“Didn’t Auntie Sally get to chat with him?” I said.
“No, she said she was getting loads of gossip from the makeup ladies,” said Zoe. “Apparently that actor in Deerpark Drive has got a false—”
“So the three of you didn’t sit together?”
“No, Auntie Sally managed to get tickets, but not three in a row. I was in the seat behind Mom, and we were at one end of the audience, and Auntie Sally was at the other end. She couldn’t actually see us, there was a huge camera platform-whatsit in the way, but we all got a lovely view of the stage.”
“And when did your cousin Joe and his friends see your mom setting fire to the bookshop?” I said.
“Just after half-past eight,” said Zoe.
“About fifteen or twenty minutes after the first show finished,” I muttered. “Which means that if your mom returned to the bookshop during the interval, she must have traveled at about, oooh, two hundred and fifty thousand miles an hour.”
“Exactly,” said Zoe. “Impossible, quite apart from the fact that she was with me all the time.”
“Is there any way Joe and the others could have seen some random stranger and just made a mistake? You know, seeing someone in the shop they might expect to see in there?”
“Not according to Joe,” said Zoe sadly. She looked up at me. Those extra gallons of tears were definitely on their way. “And besides, there’s more to tell you. It gets worse,” said Zoe.
“How?” I said.
Zoe paused for a moment. “There’s evidence in the shop that the fire was started by Mom’s brother, my Uncle Barry.”
“Evidence? What sort of evidence?”
“There’s a clear footprint inside the shop. And similar prints in the muddy patch outside the shop’s back door. They could only have been made by Barry. You’ll know why when you see them. But he hadn’t visited the shop in weeks. They must have been made on Saturday night.”
“And what do the police think?” I said, shuffling forward slightly on the desk.
Zoe sighed. “They believe the witnesses more than the footprint. They say the Dance Insanity video doesn’t show Mom clearly enough for a positive ID. They think she put those footprints there to frame her brother.”
If I’d been alone, I’d have let out a whoop of astonishment. What a weird tangle of a mystery! However, as I wasn’t by myself, a whoop of astonishment would have sounded positively cruel. So I kept my whoops to myself.
“And what does Uncle Barry say?” I said.
Zoe’s lower lip started to quiver again. “This has put the three of them back to square one,” she said. “You see, my Uncle Barry, my Auntie Sally, and my mom—her name’s Mary, by the way—are triplets. They’re very alike, but they’ve never really gotten along together. Some of the fights they’ve had are legends in our family. The worst was about ten years ago, when I was just a toddler. Great-aunt Meg told me all about that one: my gran, their mother, was pretty well-off, and when she died the three triplets were expecting to inherit a huge pile of cash. But it all vanished, it just wasn’t there. Each of the three started accusing the others of taking it, and things went from bad to worse.”
“What happened after that?” I said.
“Oh, there were all kinds of horrible things said,” sighed Zoe. “So Great-aunt Meg says. None of the three would even talk to each other, not for years. But then they settled their differences a couple of years ago, and things have been fine since then, mostly. Until now.”
“Mostly?”
“Mom and Auntie Sally had an argument about a month ago, but it blew over. Mom lends Sally boxes of books to read before she puts them out for sale in the shop. She picked up the wrong box one day and put some of Sally’s own books on the shelves by mistake. Sally went nuts, but it was all over in a flash.”
“But now things are bad again?”
“You’re telling me!” cried Zoe. “Uncle Barry is Joe Albieri’s dad, so that side of the family thinks Mom is trying to frame Barry for something he didn’t do. Joe’s being just plain rude to us. Mom knows she’s innocent but doesn’t want to believe Barry is up to something. Auntie Sally is having to take sides, because she was with us in London! And hanging over it all is the fact that Mom’s in trouble up to her eyeballs!’
Her eyes overflowed again. My handkerchief was rapidly filling up with tears and snot. As she sat with her face buried in the hankie, I gave her a delicate pat on the shoulder.
“Umm, don’t worry,” I said. “Saxby Smart is on the case…okay?”
She had another window-rattling nose-blow. “Thanks. I’d better be getting home.”
