The Case of the Missing Mascot (A Sherlock Shakespeare Mystery Book 1) (9 page)

"What do I want? I want to know why you're spying on me."

"Spying on you?" I let out the mother of all dramatic sighs. "Hardly. I needed to know where the guys at that school were going to be Sunday night, so I used your profile to find out."

Watson stood in the doorway glaring at me in some kind of stunned silence for several long moments. I guess that wasn't the answer he'd been expecting. "Why did you need to know where they'd be?"

"So I could follow them, obviously."

He took off his glasses—unlike me, he couldn't function without his glasses because he could only see three inches in front of his face—and pinched the bridge of his nose before replacing them. "Sherlock, you've always been a little odd, but why are you following around guys from our rival school?"

I started to answer, but what I was going to say made me feel so stupid that I dropped my head so that I wouldn't have to look into his eyes when I said the words. "I thought they might've been the ones to steal Champers."

More stunned silence. "Were they?"

"Nope. But it's okay. I have another lead I'm following up on."

Watson crossed the room and sat beside me on the edge of the bed. "Spying on suspects, following up on leads... what's up with you?"

I turned the phone over in my hands several times before I looked up at him. "Tom."

He nodded with some hesitation. Watson had never exactly been Tom's biggest fan. "I heard about that. Are you two even still together?"

I wasn't sure how to answer that question, so I told him as much. "I don't know. He calls me an irrational bitch in one text and then tells me he loves me in the next."

"You are pretty irrational, but your boyfriend probably shouldn't call you a bitch if he loves you." From the glint of hate in his eyes, I could tell he wanted to say more, but knew better than to trash Tom to me while we were possibly still together. Instead, he patted me on the shoulder. "Relationships are hard. This reminds me a lot of when Dorothy's ex called her to get back together after he left his wife. It was a tough situation, but Dorothy finally made the right decision. You'll figure it out."

Seriously? I'm on the verge of breaking up with my boyfriend of two years and Watson was talking to me about an episode of
The Golden Girls
that wasn't even anything like what I was going through? Par for the course.

"I get that you're trying to help and everything, but I really don't think TV wisdom is going to help right now."

"Are you kidding? Those four ladies have the answer to any situation when you put them together."
 

He jumped up and started singing the theme song at me. How was it that my dorky little brother who spent all his school vacations at Nana's house watching
The Golden Girls
reruns was infinitely more popular than I was? I should post this little performance on social media to show to all his friends.

Or not. It would probably just make Watson seem even more awesome to the world.

"The biggest gift would be from me and the card attached would say..." Watson stopped singing in the middle of the line and did this ridiculously cheesy pose where he pointed both his fingers at me as though he were waiting on me to finish the line for him. Sure, I knew it. Anyone who spent any real time with my brother would be forced to learn the theme song at some point, but I couldn't bring myself to give in to his obvious attempt at cheering me up. "Get the hell out of my room."

He straightened abruptly. "Sure thing. Good talk."

My door closed with just as much force as it had opened, leaving me alone again. Alone with my phone. Alone with my thoughts.

Alone with that damn text from Tom.

I should call him. I navigated to the screen for his contact, but couldn't bring myself to connect the call. What could I really say to him at this point? Until I knew whether I wanted to stay in this relationship or not, it didn't make sense to talk to him. All that would accomplish was letting him manipulate me into feeling a certain way or fighting with him again. I didn't want either. I didn't need to hear his voice until I knew my own mind.

Easier said than done, really. Watson and Jamie had made good points, in their own ways. Tom had never been a contender for Boyfriend of the Year based on his treatment of me. He'd always been a distraction from my schoolwork. If I needed to study for a test and he wanted to go to a party, we'd always gone to the party. Anything I wanted or needed came in a distant second to his whims.

Sure, there'd been some good times. When Tom wanted to turn on the charm, he could make even me feel like the most beautiful and special girl in the school. I'd probably even had some fun at the parties and sporting events he'd made me go to. Of course, it wasn't like he was around anymore. With the distance factored in, those good times would be fewer and further between than they used to be.

But I couldn't just leave him hanging after that text either. He'd be able to see that I'd read the message. I
had
to respond, whether I wanted to or not.

I sat in my room trying to compose an appropriate response until my stomach started grumbling so loudly that I could no longer ignore the fact that I hadn't eaten since lunch. I typed out a hasty message to let him know that I'd meet him before the football game and we could talk then. That would buy me nearly seventy-two hours to figure out whether what we had was worth fighting for.

And without any more interruptions from Tom, that would give me seventy-two hours to figure out where Irene had stashed Champers before his absence ruined the Homecoming halftime performance.

Wednesday was a slightly less chaotic day as everyone began coming to grips with the loss of Champers. Students were still noticeably upset, but the teachers were a little more professional than they'd been the day before. Actual teaching happened, which was probably a good thing since there were tests on the schedule for next week in most of my classes.

No more Jamie freak-outs either. Actually, I hadn't seen her all day. When she failed to show up for the class we had together, I tried to call her, but had to leave a message. After the frenzy she'd worked herself up into last night, it wouldn't surprise me if she'd made herself sick over this whole law school thing.

