The Camp Phoenix Caper

by John V. Madormo

  “We need a cover. C’mon, let’s make it look like we’ve been here for hours.”

  The instant we slammed the door behind us, we could hear the garage door opener.

  “We’re lucky,” I said to Henry as I tossed the football in his direction. “If my mom had seen Scarlett, she would have asked all kinds of questions.”

  Seconds later, Gram and my mom walked out of the garage and into the backyard.

  “Hi, boys,” my mom said.

  “Hi, Mrs. Collier,” Henry said.

  “Back so soon?” I said.

  “You won’t believe why we’re early,” my mom said. “No more than a minute after your grandmother sat down in the chair, there was a robbery.”

  “A robbery?” Henry said.

  “What happened?” I asked. “Are you guys okay?”

  “These two masked men came into the beauty salon and told Shirley to open the cash register.”

  I tossed the ball to the side and walked over to where they were standing. “They were masked? So you couldn’t recognize them, huh?” I said.

  “It was all so fast,” my mom said. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t know what happened until it was over.”

  “Did the police come?” Henry asked. “Did you give them a description? How old did they seem? Were they tall or short? Fat or skinny? What kind of clothes were they wearing?”

  “Slow down, Henry,” my mom said. “I’m not sure I can answer any of those questions. I just don’t know.”

  I noticed that Grandma had been particularly quiet. Considering her background as a cryptologist in World War II and with the time she spent working alongside Eugene at his detective agency, I was fairly certain that she had paid closer attention to specific details than my mom had.

  “Gram, do you remember anything?”

  “I remember everything. They were young—probably teenagers. I could tell from their voices. They seemed nervous—bouncing up and down a lot. One of them was wearing cowboy boots. The other had on gym shoes—orange ones with black laces. The one who did all the talking—the one in gym shoes—walked with a slight limp. The one with the boots kept scratching the top of his head. Probably dandruff.”

  “Wow, Gram, that was amazing. Did you tell the police all this?” I said.

  “They didn’t even bother to ask,” Gram said. “When they see a senior citizen, they figure bad eyesight, poor memory, and too darn scared to be of any use. I could have helped them corral these bad boys. Too late now.”

  “Maybe you should call them, Mrs. Collier,” Henry said to Gram.

  “I’ve got an even better idea,” she said. “Why don’t you boys go find those young thugs? Think of it as your civic duty. Could be your next case.”

  “Please, Mom, don’t encourage them,” my mother said to Grandma. “That’s way too dangerous. I’m sure that Henry’s parents feel the same way we do—we’d prefer that these boys take up other hobbies—ones that’ll keep them out of trouble. Am I right, Henry?”

  “I’d rather not say,” he said.

  “I thought so,” my mom said with a grin. “Charlie, dinner in an hour. Henry, you’re welcome to stay.”

  “Thanks anyway, Mrs. Collier, but my mom’s expecting me.”

  I watched my grandmother and my mom enter the back door of the house.

  Before she closed the door all the way, Gram turned back and whispered, “Think about it, okay?”

  I nodded.

  “Hey, I’m gonna get going,” Henry said. “Nothing more to do here. Looks like the agency’s closed for the day.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said.

  As I watched Henry walk off, I thought about what my grandmother had said. I just couldn’t see how we would ever become involved in a case like this. It was hard to imagine a client strolling into our office and asking for help in apprehending these robbers. This was a job for the police—not a private detective agency—and the boys in blue had a heck of a lot more resources at their disposal than we had. But Grandma’s theory that teenagers might be the culprits was intriguing. And who better to understand what goes through their heads than someone like me? Granted, my thirteenth birthday—marking my official entry into the teen world—was still a few months away. But I was fairly certain that I had more in common with these perpetrators than a whole police force full of adults. I decided, however, after a bit of reflection, to drop any notion of getting involved in this robbery business and instead to concentrate on the problems of other sixth-grade classmates. They might not be as exciting, but after having nearly been turned into a stuffed human trophy in our last case, I was more than happy to settle for a few ho-hum adventures in the near future.

