“That could work,” Victor said diplomatically. “Or maybe we could just tell them the truth — we know they bought the right kind of ticket from the right store on the right day and we’re worried that they might be missing out on a big prize.”
“That isn’t very dramatic,” Logan pointed out.
“It could be,” Victor reasoned. “Can you imagine some lady finding a thirty-million-dollar ticket in her junk drawer?”
“That would be life-changing,” Logan agreed, warming to the idea. “Like reality TV. Sometimes the greatest acting is just being yourself.”
Two blocks to the east, Savannah and Melissa were approaching the second address on the list. Savannah carried Penelope in her arms. “You’ll see,” she promised. “People are much friendlier when you have an animal with you.”
And it worked. The first words out of Mrs. Alastair’s mouth were “What a lovely cat!”
In no time at all, Penelope was lapping at a saucer of milk, and Savannah was explaining about the missing lottery ticket and the huge prize that was set to expire. Melissa was content to let her partner do all the talking. She was much more comfortable interacting with a computer than with actual humans.
Mrs. Alastair listened patiently and then said, “That’s lovely, dear, but I’m not your big winner.”
“How can you be sure?” Savannah pressed. “It was almost a year ago.”
In answer, Mrs. Alastair led them through the neat house to an unused bedroom at the rear. The girls stared. The room was crisscrossed with old-fashioned clothesline. Each pin — and there were hundreds — held a ticket. The lines were marked by lottery name — Lotto, Powerball, Giga-Millions. She went straight to October and found the October 6 drawing. “I keep these,” she explained, “so I never have to worry that an unclaimed prize might be mine. You see?” She handed the small slip to Savannah. “Not a single number. Just my luck.”
Not far away, Pitch took notice when the name Amelia Alastair was erased from the master list on her phone.
“Another one bites the dust,” she commented. “And Mr. de Palma comes off, too. That makes it — eleven down, thirty-six to go.”
“I’ve got flat feet,” Ben complained. “And my butt hurts. My bike seat wasn’t meant to carry me to Green Hollow every day after school.”
“Thirty millions bucks buys a lot of bike seats,” Pitch assured him. “You can get a gold-plated one.”
Ben made a face. “If we’d found that ticket in the pocket of Mr. de Palma’s old bathrobe, the money would be his, not ours.”
Pitch shrugged. “Maybe we’ll get a reward or a finder’s fee.”
“Maybe!” Ben spat with such disgust that Ferret Face came up to investigate the disturbance. “Can you imagine Griffin basing an operation on maybe? The whole point of planning is that you know for sure!”
Pitch nodded sympathetically. “I miss him, too, you know. We all do. But remember, nobody kicked him out, not even Victor. He kicked himself out.”
Ben had no answer. It was the plain, unvarnished truth. It was Griffin’s own stubbornness that had caused this terrible rift. The same strength of character that enabled him to push a plan through to fruition by sheer force of will also made him a mule.
In a weird way, The Man With The Plan cast a larger shadow in his absence than when he was actually there. Walking up to the houses on the suspect list, Ben’s first thought was always How would Griffin approach this? Griffin seemed to be looking out at him from the family portraits that hung in the houses they visited. A couple of times, he was positive he’d seen Griffin’s bike sail by on the street — as if his friend had nothing better to do than ride around Green Hollow.
“Okay, next house,” said Pitch, consulting her phone. “Forty-four Spruce Lane.”
“Let’s go,” sighed Ben.
Kid, I wasn’t born yesterday,” the man told Griffin. “As soon as I heard how much money was at stake, I checked my storage locker. I went through the glove compartment of my car, and all the pockets of all my jackets. I even went through my wife’s handbags, and let me tell you, that’s more debris than gets kicked up by a tsunami. And you know what the answer is? Whoever that missing winner is, he’s not me.”
“I know you think you searched everywhere,” Griffin pressed, “but sometimes a fresh pair of eyes can spot something you might not notice because you know your own stuff too well.”
