Framed & Dangerous (9780545443128) Read online

  I bought a salad and a side of fries, grabbed extra ketchup, and then made my way through the lunchroom chaos to our usual corner table. Maya and Fiona were already seated. Darcy came over next, and I noticed Fiona eyeballing her outfit: black patterned tights under a purple-and-black-striped sweater dress. Pure Darcy.

  Maya said brightly, “Hey, Norah, like my Delanceys?”

  I furrowed my brow. “Your what?”

  She stretched out her leg and flexed her foot. “My new Delancey shoes! Aren’t they awesome?”

  I took a peek. They were black leather ballet flats with a silver buckle on the front toe. Nicer looking than the sneakers I wore most days, but they didn’t look as comfortable. Maya was totally excited, though, so I said, “Yeah, cool!”

  Then I noticed Fiona wrinkling her nose in distaste. “What’s up with you?” I asked.

  Fiona put her hand to her collarbone. “I was the first one to wear Delancey flats. Then everyone else started buying them. It seemed like every girl on the Dance Committee had them on.” She rolled her eyes at the fashion injustice.

  Maya blushed. I gave her a sympathetic look and said, “Don’t mind Miss Runway over here. You know how she gets with fashion. I think the shoes look great on you no matter who else has them.”

  “Sorry,” Fiona said. “All I meant was that people should have their own style. I mean, look at Darcy. She may dress like a homeless vampire, but I have to admit she has her own creative look. Darcy, Violet, and I are the fashion visionaries at this school.”

  “Well, aren’t you special?” I joked, tossing a French fry at Fiona’s plate. Meanwhile, Darcy looked surprised at Fiona’s compliment.

  Fiona tossed the fry back, and we laughed and started a mini food fight until the lunch monitor told us to knock it off.

  I was so glad everything was back to normal. Hanging out with my friends — and specifically Darcy again — had temporarily gotten my mind off the meeting with the principal. Though I didn’t know why I was nervous about it. It was a good thing. Right?

  The bell rang, and Darcy, Maya, and Fiona looked right at me.

  It was time.

  “Good luck,” Maya said. She seemed anxious for me.

  Darcy asked, “Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you?”

  Fiona scoffed. “Any meeting with the principal is better without Miss Troublemaker around.”

  “Touché,” Darcy said, laughing. She’d been in the principal’s office enough over the years. This was better for me to do myself.

  I stood, ready. I was on my own, but armed with evidence. This whole nightmare was going to end. Now.

  A few minutes later I sat in the chair outside the office. The longer I waited, the more my confidence melted into nervousness. I pulled the cuffs of my sweatshirt over my hands.

  Finally, the secretary said, “Mr. Plati will see you now, Norah. Go on in.”

  I took a deep breath and walked into his office. Principal Plati looked up from a pile of folders on his desk. “Good afternoon, Norah. Have a seat.”

  He motioned to one of the chairs opposite his desk. I picked the left one and sat down.

  “What can I help you with today?” he asked.

  I clasped my sweaty hands together on my lap. “I’m here with evidence proving that Zane Munro didn’t burn the field house down.”

  Mr. Plati’s eyebrows rose halfway up his forehead. “Is that so? And what evidence is this?”

  “Darcy and I visited Mr. Gray in the hospital yesterday afternoon,” I began.

  Mr. Plati held up his hand. “You did what?” he snapped.

  I swallowed hard. “We just wanted to ask him if he’d seen or heard anything —”

  “That is a job for the police, young lady,” he cut in. “You have no place questioning people.”

  Part of me wanted to run away and hide under a desk somewhere. But I forged on. “Mr. Plati, I really believe Zane is innocent. Someone else set the fire and left his wallet there to frame him. And I felt that the only way to prove it was to talk with Mr. Gray. I’m sorry if you’re upset about that, but I got the proof we needed. So I think it turned out okay.”

  Mr. Plati considered this for a moment, while banging the end of a pen against his desk. “Fine. Tell me what you found out.”

