Heartbreaker

(Winter 2009)


5. The Plot Sickens

On Monday morning before school, Dipper secretly took out the collage Valentine from Mabel. Nearly everyone had given her a card.

And he knew that she had given everybody in class a card, since they had checked off the names on the class list as they signed and, in Mabel's case, decorated each card. Dipper's package of 24 cards, plus a couple taken from the half-dozen extras Mom had bought, had been just enough to send everyone else in class a card.

That was part of the hurt. Dipper always tried to do everything right. And in return he got—

Well, very little.

He knew that Mabel's suspicions must be justified. If she had dropped one card in his bag—and that card was definitely missing—then someone had stolen at least it. And maybe one or two other cards as well.

But would he feel better if they discovered that he'd had three cards in his bag, and no more? Even Kurt Thigben, who'd called him out as the class loser, had received at least five, including one from Mabel (a noncommittal "Happy Valentines" with an illustration of hearts with arms and legs laughing like loons) and one from Dipper ("What Did the Cowboy's Horse Say when the Cowboy Gave Him a Valentine? Nothing! Horses can't talk!).

Even if Dipper had three cards, or four, he'd still be the loser. As they went out to the car, Dipper wondered if following up on the mystery was even worth the effort. "Seat belts!" Mom said.

"Yes," Mabel and Dipper replied in unison.

As they got about halfway to the school, Dipper felt an odd lurch, and the cloudy sky overhead temporarily lit up. "What did we hit? If it's not dead, can I keep it?" Mabel asked.

"We didn't hit anything," Mrs. Pines told her. "That must have been a flash of lightning up in the clouds."

They waited for the thunder.

No thunder.

"Slow down!" Mabel said. "Cops!"

Sure enough, a police car with flashing lights had pulled off to the right, just behind a beat-up old green pickup.

"I'm going under the speed limit," Mom pointed out.

"Then speed up!" Mabel said.

"Speed limits don't work like that," Dipper told her. "They're upper limits. You don't have to drive exactly as fast as the sign says."

They pulled into the school parking lot a little earlier than normal—not much, a quarter-hour or so. "Do you have your lunch money for the week?" Mrs. Pines asked as the kids got out.

"I've got the check," Dipper said.

"Lunch isn't worth twelve and a half dollars a week," Mabel protested. "More pizza! More burgers!"

"You don't pay for it," Mrs. Pine said. "Maybe you'd rather get up early, prepare a lunch, and brown-bag it-?"

"Objection withdrawn," Mabel said. "See you this afternoon, Mom!"

They hurried into the school, but took a complicated route to the lunchroom, where everyone congregated either for breakfast or just to wait until first bell. "Where is he?" Mabel asked in a peevish way.

"He's usually out in the halls, but maybe he's sick today or something," Dipper said.

Mabel's eyes narrowed. "Or maybe Peavy pilfered your precious postcards! What's that called when you start everything with P?"

"Alliteration, I think," Dipper said. Mabel's plan had been to ambush the janitor and question him, but to ambush someone you have to see them first. They knew that if they just wandered the halls, a teacher would see them and send them to the lunchroom and maybe even write them up. They didn't know what writing someone up meant. It had never happened to either of them. But older students made it sound awful.

A few kids were having the school breakfast. Those were mostly the poorer kids who got a reduced price for lunch as well, but occasionally a slowpoke kid would bring in the full price for a breakfast—a dollar twenty-five—and settle in for a hearty meal of nearly cold scrambled eggs (they came from a big square aluminum pan kept over hot water) and toast or oatmeal and toast or cold cereal and toast (the worst, according to Mabel—"Even if you put sugar on cornflakes, they're not the same as Sweetie Bombs") plus orange juice and maybe blueberries, strawberries, or apple slices, plus milk.

Mabel had some change and bought herself a carton of milk. She offered to buy one for Dipper, too, but he wasn't thirsty.

They spotted Mr. Peavy, who looked unusually grumpy, as the bell rang and everyone shuffled out into the hall. Mabel stopped and said, "Hi, Mr. Peavy! Did you have a good weekend?"

"Up to this morning," he said. "Cop stopped me on the way in."

"Uh-oh!" Mabel said. "Did you get a ticket for speeding? I'm so sorry! I'll help if you want to fight it in court!"

Even a grumpy janitor couldn't help smiling at that. "Nope, just a warning that one of my truck's taillights is flickering. Probably a fuse."

"That's good," Mabel said. "So, did you or did you not find a bunch of Valentine cards last Friday in Mrs. Wright's room? Answer yes or no."

