Harriet Spies, page 6
“Harriet,” Nanu said again, before I joined him. “Just a minute, please.”
I turned around. Nanu looked unhappy.
“I said I was sorry about borrowing your things without asking,” I said.
“I know, Harriet, and I forgive you. But . . . is there anything else you might have borrowed, without asking permission?”
I didn’t like where this was heading. “I thought you believed me about the Captain’s binoculars,” I said.
“Yes,” said Nanu, “but, well, it does make me wonder a bit. If you should maybe think harder about whether you remember seeing the Captain’s binoculars before the yard sale.”
I felt a big hot bubble of mad rising up in my chest. If I were a garibaldi, I would have turned from orange to red.
“I’m not lying, Nanu,” I said.
“Okay, Harriet, I believe you,” Nanu answered. But the look on her face told me that maybe that wasn’t all-the-way true.
I went outside. Clarence was sitting at the iron table under the tree. His sandwich halves were still on his plate without any missing bites. As soon as I sat, he picked up the sandwich.
“Were you waiting for me?” I asked.
“Mm-hmm,” he said, chewing.
That was a nice thing to do. I really liked Clarence. But that just made me think again about how I’d be leaving Marble Island in a month or so. It’s hard not to get attached to people you like.
We ate our sandwiches in the shade of the tree. We listened to the tinkling wind chimes and munched the salty chips.
“What’s that over there?” Clarence asked, pointing at the shed with his sandwich.
“That was Nanu’s junk shed, but now that I cleared it all out, she says I can use it as a hangout.”
“Really?” said Clarence. “Can I see?”
“Sure.” I shoved the last of my sandwich into my mouth. I remembered to swallow before I said anything else. “It’s got real windows and electricity.”
We went into the shed. Clarence stood in the middle and turned in a slow circle, looking all around. At first I thought maybe he’d say something like “It’s not very big,” or “It’s just an old shed,” but after he’d finished his circle, he looked at me, pushed his glasses up his nose, and grinned. “This is awesome,” he said. “Can I help you set it up?”
It turned out that Clarence knew a lot about decorating. He told me that the first thing we needed was a rug. “To ground the space,” he said.
I had an idea where we could get one.
Mabel Marble was sitting on her back porch, working on a gingerbread house for the birds. She had all the supplies laid out on a table in front of her—seeds and nuts and tweezers for moving them around, and a special glue she makes that’s safe for birds to eat.
“Hello, Harriet,” Mabel Marble said, looking up from her work. “Who’s your friend?”
I guess I was inspired by Clarence’s good manners, because I said, “Mabel Marble, this is my friend Clarence. Clarence, this is Mabel Marble.”
“Hello, Miss Marble,” said Clarence.
“Call me Mabel Marble,” said Mabel Marble. “Everyone does. Would you two like to help me make fresh houses for the birds?”
“Maybe later,” I said. “Clarence is helping me fix up the shed, and I wondered if maybe we could use the old rug you have rolled up in the corner of your kitchen.”
“Ah,” said Mabel Marble. “The rag rug.”
“What’s a rag rug?” Clarence asked.
“Bring it out here, and I’ll show you,” Mabel Marble said, so Clarence and I went inside.
He looked around at all the stuff—the stacks of dishes and the tablecloths and the bound-together newspapers. He stood there for a minute, just staring.
“C’mon,” I said, grabbing one end of the rolled-up rug.
He grabbed the other, and we carried it out to the porch. Mabel Marble told us to untie it and lay it flat, so we did. And then we saw that the whole round rug was made up of little bits of cloth, tied and then braided together. I think every color that exists was in it, some bright, some faded.
“First you collect fabric,” Mabel Marble said. “Old clothes, worn-out socks, tired dishcloths, anything will work. Then you tear the fabric into strips and sew them together into long strands. Then you braid the strands together, and then you’re ready to shape the braids into a rug.”
“That sounds like hard work,” I said.
