She leaned into his room. “You cooking or on KP?”
“I burn stuff; you know that. I’ll clean up.”
“Deal.”
Mr. Kuo was in the kitchen, having a cup of coffee and a muffin as he skimmed the paper and watched the morning news. He said a quick hello to us, then checked his watch and said, “Have fun today, girls,” and took off.
So I called Grams and told her I wouldn’t be back anytime soon, then got busy helping Cricket whip up pancake batter, grill bacon, and juice oranges. And things were really starting to sizzle when the doorbell rang.
“Oh!” I said, hoping Cricket wouldn’t be mad. “It’s a really long story, but I told Casey to meet me here.”
“Cool!” she said, like she really was happy to have people over, even if they invited themselves.
So I answered the door and said, “Hungry?” which, of course, being a guy, he was. And then Gary came into the kitchen, and said, “Hey, dude, you’re back,” like he was really happy to see Casey, too. And, I don’t know—it was just fun to be cooking and juicing and talking and, you know, hanging out.
Now, the whole time we were cooking, the TV was on the same station that Mr. Kuo had been watching. None of us were paying any attention to it—it was just sort of white noise in the background. But when we sat down to eat, I did a double take at the screen and said, “Hey, it’s Pretty Vegas!”
Gary and Cricket said, “Huh?” but Casey eyed the TV, then grinned at me. And something about that grin made me feel stupidly happy. I guess most people would call it an inside joke, but to me it felt like more than that. It felt like the beginning of our own language. You know how you have things you say to your best friend and they know exactly what it means, but there’s so much history behind it that trying to explain it to anyone else just sounds jumbled and disjuncted and lame. Or it’s something so embarrassing that you’d never, ever in a million years tell anyone what it means. For example, “loopy noogies.” If Marissa and I were having lunch together and I said, “Mmm, loopy noogies,” she would spray whatever she was drinking all over the place and not stop laughing for half an hour.
It goes back to fourth grade and the school cafeteria, and that’s all I’m gonna say.
The point is, Marissa and I have our own language. Words that mean an experience more than they mean what the dictionary says they mean.
I like having that with Marissa. And I guess I’d never really thought about how we have our own language because we’ve been best friends for so long and have done so many things together. But now all of that flashed through my head, and it made me glad that I’d trudged through the dusty heat of the Phony Forest and survived ticks and scorpions and attacking trees—even if it meant I’d come down with poison oak. Casey and I could say things like “Sleep Zombie” or “Pretty Vegas” or “snake floss,” and instant pictures would pop into our heads. Even “cool your heels” had a whole new meaning since our stinky experience with a certain big bird.
And as much as I’d like to forget about it, the word drool will live on in code word infamy.
Anyway, that’s how the back of my mind was entertaining itself while we were eating breakfast. It wasn’t trying to piece together any puzzles. It wasn’t thinking about Marvin or his mom. It was perfectly content to be reviewing the strange words of a new language.
And then Cricket said, “Stop that, Sammy.”
I blinked at her. “Huh?”
She pointed to my arm, which I didn’t even know I’d been scratching. “It just makes it worse.”
I stopped, but the itch didn’t want me to. “That calamine lotion doesn’t last very long.”
“Go put some more on,” Cricket said. “You know where it is, right?”
So I went down to the bathroom, got the lotion out of the cabinet, and started recoating my arms. The combination of the rash and the chalky lotion looked awful. Like I had some horrible, ghoulish disease. And it crossed my mind to ask Cricket if I could borrow a long-sleeved shirt. But sleeves against a rash like this? It would drive you crazy!
And that’s when I stopped smearing lotion and just stood there.
I was like a zombie, standing there frozen, staring at nothing.
My mind, though, was in overdrive, scratching, clawing, tearing through the rash of bumps in my mind. The bumps of information that had been under the surface but were now blossoming and itching and demanding to be scratched.
No calamine lotion could soothe this itch.
No shot from the doctor, no ice.
Only one thing was going to make these bumps go away.
Proof.
TWENTY-THREE
Even after I explained my theory, the others were not convinced. “I don’t know, Sammy,” Cricket said, breaking off a piece of bacon and popping it into her mouth. “It seems pretty far-fetched.”
Gary agreed. “Not a real strong connection, if you ask me.”
“Yeah, but it might be the tip of the iceberg. The leak in the well. The gopher hole that leads to a maze of tunnels that leads to the truth!”
Casey laughed and the others rolled their eyes, so I said, “Look. I just want to go there and ask a few questions. If it doesn’t get us anywhere, it’s no big deal.”
Gary gave a friendly little snort and said, “I’m on the hook to drive again?”
I shrugged. “I could ride my skateboard. . . . It’s not that far.”
“I rode mine over,” Casey said, giving me a smile, and all of a sudden that sounded like such a blast—just me and him riding boards across town.
But Gary stood up and said, “No, I know a hook when I’m on it—let’s go.”
So we all got into his truck again and got our eardrums pounded as we cruised through town again. And we’d almost made it to our destination again, only we got stopped.
By a cop.
Gary pulled over, cut the motor, and banged his head against the steering wheel. And when the policeman came up alongside the truck and peeked inside at the four of us, Gary asked, “Was I speeding?” like he really hoped that he was.