We stepped out of the shed. The setting sun threw the shadow of the garden fence halfway across the grass, neatly cutting the back lawn in two.
“Your Auntie Sally is a big reader, too, like us?” I said, as I walked Zoe to the gate. “I mean, if your mom lends her boxes of books?”
“Oh, yes,” said Zoe. “She kind of has to be. She’s a writer.”
“Oh, I see. Has she written anything I might have read?”
“Probably not. She’s not exactly on the bestseller lists. Not as Sally Albieri, anyway. But she does the Inspector Rumbelow mysteries, under the pen name A. E. Wilmslow.”
“WWOOWW!” I cried. “I’ve read all of those!”
I judged that a whoop of astonishment should be fine by then. So I whooped. Twice. It was turning out to be an evening full of surprises.
Chapter Three
The next day, during break time at school, I tracked Joe Albieri down on the sports field. All I had to do was follow the ka-thump of soccer balls being kicked and the yells of “Kick iiiiit!” that he seemed to need to emit every few seconds.
“Hello, Joe,” I said. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“Whaddyawant?” he grunted, not taking his eyes off the ball that was leaping about in the middle of the spaghetti tangle of boys in front of him.
“I’m on the Rogers & Rogers arson case,” I said.
He made a sort of snorting noise. “My aunt is saying my dad tried to burn her place down. That’s all there is to it.”
“Well, I think to be fair, she knows we haven’t gotten to the bottom of this little problem yet.”
“Oh yeah?” grunted Joe. He was a short, pug-faced boy, built like one of those meaty little dogs you see tied up outside corner shops growling at people. He had the same mushroom hairstyle as his cousin Zoe, and I was coming to the conclusion that the soccer had some sort of tractor beam hold on his eyes.
“There’s no problem,” he said. “My [swear!] aunt did it. I saw her. We all saw her. End of problem. KICK IIIIT!”
“And this was around half-past eight on Saturday night?” I said.
“Eight-thirty-four,” he grunted. “I checked.”
“Would you and your friends normally be passing the bookshop at that time?”
“Nah, nah,” said Joe. “One-off. Last minute thing. We went bowling. Only decided about six. KICK IIIIIIIIT!”
“So, what exactly happened at eight-thirty-four?” I said, taking a quick leap to one side to avoid the ball. Joe made a flying tackle for it, but missed.
“[Swear!] [Swear!] [Swear!] We’re walking up the street. Opposite side to the bookshop. I happen to look over. There’s my [swear!] auntie! Slinging gasoline about, from a can! I tell the others. They see her too. We watch her light a match. Woomph! Flames everywhere. Then ten seconds later: FFFSSSS! Ha ha, her evil plot to burn the building down gets foiled! Sprinkler kicks in.”
“And what did you all do?” I said.
“We saw her run for the back of the shop, soon as the flames started. So we legged it across the road and around to the back entrance. But she’d gone. One of the dads called the cops. They turned up, broke the back door in to check the fire was out. We went home. End of story.”
“I see. You didn’t go into the shop yourself?”
“Nah, none of us did. There’re no windows at the back, just the door, bu
t we went around the front and had a look inside. Nothing out of place or anything. Except for the right [swear!] mess in there!”
Things suddenly looked even worse for Zoe’s mom. There was a detail about the events of Saturday night that I’d forgotten to ask Zoe about. But now, from what Joe had said, I could tell that the arsonist was almost certainly not some random stranger.
Have you spotted it?
Whoever tried to burn the shop down hadn’t needed to actually break into the building. They’d had a set of keys: the police had to force the back door in, which meant that it had been locked, as normal. I’d forgotten to ask Zoe if there were signs of a break-in. Now I had my answer. And it pointed the finger even more firmly in Zoe’s mom’s direction!
“Your dad, Barry Albieri,” I said to Joe. “Where was he all this time?”
“What you saying?” grunted Joe. For the first time, his eyes flicked away from the soccer ball. “You on their side?”
“I’m only trying to uncover the truth,” I said.
Joe turned and stared at me. “He was at home all evening. Okay?”
