The Magic Nation Thing

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  Of course Tree was just hanging around to be with Abby until Dorcas showed up, instead of starting the long drive home to her apartment in Berkeley. Which made Abby feel even more guilty about how she and Paige had ruined Tree's disguise and her chance to solve her first case.

  But Tree didn't bring the subject up again. And a few minutes later the two of them were sitting in the breakfast nook, eating microwaved tamale pie and carrots and peas, and Abby was appreciating how Tree was finding other things to talk about besides what a mess she and Paige had made of everything.

  They'd been over all the subjects people talk about when they're trying not to mention something in particular. Things like the weather, and how Abby was doing in her classes, and how many games the 49ers had won. It was Abby who finally brought up the subject they'd been avoiding.

  “Well,” she said, “other than having a couple of dumb kids blow your disguise, how was your day? Did you find anything out before we showed up?”

  Tree's smile was, as usual, wide and uncomplicated, saying just what a smile was supposed to say, instead of slipping into a put-down as Dorcas's often did. “Nothing for sure,” she said. “I went past the latest burn site a couple of times, and I did see some people hanging around. There wasn't much to see because the building was unoccupied when it caught fire. Most of the sightseers were staying outside the police tape, but a couple of guys in suits were poking around in what was left of the building. One of them was the owner of the building. I met him when he came to the office to ask Dorcas to take the case, and he would be hard to forget. He must weigh three hundred pounds and he has this huge hooked nose. I've never seen the other man before but he was probably the insurance company's arson investigator. The rest of them, the crowd outside the barrier, were probably just local rubberneckers.”

  “Or maybe the criminals returning to the scene of their crime,” Abby said. “Aren't criminals supposed to do that? What did they look like?”

  Tree thought a minute before she said, “Nothing you wouldn't expect. Most of them looked like curious neighbors. But then later some kids showed up—all ages. The older ones looked pretty tough. A lot like the ones who were getting ready to give you and Paige a bad time when I showed up. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them were involved in the arson. I described them all in my report. That's about all I was able to come up with. Except for an empty matchbook I found under a bush.”

  A sound echoed somewhere in the back of Abby's mind. A faint reverberation like the distant ringing of a gong. “A matchbook?” she asked.

  “Yes. But there're very long odds against its having anything to do with the fire. Anyone could have thrown it down there. And I don't think it has the kind of surface that could carry much in the way of fingerprints.”

  Abby nodded. “Yeah, you're right,” she said. “Anyone could have thrown it down.” But the faint shiver of sound was still there, even when Dorcas called on her cell phone to say she had crossed the Bay Bridge and would be home in a few minutes, and it continued after Tree went to her car, calling back over her shoulder, “Just tell Dorcas my report is on her desk.”

  It wouldn't be long before Dorcas's Honda pulled into the driveway, but in that few minutes Abby could …

  No. No. She couldn't and wouldn't.

  Except that it had been at least partly her fault that Tree had lost her chance to solve the arsonist mystery and maybe be promoted to a real licensed private investigator. And Tree had always been such a good friend. A friend who, just tonight when she was probably tired and eager to get home, had stayed around just so Abby wouldn't be alone. So if there was any way to help Tree solve the mystery …

  Abby was still shaking her head and arguing with herself as she went into the office, found the folder that held Tree's report, and took out several typed pages. At the back of the folder was an empty matchbook. Abby stared at the matchbook for several seconds before she reached out slowly and picked it up. She was holding it tightly in the palm of her right hand when it began to feel warm. Slowly at first, and then faster and stronger, everything began to spin.

  AS THE DIZZYING spin got stronger, the feeling of heat in Abby's palm became more distinct. It was a deepening warmth that soon began to leap and flare as if she were holding a handful of fire, a painless burning that surged up her arm, through her body, and into her brain. The rest of the Magic Nation craziness was there too, with spinning shreds and pieces coming together in a way that gradually blocked out the view of Dorcas's desk and the familiar office wall. And then suddenly everything went black. Complete and utter darkness—except for a tiny flicker of light.

