Mudshark (4 page)

This was, clearly, the most successful act of magical misdirection Kyle had ever done, or probably would do for the rest of his life, which, according to his angry father, might be very short indeed if he did not produce the car.

Now.

So Kyle, talking fast, called Mudshark and begged him to come over. Mudshark found the car, as good as new, around the corner and down the block. Mudshark was kind enough not to give away the secret of Kyle's trick, which was actually not misdirection at all but an unlucky combination of his attempting the trick with the help of (1) his sixteen-year-old cousin (or, as Kyle referred to her, “my lovely assistant Kimmie”), who drove off in the car and forgot where she'd parked it, and (2) Kyle's dad's spare set of keys, which would no longer be kept on a peg by the back door after what soon became known in Kyle's house as That Darnfool Magic Nonsense with My Brand-new Car That I'd Hardly Driven Yet.

“See?” Kyle told his father. “It was never really gone in the first place. It was all just sleight of hand—”

“If you ever do it again,” his father said, “I will direct
my
hand to a part of your anatomy so hard you won't sit down for three months.”

“Yes, Dad.” Kyle sounded meek, even though he was secretly wondering what he could possibly do to top this one.

And Mudshark went back to his thinking, which was more and more centered around one word:

Erasers
.

This is the principal
.
Would the custodian please report to the faculty restroom with a large drum of disinfectant and a personal flotation device? Also, would whoever took the erasers from room two oh nine please return them? This holds true for all the other erasers, all sixty-five currently missing. Would whoever took them please refrain from taking any more and return all the missing ones to the appropriate rooms at once? There is nothing new to report about the gerbil except that he is still somewhere in the building. Will Mud … Lyle Williams please report to the principal's office? Immediately
.

While one part of Mudshark's mind was working on
erasers
, another part was trying to figure out the parrot.

Most of the school had come to believe in the power and knowledge of the bird. Soon after the parrot's first successful solution, faculty and staff started asking him for winning lottery numbers, students begged for predictions on upcoming grades and answers to the chemistry midterm, most of the Death Ball players wanted to know the results of sporting events—including a cow-pie-throwing contest in Kansas City—and the custodian quietly whispered a request about where to find true love.

The library was rapidly becoming the most popular room in the school, a fact that pleased Ms. Underdorf no end. Kids came in and pretended to look for a book, always on a subject that took them near the parrot's cage. Then they would sidle up to the bird and whisper a question.

The parrot would sit, eyes closed, as if pretending that no one was there.

The bird never answered questions about lottery
tickets or test answers or sports teams or even true love, but when someone wanted to find a lost item, he would emit the now-famous belch, squawk and reveal where the object could be found.

He wasn't always right, not like Mudshark, but he was, after all, a
parrot
and he was correct often enough that word spread through the school of his superpowers. The more people talked about him, the more they believed in him. And when Harvey Blenderman guessed accurately that Darryl F. Fergesen would win the Kansas City cow-pie-throwing contest rubber-gloved hands down, Harvey gave credit to the parrot even though the bird hadn't said a word.

Everyone thought it was just a matter of time before the bird shot Mudshark down as the undisputed answer champion. As much as kids liked and admired Mudshark and had come to rely on him for help, they secretly agreed that having a psychic parrot living in their school library was far more interesting than having a know-it-all twelve-year-old.

All of this was on Mudshark's mind when the PA system crackled to life:

As he made his way to Mr. Wagner's office, a wave of doom and gloom swamped him. Any time a person was ordered to report to the principal
immediately
, bad news followed.

Mudshark was ushered past the school secretary—a thin, always-smiling woman of massive efficiency who basically ran the school—and into Mr. Wagner's office.

The principal genuinely believed that his job was simply getting out of the way to allow teachers to teach. He mostly dealt with problems in the cafeteria—like why ten percent of the milk was always one day past its expiration date, and why did so many children have so much trouble unwrapping the butter pats so that little bits of tinfoil stuck to
the floor and had to be picked up piece by small, sticky, grubby, slippery, tiny little piece, and why, oh
why
did the cook insist on creating new recipes consisting of terrifying combinations (wasabi tuna noodle casserole spring rolls and chocolate potato pie, for example) that inevitably resulted in numerous parents griping to Mr. Wagner about their children's nausea?

And now, of course, erasers.

“Come in, Lyle, it's good to see you.” Mr. Wagner motioned to a chair opposite his desk. “How are things going?”

“Fine.” Mudshark waited.

“For some time now, I've heard that you are good at finding things.”

Mudshark nodded.

“I'm having trouble with something.” Mr. Wagner looked uncomfortable. Mudshark nodded encouragingly.

Mr. Wagner hesitated, took a deep breath and then blurted:

“Alltheerasersinschoolseemtohavebeenstolen.”

“I've noticed.”

