The Red Blazer Girls (5 page)

“I'm up, I'm up,” I lie, I lie.

“We'll stop at Perkatory; my treat.”

“I'm ordering something very expensive.”

Just around the corner from the church is Perkatory, a favorite coffeehouse/hangout for St. Veronica's girls (and some teachers). The entrance is a few steps down from the street—not quite aboveground, not quite below, hence the name. Like
purgatory
, get it? When we go inside, Mr. Eliot is seated at a rickety café table with his coffee,
a pain au chocolat
(yum!), and the
New York Times
. He looks up at us and then at his watch. A strange expression crosses his face.

“I'll take a large, no, make that an
extra
-large hot chocolate. And can I have one of those?” I say, pointing at Mr. Eliot's pastry.
“S'il vous plaît.”
I drop my backpack and slump into a chair, laying my head on the table.

A few minutes later, a disgustingly cheerful Margaret sits down with our hot chocolates and pastries. “So, did you tell him yet?”

Mr. Eliot lowers his paper a few inches and raises his eyebrows.

“You might be interested to know that Sophie was right,” Margaret says.

“Sophie St. Pierre? My God, what are the odds?”

“Hey, she
did
see something yesterday.”

“Ah, the scream.”

“Exactly. The
valid
scream.”

Margaret spills about everything, including the part where we snuck out of school. “And after school, we went over to her house.”

“Was she wearing a tattered, yellowing wedding dress? Did she invite you in to play cards with an ill-tempered girl named Estella?”

“As a matter of fact,” I say, lifting my head from the table, “she
was not
wearing a wedding dress, she had both shoes on, the clocks were not all stopped at twenty minutes to nine, and her name is Ms.
Harriman
, not Havisham.”

Mr. Eliot grins. “Glad to see that you've been reading your Dickens.”

“There was no Estella or Mr. Jaggers, but there
was
a Caroline,” Margaret adds. “Which is why we're here.” The rest of our escapade leaves him shaking his head.

“That is one heckuva story.”

“It is pretty cool, huh?” I know he is more interested
than he's letting on; he has folded his paper and set it aside so he can devote all his attention.

“As a responsible adult,” he says, “I
should
be really angry with you. You meet some random woman in a ‘secret passageway’ in the church, and without a second thought, you go right in her house. She could've been an ax murderer.”

“Oh, don't be so dramatic, Mr. Eliot,” Margaret says. “Jeez, give us a little credit. We're city girls—we've got street smarts and all that.”

“On the other hand,” he continues, “I have to tell you: I wish to God I'd been there with you. The whole thing is positively Dickensian! The long-lost birthday card with the mysterious clue, the strange voice on the telephone, the estranged daughter who marries the foreigner, the twenty-year-old giant cat, the walls covered in masterpieces. I can't wait to hear what happens next!”

With that, Margaret hands him his briefcase and pushes him toward the door. “I am happy to hear you say that, Mr. Eliot. Because
you
are going to help us decipher our first clue.”

“I'll give you half an hour,” Mr. Eliot says as we make our way from Perkatory to the school. “Just be out of the library before Mrs. Overmeyer gets in. School librarians are
very
territorial. And no snooping around her desk or on her computer.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Eliot, sir!” Such mistrust!

Margaret has already determined which years we are looking for, so we go straight to the shelf where all the old yearbooks sit, collecting dust.

She pulls one out and blows dust off the cover. “This should be her freshman year.”

“What are we looking for, anyway?”

“We need to see her in her environment—see what else we can learn about her. I can't figure out this
Het Cholos orf Lanscad
thing. I looked online, but there was
nothing about it or a writer named Renidash. Here, you take her sophomore year and see what you can find.”

I start leafing through the book at one of the library tables, its wooden top pocked with decades of student scratching and graffiti.

“Hey, here she is, in this picture of the Drama Club,” Margaret says. “‘Caroline Chance was our Juliet.’ God, she
was
beautiful, and jeez, a freshman with the lead in
Romeo and Juliet?
Don't tell Leigh Ann, but I'm not so sure even
she's
ready for that kind of part. How about yours? Find anything?”

“Think so.” I turn Margaret's attention to the inside back cover of the yearbook I am holding. “It says: ‘To Mrs. Overmeyer, Thanks for all the terrific book recommendations and for all your help with my Brit Lit project. Who knows, maybe together we'll make RBS popular again! Enjoy your summer in Ireland, away from our own little School for Scandal. All the best, Caroline Chance.’”

“I'm sure Mrs. Overmeyer will remember her,” Margaret says. “It sounds like they knew each other pretty well. I wonder what RBS is.”

“Sounds like a TV station. You know, like PBS.”

“Hey, that's not bad, Soph. You're wrong, unfortunately, but at least you're getting into the spirit of things.”

“Nancy Drew! Harriet! What
are you
girls doing in here!” Mr. Eliot barges through the library door, trying (and failing) to scare us with this really fake-angry voice.

Margaret holds out the yearbook to him. “Hey, Mr. E, take a look at this.”

He reads the inscription and grunts. “Hm. I'm not surprised that Mrs. Overmeyer knew her. She's been here forever. How long ago was this, almost twenty years? There are still a couple of other teachers who were here then, besides Mrs. Overmeyer. But seriously, how is this helpful?”

Margaret, a tiny bit indignant at his attitude, slams the book shut. “Well, we don't know,
yet
.”

