Total guesswork, I was sure, but Lock was awfully proud.
“Martin seemed so impressed I could solve it without leaving the lab, he completely missed that the clues were all obvious, had he taken even a moment to think about the problem for himself.”
I turned slightly toward the window to watch the steady stream of headlights whisking by us. “I’m assuming you still took his money?”
I saw Lock’s scowl in my periphery. “He only left half of what he’d offered when he came in.”
“Maybe you should stop bragging on the obviousness of the clues.” I grinned and flipped through a physics booklet that the teacher had left on my desk in maths class. She was constantly trying to get me interested in the stuff, but I preferred straight maths. Or maybe I just preferred the theoretical over the physical. “How many does that make this month?”
“How many of what?”
“What are you calling them, exactly? Problems? Cases? Have you become the school detective? Shall we hire you a receptionist and find you an office in a seedy part of town?”
Sherlock waved off my mockery, though I didn’t miss the small smile that filtered through his false modesty. “Nothing of the sort. I’m finding baubles and a few missing pets.”
That wasn’t entirely true. Since a reporter had run a piece about the “teen sleuth who saved a girl’s life” last week, Lock had been approached by a steady stream of students at school with troubles of their own. I thought he’d turn them all away to keep up with his own studies, but he hadn’t. And the gravity of his cases seemed to be escalating.
“What about Riva?”
I shouldn’t have brought it up, that case. I’d gone to Lock’s lab after drama to remind him that school was over and had gotten stuck waiting as he’d finished testing eighteen different samples of cigarette ash to see if he could tell the brand by scent alone. Riva had stepped into the lab dressed in street clothes, but she didn’t say a word, and she wouldn’t move her gaze from the worn, industrial linoleum floor. Lock and I had exchanged a look, but neither of us spoke for a bit. After a while, I’d grown tired of the anticipation.
“Do you have something to say?” I had asked. “It doesn’t seem like you enjoy the both of us staring at you.”
Riva nodded and brought the backs of her fingers to her cheeks. “I need help.”
“It’s for you,” I told Lock, and grabbed my bag to leave.
Riva made an odd noise that still managed to convey the message that she didn’t want me to leave her there alone with Lock. I dropped my bag and fell back into my seat.
“My mother is missing,” she said.
“Have you informed the police?” Sherlock asked.
At the mere mention of police, Riva’s eyes had widened and she’d backed up two steps toward the door. I stood and stepped toward her and put a hand up to stop Lock from asking anything else.
“I’m guessing you haven’t,” I said. “You’re worried that your mum might get into trouble if you tell the police?”
She nodded.
“Can I ask your name?”
“Riva Durand.”
“And your age?”
“Fourteen.”
I nodded once and turned to Lock. “A parent leaving her child at home for an extended period of time is what police call ‘child neglect.’ And because Riva is too young to stay by herself, they’ll toss her in a group home, where she’ll stay until they decide whether to charge the mother or not.”
Lock had stared at me for a few seconds.
I lowered my voice. “Or you can help her before anyone else finds out.”
Lock frowned, but he pulled a chair over by mine for Riva and then plopped into his rolling chair and glided over to us. “Tell me everything you remember about the day she left.”
He hadn’t solved this one from the comforts of his lab, but he’d found the girl’s mother pretty readily. She had crashed on the couch of a friend, sleeping off the aftereffects of a too-long weekend, and lost track of the days—or some other excuse that really meant she’d wanted to forget she had a daughter to care for. It was the first time one of Lock’s cases stayed with me well after it was over. I’d even waited outside Riva’s house the next couple of nights to make sure her mother came home, which is when I found out that Riva had younger siblings, just like me, only hers were all under the age of five.
Lock, however, had solved the puzzle, and that was that. And when I found him in his lab the next day at lunch and suggested we do something to make sure it didn’t happen again, Lock’s only suggestion was to report Riva’s mother to the police. Of course it was.
“We already discussed that option and why it is an asinine one.”
“That’s what the police are for.” He’d only realized his mistake after the words had left his mouth, but he couldn’t apologize, because he didn’t think he was wrong—only wrong to suggest it to me, apparently.