Panda-monium

by Stuart Gibbs

  Marge did her best to take up the chase, throwing the golf cart into reverse despite the fact that there was a beheaded koala clinging to the roof. I recognized the unfortunate soul as Charlie Connor, an actor who’d had his share of mishaps at FunJungle before. Charlie held on tightly to the roof, white-knuckled in fear, screaming various curses in front of the crowd as Marge raced backward through the madness. Sadly, Marge was even worse at driving in reverse than she was at going forward. She swerved to avoid a toppled saxophonist, slewed off Adventure Road, and smashed through the fence into the flamingo pond. The cart stopped abruptly, axle-deep in flamingo muck, while poor Charlie went flying.

  If it hadn’t been traumatic enough to see Kazoo lose his head, the children now all got to see him splat into some of the most foul, bird-poop-laden water in the park. The flamingos promptly fled through the hole in the fence, amping up the chaos along the parade route even more. They’d all had their wings clipped, so they couldn’t fly away, but that didn’t stop them from flapping their limbs wildly in the hopes that they might suddenly take off.

  Summer and I raced across the parade route, pursuing James, but he was already on his way out the gates. He paused and looked back for a moment, flashing us a cruel grin, then slipped out into the parking lot.

  Most of the FunJungle security guards who had arrived were tending to the crowd, making sure that no one was hurt—thankfully, no one appeared to be, save for a few scrapes and bruises—although a few were trying to round up renegade flamingos. I spotted Hoenekker as he arrived on the scene. He planted himself in front of Marge’s golf cart before she could drive out of the flamingo pond and do any more damage.

  I ran over to Hoenekker, intending to alert him about James Van Amburg’s escape. “Teddy!” he growled. “I should have known you’d be involved in this!”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “but it’s an emergency. . . .”

  “No emergency is worth causing this!” Hoenekker waved to the crowd of angry tourists, upended performers, and escaped flamingos. He was livid, his face as red as a scarlet macaw. “Do you realize how much trouble you’ve caused here?”

  I glanced back toward the front gates, but James Van Amburg had vanished from sight.

  I started to make one last plea to go after the man who’d nearly killed me, but before I could, Marge laid on her horn. “Move it, Chief!” she yelled. “I have a criminal to catch!” She stomped on the accelerator, but instead of moving forward, her wheels just spun idly in the pond, showering poor Charlie Connor with more flamingo muck.

  Hoenekker didn’t budge. Instead, he stared bullets at Marge and replied, “Your days of pursuing criminals here are through, O’Malley. You’re fired.”

  BIG TROUBLE

  FunJungle Security hauled Marge, Summer, and me to J.J. McCracken’s office. The three of us ended up seated before J.J.’s desk, while Hoenekker stood to the side. Marge and I hadn’t even been allowed to change clothes. We were still damp and had to sit on FunJungle beach towels from the Emporium so we wouldn’t leave wet spots on J.J.’s fancy couch.

  An enormous television was tuned to CNN. It was covering the panda story, a BREAKING NEWS banner across the screen. The FBI had announced that they’d made an arrest in the case. There was footage of Molly O’Malley and the other agents leading a man I recognized as Carlos Edward Gomez from his home in handcuffs.

  The sound on the TV was muted, but even if it had been on, we probably couldn’t have heard it over J.J.’s voice. If we’d thought Hoenekker was angry, it was nothing compared to how enraged J.J. was.

  “Look at that mess!” he roared, pointing down to FunJungle’s entry plaza through his office windows. “A trail of destruction from the Polar Pavilion all the way to the front gates! Reckless driving inside a family theme park! Parade floats ruined! Escaped animals! Kazoo the Koala decapitated in front of children! God only knows how many lawsuits we’ll end up with!”

  “We were in pursuit of a known criminal . . . ,” Marge began weakly.

  “That’s no excuse for destroying my park!” J.J. roared. “There are ways to deal with a criminal that do not involve causing chaos and mayhem on a mass scale! If you needed help, why didn’t you alert Hoenekker?”

  “I did alert Hoenekker,” Marge replied sullenly. “But he turned out to be more interested in stopping me than the criminal.”

