Partners in Crime (9780545463119) Read online

  As he started talking about his business — a soccer program for little kids — it was obvious that he felt as nervous as I had up there. I didn’t know what was shaking more, his voice or his hands. I thought there was a distinct possibility that his presentation would end with him puking on his shoes.

  To make matters worse, Hunter Fisk kept making faces at him. Hunter did this disgusting thing where he flipped his eyelids inside out. And, of course, poor Zane couldn’t concentrate and kept losing his place in his presentation.

  I tapped Hunter’s shoulder with my pencil. “That’s rude,” I said. “Stop it.”

  But Hunter enjoys being mean as much as Darcy enjoys tacos, so Zane’s presentation ended with a spitball to his forehead. Carefully timed by Hunter to a moment when Mrs. Feldman’s back was turned, of course.

  Unbeknownst to the rest of us, though, Darcy had crept down to Hunter’s feet like a stealth ninja, untied his right shoe, and retied the shoelace to the chair. So when the bell rang and Hunter stood up, he took his chair with him, tripped, and landed on his face.

  Darcy held her fist out.

  I gave it a bump.

  After school, we hung in my room as usual. Darcy flopped onto a beanbag and opened her laptop. I unzipped my backpack and pulled out my folder.

  “What homework are you doing first?” I asked.

  “I don’t have any,” Darcy said, tapping her fingers while waiting for her computer to start up.

  “What about the book report?” I asked.

  “Done.”

  “Math?”

  “Calculated.”

  “Spanish?”

  “Translated.”

  “You haven’t even opened your backpack yet, Darcy. How is all your homework already done?”

  She counted off on her fingers. “I did the book report during math class, my math in Spanish, and my Spanish in English.”

  I sighed and slid out my first assignment.

  “I can just give you my math and you can copy it,” Darcy said, smirking because she already knew what I was going to say. I’d never cheat. I was about to remind her of that fact, but she suddenly sat up straight, stared at her screen, and said, “Whoa.”

  “What?” I asked.

  She looked up from the computer and met my eyes. “The website we created for our fake detective agency just got an e-mail about a real case.”

  My heart started pounding. A real case? I thought the contact form was just boxes on the website page. I didn’t think it actually worked.

  “How is that possible?” I asked.

  “When I created the form on the contact page, it needed to lead to a real e-mail address. So I just had it forwarded to mine.” Darcy shrugged as if this was nothing.

  “And someone actually used the form and sent us a message about a case?”

  Darcy nodded, grinning. “Isn’t it awesome?”

  “That depends,” I said, feeling slightly nervous. “What does the message say?”

  Darcy spun the laptop around to face me. “See for yourself.”

  I squinted at the screen. The e-mail address looked fake. happypanda4444? Seriously, who would choose that? The space for the name was blank. My eyes shot down to the message, and goose bumps sprang up all over my arms. It was only one line:

  Please find my twin sister.

  I gasped. “What does that mean?”

  “It means this person has a twin who’s missing, and he or she wants us to find her,” Darcy replied sarcastically.

  “Obviously.” I rolled my eyes. “But was she kidnapped? Did she run away? Were they separated somehow? ‘Find my sister’ could mean a whole bunch of things.”

  Darcy tapped her chin with a black-painted fingernail. “True, that.” A slow smile spread across her face. “We’ll have to write back.”

  I grabbed her hand before she could start typing. “What are you going to say?”

  “That we need more information before we can agree to take the case.” She pulled her hand away and raised it over the keyboard.

  Take on the case?! “Wait, Darcy,” I said.

  The website was only supposed to be a school project. We’d do the work, get the grade, and move on to the next thing. I never intended to get involved in a real mystery!

  Darcy, of course, felt no hesitation. Her eyes were practically glowing. “Come on, Norah,” she said, flexing her fingers like they were itching to start typing.

  “We’re not real detectives,” I argued. “We’re — not, you know, qualified.”