  Back on track, my heart slowed from the speed it had revved up to. I spoke clearly and confidently. “Mr. Gray said that when he went to try to put out the fire, in addition to smelling smoke, he noticed an overwhelming scent of perfume. And, sir, since Zane doesn’t wear perfume, I think this rules him out as a suspect. I think we can assume the real arsonist is a girl.”

  Principal Plati groaned and rubbed his face with both hands, like I’d just made him overwhelmingly annoyed. “Is that it?” he said.

  I wasn’t expecting a standing ovation or anything, but his reaction was the complete opposite of what I had anticipated.

  “Yes, that’s it,” I said, my tone a lot less confident. “Isn’t that enough to prove it wasn’t Zane?”

  Mr. Plati pinched the bridge of his nose and inhaled deeply. “This is something the police haven’t released to the media, and I shouldn’t even be telling you. But you’re a bright, well-behaved young lady, Norah. And I want you to stop this nonsense and focus on your schoolwork.” He paused. “The fire department’s investigation has shown that the fire started in a trash can pushed into the center of the field house. If the sprinkler system had been completely finished, it would’ve gone off and prevented the total destruction of the field house. But unfortunately the system wasn’t turned on yet and the fire spread from the trash can and eventually engulfed the entire building.”

  “Okay …” I said, totally not understanding what this had to do with my evidence of Zane’s innocence.

  “The investigation also showed the initial cause of the fire. Someone piled napkins and dry grass inside the trash can, covered it with perfume, and lit it. The perfume was an accelerant. That’s why Mr. Gray smelled what he did. The fire was started with perfume.”

  I felt a rumbling all through my body, like an earthquake. Everything was crashing down. My evidence was not proof at all. Zane was still their main suspect. I wasn’t about to head to Zane’s house and tell him that I saved him.

  So, instead, I ran into the hall in tears.

  Darcy was waiting for me in the hall.

  “What happened?” she asked, grabbing my arm as she noticed my teary eyes.

  “Why aren’t you in class?” I asked back.

  “I got a bathroom pass so I could wait out here for you. Who cares about that, what’s wrong?”

  I leaned up against a row of lockers. “Everything.”

  “Did you tell him about the perfume?” Darcy prodded.

  I wiped my cheeks with the back of my hand. “Yeah. And he told me the fire had started with perfume. Someone poured it all over a bunch of napkins and stuff. That’s why Mr. Gray smelled so much of it.”

  “Oh no,” Darcy said, running her fingers through her hair.

  I slid down the lockers until my butt hit the floor, and laid my face in my hands. “We’ve failed,” I moaned. “We’re never going to prove Zane’s innocence. He’s going to be charged. He’s going to end up in juvie!”

  “You’re bugging out,” Darcy said.

  “I’m not bugging out.”

  “You are completely bugging out.”

  I looked up at her. “I know we were supposed to go see Mrs. Wolfson this afternoon and ask her about Charles Austin, but I just can’t. I need to talk to Zane. I need to tell him that I failed.”

  Darcy reached down and pulled me back up to standing. “Look. His parents aren’t even allowing him to talk to anyone. Plus, you don’t need to say anything yet. We can still solve this case. Wait …” Her eyes flashed. “You’re giving up!”

  “I am not!” I said. And I wasn’t. I totally wasn’t. Okay, maybe a little bit. “But can you blame me?” I cried. “The odds are stacked against us.”


  Darcy tucked the purple strand of hair behind her ear. “News flash, Norah. We’re twelve. We’re geeks. The odds are always stacked against us. But we always pull through. Together. And we will again.”

  “But what if this is the time that we don’t?” I asked. I wasn’t quitting, I was just being realistic.

  “Meet me at your locker after the last bell. I’ll think of something.”

  When the final bell sounded, all the other students ran out into the halls, bouncy and loud, barely able to contain their weekend excitement. But I shuffled along toward my locker like a mummy from a horror movie, my limbs hanging down, my head dipping low.

  Until I saw Darcy, Fiona, and Maya waiting for me.

  “What are you guys doing here?” I asked. I’d thought it would just be Darcy.

  Maya stepped over to me and squeezed my shoulder. “Darcy told us the perfume lead didn’t pan out.”

