by Stuart Gibbs
“Thanks,” Summer said.
We were heading for the room when we heard voices coming from J.J.’s office. I could recognize J.J. easily, though the other voice was unfamiliar to me. Whoever was speaking was a woman with an extremely strong Southern accent.
Summer paused, so I did the same thing.
Lynda quickly closed the window on her computer screen displaying the interview with Walter Ogilvy, as though she didn’t want J.J. to catch her watching it.
A second later, J.J. exited his office. The woman with the Southern accent turned out to be Chinese. She was only about J.J.’s height, which was shorter than Summer, although she was wearing five-inch heels, so she towered above him. She had a lot of makeup pancaked on her face, and she wore a business suit that looked like it cost a few thousand dollars.
Four other Chinese people were with them, two men and two women. They were all older and wizened and wore traditional Chinese clothing: red jackets for the men and long red dresses for the women, all gaily embroidered with flowers and birds.
“I know it’s a great deal of money,” the woman was telling J.J. “But I also know you have insurance for exactly this sort of scenario. So you won’t eat the cost anyhow.”
“For the last time, Emily,” J.J. replied. “This is out of my hands. The FBI is on the case, and they’re telling me not to pay the ransom. That’s federal policy for dealing with these things. If I pay it, it only encourages similar crimes down the line.”
“This isn’t a crime against an American citizen,” Emily warned him. “Li Ping is Chinese. You have a lot of business interests in China, J.J. If you don’t want any trouble with them, then I suggest you do whatever it takes to get that panda back.”
J.J. looked extremely concerned by this statement, but then noticed Summer and me. He quickly broke into a big smile, putting on an act. “Hey kids, this is Emily Sun. She works for the Chinese Consulate in Houston. Emily, this is my daughter, Summer, and her good friend Theodore Fitzroy.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet both of you,” Emily said sweetly, as though she hadn’t been threatening J.J. a few seconds before.
“Nice to meet you, too,” I said.
Summer said something along the same lines, though she didn’t seem to mean it.
The other four Chinese people bowed to us politely. I got the impression that none of them spoke English.
“I’ll bet you’re wondering about my accent,” Emily said. “Everyone does.”
“I’m guessing you grew up around here,” I said. “Your drawl is really similar to his.”
Emily looked impressed. “That’s exactly right. My parents immigrated here just before I was born. I was raised in San Antonio. In fact, I’ve never even lived in China.”
“And China still lets you represent them?” Summer asked.
Emily laughed. “I still have Chinese citizenship. Although that’s not even a requirement for my job.”
“Speaking of your job, I know you have a very busy schedule today,” J.J. said, nice and friendly, although it seemed like he was trying to get rid of Emily as fast as he could. “I greatly appreciate you making the time to stop by. . . .”
“Can the snake oil,” Emily told him, dropping the friendly act. “And get Li Ping back.” With that, she spun on her stiletto heels and marched to the elevator.
The other four Chinese people bowed to us once again, then followed her.
The moment Emily’s back was turned, J.J. sagged. He looked as exhausted as Juan did. The events of the day seemed to have taken a lot out of him.
“She came all the way from Houston just to ride you about Li Ping?” Summer asked.
“No,” J.J. said. “She was already here. For the sanctification ceremony for Panda Palace.”
“Oh,” Summer said, like she understood.
I didn’t, though. “What sanctification ceremony?”
“The Chinese take their pandas very seriously,” J.J. explained. “We’re contractually bound to do all sorts of ceremonial things. Like, if we have a panda cub born, we have to wait a hundred days to name it in accordance with Chinese tradition. That whole gang is staying at the FunJungle Safari Lodge. They were going to sanctify the palace for Li Ping’s arrival today . . .”
“Only, Li Ping didn’t arrive,” Summer finished.
