The Spy Catchers of Maple Hill Read online

  There were a number of other facts she could write under both “Mr. Jones” and “Communist spies”: secretive, potentially violent, keep to themselves.

  Next she decided to make a list of all the questions for which she needed an answer:

  What is Mr. Jones’s real name?

  Is Mr. Jones from Russia?

  Did Mr. Jones have previous experience as a gravedigger? What did he do before coming here?

  When Communists infiltrate, do they all go to work in the same place? Wouldn’t it make sense for them to have a leader outside the company that they reported to?

  How do spies get their secrets back to Mother Russia anyway?

  Who is Alice?

  She looked over her list. She wasn’t sure how she was going to find out all these things. She supposed there might be information about Communists in the books and magazines in the library. Hazel wished she had a little blue sports car like Nancy Drew. Then she could drive herself to the library to do more research, though the library was probably closed. While it was true that Nancy Drew had managed just fine on her own for four mysteries, Hazel wasn’t sure if she was ready for this one. She was smart, smarter than anyone, but for this case she was going to need backup. After all, even the great Sherlock Holmes needed Watson. Though she didn’t want to admit it, she needed Samuel.

  Hazel crouched at the bottom of the stairs like the gargoyles in the graveyard. She listened to her parents in the living room.

  “‘In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line,’” her father intoned.

  They were reading Thoreau to each other, something they did like normal parents played bridge or swirled cocktails in a glass. Of all the people in history, Thoreau was the person Hazel would least like to spend time with. The whole world was open to him, and he had chosen to lock himself away in a little cabin in the woods.

  The living room was off the hall that led to the kitchen. The kitchen was where she needed to go to get the lemon juice and toothpick in order to write her secret message to Samuel.

  When she was a grown-up, and a real detective, she would probably have a special watch that also served as a communicator, and she could send information to the other detectives that way, but for now she had to use another method to let Samuel know what she had found out. She had begged and begged her parents for a Super Spy Kit that she had seen advertised in the back of an Amazing Detective comic book. It had a special notebook, and a pen that wrote with invisible ink, and a magnifying glass, which is what she wanted most of all. Her parents had told her no, of course, so she was going to have to make her own invisible ink to send a note to Samuel.

  “Read the bit about simplicity, about the marrow of life,” her mother said.

  Hazel heard a shifting as her father moved in his chair. Her mother would be sitting at his feet, perhaps with her eyes closed, while he read. If Hazel timed it right, to move while her father was speaking, perhaps both would be too distracted to hear her go by.

  “Here we are,” her father said.

  Hazel started moving catlike down the hall. She closed her eyes as she passed the living room, as if this could somehow ward off their seeing her. Three more steps and her hands were on the door to the kitchen, pushing it open. She held it by the knob and let it slowly shut, with not even a click as it fell back into place.

  She let out her breath like the slow leak from her bike tire. Her heart was racing. She liked adventure, might even say that she lived for it, yet in the moment, it made her feel rather ill.

  The lemon juice was easy. She took a small, chipped cup from the back of the cupboard and filled it from the glass bottle in their refrigerator. The toothpick was harder to locate. They were not much of a toothpick family. Her father did not drink martinis with olives when he got home from work. They didn’t have people over for hors d’oeuvres that needed to be spiked on sticks. Once Hazel had been to a party at Becky’s, and they’d had tiny hot dogs wrapped in dough that Hazel thought were the most astounding things ever, but the only people Hazel’s parents ever had over were other horticulturalists, and she guessed they weren’t the tiny hot dog kind of crowd.

  So the toothpicks were kept on a high shelf of the pantry. She went to the table and lifted a large, heavy chair and carried it over to the pantry. Normally she just dragged the chair, which her mother hated because she said it would scratch the linoleum, but that night she couldn’t risk the scraping sound on the floor.

  When she climbed onto the chair, her knee hit the bag of King Arthur flour, tipping it forward. As she reached down to catch it, a small white cloud emerged, dropping tiny snow-flakes onto her nightgown. She carefully righted it, imagining the flour spilled all over the floor and the absolute disaster that had just been averted.

  Her hand closed around the small box, and she took out two toothpicks, just in case, and tucked them into the corner of her mouth. Mission accomplished, she climbed down from the chair and lugged it back to the kitchen, trying to make sure it was at just the same angle it had been when she’d retrieved it. It was true that her parents were not detectives like she was, and thus not trained to notice such things as a chair slightly out of place, but they had an uncanny way of knowing when she was on a mission or, in their words, “up to no good,” which she thought was an unfair characterization, as everything she did was for good.

  She eased open the door and heard her mother’s laughter tinkling like the wind chime above the garden. It’s now or never, Hazel thought, and scurried by, more mouse-like this time. She took the stairs two at a time, sloshing a bit of the lemon juice onto the green carpet.

  At her desk, she placed the cup of lemon juice next to a clean sheet of paper. She took one toothpick from her mouth, and left the other in, hoping she looked as smart as Mr. Wall, who sometimes chewed on a toothpick while sitting outside his garage. She thought it made him seem contemplative and wise, like John Wayne. She dipped the end of the other toothpick in the lemon juice and then held it over the paper. One single drop fell and landed on the paper.

