The Spy Catchers of Maple Hill Read online

  Hazel’s father dropped a spoonful of pork onto one of the wafer-thin moo shu pancakes. “It’s a family business for me. My father ran the graveyard, and his before him.”

  “What about you, Mrs. Kaplansky?” Samuel asked.

  Hazel’s mother smoothed her napkin. “Well, now, let’s see. I met Mr. Kaplansky when we were in college. Well, I suppose we knew each other our whole lives, both of us from here in Maple Hill, but he was older than me and we never really talked. When I started at Smith, he was finishing up at the University of Massachusetts. He used to drive me back and forth to campus. I suppose it’s when we were married. I married George and the business came along with it. That was thirteen years ago.”

  Hazel picked up her chopsticks. Bobby had tried to teach her the right way to use them. Hold the first one like a pencil. Now lift up your index finger. Slide the other one in. But the chopsticks slid and crossed. She didn’t want to have to use a fork like her parents, though. She liked that she used the chopsticks; it was as if she belonged. She imagined someday traveling to China and sitting down at a table and everyone watching her, sure she would drop her food all over her lap, but instead she would just scoop it up and pop it into her mouth.

  “I studied horticulture at Smith,” her mother said. “So it turned out to be a good fit.”

  “Did you know that in early American society, cemeteries were right in the center of town, and often weren’t well maintained? It wasn’t until 1831 with the development of Mount Auburn Cemetery that we started to get the large, landscaped graveyards.”

  Hazel’s parents exchanged a look, and Hazel didn’t need a translator to understand this one. “Well,” Hazel’s dad said. “I guess that means we’re pretty lucky to live now and not in the 1800s. There wouldn’t have been a job for us then.”

  “Not to mention cholera,” Samuel said. “I suppose once Hazel’s grown, she’ll inherit the business.”

  Hazel’s dad had spiked a half dumpling with his fork, and he paused with it nearly to his mouth, the pork filling looking like it was ready to dive right out of its wrapper’s doughy embrace. “Well, now,” he said. “Well, I don’t suppose we’ve thought that far ahead. If Hazel wanted to—”

  “No,” Hazel said. But what was shocking was that her mother said it at the exact same time. Hazel glanced up. Was her mother saying she didn’t want Hazel around? Her mother’s eyes, though, were flashing. “Hazel has other plans,” she said.

  “I do,” Hazel said. “Lots of plans. And none of them involve sticking around little old Maple Hill.”

  Samuel rubbed his chopsticks together. “I think Maple Hill’s a nice town.”

  Hazel sighed. How could this boy who had lived in seventeen places want to stay in a town as small and far away from the world as Maple Hill? Then she had a horrible thought: What if all the other places were smaller and more isolated than Maple Hill? What if the whole country, the whole world, was just like Maple Hill, over and over again? No, that couldn’t be a possibility. “I might be an archaeologist,” she said. “That’s one of my plans. And then I can actually go to Greece and discover new ruins and new places and they might even name a museum after me.”

  “I’m not sure that’s the aim of archaeology,” her father said.

  Hazel shrugged. She tried again with her chopsticks, but only succeeded in dropping her dumpling in the sweet and salty sauce, and it splashed up, leaving little brown dots all over the pink tablecloth. “Hazel.” Her mother sighed.

  Then out of nowhere, Mr. Li was there, and he handed Hazel and Samuel each their own set of rubber-banded chopsticks, just like Bobby used to make for her.

  Hazel had never had a friend over to her house other than Becky. “So this is where we live,” she told Samuel as they walked together into their living room. The carpet was deep blue, which Hazel had always liked, but now she could see that it hadn’t been vacuumed in a long time. “This is our record player.” She opened up a cabinet. “My parents don’t let me get a lot of popular records, but my grandparents sometimes buy them for me. I have Perry Como and Rosemary Clooney that we could listen to. Or we could watch television. I’m allowed to watch one program during the week, and I’ve already used it up, but I bet my parents would let us watch one anyway. Do you have a favorite band?”

