A
s soon as their father heard that Xena had Alice's schoolbag, he said, “I'll finish my work later. We have to take it to the mansion so the police can see if they can find anything helpful in it.” In the car, he turned on the radio and tuned it to a news station. He had to raise the volume above the
swish-swish
of the windshield wipers when the rain started again.
Xena hadn't noticed anything unusual when she had rummaged through Alice's bag, but then, she hadn't been looking for clues. On the way to the mansion, she and Xander, seated together in the back, pulled out the textbooks, notebooks, pens, and other ordinary things that everybody carried to school. They leafed through the pages of the books, but nothing fell out.
“What's this?” Xander pulled out a small bound book. Xena tried to grab it but he held it
out of her reach. “Nuh-uh! I was the one who found it.”
“What is it?”
“A calendar.” He turned over the pages.
“That's kind of personal,” she said. “Maybe you shouldn't read it.”
“The police are going to look at it,” Xander said reasonably, “and they don't even
know
Alice.”
“Well, hurry up then. We're almost there.”
Xander flipped to the week before. On Friday was the notation “Audition after school” in Alice's neat handwriting, then some school assignments. On Wednesday was written “G's birthday!!!” The notation “my birthday” on the following Saturday was written in much smaller letters, and with no exclamation points.
“Who's G?” he asked.
“Must be Gemma, Miss Jenny's daughter,” Xena said. “They're really good friends, don't you remember?”
“Here we are,” their father said from the front. “Would you look at that!”
They looked up from shoveling Alice's things back into her schoolbag. “Wow!” Xander said.
The sidewalk in front of the mansion's drive was packed with reporters and photographers,
and uniformed police holding them back. There wasn't an inch of space on the curb. “I don't suppose either of you brought an umbrella?” their father asked. Xena and Xander shook their heads and he sighed. “Get out here and tell the officer what you have. I'll find a place to park and be right back.”
Somehow, Xena managed to squirm through the crowd. She popped out from between two closely packed bodies and nearly fell at the feet of a police officer.
The officer grabbed Xena's elbow. “Careful!” she warned, and added, “You shouldn't be here. There's nothing to see, and you'll just get in the way.”
“But I have evidence!” Xena held the schoolbag up. “This belongs to Alice!”
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“How long are they going to make us sit here?” Xander asked. He and Xena were waiting in a small roomâif any room in that mansion could be called small; this one was almost as big as their whole apartmentâwhile their father talked with the police. “And why are they asking Dad about the schoolbag? He doesn't know anything. They should be asking us!”
Xena sighed. “That's how grown-ups are. They think that kids don't know anything.”
They looked up as the door opened, but it wasn't the police or even their father. It was a girl about Xena's age. She had dark wavy hair, a snub nose, and freckles. She looked from one of them to the other. “Are you Xena and Xander Holmes?” They nodded. “I'm Gemma. You met my mom yesterdayâMiss Jenny. She sent me in here to keep you company.”
“Do you know what happened to Alice?” Xena asked.
Gemma's light brown eyes clouded over. “Nobody does. She justâjust disappeared.”
“When did someone notice she was gone?” Xena wished she had brought her notebook with her. Xander's memory wasn't any better than anyone else's unless he read something, and they might be getting some good clues.
“About eleven o'clock last night. Did you hear that thunderstorm?” Xena and Xander nodded. “Alice is afraid of thunder. That's how my mom found out she was missingâat the first thunderclap she went into Alice's room to see if she was frightened. When she didn't find Alice in her bed, she thought maybe she'd gone into my room, but
she hadn't. So my mom alerted the security team and woke up Miss Banders, Alice's aunt.”
“What makes them think Alice ran away?” Xena asked.
“Miss Banders found a note.”
“What did it say?” Xander asked.
“I don't know. They won't let me see it. My mom said the police took it.”
As though they had heard themselves being mentioned, two police officers came into the room, accompanied by Mr. Holmes. “Xena and Xander Holmes?” one of the officers asked, glancing at his clipboard.
Xena and Xander stood up. “Yes, sir,” they chorused.
“What do you know about the young lady's disappearance?”
“Nothing,” Xena said. “We were going to come here today to trade her schoolbag for mine. I picked up hers by mistake when we were here yesterday.”
The police asked them a few more questions and seemed disappointed when Xena and Xander couldn't supply them with any more information.
“Can I have my schoolbag?” Xena asked after the police told them they were free to go.
One of the officers nodded. “I think I saw it in her bedroom. I can have someone fetch it for you.”
“Please, let me get it myself,” Xena said. “I think Alice took some things out of it, and I need to make sure I have all my schoolbooks so I can do my homework over break.” This wasn't strictly true. Alice hadn't said anything about taking books out, but on the other hand, she was so conscientious about her homework that she might have used one or two of Xena's until she had her own back.
The officer said, “Well ⦔ and appeared to be thinking about it.
Xander looked up at him with his most appealing smile. “
Please?
”
The officer smiled back and said, “All right, then. I'll accompany you.” Xena wondered what would happen when Xander grew up a littleâwould he still be so cute that adults couldn't refuse him anything?
“I'll go with you,” Gemma volunteered. “I know where Alice puts her things.”
“I'll get the car and meet you at the gate,” their father said. “That way only one of us will get wet.”
