The Red Blazer Girls by Michael D. Beil

around,” she says, under her breath, “but that housekeeper lady is spying on us.”
    “Where?” I start to turn my head.
    “
Don't
look! I can see her in that mirror over by the stairs. She is totally snooping.”
    I scooch over on the couch in order to get the same angle Leigh Ann has, and sure enough, there is Winifred, standing behind a pillar at the entrance to the living room, her head cocked in a classic eavesdrop ping pose.
    “See?”
    “I sure do.”
    “What should we do?”
    New to this world of spies and secrets, I can only come up with: “Dunno.”
    “About this letter,” Margaret continues. “Do you want us to start trying to solve the puzzle, just in case the ring is still where your father left it?”
    “Well, you certainly have a better chance of finding it than I do. Heavens, I'm outfoxed by simple crossword puzzles. I wouldn't have the foggiest notion of where to begin.”
    “It's like the first time you read a word problem in algebra. It makes no sense,” I say, keeping one eye on Winifred. “But after a few minutes, you start to see it.It's the same thing with those goofy logic problems. You know, the ones where they tell you that Aaron smokes Lucky Strikes, and Betty lives in a green house, and Cameron lives next door to Aaron, so then who drives a red Ford? It always
seems
like they haven't given you enough information, but when you sit down and organize it, there always is
just
enough to solve it, and you figure out that Doug quit smoking and lives between Betty and Cameron and drives a purple Chevrolet.” I take a much-needed breath and point at the letter. “This is just like that.”
    “But when I look at that clue, and those equations or whatever they are, I don't see how they can tell us where something is hidden,” Margaret says.
    I take a peek in the mirror and see Winifred still in position, straining to hear every word. I then turn to Ms. Harriman. “Obviously Caroline was really brainy, right? And your father was a professor at Columbia. And it sounds like he was pretty sure that she could figure it out, based on what she knew. I mean, she was almost the same age as us—okay, a couple years older. But c'mon, Margaret, how much more could she know? What about all those books you read? Don't they count for anything?” (I'm on a roll.) “Look how fast you found this envelope. It took you like five minutes to figure that one out. I'd still be in the library, flailing through the shelves. So, what do you think?”
    The fortunate combination of her own insatiablecuriosity and my unique ability to be a royal pain in her butt wears her down.
    “You actually trust us to do this?” she asks Ms. Harriman.
    Ms. Harriman laughs. “I do trust you. All I ask is that you keep this between us.”
    “And Mr. Eliot, our English teacher,” I say. “He helped us find the book, so he knows a little already. But he's cool; he'll keep it secret if we ask.”
    “Well, then. I guess you girls have another puzzle to solve.”
    Back in the foyer, we are saying our good-byes when Ms. Harriman points to Rebecca's ever-present sketchpad. “I noticed that you did some sketching while we were chatting.”
    “Yeah, I'm sorry,” Rebecca says. “I don't mean to be rude. Sometimes I don't even realize I'm doing it.”
    “Okay if I take a quick peek?”
    Rebecca instinctively hugs the pad closer to her body but then slowly relaxes her death grip as we start to hound her. “Um, okay.”
    Ms. Harriman opens it very carefully, turning the pages as if each holds a masterpiece. “Rebecca, dear, these are quite remarkable.”
    “Told you she was good,” I say.
    “Well, you were only being accurate.” She pauses, staring at a drawing of the famous Bethesda Fountain in Central Park, her fingers hovering over the delicatepencil lines. “Gracious.” She turns a few more pages, stopping at a page filled with a number of smaller drawings—the very ones Rebecca had been working on a few minutes