The Red Blazer Girls (21 page)

Ms. Harriman practically bursts into the room. She's wearing a bright red blazer—just like ours, sans crest. “Girls! It is so good of you to come and see me.” She shakes each of our hands and holds on for several seconds. She has a strange way of looking me right in the eyes, almost as if she's trying to read my mind. To be honest, it makes me a little squirmy.

After handshakes, she starts right in with the “lightning round” questions (and answers). “How are you all? You look wonderful. I
do
love those blazers. After you were here the last time, I went right out to Bloomie's and bought one for myself.” She twirls in the center of the room, showing it off. “Oh, let's not talk about me. Tell me about you. Tell me everything. Oh my goodness, would you like some tea? We must have tea. Winnie!
Would you make us some tea, please? And bring out a plate of cookies. Now, where were we? Rebecca, I'm so glad you came Saturday. You must tell me all about your lessons, after you get started, of course. Sophie, how is your guitar playing coming along? I think it's just wonderful that you take your music so seriously. And, Margaret, I hear you're a wonderful violinist.”

Many minutes and dozens of questions later, Winnie brings in the tray with the tea and cookies, creating just enough of an interruption that Margaret finally has a chance to convey our reason for stopping by.

“Elizabeth, we have some very good news,” Margaret announces, taking a cookie from the plate.

“How exciting!”

“We know where the ring is, and if everything goes according to plan, we will have it tomorrow.”

“Oh! Of course! The puzzle!
That's
why you're here!”

For crying out loud! Why
else
would we be here? I shoot a quick glance at Margaret, but she just smiles. Wait. Did I just say “for crying out loud”?

“Girls, this is absolutely incredible! I wasn't expecting anything for weeks and weeks. Tell me how it happened.” She is literally on the edge of her seat.

Margaret recites the slightly abridged version of the story (leaving out all of the math, thank God). I watch and listen while Winnie refills our teacups and passes the cookie plate around. She leaves the room, but I spot
her snooping in her usual spot. What is
up
with her? I am keeping a pretty close eye on her in the mirror when I realize she is watching me. So, if I have this straight, I'm watching her watching me watching her watch everyone else. Oy. We are both a little surprised that we've been caught, and for a moment we just stare uncomfortably at each other. The next time I check the mirror, I can't see her, but I'm
sure
she's still listening.

When Margaret finishes the story, Ms. Harriman sits back in her chair, shaking her head slowly with a rueful smile. “You accomplished it all so quickly. Even if the ring isn't there, you girls have done more for me than you can imagine. You see, I have just made a very important decision, and I owe it all to you. I need to see my daughter. It's time for my family's foolishness to end, and it's up to me to end it.”

“Oh, that's wonderful,” Leigh Ann says. “I'm sure she will be so happy. Everybody needs their mom.”

“How do you think you'll do it? I mean, will you just call her up, or …” I mean, just how
do
you make up with someone you stopped talking to?

“Well, I suppose I'll just have to swallow my pride and ask Malcolm for his help.”

“Why don't you ask her to come to the Dickens banquet on Thursday?” Leigh Ann suggests. “It's going to be lots of fun. Our English teacher is in charge. He dresses up like Charles Dickens and people wear top hats. You could watch the skits, and there's a dinner, too.”

“Goodness. That does sound interesting.”

“I don't know, Leigh Ann,” Rebecca says. “They haven't seen each other in a long time. Maybe they want something a little more … private.”

“No, no, I think I like this idea. We'll have to talk on the phone first, but I think this banquet Leigh Ann described is the perfect place to meet in person—if she'll come.”

Leigh Ann claps her hands. “Yay! I'll stick a flyer in the mail slot in your door this afternoon. It has all the information. This is so exciting!”

“Do you really think you'll come?” Margaret asks.

“I wouldn't miss it for the world. I just hope my
daughter
will be accompanying me.” She gets a little misty. “I can't tell you how nice it is to say those words.”

Later that afternoon, Margaret and I are standing on Lexington Avenue, staring up at St. Veronica's Church.

“Ready?”

“Set!”

“Let's go.”

We could hear the organ from the street, and inside we can
feel
it; the organist is seriously rockin' the joint.

“Bach,” Margaret says. “Cool.”

“Sounds like a haunted house. Or
The Phantom of the Opera
.”

Robert is nowhere in sight, but the September issue of
Elle
is open on his desk (“Hate Him? Date Him!”).
We push through the swinging glass doors and into the nave.

“Gone for the day,” I say. “Maybe the organist locks up when he leaves.”

“Hope so.”

We sneak along the side aisle, past the paintings where we had found the first and last thumbtacked clues, and make our way up to the edge of the raised section of the floor. Starting from the intersection of the two metal strips that was the zero point on our graph, Margaret counts the tiles to find the one where the point (3,1) is located.

“Uh-oh.”

“What do you mean, uh-oh?” I hiss.

“It's under the table.”

The altar table is about seven feet long and three feet wide, and it straddles the tile we need to get to. A tailored satin cloth covers it completely, hanging nearly to the floor on all four sides.

“What do we do?” I ask.

“This table weighs a ton. The wood on the top is like two feet thick. There's no way we can move it.”

She looks around the church to see if anyone is watching, but it appears to be deserted, except for the organist, who is up in the loft and facing away from us. I can just barely see the top of his head.

“Well, let's go have a look.”

Margaret crosses herself, steps up onto the worn
stone floor, and silently ducks down under the table, behind the tablecloth. I do the same, after taking one last quick look around the church.

“We're in,” I say, as if we have just broken through a sophisticated security system and are about to save the world by disarming some nuclear missiles.

