Molly Moon Stops the World

by Georgia Byng

  The flight wasn’t anything like Molly’s solitary one to New York before Christmas. This flight was chaotic as well as noisy. When the jumbo took off, Mrs. Trinklebury started a shouting-out-her-prayers thing that lasted off and on for most of the flight.

  Halfway across the Atlantic, Gerry lost a mouse. Victor, his prize buck, broke loose and made his way up to the plane toilets, where he got locked in with a hairy backpacker. When she burst out of the cubicle, shouting that she’d seen a squirrel, Victor quietly made his way back to Gerry’s seat.

  “Madam, it’s impossible that a squirrel could get on board,” the flight attendant assured the backpacker. “It’s a long flight. Perhaps you should drink some water and do some of the calming exercises that we recommend.”

  Molly would normally have wanted to get off a flight like this, with Mrs. Trinklebury being so embarrassing, but as it was, she wished that it would go on and on—then she wouldn’t have to investigate the danger that was Primo Cell.

  She told this to Rocky. “If you’re scared,” he replied, “think how terrified Davina must be, wherever she is. If she is alive and if Cell has taken her, she needs you to rescue her.”

  “She’s the only reason I’m going,” said Molly. “I wouldn’t risk my life just to check out those stars. Anyway, I suppose I owe Davina. I did steal her part in Stars on Mars before Christmas.”

  Molly leaned down to put a slice of salami in Petula’s basket. Petula was very well-behaved on planes.

  After eleven hours, the plane wheeled above the bright lights of Los Angeles. Molly stared out at the enormous city below. It seemed to stretch for hundreds of miles in all directions. She couldn’t help wondering where Primo Cell was right now, among those millions of buildings.

  Then the tires hit the tarmac and they were safely down. Everyone put their watches back eight hours. It was seven o’clock in the evening.

  Soon they were all standing in baggage claim, half asleep, waiting for their suitcases. The only people with any energy left were Gerry and Gemma, who were giving rides on the baggage carousel to Gerry’s toy superheroes.

  Molly watched a small red case trundling around on the conveyor belt. Exhausted as she was, she let her eyes linger on it, absorbing its rough-textured surface and the color of its tarnished buckles. For a moment the airport seemed very far away, and it was as if she and the suitcase were the only things that existed. A moment later Molly felt as if the suitcase was inside her mind. It was a strange feeling, but not a completely new one. It reminded Molly of the sensation she got whenever she was hypnotizing a person. A slipping sensation that happened just before her subject went into a trance, when she could feel their personality weakening and starting to belong to her. Molly thought how odd it was to be feeling this with a suitcase, and then, as she sleepily gazed, the familiar, warm fusion feeling started to spread through her body. But a second later, the feeling turned icy cold. It was exactly the same thing that had happened with the topiary dog. Shocked, Molly snapped her attention away from the case.

  It was very peculiar. This obviously had something to do with staring at objects. What would happen, Molly wondered, if she let the freezing feeling continue? Would she find that she’d hypnotized the object she was looking at? That was ridiculous. How could a suitcase be hypnotized? Next time, she decided, she would experiment and see what the cold fusion feeling grew into.

  Everyone gathered their bags and cases and hauled them onto luggage carts. Dazed and weary, they made their way to the taxi stand. No one noticed a luggage porter approaching them.

  “Hey, ‘scuse me,” he said, his face beaming with recognition, “but ain’t you the girl and the boy on the ‘Check Out the Kids in Your Neighborhood’ commercial?”

  Nine

  Molly was stunned. It had never crossed her mind that the hypnotic charity TV ad she and Rocky had made in New York could have been watched by people in Los Angeles. How many more people in the airport had recognized her?

  “Um, yeah … yeah, that was us,” she told him reluctantly.

  “Great work,” said the smiling porter. “Let me give you folks some assistance!” He took Molly’s cart and led them straight to the front of the taxi line. Here he loaded their bags into a waiting minibus and waved them off.

  “So much for Lucy saying that because we’re children, we won’t be suspected,” whispered Rocky as they sank into their seats. “Primo Cell probably saw the ad and has been looking for two kid hypnotists ever since.” Molly was too shaken by the incident to say anything.