  CHAPTER 2

  The Reign in Spain Caper

  After having finished up a particularly challenging homework assignment, I went downstairs to say good night. My parents were on the couch watching television. Grandma was sitting on the recliner with her feet up. She was decked out in a man’s navy blue suit and was wearing a Richard Nixon mask as she read the paper.

  “Those boneheads in Washington have done it again,” she said. “In my time, we knew how to set a tough foreign policy agenda.”

  There was a time when I didn’t quite understand my grandmother’s habit of assuming other identities, but since my conversation with her a few weeks back, it now made perfect sense. When she and Eugene teamed up after the war to start up their own private detective agency, Grandma spent a lot of time undercover, and that meant new personalities whenever necessary. This was an unusual look, but I kind of liked it.

  With remote in hand, a familiar sight, my dad changed the channel to the late news. A report on the robbery was just beginning.

  “That’s it,” my mom said. “That’s what I was telling you about.”

  “I wonder if they’ll show you and Gram,” I said.

  My dad turned up the volume.

  “Police are reporting that two masked men held up a beauty parlor in downtown Oak Grove earlier this afternoon,” the news anchor said. “Many of the patrons at Trudy’s Salon on Grainger Street were unaware of what had taken place. The robbers, whose faces were covered with ski masks, demanded all of the cash in the register.”

  A video clip accompanied the story. It showed the outside of Trudy’s, confused bystanders on the sidewalk, customers milling around inside the shop, and police dusting for fingerprints and ended with a short sound bite from Shirley Watson, the clerk on duty at the time.

  “It all happened so fast,” Shirley said. “Before I knew it, they were in the shop and demanding money. I thought it best to give them what they wanted. I don’t think they got more than about a hundred and fifty dollars. It was all so scary.”

  “Were you able to offer a description to the police?” a reporter asked.

  “Like I said, it all went down in less than a minute,” Shirley said. “I don’t remember anything about them.”

  “She’s an idiot,” Gram shouted as she ripped off the Nixon mask. “Open your eyes, for Pete’s sake.”

  “This is the third robbery of this nature in the past two weeks,” the news anchor said. “Thieves, dressed in a similar manner, also hit Man’s Best Friends, a pet shop on North Ellsworth Street, early last week. Eyewitness reports suggest that the suspects may be juveniles.”

  I immediately looked in Gram’s direction.

  She nodded and winked. She hadn’t missed a thing while at the beauty shop.

  “Police are making an attempt to connect these crimes but as of today have been unable to do so,” the newsman concluded. “All of these robberies remain unsolved.”

  My dad clicked the mute button on the remote.

  “What’s going on here?” he said.

  “I can’t believe this,” my mother said. “Who’d think that something like this could happen in little Oak Grove, Illinois? It makes me afraid to go out.”

  “Don’t worry,” Gram said. “The police’ll solve it.” She glanced at me and smi
led. “Or somebody else will.”

  The next day at school was relatively uneventful. I found myself thinking a lot about the recent rash of robberies in the area and about how my grandmother was suggesting that the Charlie Collier, Snoop for Hire agency should take on the case. Without a paying client, however, I knew that Henry would never be interested. I, on the other hand, had no problem with pro bono work. Sometimes you just had to pitch in for the common good even if you didn’t get paid.

  I wasn’t sure why I kept coming back to this case. I thought I had talked myself out of even considering it. I guess I just didn’t want to disappoint Grandma. But I really wasn’t sure if I wanted to commit my friends to such a high-profile case—one that was sure to involve some personal danger. I just didn’t know what to do.

  As we entered Mrs. Jansen’s science class, the last period of the day, Scarlett tapped me on the shoulder.

  “So are we on for today or not?” she asked.

  I turned to Henry, who was listening in.

  “The appointment calendar is empty,” he said.

  “Well, then I’ll assume I have the rest of the afternoon to myself,” she said.

