Ivy and Bean Take the Case (4 page)

Things were not going the way Bean wanted.

Dino pulled a blade of grass from the lawn. “Look!” he yelled. “It's the Mystery of the Piece of Grass!”

Sophie S. kicked off her flip-flop. “Oh my gosh! It's the Mystery of the Missing Shoe!”

Prairie held her finger in front of her face. “I see a mysterious hand!”

Bean felt herself get hot and embarrassed. No one laughed at Al Seven. She was doing exactly what he did. Why was he cool and tough, while Bean was hot and embarrassed? It wasn't fair.

Ivy stomped her foot. “There
are
strange and mysterious things on Pancake Court. You just don't notice them.”

Sophie S. and Ruby giggled. Trevor said, “You're loonies. Nothing strange ever happens around here. This is the most boring place in the world.” Trevor and Ruby went to school at home. They got bored a lot. “I'll bet you fifty cents you can't show me one strange thing on Pancake Court. One!”

Bean looked quickly around Pancake Court for one strange thing. Houses. Yards. Cars. Mr. Columbi going to work. Two cats. A bicycle. Jake the Teenager and his shopping bag. Nothing strange. She had to think. She could say she had a buried treasure map, and then she could draw it really quick.

Trevor made a snorty sound. “It's the case of the missing mystery!” he said. Then he laughed.

“Bean's hat is pretty strange,” giggled Prairie.

Bean yanked her hat off. “Come on, Ivy,” she said, as toughly as she could. “We have mysteries to solve.” Ivy nodded in an Al Sevenish way. “Look tough,” muttered Bean. Ivy rubbed her face, and they walked quickly away around Pancake Court.

Bean needed a mystery on the double. A lost puppy. Or a lost necklace. Or strange people hiding behind trees. Or smudged handprints on cars. Or anything. “Do you see anything that looks mysterious?” she whispered to Ivy.

“Mrs. Trantz's rocks?” suggested Ivy. Mrs. Trantz had white rocks in her front yard instead of grass. Why would anyone do that?

“Not good enough,” said Bean. “We need something strange and mysterious, like—” She stopped. “That,” she said, pointing.

It was Dino's house she was pointing at, but the house wasn't the mysterious part. The mysterious part was a bright yellow rope that dangled from the roof of the house to the ground. One end was tied around the chimney. The other end was sitting in the middle of Dino's front lawn.

“What is that?” asked Ivy.

“It's a mystery!” said Bean. Whew! Just in the nick of time!

Ivy began to smile. “It's a rope of mystery.”

“Still not scared!” hollered Trevor. He and Dino were picking bark off sticks and throwing it at each other.

“Hey, Dino!” called Bean. “What's that rope on your house?”

Dino stopped throwing bark and looked at his house. He frowned. “I don't know.” He threw another piece of bark. Then he came to stand next to Bean and Ivy. “It wasn't there before.”

“So this is the first time you've seen it?” asked Bean.

Dino nodded. Then he frowned some more. “Weird.”

“Strange,” Bean corrected him.

“And mysterious,” said Ivy.

Trevor threw a piece of bark at Dino. It bounced off. “What are you guys doing?” he asked, coming closer.

“I'm going to ask my mom,” said Dino. “She probably did it. Or something.”

Bean and Ivy and Trevor watched the rope until Dino and his mom came back. Dino's
mom looked busy. She had two pairs of glasses on her head and a sticky note on her shirt that said Don't forget Friday!

“That,” said Dino, pointing at the rope.

Dino's mom looked up to the chimney. She looked down to the grass. She frowned. She went to the rope and pulled it gently. She frowned more. “That's weird,” she said. Still frowning, she turned to Dino. “If you went up on that roof, there's going to be trouble, young man!”

“I didn't do it!” yelped Dino. “If I did it, I wouldn't ask you about it!”

“Right. Sorry.” His mom shook her head. “I have no idea what it is. I didn't put it there. I couldn't, actually. We don't have a ladder that goes all the way up to the roof.” She frowned again. “Strange.”

Bean looked at Trevor and wiggled her eyebrows, which was sort of like sticking out your tongue, but you couldn't get in trouble for it.

Dino's mom stared at the rope for a little while longer and then shrugged. “I don't know.
But I have to finish this e-mail. We'll figure it out later.” She went back in the house.

Bean waited patiently until she was gone. Then she turned around to Dino and Trevor. “Well, whaddaya know?” she said. She put her hat on again. “We've got a mystery on Pancake Court!”

The first thing Bean did was dust for fingerprints. Al Seven was always dusting for fingerprints. Here's how you dust for fingerprints: First, you sprinkle powder. Then you gently dust it away. And then you whip out your magnifying glass and peer through it, and— ta-DA!—you see the fingerprints of the bad guy!

Bean didn't really understand how that part worked, but the dusting part was fun.

Gently, Bean sprinkled baby powder on the yellow rope. Gently, she brushed it away with a paintbrush.

Everyone leaned in to look.

Bean whipped out her magnifying glass and peered through it. She saw rope. “Just as I thought,” she said. She nodded slowly and made her voice low. “There are no fingerprints here.”

Ivy nodded slowly, too. “No fingerprints.”

“But that doesn't help us at all!” said Dino. “Why is there a rope on my house?”

Bean made her eyes very narrow. “Time will tell.” She put her magnifying glass in her pocket and looked at the sky. Speaking of time, it was almost time for dinner.

Her dad came out on the front porch. “Bean!” he called.

“You can't leave now!” said Dino.

Al Seven never said good-bye. He said things like “Catch you later, chump.” But that was really mean, so Bean said, “Bye, you guys. See you tomorrow.”

+ + + + + +

The next morning was completely regular— yawn, splash, stumble, cereal, banana, where's my jacket, somebody took it, oh here it is, bye—until Bean got outside and saw Ivy. Ivy was standing on the sidewalk in front of her house, watching the ground. She was watching the ground so seriously that she didn't hear Bean running up behind her.

“Bug?”
asked Bean. She hoped it was a big one.

Ivy shook her head and pointed.

The yellow rope had grown in the night. Where it had ended the day before, on Dino's lawn, there was now a knot. More yellow rope went across the lawn, circled around Dino's tree, down his driveway, and next door to Ivy's house, where it snaked in and out of her fence posts and ended at her stairs.

“Wow,” said Bean. It was a real, genuine mystery.

“Yeah,” said Ivy. She turned around and looked at Bean carefully. “Did you do it?”

“Me?” squawked Bean. “No! No way!” She stopped squawking and looked carefully at Ivy. “It wasn't you, was it?”

Ivy shook her head. “No. I thought it was you.”

“How would I get up to Dino's chimney?” Bean pointed out.

They both turned and stared at the rope. “It's the real thing,” muttered Ivy. Bean nodded.

They both tried to look tough. But they couldn't. “Cool!” they yelled at the same time.

+ + + + + +

For some reason, Dino didn't think it was cool. “It's creepy,” he said, when they met up that afternoon. Sophie S. and Ruby and Trevor nodded. They thought it was creepy, too.

“Why?” asked Bean. She looked at the yellow rope winding in and out of Ivy's fence. “It's just a rope.”

“But somebody put it there,” said Dino. “And we don't know why.”

Bean nodded. “Yeah. Pretty strange, isn't it?”

“A real mystery,” said Ivy.

This time, nobody argued, not even Prairie. Ha. “So you want to find out who did it?” asked Bean.

“Yeah,” said Dino.