  Soon the minibus was heading out from underneath concrete columns toward the city of Los Angeles. Molly sat with Petula on her knee, wishing that they hadn’t come. She tried to let the new surroundings distract her from thoughts of Primo Cell. But it was an impossible task. Once the bus had left the airport, they headed out on a road dotted with huge billboards. On either side, ads showed Shlick Shlack knives, nutritious Navy Girl soup, and Sumpshus toilet paper, in which the boxer King Moose was pictured having a fight with a giant toilet paper roll. Cell’s companies. His influence was everywhere. Another poster that kept being repeated was of a politician in a cowboy hat. Underneath his red, white, and blue jacket, it said in bold letters, GANDOLLI FOR PRESIDENT THIS NOVEMBER. At least, Molly thought, there wasn’t one advertising Cell for president.

  The minibus turned onto the highway. Brown, scrubby hills stretched into the distance, and on them stood oil-drilling pumps, each the size of a small house. They looked like monster birds with metal legs and beak-shaped ends that seesawed, pecking at the ground.

  As Molly looked at the nodding oil pumps, she couldn’t help thinking that Primo Cell might already have hit men pecking around the country, trying to find the two children who had made the hypnotic commercial. He probably wanted to do away with them, as he had maybe done away with Davina Nuttel. The great, heartless iron birds made her courage falter.

  Soon small houses began to pop up beside the road, and then larger ones. Then they were driving up a long shopping street, full of secondhand-car showrooms and bars, and on to another with clothes boutiques and restaurants. A giant poster had Hercules Stone’s smiling face on it. It was advertising the film Blood of a Stranger. Big letters proclaimed NOMINATED FOR THREE ACADEMY AWARDS: BEST FILM, BEST ACTRESS—LEADING ROLE, BEST SCREENPLAY. Molly watched a jogger passing a fast-food shop called Emergency Donuts. OPEN 24 HOURS, DON’T PANIC. Petula pricked her ears at a pack of five dogs that were being walked by a woman on roller skates.

  “The suburbs are very big here,” Molly said to the driver.

  “The suburbs?” said the driver. “This ain’t the suburbs. This is Los Angeles city itself. This is the City of Angels, angel.”

  “But where are the skyscrapers?” asked Molly, sure that he must be wrong.

  “Oh, there are some downtown, but this ain’t a skyscraper city, doll. This is a city of gardens, nice an’ green, and low-rise buildings, which is best ‘cause we gets earthquakes here, bein’ on the San Andreas Fault line an’ all that. In fact, we’re nearly at your hotel, and your hotel is smack in the center of Los Angeles. Mos’ places, this is as high as the buildings get.”

  “But in the center of most cities,” Molly said, “the buildings are packed closely together.”

  “Yeah, that’s ‘cause mos’ cities are old and ain’t got space. This is a young city, an’ there’s always been loadsa space.”

  At the end of the wide street was a giant bottleshaped billboard advertising the drink Qube. Behind the billboard were hills with buildings on them receding steeply away.

  “Up there,” said their driver, “are the San Gabriel Mountains, an’ over there”—he pointed behind him—“is Death Valley. But you don’t wanna go there—it’s so hot, you can fry an egg on the hood of your car.”

  The minibus found a gap in the oncoming traffic and dived up a steep drive on the other side of the road. Molly saw a small sign half hidden by leaves. The Château Marmont. Molly looked up at a f
airy-tale building with turrets and towers. Windows rose for ten floors, with small balconies in front of them. The entrance was in a cavelike garage under the hotel, where three men who looked more like movie stars than porters were waiting to unpack the minibus.

  “Welcome to the Château Marmont.”

  Everyone was very excited to have arrived, although they were all dazed and dehydrated from the plane, and their eyeballs felt as dry as if they’d been rolled around in tissue and then put back in their sockets. Ascending in the elevator to the hotel’s reception area, Molly realized what an odd-looking and scruffy party they made, with boxes of mice and parakeets and Nockman with a nine-o’clock shadow around his chin where he hadn’t shaved.

