“I know, but it’s silly trash-talking. I shouldn’t let it affect me. If I want to make it to the Olympics someday, I should get used to this. I promise I’ll focus harder. I will land that double axel. I won’t let words get in my head.”
“Yeah, but words can hurt,” I said. “I’ve been bullied before and it’s not fun. I’d started thinking that what this person was saying about me was true, and well, you can say that it’s silly, but it clearly upset you.”
“Of course, it does,” Jordan admitted. Tatiana pulled her into a hug. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want you to think I was weak.”
Same with me. I didn’t want my parents to think I couldn’t handle a few mean comments, but I felt so much better after they found out. Who was I protecting by keeping it inside? Nobody but the bully.
And now, with Jordan, it wasn’t simply words.
“Listen, this has gotten a little beyond trash-talking. That stuff in your water. It could get dangerous.” I glanced over at her bottle. If you looked closely, you could see that there was an oily substance in it.
Jordan pulled apart from Tatiana and wiped away a tear. “Okay. You’re right. I can’t ignore this anymore. What do you need to know?”
Shelby walked up to Jordan and started circling her. “How do you know about the code? Who taught it to you?”
“We came up with it at camp years ago.”
“I presume this is The Mosley Academy you attend every summer,” Shelby clarified to a surprised Jordan. “Who is we?”
Jordan glanced nervously at Tatiana. “Well, it wasn’t anything big. We wanted a way to talk without our coaches knowing.”
“Again,” Shelby said, her patience wearing thin, “who is we?”
“Me and Douglas.”
It was Douglas! (Not Aisha! YES!)
“Don’t get too excited, Watson,” Shelby replied dryly. “Are you the only two who know it?”
Jordan shook her head. “No. The first year it was just the two of us. But then the next summer we shared it with some of the other campers. We wanted to find ways to sneak out and eat candy and pizza or stay up late. They’re very strict about our diet and sleep at camp.”
“That sounds awful,” Shelby said with a look of actual pity on her face. She didn’t really have empathy for anybody, except if you took away a person’s sugar.
“It’s what you have to do to become a champion,” Jordan replied as she looked at Tatiana. “Besides, I know who’s sending me the messages.”
“You do?” Tatiana asked. “Why not you tell me?”
“It’s pretty obvious: Aisha.”
UGH.
Shelby tilted her head. “Why would you say that? Did you see her doing it?”
“No, but we have this rivalry. She was at camp with us so she knows the code.”
No, no, no, NO!
“And, okay,” Jordan said with a scowl. “We’ve maybe had some issues in the past. What kills me is that I let her get into my head. Her plan is working.”
Shelby didn’t seem satisfied with that answer, which gave me a small sliver of hope. “So Aisha is your only competitor who knows the cipher?”
“There are others, but none who live in New York.”
“Can you provide me with a list of everybody who has the code?”
“Sure.”
Shelby approached one of the photos in the office. It was of Jordan and Douglas from two years ago. They were on the ice, either getting ready to start a routine or finishing it, and they were both looking at each other and smiling. “How did Douglas take it when you decided to go solo?”
“He was upset.” Jordan began wringing her hands. “I felt awful about it at the time, but now he has a great partner with Belle. Look, Douglas would never do this. Ever. He’s practically my brother and one of my closest friends. I’ve been skating with him since I could walk. Our parents thought we should skate together, but then I started to . . .”
There was a silence in the room until Tatiana stated what Jordan seemed too embarrassed or guilty to say. “She better skater. He hold her back.”
Jordan’s cheeks became flush. “It was rough for a while. Both Douglas and Sergi felt betrayed, but everything’s cool now. It’s been over a year.”
Shelby didn’t seem very convinced. Neither did I.
“Plus, what would Douglas have to gain if I dropped out?” Jordan added. “He’s not my competition. Aisha is.”
“You are underestimating the grudge of a boy scorned,” Shelby stated.
