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ancestry, and the tribal council says I have insufficient proof.”
    “Well, I’m real sorry for your troubles, honey, but I don’t know what I could do to help you.”
    Ms. Moonfeather is close to tears. “Mrs. Chandler, I know I’m a Cherokee. In a previous life I was a medicine woman and a tribal elder. I want you to see into my past lives so I can prove who I am.”
    I can tell Granny is trying not to look at her like she’s crazy. “Honey, I don’t know nothing about past lives. The only life I know is the one we’re living right now. And somehow I don’t think the Cherokees would be too interested in what you have to say about your past life. I ain’t saying you’re a nut, but they might.” She pulls her chair up closer to Ms. Moonfeather. “Now what I can do sometimes is see back into somebody’s family history.”
    “Yes! Do that! And if you can find my Native American ancestor…”
    “All right, then,” Granny says. “I’m gonna need to hold your hands.”
    Granny takes Ms. Moonfeather’s hands in hers and closes her eyes. I know her mind is far away, traveling through generations. After about a minute, she opens them and says, “I hate to break it to you, honey, but you’re white. I just traced your family plumb back to Scotland on one side and Ireland on the other. Red hair on the Scottish side, blond hair on the Irish, white skin all around.”
    Ms. Moonfeather snatches her hands out of Granny’s. “You must have made a mistake.”
    Granny shakes her head and takes a sip of tea. “Listen, honey, I know white folks have done a lot of bad stuff over the years—so bad that it’s easy to wish you wasn’t one of them. And there’s a lot of folks of all kinds of different colors that you can learn a lot from. My first teacher was a little Cherokee boy. But just ’cause you can learn a lot from Indians, that don’t make you an Indian. Seems to me you need to stop pretending to be somebody else and learn how to be yourself.”
    Ms. Moonfeather is up on her moccasined feet. “I thought you’d be different,” she says, with a break in her voice. “I really did. But you’re just one more face of the white man.”
    Ms. Moonfeather stomps across the kitchen floor and is halfway out the back door when Granny says, “You forgot your earring.”
    Ms. Moonfeather either doesn’t hear her or doesn’t care. Granny shrugs, picks up the earring, and drops it back in Methuseleh’s seed bowl.
    Adam looks at me and grins as we get up from our hidden perch on the stairs. “Sometimes I wonder how you survive without high-tech entertainment,” he whispers. “But I’ve got to admit, that whole scene was better than anything I’ve ever seen on cable!”

Chapter 4

    Adam and I are walking out of the school. We’ve just made it to the sidewalk when Isabella runs to catch up with us. “Hey, can I talk to you guys for a minute?” she asks. Isabella is usually all smiles, but her face looks serious and her eyes are puffy. I wonder if she’s been crying.
    “Sure,” I say.
    “Something bad happened at the restaurant last night,” she half-whispers as she walks alongside us. “I wanted to tell you just in case you heard anything.”
    “Nobody was hurt, I hope,” I say.
    “No,” Isabella says, then she shrugs. “Just hurt feelings.” She takes a deep breath, the way I do sometimes when I’m trying not to cry. “Sometime after we closed last night, somebody did bad things to the restaurant. They painted words on it. Bad words.”
    “Oh, Isabella, I’m so sorry,” I offer.
    “You have nothing to be sorry for,” she says. “You didn’t do it.”
    “Sometimes people say they’re sorry just to mean they’re sorry something happened,” I say.
    Isabella nods.“The reason I wanted to tell you two was I heard that last year you figured out some murder case that happened a long time ago. I know this is a much smaller thing, but I thought maybe you could help figure out who did