The Mysterious Matter of I. M. Fine Read online

  “I just thought maybe you might know him,” I prompted. “Maybe he shops here.”

  “Sorry,” she said. “Never heard of him.”

  “Why don’t we see if he’s listed in the phone book?” Beamer said. “Just for grins.”

  I was sure he wouldn’t be, since he hadn’t shown up on any of the Internet sites. Still, it was worth a try, just to cover all the bases. Maybe we’d turn up a relative.

  “I guess we should,” I agreed. “It would be pretty embarrassing if we looked all over town and then found out he was right there in the phone book.” I looked up at the clerk and smiled sweetly.

  “You’ll have to ask the manager,” she said, indicating the only other person in the store, a bald man in a dingy white apron who was taking canned peaches out of a box and putting them on the shelves.

  The manager reluctantly stopped what he was doing and led us over to a cramped little office near the front of the building. He took out a ring of keys and unlocked the door, found a phone book, then stood there waiting while we looked for I. M. Fine in the white pages.

  He wasn’t there. No one else named Fine was, either. I handed the book back to the manager and thanked him.

  “That was great,” Beamer said when we got outside. He broke the candy bar in two and gave me half. “Now what?”

  “We just keep asking. If I. M. Fine still lives in Wimberly, somebody’s bound to know him.”

  So we worked our way methodically down one side of the street and back up the other, asking everybody the same question. We asked at a drugstore, a bike shop, several clothing stores, a beauty shop, a pizza parlor, a shoe-repair shop, and a gas station. We went into a beer joint, but they told us we’d have to leave because we were underage. None of the people we talked to had ever heard of I. M. Fine.

  By then, it was getting close to lunchtime and we were feeling frustrated, depressed, and hungry. So we stopped at a sub shop to get some sandwiches and restore our spirits.

  “Okay, let’s go about this logically,” I said as we settled in to wait for our food. “I think we’re talking to the wrong kinds of people. I mean, even if they saw I. M. Fine in their store every single week, they still might not know his name. And if they did, it would probably be as Isaac or Ivan or whatever, and they wouldn’t take any special interest in him. Not if they don’t know who he is—you know, that he’s a famous author and all.”

  “Yeah, okay. So then who are the right people to ask?”

  “Well, children, for starters—or their parents.”

  “That’s good,” he said. “And what about librarians or bookstore owners.”

  “Good. Who else?”

  “I don’t know—the candy factory?”

  “Yeah, that’s a possibility,” I agreed. I was feeling better already.

  The waitress arrived with our sandwiches. She looked old enough to have kids our age. Her name tag said JOANNE.

  “Excuse me,” I said, “but do you have kids?”

  That turned out to be the magic question. Did she have kids? Of course she had kids! She gave us the first smile we had seen in Wimberly and settled in for what was obviously her favorite topic of conversation.

  “I have three,” she said. “Two big boys and a baby girl.”

  “That’s great,” I said. “Do they like to read?”

  The waitress thought for a moment. “Well now, my oldest, Chris—he never was much of a reader. All he ever wants to do is play those video games. Such a waste of time is what I think, you know what I mean?”

  I did, but I thought it best to keep the conversation on track. “Did Chris ever read the I. M. Fine books? Lots of kids who don’t read much still like them a lot.”

  “Oh, you mean those Chillers? Yeah, I think he read a couple. But my middle boy, Jason—now, he reads every single one of them. Buys them the minute they come out.”

  “Really!” we crowed in unison.

  “Oh, yes. My Jason loves to read.”

  “Well, did you know that the author lives right here in Wimberly?”

  She drew back in amazement. “Oh, you don’t mean it!”

  “Yes,” I said. “It says so in his first book—‘I. M. Fine lives in Wimberly, Pennsylvania.’ Those are the very words.”

  “Well, I’ll be! Jason will just be so thrilled to hear that.”

  “So I guess you’ve never met him or anything?” Beamer asked.

  “Well, no,” she said. “I didn’t know he lived here until just this minute.”

