Amanda Lester and the Orange Crystal Crisis

by Paula Berinstein

  “My cousins from Liverpool, I’m afraid,” said Amanda. “You see, we were at the lake searching the boats—”

  Thrillkill stood up and stared at the students one by one. Then in a very controlled voice he said, “What boats?”

  Amanda’s phone rang. The number was unknown but somehow familiar. Then she remembered: Despina! “I think this might be important, sir,” she said to Thrillkill. He nodded.

  “Hello,” she said. “Despina, is that you?”

  “Yes, darling,” said Despina. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. Are you and Hill?”

  Thrillkill let out a huge sigh.

  “We’re fine, dear. Well, not exactly fine. We’re at the doctor’s. However, I remembered something that might be important.”

  “What’s that?” said Amanda.

  “I’ve got the license plate of that van for you.”

  Amanda let out a whoop. Thrillkill gave her a dirty look, so she said, “She’s got the plate, sir.” Thrillkill stopped glaring and made a motion that said, “Get on with it, already.” “ME56BLX,” she said slowly as Despina read out the number. Holmes scrambled to make a note of it. “Thank you, Despina. You’ve been incredibly helpful. I’ll call you later, okay?”

  “Yes, excellent, dear,” said Despina. “Oh, Hill says that boyfriend of yours is very handsome.”

  Amanda felt herself go limp. She did not want to hear about Holmes. She did not want to see Holmes. She did not want to talk to Holmes. She did not want Holmes to talk to her.

  And then a thought struck her: was Despina talking about Holmes, or Nick?

  35

  The Detective’s Bible

  Professor Buck sent divers to the quarry to look for the Bible. He also sent a team out to search for David Wiffle, Philip Puppybreath, and Gavin Niven. They removed the boulders and dragged the pit but found no sign of the book there or anywhere in the area.

  They discovered David Wiffle a short way away sitting against a boulder. He was scratched, bruised, and dusty. When they approached him he said nothing but came with them willingly. They tracked the roommates to the road but their footprints disappeared. Whether they were with the Moriartys or had gone somewhere else the rescuers couldn’t tell. The boat they’d stolen was still tied up at the lake, as was Blixus’s. The teachers searched both but found no clue as to where they or the Moriartys had gone. They did discover Nick’s fingerprints all over the Moriartys’ boat. It appeared that he’d been hiding out there since the explosion.

  Thrillkill didn’t punish David. He said the boy had been through enough. His father was dead. He destroyed the book out of loyalty to the school, taking it in the first place to try to help the detectives. Now he had withdrawn and wouldn’t show his face. Even Gordon Bramble couldn’t get a word out of him, although he did take meals up to David’s room. Mostly they remained uneaten though.

  If the teachers had been upset before, now they were hysterical. It wasn’t just that the Bible was missing. It had been destroyed, or so it seemed. They had lost their holy grail. Without the Bible to unify them they seemed to lose their compass and began to fight openly. It was now obvious that they had split into two factions:

  The Realists. They believed that the Detective’s Bible was the undying symbol of their organization and without it they were lost. They wanted to discontinue the school. The members of this group were:

  Browning. Sketching.

  Mukherjee. Legal issues.

  Hoxby. Pathology.

  McTavish. Police Procedure.

  Pickle (although still in prison). Textual Analysis.

  Pole. Fires and Explosions.

  Scribbish. Evidence.

  Sidebotham. Observation and Research.

  The Punitori. They were militant and wanted to take back what was theirs. They aimed to hunt down the perpetrators of the assumed theft and “neutralize” them. They’d recover the Bible and resume their operations. Their members were:

  Also. History of Detectives.

  Feeney. Criminals and Their Methods.

  Snool. Weapons.

  Pargeter. Toxicology.

  Buck. Profiling.

  Stegelmeyer. Crime Lab.

  Ducey. Logic.

  Peaksribbon. Self-defense.

  The last group, which wasn’t exactly an official division, was those who abstained. They were:

  Thrillkill. Headmaster.