  “Don’t forget about possible walk-ins,” Henry said. “You don’t want to miss out on a killer case just because you were wasting your time doing your nails or something equally lame.”

  I was just about to don my referee shirt when Mrs. Jansen conveniently intervened.

  “Okay, kids, please take your seats,” she said.

  Scarlett glared in Henry’s direction as she walked to her desk.

  “I’ve got a little brainteaser for you today,” Mrs. Jansen said. “And it has to do with the theory of gravity.”

  As was usually the case, whenever Mrs. Jansen uttered the word brainteaser, half the class looked in my direction. Some smiled. These were the ones who enjoyed watching my powers of deduction in action. Then there were the others—the ones who scowled at me. These were the kids who would have loved nothing better than to see me fall flat on my face. To be honest, I had gotten pretty used to their reactions over the years. For the last couple of weeks, however, things seemed to have gotten better. After successfully cracking the birdnapping caper, the legions of jealous classmates had diminished. But it appeared that the honeymoon was over. They were back, and their forces seemed to have grown.

  “Let’s refresh our study of gravity for a moment,” Mrs. Jansen said. “Who can give me a working definition?”

  Stephanie Martin, one of those annoying kids who nods and smiles all the time when the teacher is speaking, raised her hand.

  “Yes, Stephanie,” Mrs. Jansen said.

  Stephanie jumped to her feet. “Well, if I understand it correctly, gravity is the natural force of attraction between any two massive bodies, which is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Will that do?”

  Mrs. Jansen smiled. “That was actually a little more than I was looking for, but I’ll take it.”

  Stephanie sat back down and continued nodding. She just couldn’t help herself.

  “And who can tell me the name of the seventeenth-century mathematician and scientist we most associate with the theories of universal gravitation?” Mrs. Jansen asked.

  Stephanie didn’t wait for her name to be called. She shot up, nearly knocking her desk over in the process.

  “That would be Sir Isaac Newton,” she said.

  “Very good, Stephanie. But remember to wait to be called on next time, okay?”

  Stephanie nodded. What else would you expect?

  “Okay, here we go,” Mrs. Jansen began. “How many of you like to ski?”

  A few hands went up.

  “And how many of you would consider yourselves hikers?”

  A few more hands were now raised.

  “Well, imagine this. You’re skiing or hiking down a snow-covered mountain when you look behind you and see a wall of snow coming right at you. You find yourself in the midst of an avalanche, and there’s no escaping it. Before you know what’s happened, you’re buried alive.”

  Gasps filled the room.

  I closed my eyes. I wanted to get the full effect. It always made it easier to figure out a brain buster when I imagined being right in the middle of it.

  “And you know that you’ll never survive unless you get out from under that drift,” Mrs. Jansen continued. “You frantically start to dig your way out…but there’s just one problem—you don’t know which way is up. For all you know, you may be digging into the side of the mountain. But if you were really clever, you would know which way to dig.” Mrs. Jansen smiled and leaned against the blackboard.

  It didn’t take me long to figure it out. I looked around the room for hands to go up. At first there were none.

  “Oh, what the heck,” Henry whispered from the seat behind me. He slowly raised his hand.

  “Henry, what do you think?” Mrs. Jansen said.

  Henry stood. “Well, if I didn’t know where to begin, I’d start digging in equal directions all the way around me. Then I’d stop every couple of minutes and see if I could hear sounds from any particular direction. As soon as I did, then that’s where I’d concentrate on my digging.”

  “But what if there were no sounds?” Mrs. Jansen said. “What if no one knew you were buried? And don’t you think that before you could dig in all directions, you’d probably run out of air?”

  Henry knew he had missed the mark, but he had no intention of surrendering the floor. “I can hold my breath a pretty long time,” he said. “I might just be able to pull it off.”

  “And you might not,” Mrs. Jansen replied. “We’re actually looking for something else…but nice try.”