  Then, nothing.

  She needed to ask for Samuel’s help in figuring out who Alice was, and to break up the spy ring, but of course she couldn’t just write that down in a letter, even one written in secret ink. Once Samuel held the letter to a lamp and the message was revealed, well, then anyone could read it—including Mr. Jones—so she didn’t want too much information on it. Secrets had to be kept. They would have to develop a code to send each other messages. In the meantime, she would be brief.

  The drop of lemon juice spread out, making a translucent dot before disappearing altogether.

  Finally, she wrote We need to meet. It took her longer than it would to write with a pen, scratching each letter out on the paper, and she imagined this was what scribes had felt like. She left the paper on her desk. In the morning she would fold it into a simple square, write Samuel’s name on the outside, and slip it into Samuel’s cubby.

  10

  Triangle People

  Hazel made sure no one was watching when she slipped the folded square into his cubby where it wouldn’t be obvious to anyone walking by but would be seen by Samuel when he was putting his things away.

  To her surprise, Hazel found a note in her own cubby. It was an office slip, telling her she should report to the main office, with the box next to “Immediately” checked. Normally these slips were for when kids needed to leave early for a dentist appointment or something like that. When “Immediately” was checked, though, it meant something was up.

  Mrs. Sinclair was busy talking to Otis Logan about multiplication tables—he was still stuck on the fours and he blamed the polio, but Hazel knew that was just an excuse. So Hazel left without saying anything. Surely it was Mrs. Sinclair herself who had put the slip in Hazel’s cubby, and so she would know that
Hazel was at the office. Hazel headed down the hall against the rush of students hurrying to their classrooms before the bell rang to start the day.

  Hazel tried to imagine why she was being called to the office. In her highest flying fantasy it was because Senator McCarthy and his investigators had found out about her work and were coming to offer support and give her a medal. She knew that was unlikely, as she still had a long way to go in her investigation.

  When she arrived in the office, Mrs. Dunbarton, the secretary, had a phone cradled under her ear and a line of students waiting. When it was Hazel’s turn, she handed the office slip to Mrs. Dunbarton, who was still on the phone. She glanced at the slip and shook her head while speaking to the person on the other end of the line. “Got it. Out at one thirty p.m. Yes.” Pause. “Yes.” Another pause. “Mrs. Mitchell, I can’t make any guarantees as to whether Lucy will remember to bring her lunch box home today. Take it up with her teacher.”

  She sighed as she hung up the phone and then looked at Hazel. “Where’d you get this slip?”

  “It was in my cubby.”

  Mrs. Dunbarton pressed her index finger onto the slip so hard the tip turned red and white. “There is one person in this school who writes the office slips. That person is me. This is not my handwriting.”

  Hazel felt herself flushing, though she hadn’t done anything wrong.

  “So where’d you get it?”

  “I told you, Mrs. Dunbarton. It was in my cubby when I got to school.”

  Mrs. Dunbarton held the slip up to the light and examined it closely. “This is the real deal, no counterfeit. Someone stole an office slip!” She looked at Hazel through narrowed eyes over the top of her cat-framed glasses.

  “It wasn’t me. I swear.”

  “I’m going to hold on to this. You get back to class.”

  Perplexed, Hazel made her way back to her classroom. When she opened the door, the class was in the middle of the Pledge of Allegiance. Hazel walked to her seat, joining in for the last line. After everyone was seated, Mrs. Sinclair said, “Hazel, where’s your tardy slip?”

  “I don’t have one,” she replied.

  “You were tardy, so you need a slip.”

  “There was an office slip in my cubby, so I went to the office—”

  “Hazel, please hurry and get your tardy slip so you won’t be late for music.”

  Heaving a sigh, Hazel stood up. Connie and Maryann were smiling like cats, and Hazel instantly knew this was their doing. She also knew she had no proof. So she went back to the main office.

  “You again?” Mrs. Dunbarton said.

  “I need a tardy slip.”

  Mrs. Dunbarton pulled out a small pad. She tucked a piece of cardboard under the carbon copy slip. “Hazel Kaplansky,” she said to herself as she wrote. “Reason?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your reason for being tardy.”

  “I was here. With you.”

  “Don’t blame me for your tardiness,” Mrs. Dunbarton snapped.

  Hazel thought about telling her that it was Connie and Maryann who had swiped the office slip, but instead she said, “Is miscommunication a choice?”

  “I’ll just mark ‘Other.’” She tore off the top white piece of paper and stuck the yellow piece in a stack on her desk. “Let’s not have this happen again, okay?”

  Hazel agreed and, tardy slip in hand, headed back to the classroom. The class was just walking out of the room in two parallel lines, one for girls and one for boys. Hazel slipped into line next to Samuel. She spoke without looking at him so as not to draw attention. She was worried that he hadn’t found the paper. “Did you read my note?” she asked.

  “You left that paper in my cubby?”

  As if anyone else would leave a note for Samuel. “Yes. Did you read it?”

  “It was blank.”