  “The reason we were asking,” he went on, “is that we’re trying to interview him for a school project. Do you think anybody else here would know something about him? I mean, would you mind asking the other waitresses, maybe?”

  “Well, sure, I could do that,” she said, pulling our check out of her apron pocket and laying it on the table. “I’ll let you know if I find out anything.” Then she headed back toward the kitchen.

  “Well, that was refreshing,” I said.

  “We didn’t learn anything, though.”

  “Maybe not. But she said she’d ask around. Don’t get grumpy on me.”

  Beamer agreed not to get grumpy, and we settled in to eat our sandwiches. When we were ready to leave, we waved at Joanne. She came scurrying over.

  “Any luck?” I asked.

  “Oh, honey, no. But everyone was so impressed that we have a famous author living around here.”

  “Oh, well,” said Beamer. “Thanks anyway.”

  I had a thought. “Can I ask you another question? I’m not trying to be nosy or anything; it’s just part of our project.”

  “Well, sure, I don’t mind.”

  “This is going to sound strange, but this past year, did your son—Jason—did he have a really bad headache that lasted for a couple of days?”

  “He sure did. It was going around the school something awful.”

  “Did the other one . . .”

  “Chris?”

  “Right, Chris. Did he get it, too? Or the baby?”

  “No, just Jason. I was terrified we’d all come down with it, but he was the only one.”

  “And then, a few months later, did he have anything else happen? It was going around our school—sort of like seizures. Thrashing around on the floor, hissing—it was on the news.”

  “Oh, yes, I know what you’re talking about.”

  “Well, did he? Did he have that?”

  “Yes,” she said, “lots of kids did.” But she was squinting at us now like she wasn’t sure why we were asking such strange questions.

  “Well, the thing is,” I explained, “we think those outbreaks were related to the books. The I. M. Fine books.”

  “No!”

  “Yes! And that’s actually why we’re here. To investigate.”

  She shook her head in amazement. “Isn’t that something!” she said.

  One of the other waitresses called, “Joanne!”

  “Sorry, kids, but I need to get back to work.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Thanks for your help.”

  “You drop by later on, and I’ll see what I can find out.”

  And she actually winked.

  13

  The library was next on our list. I just knew this was where we were going to hit pay dirt. You can count on librarians to know about books and authors.

  But I quickly lost heart once we walked inside. The Wimberly library was a tiny storefront operation. I’ve seen convenience stores with more space. I’ve seen bookmobiles with more books.

  “You want to apply for a library card?” asked the lady behind the desk.

  “No,” Beamer said. “We just have a question. About a local author.”

  She looked surprised. “Local author?”

  “Yeah, the children’s author, I. M. Fine. We heard he lives here in Wimberly.”

  “I. M. Fine?”

  “He writes the Chillers series. Scary stories for kids.”

  “Oh, yes. I know the ones. I’m afraid we don�
��t carry those books. We have a pretty limited budget.”

  “Well, actually, we were more interested in finding him,” I said. “Here in Wimberly.”

  “Oh, well . . .” She looked truly regretful. “I’m afraid I can’t help you there.”

  “Thanks anyway,” Beamer said, and nudged me out the door.

  He looked at his watch. “You know what, Franny? I’m starting to get nervous about this. What if my grandpa drives by the pool to check on us and finds out we’re not there?”

  “Oh, stop worrying, Beamer,” I said. “He’s in his garage, puttering with his inventions. I bet he hasn’t given us a second thought.”

  “I don’t know. I wouldn’t put it past him to check.”

  “So if he does find out we left—which he won’t—we’ll just say we got bored and went for a walk.”

  “Give me a break! We went for a walk? All day?”

  “He doesn’t have to know how long we were gone—just why we weren’t there at the exact moment he drove by.”

  “Okay, but what if he asks around at the pool? What if the lifeguard says, ‘Yeah, I remember those two. They left twenty minutes after you dropped them off’?”

