The Secret Cellar (3 page)

“You have good taste,” says Lindsay. “That’s a Hacker model from 1935, with the original paint. It’s twelve hundred dollars.”

I hear Becca snickering behind me. “For twelve hundred bucks, I want a boat big enough to ride in, at least.”

“That’s a bit more than I want to spend,” I say. “Maybe I’ll look around a little.”

I wander over to a display case containing an assortment of items: cuff links of every shape and size, a couple of gold pocket watches, wicked-looking straight razors, engraved cigarette lighters, money clips, and much more. And then I see the perfect gift for my dad.

“Margaret, come here,” I whisper. “Do you see it?”

She leans over the case, her eyes scanning the contents until they land on an antique fountain pen. She grins at me. “You’re right. It’s perfect. Can you see the price?”

“Do you see something you like?” Lindsay asks, moving behind the case. When she realizes which case we’re looking in, her face falls. “Oh, this case is … special. These are things from the estate of a gentleman who lived in the neighborhood, a Mr. Dedmann. Unfortunately, they’re not for sale—not in the usual way, that is. They’re all going to an auction next Tuesday evening. Which piece are you interested in, one of the Cartier watches?”

“No, the fountain pen,” I say. “Can I see it?”

Lindsay unlocks the case and sets the pen on a felt pad on top of the glass. As I lift it, I smile at the heft of the thing: it is about as far from the cheap disposable pens I use as you can get. The rounded barrel is polished black, sleek and smooth, and the gold nib still looks new.

“It’s a beauty,” says Lindsay. “An old Reviens—made in France in the twenties. They’ve been out of business for years.”

“How much is it worth?” I ask.

Lindsay smiles. “Well, that depends. If it were for sale here in the shop, Mr. W.—he’s the owner, I just work for him—would probably ask two hundred dollars for it. But … if you were to buy it at the auction, you might get it for a lot less. Depends on who else wants it. And how badly, I suppose.”

“Like, how much less?” I ask.

“With something like this, the auctioneer will probably start the bidding at twenty-five dollars. After that …”

Margaret and I share one of our are-you-thinking-what-I’m-thinking? looks and grin at each other.

“So, tell us more about this auction.”

Mr. Eliot’s latest harebrained scheme to torture his honors students is to force us to perform in a one-act Christmas play that he wrote just for us. (“My, aren’t we lucky,” Livvy Klack, my enemy-turned-friend observed.) It’s called
The Merry Gentlemen
, and it is, according to Mr. Eliot, an homage to his hero, Charles Dickens. It tells the story of the two men who come into Scrooge’s offices on Christmas Eve, asking for money for the poor. Grumpy old Scrooge, if you remember, runs them out the door, telling them that it’s not his problem that people are suffering. A real prince, old Ebenezer.

Mr. Eliot’s script picks up from Scrooge’s last “Bah! Humbug!” and follows the two “portly gentlemen” throughout the remainder of Christmas Eve, revealing twists and turns in their lives that I doubt Mr. Dickens ever considered. I don’t want to give away the whole story, but I can reveal that after their unpleasant experience with Scrooge, the two gentlemen begin to have
serious doubts about what they’re trying to achieve. In fact, after a few glasses of Christmas cheer, they’re so filled with despair that they convince themselves that their mission is absolutely pointless.

We’ve only been rehearsing for a few days, and Mr. Eliot is driving us crazy by constantly changing our lines. Even Leigh Ann, who is practically a professional actress, is losing her cool. With the help of some oversize thrift-store clothes and a ton of stuffing, she and Livvy are playing the portly gentlemen. They both had almost all their lines memorized when Mr. Eliot broke the news that he was still rewriting some of their scenes.

“Can you do that?” Livvy asks.

“I’m the director and the playwright. I can do anything,” he says. “That’s why it’s so good to be king.”

Leigh Ann grumbles under her breath, “Yeah, and that’s why there are revolutions.”

