amelia got to her feet and grabbed her bag, still chuckling a little. She unzipped it and took out the necklace. It was a definite match for the one in the sketch.
‘I remember it from the attic,’ Hannah said. ‘What about you, Sam?’
‘All necklaces look the same to me.’
‘OK, so if Amelia found it at the party, then that meant someone at the party was involved. Since those Manuel and Bart characters weren’t there . . .’ Chris began.
‘It means we’re not just looking for two people, we’re definitely looking for three,’ Hannah said.
Brian hadn’t heard what anybody had said in the last couple of minutes. He was feeling bad. Yes, Amelia was right. There was no doubt about it – he was a top-class idiot.
‘Look, I messed up. I’m sorry, Amelia. I really am.’
‘It’s OK,’ Amelia said.
‘It’s OK?’
‘It’s partly my fault. I haven’t been completely honest and you probably sensed that.’
‘I . . . What now?’
‘I didn’t want to come to Newpark and I didn’t want to join your club because I thought it was stupid, but I was wrong. As wrong as you were about me.’
‘You don’t have to tell them,’ Hannah said.
‘I know, but I’d like to.’ She looked around the garden shed at the faces of the other Misfits. ‘I’m not here to look after my gran. You’re right, she’s well able to look after herself and, even if she wasn’t, she wouldn’t let anyone mind her. The truth is I have a new baby sister. I thought she was the really annoying one, but it turns out I was annoying everybody else. I, you know, might have complained about my sister crying all the time and I didn’t really help around the house. They’d probably have put up with it, but then I did something a little bit stupid and my dad decided that we needed a break from each other.’
‘What was the stupid thing?’ Sam asked.
‘I hoped you wouldn’t ask. My stepmother, Vivienne, was always trying to get me to relax more. She said I was too uptight.’
‘You? Never.’
‘I don’t believe it for a second,’ Hannah said, smiling.
‘Mock if you want, Hannah, but I’m not the one hiding in a garden shed because I’m scared of my parents.’
‘I’m not hiding! I chose to be here. And I’m not scared of my parents. Not even a little bit,’ Hannah said, remembering to check the time on her mobile phone when she thought nobody was looking. Still two minutes left before she needed to go back in.
‘Anyway, it was fun before because we used to do all this stuff together, but then she said she couldn’t do anything with me because she was pregnant, and then the baby was born. Vivienne and Dad argued for ages over the baby name and they finally decided on Susanna. The name was this whole big thing with them. I went with Vivienne to register the birth.
‘You have to fill out these forms and then this person on a computer prints off a birth certificate. Susanna started crying – she cries all the time – and so I said I’d hand in the forms for her while Vivienne took her outside. Before I handed them in, I decided, for a joke, to change the n
ame on the form. The guy who registered the birth was a bit surprised, but he said he was seeing all sorts of weird baby names these days, so he went ahead with it. I got the certificate, but Vivienne was so distracted by my sister that she didn’t even look at it. Nobody checked until later on when Dad came home from work and they asked to see it. When they saw it, they went through the roof.’
‘What did you change the name to?’
‘Supergirl.’
‘What?’ Brian asked.
‘Yeah, Supergirl Princess Parkinson. Well, they were always saying how great she was and calling her a princess and all that, so I thought, if you think she’s super, then why not just call her Supergirl? I thought it was a silly joke, but they didn’t agree.’
‘Does she have to be called Supergirl forever, like when she goes to school?’ Sam asked.
‘No, they changed it back. But they got really angry and I ended up here.’
‘You’re no Trick Whittington, but you’re definitely in the right club – you’re a hundred per cent misfit,’ Sam said.
‘Oh yeah, a complete misfit,’ Brian said. ‘There’s something else, Amelia – I didn’t want you in the club. Not because I didn’t like you, but because I wanted things to stay the way they were. I was wrong about that too.’
‘I don’t want to go to Galway,’ Chris said.