Peavy took off the flat cloth cap he always wore and scratched his bald, freckled head. "Fourth grade? I found a few in the paper bin, I think."

"Where are they?" Mabel asked. "You better tell me! I'm the bad cop!"

"What?" he asked, fighting back another smile.

"Oh, honey, you can tell me everything," she said. "Now I'm the good cop!"

"I don't know," Peavy said. "I tossed all the paper stuff in the big recycling bin behind the school. It may have been picked up already, that usually happens on Monday morning. Even if the stuff's still out back, I had about five trash bags full, so I don't know how I could find it."

"That's all right," Dipper said, tugging Mabel's sleeve. "Come on, Sis, we'll be late."

They hurried on and were almost the last students to reach their desks. Mrs. Wright crooked a finger at Dipper. "Come and speak to me for a minute," she said.

She didn't look mad, but Dipper's heart beat fast as he came to the desk. "Let's step out into the hall," she said.

The hall now was empty. Mrs. Wright said, "Dear, I heard that you didn't get any cards on Friday. Is that true?"

Dipper glumly nodded.

"I know there was a mistake," she said. "I put a card in each student's bag after lunch. Mabel had a good many by then, and you had two or three. Someone is playing a mean trick on you, Dipper."

"Thanks," Dipper said, but it came out as a whisper.

"I'm sorry, dear," Mrs. Wright said. "If anyone lets me know who played this mean prank on you, I'll deal with it. Anyway, I want to tell you that having your sister and you in my class is a joy. You're a fine boy, Dipper. Hold your chin up."

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak. And his chin felt as if it were trembling.

The school day began as usual. A couple of kids were absent—there was a bug going around—and the ordinary business went on after roll call, lunch money collected, the week's photocopied lunch menus handed out, announcements for the day, and so on. Then came English, and they were off and running.


A couple hours later, the janitor had caught up on his work and knocked off for a short break. Mr. Peavy had a little cubbyhole, not quite an office, but a place where he could sit down and rest when he needed it. After he had finished his belated sweeping of the halls, he paused there for a cup of coffee and a few moments off his feet.

He had a desk, not one of the new Formica ones, but an antique, an old teacher's desk made of wood, stained a dark brown, the top decorated not only with a maze of interlinking coffee rings but with some carvings from the ancient times when school boys could carry jackknives to school and even deface the teacher's furniture without being taken to the police station.

GUESS WHO TEACH MARCH 1957

EES RULES

BBB WAS HERE

Wait a minute. That last one looked more recent. Had it always been there? Must have. Peavy kept the door locked when he wasn't actually in his small windowless break room.

Nah, couldn't be new.

Funny he hadn't noticed it . . . before . . . wait.

There was a square white envelope on the table, too, that he definitely didn't remember leaving there. Dang, was it a pink slip? Was he getting fired?

He turned it over and read DIPPER PINES as the address.

Heck, it was just a Valentine card. The flap was just tucked in and not sealed. Not feeling one twinge of guilt—the US Postal Service was one thing, but this was an elementary school, for crying out loud—he pulled the card out. On the front it had a picture of a girl and boy in a red wagon hanging on for dear life as it shot down a hill thick with flowers in the shape of hearts.

Inside it said, "I'm Thrilled to Share Valentine's Day With You."

And signed, "From Mabel (Your Sister). Have some cats!"

Below that, Mabel had drawn three dancing cats, Peavy supposed. They were something that looked a little bit like cats, and they were either dancing or kick-boxing.

Peavy frowned. The little girl who'd asked him about Valentine's cards. Was she in the fourth grade? She looked about that age. Her name, for all he knew, might be Mabel. And she'd said she and her brother were in, uh, whose room?

Peavy just couldn't recall. However, the school had only a limited number of fourth-grade classrooms. And he knew which classes went to lunch at which serving—there were three, one at 11:40, one at noon, and one at 12:20. The fourth grade was in the middle, so he decided he'd be at the lunchroom door at noon and watch for the girl. He wasn't sure she was Mabel Pines, but he knew her face.

She was the one who could always make him smile.

Even on a day when that fool traffic cop had pulled him over. "What did I do?" Peavy had asked.

And the cop—a real porker—had said, "Nothing. Your T-tail-taillight is all. It flickers."

He'd written up a warning and had told Peavy to have the left taillight checked. "Probably just a f-fuse," the cop had said.

"You're kinda new on this job, ain'tcha?" Peavy had asked because the heavy cop was sweating bullets. He'd just nodded, handed the warning to Peavy, and walked off.