“Okay Miss Marple, but right now you need to move it on out of here. You can talk to Mrs. Overmeyer later.”

As Margaret and I follow him to his classroom, I ask him if he has any ideas about the reference to RBS in the yearbook.

“Sure. Randy Bob Shakespeare. RBS. Will's younger brother. A real redneck. Specialized in plays about Elizabethan trailer parks.”

“Mr. Eliot, why can't you ever just admit there's stuff you don't know?”

“Oh, he knows what it is,” said Margaret.

Mr. Eliot smiles.

“And you're not going to tell us!”

“C'mon, wouldn't you rather figure it out on your own? Tell you what—if you don't have it by the end of the day, come and see me. I'll give you a little hint: she capitalized
school
and
scandal
. You're the detectives—detect!”

I
am
starting to feel like a detective, but first I have to go to math class.

After math class, I totally bomb a Spanish quiz (since I already speak French fluently, they make me take Spanish—
c'est injuste!
) and I'm pretty sure I dozed off in religion class (Lord, please forgive me!), so I am really looking forward to lunch. Leigh Ann joins our table for the first time, and over French fries and chicken nuggets, we tell her all about our little adventure. She is properly impressed and really excited that we have included her. (I'm still a bit doubtful about the whole quartet thing.) After dumping our trays, we all head back to the library to continue our research. Mrs. Overmeyer is on the phone when we get there, so Margaret immediately heads for one of the computers and logs on. Margaret is smart,
not
patient.

She types in “school for scandal,” and we wait. When the results pop up, her mouth opens so wide her chin almost hits the table. “Oh my God. Turns out I am a complete moron. Sophie, do you have the note?”

I pull it out of my bag and hand it to her.

Margaret pounds the heel of her hand against her forehead. “I repeat—a moron.” She shoves the note under our noses, and we all try to see what had suddenly become so clear to her. “Do you see it?”

“Uh, no,” I say.

“Look at the note again. He talks about this play, Renidash's
Het Cholos orf Lanscad
. Look at what I found when I looked under ‘School for Scandal.’ It was written by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. RBS. Now, look at the names again:
Sheridan. Renidash
.”

“Ahhhh. I see it. The letters are all jumbled up,” I say.

“An anagram,” says Margaret.

“And
Het Cholos orf Lanscad
is
School for Scandal!”
notes Leigh Ann, jumping right into the thick of things.

“That Professor Harriman was a clever little man, wasn't he?” I say. “So, what is this
School for Scandal
, anyway?”

Margaret scrolls down the screen. “Let's see. It's a play. Oh my God, it's in the Harvard Classics! It's in volume eighteen,
Modern English Drama.”

“Have you read it?” I ask. “What's it about?”

“Not yet. It says here it is a ‘comedy of manners.’”

Rebecca has a puzzled look. “A play about manners? Is that like ‘Don't talk with your mouth full’? How do you turn that into a play?”

“It's about a gossipy woman named—oh, Mr. Eliot
would love this name—Lady Sneerwell, and hey, wait a minute, remember the cat?”

“Teaser,” I say.

“Teazle,”
Margaret corrects. “There's a character named Lady Teazle. Let's see if it's still here in the library.” She leaps out of her seat to go to the card catalog computer and types in the name of the play. “Oh, no. It's in storage.” She lets that sink in for a second before starting her rant. “Wait a minute. The Harvard Classics are in
storage?
What kind of school is this? What kind of world are we living in? I have to talk to Mrs. Overmeyer.” She marches over to the librarian's desk, arriving as Mrs. Overmeyer hangs up the phone.

“Yes, de-ah. How might I be of service to ye?” she asks. After something like forty-five years in the States, her Irish accent is as thick as day-old oatmeal.

“If a book is in storage, where would I find it?” Margaret asks.

“Oh de-ah. As the late Mr. Overmeyer—God rest his soul—would have said, ‘Are ye feeling lucky?’ The truth is, it depends. What are you looking for? Maybe you can find the full text online. The Internet is wonderful that way.”

“No, I'm afraid I need the actual book. It's a play, part of the Harvard Classics, called
The School for Scandal
.”

Mrs. Overmeyer's face brightens instantly. “My word. No one's asked for that since—”

“It's by—”

“Yes, I know. Sheridan. Richard Brinsley Sheridan. He was born in me hometown of Dublin. Not too many people reading him these days. Are you interested in him? Or just that play in particular?”

“Well, both, kind of. But mostly that play. Do you know where it is?”

“Well,
if we
still have it—that is, if it didn't get ruined when the basement flooded a few years back—and if it didn't get tossed out by someone else, then it would still be in the storage area in the basement. When do you need it?”

“Now-ish?”

“Well, if you really need it in a hurry, my best advice is to head for the public library on Sixty-seventh, between First and Second. They can get it for you.” Mrs. Overmeyer sees the disappointment on our faces and adds, “I'm sorry, but I'm not allowed to let you into the storage area by yourselves. Sister Bernadette would hang me by me thumbs.”

“What if a teacher went with us?” I know just who to ask.

“If you can find a teacher to go down in that god forsaken place and help you look for a moldy old book, then God love ye. Might I ask why it's so important that you find
that
book?”

“Mrs. Overmeyer,” Margaret begins, leaning over the counter, “do you remember a girl named Caroline Chance? She would have been here—”