  The fire leapt up, died down, and grew again until its light began to illuminate the walls of a room—a dark, barren room where torn wallpaper dangled and where the paint on the walls and ledges was chipped and stained. The room seemed almost empty, except for the source of the mysterious flame. Flickering firelight was leaping from something shaped like a large bucket. The window curtains were flaming too, and the air was becoming heavy with smoke.

  Then the pieces were breaking apart and spinning again, and the scene was changing. Now the light was cool and dim. Streetlights shining through heavy fog faintly illuminated an empty street where darkened windows gave a middle-of-the-night feeling. As the scene narrowed to the exterior of a large three-story apartment house, a man emerged from a doorway, looked carefully in every direction, hurried down the steps, and walked quickly away. As he approached the street, Abby could see him more clearly. Could see his huge bulky shape and his big shiny nose. He was wearing heavy gloves and carrying a large object in one hand. Just before he reached the sidewalk, he stopped long enough to throw something into a clump of bushes.

  And then there was the familiar sound of a car in the driveway, followed by a click as Dorcas's key turned in the lock, and Abby came spinning back to the reality of the O'Malley Detective Agency office. Abby quickly put the matchbook back where she'd found it and slammed the folder shut, pushing it away from her across the desk. “No,” she whispered. “No. I don't believe it. It doesn't mean anything.” Turning away, she hurried to the kitchen in time to see her mother coming in the back door.

  “Sorry to be so late.” Dorcas took off her jacket as she looked around the kitchen. She was wearing her gray-green pantsuit and a turtleneck that Abby's dad had given her a long time ago, along with a bunch of jangly jewelry. “Have you eaten?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Abby said. “Tree helped me heat up some stuff and she ate some too. She stayed until you called. There's some of the tamale pie left. Are you hungry?”

  Dorcas shook her head. “I ate at a deli while I was waiting to interview a woman who claims she could be a witness in the Anderson case. But I might have a cup of coffee.”

  While Dorcas made her coffee and took her cup to the breakfast nook table, Abby hung around drinking a glass of water and arguing with herself about what she should tell Dorcas and when she should do it. She knew all the facts would be in Tree's long, carefully written report. Including the facts about what she and Paige had done. All about how they had been stupid enough to go downtown without asking and had wound up blowing Tree's disguise. At last Abby took a deep breath and began. “I guess I have something to tell you, Mom.”

  “Yes? What is it then?” Dorcas looked up quickly and motioned for Abby to join her at the table. “Sit down. Tell me.”

  So Abby pulled out a chair and sat—and went on sitting while her mother's stare sharpened. “It's about a dumb thing that Paige and I did today.” She paused, sighed, and went on. “It was Paige's idea but I went along with it, so it's my fault too.”

  “For heaven's sake, Abby. What happened? What did you do?”

  “Well, my first mistake was telling Paige about the disguise I'd come up with for Tree, and Paige was …Well, you know how crazy she is about anything like that. She got so excited and she wanted to see if we could do something to help Tree catch the arsonist.”

  Abby told about how Pai
ge kept them on the bus until they got nearly down to Van Ness. And about how the gang of boys had started after them and Tree had had to blow her disguise to come to their rescue. As Abby talked, Dorcas's eyes narrowed and her lips got tighter. It wasn't until Abby stopped that Dorcas started, but she had a lot to say.

  When Dorcas was finished Abby's allowance was gone for two weeks, and Dorcas was going to call Daphne Borden in the morning, and after that, “Who knows? Daphne and I will have to come to a decision. Perhaps we'll have to arrange for you and Paige to see less of each other for a while. At least until both of you are able to behave in a more responsible manner.”

  Abby was shocked speechless. Not to see Paige? For how long? Dorcas hadn't said. Abby was fighting tears as she left the kitchen and went up to bed feeling so guilty, and at the same time so angry, that it was hard for her to think of anything else. Hard even to get back to what had happened, or had seemed to be happening, in the agency office when she'd picked up the matchbook. But once she started thinking about it, she couldn't stop.

