Read On the Case (From the Files of Madison Finn, 17) Online
Authors: Laura Dower
On the Case (From the Files of Madison Finn, 17) (14 page)
“Are you looking for something?” Madison asked.
Mr. Olivetti nodded. “Uh, yes. I am-a-looking for notes I took at a concert last week. I seem to have mis-a-placed them…”
Madison swallowed.
“Oh?” she said. She steadied herself for further questioning. “Mr. Olivetti?” Madison asked tentatively. “What ever happened to that sheet music that disappeared from your classroom?”
Mr. Olivetti got a blank look on his face. “I told you about that?”
Madison nodded. “Yes, you told me. What happened? Did they ever catch who stole it?”
Mr. Olivetti scratched his nose. He shook his head and stared at the floor.
Madison squirmed as she waited for his response. He was taking a long time to answer, or at least it felt that way. It was like one of those drawn-out moments on
Crime Time,
right before the guilty party confessed to stealing the rubies or robbing the bank. Madison could almost hear the slow, low theme music playing in the background.
Was Mr. Olivetti avoiding Madison’s question?
Was this a sign of his guilt?
“Oh, Miss-a-Finn,” Mr. Olivetti said, shaking his head. “You got me.”
Madison gulped. “I got you?” she stammered. “What do you mean?”
Mr. Olivetti just laughed.
But it sent a shiver down Madison’s spine.
Case Closed
I don’t belong on Crime Time. I belong on that candid video show Gotcha! instead. Even Phinnie is laughing at me.
Mr. Olivetti said “You got me,” but he didn’t mean “You caught me red-handed!” Sure, he was responsible for the whole sheet-music incident. But not exactly in the way I expected.
Mr. Olivetti didn’t steal the sheet music.
He lost it. LOST IT!!!!
Now I’m losing it.
Here’s what he told me: he was sure that the package of sheet music had been swiped from his classroom. He told the school administration so they could look into it. Then everyone started talking. That’s when Lindsay heard about the theft and then Lana got caught with the cat hair and Penelope was carrying the bag and my Crime Time fantasy took over.
Mr. Olivetti said that he had spent the last week panicked about the missing package, but that then just that morning before school he had discovered the sheet music in its package under the seat of his car! It was with him the whole time. When he told me, I just stood there with my jaw on the floor, gasping for breath. I wanted to scream, How could you do this to me?! Of course, he didn’t do anything to me, not really. I did the damage myself. I’m the one with the overactive imagination, after all.
RudeAwakening:Be careful or you’ll poke your Private Eye out.
Stephanie tried to warn me about this. She said that too much snooping could get me into trouble. And she said I should never assume someone was guilty. And what did I do? I assumed. I accused. I goofed.
You know who else was right? I hate to admit itbut Aimee was right. She said all along that I was getting kind of obsessed with the whole detective scene. She said it wasn’t making me see things clearly.
I already sent Penelope like six e-mails apologizing. She hasn’t responded. She must think I’m a twit.
If I were an ostrich I could bury my head in the sand. But we don’t have much sand in Far Hills.
What am I supposed to do now?
Madison looked up from her laptop. She’d barricaded herself up in the media lab at the library during Friday’s lunch hour. The early classes of the day had gone by without much mention of the sheet music. But by lunchtime, the entire school was whispering about Mr. Olivetti’s mistake.
Madison was too embarrassed about what she had said and done to face people at lunch. She couldn’t deal with Egg and Chet’s heckling, Dan’s questions, and Aimee’s “I told you so.” And she was definitely too ashamed to look Hart in the eye.
It was better to hide out until things blew over, Madison told herself.
“There you are!”
Madison turned around. Fiona stood with her bag slung over one shoulder. In her hands were an orange, a container of yogurt, and a package of cheese and crackers.
“I knew you’d come up here. You always do. I smuggled these out of the cafeteria,” Fiona said. “I heard about the mystery. I heard that Mr. Olivetti never had anything stolen. I figured you didn’t want to talk about what happened. You must be so bummed.”
“Bummed?” Madison said. “
Mortified
is more like it.”
“How could you have known?” Fiona asked. “You only followed the leads like a real detective would. Like Major DeMille, right?”
“Right.” Madison shook her head. “Is everyone laughing at me behind my back?”
“No,” Fiona said right away.
Madison made a face. She wasn’t convinced. “
No one
is laughing?”
Fiona paused. “Okay, my brother made a few jokes. But he’s king of the obnoxious, you know that.”
“Uh-huh,” Madison said. “What about Hart?” she asked.
Fiona shrugged. “Well… I don’t know,” she said softly.
Madison knew what
that
meant. It meant Hart was laughing a little, too, but Fiona was too nice to tell Madison the truth.
“Want to walk home today after school?” Fiona asked.
“Sure,” Madison said.
She wished the end of the day were there already.
At the end of the school day, Madison waited by her locker for Fiona. She hoped she would see Aimee, too, but she figured Aimee probably had dance class. Aimee always had dance class these days. Lately Aimee had been missing from many of their friends’ usual gatherings. Madison figured that she was the reason why. After flunking her
Crime Time
experiment, was Madison now in danger of losing her friend?
