Ivy and Bean Take the Case

by Annie Barrows

  “But now we know,” Bean was saying. “We didn’t know before, and now we do.”

  “He’s just tired because his baby cries all night!” said Prairie. “It’s not very mysterious,” agreed Dino. Ruby and Trevor, who lived down the street, nodded. They’d come outside when the mailman screamed, but they didn’t think a sleepy mailman was mysterious either.

  Ivy’s cheeks got pink. “Look! No one knew why he slept in his truck. Now we know. The mystery was solved by Bean, P. I.”

  Prairie shook her head.

  “Fine,” said Bean. “I’ll solve my next mystery alone. With Ivy.”

  “What’s the mystery?” asked Sophie S.

  “I can’t tell you, but it’s a good one,” said Bean, crossing her arms.

  “A really good one,” added Ivy. “Very mysterious and strange.”

  “Strange?” said Sophie S. “Really?”

  Bean frowned. It wasn’t exactly strange.

  “Yeah!” said Ivy. “So strange it would make your hair stand on end.”

  Trevor made an I-don’t-believe-you noise. “What is it?”

  “So mysterious that your skin would crawl,” Ivy went on. Bean looked at her, worried. Their skin probably wouldn’t crawl, exactly. “So incredible—”

  “WHAT?” yelled Trevor, Ruby, and Prairie at the same time.

  “The Tengs!” Bean shouted. “What do they keep locked behind their fence?”

  There was a silence. “I’ve always wondered that,” said Trevor.

  + + + + + +

  It was a beautiful garden. There were flowers everywhere, roses and big blue things that Bean didn’t know the name of. There was a cherry tree with shiny red cherries on it. There was a stone lion and a table and a white bench where the Tengs’ cat snoozed in the sun. There were even artichokes with purple tops growing on stems. Bean had never known that artichokes grew on stems. It was pretty. It was nice.

  But it was not mysterious.

  Or strange.

  Or incredible or skin-crawling.

  Bean climbed down the chair on top of the other chair on top of the table. Slowly, she turned to face Ivy, Sophie S., Dino, Prairie, Ruby, and Trevor.

  WHAT’S UP?

  Things were not going the way Bean wanted.

  Dino pulled a blade of grass from the lawn. “Look!” he yelled. “It’s the Mystery of the Piece of Grass!”

  Sophie S. kicked off her flip-flop. “Oh my gosh! It’s the Mystery of the Missing Shoe!”

  Prairie held her finger in front of her face. “I see a mysterious hand!”

  Bean felt herself get hot and embarrassed. No one laughed at Al Seven. She was doing exactly what he did. Why was he cool and tough, while Bean was hot and embarrassed? It wasn’t fair.

  Ivy stomped her foot. “There are strange and mysterious things on Pancake Court. You just don’t notice them.”

  Sophie S. and Ruby giggled. Trevor said, “You’re loonies. Nothing strange ever happens around here. This is the most boring place in the world.” Trevor and Ruby went to school at home. They got bored a lot. “I’ll bet you fifty cents you can’t show me one strange thing on Pancake Court. One!”

  Bean looked quickly around Pancake Court for one strange thing. Houses. Yards. Cars. Mr. Columbi going to work. Two cats. A bicycle. Jake the Teenager and his shopping bag. Nothing strange. She had to think. She could say she had a buried treasure map, and then she could draw it really quick.

  Trevor made a snorty sound. “It’s the case of the missing mystery!” he said. Then he laughed.

  “Bean’s hat is pretty strange,” giggled Prairie.

  Bean yanked her hat off. “Come on, Ivy,” she said, as toughly as she could. “We have mysteries to solve.” Ivy nodded in an Al Sevenish way. “Look tough,” muttered Bean. Ivy rubbed her face, and they walked quickly away around Pancake Court.

  Bean needed a mystery on the double. A lost puppy. Or a lost necklace. Or strange people hiding behind trees. Or smudged handprints on cars. Or anything. “Do you see anything that looks mysterious?” she whispered to Ivy.

  “Mrs. Trantz’s rocks?” suggested Ivy. Mrs. Trantz had white rocks in her front yard instead of grass. Why would anyone do that?

  “Not good enough,” said Bean. “We need something strange and mysterious, like—” She stopped. “That,” she said, pointing.

