Spiders on the Case Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Copyright

  In the dim light of the rare books room of the Boston Public Library, a brown walnut spider, a type of orb weaver, waited in a shimmering silken web stretched between two ancient volumes of Greek poetry. The young spider had been secretly observing the new spider family since their arrival almost two weeks before. The mother and three spiderlings were every thing he had ever dreamed of being. Charming and smart, they spun stories as easily as silk. Behind their three pairs of eyes, they had little fiddle markings. Buster himself — for that was the brown walnut spider’s name — had no such interesting marks. In addition to all this, the three spiderlings were curious, lively, and often squabbling. In short, they were a family. Buster was an orphan.

  And the newcomers were not just a family, they were a venomous one. How he envied them for that. He almost swooned at the very thought. And he needed their venom desperately. For something very bad was happening in the Boston Public Library, and it had to be stopped. The little spider family was clueless as to what was going on practically in front of their very eyes — all twenty-four of them! But with this family on his side, the horrid crime spree would end!

  And when Madame unfolded the gown from the layers of tissue paper, she almost fainted with delight at Monsieur Poulet’s creation. “Mon sieur!” she exclaimed. “It is too beautiful — trop belle. It is a chef d’oeuvre, a masterpiece.” Jo Bell hesitated over the next words. “It shimmers like the clouds with just a soupçon of” — Jo Bell paused — “soupçon. I think that means ‘a hint.’ Yes, a hint of silver thread. I love the word ‘soupçon’!” Jo Bell exclaimed, and looked up at her mother. “Mom, have you heard anything I’ve said in the last five minutes?”

  “What, dear? Something about soup’s on. Yes, a lovely human expression for ‘dinner is ready.’”

  Jo Bell sighed. What did one have to do to get attention in this family? She was the oldest. Didn’t she deserve a little respect? Instead, every one fussed over Felix and the “enchanting” webs he spun. Their mother had called his last one a “triumph.” She wanted to shout, “Hello! I’m here, too, you know! MOI!” But her mother only had eyes for Felix.

  “‘Soupçon’ — it’s the French word for ‘hint.’ Mom, you’re not listening to me! I’ve been teaching myself French. And look, I spun a replica of the very gown Madame Gerora described. I copied it from the book I was telling you about.”

  “Oh, yes, oh, yes,” her mother replied somewhat vaguely. “Well, that’s very nice, dear. Quite lovely.”

  Jo Bell’s mom’s enthusiasm meter seemed to hover around a five as opposed to the solid ten with bells and whistles it reached for Felix’s masterpieces.

  “You call that art?” Felix said, examining the gown Jo Bell had just spun.

  “I certainly do!” Jo Bell replied, crossing her front legs in annoyance. “You are not the only artist in the family, you know, Felix. Fashion is art, especially high fashion. You don’t know every thing,” Jo Bell huffed.

  Sock it to him, Jo Bell, Buster thought.

  “I know it’s not as good as this new web design of mine. It’s perfect for trapping and storing silverfish. Elegant yet practical. Form follows function, as the great architects say.”

  “Now, Felix, mind your manners. We can’t all be architects as you are.” Edith, the spiderlings’ mother, swung down from the web repair work she was tending in the corner.

  “Mom, this is beyond manners! He is insulting what I care about.”

  “All he said was that fashion isn’t an art form, dear.”

  “Mom, now you — you’re saying it, too!” Jo Bell was ready to explode. Her mother always sided with Felix.

  “It is a kind of art, dear!”

  Kind of. Two little words that made fashion design sound like a half art at best! Her mother’s lukewarm defense only made Jo Bell angrier.

  “Fashion is so … so … vain. It’s really a frivolous preoccupation of humans,” Felix added.

  WHAT?! Was Felix the only one who got credit for anything? Jo Bell felt like an alien in her own family. She thought, That’s exactly it. I might as well be a Peruvian jumping spider or a Mexican lace weaver.

  Trying her best not to explode with anger, Jo Bell said with all the patience she could muster, “Mom, I take offense that you feel my interest is a ‘kind of’ art form, but I can definitely tell you that French is certainly not a ‘kind of’ language.”

  “Oh, dear, oh, dear.” Edith was beginning to wring two of her rear legs together. In another few seconds, she’d be wringing six of her eight legs. “I didn’t mean that at all, Jo Bell. I misspoke. Since we’ve been here in the Boston Public Library, we have all learned so much already. You especially, dear. Some French! And now Felix is trying as well.”

  “What about à la mode?” Julep asked. She was the youngest of the family and just returning from one of her explorations in the pop-up books section of the Rare Books Department. “Isn’t that the one with ice cream or something? A gown with ice cream. Yum.”

  “No, darling, that is just a food term for the most part — although, loosely translated, it can mean ‘in style.’” Edith paused. “Let’s stop the bickering. We promised Fatty that we would meet him at the theater this afternoon for the matinee of the flamenco dancers. Another lovely art form that we can explore.”

  Fat Cat, or Fatty, was the godspider of Edith’s children. He had traveled with them to Boston all the way from the philharmonic hall in Los Angeles. But Fatty preferred theatrical settings to libraries.

