“Then why is he paying?”
“It’s what people do on their birthdays when they get older, grown-up. They give themselves the present of having ice cream with you, or something like that. My mother says her grandmother said—she’s dead now, of course. The grandmother, I mean; my mother’s very much alive—one of the things you learn if you get to live a long life is how important people are to you. The people you care about, I mean. My mother’s grandmother told her there don’t even have to be that many of them. She said just one can be enough. Do you think one can be enough?”
“How would I know?” Max asked, but he thought that maybe this great-grandmother knew the truth of it. He had only Grammie, but worried as he was about his parents, worried and anxious as he had been for two weeks and one day now, he was managing, wasn’t he? With Grammie’s help. Without Grammie, he knew, it would be much harder. Not impossible—he’d learned that about himself in the two weeks and one day—but much much harder, and lonely, too. He said, “It’s like having just one friend at school. You don’t need more, do you?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Pia said, but without any trace of self-pity, and Max laughed. He did not say, Me either, although he could have.
Instead, he turned his attention back to the family, listening in while they discussed flavors and then ordered their ice cream cones. The grandfather didn’t want any ice cream. He stood to the side, a couple of Gabrielle’s white pastry boxes tied with scarlet ribbons on the counter in front of him, his wallet in his hand, not talking to any of them, a contented smile on his lips. Max watched all this, then turned to Pia. “You might be right.”
“I am,” she told him in the same confident tone of voice that she had used to assure the hotel manager that Ari would be able to come in to work despite perhaps having typhoid fever. Remembering his first meeting with her—was it just the day before?—Max decided that she knew how to talk confidently, but you couldn’t always believe what she said. He looked back to the grandfather, who was putting change into his pocket and passing out the boxes for others to carry.
“Happy birthday, Mr. Bassett,” Gabrielle said to him with one of her smiles.
“Thank you, Miss Gabrielle,” the old man answered with a bow, as if she were a lady at an opera.
Gabrielle turned her attention to her next customers, the young couple, the tall young man, and the girl—his sister?—her attention caught by the bright white-blond hair. Then she looked again and asked, not quite sure but—now that she looked a third time, looked carefully at his eyes—really asked without any doubt, “Mister Max? It’s good to see you again. Is this your little sister?”
“I don’t have any sisters,” Max said.
Gabrielle smiled. “Well, it’s not your brother, and she’s too young to be anybody’s girlfriend.”
“I’m his assistant,” Pia announced.
Max turned to look sternly down at her. “You know I don’t have any assistants.”
Pia smiled, all innocence. “But you could. You should.”
Now Gabrielle laughed. “What can I get you two? I have chocolate cake with mocha cream filling. I’ve got lemon curd tarts, chocolate croissants, and the ice cream, of course.”
Talk of food distracted Pia. “Are the pastries good?”
“Try one,” Gabrielle advised. “Cake for you?” she asked Max, and that was exactly what he wanted most … after he satisfied his hunger to put Pia in her place. They moved to one of the small round tables and sat down facing each other, like opponents in a chess game.
Pia apparently decided from the look on his face that she should change the subject. “That lady seems nice. Is she a friend of yours? What’s her name?”
Max told her firmly, “I don’t want an assistant, and I don’t need one.”
“Maybe. But I’m the one who thought of typhoid.”
“Yes, I know, and it was a good idea.” She waited, until he added, “A very good idea. But”—and now he changed the subject—“why were you there at my house?”
“Looking for you, of course.”
“Why?” Max asked again. He was losing patience.
Gabrielle came over and put two plates down on their table and offered them lemonade or coffee. Max chose coffee, to go with the chocolate cake, and Pia asked for lemonade. Gabrielle looked down at them for a minute while they looked up at her, waiting to hear what she wanted, until she said, “People should always try to understand each other. Especially young people.” With that pronouncement she went back behind the counter.
Pia looked at Max. “All right,” she said. “I know I’m irritating and I should try not to be so impatient. It’s just that”—she raised her pastry, ready to bite into it—“sometimes, other people are so slow.”
“You think I’m slow?” Max asked, too amazed to be insulted.
“No, the opposite. Well, mostly the opposite.” There was a little silence as they both took a bite and then—quickly, eagerly—a second bite, and a third. “This is really good, you’re right,” Pia said, and quickly, before Max could say anything, she recommenced talking. “I was coming to see you because I know you’re a detective. But I don’t think detecting about dogs is the same as detecting about people—”
“I’m not a detective,” Max repeated patiently.
“So probably there’s no danger you’ll find the dog, but I wanted to tell you that Clarissa is the worst of all of them, about her pet. She’s the kind of person who should never have a pet, but if she has to, if she has to have something to show off? She should have a pet flea.”
Max laughed.
“That’s more like it,” Gabrielle said softly as she set their drinks down on the table. She did not linger.
Pia flushed but went on. “No, I mean it, except a flea would probably escape. Like the dog did, if you ask me.”
Max didn’t say so, but that had been just what he was wondering about.
