“What makes you think it wasn’t the mayor?”
“I heard the real mayor on TV. He didn’t sound anything like whoever called Justice Jack when he was at Buckley’s.” I shake my head. “Why didn’t that click?” Then I add, “Boy, he’s a good actor.”
“Who?”
“Jack! None of what he did was for making the world a better place—it was to get a reality show! Stealing the statue must just be part of that.”
“Wait—you’re saying Justice Jack stole the statue?”
I nod toward where Mama Jack is now pulling on a large metal hook to unwind a cable that’s anchored to a big red W-shaped brace at the back of the cab. “I bet they’re here to get the statue out of its hiding place.”
“Why not just hide it out here in the trees?”
“Anyone could stumble upon it out here. Someone walking their dogs … someone shortcutting home from school … And the junkyard’s like a really secure prison. With man-eating dogs! Besides, you sure wouldn’t want to get caught with that thing, right? And who’s going to look in some back corner of a junkyard?”
Marissa shakes her head. “That statue seems like a crazy thing to steal!”
“Yeah, but it was the perfect thing to steal for publicity, and that’s what they’re after. They probably couldn’t land a reality show by rescuing kittens and returning bicycles. They needed something bigger.”
“But … to break into City Hall? That’s risking a lot.”
And that’s when something else clicks. “Officer Borsch said the alarm didn’t go off.” I think a minute. “He said there was a broken window, but the alarm didn’t go off, but …”
“But what?”
I hold my head. “Billy was the one who said, ‘City Hall!’ when Jack got the call at Buckley’s.”
“Did he see the caller ID?”
“Yes! Jack showed it to him.”
“So … maybe it was the mayor?”
All of a sudden it feels like my brain is stumbling over big blocks. Like it wants to race but it can’t because there’s too much stuff in the way.
Could it have been the mayor?
And then Marissa says, “Or … maybe Billy’s in on it?”
I look at her, horrified. “No!”
“Come on, Sammy. Can’t you see Billy going along with something like this? He probably thinks it’s funny.”
“No. N-O, no!”
She shrugs and rolls her eyes, and we both sit there a minute thinking, until finally she says, “What if one of them works at City Hall?”
“Oh!” I look at her all wide-eyed. “Do you think any phone from any office over there would show City Hall on the caller ID?”
Marissa shrugs. “Probably.”
I think about it another minute and something about it just feels right. “Thank you. That makes total sense.”
It’s definitely dusky now, but we can see movement on the junkyard side of the fence. “There he is,” I whisper. “And he’s dragging something really heavy.”
“He looks like a giant waddling penguin,” Marissa whispers back.
We watch while Tow Truck Tony takes the hook from Jack’s mom and loops the cable around something big that’s wrapped up tight in a brown tarp.
“That’s about the right size, don’t you think?” I whisper.
“It seems kind of small to me,” Marissa says.
“You’re used to seeing it on the base.”
“So they stole just the brass part?”
“Right.”
She nods. “Okay. Then maybe so.”
Once Tow Truck Tony’s got the cable hooked on and secured, he goes over to the passenger side of the truck and pretty soon a noise starts and the cable pulls up, up, up, hauling the big tarp-wrapped thing onto the bed like a wrecked car.
“That must be the statue,” I mutter. “What else could it be?”
“But what are they going to do with it?”
“Plant it somewhere and have Jack miraculously find it. Billy said there was something big going on tonight—this must be it.” I hit my forehead. “Snakes in December—I knew there was something weird about that!”
“Wait—snakes? What?”
“Never mind,” I grumble. “You think you’re an idiot? I’m the idiot. I can’t believe I let myself get sucked in by Justice Jack. I actually believed him.”
“So, what are we going to do?”
A bunch of ideas flash through my head, but the only smart one is something I can’t do. “It’s so stupid that neither of us has a phone.”
She snorts. “Tell me about it.” Then she eyes me and says, “But speaking of stupid, I sure hope you’re not getting any ideas about jumping on the back of that truck.”
“It did cross my mind.”
“No! You hear me? No! We don’t even know that it’s the statue!”
We watch as Tow Truck Tony levels the bed and then has Mama Jack help him connect some fat straps across their junkyard load. And when the straps are snugged down tight, Tony twists the secret entry closed and the junkyard sneaks get back in the cab.
I whisper, “If we jumped on the truck, we could look under the tarp and then we’d know.”
“Oh, sure. How are we going to do that?”
“They’ll be coming right by us to get out of here. It would be easy.”
“How do you know they’ll be coming this way?”
I point to an island of dirt just a few yards away. “See the tire tracks? Casey and I followed them last night. That’s how we found the seam in the fence in the first place.”
The truck engine fires up and Marissa starts to squirm. “You want us to jump on board like we’re jumping a train?”
“They won’t be going very fast. And there’s no back window for them to see us. It’ll be easy.”
“But why?” she asks as the truck starts toward us. “Why put ourselves in danger over a stupid statue?”
Real casual-like, I say, “Did you know there’s a reward?”
She snaps to face me. “A reward?”