  “Whoever wrote this knows that,” Darcy explained. “No one outside of our social studies class — well, outside of our school — could have seen this website.”

  I raised my eyebrows in suspicion. “If it’s on the Internet, anyone could have seen it.”

  “Well …” Darcy looked up at the ceiling. She always has trouble with eye contact when she’s busted doing something bad. “I didn’t want to pay for web hosting, so I sort of … hacked into the school’s server and used their space. So it’s only up on the school’s intranet. Nowhere else.”

  “The what?” I said.

  “In-TRA-net. It’s like a private network that the school uses, and you can only access it there.”

  Although Darcy didn’t ask permission before she stole school server space, I wasn’t interested in lecturing her now. I wanted to figure out what was going on.

  “Hmm,” I said. “That does narrow down the list of who could’ve sent the message.” But still … us? Solving a real case? That was crazy. “I don’t know if we should get involved.”

  Darcy said, “This person needs help, and our presentation gave them the idea to turn to us. To put their trust in us. You do want to help a classmate in need, don’t you?” Darcy smiled. She knew what buttons to press on me.

  I did enjoy a challenge. And if someone really did need help …

  I stared up at the plastic stars on my ceiling. Darcy and I were both only children. I thought about what it would be like to have a sibling — let alone a twin — and then have them … disappear. If that’s what even happened. It must be maddening to have a sister and not know where she is. And to ask for the help of two seventh graders, the person must be … desperate. My heart went out to whoever he or she was.

  “Okay,” I said. “Write back. Ask for more info.”

  Darcy’s fingers flew over the keyboard as she typed.

  Who are you?

  What happened to your sister?

  We might help ….

  She paused for a moment, then hit SEND.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  “Now,” Darcy said, lacing her hands behind her head, “we wait.”

  After a couple minutes of sitting in stunned silence, I decided to get back to my homework. There was a chance the mystery e-mailer wouldn’t write back at all. I couldn’t sit around forever waiting for a —

  Ding!

  My eyes widened. “Is that what I think it is?”

  A devilish look came over Darcy’s face. “I have new mail.”

  I scrambled off the beanbag and over to Darcy’s side as quickly as I could. She clicked on the message.

  It listed a name, a birth date, and the line Find her.

  “Bailey Ann Banks, Bailey Ann Banks.” I repeated the name a few times. It meant nothing to me. I eyeballed Darcy.

  She shrugged. “Never heard of her.” She frowned at the screen. “And this doesn’t really answer the two questions I asked.”

  “Maybe that’s the only information the person has,” I said.

  A thousand questions darted through my head. Who was Bailey? Why was she missing? Had she lived here in town? Why was our e-mailer staying anonymous? Why did he or she contact us instead of the police? I didn’t even know where to begin.

  “But whose twin could she be?” Darcy said, looking frustrated. “There’s no one with the last name Banks in our social studies class. Or even our grade.”

  I squinted at the screen. “Maybe the n
ame was changed or something,” I mused out loud. “Or maybe it’s someone in a different grade.”

  “But check out her birthday,” Darcy said.

  “April fourth. So?”

  Darcy pointed. “The year.”

  I blinked quickly as I realized it. “She’s our age.” A shiver went down my back.

  “Yeah.” Darcy nodded. “Since this person is looking for their twin, it means this person has to be in our grade.”

  “What do we do now?” I asked, scratching my head.

  Darcy picked at the paint on her thumbnail. “I think the first thing we need to figure out is who our mystery e-mailer is.”

  I nodded, and flipped to a fresh page in my notebook. “Maybe we should make a list of suspects?” Darcy and I like making lists.

  Darcy was staring at me, her eyes sparkling. “So you’re saying we should take the case?”

  I took a deep breath, wondering if we were ready for all this. “I think so.”

  Darcy nodded eagerly. “I agree, Detective.”

  Darcy and I never got around to making our suspect list because my mom had called me down for dinner. The next day, I had trouble paying attention in school. Me. Miss Always Pays Attention. But the mystery of Bailey Ann Banks wouldn’t leave my head.