  “I’m not going,” Jo Bell said stubbornly.

  “Now, Jo Bell, don’t be that way.” Edith sighed.

  “What way? Not ‘gifted’ like Felix?” Jo Bell’s mother was always talking about how gifted Felix was ever since he had begun spinning beautiful new webs that usually only orb weaver spiders could create. Here, Jo Bell had taught herself French and spun the lovely design of an evening gown, but did her mother say anything? Once more she asked herself, what did one have to do to be noticed in this family?

  “Suit yourself, dear,” said Edith. “If you prefer to stay here.”

  “That’s exactly what I’ll do,” Jo Bell replied. She was furious. Ever since Felix’s accident at the philharmonic hall in Los Angeles, where he lost a leg, Edith had been fawning over him. But for silk’s sake, the leg had grown back, as it usually did with young spiders!

  Jo Bell settled in between her favorite pages of a book, Les Dessins des Hauts Couturiers. She had finally figured out what the French title meant. The book was a bound port folio of original fashion drawings by famous French designers, including Coco Chanel and the legendary Charles Worth. There were even drawings by the woman who designed Marie Antoinette’s ball gowns. But did anyone give her credit for learning French? No! All they could talk about was how stupid fashion was!

  And what was so fabulous about hanging out in a pop-up circus? That was where Jo Bell’s younger sister, Julep, had ensconced herself since they had arrived at
the library. And Felix, for that matter? Felix’s new webs were beautiful, but they were traps, nothing more. Felix might call himself an artist, but as far as Jo Bell was concerned, he was only making weapons to catch silverfish, book mites, and the rest of the bugs eating up volumes in the rare books room. Lately, he had buried himself in military history. It was interesting, but what made reading about war any better than learning French?

  Forget about them, she told herself. She wanted to look at this gorgeous drawing of a dress from more than a hundred years ago. It had a bunched-up funny thing on the back called a bustle. Jo Bell caught a glimpse of herself reflected in a glass case. I have a natural bustle, she thought.

  All spiders did, for that matter. A spider’s body contained two major parts — the front and the back. The front had the head, the back the stomach. The head was quite tiny when compared to the back end, which swelled up somewhat like a bustle. Now, if Jo Bell could only spin herself a bit of silk, not for a web but for a spider-size gown that would flow out over her natural bustle!

  Just as she was having these thoughts, she heard voices.

  “Oh, hello, Ms. Smoot. It’s been a while.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Your husband was in a few days ago. So good to see you.”

  It was Tom the conservator speaking. He welcomed everyone to the rare books room so warmly — even a family of extremely venomous brown recluse spiders. Jo Bell would never forget how Edith had told them to freeze when they first spotted Tom. But what did Tom do? Squash them under his rather large foot? Shriek and faint as the conductor at the philharmonic hall had done when he saw Felix on his baton? Call the dreaded E-Men, the exterminators? No! Nothing of the kind. He had merely bent over and whispered, “Welcome! I am so glad to see you. They tell me that book lice are quite tasty — from a spider’s point of view. There are plenty here. They eat paper. You will be doing a great service to the rare books collection if you would indulge yourself.”

  And the book lice were tasty and the spider family did indulge. Edith insisted. If Tom was kind enough to allow them to live in the magnificent Boston Public Library, they must earn their keep. Within a day of their arrival, Edith had organized patrols to hunt down the little critters. And it was not just book lice but silverfish and cockroaches and beetles who bored, gnawed, and feasted on some of the world’s oldest and most treasured books. In the dim, soft glow of the rare books room, a great battle raged — the battle to preserve priceless volumes from enemies like dampness, mold, and bugs!

  Jo Bell heard Ms. Smoot sigh with pleasure as she opened the fashion journal she had been exploring. Then the woman whispered, “These bustles will make the ultimate fashion statement in my new collection! They’re drop-dead chic!”

  Suddenly, a long, sharp shadow fell across the beautiful drawing. It wasn’t a pencil. It was a blade! Jo Bell dived into the gutter of the book. Then came a tiny rasping swizzz and Jo Bell felt the page shake. A small jolt sent her deeper into the gutter until she fell through a tiny hole in the book’s binding, thankfully safe from the sharp edge of the blade. Before her eyes — all six of them — the page with the beautiful illustration of the bustles vanished. It was gone in the blink of her half dozen eyes (had those eyes possessed eyelids to blink).

  “Toodle-oo!” Ms. Smoot trilled into the conservator’s room, where Tom was restoring a diary of John Adams, the second president of the United States.

  “Good-bye, Ms. Smoot.”

  Jo Bell lay in the binding, stunned. Did Tom realize what had just taken place? How could she tell him? Although Jo Bell’s family understood English, they couldn’t speak to humans, and humans couldn’t understand spiders at all. And to think that her mother believed that silverfish were the bad guys in the library! The glint of the blade in Agnes Smoot’s hand flashed in Jo Bell’s mind like a bad dream that wouldn’t go away.

