by Diaz, AJ
“Then why?”
“I just remembered something. Let’s leave it at that.”
“Whatever,” said Susan, “I just can’t wait to see the elephant.”
Chapter 6 Later that day, in between their final classes, Taylor and Susan talked again in front of their lockers, which were side by side.
“Tell me again, I forgot,” said Taylor. “How did you get the principal to have our lockers side by side? I mean, you were originally two halls down.”
“I’ll just tell you two things about that,” said Susan. “The principal has no friends in the teachers’ lounge, but he makes a mean peanut-butter and syrup sandwich.”
Taylor laughed. “Now I remember why I can never remember the story: you never tell me. Why are you so vague?”
“I prefer the word obscure.”
“Whatever.”
While Susan was reaching for something deep within her locker, Taylor saw the principal coming their way. “Hello, Mr. Principal,” said Taylor.
The principal smiled. “Hello, Taylor, how is everything going?
“Good.”
“You know, I was wondering something,” the principal began, “are you going—”
The principal stopped for no apparent reason. “What’s wrong?” Taylor asked.
“Uh, hi, Susan, I didn’t see you there.” The principal was looking at Susan who had just emerged from her locker. “I—I think I’m late to something. Bye, kids.”
Speed walking away, the principal glanced back as if to make sure he wasn’t being followed.
“Okay,” exclaimed Taylor, “you’ve got to tell me what you did to that poor man.”
“Nothing. I’m always just myself. You know that.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.” Then Taylor gasped.
“What is it?”
“You know how I’m mostly always mature?” said Taylor.
“Yeah.”
“Well, it’s hard to contain that maturity when I see him.”
“Him?”
Taylor turned Susan’s head to where she was looking. “Jason.”
“Oh, him. Yeah, I don’t know what you see in him.”
Taylor started mumbling, “Long blond hair with highlights, blue eyes—”
“Strong, strapping, and captain of the football team, I get it. But you do know he’s incredibly dumb.”
“I know. But who cares? And of all people, why do you care?” Taylor asked Susan.
“Allow me to elucidate: talking to someone as dumb as Jason is like talking to a wall.”
“You do that all the time, anyway. What’s your real problem with Jason?”
“Okay, I’ve only talked to a wall once,” said Susan, “and that was under strange and un-probable circumstances.”
“I’ll say.”
“But I’m telling you, he’s dumb.” Susan thought for a moment about what to say that would prove her point to Taylor. “For example, he can’t decide whether to ask you or Abby Adamson to the dance. Everyone knows, including me though I’m extremely slash barely jealous, that you’re the hottest girl in the school. Every boy wants to date you. But of course, Jason doesn’t recognize that, which is what I call dumb.”
“Whatever you say,” muttered Taylor in an elated trance.
“Whatever to you.”
Jason, blond hair slightly waving with every step, approached them. “Hey Taylor.”
“Hey.”
Then Jason saw Susan. “And Susan!” he exclaimed with a tinge of fear in his voice. “And Susan,” he repeated in a normal tone. “I would never forget you.”
“Got that right.”
Taylor cut Susan off there. “So, what are your plans for… you know, the next two weeks?” The dance was in two weeks. Taylor was trying to get him to ask her to it.
Jason smiled. “Oh, I got this sweet motorcycle. It’s in my garage. Only my mom won’t let me ride it. But this weekend I’m going to.”
“To ride it?” asked Taylor. “You just said your mom won’t let you.”
“Noooo.” He chuckled. “She just won’t let me ride it in the street. I’m just going to rev it up in the garage and putt around.”
“Just two things,” said Susan, “if you’re really going to ride it in the garage, which I sadly believe. Make sure you drive in circles, not into walls, and open the garage door so you don’t get carbon monoxide poisoning.”
Jason frustratingly took mental notes. “Wait, what was the second thing again? Don’t mix car bombs with Tide?”
Susan replied, “I think you might already have carbon monoxide poisoning.”
“Cool. So does that mean I’m immune?”
“Hey,” Taylor said, glaring at Susan now, “why don’t you just not ride the motorcycle this weekend. Besides, don’t you work at the fair?”
Jason thumped himself in the side of the head. “You’re right. I don’t know how I could have forgotten.”
“I do,” muttered Susan, smiling mockingly at Jason.
Jason pointed at Taylor and Susan as if they were the smartest thing since inflatable footballs (according to him) and said, “Thank you,” and walked away.
Susan was just about to make fun of Taylor for liking such a dumb guy as Jason, when an angry voice said, “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”
Taylor and Susan didn’t even need to look to know who was speaking. Abby Adamson. Their mortal enemy since the start of the previous year. The girl had been held back in the third grade and was one year older than everyone in her current grade. She was strikingly pretty, second only to Taylor and possibly tied with Susan, having a slightly freckled face combined with long dark hair.
Her attitude was the only thing that didn’t match her appearance. And, at this moment, her voice. “What do you think you’re doing talking to my boyfriend?”
Susan laughed. “He’s not your boyfriend. By saying that, you’ve lumped yourself with the host of other girls who claim the same thing.”