“Was anyone with him? Did he get any phone calls? Did anyone drop by?”
“No, no, and no,” said Joe. “The first he knew of all this was when I got home at ten to nine. And then on Sunday morning he gets quizzed by the cops over some phony shoeprint evidence! He’s being framed!” His eyes flicked back to the ball for a moment. “KICK IIIIIT!”
“And you’re sure,” I said, “absolutely sure that it was Mary Rogers you saw in that shop?”
He turned and stared at me again. “Are you saying I don’t know my own aunt? Yes, it was Mary Rogers. She was even wearing that black and white jacket of hers. The hideous one.”
I knew exactly which jacket he meant. Several times, I’d seen Zoe’s mom meeting her outside school after Miss Bennett’s Wednesday night book club. Mary Rogers had indeed been wearing a distinctive jacket with a sort of black and white zigzag pattern running across it. And it was true: that jacket was hideous.
“Well, thanks for your help,” I said to Joe sadly. Things were looking totally awful for Zoe’s mom now.
“No problem,” said Joe. “You go ahead and prove it’s all an insurance scam by that—OOWW! [Swear!] [Swear!] [Swear!]”
With a hollow thump, the ball had suddenly bounced off Joe’s head, knocking him sideways.
I was on my way back to the classroom when the bell rang. I plodded along, oblivious to the rapid movement all around me.
Had Mary Rogers really been trying to pull off an insurance scam? One which had gone wrong because she’d been accidentally spotted? I’d wondered about such scams in previous cases, notably the incident of The Clasp of Doom (see Volume One of my case files for details). But something didn’t fit. There were still too many unanswered questions.
By chance, I happened to get my first glimpse of Joe’s dad, Barry Albieri, as school was finishing for the day. He met Joe outside the school gates. I stood and watched him for a moment or two, from the cover of a conveniently tall bush.
Zoe’s Uncle Barry was a slim, slightly built man, the absolute opposite of Joe. Although he, like Joe and Zoe, also had that ka-boom of blond hair.
You know how you can sometimes get an instant impression of someone? A sort of snapshot of what they’re like, even though you’ve never met them before? I got an instant snapshot of Barry Albieri, and it wasn’t a very flattering one. There seemed something…shifty…about him, something you couldn’t trust.
On the way home, I called my friend Izzy, the school’s resident Empress of All Knowledge. I gave her the details of the case and asked her to have a look around and see what she could come up with.
“Dance Insanity!” she squealed down the phone at me. “That’s my all-time favorite show! I’m so looking forward to the final this week!”
I held my cell phone at arm’s length for a second and pulled a quizzical face at it. “Am I really the only person who’s never seen it?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
Chapter Four
I’d arranged to meet up with Zoe at the bookshop a little later that afternoon. Walking along Good Street as I approached the shop, I could see that there was a large metal Dumpster placed across the shop’s entrance. The door was open and shovelfuls of mangled books were being heaved into it, thudding as they hit the books that were already in there.
It was Zoe who was wielding the shovel. She waved to me and called through the open doorway. “You’ll have to go around the back! I’ll come and let you in!”
From my previous case file The Pirate’s Blood, you’ll know that Rogers & Rogers secondhand bookshop was on the corner of a block of eight converted Georgian houses and that running between the two tall, back-to-back rows of four was a narrow alleyway.
To each side of the alley, there was almost nothing but blank brick wall. At one or two of the eight addresses (including Rogers & Rogers), a plain back door had been added, opening out onto the alleyway. And at one or two of the others (including the bank that backed on to the bookshop), there was a metal balcony jutting out of the first floor.
It was a dark, vaguely smelly place. Drips from a leaking gutter above the bookshop left a permanently muddy patch beside the bookshop’s back door, the obviously recent repairs to which showed where the—
“GRRROOOOWWOOWOWWW!”
I almost screamed with fright! A huge, snarling black dog had appeared on the balcony above. It was followed by a tiny old man wearing a gray cardigan and the droopiest mustache I’d ever seen. He tugged the dog back by its collar.