“It's hard not to. Half the teachers have taken to using their shirttails to wipe off the board, which makes for some uncomfortable half-clothed moments in the classroom. Another half are swiping gym towels from the locker rooms, so now we've got showers full of wet kids but no towels. Then the other half of the faculty are asking for easels and enormous pads of paper to write on, which simply isn't in my budget. Then there's the half that just keeps writing
over
everything and have you
seen
that undecipherable layer of gobbledygook on the boards in the science wing?”

“That's four halves, sir.”

“It is?”

“Yes, but I see your point.”

“It seems a silly concern, I know, especially given the disastrous end to the recent Death Ball tournament and the still-lost gerbil and that weird parrot in the library and don't even get me started about the faculty washroom crisis, but I wonder if you could help me find the erasers.”

Mudshark smiled.

“Of course.”

Mudshark went home after school, thinking about the principal's request. As soon as he entered the house, his mother whizzed past him, thrusting a sticky Sara into his arms.

“Look, lovey, would you be a dear and watch the girls for me? I have to give a presentation at the library and your father is running late at the office. The girls are doing an art project so they shouldn't be any trouble for you while you wait for Dad to get home.”

Mudshark held Sara at arm's length and inventoried the damage: a piece of dog kibble was stuck in her hair, she had colored her entire right hand with purple marker and her shoes were not only mismatched but also on the wrong feet.

He looked out at the driveway and saw his mother hurrying toward the car, three tiny but perfect purple handprints on the seat of her crisp white suit skirt.

“Kara. Tara,” he bellowed. “Park. Now. Move.”
He set Sara down and held her purple hand as they waited for the other girls to come tearing down the hall from the playroom. He noted that Kara had the shoes that matched Sara's, Tara's dress was on backward and inside out and both of them had also colored their right hands purple. They walked out to the garage and he loaded them in the red wagon for the five-block trip to the park behind his school.

Once set free on the playground, the girls scattered, one to the sandbox, another to the gray plastic hippopotamus on its enormous spring and a third to the merry-go-round.

Mudshark sat on a bench facing the school building and eyeballed the girls as he let his mind drift, idly noticing a van pulling up to the back of the school. He came to attention when he saw a tall man carrying large, flat packages from the side door of the van to the basement door of the school. The man handled the packages carefully, one at a time, and lined them up near the door. After he'd unloaded six or seven packages, he started taking them down to the basement. The basement … the custodian …

“Don't!”

Mudshark looked over at his sisters, who were now all in the sandbox. They were each drawing with a stick, smoothing the sand down and patting the space in front of them flat before dragging the stick like a paintbrush through the sand to make lines. Tara was on her feet, waving her hands and shrieking at Kara and Sara.

“Don't wreck it! Don't wipe away my picture and draw over it!”
She stomped on their pictures, and they all started crying.

Mudshark got up to deal with the girls. He looked toward the school, tipped his head and narrowed his eyes, thinking. Then he nodded and smiled. “Gotcha. I know what's been going on now.”

Just then the girls tackled him, sat on him and sprinkled him with sand.

This is the principal
.
Would the custodian please report to the faculty restroom with a Geiger counter, lead-lined gloves and smoked-lens goggles? Would whoever took all the erasers from all the rooms in the entire building please return them? Will the gerbil, if he's listening, please refrain from terrorizing Mr. Patterson? And Mr. Patterson, will you please stop carrying the tennis racket up and down the halls and dropping a backhand on anything that moves? Three parents have called complaining of waffle marks on their children's faces. Thank you
.

Mudshark hesitated.

It was the next morning. Mudshark stood in front of a door in the basement of the school that he had never seen opened before. A door no student had ever passed through. He raised his hand and turned the knob.

Slowly, the door opened.

He peered inside.

“It's like a museum!”

This was the custodian's room, a small work space under the stairs. The walls were covered with posters of art and with actual paintings. Small sculptures stood on tables in the corners. The room glowed with light and color. As Mudshark leaned in, he heard classical music and recognized it from music-appreciation class: Pachelbel's Canon in D Major.

The custodian turned around, startled.

“Hey!” He smiled. “People don't usually come in here.”

“It's beautiful.”

“That's the idea. My name's Bill. Bill Wilson. And you're …?”

“Mudshark.”

“Ah! The Mudshark Detective Agency. I saw the sign. Glad you like it here. I have lots of paintings and posters at home, so I take some home, bring new ones in, keep things fresh. You can't have too much beauty…” He trailed off, serious for a moment, then smiled. “Ever.”

“Why don't you hang these in the hall, where everyone can see?”

“I think that how someone looks at art is mostly private. I don't feel it's fair to force other people to see things the way I see them. It's never right to force people …” Again, the serious look, then another smile. “…to do anything. Ever. Besides, it's safe here. The beauty.”

“Safe …,” Mudshark said.

Bill looked at him. “Safe is a very big deal to me.” He saw Mudshark's confusion. “You see … when I was eighteen, a college freshman, a war began and I felt I should help my country, so I joined the military and I was sent to fight. For two years, three months, twenty-one days and nine
hours. I saw … terrible things. I did some of them myself.” He looked down at the floor, lost in his thoughts.

Mudshark gently cleared his throat to get Bill's attention. “Go on.”