Minerva Clark Gives Up the Ghost by Karen Karbo Page A

in the window at Paisley’s shop.
    Angus Paine laughed with what I thought was too much relief, but I couldn’t be sure. “Dude, I thought I told you, this grocery has been in our family for—”
    â€œYeah, I know, forever.”
    â€œâ€”for generations. I’m going to take it over as soon as I graduate from college. My dad wants me to go to a four-year college. I could try to go the community college route, but …”
    Blah blah blah blah blah. I stopped listening, which a sleuth should never do, I know, but it was so late.
    â€œDid Paisley have a contract with your parents?” I interrupted him.
    â€œYou mean, did she have motivation to torch the place?”
    Yes, that was exactly what I’d meant. People committed crimes for love or money. It was a well-known fact, at least on
Law & Order
. “Maybe she was so desperate to expand her business, she got into a situation where she was going to have to pay your parents more than she had.”
    â€œI never would have figured that out,” said Angus. “It could be her. I bet it was. That makes total sense.”
    â€œBut there’s no hard evidence.”
    â€œI’ll call Robotective tomorrow, let him find the evidence. That’s his job, not our job, right?”
    â€œIf you want to get technical, none of this is our job,” I said.
    He laughed. “And hey, when am I going to get my wheels back?”
    I remembered his Go-Ped, now stowed in our garage. A bad thing happened next. I felt excited. I felt glad to have an excuse to lay eyes on Angus Paine, he of the red hair, outrageous freckles, chipped front tooth, and geeky black trench coat. How could this be when I didn’t even like him, and I already had a boyfriend?
    In the morning I learned a secret about my brother Morgan. Even though he is a Buddhist who never raises his voice and has genuine conversations with Weird Rolando about composting, hybrid cars, andsomething called string theory, he was using my dog Ned as a babe magnet.
    The day after I brought Ned home, Morgan started taking him for a walk every morning. Morgan had never been a big pet person, even though he was a vegetarian. You’d think that if he loved animals enough to give up hamburgers and chicken wings, he’d have taken more interest in the parade of animals who’d been through our house: Jupiter, of course, and all the rats, cats, rabbits, guinea pigs, fighting beta fish, and George and Gracie, our two ginormous brown poodles Mrs. Dagnitz took with her when she left, but he said one thing had nothing to do with the other. Morgan was a philosophy major in college and made mysterious statements like this all the time.
    Then he fell in love with Ned and his foxy face and big ginger-colored splotches. He said that the way Ned smiled, he looked as if he was always about to burst into a show tune.
    Morgan never asked anyone else to come along on his walks with Ned. I thought it was because he was a philosopher and needed his alone time to ponder ideas large and small.
    Ha! Little did any of us know.
    Earlier that morning when Morgan left Casa Clark with Ned, he ran smack into Mark Clark and me, standing on the sidewalk in front, gazing up at the toilet-paper streamers hanging from the trees, the shrubs, the fence, and the phone lines. We’d been TPed but good.
    â€œAny idea who did this?” asked Mark Clark.
    I pulled a strand of paper from where it was wrapped about the phone pole on the parking strip. Not two-ply. One-ply, and so scratchy you could give yourself a nasty rash if you weren’t careful. It was toilet paper from my school.
    â€œFifth graders!” I said. “They have a vendetta against me.”
    â€œThere’s nothing worse than a fifth grader with a vendetta,” said Mark Clark. He reach over and tugged my ponytail. I knew when I was being mocked.
    â€œI’m not kidding.” I told him how the paper was stolen from the