The Red Blazer Girls (17 page)

She smiles politely at me. “Sophie,” she says softly.

I smile back. “Hi.”

Awkward silence.

Somebody else,
please
say something. English, Polish, Swahili, Klingon, anything.

Margaret's mom finally asks me how I like the upper school and how my parents are—typical parent questions, to which I give her the typical kid responses: “It's okay” and “Oh, they're fine.”

Margaret rescues me by dragging me back to her room.

“Let's go out,” I suggest. “It's beautiful.”

“Yeah, I know. We went to the early Mass,” she says. “So, what do you want to do?”

“I dunno. I was thinking about a movie, but it's
way
too nice. Maybe we should go hang in the park. You can bring a book if you want. I just didn't want to stick around the house. My mom woulda had me cleaning my room or something.”

“Hmmm. That might be a good thing.”

“That's
beside the point. So that's your grandmother, huh? She doesn't seem that bad to me.”

“I never said she was
bad
. I said she was driving me bananas.”

“Well, she seems nice to me.”

“Sophie, you've known her for two seconds. Go for a
walk around the block with her, then tell me what you think. Or take the subway. Yesterday she started
singing
—in Polish—on the train.”

“I seem to remember that you
liked
singing with her.”

“Past tense. I was six.”

“C'mon, let's go. We can call Rebecca later. Maybe she can sneak out for a while.”

Margaret digs into her book bag, excavating her copy of
Great Expectations
. “What about Leigh Ann? Should we call her?”

I respond with a typical parent answer. “Maybe later.”

We enter Central Park at Ninety-seventh Street and find a nice spot to read and soak up the sun on the rocks near the ball fields in the North Meadow. Rebecca shows up about forty-five minutes later, sketchbook in hand and dressed in all black. We tease her about taking the whole artiste thing a little too seriously, which leads us to Ms. Harriman, which leads to the fourth clue. And guess what? Margaret
just happens
to have a sheet of paper on which she has printed the clue in great big letters.

It says:

“I've heard of David Copperfield, and I know Scrooge,” Rebecca says, “but who the hell are all these other people?”

“I
think
they're all from Charles Dickens's books, but I'm not a hundred percent sure,” says Margaret. “I've only read
David Copperfield
(Harvard Classics, fiction, volumes seven and eight) and now, part of
Great Expectations
(which, much to Mr. Eliot's dismay, is
not
included in the Harvard Classics). And by the way, you know Pirrip, too.”

“I do?”

“That's Pip. His real name is Philip Pirrip, remember?”

“And I know Drummle, too,” I say. “He's the guy Pip hates. Jaggers calls him the spider. Bentley is his first name.”

“And
Uriah
Heep,
Thomas
Traddles,
James
Steer-forth, and
David
Copperfield, obviously, are all from
David Copperfield,”
Margaret adds. “Which leaves us with … Guppy, Summerson, and Squeers that we don't know anything about.”

“We can fix that in like five minutes if we go online,” I say.

“Does
every
name on the list have a double consonant or a double vowel?” Rebecca asks.

“Yep. Six with consonants, four with vowels,” Margaret answers. “Two with three syllables, five with two, and three with one.”

“Could it be something about the characters themselves?” I ask. “Like, are they good or bad? Or their job, maybe?”

“Hmmm. Possible. But a lot of that is kind of vague,” Margaret says. “For example, is Scrooge good or bad? It depends—in the beginning or at the end?”

“Why don't we just get
all
their first names and then just go around to all the pews,” Rebecca suggests.

“We
could
, but somehow I don't think that would be as easy as you think. First of all, there are hundreds of pews, and second—”

Suddenly Margaret snatches the paper from my hands. “It's Copperfield!”

I look at the list to see if it will miraculously jump out at me, too. No such luck.

“Why Copperfield?” Rebecca asks.

“Because he's the only
title
character on the list.
David Copperfield
. We need to look for someone with the last name of David.”

“Well, that was easy,” I say.

Margaret agrees. “Almost
too
easy.”

Maybe Everett Harriman wasn't all
that
after all.

Half an hour later, we are back in the church, straining our eyes in the dim light to read the worn brass plaques at the end of all the pews. There are a lot more than we expected; each pew has been donated in ten-foot sections, and each
section
has its own plaque. We start in the back and work toward the altar, pacing back and forth, back and forth. About a third of the way through, Rebecca and I shout, “Got it!” at the same time. The problem is that we are about a hundred feet apart.

“‘Gift of Anthony David,’” I say. “‘In memory of Althea David.’”

“Mine says ‘Gift of Anthony David, In memory of Annabelle David,’” says Rebecca.

“Uh-oh,” says Margaret. “Mine says ‘Gift of Anthony David, In memory of Anne Marie David.’ It was supposed to be a
single
pew, according to the clue. I'm sorry, guys. I must be wrong.”

She looks so crushed.

“It's okay, Margaret,” I say. “No big deal. I'm sure we'll get it.”

On our way back uptown, I come up with a solution. “Look, it's a literature clue. Let's just ask Mr. Eliot. He was
born
to solve this piece of the puzzle.”

“But then we'll have to wait until Monday morning,” Margaret says. “And besides, I want to solve it without anybody's help.”

“How is using Mr. Eliot different than using the Internet?” Rebecca asks.