“No, son,” the cop said. “You’re not driving too fast; you’re driving too loud.”
Gary heaved a sigh. “I know. They want three hundred and fifty bucks to fix it.”
The cop nodded. “License and registration, please.”
So Gary took his driver’s license out of his wallet, flipped down the sun visor and removed a square piece of paper, then handed them both to the cop.
Now, I’d never seen this cop before, so I didn’t really know how to help, but I wanted to do something, since this whole excursion had been my stupid idea. I mean, I’ve heard that tickets can be really expensive, and from the way Gary was taking deep breaths and looking so worried, I was sure he was having a panic attack about the cost of the ticket on top of having to pay to fix his truck. So I leaned forward between the front seats and said to the cop, “Hey, do you know Gil Borsch? I haven’t seen him much since he got promoted to sergeant. How’s he doing?”
The cop sort of cocked his head at me, hesitated, then said, “He’s fine.”
“So . . . what’s he up to?”
He eyed me again. “Actually, he’s on vacation.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know what to say after that. The guy was so . . . professional. Maybe he was on loan from a real police department, I don’t know. I just know he wasn’t anything like the cops I usually run into in this town.
Anyway, I don’t think it had anything to do with me, but he only gave Gary a “fix-it ticket.” He handed it over, saying, “You’ve got thirty days to take care of this, Mr. Kuo. After that, you will be cited if you’re caught driving this around.”
“Uh, thank you, sir.”
When he was gone, I said, “I’m really sorry, Gary. I should just have taken my skateboard.”
“Not your fault,” he grumbled.
I knew he meant it, but I still felt bad about it as he drove us the last four blocks. But then my mind started getting occupied
with other things.
I’d never been to a television station before, and I guess I was expecting something much more Hollywood than what I saw. The complex was only one story high. It was made of painted cinder blocks and laid out like giant pieces of pie, with wedges of parking between the buildings.
As we went up the driveway and passed by a fleet of white KSMY vehicles near a bunch of huge satellite dishes, Gary called, “Where do you want me to park?” over the roar of his exhaust leak.
“Anywhere,” I called back.
So Gary pulled into a space, and just as he cut the motor, Cricket pointed and said, “Look!”
It was a bike, leaning against the building near a side door.
A royal blue bike with orange trim.
“What is she doing here?” Cricket gasped.
“Who?” Gary asked.
“Janey!” She turned to him. “The girl from the museum? The one who dumped Quinn!”
“Maybe it’s not her bike?” Casey said.
Cricket got out of the truck. “It sure looks like it!”
I caught up to her as she marched toward the bike, my mind scrambling for a reason Janey would be there. “Remember how Robin said that Quinn being late was, you know, out of the ordinary?”
“Huh? No, I don’t remember that.” She glanced at me. “But it is.”
“Quinn was supposed to be at the Lookout when we got there the first day and he wasn’t, remember?”
“Right,” she said, but it was a real absentminded right because we were nearly at the bike.
“And he was supposed to be at the Lookout again the next morning. When Robin and Bella went after Gabby, remember?” All of a sudden Janey being at the TV station made total sense. I pulled Cricket away from the bike and whispered, “She was the reason Quinn was late! She was a decoy!”
“A what?”
Only just then the door latch clicks and the door starts to push open. Casey and Gary are coming toward us, so real quick I flag them back, then grab Cricket by the arm and dive for the bushes.
Two seconds later Janey emerges from the building, only she doesn’t just hop on her bike and leave. She glances over her shoulder, then stands there talking to someone who’s propping open the door from inside. We can’t see who it is because the door is blocking our view, but we can hear Janey’s side of the conversation.
“Look, if he’s arriving at three, we should leave at three. . . . I know, but I don’t want to get there early. . . .Okay. Quarter of. I’ll pick up the meat.” She reaches back inside like she’s giving a quick hug, then swings onto her bike and pedals off.
“Who is that she was talking to?” Cricket whispers.
“Her partner in crime,” I mutter, easing out from behind the bushes. “Something’s going down at three o’clock, and I’m pretty sure it has to do with Marvin’s mom!”
Now it’s Cricket’s turn to grab me by the arm. “What? Where do you get that?”
“The meat? It’s either to feed a condor or it is a condor.”
Her jaw drops. “Have you totally lost it? They were talking about a date!” She follows me toward Gary and Casey, who are coming out from around the building. “You know, like going over to somebody’s house to barbecue? She’s picking up the meat—like, the steaks or whatever.”
I snicker and shake my head. “Oh, no. That is not what that was. That was—” And then I notice a familiar steel blue SUV parked beside a bright yellow sports car. “Look!”
So we all go over to the SUV. And I was planning just to, you know, peek in the windows, but the dark tinting made it almost impossible to see anything in back, and the front seats had nothing on them but the morning paper. No cowboy hat. No sunglasses. No condor feathers . . .just the stupid newspaper.
But then I saw something—a bottle on its side on the shelf under the CD player in the dash. I moved around so I could see it better, and bingo!
Calamine lotion.
“I want to know who this belongs to!” Cricket whispered.