  At lunch, I put my tray down and started to dig into the spaghetti. I love Pasta Day. It’s the only day I buy the hot lunch. Darcy settled in beside me and ripped open her paper lunch bag to reveal a juice box, a Ring Ding, a Twinkie, and a Ho Ho. I raised an eyebrow.

  “What?” she said. “The boxes were expiring tomorrow. I’m doing my mom a favor. We wouldn’t want to have to throw it out and waste food.”

  “Twinkies expire?” I said doubtfully.

  Darcy ignored my question. “So,” she whispered, “I started on that list.”

  I glanced around nervously. Talking about suspects right in the middle of the cafeteria gave me butterflies in my stomach. Not the good kind like when a cute boy (um, Zane) smiles at you. More the nasty butterflies-with-fangs kind.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Let me focus on getting through the school day. We do have an English quiz after lunch.”

  Darcy waved her hand as if that wasn’t important. “But what about the investigation?”

  I glanced over my shoulder. “It’s too risky to talk about it here at school. We’ll pick that back up this afternoon.”

  She took a huge bite of a Ring Ding and thought it over. After some chewing, she said, “Only if we can meet at my house this time.”

  I sighed. “Deal.”

  I did well on the English quiz, so I was much less stressed by the time we climbed the stairs to Darcy’s room that afternoon. Our homes were almost identical from the outside. But inside, they couldn’t be more different. Darcy’s bedroom walls were all dark purple except for the one behind her bed, which was black. Darcy and her mother liked modern-looking furniture, but to me, most of it just looked weird.

  I slid onto a wavy-styled chair that looked like a strip of bacon. “So let’s see the list.”

  Darcy took out her notebook and opened it to a page of names. “I wrote down everyone who was in class the day of our presentation. It could be a boy or a girl because the e-mailer didn’t say they were identical twins.” She shrugged. “Let’s figure it out!”

  I attempted to lean forward, but the bacon chair wouldn’t let me. “Who’s first on the list?”

  Darcy shoved me over a bit so we could share the bacon chair. Thankfully, it was big enough for two. “Maya Doshi,” Darcy said, pointing at the name. “She was very quiet that day.”

  “Maya’s always quiet,” I said. “I think I’ve only heard her speak two words in my entire life.” I looked at the list. “What about Fiona Fanning?”

  “Please.” Darcy rolled her eyes. “That girl has more shoes than brain cells. She wouldn’t think to e-mail us from the website.”

  Darcy’s finger trailed along the list of names and stopped at one. “What about Zane Munro? Did you see how nervous he was during the presentations?”

  Zane? No way, I thought. “He was nervous because he had to stand in front of the class by himself, and Hunter Fisk kept shooting spitballs at his head. Plus, he wouldn’t bother with all the secrecy. If he wanted my help, he’d just ask.”

  Darcy tilted her head to the side and said in a singsong voice, “Norah likes Za-ane …”

  “Darcy, stop it.”

  “You want Zane to be your boyyy frieeend.”

  I crossed my arms. “Shut up. Next suspect.”

  Darcy let out one last laugh, then moved on. “Speaking of Hunter, he was firing death rays at me from his eyeballs today.”

  “You tied his shoelace to the chair and made him fall in front of the entire class.”

  “Oh yeah,” Darcy said, smiling. “I guess his evil stare could’ve been because of that.”

  “Slade was sweating a lot today in social studies,” I said. “Sweating could be a sign of guilty secret keeping.”

  “Or it could be that Slade always sweats.” Darcy made a face. “He’s wetter than a dog’s nose.”

  We went through the rest of the class list, but it all ended the same. No real clues, just guesses. Darcy started to pull at her hair and it stuck out at odd angles. “Well, that was a waste of time,” she said. “We’re never going to figure out who our client is.”

  But while Darcy was trying to look for clues in our classmates’ behavior, an idea occurred to me.