Our day doesn’t get any better after that. As we gather our books and coats from our lockers, I persuade Livvy to join us at Perkatory, our local coffee shop / hangout, for a little unwinding and director-bashing. I lead the way from the school, past the church, and down the steps to the front door, where I stop, my red Chuck Taylors suddenly glued to the concrete. Becca, who isn’t paying attention, runs into me, smashing my face right into the door.

“Owww! Ow, ow, ow!” I shriek. “My nose!” My
lovely Gallic nose (inherited from Dad) is still healing from a little run-in it had with Livvy’s fist during swim practice a few weeks ago. That whole Mistaken Masterpiece extravaganza may have had a happy ending, with Livvy and me walking down the red carpet to the premiere of Nate Etan’s (astonishingly bad) movie together, but my nose hasn’t quite gotten over it yet.

“Sorry!” Becca says, unable to suppress a smile.

Livvy cringes with embarrassment. “Oh, man. I am so sorry, Sophie. Are you okay?”

“It’s her fault for just stopping like that,” says Becca. “What is the matter with you, anyway?”

“Me? How did this get to be my fault? Look at the sign!” I step aside so everyone else can see what has stopped me cold:

“What? That can’t be right,” says Leigh Ann.

“They can’t do this!” shouts an indignant Becca. “It’s not fair. What are we supposed to do?”

Even Margaret, usually unflappable, is shaken. “No. Not Perkatory. We need this place. Even with its smelly old couches and the occasional cockroach. It’s ours. We have to do something.”

She’s right. It’s not just a coffee shop—it’s part of our history. The countless cups of coffee and hot chocolate, the stale pastries, the conversations, Jaz stealing the violin, the music … Oh no! The music!

“The Blazers!” I scream. “Where are we going to play?”

The Blazers, in case you haven’t heard of us, is our band, and we’ve had a regular Friday-night gig at Perkatory for the past couple of months. Okay, to be completely honest, it’s the only place we’ve ever played, other than Elizabeth Harriman’s basement. We don’t actually get paid, but Aldo, the manager, gives us free ice cream every Friday. There’s me on guitar, Becca on bass, Leigh Ann on vocals, and our friend Mbingu, the only non–St. Veronica’s member, on drums.

Becca groans. “Finished up at the age of twelve. Life is so cruel.”

“I’ll find you guys another job,” promises Margaret, our manager. “But in the meantime, we have to get to the bottom of this. I know just where to go. If it happened in this neighborhood, Malcolm Chance is the man to talk to.” She spins around and stomps up the steps.

As we rush off to see Malcolm, I almost knock over a guy who is standing on the sidewalk handing out flyers. He shovels one into my hand as I’m apologizing.

“Half-price coupon,” he says in a heavily accented voice. “Grand-opening special.”

I’m about to say “No thanks” and hand it back to him (in the interest of saving a tree, or at least a small branch) when “New Coffee Shop” near the top catches my eye.

“Wait!” I shout as my friends swing past me and turn
the corner onto Lexington. I spin back around to the guy with the flyers. “Where is this?
Dónde?
”

To my horror, he points to a building directly across Sixty-Sixth Street, almost a mirror image of the building that is home to Perkatory and our old friend Mr. Chernofsky’s violin shop. The awning that extends over the stairs to the lower level is
brand-
new, I realize, and in one of those playful fonts reads:

“What’s going on?” Livvy asks. “
Now
, why’d you stop?”

I hold the flyer up in front of their faces. “Look across the street—at the awning.”

“ ‘Coffeeteria’? What a stupid name,” says Becca.

“I’ve heard that name before,” Margaret says with a worried expression.

Leigh Ann nods. “Yeah, they’re popping up all over the place. Everybody says they’re great.”

“They’re not great. They’re evil,” I say, which is surprising because I hadn’t even heard of them until ten seconds ago. “What are they doing here?”

“That must be why Perkatory’s closed,” Livvy says. “Aldo probably figures he doesn’t stand a chance against them.”

When the flyer guy sees how interested we all appear to be, he comes over and hands us a few more.

“No!
No más!
” I shout, tearing them into pieces.

He looks at me like I’ve lost my mind (an altogether reasonable conclusion, some might say), shrugs, and turns away.

“Corporate stooge!” Becca yells.