  J.J. shifted his gaze toward Hoenekker, who stood at military attention. “I mobilized my men immediately,” Hoenekker reported. “However, by the time we arrived on the scene, the troubles along the parade route distracted them. They prioritized ensuring the safety of the visitors over apprehending Van Amburg, which unfortunately allowed Van Amburg to escape.”

  “How’d he even get into the park at all?” J.J. demanded. “Weren’t your men warned to keep an eye out for him at the gates?”

  “They were,” Hoenekker admitted sheepishly. “But—”

  “The security force here is completely incompetent,” Marge finished. “I would’ve had him if you hadn’t interfered.”

  “For all we know, you might have destroyed half this park if I hadn’t interfered!” Hoenekker raged. He turned to J.J. “I can’t have a loose cannon on my force like this any longer. I know you’ve always respected her determination, but between her colossal failures on the panda case and this, we have to let her go.”

  J.J. didn’t argue. He simply nodded and said, “I understand.”

  Marge gave a strangled gasp and fixed J.J. with a look of betrayal. “You can’t fire me!” she yelled. “Not after all I’ve done for this park!”

  “It’s done,” J.J. told her. “Go clean out your locker.”

  For the past year, I had been hoping to hear those words. I had always imagined the day Marge got fired would be one of the happiest of my life. It should have been thrilling to see my biggest antagonist finally get her comeuppance. But now that the moment was here, I was surprised to find I wasn’t that happy at all.

  Marge was devastated. She seemed like a shell of herself as she slowly rose from the couch. It occurred to me that Marge didn’t have much besides this job, and now . . . it was gone. Plus, for all her faults—and there were about ten thousand of them—she had risked her life to save me from the polar bears.

  Meanwhile, I also needed Marge around a bit longer. With James Van Amburg’s attempt on my life and the ensuing chaos, there hadn’t been a chance for me to tell anyone my new thoughts on the Li Ping case. I still had some questions that only Marge could answer.

  “Wait,” I said.

  Marge paused on her way out. Everyone turned toward me, surprised I’d spoken up.

  “Teddy,” J.J. said ominously, “don’t start with me.”

  “I’m not trying to . . . ,” I said.

  “Why is it,” J.J. went on, “that whenever a crisis occurs at this park, you’re always there? The shark tank implodes; my daughter’s dangling in the air above the crocodile pit; a dead hippo falls out of the sky and sullies a hundred distinguished guests. And no matter what, you’re involved.”

  “Daddy,” Summer said sternly. “That’s not fair. Teddy wasn’t responsible for any of that!”

  “Maybe not entirely,” J.J. conceded, “but he’s not completely without blame either. Some people are simply magnets for trouble. And Teddy, in all my life, I have never met anyone who attracts trouble more than you. I don’t know if it’s that you’re reckless or unlucky, or that you keep getting involved in things you’re not supposed to. . . .”

  “Last time he got involved in a case, it was because you forced him to,” Summer said petulantly.

  “I’m not saying I haven’t had a hand in all this at times,” J.J. replied. “Although today’s catastrophe had nothing to do with me. And yet . . .” He turned to me. “There you were, smack in the middle of it.”

  “I was only trying to help find Li Ping,” I said.

  “Well, this time, no one asked you to,” J.J. snapped. “In fact, the FBI specifically ordered you t
o keep away from this case. And yet, you wouldn’t, despite ample proof that they have things under control. In fact, they have already made an arrest in connection with the crime. . . .”

  “But they’re wrong,” I said.

  “Oh come now!” J.J. cried. “I know you have a great track record solving crimes, kid. But the feds had a ton of evidence against the NFF.”

  “It was planted,” I told him. I did my best to sound confident, although in truth, I didn’t have proof that I was right about my hunch. Not yet, at least.

  On the television, Molly O’Malley appeared, making a statement to the press. Marge tensed angrily at the sight of her sister. J.J. flipped the sound on so we could all hear her.

  We picked up Molly midsentence. “. . . need to share the credit with my entire team, who worked tirelessly to root out these criminals. I’m aware that Carlos Gomez and the NFF have issued statements professing their innocence, but I can assure you those are lies. I will stake my reputation on proving they are guilty of this heinous crime.”