The hallway was packed with kids pushing their way past other kids. Some boy with a hockey stick sent a book flying down the corridor like a puck. A teacher waving a notebook chased after two girls. A pack of boys dressed in black T-shirts, with their hands in the pockets of their jeans, skulked by the water fountain.
And then, through the crowd, Ivy and the drones appeared.
Madison turned her head away so she wouldn’t be recognized and so that she wouldn’t have to say anything to Ivy. But the enemy and her cohorts, of course, couldn’t resist making a few cruel comments on their way.
“Hey, Madison,” Ivy jeered. “How’s Little Miss Detective?”
“I heard you blew it,” Rose said.
“Yeah, you can’t solve anything,” Joanie added.
The three laughed in unison.
“Why don’t you go crawl under a rock?” Madison snapped.
Ivy tossed her red hair and put on a pout. “Oh, crybaby, what’s wrong?” The drones laughed again.
“Everyone knows what happened. You can run, but you can’t hide…” Ivy taunted Madison.
Madison was speechless.
But then someone else spoke up.
“You heard her, Ivy. Crawl under a rock.”
Madison’s eyes bugged out. That was Hart talking.
“What did you say?” Ivy said with disbelief. She glared at Hart.
“Quit being so mean, Ivy,” Hart said. “You’re always being mean for no reason.”
“No reason? I have a perfectly good reason,” Ivy snapped.
Madison didn’t say anything. Neither did the drones.
“Oh, yeah? What’s your reason?” Hart asked.
Ivy was in shock. Everyone was. Not only was Hart standing up for Madison, but he was saying everything that Madison and her BFFs thought about the enemy. Madison felt her heart pound. She had liked Hart before, but now she was ready to burst with like. Madison wondered if this was what love was—a shock to the system.
Ivy had clearly run out of things to say. Without another moment’s hesitation, she and the drones buzzed down the hall. Madison hoped that she would, in fact, go find some rock to crawl under.
“Thanks, Hart,” Madison said.
“She had it coming, Finnster,” Hart said.
Madison thought his eyes were twinkling, but she couldn’t be sure. After everything that had happened at the movies on Wednesday, the last thing Madison would have expected was
this.
The crackling voice over the loudspeaker announced a full roster of after-school activities. More kids rushed past.
“So…” Madison said.
“I heard about Mr. Olivetti,” Hart said.
“Yeah… well… duh… I should have known,” Madison said. “I’m no detective.”
“I know you were wrong about the mystery, but don’t feel bad. Everyone makes mistakes, right?” Hart said. “Even me.”
Madison chuckled. “You sound like my dad,” she said.
Madison’s throat muscles clenched. What was she talking about? Her dad? This wasn’t her dad. This was Hart, the Hunk. She bit her tongue so she wouldn’t say anything else stupid.
“Er… see you around,” Hart said nervously.
“Thanks again,” Madison said. “Really.”
Hart nodded. “Whatever,” he said.
Madison wrapped her arms around herself as she watched him walk away. Then she knelt and distractedly picked at a stone that had gotten lodged inside the bottom of her sneaker.
“Maddie! Maddie!” Fiona appeared at last, running down the hall. “I got stuck with a teacher, and I couldn’t leave. Sorry. Ready to go?”
Madison nodded. “He just saved me,” she said.
“Huh?”
“Ivy came by. She attacked me. And he rescued me. It was like a movie or something,” Madison explained.
“Huh?” Fiona said again. “Who saved you?”
“Hart,” Madison said. Now,
her
eyes were twinkling.
Fiona giggled. “Hart?”
“Maybe this whole detective thing didn’t turn out so bad, after all. Maybe it was all meant to happen the way it did so I could have that three minutes with Hart,” Madison said.
“Oh, Maddie,” Fiona said. “You make me laugh.”
“That’s me. A regular laugh riot,” Madison said.
They walked out of the building together and headed for home.
Mom was very understanding when Madison explained to her what had happened with the school mystery. She ordered a pizza and drove to Freeze Palace for cherry ice-cream sundaes for Madison and her.
After dinner, Madison finished up her homework and went online. It was quiet for a Friday night. Usually, Madison and her friends made plans for the weekend or at least met up in chat rooms to gossip about the week. But no one had made plans at school or called Madison up to do anything.
Inside the e-mailbox, however, it was another story. Madison had a slew of e-mails from almost all of her friends—and Dad, too.
Dad had sent his love. He and Stephanie wanted to know how the mystery had turned out.
Madison wrote back, “It didn’t.” She’d fill them in on the details later.
Dan had sent an e-mail from the clinic. He told Madison to “hang in there.” Madison realized what a good friend Dan was. He always had something supportive and nice to say.
Lindsay had sent an e-mail with an apology for starting Madison on the mystery in the first place. “It’s all my fault,” Lindsay wrote. “If I hadn’t been so nosy…”
Madison hit
REPLY
and reassured her friend that it wasn’t anyone’s fault, but it was nice to know how much Lindsay cared.
Even Egg had sent Madison an e-mail, although his was filled more with jokes and jibes than with words of support. But Madison laughed. She realized that she couldn’t just hang on forever to her failure to solve her first big mystery.
Her friends were there. With laughs or hugs, they would help.
A message popped up in the corner of her screen.
It was Aimee.
Madison almost burst into tears.
She typed a quick reply.
They went into a private chat room.