Life went against me that weekend, though. Or worked in my favor. Whichever way you look at it, Sydney needed to interview someone in the workforce for an assignment at school, and it couldn’t be a relative, so she begged me to call up Stenway and see if he would consent to be interviewed. I asked her why she couldn’t call him up, and she said that “didn’t he owe me a favor, so I should start negotiations." I told her it was her project and she could do her own work. Mom settled the argument on her way out the door by telling Sydney to call. I grinned at her.

  Sydney blustered. “You could go ask him when you feed the cats.”

  I had begun to see an opportunity and refused. “I’m going later in the afternoon. It’ll be too late by then.”

  Sydney whined and fussed but finally gave in. She looked really pale as she rang up, and kept clearing her throat until finally someone answered. It ended up being a lot less painful than she was clearly expecting, except for when she glared at me and held the phone out. “He wants to talk to you.”

  “Hello.”

  “Are you coming over to feed later?”

  “Yes.”

  “Could you give Ms. Lytar a hand in moving her things out? Mr. Left is at the lab for the day, and I was going to do it but…”

  “Yeah, sure. You really owe me, you know.”

  “I’ll pay up someday. I promise.”

  “Sure. When are you coming for the interview?”

  “I think we decided on three o’clock.”

  “Staying for dinner?”

  Sydney threw the dish towel at my head, and I ducked just in time.

  “That wasn’t a condition of the interview, although I wouldn’t refuse.”

  “How kind of you.”

  “Thanks, T.J. May I speak to Sydney?”

  I handed the phone back, and waited anxiously for Sydney to finish her call. Finally, she hung up and skipped up off to her room. I rooted around in the kitchen drawers forever until I found the phonebook, and flipped through it, looking for Clive’s phone number. There were a few entries with similar last names, but as I was pretty sure that he lived on the south side of town, I went with that entry. Luckily, I got it on the first try. I explained to his mother, a soft spoken, quiet little person from the sound of it, that I was Clive’s classmate and I needed to talk to him about a project. She sounded suspicious, (how often would Clive take a phone call, especially for homework) but she turned the phone over to him eventually.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “Who is this?”

  “Rude. Look, Clive, you gotta come to the Left mansion at three. Stenway’s going to be out, I know for a fact. Let’s just get this over with. Three o’clock, come to the kitchen door.” I rang off. This day was going to be frustrating enough without a long phone conversation with Clive.

  Two o’clock came around and I started to bundle up and make my way over to the Left mansion. Helping Ms. Lytar might take a while, and I wanted to be able to feed the cats and get everything done before Clive got there. Stenway didn’t come out of hiding until it was time to leave for his interview; he skipped out on the packing and loading entirely. By three o’clock, Ms. Lytar was driving away and the house was empty except for me and the cats. By three fifteen, I was nervously pacing back and forth in the kitchen, waiting for Clive’s knock.

  Finally, it came and I answered. Clive walked right past me and straight to the radiator, holding his hands out over it. “Couldn’t find the door.”

  “Well, let’s hurry.”

  “I thought the butler was going to be out for a while.”

  “He is. I just figured we’d both like this to go as quickly as possible.”

  Clive grunted and rubbed his hands together. He pulled out a little black felt bag and nodded. “That sounds like a good plan.”

  I led him to Stenway’s study and tried the door. Locked. Clive nudged me out of the way and fiddled with the knob. A few minutes later the door swung open, and Clive grinned. “Nice little warm-up. Where’s the goods?”

  I walked to the bookshelf, scanned it quickly, and reached for the book. Setting it down on the desk, I flipped through the pages.

  Clive looked up at me. “I swear, if you were pulling our legs, all along…”

  I stared down at the gaping square in disbelief. To reassure myself, I stuck my fist into the cutout in the center of the book. “I promise. It was there. It was a little box, just this size, and it fit right there.”

  “Well, it’s not there now.” Clive glared at me.

  “Someone took it.” I turned to survey the room. Clive was faster, though, opening drawers and lifting cushions, conducting a search. “No, Clive. Stop.”

  “We need that box.”

  “We can’t just search the room! I’ll get in trouble.”

  “No one is here, girlie. They’ll never know.”

  I looked around the room, at the shuffled papers and flipped over cushions. “You don’t know these folks, Clive. Stenway will know immediately, and if Mr. Left is a clairvoyant like we think he is…” We both froze as the thought hit us at the same moment.

  Clive stuffed his tools back into his pockets, stopping briefly by the door to press down the lock and wipe the knob with his coat sleeve on his way out of the room. “No sense in hanging around, then.”

  I followed, shutting the door firmly behind me. “He took it. He was here when I found it.”

  Clive paused, unsure of his way back, and I took the lead. He muttered at my back: “Stupid girl. He must have known you were looking for it. Why couldn’t you be more careful.”

  “Everything is not my fault.”

  “Sure, that’s what they all say.” Clive grabbed his coat, swinging open the kitchen door. He slammed it behind him, walking quickly away from the house.

  Surely there was a good explanation for why the box was gone. Stenway knew where it was, maybe he needed whatever was in it. I tried to remember that day I'd first seen the box. Stenway had been very... off when he opened the door. Why?

  I thought about it all the way home. It didn’t necessarily mean that Mr. Left had taken the box. Stenway could have removed it too. The main questions was, why? Why was the box moved, for one, and why at this particular time? I was very confused, but things were looking pretty bad for Stenway. I was slowly growing a list of things to talk to him about, when he finally owed me enough favors that he couldn’t back out of a conversation.