“Lots of things are hard work,” said Mabel Marble. “That’s no reason not to do them.”
“We’ve got a whole pile of clothes at home that Dad says are too stained for us to wear anymore,” Clarence said. “I wonder if I could make a rug out of them!”
Clarence didn’t seem like a kid who was afraid of hard work. I liked that about him, too.
“Do you think we could use the rug for my shed?” I asked Mabel Marble.
She nodded. “As long as you let me come visit it from time to time.”
“It’s a deal,” I said, and we shook on it.
Then Clarence and I rolled up the rug again and carried it across Mabel Marble’s yard and through the gate, straight into the shed, where we laid it down.
“Wow,” I said. “It already feels like a real room in here!”
“I told you we needed a rug,” Clarence said.
I liked how he used the word “we.”
By the time Clarence went home for dinner, we had managed to move in a card table and two chairs, my stack of books from the library and a couple of bookmarks, my rock collection (which I’d brought all the way to Marble Island from home), and Dad’s miniature-making stuff. Clarence said most of the paint from the box I’d found in Mabel Marble’s basement was dried out and useless, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away.
After Clarence left, I spent some time arranging and rearranging the shelves. Then I decided to get Matzo Ball and show him the place.
He was snuggled up next to Moneypenny in their favorite sunny spot, the window seat. I almost felt bad about waking him. But I did anyway.
“Come on, Matzo Ball,” I said, scooping him up by his fuzzy armpits. “I want you to see what I’ve been working on.”
He was floppy and warm from his nap, and I buried my face in his peachy fur. He smelled like sunshine.
When we were in the shed, I turned on the light and closed the door so that he couldn’t make a run for it and maybe climb over the fence into Mabel Marble’s yard, the way he’d done before. I love Matzo Ball, but I know from experience that he isn’t trustworthy around birds. To him, they probably look like flying candy bars or something.
“What do you think?” I asked.
He skulked around in that funny careful way cats walk when they’re in a new place and not totally sure about it. But after he sniffed most of the corners, he relaxed a little.
I sat in one of the chairs and opened a book where I’d left off, laying the bookmark on the card table. I read for a few minutes, but I was too excited about being in my new hangout to concentrate. Just think—it wasn’t very long ago that the shed had been packed full of junk and I had found the old key in the chest of drawers, the key that led me to Mabel Marble.
Thinking about that made me think about the talk Nanu and I had had, the one when she told me that she used to steal things when she was young . . . like a pencil from a girl in her class who had better handwriting than she did.
A tingly feeling went up the back of my neck, making the little hairs there feel alive. Wait a minute. Nanu had confessed to me that she was a thief . . . was it possible that maybe she was the person who had taken the Captain’s binoculars?
As soon as the idea came to me, I was sure it couldn’t be true. There was no way that Nanu would steal the Captain’s binoculars. Absolutely no way.
But one thing I knew about solving mysteries was that you aren’t supposed to let anyone off the hook. If a person had the opportunity to be the thief, you are supposed to investigate them no matter what.
After all, sometimes in movies and books, the criminal is the person you’d least expect.
“Meow,” said Matzo Ball, batting at the leg of my overalls.
“Not now, Matzo Ball. I’m thinking.”
“Mrow,” said Matzo Ball. He reached up with his fuzzy white-and-apricot paw and batted at the tassel of my bookmark, which was hanging off the edge of the card table. I put the bookmark back into the book and shut it.
“Okay, Matzo Ball,” I said, picking him up and kissing him three times. “I’m getting hungry, too. Let’s go inside.”
I couldn’t imagine why Nanu would take the Captain’s binoculars. But if I was going to be thorough about solving this mystery, I was going to have to investigate Nanu, whether I liked it or not. While we ate dinner, I’d be watching her to see if there was anything she might be hiding.
12
Macaroni and Cheese and Marshmallows
UP IN OUR LITTLE APARTMENT we ate macaroni and cheese, but not the kind from a box. Nanu’s cheese sauce is homemade, and after she mixes it into the noodles, she puts the whole thing in the oven and bakes it until the top is brown and crispy. Then she cuts slices out of it to spoon into bowls.
