Amanda Lester, Detective Box Set

by Paula Berinstein

  Clive giggled. “I don’t think they can read them.”

  “No, of course not, but do you think there are patterns that mean something to them? Like the ones you say are on their feathers?”

  He thought for a moment. “The patterns might be a way they communicate. Maybe they can change them by flicking their feathers in different directions or something.”

  “Even if that’s true,” she said, “it doesn’t make sense that the Bible would have been customized to speak to peacocks. I can’t see a reason Earful would have tried to mimic those patterns, and how did he know about them anyway?”

  “Good question,” said Clive. “But obviously there’s some connection between the ink and the peacocks.”

  “Were the peacocks some kind of symbol to him?” asked Amanda.

  “You mean like a mascot or something?” said Clive.

  “Not that,” said Amanda. “If that were the case they’d probably be on the school crest. Although what peacocks have to do with being a detective I can’t imagine.”

  “No,” Clive laughed.

  “I just don’t get it,” she said. “Let’s say for a second that we’re Earful and we want to make this secret book. What would we do?”

  “Encode it, as he did,” said Clive.

  “And use invisible ink for a second level of writing,” said Amanda. “One you wouldn’t even know existed unless you knew it was there.”

  “Right,” said Clive. “But regular invisible ink doesn’t last, does it? It wouldn’t have made sense to use something that would deteriorate.”

  “Bingo!” yelled Amanda, grabbing Clive and planting a kiss on his forehead. He looked so startled that for a second he looked like he might break. “That’s it! There’s something about this ink that’s long-lasting—maybe even permanent. And when Professor Also told me the Bible was virtually indestructible, she was referring to that as well as the pages.”

  Yes,” said Clive. “And I would venture to say that it’s the ink the peacocks love, not the pages. Which means one of two things: either the ink is edible, or . . .”

  “It’s something they recognize as a message,” Amanda finished.

  “Which means . . .” said Clive. “The ink is made from peacock feathers!”

  Amanda grabbed Clive and started jumping up and down. This was huge! If the ink was made from peacock feathers, that would explain why the birds were so attracted to the page. Maybe they thought it was one of them. But wait a minute. Did it also mean that old Earful had killed peacocks to make his ink? Amanda shuddered. The idea was horrifying.

  “You don’t think . . .” she said.

  “I think a lot of things,” said Clive. “Which one did you have in mind?”

  “You don’t think Earful killed peacocks to make this ink, do you?”

  “I shouldn’t think so,” said Clive. “Have you seen all the feathers they shed?”

  Amanda had been so busy trying to evade crazed peacocks that she hadn’t noticed, but now that she thought about it Clive was right. There were stray feathers everywhere.

  “So he would have collected them and used them to make the ink?” she said.

  “Yes,” said Clive. “And this explains why the original Bible is so important. You can’t make a proper facsimile without the ink.”

  “I wonder if just any peacock will do or if it has to be those blue ones,” said Amanda.

  “Hard to say,” said Clive, “but I’m going to assume it has to be them.”

  “Why?”

  “Because everything about this is unique. The Bible is one of a kind. The peacocks, as far as we know it, are extremely rare. We could try to prove the thesis experimentally but it could take years. I’m willing to assume those peacocks are incredibly valuable.”

  “Which means that if anything happens to them, no one could ever make this ink again,” said Amanda.

  “It sure looks like it,” said Clive.

  “It also means that if the rest of the Bible is out there, those peacocks will find it.”

  “So the question is,” said Clive, “are they hanging around Legatum because of this page, or because there’s more of the Bible here?”

  Amanda knew she was going to have to consult Holmes, with or without Clive, and since they had discovered the ink together, it was only fair that they both be there. But events conspired against her, and a short while later she found herself alone with Holmes once more, this time outside on the beautiful east side of campus.

