The Missing Dog Is Spotted

by Jessica Scott Kerrin

  “Sulfur dioxide,” Creelman declared, but he didn’t pound the table. Instead, he stood with his arms crossed, giving us plenty of time for this fact to sink in.

  I wondered if my mom should make the call about cemetery duty after all.

  “And where does sulfur dioxide come from?” Creelman demanded.

  He was relentless!

  Desperately, I looked over to Loyola, who had finished checking out the books. I caught her eye, but then she quickly busied herself by sharpening pencils. She was not coming back any time soon. Traitor!

  “The periodic table?” Pascal guessed.

  The periodic table? I was tempted to inch my chair closer to Merrilee so that Pascal had plenty of room to dig his own grave. Good grief!

  “Burning coal power!” Creelman replied, his eyes widening.

  Even though we knew it was coming, all three of us jumped when he pounded the table yet again.

  “Sulfur dioxide is the enemy of gravestones,” Creelman continued, as if he were talking about some new plague or a campfire ghost story. “It steals letters and makes our grave markers unreadable.”

  Pollution. Got it. I sneaked a peek at the wall clock. This was going to be a very long afternoon. I almost wished I was back in the cemetery, despite the rain.

  Almost.

  “Part of your job will be to read and record our gravestones so that the information doesn’t disappear,” he leaned in, “forever.”

  As if rehearsed, Preeble pulled a small mirror from the pocket of his raincoat, handed it to Creelman, then took a precise step back beside Wooster. Creelman moved beneath the nearest stained-glass window and held the mirror in front of the engraved plaque mounted in the shadow of the windowsill.

  “If there’s plenty of light, like in this library, you can use a mirror. You hold it over the gravestone like this,” explained Creelman, flashing the mirror across the plaque, “and redirect the light at an angle so that the carved words are highlighted in shadows. See?”

  The words etched on the plaque really popped out. It read, Restored by the Twillingate Cemetery Brigade.

  Despite the table pounding, I was a little impressed.

  “But sometimes there’s not much light,” Creelman said, his eyebrows casting a shadow, his face clouding over.

  That was Wooster’s cue to pull out a paintbrush from his pocket and hand it to Creelman, then return to his spot beside Preeble.

  “What you do is take a brush and some plain water.” Creelman demonstrated by brushing the air. “When you wet the surface, you move the dirt into the carved letters and lighten the surrounding surface at the same time. Then it’s easier to read.”

  Makes sense, I thought. It was simple to follow now that the table pounding had stopped.

  Creelman began to lay out his yellowed sheets of paper in front of us.

  “Even with all that, you’ll still need to become an expert at deciphering engraved characters that have partially disappeared. Have a look.”

  The three of us leaned in. Creelman’s papers contained charts of what carved numbers looked like after they had weathered for one hundred years and then two hundred years.

  “I need someone to demonstrate,” Creelman said. He slowly scanned the three of us, and his eyes landed on me.

  “Okay,” I croaked, having very little choice.

  He handed me a nubby pencil.

  “Write the numbers 1 through 9 on this piece of paper,” he instructed.

  I did.

  “Now look. See how all your strokes are even?”

  Everyone inspected my numbers. I have to admit that I do write neatly. My notebook where I record my collection of t-shirt sayings is a thing of beauty.

  “But it isn’t so with numbers hand-carved in marble. They are carved by uneven chisel strokes. Take the number 4. The carver has to lean in hard to make one long downward stroke, and then finish the rest of the number with short light taps. Over time, those little strokes fade away, leaving only the deep downward stroke, until finally you can’t tell a 1 from a 4.”

  “How do we figure out which is which?” Pascal asked.

  “Good question!” Creelman replied, not scowling for the first time that afternoon. “Your only clue is the spacing. Look here. The downward strokes in the year 1811 are spaced more evenly than the year 1814.”

  Even Merrilee nodded in interest.

  “The numbers 2, 3 and 5 are in the next group. Over time, only the deep curve on the right side of all three numbers remains — here at the top of the 2, here at the bottom of the 5 and here, twice for the number 3.”

  By now, I’d completely forgotten about the cemetery. As we studied Creelman’s charts, I began to feel as if we were training to become detectives for hidden codes.

  “Next are the numbers 6, 9 and 0. They also have deep curves on both sides that remain over time. The number 6 will have a long curve on the left and a short curve on the right. Nine is just the opposite. And see here? Zero will have two long curves.”

  Look at that, I thought, taking in the lesson.

  “Last are the numbers 7 and 8. When carvers engrave an 8, they have to cut a deep diagonal line in the middle that is the last to fade away. But unlike the number 8, the number 7 has a long deep diagonal cut that runs all the way to the bottom.”

  Then, just when I was not expecting it, Creelman pounded the table and declared, “Sevens never die!”

  From the safety of her desk, Loyola Louden looked our way with a startle.

  The lights flickered overhead.

  “Now, we’re going to leave you to study these charts. When we get back, there’ll be a quiz. We can’t have you making any errors when you’re recording our gravestones.”

  With that, Creelman, Preeble and Wooster marched past the book stacks and out the front door, leaving behind the yellowed sheets, a mirror and three puddles on the marble floor.