“A goldfish, maybe. Except she never would, because anybody can have a goldfish. So if you do find that dog, I don’t think you should give it back to her. Do you think you will find it?”
Because he already had, Max could say honestly, “No, I doubt I will.”
“But you might, because you were smart enough to come to school to find out what could have happened. I think you’re probably a pretty good detective.”
“I told you, I’m not a detective.”
“And I think I’d make a pretty good detective’s assistant. I’m like my father, we have really good ideas, we’re always thinking up something new. That’s why he’s rich. I’m going to have a piece of that cake,” she said, and went up to the counter, returning with a second plate. “And,” she explained, sitting down again, “if this cake is as good as the pastry, I’m having one of my best good ideas.”
Of course Max was curious, but he wasn’t about to ask. He watched her take a couple of bites and didn’t say anything. He guessed that Pia liked her ideas so much she wouldn’t be able to resist boasting about them.
He guessed right. She looked across the table at him, eyes sparkling, to say, “She could have her own pastry shop, or restaurant. Or she could work in a private house, if the people were rich enough to have a private pastry cook. Like us,” she said. “My mother loves sweets, and she’s almost never happy with what she gets. She’d be happy with this.” She ate another bite of the cake.
Max didn’t want Gabrielle put on the spot, so he leaned forward to say quietly, “She doesn’t have any recommendations.”
“Why not?”
Max shrugged. “I don’t know. She said she can’t get them, and that even her family won’t have anything to do with her.”
Pia thought about this. “What could she have done that’s so bad but she’s not in jail?”
“I told you, I don’t know.”
“But she has the job of working here, so it couldn’t have been that terrible. You’re the detective, why don’t you find out?”
“I’m not—”
“Don’t you care? She seems really nice, and she likes you. I can tell. If I can find out what she did, will you let me be your assistant?”
“No!” Max cried. “I’ve told you, I don’t want an assistant.” She was relentless, this girl. Granted she did have good ideas, and granted she was probably brave, if the way she ran her bicycle into the man running out of his house was any example, but he already knew that she didn’t listen, and his guess was that she wouldn’t be any good at doing what she was told.
“We’ll see about that. I bet I can find out anyway,” Pia said, and she took her plate of half-eaten cake up to the counter, where she engaged Gabrielle in a quiet conversation. Every now and then one or the other of them looked over at Max, but he paid no attention. He drank his coffee slowly, pretending he didn’t notice them, the Absent-Minded Professor from The Lepidopterist’s Revenge, and he looked out the window at the busy boulevard. People hurried along the sidewalk, going home at the end of the day. There were fewer delivery wagons on the street, but Max saw three automobiles go by in just the time he sat there, waiting for the two of them to be through with their chattering and pretending he had forgotten that he hadn’t come in alone.
In reality, Max never forgot how alone he was. He couldn’t forget it, he could only figure out ways to be distracted, to be finding other things to think about. Really, now he thought of it, he was a lot like that Absent-Minded Professor, and he scratched gently at the back of his head in the same gesture his father had used when playing the role.
Eventually, Pia returned, her face wearing a smug smile. “I’ll tell you when we’re outside,” she said, although Max had not asked her what she’d learned. “See you soon, Gabrielle,” she called over her shoulder as they left.
“You too, Mister Max,” Gabrielle answered. “It’s always something good when you come by.” She smiled as if she meant it. “He’s the one who found that little boy,” she told Pia. “Did he tell you? No, I didn’t think so. He’s not a boaster, our Mister Max.”
Pia and Max claimed their bicycles and stood side by side in front of the shop window. “Well,” Max said, beginning his farewells.
“Come to the park, it’s just across—”
“I know where the park is. But why?”
She didn’t answer. She just mounted her bicycle and rode off, her braid bouncing from one shoulder to the other. She was right about being irritating, Max thought, but he followed her anyway, in case there was something useful she might tell him. Besides, he remembered, he hadn’t thanked her for trying to stop his thief. He didn’t follow her all the way into the park, however. He halted by the first tree and dismounted. “I’m not going any farther. I’ve got something to do,” he said. “So what is it?”
Pia turned around to come back and join him. “I didn’t find out anything, really. She won’t go into private service ever again, she did say that, but she didn’t say why, only that I shouldn’t fall in love if I could help it. I told her I could help it for sure. But I’m going to bring my mother there, tomorrow if I can. I know she’ll like Gabrielle’s sweets and she’ll tell Poppy, and he’ll think of something. When he’s thought of his something, things will happen. Poppy does what he sets out to do,” she told Max. “He does what he says he will, and he knows everybody.”
“Is that so,” Max said, careful to act uninterested. He changed the subject. “I didn’t thank you for trying to stop that man. That was really brave,” he said, and held out his hand to shake goodbye.
She didn’t accept his hand or the compliment. “It didn’t do much good, did it? But, Mister Max, why was he there? What did he want? What are you going to do about it? It’s attempted robbery, and he could have killed Ari. Are you in danger? I can come by Saturday morning to help clean things up.”
This girl made him tired, with her barrage of questions and her refusal to go away. “I don’t need any help,” he said.
