Harper Madigan: Junior High Private Eye (13 page)

I sit alone at my desk Monday morning. Not my desk in class, but
in my office
. Which is no longer condemned. Well, it is, technically, but the school’s gone back to ignoring it, and a certain Vice Principal gave me a copy of the new key and then looked the other way.

I prop my feet up on my desk and lean back in my chair, my hands behind my head. I’m missing homeroom, and even though I don’t have my
carte blanche
hall pass anymore, I’m too busy enjoying the world being back to normal to care. I haven’t exactly made a habit of going to homeroom before now—is it going to kill me to miss a few more minutes? I don’t think so.

There’s a knock on the door, and before I can say, “It’s open,” Danigail barges in like she owns the place.

I scramble to get my feet off my desk and almost fall out of my chair. The case, and my business with her, is over—this is the last place I expected to see her.

“I see you redecorated,” she says, hands on her hips, taking in how trashed my office is.

I just got back in this morning—I haven’t exactly had time to clean up after the break-in last week. “If I’d known you were coming, I would have…” I glance around at all the mess. There’s no way I could have fixed the place up before she got here. “I would have locked the door.”

She rolls her eyes at me and leans against my desk. She looks me over, studying my face.

Our eyes meet, and then I glance away. The room suddenly feels way too quiet, not to mention way too small. I lean my head back and stare at the stain on the ceiling, the one that looks a little like an angel if you squint just right. Only I don’t squint, I just stare at it. At anything but her.

“I didn’t think I’d see you again,” I finally admit.

“I had to come over here, you know? I had to say thank you, for what you did for me.”

I face forward, meeting her eyes and not looking away this time. “All in a day’s work,” I mutter, because the truth is too complicated to say out loud.

She knows I got her off the hook. She doesn’t need to know how close I came to selling her out for my dreams of revenge.

“I
know
what you did for me,” she says. “Austin told me what you gave up. And what Mrs. Mills will do to this town if she gets elected.”

So much for keeping secrets. I shrug. “Some days I do the right thing, some days I screw up. Last Thursday, I happened to do the right thing.”

“Oliver’s not mad at you, you know. And he’s not mad at me either—not anymore. We could, I don’t know… We could all be friends again. Like before.”

A smile tugs at one side of my mouth, then fades away. “We’re different people, DG. Elementary school is behind us, and there’s no looking back.”

“You don’t have to be such a loner all the time, Harper. There’s no law that says detectives can’t have friends.”

“My friends end up hurt. So do yours, come to think of it. And anyway, you’ve got enough damage in your life as it is.”

“That’s not fair.” She closes her eyes for a second, breathing in through her nose and clenching her fists. “Maybe I need you, huh? Did you ever think of that? We were friends for a long time, and maybe you were good for me, and maybe someday you’ll realize that I was good for you too, so—”

The door flies open and Austin hurries in, the rubber of his shoes squeaking against the floor. “Sorry I’m late,” he says, glancing at his watch before taking in the scene in front of him. His face goes a little red as he realizes he might have just interrupted something personal.

Danigail pulls away from my desk, wrapping her arms around herself.

I swallow hard, secretly thankful for the interruption. “It was good seeing you,” I tell her.

“That your fancy way of kicking me out?”

“No. Just the truth. From one friend to another.”

A smile slips across her mouth, and for a second her whole face lights up, and it could be last summer, and we could be the people we were before tragedy broke us apart, because in this moment she looks just like the Danigail I used to know.

“See ya, Harper,” she says, turning to go. Then she hesitates and leans in close, whispering, “Keep in touch this time, okay? A detective like you should know how to find me.” Then she disappears into the hallway.

The moment she’s gone, I slump back in my chair. “The non-paying clients are always the most exhausting.”

“That’s one case I won’t miss,” Austin says, like one week on the job makes him an expert. He looks around for an extra chair and doesn’t find one. We’ll have to fix that. In the meantime, he starts gathering up the office supplies strewn all over and sorting out my overturned desk drawers.

“Take a breather, Phelps,” I tell him, motioning for him to stop cleaning. “This might have originally been a janitor’s closet, but that doesn’t mean it has to look like janitors live here. Let’s just bask in the fact that the agency is up and running again.”

“And with a new member,” he says, straightening his tie. Because even after all our adventures together last week, Austin’s still a stuffed shirt at heart. He’s still the kind of kid who wears a tie to school when it’s not even picture day.

The door opens again and this time Dodge squeezes himself into the office. With all the mess on the floor, the standing room is down to less than normal, which means there’s practically none. Austin shuffles towards the wall to make space and pretends he doesn’t notice it sagging on top of him.

“Is there a sign on the door that says
Just come in
? Or have you never heard of knocking?”

“Didn’t think I had to knock,” Dodge says, staring down his nose at me. “What with getting you your office back. And not adding on time to your suspension, when I know—I
know
—you broke the rules. And it’s after eight. You should be in homeroom right now anyway, and you don’t see me busting you for it, do you? Which reminds me.” He reaches into his suit jacket and pulls out a white laminated card.

I can’t help exhaling in relief as the last missing piece of normalcy finally falls into place. My
carte blanche
hall pass, my all purpose permission slip for getting things done around here. I reach out to take it from him, the words, “Thanks, Dodge—you won’t regret it,” on my lips as he turns and does the unthinkable. He hands the card to
Austin
.

Austin beams and slips the string over his head, the laminated card resting just over his heart. “I won’t let you down, sir.”

I’m still holding out my hand. I’m waiting for Dodge to reach into his coat and pull out another one.

Dodge clears his throat. He doesn’t move.

“The laminating machine break down? You run out of paper?”