  It was Dino’s house she was pointing at, but the house wasn’t the mysterious part. The mysterious part was a bright yellow rope that dangled from the roof of the house to the ground. One end was tied around the chimney. The other end was sitting in the middle of Dino’s front lawn.

  “What is that?” asked Ivy.

  “It’s a mystery!” said Bean. Whew! Just in the nick of time!

  Ivy began to smile. “It’s a rope of mystery.”

  “Still not scared!” hollered Trevor. He and Dino were picking bark off sticks and throwing it at each other.

  “Hey, Dino!” called Bean. “What’s that rope on your house?”

  Dino stopped throwing bark and looked at his house. He frowned. “I don’t know.” He threw another piece of bark. Then he came to stand next to Bean and Ivy. “It wasn’t there before.”

  “So this is the first time you’ve seen it?” asked Bean.

  Dino nodded. Then he frowned some more. “Weird.”

  “Strange,” Bean corrected him.

  “And mysterious,” said Ivy.

  Trevor threw a piece of bark at Dino. It bounced off. “What are you guys doing?” he asked, coming closer.

  “I’m going to ask my mom,” said Dino. “She probably did it. Or something.”

  Bean and Ivy and Trevor watched the rope until Dino and his mom came back. Dino’s mom looked busy. She had two pairs of glasses on her head and a sticky note on her shirt that said Don’t forget Friday!

  “That,” said Dino, pointing at the rope.

  Dino’s mom looked up to the chimney. She looked down to the grass. She frowned. She went to the rope and pulled it gently. She frowned more. “That’s weird,” she said. Still frowning, she turned to Dino. “If you went up on that roof, there’s going to be trouble, young man!”

  “I didn’t do it!” yelped Dino. “If I did it, I wouldn’t ask you about it!”

  “Right. Sorry.” His mom shook her head. “I have no idea what it is. I didn’t put it there. I couldn’t, actually. We don’t have a ladder that goes all the way up to the roof.” She frowned again. “Strange.”

  Bean looked at Trevor and wiggled her eyebrows, which was sort of like sticking out your tongue, but you couldn’t get in trouble for it.

  Dino’s mom stared at the rope for a little while longer and then shrugged. “I don’t know. But I have to finish this e-mail. We’ll figure it out later.” She went back in the house.

  Bean waited patiently until she was gone. Then she turned around to Dino and Trevor. “Well, whaddaya know?” she said. She put her hat on again. “We’ve got a mystery on Pancake Court!”

  PANCAKE FALLS

  The first thing Bean did was dust for fingerprints. Al Seven was always dusting for fingerprints. Here’s how you dust for fingerprints: First, you sprinkle powder. Then you gently dust it away. And then you whip out your magnifying glass and peer through it, and— ta-DA!—you see the fingerprints of the bad guy!

  Bean didn’t really understand how that part worked, but the dusting part was fun.

  Gently, Bean sprinkled baby powder on the yellow rope. Gently, she brushed it away with a paintbrush.

  Everyone leaned in to look.

  Bean whipped out her magnifying glass and peered through it. She saw rope. “Just as I thought,” she said. She nodded slowly and made her voice low. “There are no fingerprints here.”

  Ivy nodded slowly, too. “No fingerprints.”

  “But that doesn’t help us at all!” said Dino. “Why is there a rope on my house?”

  Bean made her eyes very narrow. “Time will tell.” She put her magnifying glass in her pocket and l
ooked at the sky. Speaking of time, it was almost time for dinner.

  Her dad came out on the front porch. “Bean!” he called.

  “You can’t leave now!” said Dino.

  Al Seven never said good-bye. He said things like “Catch you later, chump.” But that was really mean, so Bean said, “Bye, you guys. See you tomorrow.”

  + + + + + +

  The next morning was completely regular— yawn, splash, stumble, cereal, banana, where’s my jacket, somebody took it, oh here it is, bye—until Bean got outside and saw Ivy. Ivy was standing on the sidewalk in front of her house, watching the ground. She was watching the ground so seriously that she didn’t hear Bean running up behind her.

  “Bug?” asked Bean. She hoped it was a big one.

  Ivy shook her head and pointed.

  The yellow rope had grown in the night. Where it had ended the day before, on Dino’s lawn, there was now a knot. More yellow rope went across the lawn, circled around Dino’s tree, down his driveway, and next door to Ivy’s house, where it snaked in and out of her fence posts and ended at her stairs.

