Novel - Half Moon Investigations (2 page)

Bella glared at me. “You better begin,” she said hoarsely. “Or I’m going to roll over and crush this ant. Then I’m going to take your precious badge and stuff it somewhere painful.”

I paled, but not as much as Herod did.

“Hurry, Moon,” he said urgently. “If I get crushed, my family will come looking for you.”

I felt as though I had wandered into somebody else’s nightmare, but it was too late to back away slowly and close the dream door behind me. There were a hundred eyes on me, all expecting a rabbit out of a hat.

Doobie elbowed me. “Go on, Fletcher,” he said. “You can do it.”

I suspected that Doobie wanted me to enter the fray so that he could have my badge when I didn’t come back.

April Devereux’s gang of April clones stamped and pouted at me. It was quite unnerving. They generally looked so pink and harmless.

“I can’t do anything here. You need a referee, not a detective.”

Herod’s forehead was pretty red now, with the effort of hanging on. “You better help, Half Moon. I’m warning you.”

There was no point in arguing. You couldn’t debate with Herod Sharkey. It would be as pointless as trying to sell a vegetarian lifestyle to a T. rex. The best thing to do would be to turn around and leave. So, I gave that a try, but the crowd was not as eager to let me out as it had been to let me in. I was an interesting wrinkle in an otherwise boring headlock fight. The kids surged forward, forcing me closer to the fight itself.

As I was bumped backward, I realized that I was in a very vulnerable position. All Herod had to do was scissor his legs.

Herod must have realized this too, for he suddenly kicked his skinny legs up and wrapped them around my neck. My balance was off, so I toppled to the ground, bouncing off Bella’s thigh on the way down.

The other kids cheered. This was a positive development as far as they were concerned.

I was disgusted more than afraid. Herod was only ten, and small for his age, so he couldn’t do much more than keep me on the ground—not in this position. But time was ticking on and soon the bell would ring, and Principal Quinn would make her way out here with her dogs, Larry and Adam, to see what the problem was. And the rules said that anyone caught in a fight paid a little visit to the office.

Herod’s boot laces were wedged up under my chin, and his feet were hooked together. I tried to unwind them, but unfortunately I was one-handed. Bella had rolled over my right arm. It felt like I had been steamrolled. Surely my arm was cartoon flat.

“You better start thinking, Half Moon,” said Herod. “Otherwise we’re going down to the office together.”

“Yeah, Half Moon,” chimed in Bella. “Get your thinking cap on.”

Apparently I was the bad guy now.

There was a simple solution. Simple but not very macho. However, I had little time and no options. With my free hand, I grabbed Herod’s left heel and tugged off his hiking boot.

“Hey!” he shouted. “What are you doing? He’s stealing my shoe.”

I wasn’t, of course, stealing his shoe. What I was doing was much less dignified. Before Herod could figure out what was going on, I grabbed his foot, and with my index finger, began tickling the sole.

“What?” squealed the ten-year-old. “Not fair! Stoppit!”

To give Herod his due, he held on for a few seconds before wriggling off Bella’s back and out of range. He was on his feet with tears of anger in his eyes.

“What kind of fighting is that? That’s baby fighting.”

He was right, of course. But I was a thinker, not a fighter.

I stood up, coughing. “Listen, Herod. I’m willing to look into this organizer thing, but you have to let me follow proper procedure.”

I picked up Herod’s boot, holding it out, mainly to show everyone that I wasn’t trying to steal it.

Things could have calmed down then. A lot of kids were drifting away for line-up. Bella was up but winded, and Herod was having a teary moment. The whole thing was running out of steam, and would probably have turned into a Hold-Me-Back, if Red Sharkey hadn’t arrived.

Red burst into the center of the circle on a mountain bike, scattering bystanders like skittles. Red Sharkey had always been at the center of the rowdy crowd. Red made his points with fists and jibes. He was tall and wiry, with flaming red hair that had earned him his school-yard name. Most of the children and staff at Saint Jerome’s didn’t know Red’s real name, and wouldn’t use it if they did. Red was the oldest kid in middle school. He should have moved on to high school a year ago, but he hadn’t attended much early on and had been held back.