  Snaffle. Secrets.

  Kindseth (still in the hospital). Photography.

  Tumble. Disguise.

  Amanda wondered about the Punitori. How did they propose to recover the Bible? It had to have been destroyed. There was no way you could crush it with a bulldozer, drown it, and come up with anything but pulp, if even that. And did they really plan to neutralize two first-year students—boys who were obviously a bit misguided but who were probably redeemable?

  Amanda and her friends still didn’t know what was actually in the Bible, of course. Perhaps there were facsimiles around that contained the same critical information. If that were the case, they could still use it and nothing would actually be lost. It wasn’t clear whether facsimiles existed, though, or where they might be if so.

  What they did know what that the teachers didn’t want the parents or the other students to find out what had happened to the book, although some of the teachers were advocating coming clean. They’d already cautioned Amanda and her friends to keep their mouths shut. They were afraid the students would leave the school and the whole enterprise would die. Ivy had heard Thrillkill and Professor Also worrying about money and recruitment. But the worst thing about losing the Bible was the prospect of the Moriartys having access to it. The very thought was scaring the teachers stiff. Amanda thought Professor Scribbish had even lost some hair, which he could afford, but still wasn’t good.

  Then Amphora heard something that resolved a longstanding question, and not in a good way. There were no copies. Whatever was contained in the Bible was gone. Now the kids knew that the secrets trove in no way duplicated the book. That was something else entirely—something seemingly off the teachers’ radar.

  But there was more to the book than it seemed. The physical object was unique—so special that it could never be replaced. It had been hand-written by Legatum’s founder, Lovelace Earful, upon the school’s founding in 1887, which of course made it irreplaceable. But apparently Mr. Earful had added secret features that rendered the book priceless. Detectives had labored to find this information for more than a hundred and twenty years with absolutely no luck. The thing was a combination of the Holy Grail and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and without it they had lost their foundation.

  A couple of the teachers claimed that they could remember some of the information in the Bible and had written down what they could, but the bulk of the content had been lost. No wonder they were going crazy. If they couldn’t find it they had several choices: attempt to recreate the information, start over from scratch, or do without.

  The immediate result of the book’s loss was that if someone like Moriarty had the information, they’d be on level playing ground with the detectives. If no one did and the teachers did recreate the information, they’d have a leg up again. Some of the teachers argued that they had to try to do that just in case. Others figured that it was too late. This defeatist attitude so angered the Punitori that they almost came to blows with the Realists right there in the main hall. In fact at one point, elderly Professor Sidebotham beaned middle-aged Professor Also over the head with her tablet, sending the history of detectives teacher to the nurse, who fortunately knew nothing about the book and couldn’t take sides.

  One thing no one was mentioning was that if the Moriartys had the Bible, the fact that it was in a very difficult code might render it useless to them. They all knew better. The criminals had access to some of the world’s best cryptographers and they’d crack the code one way or another. Whether they could decipher what legions of detectives had been unable to do was another quest
ion.

  At last one of the teachers raised the idea of taking protective measures. This was Professor Ducey, whose practice of logic wasn’t limited to the classroom. He claimed that whether or not the Moriartys had the book, the detectives should act as if they did and do so at once. But what measures would that protection consist of?

  Amanda and her friends thought about this question long and hard. Without knowing what was in the book it was difficult to know how to defend Legatum, but they resolved to try.

  “We have to find Blixus,” said Ivy.

  “Maybe Scapulus can hack him again and we can find out from here,” said Simon. “He did get into their network.”

  “It’s worth a try,” said Ivy.

  She texted Holmes, but when he came to the common room and heard what they were trying to do he shook his head. “It won’t work.”

  “Why not?” said Amphora, who was still flirting with him but in a less conspicuous way.

  “They’ve disconnected everything,” he said. “After we destroyed the virus formula the whole network disappeared.”

  “You didn’t do that?” said Ivy.

  “No,” said Holmes. “It wasn’t anything I did. They obviously figured out we’d got in there. I’m sure they’ve recreated the network, but I have no way of finding it.”