  What is she going to do? Buster wondered. Will she panic? Naw! Why would she? She’s got venom! But Buster could tell that the spider girl was shocked. Well, get used to it, he thought. Agnes Smoot and her husband, Eldridge Montague, were becoming bolder with each theft. What a team they made! Eldridge was a dealer in old maps, and beneath her ugly wig and horn-rimmed glasses, Agnes was none other than the new rising design star Diane de Funk. “Where does she get her ideas?” people marveled. Where indeed! She sliced the pages out of old books and magazines and even lifted original drawings and sketches from the portfolios of some of the world’s finest designers, all from the rare books room of this grand old library. But now, with the arrival of some of the most deadly spiders on earth, there was hope. The destruction of priceless treasures from the Rare Books Department could be stopped. And the wondrous newcomers were a family!

  Buster had no recollection of his parents or even of any sisters or brothers. He had hatched in the Boston Public Library. To be specific, his hatching occurred in the armpit of a statue of a shepherd boy playing the flute. Buster imagined that his mother had deposited her egg sac there because (1) she was a sculptor herself. (2) She might have been a musician. (3) Or a shepherd? (4) Or maybe she just liked armpits.

  It was a boring location, for no music came out of the flute, and sheep did not frequent the Boston Public Library. So Buster decided to move on. His next place of residence was the Bates Hall reading room of the library. When he crept into that vast space lit by hundreds of green-lamp-shaded table lights, he thought he had landed on another planet.

  The green glow hovered over the oak tables like a cloud of the most exotic butterflies. A hush enveloped the huge room, and Buster felt smarter simply walking into it. It was in Bates Hall that Buster educated himself by perching on the shoulders of unsuspecting readers or nestling in the gutters of their open books. The one advantage of being a walnut orb weaver was that Buster was very flat and a boring brown. He was able to squeeze into the smallest places without being noticed. There was no spider in the world better at pretending to be dead than a walnut orb weaver. Buster could drop like a stone from his web and remain motionless for a long, long time with his legs tucked up, until any danger had passed. But could he deliver a fierce sting? Never. He had no hope of stopping Agnes and Eldridge on his own.

  Now this lovely toxic family had arrived. They had been wonderful in apprehending silverfish and beetles and all manner of insects that were chomping through the books. The mother organized night patrols and was constantly sending her children out on recon missions. They had discovered a breeding community of little paper sharks on their first night and had finished them off by dawn. But there was bigger prey — humans bent on destruction.

  Unfortunately, Buster lacked not only venom but nerve. He was painfully shy. Was he supposed to waltz up to this nice young girl — who was just about his age — and say, Please join me on a mission to stop two dangerous criminals who might squash us both? For silk’s sake, he didn’t even have the guts to say hello! His social skills were zero.

  Buster couldn’t remember how many self-help books he had read about how to make friends and influence people. He figured human advice would work for spiders, but he just couldn’t get up the nerve.

  He had to do something, though, and soon. Agnes Smoot was growing bolder.

  Jo Bell made her way back to the glass case that displayed some of the library’s oldest books — those printed before the year 1501 — slightly dazed from what she had just witnessed. She comforted herself with the musty smell of old parchment and the familiar sound of Tom Parker on the telephone. “Yes, we do have a first edition of the Champollion dictionary of hieroglyphs. It happens to be my area of interest. So, yes, we have quite a bit on hieroglyphics here. ‘Hieroglyphics are us,’ you might say.” He chuckled at his little joke.

  “What’s this?” Jo Bell muttered. Something had fallen directly in Jo Bell’s path, like a flake of peeling paint from the ceiling. She peered at it.

  I cannot believe I’m doing this, Buster thought. Pretending I’m dead so I can meet a girl! How pathetic ca
n you get?

  Jo Bell crouched down on her eight legs to look at him closely. “It’s not dust,” she whispered.

  Right! Right! I’m not dust, Buster thought.

  “Not a flake of paint.” Jo Bell spoke softly.

  “Are you kidding?” Buster squealed. “Paint! Who would ever paint something this dingy brown?”

  “Yikes!” Jo Bell squealed. “It’s talking.”

  “Oh! Oh! I didn’t mean to scare you. It just slipped out.” Buster was now in the process of unpacking his legs, which had been tucked in so tightly that there had not been the least hint that he had one leg, let alone eight. Jo Bell was astonished.

  “Uh … this is sort of hard to explain,” Buster said.

  “Well, do try. Have you been here all along? I mean since my family arrived?”

  “Yes, yes indeed.”

  “How come you never said anything? Not even a how-do-ya-do!”

  “I … I … I have social issues,” Buster stammered. Then he blurted out, “Shy! I’m shy!”

  “You mean you’ve just watched us and never said a word?”

  Buster nodded.

  “That’s like spying!”

  “Oh, no, please don’t say that! I mean I … I didn’t have anything bad in mind.” He paused. “Well, actually, I sort of did, but not bad for you.”

  “Bad for who?” Jo Bell whispered. She was suddenly frightened.

  Buster picked up on it immediately. “Don’t be scared. I couldn’t hurt a fly. That’s my problem. I have no venom! But you saw what happened back there when you were in the fashion portfolio.”