by Lavie Tidhar
On my way out, I saw the librarian behind her desk. When she thought no one was looking, she opened her drawer and quickly drew out a chunk of chocolate and put it in her mouth. When she caught me looking she shut the drawer quickly and pretended to fill in an index card.
I pushed through the doors and out – and ran smack into Sweetcakes Ratchet.
13
“Watch where you’re going, Nelle.”
“This the gumshoe?”
She had two of her girls behind her, Daisy and Rosie, and they circled around me, one on either side, and began to push me playfully between them.
“Stop it,” I said, angry.
“Stop it!” Daisy imitated me, laughing.
“Stop it!”
“Make me!” she said.
“Oh, look, she’s going to cry,” Rosie said. Sweetcakes watched them with a tolerant smile. They kept shoving me between them like I was their new favourite plaything.
“What are you doing here, Nelle?” Sweetcakes said.
“I was returning a book,” I said. “This is a library, Mary.”
“Are you being smart again, Nelle? This is my patch. Did Waffles send you? Are you spying on me?”
“Why would Waffles send me?”
“Maybe he wants his candy back!” she said, and barked a laugh.
“Whatever’s between you is none of my business,” I said.
“Unless you work for him now,” she said, and snarled. “Heard you went up to his place.”
“That’s none of your business, Sweetcakes.”
“But that’s where you’re wrong, Nelle. Candy is my business!”
The next time I was shoved I pretended to stumble. Then I came up low against Rosie’s legs and pushed hard, and she stumbled and fell.
I was already in motion, jumping after her and over her body as she lay there crying.
“Stay out of my library, Nelle!” I heard Sweetcakes scream behind me furiously. “Stay out of my territory, or I’ll get you!”
I was running, running so fast my heart was trying to escape through my ribcage and my throat hurt and all I could hear was the beating of blood in my ears. I finally slowed down when I was sure no one was following me.
So Sweetcakes was selling candy out of the public library, I thought. I was angry, and a little horrified at the realization.
It made sense. It was a perfect location.
Kids came in and out of the library all day long and no one paid them any attention. It was the perfect excuse to say, “Mom, I’m going to the library!” and then, in a quiet corner of the reading room, meet a Sweetie Pie and get something sweet.
Contraband candy, I thought. It was everywhere.
But now I knew for certain the old teddy bear was Farnsworth’s, I had another avenue to try. I had the beginnings of a plan.
I went back home to get my bike. It still needed fixing after the beating it got from the Sweetie Pies outside Bobbie’s place.
I popped back into the house and made lunch. In my room, I saw the teddy looking at me with his single glass eye. He seemed very lonely and sad, as though he missed his owner. I put him into my school bag gently and closed it. He would be snug and warm there. There was a place I could take him where I might get some answers, but first I needed to fix my bike. I ate quickly, took my bag with the teddy in it, and then I wheeled the bike back on to the mean streets.
I avoided the playground and the library. The bike repair shop sat on the beginning of the slope at the start of Lennox Avenue. The breeze from the bay brought with it a refreshing coolness, a tang of salt. It was hot pushing the bike up the hill, and the straps of the bag pressed into my shoulders. I was relieved to find shelter at the shaded entrance to the bike shop.
A bell chimed as I walked in. The interior of the shop smelled pleasantly of glue and oil. Miss Redfearn, the bike mechanic, was sitting on a stool in her grease-stained overalls, tightening the screws on a pedal.
“Hello, Miss Redfearn.”
“Nelle. I’ll only be a moment.”
I watched her work. She was quiet, intent on the job at hand. There was a look of concentration on her face. Her black curly hair stuck to her forehead with the heat and she pushed it away. Finally she was done. She settled back with a satisfied look. When she turned to me, her full concentration followed with her.
“How’s your mom? How can I help you today?”
“She’s fine,” I said. And, “It’s my bike, it’s…”
“Let me see.” She got up and wiped her hands on a rug and came over and took the bike from me. She looked it over, concern written on her face.