  Clive had had to do something for Professor Sidebotham and Amanda saw Holmes from the common room. He’d gone outside with his laptop and had put the case down on a bench. Suddenly a peacock had come screaming out of the sky, grabbed a piece of paper that had been sticking out of a pocket, and flown off with it. This was such a weird sight that Amanda flew out the door to see what was going on. When she got to the bench she could see a tiny bit of paper still sticking out of the laptop case. Whatever it was, the peacock had wanted it badly. Could it be . . . no. There was no way Holmes would possess a page from the Bible and not tell people. Not tell her.

  On the other hand, he did have a tendency to be secretive. All summer he had refused to tell anyone what he had discovered on Professor Redleaf’s computer, insisting that he had to protect the school. That had made Amanda furious. While he had finally relented, she had seen something in him she didn’t like—something that might surface again. And now he seemed to be doing exactly the same thing.

  As she reached into the case to grab the paper, Holmes raced for it too and the two of them collided. But that didn’t matter to Amanda. She could see that it was a bit of a page from the Bible and she was furious. Waving the shred in front of him, for she was successful in getting to it first, she faced him and practically spat, “What’s this?”

  Holmes, sheepish expression on his face, was silent.

  She was absolutely livid. “Where did you get this? Have you been following me?”

  “You know I wouldn’t do that,” he said.

  “Then what’s going on?” Still holding the paper, she folded her arms and glared at him.

  “I found it on the ground, in town.”

  It sounded plausible. Could a peacock have dropped it? She softened. “Do you know what it is?”

  “I think so. I was going to have a look.”

  Amanda eyed him closely. He seemed sincere so she said, “I have another page.”

  Holmes’s eyes widened. “You do?” He seemed not to be concerned that she hadn’t shared that small fact with him. He was more interested in the discovery.

  “Yes, and it’s what you think it is,” she said. Suddenly she felt an overwhelming sense of guilt. She should have told him she had the page. He deserved to know. Why hadn’t she? Maybe she was the secretive one. “Scapulus, I have to tell you something.”

  She held out the page to him, but he shook his head. “About this?” he said.

  “Yes. The page I found . . . Clive and I discovered something.”

  “Go on,” he said. He seemed anxious. She wasn’t sure why. Surely he wasn’t jealous of Clive.

  She told him all about what they’d uncovered in the lab. As she described their experiments and their conclusions, Holmes grew more and more excited, until finally he said, “I’ve got to see it, Amanda. I want to decode that invisible text.”

  “Do you think you can?” If Holmes could figure out what the peacock ink said, it might solve everything. The Punitori might come back, they might be able to stop Moriarty once and for all, and Nick might even be accepted into Legatum. Well, that was a bit of a stretch, but you never knew.

  “I don’t know, but I’d like to see that ink as soon as possible.”

  Suddenly Amanda felt a hand on her shoulder and heard Amphora say, “What’s that?” She had snuck up behind the two while they were looking at Holmes’s page.

  “Oh, hi,” said Holmes guiltily, stuffing the page back into his laptop.

  “What are you hiding there?” s
aid Amphora.

  “Nothing,” said Holmes. “Let’s go get some tea.”

  Amphora gave Amanda a look of triumph and slid her arm through Holmes’s. Then the two of them walked off, leaving Amanda alone with the peacocks.

  Holmes took the two pages and started working on them right away. Sometimes he’d keep them, sometimes Amanda would keep them, and sometimes, though rarely, Clive would take charge of them. Now the peacocks were not only hanging around the school, but were beaking the windows, messing up the gardens, and shrieking constantly, trying to get at the three kids and the precious items in their possession.

  With all of this craziness going on, Professor Sidebotham announced that she was going to have the gardeners institute peacock-repelling measures. That meant planting all sorts of things peacocks hate and making sure none of the foods they loved were anywhere in the vicinity. Soon gardeners could be seen in all corners of the campus, digging and ripping things up and planting, and presumably driving the peacocks away. But the birds still hovered in the trees and on the roof, and they still screeched at all hours of the day and night. Their cries sounded like “Email, email.” They were truly silly birds and under other circumstances Amanda would have enjoyed them, despite the fact that one had knocked her out and sent her into Nick’s arms.

