Sunday Drive

Middle School, My Dear Watson -- Chapter Six

(below is the latest installment in my new middle grade book about Sherlock Holmes in middle school. You can read Chapter One here and follow the links from there.)

ELEMENTARY MIDDLE SCHOOL, MY DEAR WATSON — continued

CHAPTER SIX

The Case of the Hijacked Hardware

My parents run a hardware store. I think I told you that. It’s been in my Mom’s family for a long time – her grandfather started it over sixty years ago. It’s a real family business. I used to help out at the store after school, but I had to stop when I hurt my leg and I couldn’t stay on my feet for too long. But now that my leg was feeling a little better I decided to try helping out at the store again. And when I went to the store, Sherlock would almost always join me.

One day I was at the store sorting the bins of loose nails, screws, and assorted fasteners. Everything gets mixed up if you don’t sort them every week or so. My mother was in the back of the shop, adding up the store’s receipts while she nursed my baby sister, Agnes. Mom was cursing under her breath a little while she did it – the store doesn’t make a lot of money. Dad was standing by the cash register, answering Sherlock’s questions.

“Exactly how many types of hammer do you sell, Mr. Watson?”

“Well, Sherlock, I’d have to look at the stock list to give you a precise answer, but we sell several dozen different kinds of hammer, at least.”

“And they all vary in size and utility?”

“Yes, we have jeweler’s mallets – those are used for fixing watches and bracelets, that sort of thing – which only weigh a few ounces. And we have sledgehammers, for breaking concrete, that weigh thirty pounds or more.”

“And which hammer would you say was the most convenient for smashing a human skull?”

“Well…”

“Don’t answer that!” yelled my Mom from the back of the store.

“Come on, Mom,” I said, “Sherlock’s a detective. He has to learn about these things.”

“Well he doesn’t have to learn about them here,” said Mom. “He’ll go home and tell his parents that we’re recommending murder weapons and they’ll think we’re maniacs.” But she said it in a funny way that made Agnes laugh. “You think that’s funny, don’t you? said Mom to Agnes. “You think murder is hilarious. You’re just a murder baby.” Agnes was giggling like crazy. Agnes is six months old and thinks pretty much anything Mom says is funny, but the truth is Mom is pretty hilarious, so maybe it just means Agnes has a good sense of humor.

Meanwhile, Sherlock was tinkering with a padlock; Dad was showing him how to pick it with two little metal sticks, which basically involves scratching around the lock until something clicks, and could be considered, you know, illegal, but if Mom noticed he was doing it she didn’t say anything. But that’s the kind of thing a detective needs to know, too.

“Mr. Watson?” said Molly. “We need another case of nails and I can’t –”

“John, get that for her, would you?”

“Sure thing.”

I should’ve mentioned Molly, who’s one of the people who work at the store. She’s in college and works part time to help pay her tuition (although she says it doesn’t help a whole lot). My parents hired her to fill in when I couldn’t come in anymore. She’s smart, with green hair and lots of tattoos, but she has crazy skinny arms and she’s not particularly strong, which is why she has a problem carrying cases of nails.

I guess I also should’ve mentioned that I am strong – or, at least, stronger than most kids my age. I was always kind of strong, but then in 4^th grade I started wrestling at the YMCA, and it turned out I was really good at it. So I wrestled a lot, and I practiced a lot, and I just got stronger and stronger and stronger. Pretty much anyone can get strong if they wrestle every day. I’ve got pretty big shoulders now, already, and I’m only 13.

Wrestling is a great and simple sport. It’s just you versus another kid – no pads, no balls, no sticks. And you don’t have to be a giant to be good at it, unlike, say, basketball or football. Some of the best wrestlers in the world are really tiny people – they just wrestle against other tiny people. The only downside is that you have to be okay with having your face smashed into another kid’s sweaty armpit… and other places. But it’s better than it used to be. In ancient Greece they used to wrestle naked.

