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help.
    â€œIndeed,” said Boris, dropping Montauban’s thumb into the diaper bag. “We will have to choose our plan carefully.”
    While Boris and Nanny X talked about their strategy, I walked over to the Yoko Ono Wishing Tree, the spot in the sculpture garden where people write down wishes and hang them from the branches.
    A lot of the wishes were for world peace. One said, “I wish for a million dollars.” One said, “I wish my mom would get better.”
    I took a pencil and wrote on a slip of paper: “I wish we could catch The Angler.” I wrote “we.” I meant “I.” But I knew it was going to take more than wishes to solve our case.
    I found a low branch and was hanging up my wish when I noticed another wish, in swirly, slanted handwriting. “I wish the president would get some new art for his front lawn,” it said. On the back of the paper it had one word: “Mine.”
    I guess there could be a lot of people who wanted their art to be discovered. But there were not a lot of people who said out loud that they wanted their art to be on the front lawn of the White House. I looked at the swirly handwriting again. It had an artistic quality to it. It also looked like a woman’s handwriting. I don’t know why we all automatically thought we were searching for a bad
guy
. Maybe The Angler was a woman.
    â€œ
Hey
,” I yelled.
    â€œHay is for horses,” said Nanny X. That meant that she was feeling a little better. She came over to see.
    Except for the “mine,” the white tag was unsigned, like all of the other wishes.
    â€œIt’s a clue,” I said. “The Angler was
just here
.”
    â€œWait a minute, now,” Boris said. “How often do they collect these wishes? I’m not saying it’s not The Angler, but this wish could have been hanging on the tree for a very long time.”
    â€œI know how to find out,” I said. I ran up the steps of the garden, two at a time. Stinky followed me, even though I could have done it alone. I guess he felt that as a safety patrol, it was one of his responsibilities to see that I got across the street safely.
    â€œWhere are you going?” he asked.
    â€œTo ask a question about my clue.” I used “my” just to remind him that whatever answer I got was mine, too. If I couldn’t solve the mystery first, I wanted to solve it the best.
    I spotted a security guard near the fountain and ran straight up to her.
    â€œWhat happens to the wishes on the Yoko Tree?” I said it really fast, Nanny X style.
    â€œWell, they’re harvested,” she said. “Like apples. And sent to Iceland, to the Yoko Ono Peace Tower.”
    â€œHow often do you harvest them?” That was the important part.
    â€œEvery day.”
    That meant the wish had to have been written
in the last twenty-four hours
. The Angler was close.
    â€œ
Thank you
,” I shouted, and ran back to the others, with Stinky looking both ways as we crossed the street. Nanny X snapped a photo of the wish with her diaper phone, andBoris used his modified iPod to scan the wish for fingerprints. Stinky said it played “Secret Agent Man” whenever he did that, but we couldn’t hear it without the ear buds. If I solved the case, I would write a song called “Secret Agent Woman.”
    Boris put the iPod away and started punching words into his phone. “Fish.” “President.” “Sculpture.” It may not have been connected to the same crime databases as Nanny X’s computer, but a whole bunch of stories came up. There was one about a sculpture of a hogfish that had been given to President Kennedy by the president of Bermuda.
    There were stories that didn’t have anything to do with presidents, fish or sculptures. And then there was this story in
Artsy Bartsy
magazine: “Fish Art Overstays Welcome.”
    The story was a review of a show by an