  “Oh, all right,” I said. I thought he was being a little paranoid, but I have to admit that asking an endless string of strangers if they had heard of I. M. Fine was getting a little stale.

  So we headed back to Maple and First, stopping in at the occasional store on the way. As a result, we learned that I. M. Fine had failed to make himself known at Reynold’s Hardware, the Tire Shop, Dunkin’ Donuts, Hopwood Dry Cleaners, or the Five ’n’ Dime.

  The bus wasn’t due for another half an hour, so we just stood there for a while, staring numbly up the road in the faint hope that it would come early and rescue us.

  Suddenly, I had a thought. No matter how bummed out we were at the moment, we would still be coming back the next day. And it would speed things along if we had a plan. This led me to think of the candy company. I kind of liked the idea of trying something different from what we’d done so far. But we didn’t have a clue where the candy company was.

  I knew it couldn’t be that hard to find out, though. After all, we were talking about a pretty big company. In fact, it was probably the biggest business in the whole town. I decided to pop into the barbershop and ask.

  “Yell if you see the bus coming,” I told Beamer. “I just want to check something out.”

  The barber was sitting in one of his two chairs, smoking a cigarette. There was not a customer in sight.

  “Hello, little lady,” he said.

  I guess, being a barber, he didn’t see a whole lot of females on a day-to-day basis, except maybe the mothers of six-year-olds who came in for a bowl cut. Still—little lady?

  “Sorry to bother you,” I said, “but I’m trying to find some information on a local company, the Kute Kandy Corporation. Do you know anything about it?”

  “Kute Kandy,” he said, shaking his head in disgust. “Can you imagine—a big company like that? Calling it Kute Kandy? The name’s bad enough, but he had to spell it with a K?”

  “Yeah, it does sound pretty silly,” I said.

  “It started out right over there,” he said, pointing across the street to a dress shop. We had already been in there earlier that morning.

  “Bermann’s Candies, it was then. Little family business. I’ll bet it employs three hundred people now. Maybe more. And he goes and calls it Kute Kandy!”

  “The owner, you mean? Mr. Bermann?”

  “Yeah, Jake Bermann. He’s retired now. Moved to Florida.”

  “This is off the subject,” I said, “but do you know the writer I. M. Fine? Lives here in Wimberly?”

  “Fine?” He thought about it. “I knew an Irving Fine back in the early fifties. Or knew of him is more like it.”

  “Really?” I said, gasping. “Do you know where he lives?”

  “Oh, sure,” he said with a wicked grin. Even before he’d said it, I knew what was coming. “Yeah, he’s been at the same address for quite some time. About six feet under. Headstone on top.”

  This guy was creepy, and I really wanted out of there, but I felt we were circling around something important.

  “You said you knew of him. What exactly?”

  “Well, little lady . . .” He leaned forward and paused dramatically. “He was a spy. A Russian spy.”

  “A spy!” I croaked. I had never heard of a real spy—just the movie kind, like James Bond.

  The barber was still grinning. “Yes indeed, that’s what he was.”

  “But how could you know a thing like that?” I asked. “He didn’t tell you, did he?”

  “Nope. I read it in the paper, same as everybody else. Irving Fine was called down to Washington to testify about it. Gave our American secrets to the Russkies. So what do you think about that?” He raised his eyebrows to show how impressed I should be.

  “Gosh,” I said. “Did they put him in jail?”

  “Should’ve. Didn’t get a chance, though. Driving back from Washington—ka-blamm! Right into a telephone pole. It was in all the papers.”

  Well, this was plainly not our guy, but it might have been I. M. Fine’s father. “Did he have a son, do you know?” I asked. “Like Irving, Jr., maybe?”

  “Haven’t got a clue,” he said.

  The bell tinkled and a teenage boy with hardly any hair came in and sat in the free chair. I couldn’t imagine why he thought he needed a haircut. Maybe he wanted it all shaved off. The barber stubbed out his cigarette and got to his feet.

  “Well, thanks,” I said, edging toward the door. “Just one last thing. Do you know where in town, exactly, that candy factory is?”