Alice's bedroom was huge, as they had imagined, and very grand. Still, there were little homey touches about it that kept it from being formal and cold. A framed photograph of a laughing woman holding a baby sat on the dresser. “That's Alice's mother, Queen Juliette,” Gemma said when she saw Xena looking at it. “She and the king were killed in a plane crash when Alice was just two.” Some ragged stuffed animals were on top of the bookcase, which was filled to overflowing with books. All expensive hardcovers, Xander noticed.
“Is this yours?” One of the policemen held up a navy schoolbag decorated with a crest showing the head of a giraffe, their school's emblem.
Xena looked inside the bag. She saw the science lab notebook with her name on it and a few other things. “My math book is missing, and a book I was supposed to read for literature class.” She looked around. “There's the math book.” She pointed at the desk. “Can I get it?”
The policeman nodded. “Just don't disturb any of the powder.” Xena and Xander didn't have to ask about the powder that lay in a white mist over all the hard surfaces. They knew that
it was for finding fingerprints. Xena picked up the math book carefully, and saw the novel she was supposed to read, so she took that too. A glass jar on the desk caught her eye. It had several banknotes in itâseventy pounds or so, she guessed, about a hundred dollars. Odd that Alice would leave that behind if she was running away. Wouldn't she need money? But then, a princess probably got a huge allowance, and seventy pounds wouldn't mean much to her.
“Is that all?” the officer asked.
“I think soâ” she started, but Xander interrupted her.
“What about your cell phone?”
“Oh, right!” She'd forgotten all about it. She looked inquiringly at the policeman.
“We didn't find one.”
“Are you sure?” He shook his head, and Xena's heart sank. She would get in a lot of trouble if her mother found out she didn't have that phone.
On the stairs, Xena asked Gemma if Alice had a lot of pocket money. “Hardly any,” Gemma told her. “Her aunt says it isn't good for her to have more money than other people, but she gets even less than I do.” Xena opened her
mouth to ask about the jar on the desk, but changed her mind.
Their father wasn't back yet, and Alice's aunt was talking with some police officers. “Can you hear what they're saying?” Xander whispered to Xena, who shook her head.
“I'll try to find out.” Xena was an athlete and took her studies of martial arts very seriously. She had the ability to move smoothly and silently, and she often managed to get close to people without being seen. Her mother called it “Xena's cloak of invisibility,” and it had helped her in past investigations. Xena crept as close as she dared, keeping her eyes downâshe had learned long ago that a direct gaze attracts attentionâuntil she was standing next to a table polished to such a deep sheen that it cast back her ghostly reflection. She paused.
“I understand you have quite a complicated security system here,” one of the officers was saying. “I saw your camera outside. Have you reviewed the recording from last night?”
“The system was knocked out by a lightning strike,” Alice's aunt said. “We didn't discover this until long after my niece had disappeared.”
“Who was in the house, ma'am?”
Xena crept a bit closer.
“Mrs. GilesâPrincess Alice's nannyâand her daughter, Gemma, and the princess's bodyguard.”
The policeman looked up. “No other servants?”
Xena leaned over the table.
“No. The servants had all been given the night off.”
Xena let her eyes stray over the papers on the table. They mostly looked like official forms, but then her eye was caught by a piece of the familiar three-hole paper with faint blue lines that everyone used for schoolwork. Part of it was covered by another paper, but the first words let her know what it was.
Dearest Aunt Penelope,
Don't bother looking for me because I
don't want to come back.
It was the note that Alice had left. For a moment Xena thought of picking it up, but that would have meant circling around the table and getting closer to the police and Alice's aunt, and she wasn't confident of remaining unseen. She
was pretty sure that neither the police nor Aunt Penelope would be willing to let her read the note, but the more she thought about it, the more curious she became. So as carefully as she could, she glided back to where Xander and Gemma stood watching her.
“Give me your phone!” she said to her brother. Normally he would object to her bossing him, but he could tell from her urgency that this was not the time to protest. He handed it to her, and she moved slowly back to the table.
Xander watched as she reached across the table and slid a piece of paper off another one. He held his breath, hoping that none of the adults would notice his sister. He didn't know what she wanted with his phone until he saw the flash of the camera. It must have caught the eye of Alice's aunt, too, because she turned and snapped at Xena, “What are you doing? Are you in the pay of those dreadful newspapers?”
“No, ma'am, Iâ”
“Give me that camera!”
“But Iâ”
This time Xena was interrupted not by Alice's aunt, but by a commotion at the door as a short man in a black suit burst into the room. She
retreated to stand next to Xander and Gemma and handed the phone back to her brother, hoping Miss Banders would forget about it.
“Who's that guy?” Xander asked Gemma.
“He's the Borogovian prime minister,” Gemma answered. “He arrived in London last night to help Alice rehearse for the coronation. He brought Alice's crown and other things that she'll need.”
“Any news?” the man asked.
“Nothing, sir,” one of the officers said. The man collapsed in a chair and buried his face in his hands. “Don't worry, sir,” the policeman said. “We'll find her.”
The prime minister lifted his head. Dark circles were under his eyes, and his hair stuck out as though he hadn't combed it that morning. “Thank you. I'll do whatever I can to help. Why do you people allow transit strikes? Even theâwhat do you call that tunnel between England and France? Oh yes, the Chunnelâeven the Chunnel was closed. I had to hire a private boat to bring me over from the Continent, and we just barely made it into the port before that storm closed down the shipping for small boats. There was construction work outside my hotel last
night, so I hardly slept, and then it was almost impossible to find my way here.”