The man shook his head in exasperation. “Why can’t you kids just sell candy bars, like in the old days? The other one drove me crazy, too — ‘Did you check the crawl space, did you check the septic tank, did you check the underwear drawer?’ ”
“The other one?” Griffin was instantly alert. “Someone else was asking about the ticket?”
“Yeah, about half an hour ago. Another kid your age, same nosy questions, also trying to make me rich.”
“Can you describe him?” Griffin persisted.
“Did it ever occur to you that I don’t like being reminded that I bought a ticket on the right day from the right place, but I can’t remember whether I checked it or not? I probably did — I always used to. But it’s something you don’t like to think about — especially when a new kid comes every half hour to bug you. Now please go away.”
Shut out on the front porch with the door slammed behind him, The Man With The Plan took a single piece of information from the man’s rant: Somebody else was asking about the ticket.
It could be only one person: Darren Vader. He hadn’t given up on the plan. He was going solo so he wouldn’t have to split the reward money!
In an instant, Griffin was back on his bike, pedaling toward town and Mike’s Woodstock Market. “Mike! Mike!” he exclaimed, bursting into the store.
The tall, thin hippie storekeeper was behind the counter, finishing up with a customer. “Would you like some aromatherapy candles to go with that?” he inquired.
The woman stared at him. “With Band-Aids?”
“Serenity heals better than any medicine,” Mike lectured. “At Woodstock, there were babies born with nothing more than rainwater and paper towels. But there was spiritual energy everywhere.”
The customer left hurriedly, and Mike turned his attention to Griffin. “What can I do for you, man?”
“Remember Darren?” Griffin asked. “The kid who was with me the first time I came in here?”
“Sure,” the storekeeper replied. “I just watched the video of that visit. Ever since you showed me how to access the footage from my security camera, I’ve been kind of hooked on it. You know, I think Mick Jagger might have come in here once to buy Maalox. I can’t believe I didn’t recognize him.”
“But have you seen him in person?” Griffin probed. “Darren, I mean — not Mick Jagger.”
Mike shook his shaggy head. “Not since the day you young dudes came in together and taught me to watch the video. It’s a groovy way to pass the downtime. Want to check it out?”
“Maybe later,” Griffin acknowledged absently. He understood that Operation Jackpot had just been transformed in a fundamental way. The ticking clock was no longer his only enemy.
If Griffin had accepted Mike’s invitation to view the security video on the computer, he would have seen something that would have shocked him to his core — Victor Phoenix, leading Pitch, Savannah, Logan, Melissa, and Ben into the market to stock up on drinks for the ticket hunt.
Time stamp: barely an hour ago.
* * *
Darren Vader polished off the last huge bite of his breakfast burrito and tossed the greasy wrapper to the floor, in spite of the fact that there was a trash can barely a foot away. “It’s good for the tiles,” he offered to a group of seventh-grade girls who were passing by.
At peace with the world, he strolled up to his locker, fed in the combination, and opened the door. A sheet of paper floated down and landed at his feet.
It was unsigned, but the handwriting was unmistakably that of Griffin Bing.
Darren’s first instinc
t was to panic. How could Griffin possibly have found out that Darren had recruited Victor and the team to join the search? That would have taken not one but two blabbermouths — first Victor would have had to blab to the others that Darren was his silent partner. And second, one of them would have had to blab that to Griffin. It was possible, but not very likely. The odds were that Griffin didn’t have the whole picture.
Yet, with a sinking heart, Darren realized that it didn’t matter how wrong Griffin happened to be. He was mad, and he was close, which meant he would make good on his threat to keep Darren from profiting from the missing ticket.
The thought of all that money floating around, and none of it sticking to him, made Darren’s burrito turn to stone in his stomach.
He caught up with Victor in the east stairwell outside the science lab.
“Oh, hi, Darren. How’s it going?”
