The Spy Catchers of Maple Hill (14 page)

“Good. I'll have Mrs. Dunbarton call your parents. You can wait in the office.”

Hazel took a seat on the wooden bench of the main office and contemplated what evil fate awaited her.

Hazel had never been grounded nor suspended, and she wasn't quite sure how she was supposed to act. She got dressed in her drabbest clothes and went downstairs making the saddest face she could.

Her parents seemed to have warmed up slightly. The day before, the car ride home had been silent as a tomb. It even had the cold, still-air feeling of the granite mausoleum Hazel was using for the fallout shelter. Her mother had driven with her eyes straight ahead all the way back to Memory's Garden. She had pulled into the driveway of the cottage and stopped the car. With her hands still on the wheel she'd said, “It seems to me that a girl your age and of your intelligence should know a better way to deal with conflict than with violence.”

“Mom, she—”

“It seems to me that a girl who likes to talk so much might
have the proper words to tell another child that she's out of line.”

“I was too angry—”

“It seems to me that anyone from Maple Hill would know that this is a small town and everything we do reflects back on our families.
And
,” she said before Hazel could try again to interject, “it seems to me that someone raised in this house would have a little more respect and think about her family, her actions, and the repercussions before acting impulsively.”

Then she'd been grounded indefinitely, which she had tried to argue was cruel and unusual since even the worst criminals got to know the length of their sentences, but her parents had not been swayed.

Hazel tried to make her face even sadder as she put her cereal bowl in the sink, the last bit of milk sloshing out of it onto the plates below.

She picked up her school library's copy of
Charlotte's Web
that Mrs. Sinclair had more or less forced on her the week before, saying she needed to move beyond mysteries. She hadn't been interested then, but suddenly this story of a pig with its head on the chopping block seemed relevant. Book in hand, she headed into the living room. Though she knew little about being grounded, she felt certain that television, even educational television, was forbidden.

Her mom looked up at her, shook her head, and said, “Uh-uh.”

“Should I go to my room to read?” Hazel asked.

“No reading,” her dad said. “Weeding.”

She groaned inwardly, but didn't complain. Weeding was her absolute least favorite thing to do, and her parents knew it.

“Mrs. Vorschat is being buried today. Stay away from the funeral.”

Hazel nodded and started to go outside, but as she went by the front door, she saw the
Maple Hill Banner
on a small table, and Mr. Short's face looked right back at her. Above him was the headline:

The article said that Mr. Short and a young man in his twenties that Hazel didn't know were going to be questioned by the committee on suspicion of having Communist ties. Hazel couldn't believe it. Not Connie's handsome, friendly father. He couldn't be a spy! But Hazel remembered when she had mentioned to her father how gregarious Mr. Short was, her dad hadn't bothered to be impressed by Hazel's use of a four-syllable word. Instead he had said, “You don't get to head the union by being unfriendly.”

They did say that a lot of the Communist ringleaders were in the union.

Mr. Short and Mr. Jones! Hazel dropped the newspaper with a dull thud. Of course: it made sense now why Mr. Short had been giving something to Mr. Jones. It was top-level confidential secrets he'd gathered at the plant. It was awfully bold
of them to do it right out in the open like that, but maybe that was part of their plan: if it didn't look like they were hiding anything, then no one would suspect them. No one but Hazel. Now that the investigators were onto Mr. Short, it was only a matter of time before they made the Mr. Jones connection. Maybe she ought to go to them with everything she knew. But no, Samuel was right. They still had no concrete evidence. Nancy Drew always waited until she had all her evidence in place before going to the police. Hazel needed to do the same thing.

“Hazel Kaplansky!” her mother called from back in the kitchen.

“Mom, I—”

Hazel's mom pointed outside without saying another word.

Hazel knew when she was beat. She left the paper where it was and went outside.