And it was a fuse, by gar. When he'd had a chance after sweeping, Peavy had ducked out to the parking lot and checked. Sure enough, one fuse was almost loose in the box. Just a push of his finger clicked it into its socket. Then he turned on the lights and walked around back. Both taillights on and steady.

Stupid fuse.

Anyway, now that he was at school, finally, and had hurriedly push-broomed all the hallways in a half-assed way because he'd been late, and now he had drunk his morning cup of coffee, Peavy walked down to the principal's office and asked the secretary, Miz Graff, if there were any problems, she checked and said no, nothing urgent, but there was a report of a leaky urinal in the boy's locker room in the gym.

Another glamorous part of his job. He went, checked, found the culprit—dripping about one drop a minute from the handle coupler. No sweat. He went to the supply closet, found the gasket drawer, found the right red rubber ring (for some reason he was feeling cheerful, even with a urinal to fix) and walked back to the gym twirling the gasket around his forefinger and singing under his breath, "If you want fix a toilet, remember this one thing: The darn thing won't work without the right red rubber ring."

He made himself laugh.

All right, easy job. Shut off the water in the gym pipe room, set a basin under the leaky urinal, use the big pipe wrench (the jaws thoughtfully padded with duct tape) to unscrew the handle assembly nut, let the standing water glurch out into the basin, then remove the old gasket—ah, ha, it was corroded to black and worn through on the top, the source of Old Floorful. Replace the worn, limp, tired thing with the right red rubber ring, replace the flush handle and tighten the huge nut, go turn on the water supply, check for leaks—none. So flush it. No leakage.

He packed up his tools, emptied the basin, ditched the used gasket, mopped up the little pool against the wall beneath the urinal, went down the line flush-flush-flush-flush-flush, no more leaks. And so another job well done.

Then it was close to noon, so he went back to his cubbyhole office, grabbed the envelope, and waited as the kids in Mrs. Wright lined up. Dipper was the leader, at the front of the line, and Mabel was right behind him. The kids filed out as Mrs. Wright lingered for something—her purse, probably—and Peavy took advantage to offer the envelope to Mabel. "Found this," he said.

"My card!" Mabel said. "Your card!" she said to Dipper. "Where was the card?" she asked Peavy.

"It was in the wastebasket for paper in your room," Peavy said. "There were some others, but I trashed them, sorry. Didn't know somebody lost them."

"Where are they now?" Mabel asked.

Peavy sighed. "In a big plastic bag in some big metal bin at the waste management center. Or maybe by now they've been sorted and shredded or pulped."

"Then I can't-?" Mabel asked.

"Sorry, girly," Peavy said. "The cards are gone by now."

Mrs. Wright came out, Peavy said hi to her, and the kids marched into the lunchroom. They had a scant twenty minutes to select their food, sit, and eat. It was Monday, which meant you chose chicken nuggets or a club sandwich, plus two sides selected from mixed vegetables, green beans, or mac and cheese. Dessert was either fruit cocktail, apple slices, or a banana. That plus milk was it.

Mabel went for the chicken nuggets, mac and cheese, and mixed veg, plus the banana.

Dipper, just to be different, chose chicken nuggets, mac and cheese, green beans, and apple slices.

"See," Mabel said as they sat down at their usual table. "You did get some cards. Here's mine!"

"Did you fix this up with Mr. Peavy to make me feel better?" Dipper asked suspiciously.

"What? No! Me? No! I swear on Ripper's life that Mr. Peavy really must have got it from the recycle can. It even smells trashy! The envelope does. But here, Dipper, proof positive that people did have cards for you."

Dipper took it. "Mrs. Wright said she put a card in my bag, too." The envelope did have a suspicious smell, which rather put Dipper off the chicken nuggets, but he pulled the card out. He smiled at the cartoony kids in the wagon and then read the note. "Nice cats, Sis," he said.

Mabel was down to her last nugget. "One day I'm gonna be a master craftsman. Craftsperson. Crafty woman. Anyway, Dip," Mabel said with a sad smile, "this proves that you did get cards, but somebody stole them. Today at recess I'm gonna grill some suspects. Grill 'em until they're as crispy brown and juicy as these chicken nuggets! Chomp!"

"What's the point?" Dipper asked. "We're not going to get the cards back."

"No, but if we know how many cards you were supposed to have," Mabel said patiently while chewing the last bite of processed chicken stuff, "then that narrows down our list of suspects. Nobody would give you a card just to steal it. Come on, don't you want to solve the case?"

"I guess," Dipper said. He realized time was passing and started to eat. Then as he sipped his milk, he said, "Really, though, Mabel, this card from you, well—it's just about enough."

"Not for me," Mabel said ominously.