“Oh, right,” he said suddenly. “I actually didn’t practice here two Mondays ago.”
Bethesda’s heart sank.
“I was going to,” Kevin continued. “But someone else was using the room.”
“Ms. Finkleman?”
He looked up. “No. A kid. Two kids, actually.”
Bingo. Bethesda rolled herself a few inches closer to Kevin on Ms. Finkleman’s spinny black desk chair. “Two kids were in here? Kevin, who were they?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“Geez, Bethesda, take it easy. When I heard someone was in here, I turned around and went home. That’s called minding your own business.”
She ignored the swipe. “You’re sure it was two kids?”
“I heard two voices. A girl and a boy. And they were singing.”
Bethesda’s feet rat-a-tatted on the floor like drumsticks. Her gaze jumped from one end of the Band and Chorus room to the other, as if she could force this mysterious pair to materialize from the room’s darkened corners. Two kids. A boy and a girl. Singing!
“So, what were they singing?”
“Oh, it was sort of a goofy thing. Let’s see…” Kevin tilted his head toward the ceiling, summoning back the song, and Bethesda watched his hands. His fingers were thinking, too, arranging themselves in little clusters on the keys, trying and rejecting possibilities, conjuring a melody remembered from a couple weeks ago. “The boy was doing most of the singing, as I recall, with the girl just kind of chiming in.” Kevin tried out a chord, paused, shifted his fingers, tried another. “There we go.”
He began to sing.
“Locked up too long! You been locked up too long! And that’s wrong, so wrong!”
As always, all the hesitancy of Kevin McKelvey’s speaking voice disappeared when he sang, and he belted the silly little lyrics clear and strong. Kevin’s fingers bounced through the simple, three-chord pattern. “Turn to me! Turn to me!” he sang. “And I’ll set you free!”
His voice popped up an octave for the big finish. “Oh you sweet thing… I’m gonna set… yooooooooou… freeeeee!”
Then, just like that, Kevin stopped singing and shrugged. “Then I left.” Bethesda refrained from pointing out to Kevin that, for someone minding his own business, he had heard an awful lot of the song.
“So, detective?” he asked. “Am I free to go?”
After Kevin left, Bethesda took his place at the piano bench. She plunked at random keys, singing lightly to herself, wondering what it all could mean.
“Turn to me… and I’ll set you free…”
Whoosh!
In one easy, graceful movement, Guy Ficker crouched, sprang, took to the air, pumped his legs, and sent the basketball swooshing noiselessly into the net. He snagged his own rebound, twirled on his heels, and bounced the ball over to Tenny Boyer.
“Ow,” said Tenny, flinching, as it sprang up from the blacktop and stung his palms.
“Shake it off, man,” said Guy. “Your shot.”
Tenny shaded his eyes with one hand and dribbled awkwardly with the other. They were at the Remsen Playground after school, playing a game called Horse, where the goal is for each player to match the shot the other guy just took. If you missed the shot, you got a letter. The first person with all five letters lost. They’d been playing for six minutes. Tenny had HORS, and Guy had nothing.
“Hey, um, Guy. Can I ask you a quick question, dude?”
Guy scowled. “Take your shot, Tenny.”
Maybe this was a bad idea. Tenny had figured it would be smart to do his first suspect interrogation here, in an atmosphere where Guy was most comfortable—on the court, out in the open air. Nearby, a couple elementary school kids were whacking a tennis ball back and forth; toddlers tottered around in the sandbox; an older kid in a baseball cap was sitting on the playground equipment, humming to himself. It was the perfect setting, Tenny thought, to interrogate a sports person like Guy. People are most relaxed when they’re doing something they love, something they’re good at. Tenny had a recent painful memory of his mom coming to talk about something Very Serious and Important, and how agitated and annoying the whole conversation had been—mainly because she insisted he sit with her at the kitchen table. All he wanted the whole time was to be in the basement, with his guitar, so he could strum chords or lightly fingerpick while she was talking.
“C’mon, Tenny. Shoot.”
Tenny jumped and spun around, as Guy had just done so effortlessly, and hurled the ball in the general direction of the net. It flew past the backboard toward the metal fence separating the court from the slides and swings. The older kid in the baseball cap at the top of the slide stopped humming and barked in surprise as the ball rattled against the fence.
Tenny was not a sports person. “That’s E for me,” he said, relieved. “You win.”
“Play again?”
“Uh…” Not waiting for an answer, Guy scooped up the ball, dribbled twice, and drove in one easy motion down the court for a smooth, gliding layup. “Your shot, man.”
Okay, this was definitely a bad idea. Tenny was starting to feel like he’d been out here forever, pretending to like basketball. He dribbled twice (as Guy had done), drove in toward the basket in one easy motion (as Guy had done), and then heaved the ball as high and hard as he could, way over the fence. It landed with a distant thump, somewhere on the far side of the swing set.
“Oops,” said Tenny.
“Wow,” said Guy. With no rebound to grab, his hands flapped helplessly against his hips.
“Oh, hey,” said Tenny. “So here’s what I wanted to ask you…”
They sat with their backs against the fence, and soon Tenny got all the info he was after. He confirmed, first of all, that Guy had been angry (was still pretty angry, in fact) about not being able to use the gym to practice for his archery tournament. “Double V says I can use it every day for a week,” he complained, using a nickname for Principal Van Vreeland popular among the cool kids, “and then I get the boot so Pamela and the gymnastics people can have it. Lame, right?”
“Totally.”
Motive confirmed! Tenny thought. Sweetness.
But, as it turned out, Guy had an alibi, too. “Monday? Five forty-five? Sure, man. I was at the mall. Went with my dad to look at baseball mitts, then to dinner. You can ask Tasharoo about the dinner part.”
“Um… Tasharoo?”
“Natasha, man. We’re kind of, like, family friends. My folks have known hers since we were kids. We go to dinner every once in a while at that seafood place, Pirate Sam’s. Family tradition, you know?”
Tenny did know. Pirate Sam’s was a family tradition kind of place. There was a period, years ago, when his own family went every Sunday night for dinner. He always got the Golden Fish Nuggets, which came in a cardboard chest.
“That answer all your questions, Tenners?” said Guy, hauling himself up from the patch of asphalt where they’d settled themselves. Tenny smiled bashfully, surprised at how proud he was that Guy had graced him with a nickname.
He was still smiling when he heard a voice from the playground side, yelling, “Heads up!” The basketball was on its way back, and Tenny just had time to realize that it was Todd Spolin who had thrown it, and that it was Todd who’d been sitting there on the playground equipment, the whole time they were talking—before the ball sailed over the fence in a wide arc and bonked him in the nose.