  “Wait.” I shot up from the bacon chair excitedly. “It’s all about the numbers!”

  Darcy tilted her head like Hubble does when he’s confused.

  “The birth date!” I said.

  Darcy’s eyes lit up as she caught on. “You’re right! The twin was born on April fourth. So all we need to do is find out which one of our classmates was born on April fourth.”

  But the excitement drained from my body as I said out loud, “Err, how do we do that?”

  Darcy thought for a moment, then a smile stole across her face. “I have an idea.”

  Oh no. I could see trouble brewing. “What’s your plan?” I asked.

  “We go to Principal Plati’s office and wait until he isn’t around. Then we do something to distract the secretary. She leaves the office unattended. Then I slip inside, download the seventh-grade student file onto a flash drive, and we’ll have a listing of everyone’s birthdays.”

  “Darcy!” I cried. “You can’t mess around in the school office again. You’ll be suspended.”

  Last year, once a month, Darcy snuck into the office and inserted “Happy Birthday to Darcy Carter” into Principal Plati’s morning announcements. The school secretary figured out after four months that something was up, but I think Principal Plati would have gone on wishing Darcy a happy birthday for a few more months after that.

  “It’s the fastest way,” Darcy argued.

  “You can’t do it,” I said, worry leaking into my voice. We joked around about us being opposites and it was fun that Darcy wasn’t always a goody-goody like me. But this was going over the line. I pleaded with my eyes. Darcy was my best friend and I didn’t want her constantly getting into trouble.

  Darcy heaved a sigh. “Fine. We’ll find another way.”

  I leaned back in the chair and let out the breath I’d been holding. “Thank you.”

  We couldn’t research our classmates’ birthdays over the weekend. But I had a different kind of birthday to deal with: my cousin’s third birthday party, which was about as awful as you could imagine. My aunt and uncle hired a clown and, long story short, twenty little kids are now traumatized for life.

  One of the kids was apparently terrified of clowns. He started screaming as soon as the clown entered the room with his big floppy shoes and red bulbous nose. The clown made the mistake of reaching for the scared boy, maybe to try to make him feel better. But all the kids immediately got it into their preschool brains that the clown was about to kill them. So they all s
tarted screaming and running around the house.

  This then ruined our weekly family movie night because my mom had a migraine.

  So, instead, I headed upstairs to read for a while. It was a good book, from one of my favorite sci-fi authors. But I couldn’t concentrate. My mind kept wandering to Bailey Ann Banks, whoever or wherever she was. I walked over to the window and trailed my fingers along my all-time favorite birthday present — my telescope. I leaned over and peered through the lens. The moon wasn’t full yet, but I still had a nice view of the seas. (Those are the moon’s dark spots. But they’re not actual seas. They’re plains of solidified lava.)

  Most kids our age don’t really know what they want to be when they grow up. They’re just guessing. Darcy says she’ll end up as either an FBI agent or a fugitive permanently on the run.

  But I’ve always known what I want to be. An astronomer. I want to study the skies, the stars, and the planets. I want to solve the mysteries of the universe. When some people come up against a scientific unanswered question, they get frustrated. They want to know “why” right now. Me? I’m delighted. It’s a challenge, set out there ready and waiting for me.

  I wondered if maybe that was why I was starting to get excited about this missing twin sister case. At first, Darcy had been more into it than I was. But now it was all I could think about.

  I wanted us to solve this mystery.

  And we would.

  On Monday, Darcy and I kept to our vow not to discuss the case at school. But it was clearly killing us. At lunch, we silently shared a plate of French fries, feeling tense. Finally, Darcy spoke up, but it was only to ask if I wanted ketchup. I did, so she jumped up and headed to the condiments table.

  I gazed around the cafeteria. Maya Doshi was, as always, sitting alone. Her pretty, long black hair covered her face as she leaned over a book. Maya had no friends that I knew of. I’d tried talking to her a couple times, but she always seemed so nervous, like my questions were tests. She’s really shy.