The Calder Game

by Blue Balliett

  Mrs. Sharpe had hired a car to take them all from the airport to Woodstock. The drive was long and slippery. Petra was in the middle of an ice-smooth backseat, and busy trying not to touch either Mrs. Sharpe or Tommy with any part of her body.

  It was hard to see out, and she had to look through the front windshield, which was small. England was green, even in the fall, and had curving hills in every direction and stone walls bordering almost every road. Chicago was flat, and the only stone walls were concrete dividers in highways; Petra was fascinated by the up-and-down feeling of driving in this country, and the homemade look of things. The highway was narrow in some places and wide in others, and ducked through the middle of twisty towns.

  “Whee, it’s a roller coaster! Too bad we’re not speeding —” Tommy stopped, having glanced over at Mrs. Sharpe.

  “Yes, too bad we’re not dead,” she snapped, and gazed brightly out the window as if she had only commented on the weather.

  Tommy slouched. Petra hardly dared to breathe. It was a relief when they saw the signs for Woodstock.

  As they were unloading the car, Tommy said, “Awesome!” in a delighted voice and promptly dragged his suitcase right over Mrs. Sharpe’s toe. He didn’t even look down when he felt the bump — assuming it was a cobblestone, he pulled harder once his suitcase stopped moving. In Hyde Park, Mrs. Sharpe wore thick shoes with laces, but for traveling she had put on something closer to a leather glove, a glove with a large silver buckle on the front. She yelped in agony and, before Tommy could apologize, whacked him on the leg with her walking stick.

  He froze, mouth open, shocked that she’d hit him. It was so sudden and awkward that Petra was dying to laugh, tried hard not to, and then snorted explosively, sounding more like a large mammal than a girl. As she dug madly for a tissue and Tommy made outraged faces, Mrs. Sharpe marched ahead into the guesthouse. The words “brats,” “bad idea,” and “manners” drifted out across the English afternoon.

  Miss Knowsley only had visitors stay in one room of her house on Alehouse Lane, and that was the one Walter Pillay had rented. Mrs. Sharpe and the kids were five minutes away, in three rooms above a tea shop near the gate to Blenheim Park. The largest room looked out on a graveyard. Petra’s and Tommy’s rooms were across the hall and looked out on the street. All three were connected by a thin, uneven hallway that groaned and creaked with every step. Petra had never heard such a noisy floor.

  Mrs. Sharpe turned toward the kids before closing her door. “The plan is to meet Walter Pillay for an early dinner in an hour. We’ll unpack and rest until then,” she ordered.

  “But I’d like to start looking,” Petra said in her most reasonable voice.

  “Yeah,” echoed Tommy, rubbing his leg.

  Mrs. Sharpe said nothing, turned quietly, and swung the door shut. Petra and Tommy could hear the thunk-click of a bolt.

  “See you,” Petra said to Tommy, then shrugged.

  He paused, then nodded.

  The kids went into their separate rooms and also closed and locked the doors, feeling both grown-up and a little upset. After all, shouldn’t they be out looking for Calder? What if he was in a situation where every minute counted? Did Mrs. Sharpe really expect them to stay alone and inside?

  “Pssst!”

  Petra looked up from her notebook — something was moving outside her window. A bent piece of black wire with a square of paper speared on the end of it bobbed up and down.

  “Pssst!” she heard again.

  She hurried over, opened her window as wide as it would go, and grabbed the folded paper. LOOK OUT NOW, it said. Subtle, she thought to herself a little meanly, noticing at the same time that the stone sill on her window had a big dip in the middle. Was that from people leaning on their elbows and watching the world go by? Time is strange, she thought to herself, imagining many hundreds of elbows over hundreds of years. She looked out.

  The end of the clothes hanger was now tangled in Tommy’s curtain, and the lace waggled busily around his head. Petra giggled.

  Tommy scowled at her. “Cut it out! I’m the one who thought of escaping!”

  “Shh, whisper! Where to?” Petra asked.

  “Just a little exploring.”

  Both were now leaning on their elbows.

  “What about the squeaky boards?” Petra looked doubtful.