  What had she seen, really seen, when she'd held the matchbook in her hand? Where had the images come from and what did they mean? Wasn't it possible that she'd imagined a fat man with a big shiny nose simply because Tree had described such a person as the owner of the building?

  It didn't make any sense. Why would anyone want to burn down his own apartment building? As she changed into her pajamas and got into bed, Abby went over all of it again and again. She went over exactly what she'd seen, or thought she'd seen, perhaps a dozen times while she tried and failed to go to sleep.

  The questions she kept asking herself were what she had seen, and what did it mean, and hardest of all, what should she do about it? Should she go to Dorcas and tell her that she thought the man who owned the apartment building had set fire to it himself—and why she thought so?

  And then … either it would turn out that she was right and Dorcas would say that her theory about Abby's supernatural abilities was absolutely true. Or else it would turn out that what she thought she'd seen was a bunch of nonsense, and that the owner of a building wouldn't be stupid enough to burn down his own property. And then Abby O'Malley wouldn't have to worry about being some kind of weird throwback to the days of witches and wizards. But what she would have to worry about was being even deeper in the doghouse than she already was, for making up a wild story to try to get herself and Paige out of trouble.

  When morning finally came Abby was bleary-eyed from lack of sleep and still undecided about what she would do and who she would or wouldn't tell about the matchbook. But then fate, or just Dorcas's crazy schedule, took matters out of her hands, at least temporarily. Just as Abby reached the kitchen, the phone rang and Dorcas went to answer it, and a minute later she was throwing on her coat and rushing out of the house.

  “There's oatmeal on the stove,” she called to Abby over her shoulder. “And I haven't forgotten about talking to Daphne. It will just have to wait till I get back. Tree should be here in a few minutes. Tell her I had an urgent call from a possible witness.”

  Tree did arrive soon, in fact while Abby was still spooning up soupy oatmeal. (Dorcas's oatmeal was usually thick and lumpy except when she was in a hurry. Then it was apt to be more like oatmeal soup.) It wasn't particularly appetizing, but even so, when Abby invited Tree to have some, she said she would. Glancing at her watch, Tree said she thought there was time enough for a quick bowl of something nutritious, which she was really going to need because it looked as if she would be having another very busy day.

  Abby sat across the table, watching Tree eat soupy oatmeal and being grateful that Tree hadn't even mentioned the mess Abby and Paige had made of her first surveillance assignment, when all at once she found herself saying, “Why would a person set fire to his own building?”

  Tree looked up quickly and stared at Abby for a moment before she asked, “What person are you referring to, Abbykins?”

  Even though Abby had more or less asked for it, Tree's question came as a shock. Now she'd have to come up with an answer that would get Tree thinking in a particular direction without admitting what she thought she knew and how she knew it. It wasn't going to be easy.

  Abby shrugged. “Oh, I don't know. I was just wondering.”

  “But why? Why would you wonder about something like that?” Tree's eyes narrowed. “It wasn't one of those hunches your mother says you have, was it?”

  “No. Not a hunch, at least not exactly. And anyway, why would a person burn their own building?”

  Tree shrugged. “Well, it's been known to happen. Particularly if the building is in bad shape and the fire insurance is worth more than what the owner has invested in it.”

  “Oh yeah,” Abby said excitedly. “I didn't think about that.”

  “Well, I sort of did.” Tree's smile looked uncertain. “But Dorcas didn't really agree with me. She said this Mr. Barker seemed like such a law-abiding person. And she was impressed by the fact that he looked up our agency and asked us to investigate, even though the insurance company was already doing its own investigation.”

  “Yeah,” Abby admitted reluctantly. “I guess he wouldn't have done that if he had anything to hide.”

  Tree shrugged again. She was grinning as she said, “Yes, that's what you might think, or else it might be what Mr. Barker wanted everyone to think. But you know what, Abbykins? I was there in the office when he came in to talk to Dorcas, and I got the feeling that maybe what he was really thinking was that an agency run by a couple of women wouldn't be much of a threat.”