Jordan shook her head. “Not Douglas. He’s not like that. So, are you going to talk to Aisha?”
“We have several suspects we’ll be speaking with.”
“I appreciate your help and all, but I really think that’ll be a waste of your time.”
Shelby smirked. “I’ll be the judge of that.”
Jordan stood up. “Okay. Can I get back to skating?”
Shelby gestured toward the door. “By all means, but you need to proceed with caution. This person has gone beyond words now.”
“You mean Aisha has gone beyond.”
It looked like Jordan was not going to drop her Aisha suspicion. My mind flashed back to all the times I’d seen Jordan off the rink. She was always hanging with Douglas and Belle. She never seemed to look at Aisha, let alone talk to her. It made sense she’d simply assume it was Aisha. But what if it wasn’t?
Jordan paused before she walked out of the room. “But if you did catch her, she’d probably get kicked out of the US Figure Skating Association.”
“Just like what happened to the person who messed with her skates last year?” Shelby said with a smirk.
Jordan’s jaw went slack. “That was never proven.” Her voice was barely audible.
“One last question,” Shelby said. “Anybody else in the rink know the code? Sergi? Belle?”
“Belle’s mom?” I added.
Jordan sighed. “No. The coaches didn’t know we even had a code, but I guess they do now. Belle was too young and wasn’t at the camp back then. Listen, I have three days to nail my routines, so I really have to get back out on the ice. I hope you find the girl doing this, but I can only control my performance.” Jordan shrugged her shoulders before leaving with Tatiana.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“If Jordan is telling us the truth, we have a couple people to remove from the suspect list.”
“So it’s either Douglas or . . .” I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
But Shelby had no trouble finishing the thought for me. “Aisha.”
I dragged my feet back to the rink where everybody was skating like usual. My attention focused on Douglas and Aisha. One of them was responsible for this. I sank down on the bench in defeat.
“Excuse me.” Mrs. Booth walked over.
What now?
“Where did you get that?” She was pointing to something in my hand. I was holding one of the ciphers. I forgot to put it away before we walked out.
“I—I—” I stuttered.
“How do you know those drawings?”
Wait a second. How did she know these drawings?
“We learned it at The Mosley Academy,” Shelby replied quickly as she sat down next to me. “Are you familiar?”
Mrs. Booth nodded. “Yes. Belle keeps getting these messages.” She grabbed the sheet and studied it. “I don’t know what it means, though.”
WHAT?
Belle was also being bullied?
“It’s just something we do for fun,” Shelby replied coolly. “Come along, Julian. Best to get back to practice.”
Well, this day kept getting better.
Shelby took my hand as we went back out on the ice. “Oh, Watson, this just got interesting.”
Interesting? Didn’t she mean confusing?
Because the more we found out about this case, the less sense it made.
Hey, so—fun fact: you can apparently fall asleep standing up.
Yep. True st
ory.
“Watson?” Jason’s voice jolted me awake as I was leaning half-in, half-out of my locker after school. “You okay?”
I blinked a few times to wake myself up. “Yeah.”
But was I really okay? I was exhausted. Even though the school day was over, I still had plans to hang out with Dad before we had dinner with Shelby’s family.
There didn’t seem to be enough time in the day.
“Do you need my notes from English?” Jason asked. “You were staring off like a zombie or something.” He laughed.
“Yeah, that would be great.”
Because on top of everything, I still had homework. Couldn’t forget that.
This case couldn’t end soon enough.
Now that we knew Belle was also getting notes, it had to be Douglas. Who else would have problems with Jordan, his former partner, and Belle, his current one? Although Belle hadn’t been acting any differently. It was her mom who seemed to be distracting her more than anything.
But I didn’t really know Belle. Maybe she had been frazzled?
The most important question I had was: What now? How were Shelby and I going to finally solve this thing?
I looked around the hallway for Shelby, but couldn’t find her.
“Here,” Jason said as he took a photo of his notebook. “I’ll text you.”