  J.J. muted the TV again and turned back to me. “Sure looks to me like the FBI knows what they’re doing.”

  “But they haven’t found the panda yet, have they?” I asked.

  J.J.’s swagger faded. I’d caught him by surprise. When he spoke again, he didn’t sound quite so sure of himself. “Not as far as I know. But you honestly expect me to believe that an entire team of FBI agents is barking up the wrong tree? You were just pursuing James Van Amburg yourselves. Isn’t he one of the founders of the NFF?”

  “He was,” I acknowledged. “But I don’t think he’s working for them anymore. He’s working for the bad guys instead.”

  “Who are . . . ?” J.J. demanded.

  I grimaced. “I don’t know yet.”

  J.J. gave a short bark of derisive laughter. “Ha! That’s all you’ve got? A hunch?”

  Summer rushed to my defense. “Daddy, you know how smart Teddy is. You’ve said it yourself a dozen times. So if he thinks something stinks about all this, then something stinks. James Van Amburg just tried to kill him, for Pete’s sake! Because he realized Teddy had evidence that proved the NFF wasn’t involved.”

  “And how would he know that?” J.J. asked.

  “Because Teddy told me so,” Summer declared. “He said it on our phone call.”

  “I had just left Panda Palace,” I explained. “I guess Van Amburg was keeping an eye on me again. He must have overheard me, then followed me to Polar Pavilion and thrown me in with the bears to make sure I didn’t tell anyone what I knew.”

  “J.J.,” Hoenekker interrupted, “at this point, it is still conjecture that Van Amburg threw Teddy into the polar bear pit at all. My men are examining the security footage from the Polar Pavilion to confirm if that’s what actually occurred.”

  “To confirm it?” I repeated, annoyed. “Why? You think I might have just jumped in with the polar bears for fun?”

  “I think it’s possible that you have misconstrued the situation,” Hoenekker replied. “There were dozens of people in that exhibit and no one else saw him throw you in. . . .”

  “I did,” Marge said. “I was coming through the doors when it happened. That’s how I knew Teddy was even in the water.”

  “As we have established, your skills at deduction are questionable,” Hoenekker said.

  “You know what’s not questionable?” Marge snapped. “That you’re a pinhead.”

  She and Hoenekker started shouting at each other, all their rage bubbling out. J.J. had to rush between them. “Both of you, can it!” he roared.

  Marge and Hoenekker fell silent but kept glowering at each other.

  J.J. looked to me. “All right, Teddy. I’ll bite. What evidence did you find that was worth him killing you over?”

  “Pandas make fifty pounds of poop a day,” I reported.

  “Fifty pounds?” J.J. asked. “That can’t be healthy. No wonder they’re going extinct.”

  “They don’t digest bamboo very well,” I explained.

  “So?” Hoenekker asked.

  “Li Ping was on the truck for a long time before she got kidnapped,” I went on. “They made a pit stop halfway through the trip in Las Cruces and the panda was still on board. That had to have been at least eight hours, right, Marge?”

  “That’s correct,” she confirmed.

  “But when the truck got here,” I said, “there wasn’t any poop in it.”

  Everyone fell silent as that sank in.

  Hoenekker’s jaw swung open. “Son of a gun, you’re right.”

  “He is?” J.J. asked.

  “Of course he is!” Summer declared. “Teddy’s never wrong!”

  “There was a bunch of bamboo,” Hoenekker said, “but no poop.”

  “It’s not like we could have missed it,” I added. “According to Chloé Dolkart, it’s big, like the size of avocados. And pandas do it forty times a day.”

  “Hold on,” Marge said, trying to make sense of what was going on. “Are you saying that whoever stole Li Ping also swiped a whole bunch of panda poo?”

  Summer smacked her forehead, stunned by how dense Marge was.

  “No,” I said. “I’m saying the panda poo was never there. Because the panda was never there. Someone switched the trailers on the trucks.”

  “What?” Marge asked, still trying to understand.