“This poor thing!” she said. “Who did this to her?”
“Just some girls,” I said.
“They won’t be welcome in my shop,” she said. She stroked the front wheel lovingly. “We’ll take care of you, don’t worry,” she said to the bike.
“Will it take long?” I said.
“A couple of days, probably,” Miss Redfearn said. She used to teach gym class at school and she was always nice, but you could tell she liked bicycles more than children. I guess they made more sense to her than we ever did.
I said, “Miss Redfearn, I need it really fast.”
“Why is that, Nelle?”
Sometimes, she still sounded just like a teacher.
“It’s for a job. I can’t really explain. Please?”
“You mean an investigation?”
I shrugged, a little uncomfortably. Grown-ups always thought I was play-acting, that a girl couldn’t really be a detective. But they were wrong. And I was going to prove it to them, by finding Eddie.
But a soft smile momentarily lit Miss Redfearn’s face. “I always wanted to be a detective…” she said.
“Did you?” I said, surprised.
“When I was a girl,” she said. “Then I grew up…”
I watched her. Her hand spun the bent wheel of my bike. “All right,” she said. “Let me see what I can do.”
“Thank you,” I said. I watched her carry the bike over to her workspace, where she set it down carefully. The radio was on and the last notes of a song faded and an announcer said, “And now for a word from the mayor.”
“Thank you, Bob. Hello, I’m Mayor Thornton.” Even on the radio, he sounded like he was smiling, with all those even white teeth. “Three years ago, you elected me to represent you. Together, we have made this city better, stronger, and healthier! But there is more, so much more to be done. We must work to bring back our glorious city, to tear down the old and bring in the new! I say to you now, we must tear down only to build! New roads, new houses, new—”
“No, no, I just wanted music,” Miss Redfearn said. She turned the dial on the radio until she found something classical, then nodded in appreciation and went back to looking at my bike.
“Miss Redfearn?”
“Yes, Nelle?”
“You know Mr Thornton?”
“The mayor?”
“Yes.”
Miss Redfearn pinched the tyre on the front wheel and looked at it sadly. “I’ve never met him,” she said, “if that’s what you mean.”
“Oh.”
“But I voted for him.”
“You did?”
That took me by surprise. She heard it in my voice and smiled. “Yes,” she said. “As it happens, I agreed with him.”
“You’re a Prohibitionist?”
She shrugged. “You shouldn’t eat sweets, really,” she said. “They’re bad for you. Riding a bike is healthier.”
“But what about choice?” I said. “I thought…”
“You know,” Miss Redfearn said, “not everything is about candy, Nelle. Thornton’s not a terrible mayor. The city’s done no worse under him than under most other mayors.”
“But it’s not fair!” I said. “You can’t just tell us what to do!”
“Well, we can,” Miss Redfearn said. “I mean, you’re kids. This is how the system works. No, there is no need for you t
o make that face, Nelle.”
Miss Redfearn frowned in concentration as she dismantled my bike.
“When you get older, Nelle,” Miss Redfearn said, “you’ll see not everything in life is fair.”
Then she stopped and shook her head and smiled a little sadly. “No,” she said. “I hope you never do.”
“I know things aren’t always fair,” I said quietly. I thought of my dad. I thought of Eddie, lost or hiding somewhere. I thought of the smell of chocolate that used to be everywhere in the air and now wasn’t. “But they ought to be.”
Miss Redfearn was frowning at the bike. Her hands moved dextrously as she worked.
“I know,” she said at last, and shook her head. “I used to feel that way too.”
Then she said, “Come back in an hour, Nelle. I’ll have the bike ready for you by then.”
14
Outside, the sun was bright and the traffic was in full flow, cars passing both ways, a dog barking, a police siren wailing urgently in the distance. Life wasn’t fair, I knew that, but it ought to be. I still believed that, and I knew I always would.
Three doors down from the bike repair shop stood my real destination: Mr Lloyd-Williams’s Trinkets, Teddies & Toys Emporium. My dad had bought me Del Bear there, when I was a toddler. Teddies, party hats, cowboy and witches’ costumes hung in the windows, and I went in.
