“March!” Maggie yelled, her voice dropping a couple octaves and rumbling from somewhere deep in her throat. March had once called it her Satan voice, which seemed about right.
Music blared from behind someone’s door upstairs—not March’s, because he was tidy about everything, including noise.
Maggie shrugged when there was no response. “Go on up,” she said. “Knock first. You never know when March will decide to study in his underwear.”
We both laughed. March wore long pants all the time, even in the summer. He thought he was too thin. Even when Dad’s boss invited us out on his boat, he would wear mesh gym pants and a tank top. Every. Single. Time.
I made my way up the stairs, stepping around an avalanche of Matchbox cars, probably belonging to Mason, Miles, and Max, March’s younger brothers. Sure enough, the boys were crowded into the room at the end of the hall, building an intricate track that dropped from the top bunk down the length of the bottom bunk before sloping to the floor, where it wound around the room.
“Hey, guys,” I said.
“Hi, Kazu.” Mason was the only one who looked up from their work as I knocked on March’s door. Mason was nine and shared a room with March, but he rarely spent any time there on account of March nagging him to clean up before he could even think about making a mess. So Mason mostly hung out with Miles and Max, who were seven and five, creating crazy messes around the house that March couldn’t say boo about.
“Come in!”
I opened March’s door. I had always thought that his bedroom belonged in my house, and my bedroom belonged in his. March’s room was neat like a hotel room with clean dresser tops and vacuumed corners. Galaxy bedspreads hung over each bunk with precision, as if March had used a ruler to calculate overhang. He sat at his desk, looked over his shoulder when I walked in, and quickly turned back to his computer, where he was working on something brainy.
While the tidiness of it all made my head hurt, I loved the walls, painted a deep purple and spotted with tiny glow-in-the-dark stars. Strewn across the ceiling, over the same deep purple, was the solar system March’s mom, Candy, had freehanded. She was a graphic artist who worked from home.
“I’m busy,” March grumbled.
“It can’t be homework, because it’s Saturday, and you said Mr. Carter doesn’t give homework on the weekends.”
“I can still be busy even though I don’t have homework.”
I walked toward him, pulled the contents from my manila folder, and dropped them dramatically onto the corner of his desk, except I missed and the pages fluttered to the floor. I bent to pick them up, trying to reorder the four printouts. “Operation: Expose James Crowley. Coordinator of Spying: Kazuko Jones. Director of Computer Hacking: March Winters.”
I handed him the stack, which felt thin after the failed dramatic reveal. He shuffled through them and scoffed. “So you found his Facebook page, his LinkedIn profile, his wife’s obituary, and his address, which we already knew?”
“That’s why you’re the Director of Computer Hacking. I can’t do this without you.”
“Do what? Mr. Crowley is harmless.”
“Then prove me wrong.” I dropped onto a beanbag covered in rocket-printed fabric. “Besides, you love an excuse to hack anyone. Consider this an exercise in Operation: College Entrance. Scratch that. Operation: College Scholarship Extravaganza!”
Now that I thought about it, March’s eyes were probably extra-wide because everything he saw was lit by the MIT logo: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he hoped to attend college someday. I knew what motivated March Winters, and you had to know people to work ’em.
March tilted his head to the side, considering. “It won’t be hard, because he’s old, and most old people don’t know how to protect their computers. But it’s still illegal.”
“Dognapping is more illegal.” I pushed up from the beanbag, hoping to spur March to action.
“Actually, in Colorado, dognapping is considered petty theft while computer hacking is a felony. So it’s not more illegal.”
Smarty-pants. But I couldn’t ruin it with name-calling. March hated being called names.
“Well, it should be more illegal.” I placed my hand on his shoulder. “Please, March. Do it for the puppies.”
He shrugged me off. March didn’t like to be touched.
“Do it for the puppies,” he mimicked, his voice high and his face pinched.
“Is that a yes?”
He sighed, making a show of it. “That’s a yes.”