“I know who it belongs to,” I told her, still looking inside the driver’s window.
“You do? Who?”
“Grayson Mann.”
Her eyes popped. And after she sputtered a minute, she said, “You think Janey’s two-timing with him? Over Quinn? He’s way older than she is! And he’s so . . . so . . .”
“Vegas?” Casey asked.
“Exactly!”
“You want proof?” I asked, because I’d just noticed that proof was wedged under a black rectangular gizmo that was clipped to the turned-down sun visor.
“Yes, I want proof!” Cricket said. “I can’t believe you believe that! There’s no way!”
So I snaked my hand through the window, which was vented a few inches.
“What are you doing?” Cricket asked, and believe me, I’d never seen her eyes so wide.
“Getting you proof.”
“What if the car’s alarmed?”
“Apparently it’s not,” Gary said, but he was looking around nervously.
I wound up pulling both the black rectangular box and the registration paper out through the crack in the window. “Ready?” I asked. And I was so confident that I was right that I didn’t even bother to look at the registration before handing it over.
Cricket took the paper, but a few seconds later she cried, “Ha! You’re wrong.”
I snatched it back and just blinked at it for a minute, not believing my eyes. “Oswald Griffin? Who’s that?”
Just then a car drove into the parking lot, so we all ducked out of view and waited for it to go by. And I was so busy not believing how stupid I’d been that I didn’t make the connection right away, but it did finally hit me. “Cricket . . . didn’t Bella say that Janey’s last name was Griffin?”
Her eyes got all big again. She snatched the registration back from me, checked it over, and said, “All this time she’s been married? She was having an affair with Quinn? That’s why she broke it off like that? Wait until Quinn hears about this!”
The car we’d been hiding from had left the parking lot, so I stood up and said, “Come on.”
“Where to?” Cricket asked. She shoved the registration paper back at me. “You need to put this and that garage door opener back!”
I stopped short.
Garage door opener?
I looked at the little black box and its long, flat activation switch, and my mind went giddy. The registration paper showed the address, and I was holding a remote control to the garage door!
“Why the look?” Cricket asked.
I was dying to tell her, but there’s no way she’d want to hear what I was thinking, let alone do it. It would go against all the Girl Scout laws or credos or whatever they’re called. You know—a Girl Scout is considerate and honest and does good deeds. What a Girl Scout most definitely does not do is open other people’s garage doors with an opener that’s been snaked from a locked vehicle.
“So what’s the plan?” Casey asked.
“Uh . . . I think it’s time to use my favorite weapon,” I said. He produced a cell phone from the pocket of his jeans, but I shook my head. “I don’t want it to be traceable.”
Cricket snorted. “Oh, like that call you made to Trail Riders when you were impersonating a federal agent?”
I blushed. “Sorry about that . . .”
I spotted a pay phone at a gas station across the street, so we went over there, and luckily the phone book in it was actually pretty much intact.
I looked up the number for KSMY and got connected, and when the receptionist answered, I said, “I’d like to speak with Oswald Griffin.”
A few seconds later she said, “I’m sorry, but there are no Griffins or Oswalds in my directory.”
I thanked her, hung up, and immediately dialed again. And when she asked how she could help me, I said, “Grayson Mann, please.”
While the transfer went through, I tried to stay cool, but man, my heart was bouncing off the walls. And pretty so
on my hands were shaking and my forehead was sweating. It got so bad that I was actually about to just bail on the whole call, when over the line came, “Grayson Mann speaking.”
It sounded like someone announcing the king.
“I have information about that condor poacher,” I whispered.
There was a slight pause, then, “Speak up, please. I can barely hear you. Did you say you have information about the condor poacher?”
“Yes,” I hissed. “I can’t speak any louder. This is highly confidential, but I think you should know.”
“Go on . . .”
“There’s a sting operation planned. It’s going down in about an hour.”
“A sting operation?” I could practically see him sitting up straighter. “They know who’s got the bird?”
“They’re pretty sure, yes.”
“Who? Where?”
“All I know is there’s a man named Lester—”
“Blunt? The taxidermist?”
I hesitated, then whispered, “Someone’s coming! I’ll have to call you back,” and hung up quick.
When I turned around, Cricket was holding her head like she thought it might explode, and Gary and Casey were both looking at me like they’d just come off some radical roller coaster.
“What are you doing?” Cricket gasped. “What’s that going to accomplish?”
I held up a finger and said, “Give it a minute,” but it didn’t even take a whole minute for the pay phone to start ringing. “Star sixty-nine,” I said with a grin, then snatched up the phone. “Natural History Museum.”
Click.
I hung up again and said, “Okay, guys. Back to the parking lot.”
Cricket said, “Natural History Museum? Why the Natural History Museum?” and Gary said, “I feel like I’m trapped in a pong game.” But Casey walked beside me and said, “You’re flushing him out, aren’t you?”
I grinned. “I’m twinkling him out.” And for the first time in a week I felt like I was back in the saddle. I knew what I was doing, even if I hadn’t really had the time to totally line it out for everybody else.
I looked at Cricket as we hurried across the street. “He asked me, ‘They know who’s got the bird?’”