The Magician's Bird (9 page)

Laurie and Misti exchanged a glance. Bud was making a certain amount of sense.

“I for one vote to hide it,” Bud went on. “LeFranco has whatever evidence he has. We don't need to give him any more. I don't want to be the one responsible for ruining Maria Tutweiler's name and shutting down the school.”

“You just want to keep the secret room.” Laurie folded her arms. “It has nothing to do with LeFranco.”

Bud got a shifty-eyed look on his face. “Well, yeah. But so what? It's cool!”

Misti stacked the ID cards back up. “I think he's right. We don't need to tell anyone about this.” She put the cards back into the wallet and then stroked the head of the Marchetti Bird. “And maybe if we're lucky, we can convince his bird to tell us all his secrets.”

Laurie rolled her eyes. “Right, you work on that. Okay,
fine, who cares, we'll keep it secret. And when Winkle busts us, you can be the one who does the explaining.”
If
he busted them. Now that they had evidence to hide, keeping the room secret didn't seem like such a terrible idea. But she wasn't about to let Bud know that, not since he'd been so quick to turn on Maria Tutweiler.

“Great!” Bud popped up like a cork. “So what I was thinking was—”

“Bud! Shh!” Misti grabbed his knee. She was aiming for his arm, but the jumping up took her by surprise.

Misti sat stock-still for a second, listening. Then she gave a triumphant squeal. “I knew it was a ghost!”

“What are you talking about?” Laurie wasn't in the mood to be patient.

“Listen!” Misti pointed randomly into the air. It was hard to pinpoint the location of the ghost.

Bud and Laurie both listened intently, cocking their heads like a pack of curious dogs. Finally Bud shook his head. “It's not a ghost. It's the voices again.”

“Miss Lucille?” Laurie got up quietly.

“I don't think so. Come on.” Bud crept over to the passageway door and put his hand on the knob.

“Wait!” Laurie hissed. “Remember, someone was in
here. The lion bookend moved! What if they're coming this way?”

Bud turned the knob and opened the door. “Then we run for it. But I think they're in the library.”

The three of them crept slowly down the passageway, listening intently as the voices got louder.

“Definitely not Miss Lucille,” Laurie whispered.

When they got to the screen in the library, they peered out into the darkened room, scanning the area.

“There's nobody in there,” Bud said, disappointed. Ponch and Jon were even asleep. He had been sure the voices would be coming from the library. It didn't make any sense.

“It's because it's a ghost,” Misti said.

“It's not a ghost,” Laurie said. “It's just farther down the passage.”

She crept on into the darkness, more carefully since she didn't know what was up ahead.

After another turn in the passageway, Laurie saw soft light coming from another screen up ahead. The voices were much louder now.

“This is it,” Laurie said, creeping up to the screen and peeking through. And then she froze. “Oh, man, you guys,” she breathed. “You're not going to believe this.”

“What's going on?” Bud didn't understand who Reginald was talking to or why he looked so secretive about it. The guy Reginald was with looked familiar, but if he had to keep track of all the grown-ups in town, Bud wouldn't have room in his brain for anything else.

“LeFranco. That's LeFranco,” Laurie whispered.

“Wayne LeFranco? The dead one?” Misti perked up hopefully.

Laurie gave her a look. “No, Walker LeFranco. The alive one, Misti.”

“Crud.” Misti slouched back down. That's what she'd thought, but she figured it was worth asking.

“That doesn't make sense. Why would LeFranco be here?” Bud wiped his nose and turned into snouty Bud. Laurie had to look away.

“Shut it for a second and maybe we'll find out.”

Bud snorted in irritation, but he shut his mouth.

Reginald was the janitor at Tuckernuck Hall, and he was a real stickler about where you could bring your liquids and that kind of thing. He'd been pretty suspicious of Laurie and Misti ever since last September's unfortunate orange juice incident. Laurie and Misti couldn't see him in the halls without him doing that “I'm watching you” sign, where he pointed two fingers at his eyes and then pointed at them. It was getting old, to be honest.

Laurie wasn't the least bit surprised to see him in the school. But Walker LeFranco was another story. He hated everything about Tuckernuck Hall and had always sworn he'd never set foot in the place. (That wasn't an exact quote. His version used lots of what Misti called
“cuss jar words.”) But he definitely seemed to be setting foot in it now.

“Now we're all clear about tomorrow? You know what to do?” LeFranco paced in front of Reginald. “I don't want to have to clean up your mess.”