She decided to work by the statue of the Three Graces. As she walked, she could see Mr. Jones across the way. The one good thing about being suspended was that it gave her more time to observe him. He had finished digging the grave the day before and now was standing above it with his shovel, ready to smooth things out. Her gaze traveled over to the garden shed. That's where he stored all the secrets. She needed to get in there.

As she set to work devising her plan, she got down on her knees and began plucking out crabgrass, dandelions, and stray bits of ground cover. After a moment, she looked up at the
sculptures. “Yes, Abitha, it is a school day. I've been suspended.” She gathered the weeds she had pulled into a pile. “It means I can't go to school for the day, but it's a bum rap. It was self-defense.”

She moved closer to the base of the statue. “I was sticking up for a friend.” There was a big weed with roots that went deep and wide and she had to lean way back to pull it. “Then he left me out to dry, swinging in the breeze, you know. So I don't know if we're friends anymore.”

She kept moving around the base of the statue. “Oh, Tabitha, I'm glad you asked. You see, Maryann and Connie, I've told you about them. They were being their same old rotten selves and they started to say something awful about Samuel and it was like something just swelled up inside of me and I pushed Maryann as hard as I could and she fell down right on her butt.”

She laughed, and the hollow sound echoed around the stones.

“Yes, she did deserve it.”

Her weed pile was pretty big, so she went and got the wheelbarrow and filled it. She tugged up a few more around the edge of the pond. All the while she was stealing glances at the garden shed. She'd been out there most of an hour already and Mr. Jones hadn't gone anywhere near it. She said good-bye to the Three Graces. “Nice talking to you girls.”

In the time she'd been weeding, the funeral had begun. Mourners were around the grave in their black clothes. There
were few things sadder than a funeral on a gray fall day, the trees barely holding on to their leaves. Hazel made a big circle around to get to the compost pile, where she dumped her weeds on top of the husks of acorn squash they'd had for dinner the night before.

Living right next to a cemetery, she'd had many occasions to think about her own funeral. When she was little, she had wanted a white casket with silver satin inside. She'd wanted the casket to have her initials carved in curlicue letters on the outside. Now, though, she wanted something much more simple. She'd seen a man buried in a casket that was a perfect rectangle, made out of a dark wood. She thought that seemed rather dignified. She'd have a big headstone listing all her accomplishments.

She thought that was far more important than the Bible quotes that most people put on their headstones. It would certainly help people like Samuel with their research.

She'd want her funeral to be somber and sad, with lots of wailing to show how much people missed her. Maybe someone could throw themselves on her coffin and beat the wood with their fists. Mrs. Vorschat's funeral was far more subdued. It was
pedestrian, which, Hazel had learned, did not mean walking, but ordinary, and Hazel was not ordinary.

She started back into the cemetery, thinking about the night before when she'd overheard her parents talking about her and Samuel.

“I don't know what's going on. Hazel has never been in trouble before. Clara Rushby said she was sticking up for the Butler boy. It's hard to fault her for that.”

“That's it precisely. She never had any trouble before that Butler boy came back.”

“George, try to have a little sympathy. Lacey Switzer might have made a mistake, but that boy didn't do anything wrong.”

“Of course. And it's nice for her to have a friend, but—”

“It's not his fault. His situation, it's, well, just not his fault.” Her mother's voice had sounded sad and weary.

“I know, I know. Of course.” He'd sighed. “But I don't think it's a coincidence that she's gotten in trouble since he's come around.”

“True.”

“I know he needs a friend, but if it's going to be at the expense of Hazel …”

“I know,” her mom agreed. “So what do you want to do? Tell her they can't be friends?”

A breeze kicked up some leaves and they danced around her legs like her flitting thoughts about what her parents had said.
His situation. He needs a friend. Not his fault
. Maryann and Connie said that everyone knew why he'd come back to
town. What was his situation and why did everyone seem to know about it except Hazel? What had his mother done that was so awful?