  “Then it’s going to have to be in person,” said Ivy.

  “What’s going to have to be in person?” said Holmes.

  “We need to find Blixus,” said Simon. “We need to get that Bible back.”

  “You think he has it and it’s intact?” said Holmes.

  “Dunno,” said Simon, “but we have to find out. The school is going to fall apart if we don’t.”

  “I’ll go,” said Holmes.

  “We’re all going,” said Simon. “Right?”

  “Right,” they all said, although Amanda didn’t relish the thought of going anywhere with Holmes now.

  “But where do we look?” said Amanda.

  “Where indeed?” said Simon. “Any ideas?”

  Complete silence.

  “I guess we have some research to do,” said Ivy.

  36

  Goodbye to the Crystals

  Before they tackled the problem of locating Blixus, Amanda and Simon turned their attention to the remaining nineteen crystals. They called Clive in as a consultant.

  “We should put them underground,” said Simon. “They need to be in their natural habitat.”

  “And it has to be a special type of soil,” said Clive.

  Amanda and Simon stared at him. “What do you mean?” said Amanda.

  “They need to be in contact with a blacksniff parasite,” said Clive.

  “A what?” said Amanda.

  “It’s a class of parasites that lives in the soil around here. It seems to like the crystals.”

  “A parasite on crystals?” said Amanda.

  “They are alive,” said Simon. “That makes sense. What are they for?”

  “I’m not sure exactly,” said Clive. “They do something to the crystals that make them thrive. I saw them with my special app when you were streaming that video to me from the factory. I’m not sure if they clean the surface of the crystals or nourish them somehow. But they can’t live underground without them.”

  “I thought they ate light,” said Amanda.

  “They do,” said Clive. “This might be another nutrient they need. I’d have to experiment to know for sure, but they’ve been through enough. I don’t want to poke and prod them anymore.”

  “That explains a lot,” said Simon.

  “What do you mean?” said Clive.

  “I’ll bet the soil where Mr. Wiffle’s body was found is full of those things. That’s why they did so well there. At the factory too.”

  “You’re right,” said Clive. “This area has loads. There weren’t that many on the London crystals though.”

  “Are you telling me that if Blixus had made more crystals and there had been no parasites, they would have died?” said Amanda.

  “Yes,” said Clive. “And get this: I sampled some of the dirt at the quarry, and it was all wrong. The ones he was making would never have lasted.”

  “But he didn’t care about their health,” said Amanda.

  “No,” said Simon. “Make ‘em and milk ‘em. That was all that mattered to him.”

  “But we have access to the right kind of soil around here, right?” said Amanda. Clive nodded. “Where would be the best place?”

  “There’s a little niche in the tunnels that would be good,” said Simon. “A part under the lake. Don’t you think that would work?”

  “I do,” said Clive. “The environment is perfect. Legatum is sitting on top of a unique ecosystem.”

  “Are you sure they’ll be safe there?” said Amanda.

  “Yes,” said Simon. “We’ll bury them where no one can see them. And if there’s another earthquake and the alcove collapses, they’ll still be fine. They like that kind of soil.”

  “Can we visit them?” said Amanda.

  “I think that can be arranged.”

  On the way to bury the crystals, Amanda, Simon, and Clive stopped to look at the secrets trove. They were proud of Ivy for figuring out how to get into the compartments, but the job before them was monumental. How were they going to get into all those compartments and read all those coded secrets? They were already spread so thin and there were thousands of secrets to obtain and read. It wouldn’t hurt to look at some of the ones that had been exposed by the quake and its aftershocks though.

  They didn’t know what the odds were of finding it, but within the first few secrets they looked at they saw something about the Cave of Skulls. This was the place where Thrillkill and Wink Wiffle had run into Blixus Moriarty. The kids were dying to find out what had happened there. Whatever it was might have led to David’s father’s death, and if they could follow the story they might even be able to find the perpetrator and figure out what went with the key Amphora had found. They pawed the open compartments nearby but couldn’t find another mention of the incident, at least not one they could decipher. Because so much of the trove seemed to be encrypted they couldn’t tell.