The corner pieces are the best because they have the most crispy bits. This was something the Captain and I agreed on; she loves Nanu’s macaroni and cheese as much as I do. Whenever Nanu makes macaroni and cheese, the Captain joins us. So there were three of us sitting around Nanu’s kitchen table that evening. The Captain is so tall that her legs filled up most of the space underneath the small, round table. She looked like she’d climbed into our dollhouse and was trying to fit in.
Moneypenny, who also loves Nanu’s macaroni and cheese but knows she’s not supposed to beg for it, lay down in her basket in the corner of the kitchen. Her long, spatula-shaped ears draped out of the basket and onto the floor. Watching as we ate, her mournful eyes followed each forkful.
“I think we should give Moneypenny her own serving,” I said. “It seems sort of mean to torture her like this.”
“People food isn’t good for animals,” the Captain said.
“I think Moneypenny would disagree,” I said, disagreeing.
“That’s the problem with people,” the Captain went on, as if I hadn’t spoken. “They want to turn pets and wildlife into people, instead of respecting the differences.”
“Did something happen in the field today, Captain?” Nanu asked.
“Actually, yes.” The Captain set down her fork. She pulled out her napkin—which she had tucked into her collar—and dabbed her mouth. “We were way out in Middle Ranch, where a big flock of island loggerhead shrikes has been nesting, and a deer came up to us in the truck, bold as can be!”
“Really?” That sounded exciting to me. “Was it cute?”
“It was adorable,” the Captain said. “But that’s not the point. The point,” she said, picking up her fork again and stabbing a macaroni, “is that it wasn’t afraid of us.”
“Why would you want the deer to be afraid of you?” I asked. “If it were me, I’d be excited if a deer came right up to me like that.” I jumped up and pretended to be a deer, using my hands to be its ears, and went right up to Nanu, sticking my face in hers. She laughed and kissed my forehead.
“That’s the problem with people like you,” said the Captain. “You and Mabel Marble and all the tourists. Making houses for birds out of seeds and nuts, feeding the deer marshmallows at the campground.”
Maybe the Captain had more to say, but I had heard enough. I almost yelled. But then I remembered Clarence’s good manners. So I said—in a not-yelling voice—“I don’t know why you’re so crabby, but there’s no reason to be mean about it.” Then I plopped back down into my seat.
“Oh, dear,” said Nanu.
For a minute I didn’t know if she was going to be mad at me for talking back to the Captain, even though I hadn’t yelled, but then she said, “Captain, I’m sure you’ve got quite a bit on your mind, and I’m sure it’s distressing to see an emboldened deer. But surely you must want to apologize to Harriet for losing your temper.”
Nanu didn’t say it like it was a question. She said it like it was a statement. I decided to remember that, for later.
The Captain did look sorry. She set down her fork again, with the piece of macaroni stuck on it.
“Your Nanu is right,” she said to me. “It’s not your fault I’m upset. I am sorry.”
I shrugged. I wasn’t quite ready to forgive her, so I changed the subject. “Who’s feeding marshmallows to the wildlife?”
The Captain sighed. She took off her glasses and set them on the table. “The deer that came up to us today had a jumbo marshmallow stuck to its ear. Picture that! A wet, sticky marshmallow caught up in deer hair. Some tourists down at the campground have been hand-feeding the deer and sharing videos of themselves doing it. It’s become quite the trend to feed the wildlife. And that’s not safe for anyone—not the campers, and certainly not the deer.”
I thought about that. I could see that feeding marshmallows to a deer—as fun as it sounded—probably wasn’t a great idea. Marshmallows aren’t even good for people to eat, really. But what Mabel Marble did with her gingerbread houses seemed different.