  “My mom always liked to listen to Frank Sinatra. She said his voice was smooth as honey, but salty, too.”

  “That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” Hazel told him.

  “My mom doesn’t always make a whole lot of sense. Anyway, I don’t like music so much. Not new stuff anyway.” As he spoke, he dug into his satchel and came out with his book, which he placed on the coffee table. “Since we’re here, let’s strategize,” he said. “What do we know?”

  Hazel looked over her shoulder to make sure her mother had not come back into the room. She wished he would be a little more circumspect.

  Samuel read from his notebook. “We know her name was Alice and that she was ten years old. That’s a start.”

  “But it doesn’t matter anymore. We don’t need to know who Alice, Ten Years Old is. It’s just a front.”

  “You asked me to find out about that headstone, which means figuring out who Alice, Ten Years Old was, and that’s what I aim to do.”

  “Suit yourself,” she said. “Have you ever done a grave with so little information?”

  He shook his head.

  “Hey, how did you know that stuff about the graveyard? About the one in 1831?”

  “Mount Auburn,” he told her. “It’s in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We lived there for a tiny bit, and I read about it when I was doing some research.”

  “And you remembered it?”

  “Sure. It was interesting.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me your grandmother was Mrs. Switzer?”

  He looked up from his notebook and then back at the table. “I thought everyone knew.”

  She had to admit that everyone did seem to know who he was. Everyone but her. “That meeting she’s at, it’s about the Communists, isn’t it?”

  Samuel nodded and wiped some dust off the book that wasn’t really there.

  “Did you see the window in the restaurant?” she asked.

  “The broken one?”

  “Right,” she said. “Mrs. Li said it was juvenile delinquents, and maybe it was, but I think they chose the Lis because they’re Chinese and people thought they were Communist even though they aren’t.” She wished her hunch was wrong, but she was pretty sure she knew why the window had been broken. It was the only thing that explained why Mr. Li was so angry, and why Mrs. Switzer seemed so uncomfortable: someone must have read the news about the Communists in town and instead of doing a thorough investigation like Hazel was, they’d gone after the Lis because they were from China, a Communist country. And if folks were willing to do that to the Lis, what would they do to her family when it was discovered that there’d been a Communist spy working right beneath their noses? The Comrade had to be exposed, and Hazel needed to be the one to do it.

  Samuel said, “People jump to all sorts of conclusions.”

  “Precisely. And what’s really stupid is that Bobby Li died in Korea, fighting the Communists. That’s why this is such an important case. We need to do it right and get the facts before more innocent people are hurt. We know who the real Communist is here.”

  “You have a theory,” he told her. “You are gathering evidence, but you still don’t have any concrete proof.”

  “He saw me earlier. Watching him.”

  “You were watching him?”

  She swallowed. “Not intentionally. I was up in the tree and he just appeared, and then I swear he was staring right at me. Do you think he knows we’re onto him? If The Comrade knows I know …” She shook her head and let out a low whistle.

  “Let’s deal with the here and now,” Samuel said.

  “Well, even though I wasn’t spying, I did observe something.” She waited for him to prompt her, but he
was busy reading over his notes. “He stole an American flag from Soldier’s Field.”

  “Soldier’s Field?” Samuel asked.

  “Yep. Stuck it right into his back pocket.”

  “From a soldier’s grave?” he asked. “Which soldier?”

  “How should I know? But that’s pretty bad, don’t you think? You can’t get more un-American than that.”

  Samuel frowned. “Actually,” he said, “I’d like to watch television after all.”

  Hazel looked at him for a minute. “Sure,” she agreed. “But Dragnet won’t be on until Thursday.”

  “I think we have enough mystery right here,” he said. “Let’s find a variety show.”

  Hazel was not a big fan of the variety shows, but she figured Samuel was her guest, and her mother always said you let the guest choose. “Okay,” she said. She stood up and clicked on the television, then turned the dial until she found Milton Berle on the screen.