“Who cares? But he’s going to ask me to the dance.” Abby stepped right up to Taylor’s face. “So don’t get in my way.”
“If he’s going to ask you,” said Taylor calmly, “then why are you so mad?”
Abby calmed down. “It’s not that…”
“Then what is it?” asked Susan.
“I’m just making sure,” said Abby. Taylor and Susan rolled their eyes. Abby continued, “I have a black belt in Karate, I’ll have both of you know. So don’t mess with me.”
“Do you think Jason is the kind of guy who’s impressed by a pretty girl who can put someone in a choke hold?” asked Taylor.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he was,” said Susan with a broad smile.
“Nobody asked you,” retorted Abby. “This is between me and Taylor.”
Susan stepped between them. “And now I’m between you and Taylor,” she said with another joking smile.
Taylor stepped sideways and faced Abby. “I’ll have you know that I’m solving a mystery not even the police can solve. I think Jason will be impressed by that.”
Abby laughed. “So! My dad is solving a mystery at the private golf course he works at. And I’m helping him.”
“Big whoop,” said Taylor. The school bell rang.
Chapter 7 Taylor Kelsey sat behind the wheel of her old, sad-looking jalopy—an old Chevy, like the kind one might see in an Elvis movie or a black-and-white TV show. Susan Beckette sat in the passenger seat.
The seats were large and comfortable. Furthermore, the shape of the car made the inside seem more spacious than it actually was. It was quite nice. But people often times don’t recognize the good things they have while they have them, and this was the case with Taylor.
Susan on the other hand liked the car, though she couldn’t drive because she didn’t have a license.
It was Saturday and the girls got to dress in something other than their school uniforms. Taylor was wearing a colorful skirt that fell over black ribbed tights. She was also wear
ing a blue blouse, which reminded her of something Nancy Drew might have worn. Or any kind of intelligent woman detective.
Susan was wearing her school uniform, that way she could speak with an English accent and pretend she went to a boarding school nearby. She could fool most anyone with her routine.
Alternating between an English and American accent for practice, Susan asked, “So how long is this going to take?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been to a police station before.”
“So when do we get to go to the fair?”
“I told you, I don’t know. I just want to see what the police are doing about the café case and what progress they’ve made. We might find something out we need to know. Remember, there’s a reward involved for all of this.”
“Yeah,” reminded Susan, “for the robbery of the big painting. Not for the murder.”
“But I think they’re connected.”
“Think. You think. Think, think, think.” Susan said the first “think” with an English accent, the second with an American and the third with an English.
“I almost know they’re connected,” said Taylor. “Does that help?”
“Not a bit. But I’ll help you because there is a slight, however small, chance of money, and I have nothing better to do than to study Copernicus’s heliocentric model of the planets.”
“Nice.” Taylor made a turn. “So, why don’t you let anyone else know that you’re smart? Because you are really smart, you know.”
“I know I’m smart. After all, I’m not dumb. And I don’t like people to know because I don’t care if they know. I know what I know, and that’s what I know.”
“If you say so.”
“So.”
“What?”
“You said, ‘If I say so.’”
“So I did,” said Taylor. “I must tell you, however, that not all of your jokes are funny. Some of them are just dumb.”
“You can’t win ‘em all,” was Susan’s response. Then in a more serious tone, “Can you let me know when I tell a dumb joke, so I don’t embarrass myself.”
“I didn’t think you cared about embarrassing yourself,” said Taylor. “But okay.”
“I don’t care about embarrassing myself. But I do care to tell only funny jokes. What should our code be if I tell a funny joke vs. a dumb joke.”
Taylor pretended to be in deep thought. “Let’s see… if it’s funny… I’ll laugh. If it’s dumb, I won’t laugh.”
“I still think we need code words. How about police codes?”
“You know police codes?” asked Taylor.
“All of them. I have a good memory, as you, your parents, and my parents only know. Oh, and my teachers.”
“That’s true. So what should the codes be?”
Susan thought about it. “How about 10-3 if the joke is dumb. 10-3 means stop transmitting.”
“Sounds good. If the joke is good, then I just won’t say anything, okay.”
“Fair enough.”
Two minutes later the girls pulled into the parking lot of the police department. The building was huge: three stories tall and a quarter of a block long. Large reflective office windows lined every level. A few stairs with wrought-iron railings on either side led the way to the glass double-door entrance.
It was all very daunting, but Taylor, who’d wanted to be a detective for as long as she could remember, was shaking with excitement. Susan spoke first, “Who do you think we’ll be allowed to talk to?”
“If we’re lucky, a sergeant.”
“Why not a lieutenant?” asked Susan.
Taylor just laughed and turned toward Susan. “What do you mean?”
Susan, squinting under the bright sun, looked over at a black Dodge Charger from which a man was emerging. Taylor followed her gaze. “How do you know that’s the lieutenant?”
“Easy. Badge on the belt. Dress clothes. Gun draped over shoulder. Exempt license plates.”
“Yeah, but he could be the captain or a sergeant.”
“No, he can’t. I read a newspaper story,” Susan explained, “about a patrol officer who accidentally ran his car into the ocean and lived. The guy was promoted to a lieutenant for doing accidental daring things though he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. And that’s him. I recognize the picture.”