She has a point.

“I guess we could e-mail him,” Margaret admits. Mr. Eliot
had
given us his e-mail address, which we are permitted to use for school-related communication. (“I don't want you filling up my mailbox with a bunch of stupid jokes—or worse,” he said.)

“We can do better than that,” I say. “I just happen to know where he lives.”

Ten minutes later, we are in the lobby of Mr. Eliot's building. The doorman rings his apartment, telling him that there are three young ladies waiting downstairs and that they insist it is really important that they speak with him. Then the doorman, Freddy, as his badge indicates, listens while nodding his head before hanging up the phone without another word.

“He says he'll be down in a minute. You can wait in the lobby. You girls students of Geor—er, Mr. Eliot's?”

We all nod.

“He's a good guy, always bringing me books to read on the overnight shift.”

“Lots of Charles Dickens, right?” I guess.

Freddy smiles. “No, not really. Mysteries, mostly. He loves those old ‘whodunits’—Nero Wolfe, that kind of thing—but lately he's been bringing me these graphic novels. You know, the ones that look like comic books, only thicker. And with a lot more blood.”

“Oooh, I love those,” Rebecca says. “The gorier, the better.”

“You would,” I say. “You probably like all those dead teenager movies, too. All that
Nightmare on Elm Street
and
Halloween
and
I Know What You Did Last Summer
crap.”

“Crap! Those are classics!”

“Prime examples of fine filmmaking,” notes Margaret.

Before the conversation can sink any deeper into a discussion of who is more evil, Jason or Freddy (Krueger, not the doorman), Mr. Eliot steps out of the elevator.

“Hello, girls. Are you bothering Freddy?”

“No, no, George,” says Freddy. “They're fine. We've just been having a literary discussion.”

“I'll bet. Okay, what is the big crisis that has caused you to breach my sacred domicile?”

“Wait, where's your wife?” Rebecca asks. “I was hoping she'd come down, too. We want to meet her.”

“She's upstairs, probably scared to death that my
students know where I live. And probably wondering, as I am,
why
they've come to my apartment building on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.”

“Well, it's about the puzzle,” Margaret says.

“Oh, for crying out loud.
That's
the big emergency?”

Margaret points at the tastefully decorated seating area in the lobby. “We'd better sit down, Mr. E. This may take a while.”

We move to a very comfortable leather couch and chairs. Mr. Eliot listens and actually seems impressed by our resourcefulness and tenacity.

“And now you're up to the fourth clue, which is something to do with literature, and you think I can help you.”

“Exact-e-ment,”
I say, exaggerating my French accent.

“Well, before I agree to help, tell me more about this Malcolm fellow. I just want to make sure you haven't gotten yourselves involved with some lunatic.”

“Oh, I don't think he's
dangerous
or anything like that.” Like I'm an expert on human nature or something. “I just think he's skeevy.”

Margaret shakes her head at me. “He's
not
skeevy. Soph, you just don't like him because you think he snooped on us.”

“He
did
snoop on us! And you could tell he didn't think we would ever be able to find the ring. He was like,
there's no way you silly little girls from St. Veronica's are going to be able to find it without my
invaluable
help.”

“He said that?”

“Well, no. But you could tell that's what he was thinking.”

“So now this is about your wanting to prove him wrong. And you don't think you're all getting just a little bit
obsessed
with this story and this ring?”

“What is that line you quoted to us the first week of school?” Margaret asks. “Something some coach said? ‘You've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.’”

“Margaret, I can't believe you remember that,” Mr. Eliot says. “It
was
a coach—not a real coach, but Coach Bob, a character in
The Hotel New Hampshire
, one of my all-time favorite books.”

“So a little obsession is a good thing, right?” Margaret would make one heck of a lawyer.

Mr. Eliot concedes the point. “Okay but two things before I agree to help. One, be careful. If this Malcolm guy says
anything
that sounds even the slightest bit threatening, call me, call your parents, or better, call the police. And two, when you think you've solved this thing,
please
don't just start pulling up floor tiles in the church. Father Danahey would be most displeased with you—and with me, if he knew I had anything to do with it. Promise?”

“We promise.”

“All right then. We're agreed. Now tell me about this clue number four.”

Margaret unfolds the clue and sets it on the coffee table before Mr. Eliot. “Which name doesn't fit?”

He picks up the paper and squints at the list of names. The lines in his forehead get deeper and deeper. He doesn't say anything for a couple of minutes, and then a slight smile creeps in. “Okay I've got it.”

A long pause.

“Well?” Rebecca says. “Tell us!”

“You really want me to just
give
you the answer? You don't want to try to figure it out on your own?”

“Just tell us, please,” I say. “We promise to be good the rest of the year.”

“How good? I
should
make you figure it out for yourselves. It's not that hard, really. Actually, knowing that you figured out all those other clues, I'm a little surprised you didn't get this one.”

Now Margaret is miffed. “I never said we
couldn't
figure it out. I'm—we're just starting to get concerned about the time.”

“Okay, okay. I didn't mean to question your abilities. Boy, you take this sleuthing stuff seriously. It's—”

Margaret holds up her hand. “Wait! Before you say it, just tell me this: who are Guppy, Summerson, and Squeers?”