“Well, now we really have to go see Malcolm,” I say. “There must be something we can do to stop this.”

“Looks like we might be too late already,” says Leigh Ann.

I cross my arms. “I refuse to accept that.”

Way back in September, when Elizabeth Harriman sent us off in search of the Ring of Rocamadour, I was certain that her tweed-loving ex-husband, Malcolm Chance, was our nemesis. Boy, was I wrong! (Hardly an isolated event, Becca would be quick to point out.) He turned out to be a huge help along the way in that case, and in the other two big cases we’ve had since. He’s smart, witty, and, as a professor of archaeology, he understands better than most that when you’re looking for evidence, sometimes you just have to keep digging. After knowing him for a few months now, the only mystery that still remains about Malcolm is the nature of his relationship with Elizabeth. They seemed to hate each other when we first met them, but ever since we helped Elizabeth and her daughter reconnect, those two appear awfully cozy together.

So it’s not surprising when Malcolm opens the bright red door to Elizabeth’s townhouse on Sixty-Fifth Street.

His face breaks into a huge smile when he sees us. “Well, if it isn’t my favorite crimson-blazer-wearing detectives! Elizabeth! We have visitors!”

I push Livvy toward him. “Hey, Malcolm, you remember Livvy, don’t you? She was my doppelgänger when we switched paintings,” I say, referring to the case of the Mistaken Masterpiece.

“Of course, of course,” he says. “Livvy, welcome! Good to see you again. Please, come in and get warm, everyone.”

“We can only stay a minute,” I say, after all the hugs and cheek-kissing. “Our teachers are trying to kill us with homework. But this is kind of an emergency.”

“My, that sounds dire,” says Malcolm. “Sit. Have a cup of tea.” As he says the words, the grandfather clock behind him begins to chime.

“It’s a sign,” Elizabeth says. “Four o’clock. You simply must stay for tea and tell us your troubles. That’s what friends do.”

We look at one another and then give in to the inevitable, perching in a perfect, red-blazered row on the couch, like birds on a wire.

“What do you know about Perkatory?” Margaret asks Malcolm. “We just came from there, and it’s closed.”

“And what’s worse,” I say, “is that there’s another
coffee shop opening up across the street. Part of a
chain
.” The way I emphasize that last word, you’d think they were selling babies inside. “It’s called Coffeeteria. Is that a stupid name or what?”

Margaret pats me on the arm. “Easy, Soph. Deep breaths.”

I lean back on the couch, following her advice.

“Anyway,” Margaret continues, “we figured that since you seem to know just about everything that goes on in this neighborhood, you’d probably be able to give us the real scoop.”

Malcolm frowns. “Sorry to disappoint you girls, but this is the first I’ve heard of it. Is there a sign, or a notice from the health department, anything like that?”

“Just a sign saying
CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
,” says Leigh Ann.

“I saw the manager—what’s his name, Aldo?—last Thursday,” Malcolm notes. “He was outside sweeping the steps, talking with Ben, from the violin shop. He waved and said hello; I didn’t notice anything unusual. He was smiling. It’s probably nothing.”

“We saw him Friday,” I say. “We played there on Friday night, for cryin’ out loud. He never said anything about closing.”

“You mentioned something about the health department,” says Margaret. “Why would they care about a little place like Perkatory? It’s not really a restaurant; they just sell a few things to eat.”

“They still have to pass the inspections. But if that was the problem, there would be a sign saying so. I’ll tell you what—I’ll look into it for you. The building is owned by someone in the parish. I’ll give him a call. How’s that sound?”

“Thanks, Malcolm,” Margaret says. “You’re the best.”

“Let’s not get carried away,” teases Elizabeth. “We don’t want it to go to his head. He’s hard enough to be around as it is.”

“Oh, I almost forgot!” I say, leaping to my feet. “Do you guys know anything about auctions?”

“Auctions?” Malcolm says, grinning ear to ear. “Ladies, when it comes to auctions, Elizabeth here is a true master, an ace, a … virtuoso. Auctioneers are mere putty in her hands. They may think that they are in charge—”