I love wrestling. It’s nice to be good at something. I’d never been really good at anything before I found wrestling and, well… it made me feel kind of special. Like, I’m pretty good at some things, and I’m no good at a lot of other things, but there was nothing that I could say I was better at than anyone else until I found wrestling. Wrestling was the thing people noticed me for; one time a man even stopped my Mom and me at the supermarket and said, “Wow! Great job! I saw your match yesterday at the Y.” Wrestling was my talent and I thought I’d do it for my whole life. But I had to stop after I broke my leg. You see, you need leverage to be a good wrestler, and if one of your legs might snap in half if you lean on it too hard, you don’t have any leverage. So that… stinks. It really, really stinks. The doctor says my leg bone might be strong enough someday for me to wrestle again, but she doesn’t make any promises.

Anyway, even with a bum leg, I’m still plenty strong enough to carry around cases of nails, so I knew Molly appreciated it when I dropped by.

That’s when the phone call came. Dad answered it with a big smile in his voice: “Wheelwright Hardware” – “Wheelwright” was my mother’s grandfather’s name. Then Dad said, “Yes…” and “Yes…” again a few times, and then his face fell. He said, “That’s not possible.”

My Mom heard the change in his voice from all the way in the back of the store. “Is everything alright, Roy?” she asked. He held up a finger to her, to hold on a second, and then he pulled a clipboard with a pile of greasy papers clipped to it – the “stock list” – out from under the counter and flipped through it quickly. Then he said to her, “Honey, go back in the store room and see how many boxes of lithium batteries we have. There should be five.”

Mom gave him a funny look, but she didn’t ask any more questions. She carried Agnes back into the store room. Holmes and I exchanged a look – what was going on here? Dad was flipping through the stock list some more and said into the phone, “I’m sure there’s some misunderstanding, officer…” And then Mom came back from the store room and said, “We don’t have any boxes of lithiums, Roy.”

So that’s how me, Holmes, Molly, and my Dad ended up in the future offices of Kloojco.

Kloojco is a company that wants to make a billion dollars on the internet. I’m not sure how they plan on doing that – or if they even know – but from the conversations I’ve heard my Mom and Dad have with Deepak, the guy who runs Kloojco, I think it involves inventing phone apps that invent other phone apps, or something like that.

It’s hard for a small hardware store to compete these days. When someone needs a hammer they can just order it on their phone and it’ll arrive the next day. Or they can go to one of the giant hardware stores with the huge parking lots, which usually sell everything cheaper than we can. In order for my parents to stay in business, they have to offer service (which means being friendly to business owners like Deepak), convenience (like selling important things that people want immediately, not tomorrow) and unique options (like making copies of people’s house keys).  House keys is a good example, actually. Mom and Dad only make a few dollars when someone comes in to get a key copied, but it gets the customers to come into the store, and maybe while they’re there they’ll buy something more expensive.

Lithium batteries are one of the expensive things Mom and Dad want people to buy. They’re used in a lot of high end electronics and they can cost hundreds of dollars, each. A box of them is worth thousands. So you can see why Dad was concerned that five boxes of lithium batteries –  five big heavy boxes that should’ve been in our store room – were sitting on the floor of Deepak’s otherwise empty office, ten miles away from the store in a new strip mall.

“We don’t move in until next week,” said Deepak, who was pacing back and forth across the room. He was one of those guys who is always pacing. “But I thought I’d stop in and re-measure the space I want to put my desk in. But when I came inside –”

“Was the door locked?” asked Sherlock, who was examining the smooth and shiny brand new lock on the front door.

“You better believe it was, bub,” said Deepak, slapping the key ring that dangled from his belt loop. “I always lock my stuff. So I unlock the door, come in, and whoa – what are these batteries doing here? With the Wheelwright Hardware address on them? Anyway, I called the cops.”

“You did the right thing, Sir,” said the cop, Inspector Gregson. She wasn’t dressed in a uniform, but you could tell just by looking at her that she was a police officer. She had very straight posture, very short red hair – shorter than Mary Marston’s Dad’s hair, actually -- and a mouth that was permanently stuck on frown.  She turned to my Dad and said, “Are these your batteries?”