For a moment, Red’s eyes were wide and worried, then he saw his brother upright and apparently not bleeding. He jumped off his bike, kicking the stand with his heel during the dismount. I couldn’t pull off a move like that if I practiced for a year.

“Roddy?” he said, with a casual nod.

Herod scowled at his brother. “I don’t need you, Goody Two-shoes. I can handle this.”

“So I see. Can’t you stay out of trouble for a minute?”

Bella caught her breath. “Your brother stole my organizer. Brand new.”

“I did not!” objected Herod.

Red frowned. “Whenever anything goes missing in this school, the nearest Sharkey gets the blame.” He glanced at his brother. “You didn’t take it, did you?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

Herod took a second to think back over the past few days.

“Yeah. Certain. No organizer.”

“Right, that’s it. He didn’t take it. End of story. Nothing to see here, let’s move it along.”

Good idea, I thought. Red has more sense than his brother.

But Bella wasn’t backing down for anyone, even Red Sharkey.

“
He’s
going to prove Herod did it.”

Oh no, I thought. I’m
he
.
He’s
me.

“Who’s going to prove Herod did it?” demanded Red.

“He is!” shouted several dozen people. Most of them pointed, too.

Red turned, following the fingers. His accusing gaze settled on me.

“Hey, Red,” I said, trying the friendly approach. “How you doing?”

Red smiled mirthlessly. “Half Moon. The man with the badge. This is not lost cats, this is the actual world. People could get in trouble.”

I shrugged. “Tell your brother. He invited me.”

“Doobie is always going on about his partner, the qualified detective, with the actual detective’s badge,” said Herod. “So let the nerd prove I’m innocent.”

I didn’t know which disturbed me more: Doobie calling me his partner or Herod calling me a nerd.

“Yeah, let the nerd prove he’s innocent,” said Bella, rubbing her neck. “Or else Herod’s guilty, as far as I’m concerned.”

Red rubbed his temples as though the stupidity of what he was hearing was giving him a headache. “Listen to me. Half Moon plays at being a detective. His mom bought him a toy badge somewhere, so now he goes around pretending to be Sherlock Holmes. It’s not real. He can’t
prove
anything.”

This was too much. I imagined the badge in my pocket glowing with indignation. I took out the wallet, flipping it open.

“Actually, Red,” I said. “This is a real detective’s badge. I am a real detective. First in the academy.”

Red turned slowly toward me. Generally, at this point, I would run away and find a dark corner to hide in, but some things are worth standing up for.

“So, you’re a real detective. I bet criminals all over Ireland are turning themselves in. ‘What’s the point?’ they’re saying. ‘Fletcher Moon is on the case.’”

“Go, Fletcher!” snuffled Doobie, who was too young for sarcasm.

“So what does your big detective’s brain tell you about the case of the missing organizer?” continued Red.

I shrugged. “Nothing. I don’t know the facts. I haven’t had a chance to question anyone.”

Red leaned back on the saddle of his bike. I got the feeling he was more interested in poking fun at me than clearing his brother’s name. Although, in all fairness, it would take two dozen lawyers and a time machine to clear Herod’s name completely.

“I’m sure Bella can answer any questions you care to ask,” said Red, grinning in anticipation of my failure.

“Come on, Fletcher,” said April Devereux. Her Barbie buddies did some cheerleading hops. It was nice to have somebody in my corner, even April and co. Although I suspected that they were more anti-Sharkey than pro-Moon.

I cleared my throat and tried to sound professional. “So, Miss . . . ah . . . Bella. Tell me what happened. Don’t leave out any detail, however insignificant.”

Bella thought for a moment. “Well, I got up at seven, and I was thinking about these earrings for ages, ’cause Quinn says they’re banned.”

I interrupted her. “Okay. You can leave out those details, stuff that only happened in your head and not in the actual world. Just tell us about the organizer.”

“Okay. It was a birthday present. Date book, phone numbers, MP3 player. Everything. If someone wanted to know the time in Tokyo, all they had to do was ask.”

The crowd oohed, impressed. Bella accepted their admiration with a little royal wave.

“So I brought it in today for the first time. Only, I forgot about it for a minute ’cause I was worrying about the earrings. I left my bag by the wall and went off for a walk with the girls.”