  Fiona flashed her brilliant smile. “So we all canceled our plans and we’re going to spend the afternoon investigating together.”

  Fiona was probably the only one of us who had plans, but I got what she was saying. They’d banded together to lift my spirits. To motivate me.

  It was kind of working.

  “One more thing.” Darcy passed her cell phone to me. “You got a message.”

  Someone sent a text message to Darcy’s phone for me? That didn’t make any sense. I felt a twinge of nervousness, but Darcy had a huge smile. I looked down at the lit up screen.

  norah, it’s zane. i’m taking a chance 2 sneak out 1 message. i know u don’t have a cell but i hope darcy will show this to u. thank u 4 believing in me. it means a lot. i miss u.

  My heart flipped in my chest. Zane had risked his grounding to send me a secret message. He’d been thinking about me. He missed me. I knew I was blushing and grinning at the same time. The fog I’d been stuck in lifted, and I felt a jolt of determination.

  “Let’s do this,” I said to the girls. “Any ideas?”

  Darcy grinned — clearly, she knew Zane’s text would encourage me. She said, “There’s one place that we haven’t checked for clues … the crime scene.”

  “The field house?” I said, too loudly, and Maya shushed me. “Principal Plati said we were supposed to stay away from there,” I whispered. “It’s roped off.”

  Darcy shrugged. “We’ll get as close as we can without going over the line.”

  Before we put our plan into action, I texted Zane back. My heart was pounding like crazy as I typed:

  hi, it’s norah. darcy and i are actually working on ur case. i miss u too.

  That last part was the scariest to write, but I pressed SEND before I could chicken out. Then I passed the phone back to Darcy. I knew Zane probably wouldn’t write back since his phone time was obviously limited. But I was so glad we’d been in touch.

  Darcy, Fiona, Maya, and I took our time at our lockers and chatted outside for fifteen minutes. We weren’t breaking any rules by going close to the field house, but we didn’t want a crowd. After everyone had cleared out, we crept behind the school and crossed the grass, then the track, and finally got near the remains of the field house.

  I could still smell the fire, even though it had long been put out. The charred building was surrounded by yellow police tape. As we got close, my hope started to fizzle. We couldn’t go inside the building because it was unsafe, plus any clues would’ve been ashes by now. Even the area around the building was wrecked. The water from the giant fire hose had turned the dirt around the field house to mud.

  “Any evidence that was here is gone now,” I said.

  “If only we’d looked closer that morning when we first got here,” Maya said. “When the fire was still raging and we were all standing back, there might have been some clues left behind.”

  I heaved a breath. “We weren’t looking for clues then. We were in shock and never figured the fire wasn’t an accident.”

  Darcy was suspiciously quiet. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and turned it on.

  “Expecting an important call?” Fiona joked.

  But then I remembered. The morning of the fire, I saw Darcy walking around taking pictures with her phone.

  “Did you get anything with those pictures you took?” I asked, hurrying to her side.

  She started flipping through them. “I totally forgot I took them until just now. I mostly took photos of the fire itself because it looked cool. I wasn’t thinking about evidence.”

  “Still,” I said. “Maybe something’s on there. Let’s look.”

  We all crowded around as Darcy swiped each photo past. She was right, they were mainly pictures of the flames shooting out of the building. Until the last one.

  “What’s that?” Fiona asked.

  “It was a mistake,” Darcy said. “I meant to take another photo of the building but I ended up taking a picture of the ground.”

  I squinted at the photo, which was mostly brown. “Can you blow it up bigger?”

  Darcy used two fingers on the screen to make the photo go close up. Her eyes widened as the photo did. “Holy guacamole! It’s a footprint!”

  Darcy handed the phone to me and I gasped. There was a distinct footprint in the dirt. “That wasn’t made by a fireman’s boot, either,” I said. “It’s small. Like a girl’s shoe.”

  “And it’s close to the building,” Maya said. “None of the students were allowed that close.”

  “It’s the arsonist’s print,” Darcy said, her eyes shining. “Made either when she entered or left the building!”

  “Awesome!” Fiona said, grabbing the phone.