  “Kute Kandy.” He said it again, just to enjoy how stupid it sounded. “Out on Route One. ’Bout two miles up the road.”

  “Route One?” I asked.

  “Yeah, just head west, little lady—you’ll see it. Over on the left.”

  “Thanks a lot,” I said again, then got out of there as fast as I could.

  Beamer didn’t look like he had moved one millimeter since I’d been in the barbershop. He was still standing there, leaning against a lamppost, watching the northbound traffic.

  “I found out where Kute Kandy is,” I reported.

  “Good.” He didn’t sound all that excited.

  “But that’s not all. It turns out there was an Irving Fine who lived here in the fifties. He’s been dead for a long time, but Beamer—he was a spy!”

  This time, Beamer actually turned and looked in my direction.

  “He had to go to Washington for questioning or something. And on the way back, he was killed in a car wreck.”

  Beamer hit me with his laser gaze. “That’s gotta be the father,” he said.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Fine isn’t all that common a name.”

  “Plus, it kind of makes sense. I mean, with a dad like that, you might get kind of twisted. It fits, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, it does.”

  And all of a sudden, my tiredness and frustration lifted and I positively couldn’t wait till the next day arrived. We were going to find this guy. I just knew it.

  14

  The Kute Kandy Corporation wasn’t as big as I’d expected it to be. I had just assumed that this factory made all the Jelly Bears and Jelly Worms and every other kind of Jelly whatnot in the whole world. But looking at the small cluster of buildings, I didn’t think that was possible. I decided this was just the main office. They probably had lots of other factories in different places.

  The main building was a big flat gray box with hardly any windows. Behind it, and off to the sides, were several other flat gray boxes, surrounded by miles of parking lot, full of cars and trucks.

  We went through the double glass doors and into the reception area. I had expected something kind of nice—carpets on the floor, a shiny desk with a well-dressed receptionist sitting behind it, a few nice leather chairs to wait in.
<
br />   Well, I was wrong. It was about as fancy as your neighborhood dry cleaners: linoleum floors, fake wood paneling, an old oak desk. There wasn’t anybody sitting behind the desk, though, and there weren’t any chairs to wait in, either—leather or otherwise.

  “I think the receptionist must have gone to the ladies’ room or something,” I said. “I bet she’ll be back in a minute.” I had deduced this from the half-empty cup of coffee sitting on the desk. It had lipstick marks on the rim. Just call me Sherlock.

  Within thirty seconds, a middle-aged woman appeared and took her place in the squeaky wooden chair behind the desk. “May I help you?” she asked.

  “Well, yes,” I stammered. “We wondered if there was somebody here we could talk to. About the history of the company.”

  She knitted her brows. If we had asked to hear the history of the dust ball under her desk, she couldn’t have been more surprised.

  “Like . . . what?” she said.

  “Well, you know—like how Jake Bermann turned his little candy store into this big international company. Stuff like that.”

  She continued to gaze at us for a minute, the question “Why?” hovering on her lips. And in all fairness, why would anyone really want to explore the history of the Kute Kandy Corporation? Finally, she put on this really, really sorry look and said she was afraid there wasn’t anybody around who could help us. “We don’t have a public-relations person,” she explained.

  “How about someone older, who might have worked here for a long time?” Beamer suggested. “It could be anybody.”

  The woman sighed. She rubbed her eyes with her fingertips. She looked up at the ceiling. “I guess you could talk to Edna Franklin,” she said with obvious reluctance. “But I don’t think she can give you much time.”

  “Who is Edna Franklin?” I asked.

  “She’s Mr. Bermann’s secretary.” She was already dialing the number.

  “Mr. Bermann?” I said, surprised. He was supposed to be in Florida.

  The receptionist held up her hand, indicating that she couldn’t talk to both me and Edna at the same time. I closed my mouth and waited while she explained our curious interest in the development of the Kute Kandy Corporation and asked whether Edna might be able to carve a few minutes from her busy schedule to answer our questions.