  Obviously none of Sidebotham’s remedies were working, so Amanda began to wonder whether there was a way to lure the peacocks in some other direction. She wasn’t about to use the pages as bait, but she might be able to get somewhere using food.

  What did peacocks like? Apparently an awful lot. Some of the items would be easy to obtain, particularly the vegetables. She went to the new cook, Derson Peeson, explained what she wanted to do, and walked away with a colorful assortment any vegan would love. She threw the vegetables into a shallow basket, went outside, and held up the bait.

  It worked! In a flash the peacocks were all over the vegetables. Now all she had to do was get them to follow her. Down to the front gate she went, peacocks following her the entire way. For some reason this gave them the idea to fly back into town and Amanda was immensely relieved. She had solved the peacock problem.

  The next time Amanda saw Holmes, he told her he thought the Bible used two different codes: one for the regular text, and one for the invisible text. That meant he would have to decode two different systems. The task was huge and would take up a lot of his time. How he would find enough of it to satisfy Amphora’s demands Amanda couldn’t imagine. She was secretly glad and felt ashamed of herself.

  Speaking of parasitic women, Binnie had been hanging around Amanda a lot since that time in the lab, and Amanda knew why. It wasn’t nice to think of either girl that way, but in her worst moments, she pictured the two of them, Amphora and Binnie, as leeches. She would never be that way, ever. Boys were great but they weren’t everything. Sometimes they weren’t anything.

  Still, Binnie did have potential—she was nice and very smart—but she had been acting way too much like Amphora for Amanda’s taste. So when she saw the tall girl in the hall, she took her aside.

  “Look, Binnie, I know you’re trying to get to Clive by hanging around with me. I’m sorry to say this, but you’re making a fool of yourself.”

  Most girls would have been horrified, but Binnie was unabashed. “You’re right,” she said. “I do like him. But I like you too. You’re always right there in the middle of trouble. I’d like to be your friend.”

  “You want to be my friend because I’m always in trouble?” This was a new one. Who’d want to be in trouble? Even Nick seemed to be giving up on that approach as a viable lifestyle.

  “Yes.” Binnie’s eyes sparkled.

  “You’re crazy, you know that?”

  “So I’m told. Want to give it a try?” She looked positively radiant. Amanda wasn’t sure if it was from the anticipation of doing something forbidden or because she was just like that. Come to think of it, she didn’t know much about the girl at all. All she ever saw was her height, which she found completely intimidating.

  Amanda wasn’t at all sure about this. For one thing, she didn’t want to be responsible for getting other people in trouble, and for another, she didn’t want to be in trouble herself. It just seemed to come looking for her. “Why should I?”

  “I have a lot to offer.”

  Boy, she wasn’t modest, was she? “Like what?”

  Amanda expected her to say something about how smart she was or how tall so she could reach things, but instead she said, “I can predict the weather.”

  Big deal. “So can I. It’s always raining.”

  “Actually it isn’t always raining,” said Binnie from on high. “In fact, if you look at the statistics for this area, you’ll see that there are 145 days a year without rain or snow.”

  Amanda wasn’t impressed. “Why should I care about the weather?”

  “Because it affects things.”

  “Such as?”

  Binnie explained that the weather affects people’s moods, their actions, how they get around, and more. “I’m making a study of the effects of heat, cold, humidity, and dryness on various types of evidence,” She said. “I’m especially interested in hair. Did you know that humidity can cause hair to be attacked by fungi? If you let me be your friend, all this will be yours.”

  It was a funny way of putting things, as if the girl were a king wooing an exotic princess or something. “You’re a lunatic.”

  “Yes, I know,” said Binnie. “So are you, by the look of it.”