  “Wow,” said Bean. It was a real, genuine mystery.

  “Yeah,” said Ivy. She turned around and looked at Bean carefully. “Did you do it?”

  “Me?” squawked Bean. “No! No way!” She stopped squawking and looked carefully at Ivy. “It wasn’t you, was it?”

  Ivy shook her head. “No. I thought it was you.”

  “How would I get up to Dino’s chimney?” Bean pointed out.

  They both turned and stared at the rope. “It’s the real thing,” muttered Ivy. Bean nodded.

  They both tried to look tough. But they couldn’t. “Cool!” they yelled at the same time.

  + + + + + +

  For some reason, Dino didn’t think it was cool. “It’s creepy,” he said, when they met up that afternoon. Sophie S. and Ruby and Trevor nodded. They thought it was creepy, too.

  “Why?” asked Bean. She looked at the yellow rope winding in and out of Ivy’s fence. “It’s just a rope.”

  “But somebody put it there,” said Dino. “And we don’t know why.”

  Bean nodded. “Yeah. Pretty strange, isn’t it?”

  “A real mystery,” said Ivy.

  This time, nobody argued, not even Prairie. Ha. “So you want to find out who did it?” asked Bean.

  “Yeah,” said Dino.

  “Yeah,” said Ruby and Trevor and Sophie S. Prairie nodded.

  “Okay,” said Bean. “I’ll take the case.” She tried to remember what Al Seven said when he took the case. She pulled her hat down and said, “Watch out, Mr. Whoever-tied-the-yellow-rope. You’ve met your match.”

  HOUSE CALLS

  Ivy came down her stairs holding a gigantic pair of scissors. “My mom says not to cut anything thick with them.” She handed them to Bean.

  “I’ve seen ropes that are way thicker than this,” said Bean. She knelt by the end of the rope and started cutting. “Okay,” she said, when she had finally done it. “This is our sample. Let’s get to work.” She stood up.

  “Where are you going?” asked Dino.

  “We’re going to find our suspect,” said Bean.

  “Our what?” asked Prairie.

  “Suspects are people who might have done it,” explained Bean. “We’re going to look in people’s basements and sheds and stuff. If we see a yellow rope, then we know that person is probably the one who’s doing it. Get it?”

  They got it.

  “First stop is your house,” said Bean to Dino.

  “My house?!” shouted Dino. “I didn’t do anything!”

  “Okay. But what about your dad?” asked Bean. “Or Crum . . . I mean, Matt?” Everyone called Dino’s brother Crummy Matt except Dino. It was hard to remember to call him just plain Matt when Dino was around.

  “It wasn’t my dad or Matt,” said Dino. “They’re on a field trip. But you can look in our basement if you want.”

  Dino’s basement was surprising, but not because there was yellow rope in it. There were lots of paintings in it and they were all of clouds. Dino’s dad had painted them.

  At Sophie S.’s house, they kept their junk in the garage. There was plenty of junk in there. But no rope.

  Ruby and Trevor’s house was the neatest place in the world. Even in the shed, all the stuff was in baskets and each basket had a little sign on it. Ivy and Bean found green garden string, but no rope.

  They went to Prairie’s house, Sophie W.’s house, and Jake the Teenager’s house. Jake the Teenager said his gecko was sleeping, so they couldn’t come in. But he said he knew for sure he didn’t have any yellow rope. Then they went to Ivy’s house and Bean’s house, too, just to be fair. They saw many interesting things. But not one of the things they saw was a yellow rope.

  After that, everyone went to Bean’s office to rest. Bean sat in her spinny chair, thinking. They had done all the kid-houses. Eight kid-houses, no rope. That left seven—no, eight—houses with no kids or tiny kids or grown-up kids. How was she going to get into those basements and sheds? Could she sneak in? She might have to break a window. Al Seven would do it in a second. Al Seven had probably never been grounded.

  Ivy cleared her throat.

  Bean spun.

  Ivy cleared her throat again.

  Bean looked at her. What?

  Ivy wiggled her eyebrows. She tossed her hair.

  Bean gave Ivy a bug-eyed look. What?

  Ivy tapped her nose.

  “What?!” Bean shouted.