  The foyer of the hotel was very smart and dark, with tall ceilings and a stone floor. Next to it was a grand sitting room that was packed with people. A few looked up disapprovingly at the gaggle of children. Nockman walked off to find the men’s room.

  Molly went to the front desk to check in. A receptionist with a skin like an unpeeled avocado looked worriedly at Roger, who was hugging a small palm tree in a pot.

  “Is he with you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Molly. “He’ll calm down in a minute—he’s just got I’ve-been-on-a-plane-too-long-itis.”

  The receptionist looked at the five children in front of him.

  “I’m afraid I can’t check you in until a responsible adult arrives.”

  “Uurrgh,” growled Molly. “Honestly, we’re just as responsible as them.” And to avoid wasting any more time, she zapped the avocado man’s eyes until he was ready to do exactly what she asked. Then she organized where everyone would sleep.

  As the receptionist smiled obediently, Mrs. Trinklebury arrived. She was late because she’d found herself in the elevator with the famous actor Cosmo Ace. She’d followed him up to the seventh floor and into the fitness rooms, where she’d watched him pedal an exercise bike. Molly realized that Mrs. Trinklebury was going to love the Château Marmont.

  Nockman took the key to his room and disappeared up the stairs with his birds and his luggage. The rest of the party followed a bellboy outside.

  In the gardens, where it was now dark, steel heaters like tall, stubby umbrellas showered down heat on guests at tables beneath them.

  As they weaved along a path between urns of pansies, Molly overheard snippets of conversations:

  “Steve says he loves your screenplay but he wants Spelkman directing it.”

  “But Spelkman stinks. His films are slop. He can’t get performances out of actors. Oh, no, this is terrible.”

  “It’s the only way, Randy.”

  “Now listen, Barbara. I don’t want anyone who eats meat doing my hair or my makeup, or my nails or anything. Is that clear? I don’t want any of that bad energy near me.”

  “Okay, Blake.”

  “So what are you wearing to the Academy Awards, Jean? Remember, it’s watched by people all over the world.”

  “As little as possible.”

  They walked along a jungly path overhung with rustling palm trees and lined with staghorn ferns. Mrs. Trinklebury and Roger’s bungalow was situated near a sunbathing garden where a waterfall cascaded down from rocks into a swimming pool. Roger patted the trunk of a broad-leafed ficus tree, and the hotel parrot squawked at him from its cage.

  The others followed the bellboy again, to the top of a narrow stone-stepped path, where they came to the best bungalow of all.

  It was perfect for Petula, because it had a fenced lawn in front of it with a little wooden gate. It was a modern rectangular building whose whole front was made of glass. Inside, there was a big sitting room with an Lshaped sofa and a TV, and a small kitchen area to one side.

  “Someone will come in and clean up whenever you cook,” said the bellboy.

  On top of a counter was a basket full of potato chips and candy.

  “We’ll replenish the snack basket every day.”

  Gemma started to flick through the hotel’s leatherbound brochure.

  “Look! There’s a hotel film library and it’s got hundreds of films to borrow. An’ music …” Gemma spent the next ten minutes on the phone, calling the others in their rooms. She took room service orders, and twenty minutes later the food arrived on trays under silver lids. Steaks, French fries, milk shakes, and, since they didn’t have orange squash concentrate, Molly ordered some grenadine instead. The room-service waiter explained that this was made from pomegranates and was a fruity syrup that was supposed to be mixed with lemonade, and when it was mixed with ginger ale, Americans called it a Shirley Temple cocktail.

  Molly sipped the concentrated grenadine from a glass full of ice. She knew that Shirley Temple had been a child star in the 1930s, and this made her think of Davina Nuttel. She hoped she was safe, wherever she was.

  Molly woke in the middle of the night, her body thinking that it was morning. Back in Briersville, it was already ten A.M. She found it difficult to go back to sleep because Gerry’s mice were on their squeaky exercise wheel and, outside, a tree creaked noisily.

  She wished that she was in this luxurious hotel to enjoy a vacation, not to embark upon an uncertain mission. Investigating Primo Cell had sounded dangerous back home. Now it felt impossible, too. Molly considered what exactly she and Rocky should do, now they were in Cell territory. Definitely, the most important thing was to find out whether Cell was behind Davina Nuttel’s kidnaping and, if he was, to find her.