The interior was gloomy and crammed with aisles. I loved coming here. I could spend hours rooting through the disordered toys and trinkets, and now I spent a pleasurable moment looking at a vial of fake blood, a whoopee cushion, two plastic toy pistols, a camera that shot out water when you pressed the button, a box of multi-coloured marbles and, finally, a cowboy hat.
I put on the hat and looked at myself in the mirror. “Think you’re tough, do you?” I said. “What was that? Are you talking to me? I don’t see anybody else here, are you—”
“Talking to me?” a voice said irritably, and I jumped. “Are you talking to me? I can’t see you, child.”
I removed the cowboy hat and hung it back on its hook, and went through a cramped aisle to the counter, where old Mr Lloyd-Williams stood glaring at me. He was tall and stooped, with white hair and a white moustache, and a crisp English accent like a bad actor in a horror film. He and the shop had been there for years.
He wore a cream double-breasted suit despite the heat, and a red plastic flower in the lapel that shot water in your face if you tried to smell it.
Everyone knew never to shake hands with him, because he always wore a shock hand buzzer for just such an occasion. They said he used to be a real clown, in an actual circus, I mean.
“Oh, it’s you,” he said.
This was his standard greeting, so I didn’t take offence.
“Hello, Mr Lloyd-Williams,” I said politely. I’d never met anyone else with a hyphenated surname.
“Nelle,” he said. “Nelle … Franklin.”
“Faulkner,” I said.
“Yes, yes,” he said irritably. “I knew that. How is Delphina?”
He never remembered our names properly but he knew each and every teddy bear he’d ever sold. That was why I’d come to see him.
“She’s well, thank you,” I said.
“Good, good. You look after her, you hear me?”
“I will. I am.”
“Good. Well, would you like to buy something, child?”
I could see he’d already forgotten my name again. The store was empty. I thought he must have been napping until I had come in.
“It’s quiet,” I said, for something to say.
He grunted. “Quiet month,” he said. “Quiet year. Might have to close down the shop.”
“No!” I said, in genuine horror. I couldn’t imagine the shop not being there. My dad had always taken me. He’d bought me my first detective kit there.
Mr Lloyd-Williams nodded. “Yes, yes,” he said. He had very white and very bushy eyebrows and they moved up and down as he spoke, like the hands of a conductor in front of a full orchestra.
“No one ever comes to see me any more,” he complained. “They say I only sell old junk and the shop smells of cat. I don’t even have a cat.”
“Cats are nice,” I said.
“Horrible creatures!” Mr Lloyd-Williams said with a shudder. “They have new shops now, in the big malls, big shops with all the same toys in them. Aisles and aisles and not an exploding cigarette to be seen. They never come here. Your father used to come here, you know,” he said abruptly. “With his father. That’s loyalty. That’s tradition. And then when he grew up and had you, he brought you to see me. I never forget a kind word or a bear’s face, but people still forgot me. Now I sit here for hours, dreaming, but nobody comes anymore. Perhaps I’ll go back to England, though it’s a dismal place, cold and it’s always raining. I don’t like the rain. Do you like the rain, child?”
“I … don’t mind it?” I said, wondering how to get him back on track, and he harrumphed, and said, “Well, it’s a terrible thing, rain, and bad for my bones, you know.”
“I didn’t.”
“When you get to my age…” He peered at me. “How old are you?”
“Twelve.”
“Twelve! I must have been twelve once, but I genuinely don’t remember. I’m seventy-eight, you know.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“I should be retired!” he sighed, and looked quite pleased with himself. “They all came here, back in the day,” he said. “There wasn’t anyone who didn’t pass through my shop. The president came once! The president! Unfortunately there wasn’t enough time for a picture.”
“Everyone?” I said. This was what I was counting on.
“I knew them all. The movers and the shakers, the high rollers and the lowlifes.” He shrugged. “Everyone needs a toy or a teddy or a trinket, sometimes,” he said.
