Shouldn't You Be in School?. Lemony Snicket

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СКАЧАТЬ called us and said his house was on fire,” Harvey Mitchum said, “but when we arrived there was no sign of him, although it looks like his moths were burned to a crisp.”

      Mimi pointed to some tiny black specks near the shattered glass of the tanks. They might have been moths, once. And it might have been Harold Limetta on the phone. “We were going to ask for him at Birnbaum’s Sheep Barn,” she said. “The barn supplied wool for Mr Limetta’s moths to eat.”

      “Birnbaum’s Sheep Barn has also burned down,” Theodora said, sitting on the bench before immediately getting up again and brushing the ashes off the back of her pants. It took her a long time.

      “What do you know about these fires?” Harvey Mitchum demanded. “It’s still too early to make assumptions, but I’d say both of you have something to do with all this. Lately, whenever there’s a crime in Stain’d-by-the-Sea, we seem to find you and your whippersnapper poking around.”

      “We’re here as professionals,” Theodora said stiffly, finishing up with her pants.

      “We’ll do anything we can to help you solve this case,” said the whippersnapper.

      “You can help by butting out,” Mimi Mitchum said. “And the same goes for you about butting, Harvey.”

      Harvey gave his wife an exasperated frown. “Mimi, I’ll remind you that I’m an officer of the law, just like you are.”

      “You’re not just like I am,” Mimi said. “I’m a brave and capable law enforcement official, and you’re a nincompoop!”

      “If I’m such a nincompoop, why are you the one who forgot to put the milk back in the refrigerator, so it stayed on the counter all night?”

      “Well, you’re the one who left the window open, so mosquitoes swarmed our bedroom!”

      “Well, you’re the one who didn’t hang up your towel after your bath, so it stayed wet and clammy!”

      Imagining the Mitchums getting out of the shower in clammy towels with the windows open and the air smelling of warm milk was a new item on my list of things I would rather not do. “Excuse me, Officers,” I said, “my associate and I are leaving now. Please send my regards to Stewart.”

      Stewart Mitchum was the officers’ son, and I did not really want to send him my regards. I could not think of anything I wanted to send him that would be accepted for delivery. “Stew’s at school,” Harvey Mitchum said. “He insisted that he stop working for us by making a siren noise out of the back of our car, and focus on getting a top-drawer education.”

      “How nice for him,” I lied. A top-drawer education is a very high-quality one, but the highest-quality anything in the world wouldn’t fix Stew.

      “I’d suggest you do the same, Snicket,” Mimi said, and gave me a stern look. “We’ll be keeping an eye on you.”

      “And the milk,” Harvey added, glaring at his wife. As a good-bye, I gave them a nod I had practiced for quite some time in the mirror. It was polite enough that no one could complain but not so polite that the person receiving the nod would think you liked them. I trudged through the ashes, trying to think. I had been taught to spend longer than a few minutes at the scene of an investigation, but I was not quite sure what it was that I was investigating. Start from the beginning, I told myself. The Department of Education was concerned about a suspicious fire, and pointed us toward a witness to the fire. Upon arriving at his home, we found it too was burned to the ground. There were moths, there were sheep. The Department of Education had a child working there and was convinced that schoolchildren were in danger. The whole thing was gibberish. Only a babbling buffoon would think it made any sense.

      “This is starting to make sense,” Theodora said, when we reached the roadster. “There’s an arsonist who is putting the schoolchildren of Stain’d-by-the-Sea in danger. We’ve got to find him and stop him, unless it’s a woman, in which case it is she who must be found and stopped.”

      “Two buildings have been burned,” I agreed, “but why are schoolchildren in danger?”

      “The Department of Education said they were in danger,” Theodora said. “Do you think my friend Sharon is lying?”

      “She wouldn’t have to be lying to be wrong,” I said.

      “Don’t simper nonsense at me, Snicket. I am not a baby. Our progress is being evaluated, and the case has been assigned extra-crucial status. We’ve got to speed up the investigation. I’m counting on your hard work and cooperation.”

      I took a last look at the ashes as Theodora started up the roadster. Hangfire, I thought. Is this your handiwork? No one answered.

      “Snicket, don’t be a Trappist monk. Answer my question.

      “You didn’t ask anything.”

      “Well, I meant to ask something.”

      “What is it?”

      “It’s what are your suggestions? ”

      “Let’s go to Hungry’s.”

      “Be sensible. You just want to have lunch with your friends.”

      “I work better on a full stomach.”

      “Well, two can play at that game, Snicket. I’m going to go see Sharon Haines, and we’ll see who comes closer to solving the case.”

      The roadster took us back through town. It was hot, and the sun kept glaring at me. It reminded me of Stewart Mitchum, who also liked to glare but was nowhere near as bright. Why would Stew tell his parents he wanted to focus on his education, I asked myself. And then I asked Theodora to drop me at the corner. If too many people see you getting rides everyplace, they get the impression you belong in a car seat. The corner was hot, too. Peppermint ice cream. Maybe Jake Hix will have some in his freezer for dessert.

      From the outside Hungry’s didn’t look like anything special, and inside it didn’t either. Certainly there wasn’t anything special about the owner, Hungry Hix, a bitter woman with little patience for young people. What was special about the place was Jake Hix. He was a young man, but old enough to have a sweetheart and a job. The sweetheart was Cleo Knight, the brilliant chemist, and the job was cooking up the food at Hungry’s. It is possible that his genius was more impressive than Cleo’s, and in my case he gave away the food for free, as my funds were limited, a phrase which here means that Theodora didn’t give me an allowance. When I walked into the room, he was standing at a blender that was whirring and crackling away at something the color of bricks. Watching him was Moxie Mallahan, sitting at the counter with her typewriter case hoisted up beside her. I almost didn’t see who was sitting next to her until I was already inside. Nobody noticed me for a second—Moxie because she was watching Jake, Jake because he had his nose in a book, and Kellar Haines because he was pretending not to notice me as I sat at the counter with everybody else.

      Jake looked up and turned the blender off. “How are you, Snicket?”

      “Hot and starving,” I said, nodding to Moxie.

      “I have just the thing,” he said, “but I’m going to make you taste it before I tell you what it is.”

      “Finally,” СКАЧАТЬ