Pun Detectives and the Case of the Missing Music! (Part 17)

Actually, it wasn’t too hard to figure out once I sat down and thought about what was happening.

I had to admit it: puns were pretty amazing. Annoying, but amazing. Just when you think there isn’t a single one to be found, suddenly you notice one right under your nose. Now I know why they call it wordplay. Words really could play you like a fool if you let them, and as it turned out, I’d let them for the better part of a week.

Well, not anymore. My first epiphany came by way of Greg and Evan. As I sat in HQ staring at the map whose blanks I had filled in with doodles in the shape of buildings, I couldn’t help but think of them and what they’d told me before they stopped showing up at HQ.

So you’re just using us as a crutch for extra safety then!

A security blanket.

Not long after that, they made like bananas and split. And so had we as a group, seemingly. Split, I mean. Since they weren’t showing up anymore. “Better things to do.” Maybe there was more to it, I thought. Maybe they were upset that I had called them the “backup plan” or whatever. I didn’t know. All I knew was that the three muskrateers were no more.

The three muskrateers…

It was nothing more than a dumb typo, but somehow or another, the name had stuck.

A typo that had stuck…

That was when something clicked in my brain.

I scanned the map again. This time, my eyes landed on one particular sector as if they were drawn to it.

The East Ring.

Not “Wing,” but “Ring.”

Another typo that had stuck.

Slowly, carefully, as if doing so would somehow set me down some unalterable course, I crossed out the “R” on the map with a marker. I almost laughed. Evan’s scribbled math homework, I thought. Greg was right. I’d gotten a big, fat 0 after copying it. Hard to believe that was just this last Monday. Not even one week ago. It felt like a lifetime ago. Come to think of it, one week might’ve been the longest I’d ever gone without hanging out with Greg and Evan since we met. Lily too, since I met her…

But it was no time to be thinking about that. Right underneath the scribbled out “R,” I scrawled a “W.”

“East Wing.”

That was what the building should have been called all along.

But something wasn’t right. There was something I was missing. I couldn’t tell what. But I could feel it. Misspellings mattered. That was the key. Just keep that in mind and…

And just like that, I saw it.

I had my pun.

It was so simple. How had I not noticed it before?

It wasn’t just thanks to Greg and Evan though. No, as much as I hated to admit it, Striking Eyes deserved some of the credit for this too. As much as I hated her attitude and her bad mouth, I’d have to thank her the next time I saw her. If it hadn’t been for what she’d told me, I never would have seen the truth.

Violins need to be stored properly, Striking Eyes had said. They needed a place all their own, a special place just for them. And what was special about violins compared to the other string instruments like the viola and the cello?

The E string.

Spelled another way?

The East Ring.

I knew it instantly.

It wasn’t even a question in my mind.

That was where the violins would be.

That was where I needed to look.

Of course, I had already scoured the place 67 ways to Sunday and had come up empty handed. Or so I thought. Where oh where could the violins be?

I turned the butt end of my marker into a metronome, tapping my forehead at intervals, trying to defibrillate my brain into a flash of insight.

But all I could think was one thing, and it was as sad and as sorry a thing as things came:

I wish Lily were here.

If she were, she’d have some kind of answer, a way forward, a clue. With that expressionless face of hers, that clear, toneless voice like a binary tide, ebbing and flowing in 1s and 0s, she’d say something that would spark the circuitry, guide us to the answer.

But now, there was nothing I could do about that. I couldn’t 👉depend👈 on her right now. Lily was missing.

Missing… what did that word mean anyway?

It meant when something was gone, sure, but wasn’t there more to it?

I pulled out my phone and opened a dictionary app.

missing

1. Common misspelling of “mixing.”

…Aaaaaaaand now I remember why this was one of the lowest rated dictionary apps ever created. Why the heck did I still have this thing on my phone anyway?

I scrolled down to the second definition:

2. Not present or included when expected or supposed to be.

This second sense of the word missing was, as far as I saw, right in every sense.

“Missing” meant that something was gone, but you still wanted it there.

In other words, when something was gone, but you wished it wasn’t.

In other other words, when something was gone, but it was still important.

When someone is missing, they’re no longer around, but they’re still important.

Gone, but still important to you. I was willing to bet it was a feeling Striking Eyes and all the rest of the violin players had become far too familiar with this past week.

Now… what did that mean for the case? Something, I was sure. Because somehow, it had the spine-tingling semblance of another clue. I thought and thought, tapped and tapped.

Gone but still important. Absent but essential. That was the crucial part. And Striking Eyes had said it out loud, clear and conspicuous. I’d just been too dumb to realize.

Striking Eyes’ friend, that girl Marine, was one of Vance’s not-so-secret admirers. She had given away her swim locker to Vance as a present, a token of her affection. But where was she keeping her stuff now? In her lacrosse locker, that was where. Striking Eyes had said so.

One student to one locker. Without even realizing, I had been fooled into thinking things worked that way by Vance. That’s why I was so surprised to learn that Vance had two of the things, after all. But it wasn’t one locker to one person after all. Rather, everyone who played a sport had one locker per sport.

And if memory served, my prime suspect played three sports in total.

The hypothesis checked every box. The lockers for the other sports would be in the East Ring, no doubt. And they’d been conspicuously missing from my search until now.

For the first time in days, I laughed. I couldn’t have stifled it if I wanted to. Even though I was all alone, I let it all out. And even though I was all alone, I had to give it up to them. Without Lily and Striking Eyes, without Greg and Evan, I never would have figured it out.

The end of Pun Detectives and the Case of the Missing Music (Part 17)!
To be continued in Part 18!