  As Molly tried to get to sleep, two images from the file of photographs that Lucy had given her kept returning to her mind. One was of Cell in hunting clothes with a half-cocked rifle under his arm and two lifeless pheasants over his shoulder. The other was of him on safari, with a larger gun and his foot resting on the flank of a large dead antelope.

  Molly reached down the bed to stroke Petula. Primo Cell most certainly liked killing things.

  Ten

  Early next morning, Gerry tapped on Molly’s bedroom door, waking her up. He was wearing swimming trunks, water wings, and a huge hotel bathrobe that trailed on the floor.

  “Comin’, Molly? Breakfast is by the pool. We’re gonna ‘ave pancakes.”

  For a moment, as the sun washed into the room, Molly was still half dreaming that she was back at Happiness House on a boiling hot morning. Then the memory of what she had to do today drowned her carefree thoughts. She groaned.

  Half an hour later, Molly and Rocky were sitting in their pajamas on the floor in Molly’s room. The contents of Lucy Logan’s briefcase were spread out before them.

  “Okay,” began Molly, “to find anything out, we’re going to have to check out Primo Cell’s home and his headquarters and the stars he’s hypnotized. If we do all that, we may find something out about Davina.”

  “I suggest,” said Rocky, “that we get Nockman in here, ask him what he needs for lock breaking and computer-code cracking, and then, tonight, when Cell’s office building is empty, we should break into it. If Lucy is right, and he is planning to hypnotize and keep hypnotized thousands, maybe millions, of people, and if he’s already got hundreds under his control, he can’t have all the details in his head. He’ll have to keep files—either written down or in a computer. And there has to be a secret place where he keeps them—in a locked cabinet or a locked room. I bet there’s something there that will tell us whether he’s had anything to do with Davina Nuttel.”

  “But why his headquarters tonight? Why not his home?”

  “Because he’ll be asleep there, Molly. Wake up.”

  “Okay, okay.” Molly pulled the map of L.A. toward them. “His headquarters are in Westwood, near Beverly Hills. We can catch a sixty-seven bus.”

  “The bus?”

  “That will make us inconspicuous. We’ll take Petula and we’ll look like a couple of kids walking the dog with our—um—uncle.”

  Thirty minutes later, Mr. Nockman stood docilely in front of them. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt decorated with exotic birds and a
pair of flowerpatterned Bemuda shorts that Mrs. Trinklebury had bought him. His mouth hung open, so Molly could see he had six or seven fillings. Petula sniffed at his hairy flip-flopped feet.

  “I hate to hypnotize him again,” said Molly. “He was doing so well. And I really hope that doing something criminal doesn’t make him miss his old life.”

  “We’re not interfering with his self-improvement,” said Rocky. “It’s just one night, and it’s all for a good cause. He won’t remember he’s done it.”

  “Okay,” said Molly, concentrating. “You, Nockman, are going to accompany us tonight. You will tell Mrs. Trinklebury that you will be doing some work for the Benefactor—you know, the man who Mrs. T. thinks sends us money at the orphanage. Say you’re changing his front door locks for him.”

  “Yes.” Nockman nodded.

  “You must bring everything you might need for opening locks, for breaking codes of combination locks, and for cracking codes to access files in computers. Imagine you are going to be robbing a very secure office. Is there anything special you need?” She paused while he thought.

  “I—vill need—explosives.”

  “Well, I’m afraid you can’t have them. They’re too noisy, and they make too much mess.”

  “Some locks,” said Nockman, shaking his head, “may be impossible—to open.” Molly looked at Rocky worriedly. They couldn’t use explosives. They didn’t want Cell knowing they’d broken in.

  “No one is to know about this,” said Rocky.

  “No—vun.”

  “Meet us outside the hotel entrance at ten tonight,” said Molly. “Now, go and spend the day with your birds and Mrs. Trinklebury. As soon as you leave here, you will come out of your trance.”

  Nockman nodded like a programmed robot and plodded away.

  “Good work,” said Rocky, yawning. “We might as well go down to the pool too. We’ve got the whole day to spare. I want to practice my diving.”