She bit her lip hard. Maybe
she
was a Communist, too! That made a lot more sense than blaming the Lis. If Samuel's mother was Red, it would be the perfect opportunity to get spies into the Switzer plant. Maybe that's why she wasn't around. Maybe the FBI had her. And that was probably why Samuel kept questioning whether Mr. Jones was a spy. Maybe Samuel had even been thwarting her all along.

She rounded a curve and there, as if by magic, was Mr. Jones in Pauper's Field. She dropped to her knees as if she were weeding and observed him. He wasn't doing anything but standing, his back to her. After a moment, he left, the gate creaking closed behind him. She waited, filling the wheelbarrow with more weeds in a part of the graveyard that wasn't used yet. Once she was sure he was gone, she crept down to the paupers' graveyard. At Alice's headstone she saw something glinting. She dropped to her knees and brushed aside some of the fresh dirt. It could be any number of things. Gold coins. Jewels. A gun.

Her hand closed around something small and cool. When she lifted it up, she found it was a tiny wooden doll, no bigger than her pinkie, shaped like a bowling pin. Her eyes grew wide. She knew what this was. It was one of those nesting dolls.
Russian
nesting dolls. Her grandmother had a set, and Hazel liked to play with them. Each wooden doll could be twisted apart
and inside was a smaller one. The doll The Comrade had left behind was the smallest one, solid wood that didn't come apart. The doll was painted wearing a black jumper with a red shirt underneath. Her hair was black and the eyes were green. A small daisy was painted on the black jumper.

A Russian doll left at Alice's grave: her first piece of tangible proof!

Hazel wasn't sure how she was going to avoid Samuel back at school, but it was Connie of all people who made it easier. On Hazel's way into the building, Connie stepped out of a side hallway. Hazel stopped short. This had to be some sort of a setup. She looked over her shoulder, sure there would be a mob of angry fifth graders, but there was only a group of third-grade boys. Still, Hazel kept her mouth shut.

Connie extended her hand. In it was a bright yellow envelope. “It's for my birthday. My mother says I need to invite the whole class because, well, just because.” She shook the envelope in Hazel's direction.

Hazel hesitated. If she took the invitation, then Connie would assume she actually wanted to attend the party, and Hazel would rather be locked in a room with the alien plant-monster in
The Thing from Another World
. What she really wanted
to do was take the invitation and throw it on the ground and maybe even stomp on it for good measure. She was about to do just that when she had a startling realization: this could be the break in the case she'd been looking for. Nancy Drew had faced a similar situation in
The Secret of the Old Clock
. She needed to get inside the Tophams' house to try to find the old clock that had a will hidden inside it, so she used the ruse of selling tickets to a charity ball to get into their house. Well, Hazel could use the party as an excuse to get into the Shorts' house to find more evidence to tie Mr. Jones to Mr. Short.

Hazel reached out her hand to take the invitation. Connie didn't release it. She looked at the envelope, then back up at Hazel as if she couldn't quite believe this was happening. “It's awfully nice of you to invite everyone.”

“My mom said I had to.”

“So you said.” Hazel tugged and the invitation came loose in her hand. “Of course I will have to check my social calendar. This is a busy time of year.”

Connie took a step back. “You do that,” she said. “My phone number is on there so your mom can call my mom and let her know if you're coming.”

“Marvelous!”

Connie rolled her eyes, and turned to go, not realizing that Otis Logan had come in the door behind her. She nearly pigeon-toe-walked right into him. He jumped back with his hands held in the air like he'd just been caught in a robbery. “That was close,” he said.

“Sorry,” Connie said breezily, and Hazel knew she didn't mean it.

“I sure wouldn't want to catch the Commie germs off of you.” It was a typically stupid thing for Otis to say. Communism wasn't a disease, not really. They called it the Red Menace, but it wasn't like the Blob that swallowed you up. It was something you chose. Just because Mr. Short chose to be a Red spy didn't mean Connie was a Communist, too. Otis, though, thought he was clever as could be and started guffawing as he limped down the hall.