“Exactly.” J.J. sighed, then noticed Lynda signaling to him. She pointed to the phone, indicating he had many calls to make. J.J. turned back to Summer. “Sorry, sweetheart, but I don’t have time to chat right now. Word of Li Ping’s disappearance got out and I’m swamped up to my eyeballs. In fact, there’s a good chance I’m gonna be working straight through dinner tonight.”
“I figured as much,” Summer said. “Teddy and I only came up here to get some schoolwork done. We were looking for a little quiet and some air-conditioning.”
“I told them they could use the small office,” Lynda said.
“Great,” J.J. agreed, though he seemed distracted, like his mind was already a hundred other places. “Just be careful with all the stuff in there, okay?” He then asked Lynda, “What’s going on with the feds?”
“I haven’t heard a peep out of them in over an hour,” Lynda reported. “They’re still in there with the other driver.”
J.J. looked at Juan, who had remained sound asleep on the couch despite everything that had happened. J.J. looked envious of the man. “Call Harry Boudreaux from my insurance company,” he told Lynda. “I don’t care where he is or who he’s meeting with. I need to talk to him now.” Then he went back into his office and shut the door.
Summer looked after him for a moment, then whispered to me, “C’mon. Let’s find that panda fast so Daddy doesn’t have to deal with this anymore.” She purposefully strode into the small office.
I tailed after her and shut the door behind us.
The small office wasn’t really that small; it was merely dwarfed by J.J.’s enormous office next door. At the moment, it was being used to plan the newest section of FunJungle, the Wilds. While the rest of the park was designed as a zoo with a few somewhat educational thrill rides, the Wilds was going to be an unabashed amusement park. Blueprints and scale models were scattered about a table in the center. There was a river-rafting adventure that would send guests through manmade rapids; a terrifying-looking ride called Condor Strike that would simply lift guests twenty stories into the air and then drop them; and the Black Mamba, a big, elaborate roller coaster that looked like it was being eaten by a giant snake. (The first hill sent guests into the creature’s mouth and then they’d careen through the darkness in its belly.)
Construction of the Wilds was already underway; J.J. wanted to have the rides open as soon as possible. Through the window, I could see all the way across the park to its location: a large brown scar on the earth where all the trees had been scraped off. (My family’s trailer—as well as those of everyone else in FunJungle employee housing—had been removed from this area as well.) Bulldozers, cement trucks, and other construction vehicles trundled across it while two cranes maneuvered loads of stone and iron around. The steel frame of the Black Mamba jutted into the air, and there was a wide, snaking, cement-lined gouge for the Raging Raft Ride.
Summer signaled me to be quiet with a finger to her lips, then leaned against the office wall. I followed her lead, and her plan instantly became clear: We could hear Molly grilling Greg, the truck driver, in the conference room next door.
“So you drove the first shift from San Diego,” Molly was saying, “then made a pit stop in Las Cruces around midnight, after which Juan took the second shift.”
“That’s correct,” Greg replied. “He slept while I drove and I slept while he drove.”
“And the only time you stopped on that entire drive was in Las Cruces?”
“Just like I’ve said a dozen times.” Greg sounded extremely annoyed. “We were hungry and we all had to pee. So we pulled in at a truck stop to get some food and do our business. . . .”
&nb
sp; “Doc Deakin included?”
“Yeah, he got out there too.”
“So you all left the panda alone?”
“No. I kept an eye on the truck while everyone else went inside, and then when Juan came back from the john, I went in.”
“So, if anyone had approached the truck during that time . . . ,” Molly began.
“We would have seen them,” Greg finished. “Nothing happened to the panda while we were there, I swear. She was still in the truck when we left.”
“You know that for sure?”
“Absolutely. I locked her and Doc back inside myself.”
“And after that, you all drove straight here?” Molly sounded skeptical.
“Why is that so hard to believe?” Greg asked.
“Because the idea of someone swiping a giant panda and a human being from a moving truck without anyone on that truck noticing sounds impossible.”
“Well, it obviously isn’t impossible, because it happened.”
“How?” Molly demanded.