‘What?’ Hannah said.
‘Since we’re sharing stuff. I like it here. I’ve always liked it here. It’s home and I like living a two-minute walk from the countryside and I like my friends and I don’t want to go. I hate the idea of the club breaking up and I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to upset anyone. My mum’s really looking forward to it.’
‘I’m kind of looking forward to it too,’ Sam said. ‘Moving to the city is exciting. But I’ll miss this, man. I’ll really miss this.’
‘This?’
‘Yeah, hanging around, talking nonsense, and acting stupid like dopey old Brian there. All that stuff. It’s fun, right?’
Everyone sat or stood in silence for a moment.
‘Are we finished with the emotional talk because it’s really creeping me out,’ Hannah said to break the tension.
Brian laughed. ‘Nearly. Look, we don’t have to like what’s happening – you guys moving away and all that – but we’re not finished yet. There’s a mystery to solve. We’re going to solve it because we want to stop a bunch of criminals from doing criminal things, we’re going to solve it to show our parents that they’re wrong and we’re going to solve it because it’s going to be the last and best thing the Misfits Club will ever do.’
Chris gave Brian a pat on the shoulder while Amelia and Sam fist-bumped and shared high-fives with Hannah.
‘Right, now that that’s over, we can get back to work,’ Hannah said. ‘If you don’t believe Amelia was the one who sent you that letter, who do you think it was?’
‘I don’t know. It has to be someone who knows where I live, so that doesn’t really narrow it down. Most of the people at the party know where I live.’
‘It might not be safe for you to stay at home,’ Chris said. ‘You should crash at our house until we’ve got all of this figured out.’
‘Definitely,’ Sam said.
‘I know Gran would put you up too. She’s got a spare room and an air mattress. You wouldn’t even have to give her a reason,’ Amelia said.
‘Thanks, but I’ll be fine. I’m not running away. Anyway, someone has to keep an eye on Mucky.’
‘Won’t Sharon do that?’ Amelia asked.
Too late, she noticed the others shaking their heads and drawing their fingers across their throats in order to get her to be quiet.
‘I think Sharon worries more about herself than she does my dad these days. She’s not very nice to him,’ Brian said.
Sam looked for a subtle way to quickly change the subject. He couldn’t find one, so he said the first thing that came into his head.
‘My teacher described me as perennially useless, but I wasn’t sure what he meant,’ he said.
‘You hardly thought it was a good thing,’ Chris said, playing along.
‘I was willing to be optimistic,’ Sam said. ‘OK, now that—’
Hannah checked her mobile. She was running late again. ‘My time’s up!’
She ran from the shed and straight into her house, leaving the others behind.
‘Do we just stay here or what?’ Sam asked.
‘No,’ Amelia said. ‘Now it’s time blow this case wide open.’
The others stared at her.
‘Sorry, I saw that on a detective show once and I’ve always wanted to say it.’
‘Wish you hadn’t said it. Makes you a little less cool. And you’d already lost a lot of cool points over the Supergirl story,’ Sam said. ‘So, are we going to check out that farmhouse now, or what?’
‘Definitely,’ Brian said. ‘Let’s rock ’n’ roll.’
‘I think that’s worse,’ Sam said.
‘Really? My dad says it all the time,’ Brian said. ‘No, you’re right. That is worse.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
After Hannah had gone, the others prepared for action. Despite Chris wanting to get back to work on his computer, Amelia persuaded him to go with them. She told him that they hadn’t had a successful morning checking out the two houses and that, with his intelligence, he might spot something that they hadn’t. Her attempt at flattery worked. What she didn’t explain was that they needed his lock-picking skills and that Sam had brought along his brother’s lock-picking set. She didn’t want to spook him just yet.
They packed their backpacks with all the supplies they thought they’d need, including torches, mobile phones, screwdrivers, crisps, chocolate and cola. They were cycling down a quiet country road on the way to the farmhouse when Amelia’s phone rang. It was Hannah.