Dad was really confused. “They must be,” he said “I ordered five boxes last week. I just don’t know how they got here.” He looked over at Molly, but she shrugged like she had no idea. Dad had texted the other two employees, Chico and Cody, to come too, but they weren’t there yet. “Could they have been delivered here by accident?”

“Your address is written in big black letters on them,” said Gregson. “I don’t see how anyone makes that mistake.”

“And I would’ve had to be here to take delivery,” said Deepak.

Dad thought about that. “Maybe somebody from the delivery company stole them off the truck…”

“Why would they put the batteries in here?” asked Gregson.

“We’re not supposed to open for a week,” said Deepak. “The delivery service knows that, and we use the same delivery service the hardware store does. Maybe the thief thought this was a good place to stash the batteries for a few days until they could sell them. They must’ve picked the lock to get inside…”

“Did you buy your lock from Wheelwright Hardware?” asked Holmes.

“You better believe it, bub,” said Deepak. I guess that’s just something he says.

The cop looked like she wanted to say something, but Holmes pressed on with his next question. “Is that your wi-fi network and password?” he asked, pointing at a piece of paper on the wall. Deepak nodded. Holmes followed up with: “You got your internet hooked up before you got furniture?”

Deepak smiled and said – you guessed it – “You better believe it, bub. Kloojco is an online company. The internet is our furniture. Besides, this office is in a total dead zone for cell service. If you don’t have wi-fi, there’s no way to get your phone online.” I glanced at my Dad’s phone and saw that, true enough, he had no bars.

Inspector Gregson was giving Holmes a funny look. Her face is kind of soft-looking – pretty, but soft – but her eyes are very sharp, and they were boring right into him. “You look familiar,” she said.

Holmes squinted his eyes, like he was trying to figure out where he might have seen her before. “Were you at the London Policeman’s Ball last Spring?”

Gregson rolled her eyes and turned back to my Dad: “So it’s possible that the batteries were stashed here before they ever got to the hardware store …”

“I’ll have to check my records,” said Dad, but he didn’t look very hopeful. It was obvious he didn’t want to believe that anyone who worked at the store could’ve stolen the batteries and hidden them here. Just then the other two employees, Chico and Cody, came in – Cody had given Chico a ride. Chico doesn’t drive. He takes the bus everywhere, and when he doesn’t take the bus he walks. Chico doesn’t even have a cell phone. Chico’s old school. “Sorry we’re late,” said Cody. “I’ve never been out this way before and I got a little lost.” Cody is always getting a little lost. He’s worked for Mom and Dad for about five years. He’s a big goofy guy with shaggy hair who wears brightly colored shirts, and who always has a silly smile on his face, like he’s not taking anything too seriously.

Chico takes everything seriously. He’s been working for the store since before my Mom and Dad took it over from my grandparents. He’s small and old and completely bald and kind of mean – even when I’m helping out at the store he accuses me of playing and causing trouble. He really doesn’t like kids. I try not to be around when Chico is working.

Cody was staring at the boxes. “How the heck did those get here?”

No one could do anything but shrug. Chico glared at me, like it was somehow my fault.

Inspector Gregson asked Chico and Cody a few questions, like if they remembered the batteries being delivered to the store, but they didn’t know any more than the rest of us. Then she turned to Dad and said, “Do you want to inspect the merchandise and make sure it’s all there?”

Dad asked, “Shouldn’t you dust the boxes for fingerprints?”

She shook her head. “What would we find if we dusted them? The delivery people’s fingerprints? We already know the delivery people touched the packages – that’s their job. And if the boxes did get to your store before they were stolen and brought here, it wouldn’t be surprising to find your employees’ fingerprints on them. Their fingerprints are all over everything in the store. That wouldn’t prove anything.”

“Excellent point, Inspector,” said Holmes. “Dusting the boxes for prints is completely unnecessary. Especially because we already know who the thief is.”

Next week: The Solution to”The Case of the Hijacked Hardware.”