“Okay this is the spot. The good news is that the tiles don't seem to have any cement around them. They ought to be easy to lift up.”

“Them? They?”

“Oh yeah, I guess I forgot to mention that part. You see, I really don't know which
exact
tile it is.”

“WHAT!”

“Oh, relax. Jeez, you talk about
me
spontaneously combusting. Look, the actual intersection is really
between
the tiles, right? So we might have to lift all four.”

“So what's the problem?”

“This table leg is sitting right smack in the middle of the intersection of the four tiles.”

“So what does that mean?”

“Here, try to lift it up.”

We both reach under the edge of the tabletop—and heave!

Yikes. “I think I strained something. This is like something out of a freaking castle.”

Margaret shushes me. “Someone's coming. Under the table. I heard a door open, over by the dressing room.”

The music stops abruptly, and the sound of footsteps
suddenly becomes clear and is getting closer. My heart begins jackhammering into my rib cage and when the tip of a man's black shoe appears under the edge of the tablecloth, I seriously think I might puke.

Black Shoe Man stands at the table for the world's longest minute. Will Robert's hearing aid pick up the sound of my beating heart? Margaret makes the “deep breath” sign with her hands.

The damn shoes finally move a few steps away, but they stop again near the podium on the left side of the altar. From under the tablecloth, we can't see anything above ankle height.

“He's kneeling down,” I whisper, mere inches from Margaret's ear. “He's looking for something.”

“Who is it?”

“I can't tell.” The organist launches into another raucous passage of Bach, allowing me the chance to shift positions and take another deep breath without fear of being heard. Something in my book bag is digging into my back, so I carefully slip it off my shoulders. By the time things quiet down again, Margaret indicates that the visitor has moved to the other side of the table, nearer to me.

“Can you see him now?” she whispers.

I gently shift so I can look, and—yipes!—he is standing right beside me. A few seconds later, I see his feet go through the side door into the dressing room and then the door shuts behind him.

“He's gone,” I say, taking a much-needed breath.

“Good. I don't know how much longer I could have taken it.”

“I was
dying
.”

“That's what I mean. I don't know how much longer I would have been able to stand watching you. You look so terrible.”

“Hey, thanks. So, can we get out of here now?”

“Let's be sure he's really gone first.”

When Margaret signals, we slide out from under the table and hurry off the altar to the aisle opposite where the black shoes had disappeared. We turn the corner … and practically knock over St. Veronica's half-blind, hard-of-hearing, fashion-magazine-reading security guard.

“Oh, hello, Robert.”

“Hold it right there, girls.”

We are
seriously
busted.

“What were you girls doing up there?”

“What?” When in doubt, act stupid.

“I saw you come out from under the altar table.”

“We weren't
doing
anything,” Margaret says. “Really. Don't you remember us? We were here a few days ago, working on a project. We go to school next door. Here's my ID. We were just looking around, taking some more pictures, because it's due tomorrow, and we forgot part of it. Swear to—”

The security guard looks skeptical. “We've had some trouble. I'm supposed to take anything suspicious over to Father Danahey.”

“Suspicious! Oh, come on. We're just students.” Apparently, Margaret's strategy is to play the “mischievous but innocent schoolgirl.”

Robert calls up to the organist to let him know that he will be back in a few minutes. “C'mon, young ladies. Let's go.”

And so, here we sit, the picture of guilty innocence, awaiting our fate on a bench in the pastor's office.

Father Danahey barges into the office. He's about six foot three, with hair like a paintbrush, all gruff and no-nonsense. Margaret and I start to stand when he barks, “Sit. First, your names.”

We introduce ourselves, adding quickly that we both go to school at St. Veronica's in the hope that this piece of information will automatically absolve us.

But: not so much.

“Robert tells me that you were
under
the altar table. Is that right?”

“Well, yes,” Margaret says. “But we—”

“And that you were
running
out of the church when he found you.”

“Yes, Father,” she admits.

Father Danahey looks first at Margaret, then at me, and turns his palms upward. His bushy eyebrows move in the same direction.

My palms are sweating, and my stomach is starting to hurt.

“But see, we weren't doing anything bad,” Margaret begins. “We're working on a project, and we needed to look at a few more things in the church. I know, we
shouldn't have been up on the altar, but Mr. Winter-bottom let us go up there before to take pictures of the stained glass. And then, when we heard someone coming, we just panicked and hid.”

“And that's the whole story, eh?” Father Danahey leans back in his chair. He looks tired, too tired to be dealing with teenage girls. “You must admit, it sounds a little fishy.”

“I do admit that,” Margaret says as I begin to envision the two of us breaking rocks in those
very
unflattering prison jumpsuits.

“You see, girls, I want to believe you. I'm still not entirely convinced by your explanation, but I also don't think you intended to do anything wrong. Of course, you might be pulling the wool over these old Irish eyes. You see, a few days ago, a small statue of St. Andrew disappeared from one of the old corridors, and sometime in the last twenty-four hours, someone walked off with two candlesticks that were sitting right on top of the table where you just happened to be hiding. Now, ordinarily, that wouldn't be such a big deal, because candlesticks can be replaced. But these were special. They may not have looked like much, but I'm told that when it comes to the value of antiques, that doesn't mean a thing. For example, that monstrosity of a table you were hiding under. It was made sometime in the Middle Ages for a castle in Scotland, and they tell me it's worth a small fortune. The candlesticks came from the same castle,
and they also date back to the Middle Ages. As a matter of fact, I was just meeting with a parishioner about them; he's an expert on such artifacts and I asked him to come in and tell me about them—their potential value and so forth. Now do you see my problem?”