She was still disgusted at the thought of being trapped at home rather than being on the road with the rest of the gang, but they knew it was the best thing to do. If she snuck out and her parents discovered she was missing – and they would – they’d start looking for her and they wouldn’t stop until they’d located her. If they didn’t find her in the first hour, they’d get the authorities involved and if they were looking for the Misfits, there’d be no chance of completing the investigation.
Amelia got them all to pull over to the side of the road, waited until Chris had caught up with them and then put Hannah on speaker phone.
‘It’s only a matter of time before my folks realize I have a phone, so listen up,’ she said.
Despite the remote location, the phone signal was good and her voice was loud and clear.
‘I got out of going to Mrs Finnegan’s by faking illness and Dad felt sorry for me and gave me his laptop. Mum would never have given in like that. Anyway, I’ve had a breakthrough. Those art-analyst guys I contacted online got back to me. They recognized the painting.’
Chris brought out a copy of the sketch Amelia had drawn of the painting in the attic.
‘It’s called Foundering and it’s by a guy called Duven Klempst. It was stolen from a museum in Amsterdam earlier this year. Guess what it’s worth?’
There was silence.
‘Seventy-five thousand euro. That’s a lot, but there were other paintings in that museum that were just as easy to steal and were worth a lot more. There had to be a reason they stole that painting. And then I remembered something like this had happened in one of my detective books.’
‘Hang on. Could they be stealing things to order?’ Chris asked.
‘That’s what I think, Chris. It’s in The Dead Man’s Twist. Criminals get a shopping list from some rich guys and they only steal what the rich guys want. They leave behind everything else no matter what it’s worth,’ Hannah said.
This was exactly the kind of thing that drove Sam mad.
‘Dumb it down for me, guys,’ he said.
Brian was glad he’d said that. He was having trouble followi
ng things as well.
‘Say you have a lot of money,’ Hannah replied, ‘and you’d like to buy a painting or an antique piece of jewellery or something, but the person who owns it doesn’t want to sell it, what do you do?’
‘Give up,’ Brian said.
‘Yeah, that’s what a normal person would do, but some people don’t give in that easily – rich people. Like say a rich guy wants the Mona Lisa, he tells a criminal and he goes to that museum in Paris and steals it. Then the rich guy pays him for stealing it. The criminal doesn’t have to go around looking for someone to buy the stuff he’s stolen like a regular burglar,’ Hannah explained. ‘It’s already arranged beforehand, so it’s neat and tidy. It’s only a guess, but that’s what I think.’
Sam whistled in admiration.
‘I also got in touch with Horace,’ she continued. ‘He told me that the man who owns the farmhouse you’re heading to is called Frederick O’Callaghan.’
‘Does he live there?’ Brian asked.
‘He doesn’t live at all. He’s dead, but his daughter, who lives in New Zealand, is renting it out. My guess is she’s renting it to our criminal friends.’
‘So that’s where we’re heading for right now,’ Sam said, hopping back on his bike.
‘Wait,’ Chris said. ‘We haven’t come up with a plan.’
‘There’s been too much talking and I’m sick of plans,’ Sam said. ‘Let’s just go there and see what happens.’
And, with that, he was off, pedalling furiously.
‘I don’t know what’s in the house,’ Hannah said down the phone as the others got on to their bikes, ‘but, if my theory is correct, it could be anything the criminals are able to sell.’
Brian didn’t bother to respond. He slung his backpack over his shoulders, slipped the bike into first gear and followed Sam down the road.
Amelia thanked Hannah for her hard work, said goodbye and ended the call.
‘I guess it’s up to you and me to formulate a plan, Am—’ Chris began.
‘Try and keep up with us this time,’ Amelia said as she took off after Sam and Brian.
‘Come on!’ Sam shouted. He’d twisted round to see where his brother was and now he was turned backwards while cycling forwards.
The Misfits Club Page 17