  Rain smashed against the stained glass. The only things missing were a mighty flash of lightning, a full-on power failure and sinister violin music.

  “What was that about?” Merrilee demanded. She shoved the yellowed papers away and reached over to grab one of the books from the pile that Loyola had moved to the next table.

  “You’re not going to study?” I asked.

  Although I was not the best student at school, I did study, especially when I knew there’d be a quiz. And I still kind of liked it when my mom posted my better efforts on the fridge door. I think she had even saved the portrait of my grandfather. She said it was a keeper.

  Merrilee gave me a withering look.

  But that didn’t bother me nearly as much as the table pounding that was sure to come if I failed the quiz, so I got to work. Pascal studied the sheets, too. Then we took turns writing out eroded dates and seeing if the other could guess the correct numbers.

  Eventually, Loyola returned to our table to chat. She noisily scraped a chair across the marble floor and sat down.

  “So, what do you think of the donation?” she asked Merrilee.

  “Looks pretty good,” Merrilee said, leafing through a book. “I’d like to sign it out.”

  I stopped quizzing Pascal. “What donation?” I asked.

  “Several copies of the book Merrilee has arrived by mail this morning. There’s no return address, no way to find out who the donor is.”

  I leaned over to read the cover of Merrilee’s book. The Purloined Parrot.

  “What does purloined mean?” I asked.

  “Stolen,” Merrilee said.

  I shrugged. The book still sounded pretty girly.

  “How’s it going here?” Loyola asked brightly, despite the surrounding gloom.

  “Okay,” I said, tidying up Creelman’s papers of eroded numbers. “But what’s with all the table pounding and whatnot?”

  “Mr. Creelm
an’s dead serious about the cemetery,” Loyola said, grinning at her choice of words. “He’s a founding member of the Twillingate Cemetery Brigade.”

  “Are they ever coming back?” Pascal asked, leaning into the central aisle for a better view of the front door.

  “Oh, sure,” Loyola replied. “Mr. Preeble and Mr. Wooster are probably finishing up at the cafe down the street by now, and Mr. Creelman is likely pacing the shop’s back alley, trying not to smoke.”

  “He smokes?” I repeated.

  “Poor guy,” Loyola said. “He told me that he wants to quit for good just once before he dies.”

  There was a commotion at the door, and we craned our necks to watch the arrival of the Brigade. They made a beeline for our table while Loyola returned to the front desk, pushing a squeaky trolley of books along the way.

  “Ready for your quiz?” Creelman demanded, his two cronies on standby.

  “You’re dripping,” Merrilee said kindly. “Let me get you some paper towels.”

  She got up from the table with the slightest grin.

  She didn’t fool me. I knew exactly what she was doing. She was getting out of the quiz, that’s what she was doing, and she was going to take her sweet time finding those paper towels.

  From his pocket, Creelman dug out a stack of cue cards wrapped in a thick elastic band, each with an eroded date on it. And that’s how it went — him holding up a card and us calling out the year. Merrilee took forever to return, and sure enough, by then, we were done.

  Creelman scooped up his yellowed papers from the table.

  “See you next Wednesday. Thirteen hundred hours sharp.”

  “Thirteen hundred hours? I thought we were only volunteering on Wednesdays for the next three months,” Pascal said. “Just until we graduate.”

  Creelman shot him a sober look before leading the Brigade away without a word.

  I lingered until they were gone, and then I explained military time to Pascal. We packed up our knapsacks to go.

  Outside, it poured. I stood on the steps to zip my coat while Pascal took off in the direction of his home. Merrilee remained behind to sign out her book. I looked across the street at the cemetery, glad to have avoided my duties in there, at least for now.

  Lightning flashed.

  Thunder clapped.

  Darkness descended.

  I half expected to hear an evil laugh coming from the other side of the looming iron gate.

  “Well,” I half joked to myself out loud. “This certainly has all the makings of a horror movie.”

  About the Author

  JESSICA SCOTT KERRIN is the author of the popular Lobster Chronicles series and the bestselling Martin Bridge series. Her novel The Spotted Dog Last Seen was a finalist for the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year for Children Award and the John Spray Mystery Award. It was also selected as a New York Public Library Book for Reading and Sharing.

  Born and raised in Alberta, Jessica now lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and once owned a nutty English springer spaniel who inspired this book.

  About the Publisher

  Groundwood Books, established in 1978, is dedicated to the production of children’s books for all ages, including fiction, picture books and non-fiction. We publish in Canada, the United States and Latin America. Our books aim to be of the highest possible quality in both language and illustration. Our primary focus has been on works by Canadians, though we sometimes also buy outstanding books from other countries.

  Many of our books tell the stories of people whose voices are not always heard in this age of global publishing by media conglomerates. Books by the First Peoples of this hemisphere have always been a special interest, as have those of others who through circumstance have been marginalized and whose contribution to our society is not always visible. Since 1998 we have been publishing works by people of Latin American origin living in the Americas both in English and in Spanish under our Libros Tigrillo imprint.

  We believe that by reflecting intensely individual experiences, our books are of universal interest. The fact that our authors are published around the world attests to this and to their quality. Even more important, our books are read and loved by children all over the globe.