  Henry dropped down into his seat. I could tell he was seething. It wasn’t that he couldn’t accept defeat, but he always hated it whenever someone said “nice try.” To him that meant “you’re wasting my time, loser.” But I thought that whenever Mrs. Jansen used those words, it was as if she was saying “now, that was a well-constructed hypothesis, but it came up just a hair short.” Henry, however, would never buy that.

  “I can’t believe no one knows this one,” Mrs. Jansen said. “I’ll give you a little hint—think about the topic that we were talking about right before I posed this scenario. Gravity?”

  I was just about to raise my hand when I realized that I might not have to. If past performance was any indicator, I’d get a chance to speak up—Mrs. Jansen always eventually looked to me if she’d stumped the class. Then it wouldn’t seem as though I was in a hurry to show up my classmates. It would be almost as if I had no choice. No one could blame me for that.

  “Well, it looks like I’m going to have to give you the answer,” she said.

  What was she doing? What about me? She was supposed to ask me now. She just couldn’t assume that no one in the room could solve her brain buster. Why wouldn’t she just ask me? I wasn’t sure what to do. It would just kill me to hear her rattle off the same answer that I would happily have supplied had she only asked. Whenever I was faced with a dilemma of this nature, I would always think about Sam Solomon. What would Sam have done in a situation like this? I immediately thought of Episode #22—The Reign in Spain Caper.

  This was the story of a deposed Spanish prince who narrowly escaped a murder plot and was now seeking asylum in the US. The prince had hired Sam to find out who had tried to kill him. When Sam determined the identity of the assailant, he didn’t want to tell his client. It turned out to be his twin brother, born only minutes after the prince, who because of that was second in line for the throne as long as his brother was alive. Sam knew that if he told the prince who had actually hatched the plot, it would break his heart. The two boys had been inseparable their entire lives. But Sam also knew that as painful as it might be, he owed it to the client to share this information with him.

  So there you go. Problem solved. Sometimes you have to speak up. You can’t with
hold the truth just because someone might not want to hear it. It was your obligation.

  “Well, I’m a little disappointed no one could figure this one out,” Mrs. Jansen said, “but here’s what you would do.”

  “Wait!” I yelled as I jumped to my feet. At that moment, there was complete silence in the room. Everyone, and I mean everyone, looked right at me.

  “Yes, Charlie?” Mrs. Jansen said.

  “Can I take a shot at this one?” I asked.

  “Why, of course. I didn’t see your hand up, so I assumed I had stumped you too.”

  Not a chance, ma’am. I’m Charlie Collier, Snoop for Hire. This happens to be my business.

  “So,” Mrs. Jansen said, “you’re buried alive in an avalanche. How do you know which direction to dig?”

  I glanced back at Henry. Even he rolled his eyes. But that was okay. We’d been playing this game with each other for years. He could handle it.

  “Well, first of all, I’d clear a little bit of the snow away from my face. And then I’d do something that I would never do at school.” I noticed a few eyebrows rising when I said that. “I would spit—and then whichever direction it went, I would know that was down. Then I’d just dig in the opposite direction. And that would be up.”

  Mrs. Jansen smiled. “And there you have it—gravity. It might just save your life someday.”

  I dropped down into my seat. Mrs. Jansen continued her lecture on the theory of universal gravitation, and little attention was focused on me for the remainder of the period. What a relief. I had demonstrated my heightened powers of deduction once again and had lived to tell about it.

  Henry and I met up at the bus stop after school. We saw Scarlett walking in the opposite direction. With no pending appointments, she must have felt that her services weren’t needed. If someone did happen to walk into the garage and she wasn’t there, it wouldn’t be as if we were working with a handicap or anything. That was how it had been for a long time, and we had done just fine.

  Since my mom had rescheduled Grandma’s appointment at the beauty parlor for this afternoon, Henry and I were certain that we would be able to open the agency for at least a couple of hours before they returned. We didn’t expect Mom and Gram to surprise us again. It was unlikely that anything like a robbery would ever happen again at the same location. It seemed safe enough to proceed.