He sighs. “After that last case, you’re
lucky
you’re still in business. You’re lucky, Madigan, that I didn’t get fired and that nobody got seriously injured. You’re lucky I let you reopen this place at all after you disobeyed me. You abused my authority, you got involved with
the PTA
, and you directly violated my orders to stay off the case.”

“Yeah, but I solved it, didn’t I?” Dodge knows everything that happened. It was in Austin’s report. Even if we couldn’t convict Connor, Dodge at least knows what really went on. “And I was right about Danigail. I was right that she was
innocent
.”

“And you stirred up a hell of a lot of trouble in the process. So you’ll
forgive me
”—his tone makes it very clear that
his
actions aren’t the ones that need forgiving—“if Austin having this hall pass keeps me from worrying about how rusty my resume skills are and lets me sleep a little better at night. You’ll
forgive me
if after that last case, giving you free reign of this school doesn’t sound like a good idea.”

“But…” This is what I get for having a partner. I finally cooperate with Dodge’s plans, and how does he reward me? “What about my cases?! What about—”

He holds up a hand. “Until I can trust you—and the way you’ve been going, I won’t be holding my breath—I’m imposing the buddy system. Austin’s pass covers him and a
friend
. So from now on if you feel the need to skip class, you’ll do it under his watch.”

“He might be my partner, but he’s no detective.” Not yet. “So—”

“So he’ll learn, and in the meantime maybe you’ll learn a thing or two from him about following the rules.”

There’s a knock on the door before I can argue. Dodge takes that as his cue and says, “I’ll let myself out.”

He squeezes his way out the door, and then Eugene McAllister pokes his head in. Great.

I wince inwardly and pinch the bridge of my nose with two fingers. Cleaning up after last week’s going to involve a lot more than straightening out the clutter in here. “I know, I know, you probably want that Dragon Slayer card you gave me back, but I sort of lost it, so I’ll have to owe you.”

Eugene shakes his head and waves a hand. “It’s okay. I have a new good luck charm.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out one of those plastic bubbles toys come in. Only this one has a key chain running through it, and inside the bubble are the two halves of his lucky pencil. “Austin made it for me. And explained what happened, with you and Connor.”

Austin? I glance over at him, and he shrugs as if it was no big deal. Which makes me hate him a little less for the way he keeps shining his hall pass with his shirt sleeve like it’s some kind of medal.

“Let’s face it,” Eugene goes on, “Connor brings out the worst in all of us. And I passed my last PTA History test with flying colors, and Mrs. Marsh realized she’d made some mistakes on my old papers, so… No harm, no foul. We have a long history together, client and detective, and I’d hate for that to get ruined over one mistake.”

Me too. “I still owe you for the Dragon card, so how about your next case is on the house, and no matter how big it is, we’ll call it even?”

“Welllll…” Eugene sucks in a deep breath, like he’s not sure if he’s going to have the chance to breathe again anytime in the near future. “It’s funny you should mention that, because, the truth is, I’ve got another case.”

Austin grins like it’s Christmas morning and he just got exactly what he asked for. He pulls out his notebook and flips to a clean page. “My first case as an official detective.”

“
Assistant
detective,” I correct him. “Don’t let that hall pass go to your head.”

Austin ignores me and focuses on Eugene, pen poised above the paper. “Tell me all about it.”

“A serious crime has been committed,” Eugene says, deadly serious. “I’m telling you, this is
big
.” He waves his hands around, demonstrating just how important this is. “Maybe even bigger than last time. I had my favorite bottle cap in my locker last Friday, and it disappeared between third and fourth period.”

Austin doesn’t even blink. He scribbles furiously in his notebook, taking down everything Eugene says, completely unfazed. Eugene goes on to explain in detail what the bottle cap looks like, the
exact
spot he left it in his locker, and the fact that no one but him knew the locker combination, because it was broken and the school had had to put in a brand new one at the beginning of the semester. He goes on until five minutes before the bell rings, then hurries back to class to get his backpack before homeroom ends.

Austin shows him out—all two steps to the hallway—and then leans his back against the door, rereading his notes, so serious you’d think he was investigating a murder instead of a stolen bottle cap.

I remember how only a week ago he’d thought a measly missing pencil was stupid and not worth our time. I raise an eyebrow at him. “I see you’ve changed your mind.”

“About what?” He glances over the top of his notebook.

“About getting a big story. About a missing bottle cap being a
real
case.”

“Oh, right.” His face goes a little red, like he’s ashamed he ever thought any different. “I might have been wrong about that. You were right—every client is important.”

“What’s that, Phelps?” I ask, leaning forward and cupping my hand to my ear. “I didn’t quite hear you.”

“Every client is important,” he says, standing up extra straight and beaming at me, like I’m going to give him a gold star or something.

“No, the part about you being wrong and me being right?”

“
Once
,” he says, holding up a finger in case I can’t count to, oh, I don’t know,
one
. “You were right
once
.” He sighs and sits down on the floor, since there are no other chairs and I’m not about to give up mine. “And, okay,
maybe
you solved the case, but you couldn’t have done it without my help. Dodge is right—we need each other.”

I cringe like someone just ran their nails down a chalkboard. “Let’s not go overboard here.”

“Admit it, Harper. Having a partner’s not so bad.”

“You keep saying things like that—that I actually
need
you here—and I’m going back to the solo business.” I clear my throat. “But, uh, maybe you’re right, and I couldn’t have solved the case without you. Even if you still have a lot to learn.”

“That’s all I wanted to hear.” He leans back against the wall, looking up at the ceiling. Then he grins. “Hey, it really does look like an angel.”

I’ve been waiting all week to hear him say that. I smile and prop my feet up on my desk again. “You know what, Phelps?”

“What?” he asks, still staring at the ceiling.

“I was wrong about you. I think you’re going to do all right here.”