It was a little weird walking by the ruins of the convenience store before and after school. The fire was out, but the smell of burnt wood and sour milk still clung faintly to the air. There was something else, too, but I couldn't quite place it. Maybe one of the stoners had left their stash to go up in the blaze.

I'd made good time on the walk from the school to Main Street, so I decided to stop into the cafe for a juice pick-me-up before I started work at the bookstore. I unlocked the bookstore so that I could dump my stuff off behind the counter and then walked half a block down to the cafe. Irene, as usual, was friendly to me as she took my order, but she kept glancing off behind me and muttering to herself about something I couldn't quite make out. That was strange even for her. Maybe the stress of keeping the mascot hostage was starting to get to her.

Before she could start my juice, a timer went off in the kitchen and she disappeared from sight through the opening. It was still early, so there was only one table of high schoolers and they weren't paying any attention to me. Since I was basically invisible at this point, it was the perfect time to snoop.

When the renovations were nearly complete on the cafe, Irene had showed me and Drew around. Other than the main dining area and the restrooms, there were two other areas: the kitchen she'd just disappeared into and storage area with a small office. While there was clearly no room in the kitchen to keep a teacup pig, or information on its whereabouts, the storage area held a lot of promise. And since the entrance was off the same hallway that led to the restrooms, she wouldn't think anything of it when I came around the corner to the counter to pick up my juice.

I acted like I was heading to the restroom and dodged quickly into the storeroom, just in case anyone at the one full table glanced my way. I didn't have long before I had to be at work, and had even less time before Irene might notice my absence, so I'd have to make this quick. No time for time-warp black holes today.

At first glance, that wouldn't be a problem. Champers clearly wasn't in here. Well, I guess he could be here if he'd figured out how to make a nifty box fort for himself, but that didn't seem likely. The combination of being tiny and not having opposable thumbs didn't bode well for redecoration.

I made a quick search of the boxes. It was mainly a bunch of non-perishable bulk baking ingredients that wouldn't fit into the kitchen's storage area. A few of the boxes had extra receipt paper for the cash register and an entire corner was devoted to to-go containers.

Basically, it was just what you'd expect to find in a cafe's storeroom.

The office was a different story. Its appearance was every bit as chaotic as Irene's mind seemed to be. Little piles of crystals were in each corner of the room and the faint smell of white sage and something sweet clung to the air. That might be the best theft deterrent out there. If I didn't absolutely need to be in this room, the smell would've been all it took to keep me out.

Irene's workspace looked like a bomb had gone off in a paper factory. Invoices, sales receipts, menu ideas and recipe clippings from magazines were spread across the desk with no rhyme or reason to their placement. The way my parents ran the bookstore was my only frame of reference on what it was like to own a business, but from what I could tell, tax time was going to be a bitch for Irene if she didn't figure out a filing system at some point.

Since I wasn't going to luck out by finding a file dedicated to Champers' location tacked to the wall, I sat down in the office chair and resigned myself to rummaging through the paperwork on the desk first. I used to think that the ninety seconds I'd devoted to sex with Tom were the most wasted moments of my life, but now I could honestly say it was this search. Not only did I not find any clues in the mess, but I was also now forced to agree with LePort about Irene's food not really being food.
 

Seriously. Never look at gluten-free, dairy-free, flavor-free recipes unless you're mentally prepared to handle the list of ingredients you'll find.

I was halfway through my folder-by-folder search of the bottom desk drawer when the door closed loudly behind me. "What do you think you're doing?"

Okay, this was bad. I hadn't counted on Drew coming straight here after school when the football team's booster club was putting on some sort of cookout tonight that the school's two remaining cheerleading squads would be required to attend. I'd need to come up with a good excuse for what I was doing.

Unfortunately, I couldn't think of one.

When I spoke, I used a low, gravelly voice I'd heard a cop use in a movie once. "Health department inspection."

"Health department?" I could hear the incredulity in Drew's tone.

"Surprise inspection. Wait for me in the kitchen."

"Sherlock, health inspectors announce themselves and they don't go through desk drawers." After a beat, he added, "And they never wear local high school hoodies."

I removed my hand from the file it was in and slowly closed the drawer. Since I didn't have a time machine or a super power to get me out of this, I swiveled around in the chair and said, "You caught me."

He didn't look amused. "What are you doing?"

I stood up and started to move toward the door. "You know, it's a really, really funny story and you're gonna laugh when you hear it, but I'm late for work, so..." I reached for the doorknob and pulled. "I'll have to fill you in later."

Drew pressed the palm of his hand against the door, holding it closed and foiling my escape. "We both know the bookstore's dead. Tell me what's so funny about you snooping around in here. I could use a good laugh today."

My mind was blank. I really needed to start working on my cover stories before I did things like this. When Drew didn't ease up on the door and he clearly wasn't going to stop staring at me until I answered him, I said the one thing I could think to say.

"I was looking for evidence of what Irene did with Champers after she pignapped him."