We finished our macaroni and cheese, and we all did the dishes together, and then the Captain went downstairs. As we were putting away the casserole dish, Nanu said, “Harriet, I’m proud of you for speaking up for yourself. The Captain was short with you, and I liked the way you responded.”
“You did?”
“Absolutely,” said Nanu. “You were polite but firm. The Captain is strong-minded, and she is passionate about the things she loves. But sometimes she can be brusque, and it’s not your job to put up with that.”
“What’s ‘brusque’?” I asked. I thought I had an idea of what Nanu meant, but I was enjoying this conversation, and I didn’t want it to end.
“It means that the Captain doesn’t always use gentle language or think about the impact of what she is saying. The Captain is a lot like you. Her intentions are good. But impact is just as important as intentions.”
I didn’t like being compared to the Captain. I guess there were times that I didn’t think about the things I said, or the things I did. But it felt like as long as I didn’t mean to cause trouble or hurt anyone with my lies, they didn’t really count. I’d have to think more about all that.
Two things were for sure, I decided that night. The first, I thought as I put on my jammies and got ready for bed, was that Nanu really wasn’t a suspect in the missing binoculars situation. She was too fair of a person to steal anyone’s binoculars, even if she had stolen a few things when she was a kid. And she thought too much about other people’s feelings to be hiding the fact that she had accidentally taken them, or something like that.
The second thing was something I thought about again when I went into the kitchen to collect Matzo Ball and found the Captain’s glasses sitting on the table where she’d set them down. If the Captain could lose her glasses, she could most definitely lose her binoculars, too.
Nanu might not have had anything to do with the binoculars’ disappearance. But the Captain might have. And that’s who I’d investigate next.
13
Close Up
“HARRIET,” NANU SAID, “THERE’S A package for you.”
The next day, I was in the sitting room with Clarence. We were redecorating the dollhouse. First, we’d taken everything out, and we wiped the whole inside with soft dustcloths. It was dirtier than it looked in there. Then came the fun part: The Captain had given us a silver can of pressurized air with a long, skinny red straw stuck to the nozzle. Clarence and I took turns spraying air at the dollhouse furniture, blowing dust out of the little nooks and crannies.
Our plan was to turn the dollhouse’s sitting room into a dining room and its dining room into a sitting room, and then decorate the whole place for a birthday party. In real life, the island was getting ready to celebrate Mabel Marble’s centennial birthday, and since the dollhouse was modeled after her real house, it seemed like it should be decorated. We were going to make streamers out of strips of paper towels that we had dyed with food coloring, and we had some little yellow pom-pom balls I’d found in Nanu’s sewing bag that we were going to try to make look like balloons.
While we were decorating, we went through our list of suspects, though we had to whisper about it because Nanu was just in the next room. I told Clarence that I’d eliminated Nanu, and he agreed that she couldn’t be the thief.
“After all,” he whispered, “her whole job is to make the B and B guests happy, and stealing her longest-staying guest’s binoculars would be the opposite of making her happy.”
The Dunstons were still suspects, and so was the Captain. It wasn’t a very long list, but we were stuck on what to do next to continue the investigation.
Anyway, that’s what we were doing when Nanu told me there was a package for me. It was a smallish, flattish rectangular box. “Harriet Wermer” was written on the front, along with the address for the Bric-a-Brac B&B.
It was in my dad’s handwriting.
I opened it. There was a folded note, which I put inside my book to read later, and then I tipped out the heavy thing inside. It was an odd shape, and it was wrapped up tight in newspaper. I unwrapped the newspaper, too.
“It’s my dad’s magnifying glass!” It seemed like a bit of serendipity, which is a fun-sounding word that means “uncommon luck.” (I learned that word from the Captain.) When Dad had visited, he’d said he would send me the magnifying glass so I could look more closely at his miniatures; neither of us had known then that, by the time it arrived, I’d be in the middle of an investigation.
I held it up so Clarence could see it. It had a black handle and a silver rim and the glass was shiny and polished. I looked at Clarence through it. He looked huge.