  “We can walk on the very edges, next to the wall. And if she catches us, we’ll explain we needed to get started,” Tommy said.

  Soon both were creeping down the narrow hallway. Tommy was right. There was almost no sound if they stuck to the sides.

  As they stepped onto the sidewalk, Petra held out her hand in a high-five. Tommy gave it a loud smack. This hurt, but she knew he and Calder celebrated with even harder ones. Besides, if she and Tommy couldn’t get along, they’d never get anything done.

  “Okay, what next?” was all she said, rubbing her hand on the seat of her pants. Then, before Tommy could respond, she gasped.

  Across the street, a large crow sat on the curb with a crumpled piece of graph paper in his beak. The paper was a pale blue with black lines; both Tommy and Petra recognized it.

  Petra waved her arms, and the crow took off, paper and all. “That was dumb!” Tommy said. “Now we’ve lost our first clue!”

  “I was trying to get the crow to drop it!” Petra was stung. She and Calder never called each other dumb, even when they were mad. “I’m going for my own walk,” she said.

  “Fine.” Tommy turned the other way and headed off.

  Petra checked her watch: She had just about a half hour before she had to be back in the room. If Tommy was on time, fine. If not, that would be fine, too. He’s so impossible, she thought to herself angrily.

  Looking for the old town square, Petra walked cautiously around a block shaped like a wedge of pie. It was easy to get confused here; unhurried streets wandered off in all directions, as if going someplace didn’t really matter.

  The faces around her were bony and seemed to fit with the surrounding stone. People had gray wool sweaters and black or green rubber boots, and almost everybody wore a scarf knotted neatly like a hangman’s noose. Petra zipped up her sweatshirt. She felt large and dark and kind of blurry, like a drawing where the color ran over the lines. Maybe this was what visitors to this tidy world always felt like.

  She turned another corner and found herself on the edge of the square. Aha! So this was the area where the Alexander Calder sculpture had stood. She knew that Calder had been talking to a man, right here, on the day he disappeared. Talking and shaking hands.

  She walked closer.

  Across the crime tape, she saw the yellow stencil:

  The Is crossed in a pentomino-like X, and the Ws, with one tipped on its side, spelled WE. And then, with SH-SH, it read like a warning to be quiet. Was she looking at a compass? A game? Some kind of hint? Wish … Wish.

  She did. She wished with all her heart that Calder would turn up. Suddenly, now that she was here in this unfamiliar place, the idea of something bad happening to him no longer seemed far-fetched.

  “Petra!”

  She turned and saw Tommy hurrying toward her. His mouth was open, and his eyes were perfectly round. “A policeman just grabbed me by the arm and wanted to see my passport! It’s in the room, so when he turned away to say something to a grown-up, I ran!”

  “Hmm,” Petra said, not quite willing to be friendly.

  “Okay, okay,” Tommy said. “I’ll try not to call you any more names. I’m wondering how we’ll ever get into Blen-hime — I mean Blen-um — Park with all these cops around and the entrance closed off. Have you seen the park walls? They’re gigantic!”

  Petra looked at the sky and then at Tommy. “Maybe we’ll wish ourselves in,” she said slowly.

  Tommy just stared at her. Then he saw the WISH-WISH.

  “Weird,” he muttered. “You know what Calder thought about the X piece, that it was the hardest to fit into a pentomino rectangle, so you never leave it
until last. Well, here it’s in the middle, already in place.”

  “I wonder what the X-shape means in a maze?” Petra asked. She was aware, suddenly, that someone standing nearby had stepped closer, as if to listen — a pale girl about her age, wearing black clothing. Petra looked at her and the girl spun away, rooting in a large plastic bag as if looking for something.

  “One good choice out of four,” Tommy said promptly, then grinned. “Hey, pretty good, I’m doing puzzle-thinking like Calder! No, for Calder!”

  “As long as he’s still thinking, too,” Petra said.

  Tommy scowled up at her chin. What was that supposed to mean?

  He shrugged, not wanting to ask. Earlier that afternoon, the sun peeking through leaves and between buildings had made cheerful shapes ripple across all this stone. Now the light was cool and flat, and the town looked far less friendly. Suddenly, he missed his mom and his goldfish back in Hyde Park. Goldman always had good ideas — he would have known where to look and what to do.