  But I wasn’t so sure this would help us. A footprint didn’t tell us who the person was.

  “I know what this is!” Fiona yelled.

  We all stared at her.

  “It’s the Delancey flat!” she said.

  “How could you know that?” I asked, astounded.

  Fiona reached her hand out toward Maya. “Give me your shoe.”

  Maya frowned. “What?”

  “You’re wearing Delanceys, too,” Fiona said quickly. “Just give me one.”

  Maya took off her right shoe and placed it in Fiona’s hand. Fiona turned it over, exposing a design on the sole. “You know how Delancey shoes all have the same silver buckle on the toe? The designer put the imprint of the buckle on the sole, too.”

  “What for?” I asked.

  “Her own special touch. A branding thing.” Fiona waved her hand as if that wasn’t important. “Anyway, look at the dirt in the picture.”

  We all did, and understood. The design was there. Fiona was right. Whoever had set the fire had worn Delanceys.

  And just like that, my mood lifted. It was like someone had taken a blanket off the sky and let the sun out. I had … hope.

  We had a clue.

  The next morning, I went downstairs half asleep, following the scent of bacon. Dad had made breakfast, including his specialty: happy-face pancakes. I rubbed my eyes and dropped into a seat at the table.

  “Morning, sleepyhead,” Dad said, sliding a giant pancake on to my plate.

  “Thanks,” I answered, looking down at it. The pancake had chocolate chips for eyes, an orange slice for a mouth, and a piece of wavy bacon for hair. I cut into the chin area and took a bite.

  I usually looked forward to weekends, but when I woke that morning I was actually sad that it was Saturday. Odd, I know, but I couldn’t wait for the next school day so I could shoe-inspect every girl I saw.

  The doorbell rang as Mom was setting the jug of orange juice on the table. Darcy was supposed to come over in a little bit, but she’d probably come early, lured by the scent of food like a wild animal.

  “I’ll get it,” Dad called. A moment later he was back in the room with Darcy.

  Mom smiled brightly. “Darcy, won’t you join us for breakfast? There’s plenty!”

  Darcy slid into the seat across from me. “Thanks, Mrs. Burridge!”

  Mom snuck me
a little smile that said, I’m so happy things are back to normal! I knew she’d been worried about my argument with Darcy.

  Mom poured Darcy a tall glass of OJ. “So what’s new with you girls?” she asked. “You’ve been busy lately.”

  I finished chewing and said, “Yeah, I’ve had a lot of schoolwork. And I joined the Dance Committee with Fiona.” And we’re trying to solve two cases.

  “The Dance Committee?” Mom said, looking pleasantly surprised. “You’re really expanding your horizons.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t even know if I’ll be going to the dance.”

  Darcy froze with her fork in midair. “Why not?”

  “You know why,” I hissed. I didn’t want to get into the whole Zane thing in front of my parents. It was awkward enough to discuss crushes without bringing up the fact that the boy you liked was a suspected criminal.

  “But even if …” Darcy struggled to disguise her words. “If … that thing doesn’t work out, you can still go without a date.”

  “Thing?” Mom asked.

  “What date?” Dad asked, looking alarmed.

  I clumsily dropped my fork, and it clanged loudly against the plate. “Um, there’s no thing. No date. There’s just this … dance,” I stammered out quickly. “And — and I was hoping that a boy I liked would be there. But it looks like he’s not going.” I stared at my plate and wondered if it was possible to die from embarrassment. “Can we not talk about this anymore?” I asked.

  Mom and Dad shared one of their parent looks. “Sure,” Mom began. “But if you ever do want to talk about it —”

  “I know, Mom!” I said, in a forced happy tone. “Thanks!”

  After breakfast, Darcy and I hopped on our bikes and finally headed toward Mrs. Wolfson’s house. There was nothing we could do on Zane’s case until Monday. So our plans for the weekend were to research the Prom Killer.

  Sheesh, that sounds weird. One of these weekends I’m going to just stay home and bake cupcakes, I swear.

  If Mrs. Wolfson had gone to high school with Charles Austin, maybe she could shed some light on what happened that infamous night. It was worth a try.