“They’d need to rig up another vehicle to make the attack, but it could be done,” Greg explained. “One person would drive it while a team of other people would attack our truck from it.”
“You mean, like some sort of Mad Max kind of thing?”
“Something like that. They’d need a platform built out onto the hood of the attack vehicle so that the kidnappers could stand on it. The driver of that vehicle would pull up close behind our truck. Then, someone on the platform would blow the lock on the rear doors. Once those were open, the attack team could enter the truck by leaping into it from the platform. They grab the vet and the panda and unload them back onto the attack vehicle, which then veers off and takes them away.”
“And this is all done while both vehicles are traveling at seventy-five miles an hour?” Molly didn’t sound convinced.
“I said it was possible,” Greg replied. “I didn’t say it would be easy.”
There was a long pause. It seemed Molly was mulling all this over.
I stepped to the window and looked outside. The panda truck was parked almost directly below us. It had been moved from the veterinary hospital loading dock to the exterior fence of the park. From my angle, I couldn’t see much of it except for the gray roof.
An FBI mobile crime unit was now parked next to it. I could tell this because it had “FBI Mobile Crime Unit” painted on the roof. Obviously, it wasn’t designed to be a covert vehicle.
Summer waved me back to the wall. Molly had resumed her questioning.
“So, let’s say this amazingly acrobatic high-speed assault actually happened,” she said, not bothering to hide the disdain in her voice. “You really think it could all be done without alerting the people in the cab of the panda truck?”
“I know it could,” Greg said. “Because none of us were alerted. I didn’t wake up, and neither Juan nor your sister heard anything.”
“My sister isn’t exactly a top-notch law officer,” Molly said.
“That’s not what she told us,” Greg countered. “She said she was some kind of elite zoo law-enforcement commando.”
“Did she really?” Molly sounded amused.
“That’s right. She said she was only pretending to be a security guard, but that she actually worked for the Federal Animal Protection Service or something like that. She said she was like James Bond and Jason Bourne rolled into one.”
There was a noise I couldn’t quite recognize in the conference room. It might have been Molly O’Malley laughing.
“My sister was blowing smoke,” she said. “She is not an elite anything. She is a security guard, and not even a very good one. Meanwhile, your buddy Juan out there has been driving a truck for sixteen years. You’d think he’d have noticed if someone was making a full-scale assault on his truck while he was at the wheel.”
“Not if whoever attacked it did it right.”
“Or maybe Juan noticed and simply didn’t say anything.”
When Greg spoke again, he sounded even angrier than before. “Are you accusing Juan of being part of this?”
“It makes sense,” Molly replied. “If he was in cahoots with the perpetrators, he could let them know when you were asleep, maybe even slow the truck down to aid their attack. . . .”
“Juan would never do that. He’s not a criminal.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“Go get me a Bible and I’ll swear on it. I’ve known him for ten years, and the guy’s as honest as they come. He’s never even run a stop sign.”
“Everyone has their tipping point. A piece of ten million dollars is a big incentive.”
“Not for Juan.”
“You really expect me to believe a man with that much driving experience wouldn’t notice an attack like this?”
“I don’t know what you think driving a big rig is like,” Greg growled, “but it’s a whole different ballgame than driving a car. A truck is big and loud and it takes concentration. A lot of concentration. We’re not just sitting in that cab, playing travel bingo and singing show tunes like this is some holiday road trip. We have to be focused at all times. And it’s ten times worse at night, especially out on those highways where it’s pitch-black and there’s no light except for our headlamps. If some idiot cuts us off or a deer runs in front of us, we’ve got a split second to respond or else that truck ends up jackknifed across the freeway. Plus, there can be some nasty wind shear on that stretch of I-10. A big gust can come out of nowhere, and if you’re not ready for it, the truck goes over and your precious panda ends up splattered all over the fast lane. So Juan would have had plenty on his mind during that drive. Your sister was the one who was supposed to be on the alert for any trouble. So if you want to start pointing fingers at people, maybe you ought to start with her.”