  There isn’t any orange here at all, Tommy thought with a shiver. Just beat-up stone, an un-blue sky, blackbirds, two yellow wishes, a missing red sculpture … and a missing boy.

  Missing boy — Tommy found himself counting the ten letters. Ten horrible letters.

  Dinner that night was at a restaurant called The Weasel. Walter Pillay looked as though he’d barely slept over the past two days, and Petra and Tommy were awake but yawning. Mrs. Sharpe did most of the talking.

  “Well, there’s Pigeon Tart with Leeks, Steak and Guinness Pie, Partridge on Bubble-and-Squeak with Red Onion Marmalade …” She didn’t seem to notice the lack of enthusiasm.

  “Think I’ll have the Duck, Blood Pudding, and Mash with a Poached Egg,” Petra said tentatively.

  “I’ll have the Rump Steak with Fat Chips,” Tommy said, then gave Petra a poke with his elbow. She shot him a what’s-that-for look, followed by a no-don’t-tell-me sigh.

  Mrs. Sharpe sniffed and ordered a Jacket Potato and Whipped Squash.

  Walter Pillay ordered Beer-Battered Fish, then hardly touched it. Tommy wondered, again, at all the violent language: blood, mash, whipping, even battering, and all attached to food. England was a strange place.

  “I walked around Blenheim Park today,” Calder’s dad began. His face sagged. “I just can’t imagine where he could be. I’ve thought of some kind of rescue mission involving the sculpture, the kind of thing the three of you have gotten into before, but all I can think of is why rescue something that isn’t in danger? Plus, it’s huge — too heavy to lift and too big to easily hide. And why would Calder have anything to do with valuable art disappearing?”

  He sighed. “The locals don’t seem too unhappy about the sculpture being gone. I guess they felt it wasn’t appropriate, despite the fact that it was a minotaur to go with their maze.”

  Tommy suddenly sat up. “I forget the exact story, but didn’t the Minotaur, ahh … eat people?”

  “Mmm,” mused Walter Pillay, frowning now. “I’ve been trying not to remember that.”

  Mrs. Sharpe cleared her throat. “I believe it’s an ancient Greek legend, one of the more gruesome ones. The king of the Greek island of Crete, King Minos, found himself in an unfortunate situation with his queen, who fell in love with a bull. The result was the Minotaur, who was half bull, half man — and liked to eat humans. King Minos built his world-famous maze, where he imprisoned this monster and fed him every so often with young men and women.”

  Petra glanced at Calder’s dad, who had pushed his food away. “Only an old myth,” Petra murmured.

  “Of course,” Mrs. Sharpe said coldly. “At any rate, Theseus found his way into the maze with a ball of yarn or thread, and killed the Minotaur with a sword. The end.”

  Tommy and Petra looked at their plates. Out of the corner of her eye, Petra saw Mrs. Sharpe place one bony hand on Walter Pillay’s arm. “You don’t think a Minotaur could stop us from finding your boy, do you?”

  Walter Pillay blew his nose.

  “He’s probably digging up ancient king and queen stuff, and you’ll be able to retire when you get back to Hyde Park,” Tommy blurted.

  “Or he’s busy helping with some kind of — well, some kind of large pattern. You know how he recognizes things.” Petra’s voice trailed off.

  Mrs. Sharpe pushed back her chair in a businesslike way. “If you find something old here, you can’t always keep it. That’s British law. Anyway, it’s time we were all in bed. We have a great deal of detective work to do tomorrow.” She turned toward Petra and Tommy. “Prepare yourselves, children, to think your way through a real maze. I know you can do it.”

  Somehow, her bossy tone felt just right. On their way back through the silent streets toward the guesthouse, Tommy noticed with interest that she barely used her cane. Despite the cobblestones and high curbs, she wasn’t even looking at the ground, as she usually did in Hyde Park. She peered down every street and in every window.

  She was looking for Calder.

  “She’s already in the maze!” Petra whispered to Tommy. Tommy gave her a strange look, and Petra suddenly missed Calder more than ever. Calder would have understood what she meant.