Darren waited for the stairwell to clear out. “How’s the search coming?” he asked finally.
“Pretty well,” Victor replied. “We’ve checked almost all the names on Melissa’s list, but so far, no luck.”
“What do you mean, ‘no luck’?” Darren demanded. “What’s luck got to do with it? This is supposed to be scientific! We’ve got every person who bought a ticket on that day! Sooner or later, the right guy has to come up!”
Victor Phoenix felt a nagging sense that he had been down this road before. Darren was right up in his face, and his tone was forceful and unpleasant.
“Well,” Victor began, “there are a few addresses that we’ve hit but we couldn’t find anyone home. And, of course, there’s always the real possibility that the ticket just doesn’t exist anymore —”
“No, man!” Darren cut him off. “You’re thinking like a loser! The ticket is out there — I can taste it! And we’ve only got two days left!”
Victor backed up a step, and found himself pressed against the banister. The déjà vu was undeniable. He might as well have been back at Bass Junction, getting harassed and intimidated. This was not what he expected from Darren, who’d made an impassioned speech about bullying on one of Victor’s first days in Cedarville. This was not what he expected from the boy who’d stood up to Griffin Bing.
Maybe he’d been wrong to trust Darren. Maybe things in Cedarville were not what they seemed.
Twenty-four hours to go.
The rules were fair, Melissa reflected. A year to cash in a lottery ticket. Who could possibly need longer than that?
Yet tomorrow, at six p.m., nearly thirty million dollars would turn to dust.
It was more than just a big number. It was a dream home, a college education, a trip around the world — and not just for one person, but for whole families, and for generations to come. It could be devoted to a worthy cause, like a major donation to charity. It could buy a Maserati for someone who was keeping an old clunker alive on a wing and a prayer. It could purchase life-saving surgery, or be used to fill Madison Square Garden with peanut brittle. In the end, it didn’t matter if it would be spent wisely or frittered away on nonsense. It belonged to somebody, and it was going to waste.
All these thoughts whirled through Melissa’s head as she sat in stiff-necked misery, in her least comfortable dress, trying to enjoy Aunt Chrisoula’s roast lamb. Here it was, the next to last day, and was she in Green Hollow with Victor and the team? No, she was at a birthday party for a seventy-nine-year-old lady who barely spoke English.
Thanks to Melissa’s facial recognition software, they had a name and address for every Giga-Millions customer on the video from Mike’s Woodstock Market. But that had left them with too many suspects, and not enough time to check them out. Now they were down to the wire, with fourteen names still on the list. Would the clock run out on them?
She could be sure of only one thing: Her place was on the search with the others.
They needed Griffin. Victor was a great guy, but he wasn’t The Man With The Plan. No one was. Griffin had come up with some harebrained schemes before, but never once had he let a plan crash and burn.
How could they ever have turned their backs on him?
“Melissa, what have you got there?” Mr. Dukakis asked irritably.
“Nothing, Dad.”
Her mother emitted a long-suffering sigh. “Oh, I don’t think it’s nothing. You’ve got your phone hidden in your napkin. I don’t suppose it would help if I told you that there’s a real world that exists outside of cyberspace.”
Okay, she was caught. But how else was she going to keep track of the progress of the search? She’d created this app for all the team members so that, when a suspect was eliminated, the list would be shortened for everyone.
“I’ll turn it off, Mom.” She meant it. But she didn’t say when.
As the family sang “Happy Birthday” to Aunt Chrisoula, Victor texted to say they were packing it in for the night. Tomorrow was expiration day, and the app still showed eleven names.
Yet it was the weekend, so the team planned an all-out last-ditch effort.
There might still be time.
* * *
For Darren, October 6 dawned like the day of his own funeral.
The instant he woke up and looked at the clock, he calculated the minutes to Zero Hour. And it really was Zero Hour — the moment when all that money became zero. 7:28 a.m. That meant — he calculated furiously — 632 minutes to go.
