Remarkable (16 page)

“Is she still there?”

“Oh, heavens no,” Ms. VanderTweed said. “No prison could hold Mad Captain Penzing. She demanded a trial—but no one could prove that she’d plundered anything because all of the evidence was at the bottom of the ocean. Finally, they were forced to release her to her relatives, who promised to see that she never returned to pirating.”

“Wow.”

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather do your report on her? There are so many excellent biographies about her life.”

Jane thought about it for a moment then shook her head. Mad Captain Penzing the Horrific might be exciting, but Captain Rojo Herring was her friend.

Ms. VanderTweed sighed. “Fine. Why don’t you come back tomorrow? Maybe I’ll have found something on your captain by then.”

* * * * *

Meanwhile, back in town, Mrs. Peabody was dealing with problems of her own.

The smelly pirates had returned to her ice cream parlor. And not only had they returned, but they were in no hurry to leave.

“We be waiting on someone,” Flotsam growled at her when she tried to take their order.

“Well, you can’t wait here all day. I’m going to need this table for my other customers.”

Jeb and Ebb snickered to each other. Her other customers had left in a hurry shortly after they’d arrived. Mrs. Peabody glowered at them for a moment before heading to the kitchen to call Mayor Doe and file another complaint about how pirates were stinking up her restaurant.

As soon as she was gone, however, the mood at the pirates’ table grew more somber.

“Where is ’e,” Flotsam grumbled. He was talking about Detective Burton Sly. Several days earlier, they’d pooled their pieces of eight and hired the detective to help them.

“I’m sure he’ll be ’ere in ’is own time,” Ebb said soothingly.

“We don’t ’ave time, though, do we? Every moment
we ’ang around ’ere puts us one moment closer to ’aving to sign our ‘x’ for Mad Captain Penzing the ’orrific.”

“Don’t say that name,” Jeb said weakly.

“I have to say it. How else do I remind ye of wot happens to us if the Mad Captain find us befores we finds Captain Rojo Herring? Ye wants to be on a ship where ye be expected to work fer yer living?”

“No more sunbathing or shuffleboard,” Ebb said sadly. “And no more fizzy drinks.”

“And if ye don’t jump to when the captain barks an order, you’ll be turned into shark bait faster than you can say heave-ho.”

“Can we talk about something else?” Jeb suggested.

But they did not need to come up with a new topic of conversation. Right at that moment, Detective Burton Sly slipped into the Colossal Ice Cream Palace and joined them at the table.

“Gentlemen, I apologize for my lateness,” said Detective Burton Sly. He’d spent part of the day disguised as a bush and still had bits of twigs and leaves stuck in his eyebrows.

“Where be our captain?”

“I’m afraid I still don’t know.”

“But we ’ad a bargain. We paid you to find ’im.”

“And I thought I had. I had a lead on a man with two peg legs, a big captain’s hat, a green parrot—everything you described. I was convinced that this case would be closed almost as soon as I’d opened it. But I quickly discovered that this man was not the man you are looking for.”

“How’s that?”

“There was one small discrepancy between him and your missing captain that I was unable to resolve. The man I found was not a pirate. It was obvious to me he’d spent very little of his life at sea.”

“Arghh, that be a disappointment,” said Flotsam, staring at the detective menacingly. “And we don’t ’ave time to deal with disappointment.”

Detective Burton Sly glared back at Flotsam. He didn’t like working with pirates, and he didn’t like having them hanging around Remarkable. The sooner he could find their captain and send them on their way, the better.

“There is, well…I wouldn’t call it a lead, but a certain rumor I’ve heard that might be of interest.”

“Aye? And what be that?”

“My sources tell me that the public school is offering pirate lessons now.”

“But what good be that to us,” Jeb grumbled. “We already knows how to be pirates.”

“Whoever is teaching these children must know an awful lot about pirating. Is it possible that your captain would take a job as a schoolteacher?”

“It’d be possible, I reckon,” Ebb said. “But he wouldn’t be much good at it. He barely knew his mizzenmast from his orlop deck.”

“Or his poop deck from his head,” snickered Flotsam.

“He were good at playing a pirate jig on his fiddle, though,” Jeb reminisced. “He used to serenade us to sleep.”

“I’d be willing to launch an investigation at the school yard,” Detective Burton Sly said. “Do some reconnaissance, take some surveillance photos, perhaps get some police sketches made up. All for my usual fee, of course.”

The three pirates conferred for a moment before turning back to the detective.

“Thank ye, but no. You be fired.” Jeb told him.

“We can track him down for ourselves now. We won’t be wasting any mores of yer time,” said Ebb.

“And you won’t be wasting any more of ours,” added Flotsam. And then the three pirates walked out of the ice cream parlor, laughing their wicked pirate laughs.

T
he next morning Jane awoke to the sound of Anderson Brigby Bright singing in the shower. She groaned and put her pillow over her head, but it didn’t matter. There was no way she could block out that horrible off-key wailing. Although it didn’t seem possible, his singing was getting worse every day. Jane could only hope that Lucinda Wilhelmina Hinojosa would appreciate the thought and effort that Anderson Brigby Bright was putting into his song, and not care so much about the horribly mangled music that was produced as a result of that thought and effort.

“Ohwwww I luuuuuvvee yeeeeeeeeew, oh yeeessssssss eye dewwwwwwww!”
Anderson Brigby Bright sang.
There was no point in trying to get any more sleep. The only thing to do was to get as far away from Anderson Brigby Bright’s voice as possible. Jane got out of bed and got dressed as quickly as she could.