  She was right. Amanda was a lunatic, although not in the same way. She gave the girl a long, hard look, then broke into a grin.

  “Okay. You’re on. You’ll be sorry though.”

  “No I won’t.” Binnie smiled a goofy smile. Amanda had to admit that she was hard not to like. Clive could do worse.

  “You know, if you’re interested in weather, you should have been here over the summer when Hugh Moriarty was attacking the school with purple rainbows.”

  “I heard about that. I’m sorry I missed it.”

  “Actually, we almost didn’t get out of it alive.”

  Binnie wasn’t fazed. “Occupational hazard.”

  “You’re right. It is.” Yes, the girl had potential. It would be interesting to see what she came up with next.

  Amanda had been so busy with pages and peacocks and meteorologists that she hadn’t noticed she’d barely heard from Nick. For a while he’d been texting her several times a day. But while she’d been looking the other way, his texts had first become curt and then absent. Maybe that was a good thing. The less she had to do with him the better.

  But maybe something had happened to him, and despite everything, she didn’t like the idea of that. If he were able to divorce his father and change his life, he might just be able to make up for all the terrible things he’d done. But if he’d been arrested that would never happen. She had to find out what was going on.

  She grabbed her phone and punched in a text: “How R U?” That sounded lame so she erased it. Maybe if she told him a joke he’d respond. “Piece of string walks into a bar.” Nah. That was even lamer. “I miss U.” Yikes! Where did that come from? Good thing she hadn’t accidentally hit Send. Then she got it. She typed “Kapow!” Nick loved explosions. If that didn’t get his attention, nothing would.

  A little while later she got a reply. “Fine, busy.” It was something, anyway. Perhaps he was working on his case with Mr. Onion. But when he sent another text, “Don’t come,” she really began to wonder. Why would he say that? Was he hiding something?

  Was it possible that Nick had just been using her to get help with his lawsuit? Maybe now that he’d got what he wanted he was throwing her away. She certainly wouldn’t put it past him. Well if that were the case, she’d get back at him if it was the last thing she did. He should know better than to toy with her.

  Soon she was absolutely furious. What had she been thinking, having anything to do with Nick Moriarty? She only had his wo
rd for it that she’d collided with a peacock. He’d probably knocked her out himself, then pretended to help her. How could she even have entertained the idea that what he’d told her was the truth? She should forget about him and go back to Holmes after all. Of course it wouldn’t be fair to Amphora, but if the couple were to break up, Amanda would be right there to catch him.

  11

  Can You Dig It?

  Liam Halpin and the government archaeologists were still setting things up at the farm and had not yet begun to dig. As they worked Darius attempted to film them, but with his injury it was difficult. As a result, sometimes Amanda or her friends came for a short time and helped out with the cameras.

  Darius was so interested in every little detail that when he wasn’t attempting to hold the camera, he was making detailed notes. He documented the team’s every move, every item they found, whether or not it might be relevant to their investigation, even the weather. In so doing, he duplicated their record keeping, but it was obviously important to him to do things his own way. It seemed that Darius was as much of a control freak as Amanda.

  But even though he was a stickler, he was generous. One afternoon when Simon and Clive were at the dig he suddenly blurted out, “You two. How would you like a job?”

  Whether Simon had misheard or couldn’t believe his ears was unclear. He said, “No, we haven’t been to the bog. We’d both love to see that mummy, though, wouldn’t we, Clive?”

  Darius looked at Simon as if he were crazy and said, “What are you talking about, Simon? I’m offering you boys a job.”

  Simon and Clive looked at each other as if they hadn’t heard Darius correctly, so he said it again. “I. Want. To. Hire. You. Are you interested?”

  “Oh, sure, we’d be happy to carry your things for you, wouldn’t we, Clive?” said Simon.

  “Of course,” said Clive. “What would you like us to move?”

  “Your brains,” said Darius wryly. “I’m not talking about menial work. I want to hire you as consultants. Are you interested?”