The man was slightly overweight and uncouth. His hair was combed over in an awkward way, and his face was unshaven, stubble poking out noticeably on his chin and cheeks. But despite the discrepancies, he didn’t look bad. It actually rather suited him.
“Well, then, let’s talk to him,” said Taylor.
The two girls fast-walked to the lieutenant and Susan spoke first, in an English accent. “Hey, Lieutenant, good work running your car into the ocean while avoiding that Chinese couple.”
The lieutenant looked confused. He tentatively responded, “Thank you…”
Taylor spoke next before Susan had a chance, “My name is Taylor Kelsey, and this is my best friend Susan Beckette. We go to a private school a few blocks from here, and—”
Susan interrupted, “Well, I go to a boarding school near hers. It’s actually a division of hers. I live in England with my family during the summer, though.”
“Not the winter?” asked the lieutenant.
Taylor and Susan both responded at the same time—Taylor said, “Yes in the winter, too,” and Susan said, “I live in Japan in the winter.” Their words got jumbled together and didn’t make any sense.
The lieutenant just stared at them a few moments before asking, “And you guys are best friends?”
“Well, we’re not sure,” said Susan. “We were pen pals for fifty years minus forty-six.”
“Four years?” said the lieutenant.
“Exactly. But when I arrived in America everyone from her class was at the airport to meet their pen pals. We think we may have accidentally got switched during the pandemonium. Whoever her pen pal was, though, was very much like me. So we got along.” Susan was still using her English accent and the lieutenant, of course, was fooled. “So tell us about yourself,” prodded Susan.
“My name is Lieutenant Jeff Arterman—”
“Is your first name really lieutenant, Lieutenant?” asked Susan.
Taylor flicked Susan in the arm and said, “10-3.”
At this, the lieutenant laughed. “Doesn’t that mean bomb threat?”
The girls looked at him, confused. “No,” responded Taylor.
Now the lieutenant looked confused. In a slow and thoughtful tone, he said, “That makes a lot of sense,” as if he was recalling an experience.
Taylor and Susan shrugged. “Well, like I was saying,” continued Taylor, “we’re investigating the robberies—the robbery of the large painting, in particularly—and the café murder. We’re wondering if we could get any useful information on those cases.”
The lieutenant’s gaze lingered on Taylor as if judging her character. Like he was able to tell just by looking. He finally responded, “What is it to you?”
Susan started, “I’m related to—”
Taylor was quick to interrupt, “10-3!” Then to Arterman, “I’m just a concerned citizen.”
Speaking quickly, Susan said, “And I’m not a citizen, but I’m concerned. I’m also keen on reward money.”
Arterman pretended to understand. “So you’re treasure hunters, then?”
“We’re hunters. We’re also treasurers of our personal money. So you might say we’re treasure hunters.”
“She’s just joking,” said Taylor. “She does that.” Then, “10-3”
Jeff laughed. “I suppose I could share some information on the cases. That is, if you are who you say you are.”
Susan nearly broke out in laughter, for Jeff still thought she was from England. “That would be nice,” said Taylor, and they followed Lieutenant Jeff Arterman into the department and into the offices.
Chapter 8 The lieutenant’s office was small with tall windows framing the door
and a large window on the back wall. His desk was clean and organized, as if he didn’t do much work on it. When they walked in, Taylor noticed the light was on, all the pencils in the cup on the desk were sharpened, and the calendar on the wall was practically clean of appointments. There was a dead plant in one corner of the office next to a bottle of bug killer, respectively. An overhead fan spun lazily.
Taylor and Susan pulled up two chairs in front of the lieutenant’s desk as he took a seat in his high-backed leather chair, rolled out his keyboard, and turned on his computer.
“Are people supposed to be in your office?” asked Taylor. “Like, when you’re gone?”
“No, why?”
“Because someone was.”
The lieutenant squinted at Taylor and Susan as if to say, “How do you know?”
Susan already knew what Taylor was thinking so she explained, “The light and fan were on when we came in. You didn’t notice?” Her English accent made the summation sound funny.
Jeff’s eyes discreetly darted about. “Oh, yeah. I noticed…”
Taylor just shrugged again. “Well, Mr. Arterman, here’s what I think about the cases: the robberies and the café murder are connected.”
“Robberies?” said the lieutenant. “You mean, you think all the robberies are from the same people? Like a gang?”
“Yeah, you’re the one who suggested it.”
“I know, I know, but no one believes me. Not even my wife.”
“I do. And so does the eight o’clock news.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“So”—Jeff leaned back in his chair—“what makes you think the robberies and the murder are connected?”
“One: they are all happening around the same time. Two: Aaron Cadell’s father worked at the café until the day before the murder.”
“So?”
“So, that’s got to mean something. Right?”
“I don’t see the connection.”
“Neither do I,” said Susan.
“But I know they’re connected. I just have a gut feeling.”
“But no one believes you, do they?” asked Jeff.
“Not even my parents,” sighed Taylor. “But I’m going to prove everyone wrong.”