  “I have an idea!” yelled Ivy. Everyone looked up. “Well, I do,” she said. “I read a book that said you can tell when people are lying if they look to one side or cover their mouths or pull their ears while they’re talking.”

  “Pull their ears? Who pulls their ears?” asked Sophie S., confused.

  Bean pulled her ear. “It doesn’t make me feel like lying.”

  “No,” said Ivy. “It doesn’t make you lie to pull your ear, but if you are lying, you’ll pull it.”

  “Oh.” Bean thought about that. “Great.”

  “Don’t you get it?” asked Ivy. “We go around Pancake Court. We ring the doorbell and show people the rope. We say, ‘Have you seen this rope before?’ Everyone will say no, but if they look to one side or cover their mouths or pull their ears while they say it, they’re lying! And then,” Ivy smiled, “we have our suspect!”

  PLAN AHEAD!

  The Tengs weren’t home.

  + + + + + +

  Mr. Columbi scratched his neck. “Nope.”

  + + + + + +

  Kalia said, “Potty, potty, potty!”

  Kalia’s mom said, “Sorry, I don’t think so, girls. Oh, honey, yuck!”

  + + + + + +

  Mr. Ensor, who was really incredibly old, rubbed his forehead and said, “Don’t need any rope. Thanks anyway.”

  “I love your hat!” squealed Eleanor-who-lived-in-the-blue-house. “A rope? Give them enough rope! Ahahahahaha! You kids are wild! Great!”

  + + + + + +

  Mr. Larson was talking on his phone. “Not now. No. Rope? No. I’m not talking to you, Frank. It’s these kids. No, no rope! Come back later or something.”

  Mrs. Larson said, “Get off the phone, Bennett! It’s not ours, Bean, sorry.”

  + + + + + +

  Fester the dog barked. There was nobody at his house except him.

  + + + + + +

  Ivy took a deep breath. She took one step onto Mrs. Trantz’s front path. Like magic, the door opened, and Mrs. Trantz was standing on her porch.

  “What are you doing in my garden, little girl?” yelled Mrs. Trantz.

  “Hi, Mrs. Trantz,” began Ivy politely.

  “Don’t Mrs. Trantz me!” yelled Mrs. Trantz, not politely. “What are those children doing on the sidewalk there? Is that Bernice?” She peered at Bean, who was bravely standing at the edge of Mrs. Trantz’s white gravel, and at the other kids, who were sort of crouched in the hedge next door. “Go away!”<
br />
  Ivy held up the yellow rope. It was shaking a little. Most grown-ups at least pretended to like kids. Not Mrs. Trantz. “We were wondering—”

  “Speak up!”

  “We were wondering,” Ivy said a little louder.

  “Stop whispering!”

  Ivy’s face turned red and the rope shook a little more. “We—” she began, and now her voice was shaking, too.

  Most of the time, Bean was scared of Mrs. Trantz. But sometimes she couldn’t stand her more than she was scared of her. This was one of those times. Bean charged through the white gravel, grabbed Ivy’s arm, and hauled her toward the porch. “Look, Mrs. Trantz,” she yelled. “We found this rope! Is it yours?” She waved the rope at Mrs. Trantz.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” yelled Mrs. Trantz. “I don’t have rope! Go home!”

  Bean knew how to drive Mrs. Trantz around the bend. She stepped right up beside her and smiled with all her teeth. “Great! Thanks, Mrs. Trantz!” Mrs. Trantz took a step back, and Bean followed, still smiling. She put up her arms like she was about to give her a big hug. Mrs. Trantz squeaked and scuttled back inside her house.

  “Go!” she shouted. “Go along!” She waved her hands to dust them away.

  + + + + + +

  Back in the P. I. office, they agreed that no one had lied. No one looked to one side, covered their mouths, or pulled their ears. Eleanor-who-lived-in-the-blue-house hadn’t really answered, but she hadn’t acted like she owned the rope, either. They decided that the rope didn’t belong to anyone on Pancake Court. There were no suspects.

  Bean rubbed her face.

  Dino and Ruby and Trevor and Prairie and Sophie S. watched her in a worried way. “So what are you going to do next?” asked Sophie S.

  Bean leaned back in her chair. Whoops! That was the broken part. She sat up. “I’m going to do some hard thinking,” she said. Al Seven had said the same thing when he was sitting in his car.