  It was actually pretty funny, she had to admit, and there was something about watching a funny show with someone else: even when the jokes were so-so, they still laughed. It was like their laughter was the Blob, grabbing on to them and growing, growing, growing, until they were clutching their stomachs and her mother came in to see what all the noise was.

  “I made up the guest room for Samuel,” she said, once they had control of themselves.

  In her own room, Hazel was ready to get into bed, but then she started thinking of staying with her grandparents in Florida. She had to stay in the den, and it was dark and strange, so she didn’t know what any of the shapes were. An armchair can look an awful lot like a renegade robot.

  She unplugged her night-light and carried it into the hallway, where she tapped on the guest room door. Samuel didn’t answer, so she tapped again. The door opened and there was Samuel in one of her father’s T-shirts and pajama bottoms. The pants were too big, and he had to hold them at the waist to keep them from falling. She held out the night-light.

  “I’m not afraid of the dark,” he said.

  “I know. But it’s hard to see, and anyway you might wake up in the middle of the night and need to use the bathroom.”

  “Thanks,” he said, reaching out his free hand to take the night-light from her.

  “You’re welcome.”

  Hazel went back to her room and shut off the light and then she shut her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see the claw of the tree branch outside her window, just ready to reach inside.

  15

  Here’s the Drill

  Since Samuel didn’t have a bike, Hazel pushed hers while they walked to school. Hazel kicked an orangey-brown rock and it skittered ahead and then Samuel kicked it and soon they were kicking this rock down the street, seeing who could get it the farthest. One of Hazel’s kicks made it take a sharp turn and it skipped off the sidewalk and into a puddle. “Ohhh,” they both groaned, and then they laughed.

  “Bon voyage, little pebble,” Samuel said.

  “Send a postcard!” Hazel called. Then she found another rock, this one smooth and gray, to kick along.

  “My mom has this jar of rocks,” Samuel said. “It’s one of the only things she’s sure to carry with us from place to place. She gets a rock in every town. We’ve got beach rocks and river rocks and gravel from driveways.”

  “Why does she do that?”

  “She said it’s a way to keep her grounded.”

  “Ha, grounded!” Hazel laughed, but Samuel didn’t. “I just meant because they were rocks. From the ground.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “I wonder what kind of rock she took from here,” Hazel said. “I would take a nice shiny hunk of mica.”

  “Mica’s not a rock,” he said.

  “Then what is it?”

  “It’s a mineral that can be part of a rock.”

  “Then I’d find a big rock with a nice hunk of mica stuck in it. What about you?”

  “Me? I guess I haven’t thought about it.”

  “It’s not a big decision,” she said.

  He bent over and picked up a red maple leaf and twisted it between his fingers. “I still think I need to ponder it a little more.”

  “That’s your problem, Samuel. Too much pondering, not enough action.”

  “Fine. I suppose I’d take some granite from the quarry.”

  “There you go. Doesn’t that feel good?”

  They walked along a bit and then Samuel said, “I was thinking about Memory’s Garden and what’s going to happen to it. I could take over for you. I could buy it; I think my grandmother would give me the money. Or if you wanted to keep it in the family, you could hire me to run it for you and then you would always have a place to come home to.”

  Hazel could see the school up ahead of her, a yellow bus emptying its load of students. She had never given much thought to what would happen to the graveyard when her parents wanted to retire. “I don’t think my parents will be quitting any time soon.”

  “That’s okay. We still have to finish primary school and get through high school and college. And I think I would like to get another degree or two. I’m looking twenty or so years into the future.”

  Twenty years into the future. By that time Hazel planned to be well established in her adventure of a life as an international spy catcher and archaeologist. Still, she supposed she might want to come back to visit folks like Miss Lerner and Mr. Wall, and even Samuel himself. “Okay. That sounds like a deal. But you should probably buy it outright. I don’t want anything tying me down.”

  “Deal,” Samuel agreed.

  “And hey,” she said, “when I visit you, I can stay in the guest room!”

  “If you want. Or I can keep your room for you.”

  “I’ll have to think on that,” she said.