“Mr Lloyd-Williams?”
“Yes, child?”
I took the teddy bear out of my bag and held it up for him. “Have you ever seen this teddy before?”
“A bear? You come to me with a bear?”
“Please.”
“Wait a minute.” He rooted under the counter and returned with a pair of curious-looking glasses, with a magnifying glass attachment over the left eye. He donned the glasses and picked up the teddy bear and looked at it closely.
“Ah…” he said. He turned the teddy over gently, pressed its tummy, looked behind the one remaining ear. “The poor thing,” he said. “Yes, yes. A custom job. I remember it now.”
“You do?”
“I know every teddy bear I ever sold,” he said. “I remember this one like it was yesterday. It was for the Farnsworth boy.”
Finally, I thought. I tried not to show my excitement. Mr Lloyd-Williams needed to be coaxed gently, before he forgot the topic again and wandered off.
“Tell me about him,” I said.
“The Farnsworth boy. I knew his grandfather, the general. Very stern man, the general. Didn’t approve of toys. Didn’t approve of chocolate much either. Liked the money he made off it well enough, though. Grew orchids. Why orchids, I don’t know. Awful things. Smell funny. Went up to the house once, you see. Saw him at the greenhouse. Servants everywhere and all that rot.”
He looked at me blankly. “What was I saying?”
“The boy,” I prompted, trying and not quite managing to stay patient.
“The boy…” Mr Lloyd-Williams’s eyes softened. “His daddy brought him to me. He never had toys. The general didn’t approve. But this was his boy, and he was going to do things his way. A good man. Tragic fate. Fell into a vat of boiling chocolate. Fell, or was pushed, no one could say. But, anyway. He came to me with the boy. Never seen anyone so excited. The boy, I mean. It was like he wanted to try everything in stock. Whoopee cushion. Thought it was the funniest thing he ever saw. Costumes! He tried them all on. Cowboy, pirate, astronaut, ballerina. Water pistols! Loved them. It was like he’d never been to a toy store before.”
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“Maybe he hadn’t,” I said.
Mr Lloyd-Williams nodded. “I suspect you’re right,” he said. “And all the while the father stood where you’re standing now – though, of course, he was taller than you are now – he stood on the other side of my counter and watched his boy play, and he smiled. That was all. He didn’t say anything, and the smile was just that, a smile. But it was in his eyes, and it stayed there the whole time his boy was playing. Then, finally, he turned to me and he said, ‘Mr Lloyd-Williams, I would like to buy my son a teddy bear.’”
I looked at the teddy on the counter between us. He was old and grey and wounded: he’d been through the washing machine of life and come out through the cycles, sometimes up and sometimes down, but still here. He’d been loved and cherished.
“You see the label?” Mr Lloyd-Williams said. He stretched it between his fingers, examining it with the magnifying glass. “Farnsworth,” he said. “I sewed it on myself. In a way, this teddy is more of a Farnsworth than anyone else still alive.”
“Anyone but the boy,” I said, and for a moment he looked startled.
“The boy, yes. Of course. But he is hardly a boy any more.”
We were silent for a moment, watching the faithful old companion. I had so many unanswered questions. What had made Farnsworth part with it? How had it come into Eddie’s hands? And why were Tidbeck and Webber looking for it?
“Is it valuable?” I said. “Does it have some great value, or … is there anything hidden inside, something that, I don’t know … a key or a map or…?”
Mr Lloyd-Williams picked the teddy up and examined it carefully. Finally, he shook his head and laid the bear down again gently. “I don’t think it’s been tampered with,” he said. “It is possible, I suppose, but I doubt it. It is just an ordinary teddy.”
“But it must be valuable,” I said. “It’s so old and … and it’s a Farnsworth!”
He picked the bear up and passed it to me. “It’s just an old, ordinary bear,” he said. “Listen, child. You’re asking the wrong question. Of course it’s valuable. It’s priceless. But only to the person to whom it belongs.”
I stared at him, wordless.