  Tree glanced at her watch again and hurried off to open the office, leaving Abby to think over what had just been said. And the more she thought about it, the more convinced she became that Tree was right when she'd said this Barker guy had probably picked the O'Malley agency just because he was the kind of dude who didn't think women detectives could possibly be smart enough to mess up his plans. Particularly youngish women like Tree—and yeah, okay, like Dorcas too. Tree probably knew what she was talking about. After all, a person who looked like Tree Torrelli would have had a lot of experience in sorting out whether the men she met were telling her the truth about what they were thinking—or not.

  So Abby went into the office, and when Tree looked up questioningly, Abby sighed and said, “Okay. So I guess I did have this kind of hunch about that fat Barker guy. Like, I had this feeling that he was the one who set the fire. Only I thought it was a dumb hunch because I didn't see why somebody would burn down his own building. But that was what the hunch was about.”

  Tree listened carefully, and when Abby stopped talking, she asked when Abby had had the hunch and what it had been like. But when Abby shook her head and said she'd rather not talk about it anymore, Tree didn't push it. However, she must have taken what Abby had said pretty seriously, because she closed up the office, went to the insurance company's office, and got them to get a search warrant to check out Mr. Barker's house and car, which they hadn't done before because Mr. Barker had an alibi— a friend who insisted they were together at the time the fire started.

  Abby never found out exactly what Tree said to the insurance people, but that afternoon a fire-damaged bucket was found in the trunk of Barker's car, and the investigators also found at the back of his closet a pair of his shoes that had incriminating stuff on the soles. And when the police interviewed his friend again, the friend admitted that he'd been bribed to lie about being with Barker that night.

  It turned out that the other two fires really had been accidents. One had been caused by a cigarette and the other by some bad wiring, but the two of them happening so close together probably gave Barker the idea that he could torch his own place and everyone would think it had just been one more attack by the neighborhood arsonist.

  For the rest of that week, Abby was able to arrange her diary entries into two lists—a Bad News list and a Good News list. She put Mr. Barker's being arrested for arson under the Good News heading, but the fact that
the O'Malley Agency didn't get, and never was going to get, all the money he'd agreed to pay them went under Bad News. On the other hand, the agency did get quite a bit more publicity, and that, according to Tree, was all to the Good.

  Another good development was that although Dorcas did have the talk with Daphne she'd threatened, and both Abby and Paige did get seriously chewed out, that was about as bad as it got. For one reason or another, Dorcas seemed to have forgotten about insisting that Abby stop spending so much time with Paige.

  The other Good News item was a very exciting e-mail that came on Friday from Abby's dad. The e-mail said that Mr. Montgomery, her dad's boss, had asked him how he would feel about moving back to his old office in San Francisco. That really was Good News in Abby's book. But from Dorcas's point of view? Abby wasn't too sure. When Abby asked her—came right out and asked her how she felt about it—Dorcas said, “I think it's great. Martin loves San Francisco.”

  But lots of people loved San Francisco, and there were all kinds of ways to say great. The way Dorcas said it was only great—not GREAT, and certainly not THE GREATEST.

  SO THE ARSON case was solved by …well, by a hunch, but except for Abby and Tree, nobody knew whose hunch it had been. At first Tree had wanted to tell that it had been Abby who had fingered the arsonist, but Abby had begged her not to. They'd had quite a discussion about it the day after Mr. Barker was arrested. Dorcas had left early to follow her latest lead in a missing-person case, and Abby was passing through the office on her way to catch the bus to school.

  “Oh good,” Tree said when Abby came in. “I wanted to talk to you.”

  “Oh yeah?” Abby said. “What about?”

  “About letting people know that you were the one who had the …” Tree paused and then went on. “The hunch about who the arsonist was.” Her eyebrows went up when she said the word hunch, to show that she knew it had been something a little different from a good guess. Or maybe a lot different.