CHAPTER NINE
Mom sounded disappointed when I called to ask if I could stay at March’s for a late-over that night.
“But we were going to watch Goonies,” she said. Party Night Saturday was a serious Jones tradition at my house where Dad baked his famous Dorito casserole for dinner, and then, before the movie, Mom and I air-popped popcorn, covered it with real butter, and sprinkled chocolate chips on top. We watched the movie in my parents’ room, upstairs, tucked into their California king-size bed, where I usually fell asleep between Mom and Dad, and Genki spent the evening whimpering from a doggie pad on the floor.
“Next week,” I promised, feeling torn between my detective work and one of my favorite family traditions.
“Don’t tell me you’re already too cool for your parents.”
“Mo-o-o-m.” I wanted to argue how mature I was but realized drawing her name out like that wasn’t helping.
“Okay,” she said, like she didn’t want to hear it. “Have fun.”
March and I ate pizza for dinner while watching Napoleon Dynamite in the basement. That’s not even one of my favorite movies, but at the Winterses’ house you had to vote for everything, and we were always outnumbered by the younger boys and Macy, March’s thirteen-year-old sister. Maggie had taken May, Lakeview High freshman, to her first high school football game. Their parents, Marshall and Candy, were on what they called a House Date, eating takeout by candlelight in the dining room upstairs. That’s why we all crowded onto the buckling furniture in their basement, kneeing and elbowing each other while we tried to balance loaded paper plates on our laps.
After we finished eating, March and I threw our trash in the kitchen garbage and tiptoed past the dining room. March’s parents had pushed their chairs away from the table, where they leaned into each other, talking softly. Takeout boxes and fancy china plates spotted with mounds of chow mein cluttered the table. Hopper sat patiently at Mr. Winters’s side, his nose waving at some phantom smell as he waited for them to gift him the leftovers.
“Oh, all right!” Mr. Winters put the two fancy plates on the floor, and Hopper pushed them around the dining room as he licked them clean. I noticed another empty dish stuck under one of the chairs. Hopper also knew how to work people.
I followed March back to his room, where he cracked his knuckles before settling in at the desk.
“Okay,” he said. “If we’re going to hack Mr. Crowley, we need his e-mail address. Does your route list have that?”
“No.” I took the stack from March and pulled out my route list, which only included customer names, addresses, and phone numbers. I waved the list at him.
March pointed at me, even though there was no one else in the room. “You need to call him and ask for it. Otherwise this will never work.”
“Why?” I balled my hands into fists. Computer hacking was Phase One, which was low risk and required no contact. If I called Geezer, he might figure out I was onto him. What if he tracked me down?
“Because I need to send him an e-mail with an attachment. If I do this right, once he clicks on it, the attachment will run an application connecting his computer to mine. On his end, it won’t look like anything happened. But on my end, I’ll have access to his desktop, and we can see all the stuff old people do with their computers.”
“I have to talk to him? Like, for real?”
“How else do we get his e-mail address? Just tell him you’re his paper carrier, an
d the Denver Chronicle needs to add his e-mail address to their records so they can send paperless notifications or something.”
“Can’t you do it? You sound so smart.”
“No way,” he said. “This is your crazy idea, Kazu, not mine. You either get his e-mail address or we cancel Operation: Expose James Crowley.”
He handed me his phone. I turned it over in my palm a couple times, thinking of the dog food receipt stuffed into the bottom of Geezer’s recycled newspaper bags.
Then I thought of Mrs. Tanner crying at her doorway because Barkley was missing. Because I had let Barkley go missing. What were the chances that the one person who could have stopped Barkley’s dognapping in the first place would find the receipt and be given a chance to bring Barkley home?
I dialed Geezer’s number.
CHAPTER TEN
He picked up after the first ring.
“Hello?” He said it like “yellow.” His voice was warm and deep, like a grandpa’s.