“Thanks, man.”
My stomach growled. These long days had made me extra hungry. After the “Moira Incident,” both Mom and Shelby had made sure I always have food, water, and juice on me at all times.
I took out my backpack and unzipped the front pocket to grab a bag of almonds. A slip of paper came out.
Someone left me a note?
I unfolded it to find this written on notebook paper:
A new cipher.
For me.
“Whoa, is that one of your codes?” Jason asked.
“Yeah,” I replied as I sat down on the floor and took out a copy of our notes with the decryption.
And, of course, the first letter was new. But I started working on the rest of the code. So far I had: -EET -E AT. We didn’t have the letter M yet, so I had to deduce that I was being told to meet someone at . . . My hands worked overtime.
Jason sat down next to me and watched as I broke the code.
MEET ME AT SALS FOUR
“What’s Sals Four?” I asked aloud. Was it some kind of store?
Jason took the piece of paper. “I think it means that you’re supposed to meet someone at Sal’s at four o’clock.”
“Oh,” I replied, feeling foolish since I was supposed to be the detective. (I was also on very little sleep.) “Right. Thanks.”
“Is it safe for you to go there by yourself?” Jason asked. “You want backup?”
“It’s fine. It’s from Shelby.”
Shelby was the one who had the code. She probably made up a new character for M. Shelby liked going to Sal’s. Who else would’ve sent me the cipher? But why didn’t she just tell me when I saw her at lunch or in Mr. Crosby’s class? Or text me?
Because it’s Shelby. She doesn’t make anything easy.
Oh, yeah. That.
“Well, I better go,” I said to Jason as I grabbed my jacket and headed out of the building. If I was done at Sal’s before four thirty, I might have enough time to do my homework before Dad showed up at five. I hoped. “Talk to you later.”
My feet moved slowly during the dozen blocks to Sal’s. At least there was pizza in my future. I started thinking about the case. Shelby must’ve figured something out.
As much as I wanted to interrogate Belle and her mom about the ciphers Belle had been receiving, Shelby didn’t want them to know we were aware of Jordan’s notes or blow our cover. But regionals were in three days. We had to figure out how to get Douglas to confess. Or at least catch him in a trap.
I walked into Sal’s right at four o’clock, but a quick scan showed that I was the first one to arrive.
Weird. Shelby was always early.
I slid into a booth right as my phone buzzed in my bag. It was a text from Shelby, probably telling me the unthinkable and that she was, for the first time in the history of modern timekeeping, late.
Talked to Jason. Watson, that cipher wasn’t from me.
WHAT?!?!
If Shelby wasn’t the one who sent me the note, who did?
All of a sudden I felt sick to my stomach.
There was only one person sending ciphers. They were up to no good.
And it looked like I was their next target.
“Watson!” I jumped as Sal called out my name. “So good to see you. You want some cheesy garlic bread?”
I automatically nodded even though I was no longer hungry.
I had to get out of there right away. Before it was too late.
“You came.” I froze as a voice sounded behind me. “I wasn’t sure if you would.”
No. NO. NO!
WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING TO ME?
I, John Howard Watson, am the most gullible human being alive.
Slowly, I turned around and there she was. The person who sent me the cipher. The one who lured me into her trap.
Aisha.
Aisha slid into the seat across from me, a smile on her face.
She doesn’t look like a bully or criminal mastermind.
Yeah, but I’d been wrong before.
She smiled at me. It was a warm smile. A nice smile. A really pretty smile.
Ugh. I was in so much trouble and all I could think of was how cute Aisha looked. It was the first time I’d seen her out of her skating clothes. Her hair was down and she had on jeans and a pink fuzzy sweater that hung off one shoulder. She looked like a regular girl.
Not at all like a guilty culprit.
Trouble. Trouble. Trouble.
“Watson!” Sal approached us, his arms stretched out. “What can I get your lovely friend?”