“Your grandmother’s old, and Ari got a real bump on the head. He should take it easy, and besides, those picture frames are awfully heavy. And we could talk some more about me being your partner,” she told him.
“Partner?”
“If you don’t need an assistant.”
“If I don’t need an assistant, what would I do with a partner? And anyway, I’m not a detective,” Max said, yet again.
“Then what are you?” she asked. “Because people hire you, don’t they? What do they hire you to be?”
In which Mister Max plies his trade, whatever that might be
With every round of the pedals, Max’s bicycle went faster and his thoughts, too, went faster. Pia really got under his skin. Up his nose. On his nerves. He did have ideas on his own. He had plenty of ideas. In fact, he usually had too many ideas whirling around in his head at the same time. Just now, maybe, his brain wasn’t working as efficiently as it usually did; but what did anyone expect? With his life entirely changed. With needing to earn a living and trying to figure out why those Long-ears would break into his house. With his parents who knew where and maybe even—some things were not to be thought about, and his imagination scurried away from the possibilities like a mouse fleeing the cat—
Who was Pia to tell him what to do about Clarissa’s dog, anyway? Or, what not to do.
Too much was happening too fast, and he had no time to think about anything. He guessed he shouldn’t be surprised if some little girl thought he needed someone to give him ideas. But she was wrong, entirely wrong. He could take care of things himself. Wasn’t he living independently? Hadn’t he found work he was good at? Yes, he answered his own questions, and Yes.
Max wheeled through the gate into the old city, dodging carriages and carts, sounding his bell to warn people that he was right behind them, moving fast. “Mister Max, coming through,” that’s what his bell rang out. “Important business.”
At the supper table, Ari ate with a good appetite, but Grammie kept a worried eye on him even so. She was pleased with the excuse Pia had given to the hotel manager. “That’s a resourceful girl you’ve found yourself,” she told Max.
“I haven’t found myself anyone,” he told her.
“I’m sure you haven’t,” she answered, soothing him in the way grown-ups have of seeming to agree with you while implying at the same time that they know better.
Max had too many other things on his mind to wonder if his grandmother was treating him like a child. He had the dog and his handsome red-haired tutor to think about. He had his parents and those persistent long-eared people. He had the problem—because he had to admit Pia was right about this—of what to call the job he was doing and getting paid for, since he had, probably, to accept the idea that his parents were gone for …
For how long? And where? And especially, why?
Max did not enjoy a good night’s sleep, and he woke late to find that Ari had already left for one of his classes. Remember, we meet at three this afternoon, Ari’s note read, from which Max understood that his tutor had entirely recovered from the blow to the head and that Max had better address his schoolwork after cleaning up the kitchen. Only then would he be free to take his watercolors and easel out to the back garden, and have ideas.
By the time he had the kitchen in order and finished making a map of the lake and all the towns around it, then reading about Napoleon’s rise to power in France and memorizing the names of the largest bones in the human body, not to mention preparing three mathematical proofs, it was almost lunchtime. But that Friday, the dark thoughts of the night before driven away by May sunlight and schoolwork, Max was more interested in painting than eating. He took his equipment out to the garden and stood in front of the easel, looking at the blank sheet of paper. He dipped his brush into the water, and began.
He spread sky colors and cloud shapes across the moistened paper, while his mind forgot about maps and congruent lines and war-making to turn its attention to the artistic problems he was working on. His thoughts drifted like clouds, floating inside his head, seeming
, like clouds, to have no purpose or direction for their motion although actually swept along by high, invisible winds. He painted his sky, and while he painted, other images and ideas floated across his mind, Clarissa with her black armband, the glowing golden bowl of the Cellini Spoon, and, unexpectedly, long copper earrings dangling down. He smiled as he remembered the way Joachim leaned forward, the new glasses on his nose, to understand what he had put into a picture, to discover what he might find there.
Max looked at his own picture, into which he had put a sky crowded with clouds, but he could not tell if they were about to move off, leaving a bright sunny blue, or to close in, loosing rain. This picture was a question, not an answer, and—in a sudden tumbling blowing about of ideas—it reminded him of Pia, because while painting it he had figured out that, whatever she might claim for herself, her real talent was for asking questions. The girl was always asking questions, and some of them were just what Max needed to hear in order to discover his own ideas.
He didn’t need an assistant. How could he need an assistant when he didn’t even know himself what he was doing? What he really needed was a name for his job, which was, in fact, one of the questions Pia had raised.
Max washed his brushes and carried the picture on its easel into the kitchen to finish drying. He put on his everyday trousers and shirt, because he needed no disguise where he was going.
At the pet store, Max considered the various choices on display, the painted turtles, kittens and puppies, the monkeys and parrots and parakeets, snakes and even insects, and, of course, the brightly colored tropical fish. Then, his purchase in the basket in front of his handlebars, he rode over to see Joachim and Sunny. He found his teacher having a snack of bread and cheese in the garden, two new pictures—one in the old style, one in the new—set out side by side on the easel in front of him. The painter studied the paintings through his spectacles.