“Hi,” I said. “This is your papergirl, and the Denver Chronicle needs your e-mail address for their records. We want to start sending electronic notifications.” My words tumbled out, and I wondered if he could even understand me. I didn’t sound nearly as professional as March had when he suggested this approach.
“What’s your name again?”
My name? I shouldn’t give him my name, right? Maybe a fake name would be best. “Kazuko Jones,” I said, unable to think of a good alias on the spot.
“And what are these electronic notifications?”
Why hadn’t I put the phone on speaker so that March could help me?
Okay. Why would a newspaper send electronic notifications? I thought of all the boring stuff I had seen in Mom’s in-box. “You know, bills and newsletters and Christmas cards?” March slapped his forehead.
“That makes sense.” Geezer rattled off his e-mail address, and I wrote it next to his phone number on my route list.
“Thank you very much,” I said.
“Oh, and Costco?”
I grimaced at his attempt to say my name. “Yes?”
“Would you mind bagging my papers instead of rolling them with rubber bands? When you deliver that early, they get all dewy from the frost.”
“Sure. Of course.”
“Also,” he said as I moved to hang up, “I’ve noticed you deliver papers with your dog. Be careful out there. Denver pets are going missing, and I’d hate for my papergirl to lose her sidekick.” He chuckled like that was a real knee-slapper. Stupid Geezer.
“Bye,” I said, punching the END button.
March jumped out of his chair and double high-fived me. We hooted for a bit before he said, “Christmas cards?”
“I did it. That’s what matters.” But I laughed with him, glad it was over.
“Okay, I’ll do a little hacking and then send the e-mail. If he opens the attachment, we’re in business.”
I nodded, replaying the phone conversation in my mind. Who jokes about missing pets? My face flushed, my cheeks tingling painfully. And just as quickly, relief flooded my body because Geezer thought his papergirl’s name was Costco.
March and I crouched behind the school a few yards from the bus turnout to work on a Rulebook for Operation: Expose James Crowley (aka Geezer). The sun hung low in a clear sky, and the air had a cold bite to it. Pinched between two electrical boxes, we talked as kids ran back and forth across the soccer field, their squeals echoing behind them. Some already wore scarves and mittens, their breath cloudy in the morning chill.
The bell would ring soon, so we worked quickly, whispering to avoid being overheard. I opened my Sleuth Chronicle, picking a clean sheet behind all the data and articles about the Denver Dognapping Ring, and began to take notes. When I finished, I handed the notebook to March, and he read the list of rules aloud:
1. Never talk about the operation in public.
2. Do not share operation intel with anyone else, most importantly, parents.
3. Keep all operation documents locked in March’s metal Christmas safe.
4. To avoid suspicion, do not communicate directly with Mr. Crowley (except for when we asked for his e-mail because we had to).
5. Involve police when we have hard evidence.
6. Do not do anything that will get us killed.
I nodded. That sounded about right, although I realized that heroes were often required to break rules when lives were at stake. But this was not the time to have that conversation with March, who loved rules, to-do lists, and numbered tasks.
March said Mr. Crowley still hadn’t opened the attachment he had sent Saturday night from a dummy e-mail account. “Some people don’t check their e-mail very often,” he explained as I shoved the notebook back into my pack.
“But how do you know he hasn’t already opened the e-mail and ignored the attachment?”
“Because I have an app that tells me when the e-mails I send are opened. He should at least open the e-mail, don’t you think?”
The bell rang. We stood and swatted the dirt from our pants before swinging backpacks over shoulders.
“What did the e-mail say?”
March’s voice was a whisper. “Subject line: Denver East High School Fiftieth Reunion. ‘Dear James Crowley, We are planning a fiftieth reunion for the Denver East High School graduating class of 1969. Please click the attachment below to RSVP. Thanks and hope to see you this summer! Signed, Albert Parker, 1969 Class President.’”