  “If these secrets have nothing to do with the Bible, what do you think they are?” said Simon.

  “I’m guessing they have to do with various cases,” said Amanda. “What else would be so important and take so much room?”

  “DNA,” said Simon.

  “You’re kidding,” said Amanda. “You don’t think the detectives keep people’s DNA codes locked up here, do you?”

  “Not really but you never know,” said Simon.

  “What about the national DNA database?” said Clive.

  “The trove could be for people who aren’t in the database.”

  “Why on earth would they have that?” said Amanda.

  “To compare with evidence they find,” said Simon.

  “Seems a weird way to store the information,” said Amanda. “I’m guessing that’s not it.”

  “Some kind of intelligence, maybe?” said Clive.

  “That’s possible,” said Amanda. “But it’s not in a very usable form, is it?”

  “There’s obviously more here than meets the eye,” said Simon.

  “There always is with this place,” said Amanda. “So are we ruling out the possibility that these are lines from Professor Stegelmeyer’s novels?”

  The two burst into laughter. It was the first time they’d done that in days. Clive searched their faces.

  “You don’t want to know,” said Amanda.

  When they’d found the place Simon had selected, the kids buried the crystals and said goodbye. As they placed dirt over them, the crystals blinked their farewells, then glowed apricot. Amanda felt tears sneak into her eyes and rubbed them away.

  “I’m glad we were able to save some of them,” she said. “It’s terrible that there will never be more now that the virus formula is gone.”
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br />   “We’re now custodians of the race,” said Simon. “It’s a big responsibility.”

  “What if something happens to us?” said Amanda.

  “I’ve already taken care of that,” he said. Amanda looked at him quizzically. “I stuck a secret in a compartment. They’ll figure it out eventually.”

  When they returned from their mission they were delighted to see Professor Kindseth walking down the hall, even if he was using crutches. He had been released from the hospital but was still weak. When Simon showed him his work from the 3D printer, he was thrilled. However when they told him about the factions the teachers had split into, he became very agitated. He wouldn’t verify or deny anything they claimed they knew, though, because the dispute was a matter for the teachers. Amanda could not imagine him taking sides and hoped he would remain neutral.

  There was still no news about the mysterious key. The detectives hadn’t found anything in Wink Wiffle’s house or office that it might go with. His wife didn’t know anything about it, and neither did David, who was trying to cooperate as much as possible while staying out of sight. Simon had even suggested to Ivy that maybe if she were to feel it she might get some vibrations off it, then relented and said, no, he was thinking of Editta. The girls told him that wasn’t funny and Ivy almost fined him for being so cruel. Poor Editta. What had become of her? What would become of her?

  As it turned out, Editta had kept all sorts of stuff about Nick in her room. It had been obvious that she’d had a crush on him since that first day of school when he was kind to her, and her obsession had only grown. No one had realized how foolish she could be, though, and her friends were terribly worried. The Moriartys would chew her up and spit her out. It was weird that the teachers hadn’t said anything about mounting a rescue operation. Whether that was because they were preoccupied or simply didn’t know where to look, the friends didn’t know. What they did know was that Editta Sweetgum was Legatum’s responsibility and the teachers had better do something fast. Of course that meant finding the Moriartys—a problem no one had solved.

  They were worried about David Wiffle too. As much as they didn’t like him, he’d been through an awful lot and they felt sorry for him. He’d lost his father, and by destroying the Detective’s Bible he’d thrown the school into chaos. Was destroying the Bible rather than letting Moriarty have it the right thing to do? Maybe the criminal wouldn’t have got hold of it anyway. David could have hid it in the boulders or something. Of course Moriarty still could have threatened him and he might have given it up rather than endure more pain, but there was no guarantee of that. It didn’t matter now, though. It seemed that Moriarty already had it, or what was left of it. Now the big question was whether he could crack the code and read it. What would David do then?