  “I am indeed,” Mrs. Sharpe said. “And you should both know that my hearing is excellent.”

  The rest of the walk was silent.

  On their way up the stairs, Petra and Tommy signaled to each other behind Mrs. Sharpe’s back, intending to at least open their doors and have a last whisper in the hallway. But that didn’t happen. Within minutes, both were dead asleep.

  Out in the old market square, the night rolled on, a moon crept in and out of clouds, and the yellow painted words, WISH-WISH, twinkled in the dark.

  At midnight a pair of feet in rubber boots walked softly across the letters. The boots were followed, at a distance of about twenty feet, by a very large cat. Several blocks away, a long piece of red yarn snaked around fences, across the top of a rubbish can, under a delivery truck, and between the stones in a graveyard. It ended in a mucky puddle near the Blenheim Park wall.

  Two large and four small, the feet moved on through the night.

  Tommy and Petra both woke fully dressed. Tommy jumped to his feet, horrified that he’d fallen asleep while his buddy Calder was missing someplace in this strange town. Petra also startled awake with a guilty feeling, and immediately began flipping through her notebook to a clean page. She wrote quickly:

  I dreamed I was a word that had gotten tangled inside the Calder Game. I couldn’t move, not on my own, and that felt terrible. Whose game was I dreaming about?

  Even though I was a word, I was alive but not me. I wonder what I meant.

  Someone knocked on her door, a brusque tat-tat. She hopped up, forgetting she hadn’t washed, changed her clothes, or fixed her hair.

  “Oh, my,” Mrs. Sharpe said as Petra opened the door a crack. “We’ll meet you in the tearoom downstairs.” As Petra closed the door, she saw Tommy mouth a panicky hurry to her. Being alone with Mrs. Sharpe was not a part of his plan.

  Petra hurried into the bathroom, splashed water on her face, and wrestled her hair into a ponytail — there was no time for working on tangles. She yanked on a clean sweatshirt and rushed out the door.

  As she slid into her place at the table, knocking one of the table legs and spilling tea, Mrs. Sharpe said calmly, “I have a plan.” She paused. “And it’s not for the clumsy.”

  Petra cringed, and Tommy gave her a sympathetic glance. “I mean the local police,” Mrs. Sharpe went on. “Do you understand? They follow the rules, but you might not.”

  For the first time, Petra began to wonder just how sane Mrs. Sharpe really was.

  “We’re ready,” Tommy said, although Petra thought he didn’t sound ready at all. She wished they were with Calder, which would have changed the balance at the table. Calder would just have looked blankly at Mrs. Sharpe, and then she might have explained herself a bit more.

  As it was, both kids nodded. Sev
eral muffins were eaten in silence.

  Finally, Mrs. Sharpe patted her mouth and said, “Well? Off you both go.”

  “What about your plan?” Tommy asked.

  “My plan is to leave the two of you alone. My only demands: You stay together, carry your passports at all times, and be back here at five o’clock on the dot. You’ll do far better on your own.”

  She handed each of them an envelope and said only, “Use this.”

  She stood, buttoned up her coat, and hobbled out the door, heading in the direction of the main square.

  “Awesome,” Tommy said.

  “Quite a vote of confidence,” Petra added, sounding doubtful.

  Tommy already had his envelope open. Inside were several bills, fastened with a sticky note that said Lunch, and a small, printed card.

  It read, in elegant cursive letters, Louise Coffin Sharpe, Private Investigator for the Police Department of the City of Chicago, United States of America. This was stamped with an official-looking city seal. Written in pen were the words, I hereby authorize my assistant Thomas Segovia to enter Blenheim Park and to cross police barricades at any place in the town of Woodstock. It was signed by Mrs. Sharpe and dated.

  Petra found the same thing, but with her name.

  Both said “What?” simultaneously. Mrs. Sharpe was certainly full of surprises.

  “Calder would faint!” Tommy said. “Assistant Investigator for the Chicago Police? I always knew she was a tricky one!”

  “Will faint,” Petra corrected as they hurried up the stairs to get their passports.