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trouble.
    “Who did he set on fire, Anne?”
    “Don’t worry,” Anne said. “Ethan’s fine.”
    That stumped me. If Ethan was fine, what did Anne
want to talk about? “Is Leah okay?”
    “Yes. In fact, this doesn’t have anything to do with
either one of your children.”
    Well, that made sense. If it doesn’t have anything
to do with my kids, clearly the principal should get on the phone
to me immediately. “What’s going on?” I asked.
    “Can you come over here for a few minutes?” she
said. “I have something I need to ask you about.” I was surprised,
but didn’t say anything to indicate it. It was a short walk to
school.
    Five minutes later, having given up on “_od__s,” I
found myself seated in a chair in front of Anne Mignano’s desk. And
our principal, who takes great pains to be unflappable, looked very
flapped. Not that the casual observer could tell, but I was an old
hand: Anne’s dark blond hair was just a bit mussed. Her left hand
was playing with a paper clip on a desk that rarely, if ever, saw a
paper clip out of place. And she was leaning forward in her chair
just a little more than she should, giving me the intimation of
urgency.
    “Is something wrong, Mrs. Mignano?”
    “No, not really,” she said, her voice brittle.
“Well, maybe. It’s something I need some help with.”
    Whoa. If Anne Mignano, who can stare down five
hundred seven-to-twelve year-olds on a rainy day with no movie, is
admitting she needs help, there must be a catastrophe of biblical
proportions on the way. I gave passing thought to whether Home
Depot carries Do-It-Yourself Ark kits.
    “You know I’ll do what I can.”
    “Good.” She stood, and closed her office door. There
was so much silence in the room, Harpo Marx and Marcel Marceau
would have screamed to break the tension. Anne sat back down, and
leaned forward again. “I need you to investigate something for
me.”
    “Anne, you know I’m not. . .”
    “This has to be done discreetly, Aaron, and can’t be
seen as an official inquiry. I need someone who knows how to ask
questions without giving away too much information, or drawing
attention to himself.”
    It occurred to me that a guy who practically dares
murderers to a duel usually draws some attention, but I held my
tongue. Turned out my tongue was slippery and disgusting, so I let
go.
    “What is it that needs investigation?” I asked.
    “You understand, then, that what I’m about to tell
you can’t leave this room?”
    “Anne, stop talking like The Spy Who Came in from
the Cloakroom. You know you can trust me—now, what are you trusting
me with ?”
    She searched my eyes for a few seconds, then drew in
a breath. “Aaron. We have had a problem with stink bombs.”
    Surely, I’d heard her wrong. Maybe she meant “sink
bombs.” Perhaps a sink in the boy’s room had blown up, and she
wanted me to find out who the culprit might be. Or Anne might have
said she had a problem with Simba, which would mean a vicious tiger
loose in the halls of the school.
    “Stink bombs?”
    “Yes.”
    Okay, so I’d heard right. “Stink bombs.” You can
never be too sure.
    “Someone threw a stink bomb into the girls’ locker
room during soccer practice on Friday. It was the third one this
month— there was one in the boy’s bathroom on the second floor and
one in the gymnasium. I’m surprised you haven’t heard about it.”
Anne seemed disappointed, already, in my investigative abilities.
“We spent the whole weekend fumigating in there, and the other two
still haven’t been entirely eradicated.”
    “So you want me to. . . what? Go around
sniffing kids to see who smells bad?”
    She smiled, but not sincerely. And Anne isn’t as
good at insincerity as a real politician. “I know it doesn’t sound
like much,” she said.
    “It doesn’t sound like much? We have schools in this
state where kids walk in every morning through metal detectors, and
we’re getting all bent out of shape over a few