There was another pause. When Molly spoke again, she didn’t sound nearly as antagonistic as she had before. “Just so you know, I run a tight ship here. Marjorie hasn’t escaped suspicion because she’s my sister.”
“I’ll bet,” Greg scoffed.
“I assure you, if I find that my sister is complicit in all this, I will treat her like any other criminal. I will arrest her and prosecute her to the full extent of the law.”
A phone rang, interrupting the conversation. We heard Molly answer it. “Agent O’Malley speaking. . . . Where? . . . Okay, I’ll be right there.” She hung up, then said, “Mr. Jefferson, I need to go. Agent Chen here will continue your questioning.”
“We’re not done?” Greg groaned. “How many more questions could you possibly have? How much longer is this going to go on?”
Molly didn’t answer him. Instead, we heard her gathering her things.
Summer bolted out the door of the small office. I followed her lead.
Summer quickly sat in the waiting area outside J.J.’s office, acting like she’d been there all along, and motioned for me to do the same.
I sat, and a second later, Molly exited the conference room. Behind her, I saw Agent Chen, one of the men who had been on the helicopter with her that morning, seated at the table across from Greg. I realized I had yet to hear Agent Chen say a single word.
Molly glanced at Summer and me suspiciously, then let it go and turned her attention to Lynda. “I need to see J.J. right now,” she announced.
“Mr. McCracken is on a very important phone call,” Lynda informed her.
“Interrupt it,” Molly told her. “We found his veterinarian.”
DOC
“Where was he?” J.J. asked, tailing Molly through the lobby of the administration building.
“Your own parking lot,” Molly replied. “The Zoe Zebra section.”
“Zelda,” Summer corrected. We were following the adults.
Molly looked at Summer, confused. “What?”
“The character’s name is Zelda Zebra,” Summer explained. “All the sections of the parking lot are named in alphabetical order so the guests can remember where they parked.
Zelda Zebra is the farthest from the front gates, because it’s Z.”
“I thought I made it clear I didn’t want you kids hanging around this investigation,” Molly said.
“This is no time to get territorial,” J.J. told her. “Doc’s a friend of theirs. They deserve to know what happened to him.”
Molly looked like she wanted to argue this, then decided not to. “Right. It was the farthest section of the parking lot, away from the crowds. He was dumped on the edge of the asphalt with a sack over his head and his hands tied behind his back.” She passed through the front doors of the building, and we followed her out into the heat.
“Where is he now?” J.J. asked.
“Hoenekker is bringing him in.” Molly turned toward the veterinary hospital. “Some guests saw him and reported it to your security division. I’ve been told that he’s in good physical condition. Hoenekker wanted to take him to your medical clinic, but Doc insisted upon coming to the veterinary hospital instead.”
“Sounds like Doc, all right,” I said. Doc didn’t have much respect for the doctors who worked at the FunJungle health clinic, claiming both had barely graduated from medical school. My parents actually agreed with him. When my mother had fractured her leg a few months before, she’d gone to Doc to have it set, rather than the human doctor. “A bone’s a bone,” Mom had explained. “If Doc can fix a gorilla’s leg, he can fix mine.”
A souped-up golf cart swerved around a corner, racing toward the animal hospital. I could tell Marge was driving it even before I saw her at the wheel because Marge was the worst driver I’d ever met in my life. Instead of coming in a straight line, the cart was veering all over the place. As we watched, it clipped a trash can and scraped against a lamppost.
The front seat was built for two normal-size people, but Marge took up the whole thing. Therefore, Hoenekker and Doc both had to sit in the backseat. Both were clinging to the sides of the cart for dear life, desperately trying not to be pitched out onto the ground.
“They’re letting my sister drive?” Molly gasped. “She’ll kill Doc before I get a chance to question him.”
An actor dressed as Larry the Lizard scrambled out of the golf cart’s way, barely avoiding getting turned into roadkill.