I nod. “Five thousand dollars.”
“You’re kidding!” She blinks at me. “Do you know what I could do with five thousand dollars?”
I laugh. “Who says you’re getting five thousand?”
She hesitates. “Well, twenty-five hundred.” She looks at me, worried. “Right?”
I shrug. “Sure. But if we don’t know where they’re taking it and Jack magically discovers it before we can call the police, we’ll get zip.”
“But what if it’s not the statue?”
“Then we’ll jump off before they even know we’re there.”
Marissa’s face sets up. Like all of a sudden the cement of a decision has hardened. She snugs down the straps of her backpack and looks at me. “I’m in.”
I don’t have one of those fancy backpacks with the skateboard clips, so real quick I loosen my backpack straps all the way and get Marissa to help me wedge my skateboard between my pack and my back so my hands are free.
The truck rumbles closer.
And closer.
I yank down my backpack straps and adjust the skateboard so it’s not jabbing me so much. And as the truck rumbles by, I take a deep breath and say, “Ready?”
Marissa’s fidgeting like crazy. “What if they see us in the side mirrors?”
“I think they’re too busy driving through a maze of trees.” I look at her again. “You in?”
She nods. “Let’s do it!”
Then we jet out from behind the trees and run like mad to jump the truck.
THIRTY-TWO
Even though the tow truck wasn’t moving very fast, getting on board was hard.
And painful.
That was probably mostly on account of my skateboard gouging my back and banging my arms as I ran and jumped and stumbled, because Marissa seemed to do okay but I was like, Ow! Ooooh! Aaaah! when I finally crashed to a halt beside her.
“You okay?” she asked.
; I told her, “Yeah,” but I must’ve been looking pretty pained, because she said, “You sure?”
I nodded. “I just hope they didn’t hear us.”
“They would have stopped by now, don’t you think? And this rig isn’t exactly quiet, so I think we’re okay.”
It must’ve been the reward money giving her guts, because normally Marissa would have been shaking in her shoes. But I liked her being calm, because I sure wasn’t.
“Help me get this skateboard out. It’s killing me.”
“You sure?”
“I can jump off fine with it in my hand,” I told her, struggling to get it out. “Come on. Help me.”
So there we are, wrestling with my skateboard as we ride through the eucalyptus forest, rumbling along on the back of a tow truck, when I hear the jungle whistle.
“Oh, man!”
“What?”
“Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“That whistle?”
And there it goes again: Ah-ee-ah-ee-ahhhhh.
“What is that?”
“That’s Casey looking for me.”
“You guys have your own whistle?” She shakes her head and rolls her eyes. “Sounds like the call of the wild.”
“Yeah, well, I’m supposed to whistle back.”
She gets the skateboard dislodged and says, “Probably don’t want to do that until we figure out if this is the softball statue. If it’s not, we’ll just bail off and you can whistle all you want.”
So we dig at the tarp, but it’s hard to get underneath it, especially with the straps cinched down tight. And I start to panic that we’re totally wasting time because we’re already jostling onto Sandydale Lane. “Man! I wish I had a knife!”
But Marissa’s found an end of the tarp and is pulling it up. So I jump in and help her, and all of a sudden out pops a big brass hand holding a big brass softball.
“Yes!” Marissa whispers, pumping her fist.
Now, in the back of my mind I had thought that the tow truck would make a pit stop at Mama Jack’s mobile home. I don’t know why. I just did. And even if it didn’t, I thought I could signal Casey with the whistle and get him to sneak on board with us. Trouble is, as soon as we hit Sandydale Lane, the truck starts moving.
I look at Marissa. “What’s our plan?!”
“To get the reward!”
“But what’s our plan? What if Tow Truck Tony’s got a gun?”
Normally, this would have sent Marissa into Nervesville, but something about the reward is making her brave. “Justice Jack’s mom knows you, right? She won’t let him shoot you. It’s just a stupid statue!”
“Which the most powerful man in the city wants back!”
“Which is why we’ll be swimming in five thousand dollars!”
I hear Casey’s whistle again, and this time I cup my hands together and whistle back. And as we barrel past Pair-a-Dice, I spot him on the side of the road.
Ah-ee-ah-ee-ahhhhh, I whistle again.
“Hey!” he shouts as we go by, but I’m afraid to shout anything back. And instead of doing something smart, I figure, Okay. When we get to the stop sign at the bottom of Sandydale, I’m jumping off.
But Marissa is apparently thinking, because she’s got her backpack off and open and she’s tossing a piece of rumpled yellow paper at Casey. It doesn’t go anywhere near him, but he does see it and races to pick it up.
“What did you write?”
“Call the cops!” she tells me.
“Wow. That was quick thinking. And you were fast! But I’m bailing off at the stop sign.”
“No, you’re not!” she says, pointing her yellow pad at me. “We won’t know where they’re going! We’ll lose the reward!”
“Marissa, this is crazy. I’m getting off!”
Trouble is, Tow Truck Tony doesn’t even slow down at the stop sign. He just barrels through it and veers to the right, away from the main road.