She decided she might as well stop by the library before school to see if Ms. VanderTweed had found anything for her on Captain Rojo Herring. Jane hadn’t been at all certain that the library would be open that early in the morning, so she was pleased to discover that the big front doors were unlocked.

But the reason the doors were unlocked was because Ms. VanderTweed had never closed the library the day before. She’d been there all night doing her best to find out something about Captain Rojo Herring.

Jane found Ms. VanderTweed sitting behind the reference desk. Her hair was frazzled, her sweater set was rumpled, and her librarian glasses were askew. She glared at Jane through them.

“He’s not real,” Ms. VanderTweed snapped at her. “I went through every reference I could find—and it turns out you were wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

“Captain Rojo Herring is not a real person. He’s
fictional—nothing more than a minor character in the opera
Prise de Corsaire
.” She slapped a thin manila folder down on the reference desk in front of Jane. “See for yourself.”

“Um…okay,” Jane said as she took the folder and headed over to one of the library’s study carrels. Ms. VanderTweed looked so exhausted that Jane didn’t have the heart to argue with her about it. Maybe someday she would bring Captain Rojo Herring in so that he could introduce himself to her.

The manila folder had only a few sheets of paper containing what little information Ms. VanderTweed had been able to find. As Jane read through them, she learned that
Prise de Corsaire
was an opera about the exploits of Mad Captain Penzing the Horrific—and that the character of Captain Rojo Herring was marooned on a desert island in the first act. More interestingly, she learned that
Prise de Corsaire
was written by none other than Ysquibel.

“Oh, wow,” she said to herself. The name Captain Rojo Herring was so unusual—and she couldn’t help but wonder if maybe, just maybe, Ysquibel had chosen it because he knew Captain Rojo Herring. And if he knew him, then maybe they were even friends. And if
they were friends, then maybe, just maybe, Captain Rojo Herring knew where Ysquibel was.

“Oh, wow,” she said to herself again. Maybe she could tell someone, and maybe that someone could use the information to find Ysquibel. “Oh, wow, oh, wow, oh, wow.”

“What’s that now, Jane?”

Jane nearly jumped out of her seat. Grandpa was sitting in the carrel next to her. She didn’t know when he’d come in or how long he’d been there.

“Grandpa!” she said. “I didn’t see you.”

“Most people don’t,” he agreed. “I just stopped by to return a book I borrowed on the inner workings of bell towers.”

“I thought you didn’t like bell towers.”

“I don’t like them. Jane—what happened to your hands?”

Jane shrugged. Her fingers were covered in Band-Aids. “It’s from rope-tying class. Captain Schnabel is teaching us how to tie seafaring knots.”

“Ah, yes. Your grandmother tells me that Ms. Schnabel is teaching piracy these days.”

“How did she know that?”

“Your grandmother knows almost everything
that goes on in this town. Still, I don’t think even she realized that knot tying was so hazardous.”

“It’s probably not usually. We just don’t have the right kind of rope. The one we’re using is the climbing rope from the gym. Captain Schnabel cut it down with her sword. But it’s old and full of splinters.”

“I’d think a gym rope would be much too thick for good knot tying.”

“It is. She wants us to learn how to tie a shroud knot, and an eye splice, and a chain sennit, but none of us can do it right because the rope won’t bend enough. She said my double overhand knot looks more like an untied shoelace.”

“It sounds like you need some better ropes.”

“Sure,” Jane agreed. “But Captain Schnabel says that pirates have to make do with what’s on hand, because when you’re off at sea, you can’t run to the store every time something’s not to your liking.”

“I see,” Grandpa said thoughtfully. “But what if you just happened to come across some lovely new ropes on your way to school this morning. Would she let you use them?”

“She might. But she’d probably prefer it if I pillaged them from somewhere. She had a lot of fun pillaging
the climbing rope from the gymnasium. There was nothing Coach Dunder could do to stop her.”

“And what if I leave some ropes lying around for you to pillage? Do you think you could learn to tie knots without hurting yourself then?”

“You could do that?” Jane looked at her grandpa hopefully. “It would make things so much easier.”

“But you must promise me one thing—you need to keep these ropes a secret. I don’t want Captain Schnabel or anyone else figuring out they came from me.”

“Sure,” Jane agreed, but she wasn’t really paying attention. She was imagining what good knots she’d be able to tie and how pleased Captain Schnabel would be with her.

“Jane,” Grandpa said sharply. “Are you sure you heard me? You must promise not to tell anyone about the ropes unless I say it’s okay. Not anyone. Do you understand?”

“Yeah, Grandpa, I understand,” Jane said. It seemed like an easy enough promise to keep. Jane went back to the reference desk to ask Ms. VanderTweed for a book about pirate knots. When she got back to her carrel, Grandpa was gone. But in his chair were several coils of brand-new, highly pliable rope.

Jane wondered how he’d managed to get them for her so quickly, but then she looked up at the library clock and realized that she needed to leave if she wanted to get to school on time. She scooped the ropes into her backpack and went on her way.

S
kipping school for no good reason is known as truancy—and in Remarkable, as in most towns, truancy is against the law. Naturally, this meant the Grimlet twins were only too delighted to give it a try. So when the school bell rang that morning, they were not in Ms. Schnabel’s classroom as they should have been. Instead, they were hiding out in their secret lair, which sounded like an exciting place to be, but was actually just an unused garden shed in the backyard of their creepy black house.