  They were heading up to school now. Hazel dropped her bike by the tree. As they went in the door, they walked by a group of seventh-grade boys. One of them let out a low wolf whistle and another one sang out, “Hazel and Samuel sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.” All Hazel and Samuel could do was laugh, clutching their sides and running down the hall to Mrs. Sinclair’s classroom.

  They had said the Pledge of Allegiance and were settling into a math lesson when the alarm went off. It woo-wah woo-wahed in and out like some sort of possessed trombone and everyone knew exactly what to do. Under the desks they crawled. Hazel pulled her shoes right up to her bum and made sure her underwear wasn’t showing. Once Becky had tucked herself up into a ball and didn’t realize the whole first row could see her white underpants and she hadn’t heard the end of it for weeks.

  Hazel put her hands over the back of her neck, arms over her ears, face right down on the dusty linoleum floor. Mrs. Sinclair must have done a lot of erasing on the board, because it felt like a whole chalk stick worth of dust went right up her nose. She wrinkled her nose and even wiped it against her knees. She squeezed her eyes tight. Don’t sneeze! Don’t sneeze! They had to keep perfectly silent, which was difficult for Hazel under the best of circumstances. Becky Cornflower had once told her you could stop a sneeze if you sucked in really, really hard through your nose, and so Hazel tried this, but all she did was pull the dust farther back and then there was no stopping it. A giant sneeze erupted out of her like a cannon backfiring. It was so big and so old-man-like that she thought maybe no one would realize it was her, and then she heard Maryann laughing. “Hey, Sneezy,” Maryann hissed. “You really are a dwarf, aren’t you, Sneezy?”

  Hazel couldn’t answer because she, unlike Maryann, respected the rules of the duck-and-cover drill, even though she wasn’t too sure how much protection a desk would give. They watched the movie each September, with Bert the Turtle loping along and hiding in his shell whenever he saw a flash. Just thinking of it got the song stuck in her head: He ducked and covered! Ducked and covered! The movie explained how big the blast could be and how it could burn you like a sunburn. It said that most attacks would be announced beforehand, like they actually expected t
he Russians to say: “Watch out, we’re going to drop an A-bomb on you!” Hazel didn’t think that was a very good battle tactic. The narrator told them that if they ever saw a flash of light, they should assume the worst and find the safest place they could duck and cover just like a turtle.

  Now that the sneeze was out of her, Hazel just had to work on staying quiet. Mrs. Sinclair had taught her the trick of touching her thumb to each finger and counting how many times she made it around. She was up to thirty-seven before the siren stopped. A minute later their principal, Mrs. Rushby, knocked on the door to tell them the drill was over.

  “Good job, children,” Mrs. Sinclair said. “As I am sure you are well aware, our town is in a heightened state of alert, and we must be ever vigilant. I’m happy to see you all taking these drills seriously.” She gave Hazel a look. “Most of you, anyhow.”

  Hazel could not help but try to defend herself. “I am utterly sorry, Mrs. Sinclair, but when I was down there I breathed in a whole bunch of chalk dust and I tried to keep the sneeze in, really I did, but—”

  “But Sneezy just couldn’t help it,” Maryann said sweetly.

  “Poor Sneezy,” Connie chimed in.

  “Did you know,” Samuel said without raising his hand and without being called on, “that an atom bomb has the same explosive power as fifteen thousand tons of TNT? On top of that is the radioactivity.”

  “So?” Maryann demanded.

  Hazel jumped in: “So what he’s saying is that ducking down under our desks isn’t going to do us any good if the Russians decide to drop a bomb on Maple Hill. The whole school would be blown over and then the radiation would come and burn our skin to a crisp and all our hair will fall out and we’ll be walking around here like skeletons, if we can even walk at all.”

  Ellen Abbott began to cry.

  “Hazel, that is quite enough,” Mrs. Sinclair told her.

  For once, Hazel didn’t argue, even though she knew she and Samuel were right. She just said, “Yes, Mrs. Sinclair.” Because Samuel’s fact meant Hazel’s giant sneeze had been forgotten.