No, 631. He’d wasted a precious minute doing the math.
“I made your favorite for breakfast,” his mother greeted him as he hauled himself downstairs. “Silver dollar pancakes.”
“I hate them!” he snapped, picturing thirty million of the things. “I never want them again!”
He couldn’t think about money. And that was a problem, because money was what he thought about all the time.
Eleven names to go …
No, don’t get your hopes up! The letdown would tear open his soul. Especially if Bing got the money, and Darren didn’t —
Not possible! The world could never be so cruel!
The TV was set on the Game Show Network — people trying to win money! He hurled the remote across the room.
“I need to run to the bank,” his father said. “Want to come along for the ride?”
“Oh, no!” Darren groaned. “No! No! Please, no!”
“What’s with you?” Mr. Vader demanded. “I’m just going to get some cash.”
Darren wheeled away from his father and stumbled back upstairs. Once in his room, he did what he had promised himself he would not do — he checked the app Melissa had created to track the search for the ticket. What? He counted the names again. Ten! That meant the team was out there bright and early, and they had eliminated another suspect!
If they’ve made this much progress already …
Stop it! he exhorted himself. He couldn’t drive himself crazy with pipe dreams of money he would never possess.
Yet, as the day went on, the phone kept beckoning. By lunchtime, only eight names remained on the list. By two o’clock, it was down to five.
Five! He couldn’t believe his eyes as he stared at the small screen. This changed everything! Victor and those boneheads were too dumb to know it couldn’t be done, and they were doing it!
I’ve got to get in on this!
How Darren managed to make it to Green Hollow on his bike without killing himself would forever stand as one of life’s miracles. In spite of all safety rules, he kept checking the app, pedaling without looking. When the count went down to four suspects, he rear-ended a Nassau County bus, and very nearly blew a tire against its bumper. When it hit three, he jumped the curb and wiped out in a field of ragweed. But not even the spasms of sneezing put an end to his frantic journey.
When the remaining names dwindled to two, he was already inside the Green Hollow town limits. He dropped his phone and cracked the screen by stepping on it when he stooped to retrieve it. The damage barely registered with him. In his mind he was buying a hundred new ones.
Two suspects. It had to be one or the other. The possibility that neither had the ticket was too horrible for him to contemplate. Nothing could be that unfair. For more than thirteen years, Darren Vader had waited to strike it rich. This had to be his moment.
He stashed his battered bike in the rack at the Green Hollow train station and made for Mike’s Woodstock Market. As he ran, he checked the app one final time, which nearly caused him to collide with a No Parking sign. What he saw on the cracked monitor very nearly put his fluttering heart into cardiac arrest.
Victor and the team had done it! They had narrowed the search down to a single name.
Grant Bruckman, 214 Kiwi Lane.
He could have kissed Victor Phoenix right then, and even Pitch, Savannah, Logan, Melissa, and Ben. Sure, they were Bing’s ex-posse, and probably hated Darren a lot. But they’d really come through this time. And thirty million bucks bought a lot of forgiveness.
Well, they had served their purpose, and they were out of it now. There was a big prize to be had, and Darren intended to have it all.
The problem was those guys were probably already pedaling for Kiwi Lane, wherever that was. They had a big head start, and the only way to beat them to the punch was with a car. There were no two ways about it — he needed an adult.
He burst into the market. “Mike! Mike!” He stared at the teenage girl behind the cash register. “Where’s Mike! Don’t tell me he isn’t here!”
She snapped her gum and pointed to the back of the store, where the lanky shopkeeper was stacking boxes of diapers. He glanced up at Darren. “There you are. The other young dude was looking for you.”
“Never mind that!” Darren rasped. “I know who has the ticket! You need to drive me before somebody else gets there first!”
Mike continued to work on his pyramid of Pampers. “That’s really not my thing, man. Money just messes with your head. Look at yourself. It’s harshing your whole view of the universe.”
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