  “It’s a secret message,” she said.

  “But it’s blank,” he said again.

  She turned to look at him now, incredulous. “It’s a secret lemon juice note. You hold it up to a light and the letters come out.”

  “How was I supposed to know that?”

  “Everybody knows that.”

  “So what did it say?”

  She sighed. If she had been him, she would have gone straightaway to the bathroom and held the note over a light there, even if it meant standing up on a toilet to do it. But Samuel was not her, so she would just have to tell him. “We need to get working on gathering intel on the Red situation.” She tried to sound as cool and matter-of-fact as Sergeant Joe Friday on Dragnet. She loved that program and almost always used her allotment of one show a week to watch it. It covered every detail of how the police solved cases, even if it could be a little boring at times.

  “Intel?”

  “Intelligence,” she whispered. “It’s time to do some sleuthing.” Nancy Drew was always referred to as a “young sleuth,” and Hazel thought that was a good word. Hazel Kaplansky, the young sleuth, she imagined her own adventure being told, had long harbored a hunch about Mr. Jones, and now she was going to prove his dastardly nature. Other girls might be afraid but not our heroine!

  They all sat down in a circle, and Mrs. Ferrigno began the ritual of passing out the instruments. Mrs. Ferrigno stopped near them to hand Anthony the big cymbals and Timmy the smaller ones. Next she delivered the vibraslaps. Hazel was so wrapped up in the mystery that it didn’t even faze her when Maryann and Connie got the two glockenspiels. She was barely even paying attention until she heard Mrs. Ferrigno say, “Samuel, you may play the triangle.”

  When Hazel looked up, she saw Mrs. Ferrigno with her hand to her lips. “Oh my! Hazel, what shall we have you play?” She went to a small closet and began rustling around. Hazel wondered what she might pull out. A tambourine, perhaps, or one of those sticks with all the bells on it. “Ah, here we go!” Mrs. Ferrigno exclaimed, and she pulled out a second triangle, smaller than the first and with a decided bend in one of its legs. “Go sit next to Samuel. You’ll play as a couple, which in music we call a ‘duet.’”

  Connie turned to Maryann and mouthed the word “duet” and giggled. Hazel felt herself getting pink and uncomfortable as the teasing laughter rippled around the room.

  With little fanfare, she took the malformed triangle and sat back down next to Samuel. “I always got the triangle at my last school, too,” he said.

  “I always miss the cue,” she confessed.

  Mrs. Ferrigno began to teach them a new song: an all-percussion version of “Yankee Doodle,” which sounded, to Hazel’s ears, like a closet full of pots tumbling down a set of wooden stairs, but Mrs. Ferrigno clapped and said “Lovely, lovely” as they practiced each section. When the class could play the piece the whole way through, Mrs. Ferrigno turned to Hazel and Samuel. “And the grand finale,” she said, trilling out the e.

  Hazel and Samuel dinged their triangles at the same time.

  “Satisfactory.”

  While the class worked through the song, Hazel looked at Samuel and thought of her mother’s advice to be kind to him. Her mother had never gone out of her way to give Hazel social advice of any kind, and Hazel wondered what made Samuel so special. If her parents had known his mother and she was from Maple Hill, maybe they had all been friends.

  “Hazel!” Mrs. Ferrigno said, exasperated.

  “Sorry,” Hazel replied. “I was caught up in the beauty of the music.”

  Mrs. Ferrigno rolled her eyes and said, “From the top.”

  She wondered if Samuel’s mother was as annoying and particular as he was. Everything had to be logical and reasonable for him, but when you were dealing with mysteries, things weren’t always logical. She bet even “just the facts” Joe Friday would admit that.

  The class kept playing, and when they got to the final ding of the triangles, Samuel elbowed her in the side and she came in right on time. Mrs. Ferrigno almost smiled. “Will wonders never cease.”

  “Does that mean I can get a glockenspiel ne
xt time?”

  “I think you’re more triangle material.”

  This got Maryann and Connie laughing, and Mrs. Ferrigno didn’t even tell them to stop.

  On the way out the door, Connie called, “Hey, Hazel!”

  Hazel turned around, and there were Maryann and Connie with their hands up on their foreheads, fingers in the shape of triangles, snickering at her.

  11

  The Priest Knows All

  On the bike ride over to the library, Hazel planned the investigating she and Samuel would do. They’d start by canvasing the neighborhood to see if anyone remembered a girl named Alice. Then they could come up with a list of persons of interest. They’d have to interview each of them, and for that they’d need a cover story. Maybe they could say they were interviewing people for a school project about Maple Hill’s past.

  Right next to the library was the big white Catholic church that Hazel’s mother had attended as a child; she’d stopped once she grew up and got married. The door of the church opened and Father Paul came out. Waving, he called, “Hey-o, Hazel.” He knew her even though they didn’t go to church because the priest knew everyone.

  And everything, she realized. And the whole history of the town.

  Hazel leaned her bike against the tree and trotted up a few steps. “Hello, Father Paul,” she said. “How are you on this glorious day?” She had noticed that religious people often used the word “glorious.”