  “They didn’t hit the truck while it was in motion,” I said. “Instead, they took a trailer that looked exactly like ours, made it up to look like a crime scene, with the blown locks and the chloroform and everything, and then swapped it with ours at some point on the trip. They got the panda cage and all the furniture for Doc right, but they forgot about the poop. Or maybe they just didn’t know how much pandas go to the bathroom.”

  “I sure didn’t,” J.J. muttered. “Fifty pounds. Wow. That’s more than a good dog weighs.”

  “Now, hold on,” Hoenekker argued. “You can’t swap trailers while the truck is moving.”

  “Well, no,” I agreed. “However, if you had a team of people on the side of the road, you could do it pretty quickly, I think. Much faster than you could break into the trailer, steal Li Ping, and kidnap Doc.”

  “But then the drivers would have to be in on it,” Hoenekker pointed out.

  “Only one would,” I corrected. “Juan Velasquez was driving at the time. For this to work, he would have had to park on the side of the road to uncouple the first trailer, then move the cab to hitch up the second trailer. If he did it quickly enough, Greg Jefferson could have slept through the whole thing.”

  “And what about Marge?” Hoenekker asked. “She was right there in the cab next to Juan. How could she have missed all this?”

  “Because she was asleep too,” I said.

  Everyone looked to Marge.

  “I wasn’t!” she said defensively. “I was awake the whole time!”

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Of course I’m sure!” Marge exclaimed, though she didn’t sound quite so confident this time.

  “If you fell asleep on the job, it’s best to be honest about it,” J.J. informed her. “Li Ping’s life is at stake.”

  Marge shrank toward the wall. “I . . . I might have nodded off for a tiny bit. I mean, I didn’t think I did, but it was such a long drive. And I did get a little drowsy around Fort Stockton, even though I got a big old tub of coffee in Las Cruces.”

  “Did you buy the coffee?” I asked.

  Marge thought about it, then frowned. “No. Juan did. He claimed it was regular, but it sure didn’t work for me.”

  “You wouldn’t have needed to be asleep very long for this to work,” I told her. “Maybe you didn’t even realize you’d done it. It happens to me sometimes, when I’m really tired.”

  “Me too!” Summer chimed in. “Like when you and I were watching that boring movie at my house the other night, Teddy. I wouldn’t have even known I was falling asleep except that the movie seemed to keep jumping ahead.”
<
br />   “Wait one blasted second,” J.J. said. “This still seems highly speculative to me. What’s the point of stealing the whole trailer rather than just stealing the panda?”

  “For one thing, it’s faster,” I explained. “And it’s probably easier. Instead of having to wrestle the panda and Doc out of the trailer on the side of the highway and put them in a different vehicle, the thieves could just attach the entire trailer to a different truck, drive it off wherever they wanted, and deal with Doc and Li Ping when they got there.”

  “And you don’t think Doc would have realized something was going on?” Hoenekker asked.

  “Not if he slept through it,” Summer pointed out. “He said he was asleep right up to the point where they chloroformed him. Or maybe they chloroformed him while they were switching the trailers. Either way would have worked.”

  J.J. glowered. “I suppose. But it still wouldn’t be so easy to pull this off. You’d need an exact replica of the panda trailer we designed.”

  “I don’t think it was an exact replica,” I said. “That’s where they messed up. I mean, they could fake the outside and the cage and the furniture, but they couldn’t fake what Li Ping and Doc would do inside. They didn’t think about the panda poop. And they made it look like Doc watched a nature documentary on his DVD player. One about lions. You could always call him and ask if he actually watched it. I’ll bet he didn’t.”

  J.J. considered that, then grabbed his phone and said, “Lynda. Get Doc for me, right now. He’s probably gonna say no, but tell him it concerns the fate of Li Ping.”

  While we waited for Doc, J.J. flipped the phone to speaker so we could all hear.

  I shifted nervously on the couch. As far as I knew, Doc hated television and never watched it—but I wasn’t completely sure.

  Summer put her hand on my knee. “Relax,” she whispered. “I know you’re right.”

  “I have Doc for you,” Lynda announced over the phone.

  Then Doc came on, sounding annoyed. “I’m about to go into surgery, J.J. I don’t have much time. . . .”