Aisha didn’t even look at the menu. “Water and a small salad, dressing on the side, please.” She then leaned in toward me and said, “After regionals, I’m coming here and eating an entire pizza by myself.”
I was mute. I didn’t know what to say. Or what to do.
“Who’s Watson?” she asked.
“Ah . . . ,” I murmured.
“Look, I’m sorry to be so secretive about meeting you. There’s just a lot of pressure on me right now. I overheard Mrs. Booth mentioning she saw you guys with the secret code. So I decided to take a shot and ask you to meet me outside the rink. You know, to get to know you better.”
I simply nodded. My phone in my backpack kept buzzing. I hadn’t had a chance to respond to Shelby. I needed to tell her that Aisha was the one sending the ciphers. And that she had me cornered.
No. I could do this on my own. I needed to use this moment to interrogate her. I remembered all the things Shelby had told me about questioning a witness. It was best to do it when they didn’t even realize they were a suspect. It gave them a false sense of security. Here we were, just two skaters at a pizza place.
“My parents would kill me if they knew I was here.” Aisha tucked one of her twists behind her ear.
Sal put a basket of cheesy garlic bread in front of us. I needed a couple more minutes to figure out a plan so I took a huge bite of bread. The hot cheese scalded the roof of my mouth.
“Hot, hot,” I called out as I took a large sip of water.
Aisha put her nose close to the bread and took a deep breath. “It smells so good. I guess one little bite won’t hurt.” She picked up a piece and put it on a napkin. “But I’ll wait for it to cool.”
Okay, think, Watson. You’ve always known how to talk to people. I simply had to ask her some open-ended questions. It was best to let someone talk and talk. The more a person spoke, the better the chance to get them to say something incriminating.
“Your parents are strict?” I asked.
Aisha slumped back into the booth. “Yes. Don’t get me wrong, I’m the one who wants to skate
. Being in the rink is one of the few times I really feel like me. But it’s expensive and my parents have had to take on extra jobs. They’ve been making sacrifices for me so I need to be focused on skating one hundred percent.”
I nodded, but didn’t reply because I wanted her to continue. Silence makes people uncomfortable so hopefully she’d keep talking and something would slip.
(See, Aisha wasn’t the only one who could set a trap.)
Sal placed a salad in front of Aisha and she started to pick at it with a fork. “I usually am focused, but right before a competition I want distraction. If I get too freaked out before a skate, I overthink things. I just need to go in there on Saturday and do what I know I can do. What I’ve been trained to do.”
I nodded yet again. So Aisha wanted a distraction. What better way to distract yourself than by sending cryptic messages to the competition?
But why to Belle? Maybe she didn’t want to share a rink with anybody? Jordan didn’t have to.
“What about you?” Aisha asked as she took a bite of a lettuce leaf.
What about me?
I needed to get her to confess and to find out what her endgame was. Would she stop harassing Jordan after regionals, or was this only the beginning?
“Hey,” I said, knowing that I had to get it out there. “I heard a rumor the other day about you and Jordan.”
Aisha froze for a moment before setting her fork down. “What rumor?”
I wanted to make this as vague as possible. “About a shoelace.”
She grimaced. “Yes. I don’t know for sure if it was Jordan, but it wouldn’t be the first time she got creative when it came to winning.”
Hold on. It couldn’t be possible it was Jordan sending herself ciphers and doing all of this to make Aisha look guilty. Could it?
But Jordan wasn’t the one who came to us, Tatiana did. And Jordan didn’t seem to think this was a big deal. She said it was all in her head.
Which was exactly something a guilty person would say.
“Like what?” I pressed. I needed to know what else Jordan was capable of.
“Well, there was another skater who bunked with her at world’s two years ago, Katrina. The skirt of her costume mysteriously went missing right before her long program. I’ve learned to keep everything locked up. Or at least give it to my parents or Sergi.”
The Great Shelby Holmes and the Coldest Case Page 9