It turned out that my puny stack of papers had helped after all. James Crowley listed Denver East High School in his educational history on Facebook. It didn’t take much research to discover that Albert Parker was the class president in 1969, the year Crowley had graduated, although neither one of us had been able to determine whether or not Albert Parker was still alive. We decided to take a chance, and March created the dummy e-mail account in Albert’s name; we hoped this would increase the odds that Geezer would open the e-mail and then the attachment.
“Now we wait?” I asked.
We entered the school’s foyer. March walked in a straight line, each foot placed in the middle of a tile. I had never seen him step on a crack, like, ever.
March nodded. “I’ll be alerted as soon as he opens the attachment, and then I can find all the dirt on Mr. Crowley. Like whether he recycles, cheats at solitaire, or tips his papergirl.” He snorted, and I glared at him.
“He doesn’t, by the way,” I said. “How can you trust an old guy who doesn’t tip his papergirl?”
We stopped at the top of the stairs. Kids swarmed around us.
“Maybe that’s exactly why you can trust this old guy,” March said. “Because he doesn’t tip the papergirl who’s spying on him.”
I shoved my fists deep into my pockets, scrambling for a biting comeback. “We’re breaking rule number one: Never talk about the operation in public.”
“Dang it!” March said, and I knew he would fret about that broken rule all day.
March slunk to Mr. Carter’s class, and I smirked as I turned in the opposite direction.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Mrs. Hewitt had Madeleine and me sing through the song once before she critiqued our performance. It was about two kids walking to school, looking at bugs, learning the alphabet, making friends. The title came from the chorus, “I can tell that we are going to be friends.” We both held our limp sheet music and sang without enthusiasm.
I glared at Mrs. Hewitt when she wasn’t looking, my chest tight like a fist. No one in the fifth grade cared about the things in this song, especially not Madeleine Brown. I looked sideways at her as we sang about a new school year: “Back to school, ring the bell, brand-new shoes, walking blues…I can tell that we are going to be friends.”
Madeleine rolled her eyes.
We finished the song, and Mrs. Hewitt plunked her hands on the keys, the angry, discordant sound echoing in the music room. We faced the backside of the piano as she bent over the keyboard, shaking her head.
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“Ladies.” She let out a long sigh. “That was pretty horrible.”
“She keeps messing me up,” Madeleine complained, nodding her head in my direction. “She sings really loud, and sometimes it’s not even the right—”
“I’m singing all the right words,” I cut her off before she could finish. “And she’s not singing loud enough.”
“You’re both singing like kids who just had fillings put in all their teeth.” Mrs. Hewitt walked around the piano to stand in front of us and mimicked, “‘We are going to be friends,’” only her mouth opened and shut like a puppet’s and each word hit the same note.
“When you sing, it must come from your heart.” She hit her chest with her fist, turned her head toward the ceiling, and closed her eyes. Madeleine and I exchanged glances.
“You should sing about friendship with joy and gratitude.” She circled us. “You should push the words from your stomach with such force that they ring from your lips. Just imagine. What would you do without friends?”
Well, I thought. Madeleine would have a tougher time bullying people, that’s for sure. I side-eyed her, and she mirrored my glare.
“You may not like each other very much,” Mrs. Hewitt said, returning to her place in front of the piano. “But you can think about all the friends you do like while singing this song. Let’s give it a try.”
We tried three more times, and Mrs. Hewitt became more dissatisfied with each attempt. When we’d finished the chorus for the last time, she closed the piano and walked out of the music room. She didn’t even bother to turn around when she said, “I’ll see you both again next week!”
I raked a neat pile of orange leaves in the corner of Mrs. White’s yard, which was across the street from our house. Every year she paid me to clear the leaves and then, when it snowed, shovel her drive. This year the leaves from her aspen had fallen early due to an extra-dry summer, and she had waved me over on my way home from school.
She sat on her porch, talking while she watched me work. “My husband, see,” she said, “never slowed down. He kept up on all the maintenance around here, and when he passed, I had to get help, being a bent old hag by then.” She chuckled, her voice gravelly. Mrs. White told me this same story every year.
Kazu Jones and the Denver Dognappers Page 5