Bella and her friends spent a large part of their break time walking around. They would circle the yard, searching for little kids with no fashion sense to tease.

“So, halfway around, I remembered my organizer and ran back to my bag. But I was too late, little Klepto Sharkey had already made off with it.”

“Klepto?” said Red, trying to sound incredulous.

“Yes, Red. Klepto. Short for kleptomaniac. He’s a real Sharkey, all right. Been stealing since he was in diapers.”

Red’s expression was more resigned than furious.

“So maybe Roddy’s been in trouble a few times, that’s not proof of anything.”

April Devereux took a step forward from the rank of pink go-gos.

“I saw him searching Bella’s bag. I saw him with my actual vision. That’s proof, isn’t it? I watch
Law and Order
, so I know. I’m a witness.”

I winced apologetically at Red. “That’s pretty strong. An eyewitness.”

“So where’s the organizer?” countered Red. “If he stole it a few minutes ago, where is it?”

I transferred my wince to Bella. “That’s pretty strong. No smoking gun.”

“I know that, Half Moon. That’s why you’re here. You don’t think I’d even be talking to you if I didn’t need something.”

All eyes were on me again, and not in a nice
Oh, look at that handsome young man in the shiny shoes, I won
der if he’s single
kind of way. It was more of a nasty
If he doesn’t come up with the goods in ten seconds, let’s lynch him
kind of way.

I considered the facts aloud. “So, the organizer is missing, and Herod Sharkey is the prime suspect. But if Herod did steal it, then he obviously stashed it somewhere.”

“Herod has little hidey-holes all over town,” said April. “He’s like some kind of rabbit, only one that steals stuff.”

“This hidey-hole would have to be on the school grounds. He only had a minute before Bella confronted him. Where could he go in a minute?”

This was a question with as many answers as there were degrees on the compass. And with so many thousands of footprints tracking across the basketball court, it was impossible to isolate just one set. Unless Herod had brought something back from wherever it was he’d gone.

I still had Herod’s hiking boot in my hand. I flicked it over and studied the deep sole, hoping for a clue. I found one. The rubber was stained yellow and there were several buttercups trapped in the ridges. They were freshly ripped from the soil, with barely a trace of brown on the petals.

“The Millennium Garden,” I said, looking Herod straight in the face. He was suddenly pale and open-mouthed. A reaction that told me I was right, so I took off striding toward the school garden, leaving the rest to follow.

Those few moments, during the short walk from the basketball court to the garden, were the happiest moments I was to have for some time. This was what detective work was all about. Those precious seconds when you have made a breakthrough and you are so sure of it, that the confidence seems to burst through your very pores.

The buttercups trapped in Herod’s boot told me exactly where he had been in the past few minutes. Several years ago, at the beginning of the new millennium, the school got a grant for a commemorative wild garden. Every spring we were treated to the story at assembly by Principal Quinn. The garden was designed in a ring pattern. One ring for each millennium, each ring a different color. Green, white, and gold like the Irish flag. Green grass, white daisies, and golden buttercups. Buttercups that were flowering again because of the Indian summer.

Of course it could mean nothing. Maybe Herod had just walked through the garden on his way to school, but his reaction made me think differently.

I arrived at the garden, dragging the rest behind me like the Pied Piper. I looked hard at the ground for several moments, then glanced sharply at Herod. He was staring at his own feet, but every few seconds his eyeballs would flick across to the buttercup ring. It was just as Bernstein said in chapter eight of the detective’s manual.
The criminal’s own body will betray him. Guilt is a powerful force and will find a way out.
In this case, through the eyes.

I stepped into the buttercup ring, careful to avoid crushing too many of Mrs. Quinn’s precious flowers, and thrust my fingers into the loose clay in the center. Barely a centimeter down, I hit metal. There was a box down there.

“I have never seen that cookie tin before in my life,” said Herod, jumping the gun a bit.

Red groaned. “Moron. How do you know it’s a cookie tin?”

“I know,” replied Herod haughtily, “because I put it . . .” He stopped then, because the penny had dropped.

“Exactly,” sighed Red. “As I said. Moron.”

I was about to pull out the box when Bella barged me aside. She ripped the tin from the earth. Surprise, surprise, it was a cookie tin.

Bella flipped the lid and selected her organizer from the contents.