“Oh, great!” I moan. Then I snatch Marissa’s yellow pad from her, rumple up a piece of paper, and toss it over the side.
Then I do another.
And another.
Marissa gets all excited and starts helping. “Oh! Like Hansel and Gretel!”
I shake my head. “You are never this calm and collected when we’re in danger.”
“There’s never been a reward before!” she says, all happy-faced. “And so far the only danger is the way this guy drives!”
After a few more turns and dozens of wadded papers, the eucalyptus trees have thinned way out and I have no idea where we are.
Plus, it’s definitely dark now.
Plus, I don’t see any houses.
We keep wadding papers and tossing them overboard, but I’m getting more and more worried about being hauled into the middle of nowhere.
And then all of a sudden we slow down and turn off the road.
“Oh, man,” I whisper, and start wadding up papers like crazy. “Casey and the cops’ll never see these papers in the dark!”
“Those two will never see us in the dark,” Marissa says. “Which means the minute they stop, we’ll jump off and hide. And we’ll know where they stash the statue before Jack miraculously finds it, and—ta-da!—we’ll be rich.”
Now, even though it’s dark back where we are, I don’t want to risk being spotted in the side mirrors. And since we’re slowing way down and I’d really like to be able to see what’s going on, I stand up, lean across the statue, grab onto the big red W brace, and look over the top of the cab.
Marissa jumps up, too, and as we jostle side to side over some potholes, she says, “What is this place?”
We come to a sign that says SVENSEN’S DAIRY, and straight ahead there’s a really large rectangular building.
“If this is a dairy, where are the cows?” She sniffs. “I sure don’t smell any, either.”
“It must be abandoned? Or out of business?” We’ve slowed down even more, so I grab my skateboard and tell her, “Let’s get off while we can.”
“Already?”
“Marissa! Get scared, okay? This is not a good situation!”
She comes down from her perch. “All right, all right.”
So we do a quick butt-scoot to the end of the bed, dangle our legs over the edge, and push off while the truck jostles forward over potholes. And both of us do land on our feet, but somehow we wind up falling over anyway.
“That was still a lot easier than getting on!” Marissa laughs, dusting off.
“Wow,” I say, shaking my head at her. “The lure of money has a powerful effect on you.”
“I’ve been broke since summer!” she says.
“I’ve been broke my whole life,” I grumble. Then I grab her and start to head back the way we’d come.
“Wait—where are we going?”
“Back to the road! We need to either find a house or flag someone down and call the police.”
“Casey’s already found some way to do that, don’t you think?”
“And told them what? Follow the wads of yellow paper?”
“But don’t you want to spy on them and see where they hide the statue?”
“They’re not hiding it, they’re planting it so Jack can make his amazing discovery.”
“What kind of amazing discovery will it be if it’s clear out here? No one will know!”
“Oh, I’m sure they’ll call the TV stations and the newspaper and have a huge entourage of paparazzi documenting his do-gooder phoniness.” I shake my head. “What a con. What a fake.”
“He’s like the wizard behind the curtain.”
I snort. “He’s not Justice Jack, he’s Joker Jack.”
“The Sham Man.”
“Captain Con.”
She laughs. “That’s a good one.” But then she looks over her shoulder and yanks me to a halt. “So where’d they go?”
I look over my shoulder, too, and at first it does seem like they’ve vanished, but then I spot the truck pulling
around the far side of the barn. “Over there! See them? They turned off their headlights.”
“So maybe they’re not going into the barn? Maybe they’re going out … out there! What if they hide it in a field? What if we know it’s around here somewhere but aren’t sure where? What if we lose the whole reward because we don’t actually know where it is?”
“Marissa! Get a grip! We’re in the middle of nowhere by an abandoned dairy farm. Who do you think would find us out here? How long would it take for someone to discover our vulture-pecked bones, huh?”
She blinks at me.
That’s all.
Just blinks.
So I grab her again and march her back to the road, and almost right away I see a light coming toward us from the left.
At first I’m excited because out in the middle of who knows where you might not expect a car to show up for ages.
But then I realize that it’s not a car.
Well, unless it’s missing a headlight.
“Is that a bike?” Marissa asks.
We watch another minute, and finally I say, “Maybe it’s someone with a flashlight?” because the beam of light is kind of jerking around. The light is yellow, too. And flickery. And I’m getting the sinking feeling that whoever it is won’t be able to help us call the police when I realize there’s a sound getting closer, too.
A sound I recognize.
And, really, it can only mean one thing.
We’re in some deep, dark, middle-of-nowhere doo-doo.
THIRTY-THREE
“It’s Justice Jack!” Marissa cries.
Like this is a good thing.
“He’s in on this, don’t you get that?” I grab her by the arm and haul her off the road and behind the SVENSEN’S DAIRY sign, and then we watch the headlight jerk to the side from time to time as the High Roller roars toward us.
Finally Marissa says, “So what are we going to do?”
“I don’t know! I sure hope Billy’s not with him. He’s driving like he’s drunk!”
They’re getting close now, and over the roar of the High Roller I hear someone shout, “There’s another!”