Reginald nodded. “Yes, sir, I know what to do.”

“Good. You won't need to say much, and if you run into any problems, just refer people to me. Might be good to take a few days off. Now have you been looking around here, like I said?”

Reginald shifted his weight uncomfortably. “I have, but I haven't located any of the things you asked about. No secret whatnots anywhere around here. I thought the back storage room might work for the story, though.”

“Nothing? What have you been doing all this time?” LeFranco barked angrily. “Well, if that's what we've got, that's what we'll have to go with, but I think you should try to look a little harder, Reginald. I'm doing you a favor here. Don't forget that.”

“No, sir, I won't forget.” Reginald didn't look anything like he usually looked at school. At school, he was always plowing through the hallways, ready to take down any juvenile offenders and smacking mouthy kids in the butt with his dust rag. He looked much smaller
talking to LeFranco, somehow.

Laurie turned away. “What's going on? What are they talking about?”

Bud shook his head. He didn't like the look of this one bit. “I don't know. But we'll find out.”

Headline in the
Morning News

“Isn't
he
the media?” Misti said the next morning when they met up outside the school. “How can he present proof to the media when he is the media?”

Laurie shrugged. “He's the editor-in-chief. He can do pretty much whatever he wants.” Laurie nodded toward Misti's unbedazzled T-shirt. “Nice. How'd you get away with that?”

Misti grinned. “Grape juice accident. I don't think that sweatshirt's ever going to be the same.” Misti stopped grinning. “Heads up.” Laurie looked across the lawn in time to see Calliope Judkin walk up the steps and head
inside. “Bet she's going to see Reginald.”

Misti nodded. “Bet he's not going to want to see her.”

Laurie and Misti were sprawled on the grass when Bud hurried up, looking around anxiously.

Laurie peered up at him. “What's up, Bud?”

“Did you guys go to the shed yet this morning?” He didn't look at them. He scanned the horizon like he was watching for a ship or something.

Laurie shook her head. “No. Not yet. We were waiting for you.”

“Well, I went there. And this was stuck in the door.”

Bud reached down and handed Laurie a bright orange piece of paper, and then plunked down onto the grass.

Laurie stared down at the paper in her hands. “What do you mean, it was stuck in the door? Like, accidentally? Or on purpose?” Laurie didn't even want to unfold the paper. The longer she went without knowing what it was, the better.

“On purpose. Wedged inside. Like someone knew we'd been going there. It's addressed to you, incidentally.
Well, both of us, I guess.”

Laurie carefully unfolded the paper and looked at it. It was a note.

“Um, no?” Laurie felt really weirded out. She didn't care how much this person was “a friend,” there was no way she was meeting them. “How about never? How about the time is never and the place is nowhere on earth?”

Bud nodded his head. He had his whole crazy face going on. “Yeah, I'm not about to meet that person.”

“It's too bad it doesn't say Buck and Loni, because then we'd know it was Candy Winkle,” Laurie said.

“Yeah, or that creepy man or one of the other tour weirdos.”

“It's probably just Calliope trying to mess with our heads,” Laurie said. “No way am I falling for that.”

Misti groaned. “Come on, guys, really? You don't want to know what this is about? For real?”

Laurie shook her head. “Yeah, I'm fine not knowing. No problem there.”

“Really?” Misti's jaw dropped.
“REALLY?”

“Yeah.”

Misti grabbed the paper. “Well, does it say anything else? Sheesh, you guys!”

She read the note and then turned the paper over in her hands. “See? There's more!” Misti thrust the paper at Laurie.

Laurie took it with two fingers, like it was a stinky dead thing. The note was written on the back of a flyer from a carnival that was set up on the edge of town, out near the SuperFoods parking lot.

“It's just a flyer.” Laurie looked at it in a detached sort of way. It didn't look like it had anything to do with them. Her parents never let them go to carnivals like that, so there was no connection there. Her dad had seen the chain on one of those spinny rides break once, and the person in the seat had gone flying off and almost hit the Tilt-A-Whirl. Luckily, he'd landed on the bouncy castle and didn't end up getting that hurt, but still, Laurie's parents weren't taking any chances. Laurie
shrugged and handed the flyer to Bud.

“I hear it's amazing,” Bud deadpanned. Laurie snickered. The people who had made the flyer definitely needed a dictionary. Or at least a thesaurus. Maybe for their next birthday.