“Don’t mind ’im,” he called down to me. “He won’t hurt yer, he’s only a puppy. He always likes to come out and say hello to anyone he’s not seen before.”
The dog growled menacingly at me, its eyes blazing and its teeth dripping doggie spit.
“C’mon, Killer, suppertime,” said the old man cheerfully.
After a brief check to make sure my heart was still beating, an idea suddenly occurred to me. There was an obvious question I could ask the old man; one that would test my earlier deduction that the arsonist was someone who had the keys to the bookshop.
Have you worked out what I was about to ask him?
I’d been reminded of a bit from a Sherlock Holmes story I’d read called “Silver Blaze.” Sherlock Holmes says: “And then, of course, there was the curious incident of the dog in the night time.” To which someone else (can’t quite remember who!) says: “But the dog did nothing in the night time.” To which Sherlock Holmes replies: “Yes, that was the curious incident.”
“Excuse me,” I called up to the old man. “Did Killer there, er, say hello to anyone on Saturday night?”
“Yes, there was a load of kids and their moms and dads turned up, and then the police. Went batty, didn’t yer, eh, Killer?”
“GRROWOWOWOWOWOWOWOW!”
“But not before that?” I called. “Maybe just a few minutes before?”
“No, why?” called the old man.
“Nothing,” I said. “Just a curious incident.”
This backed up my earlier deduction. If the dog hadn’t barked, then the arsonist was someone the dog already knew.
The back door to the bookshop opened, and Zoe appeared. I followed her inside.
The bookshop, which took up most of the ground floor of the building, was—as Joe had put it—a right [swear!] mess. Before the fire, there had been shelf upon shelf, right across the shop, crammed to overflowing with every kind of book you could imagine. Now there was shelf upon shelf of wet, fire-charred mush. Before the fire, the shop had been filled with that cozy smell you get from books. Now the shop was filled with the stink of damp paper and the faint odor of blown-out matches.
I wanted to say something to express how upsetting such a dismal sight was. But, to be perfectly honest, I was too upset to say anything.
“I used to love this shop,” I said quietly. “Why would anybody do this to it?”
&
nbsp; “That’s what we want you to find out,” said Zoe, picking up her shovel and poking at a shelf just above her head. A scrap of blackened paper flopped off onto the floor, which was already ankle-deep in similar gunk. She kicked some of it aside with the toe of her wellington boot, then scooped up another shovelful, went over to the open front door, and lobbed it into the Dumpster.
“Thank goodness for the sprinkler system,” said Zoe. “It was only installed last year. If we hadn’t had it, our apartment would have gone up in smoke too. Maybe even half this block.”
“Hmm,” I muttered, looking up at the sprinkler nozzles that jutted down from the fire-scorched ceiling.
“What really scares me most,” continued Zoe, “is that it was pure luck that Mom and I weren’t here. I mean, if the whole building had caught fire…Makes me shudder.”
“Hmm,” I muttered again. “Maybe it wasn’t luck at all. Whoever did this didn’t want to destroy the building, that’s for sure.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well,” I said, taking a tentative step across the ground-mush, “we know that the culprit didn’t break in. If this was done by someone familiar with this place, and they’d intended to start a major fire, they’d have turned the sprinkler system off first. No, I think they just wanted to ruin all these books.”
“Why?” said Zoe. “To put Mom out of business?”
I hesitated. I didn’t want to admit to Zoe that, so far, everything pointed directly at her mom and the idea that the fire was part of an insurance scam—everything, that is, aside from her mom’s rock-solid London alibi!
“So, who has a set of keys to this shop?” I said.
“Mom, obviously, and I have a separate set,” said Zoe. “Auntie Sally and Uncle Barry have keys. Both of them help out in the shop from time to time, although, I think I told you, Barry hasn’t been here recently. Auntie Sally’s often here. The man who owns the shop next door has a set, in case of emergencies when we’re away. Hah! What a joke! Oh, and there’s a spare set that we keep upstairs. When we have students from the college working here at busy times, they often borrow those. But we haven’t had any extra assistants for months.”
The Pirate's Blood and Other Case Files Page 6
