“We’re getting slammed with home maintenance this summer,” he’d told Mom. “The estimate for a new roof is a couple of thousand more than I anticipated.”
“That’s not to mention Henry’s new glasses,” Mom said. “And something’s wrong with the computer. I hate to say it, but it looks like we’ll have to nix the you-know-what.”
Margaret nudged me, her face still beaming, and my heart sank like an anchor in quicksand. How come it was always my family that didn’t have money for the big stuff, the fun stuff, like extra-long weekends at Disney World and this band camp trip? And what if Margaret—and even Gus, by some miraculous accident—got chosen for the governor’s concert and went to Tallahassee without me?
“Eew.” Margaret pointed to my plate, and I shoved the no-money thoughts from my mind. “Why’d you take such a big serving of that?” she said.
“I didn’t take it. I got stuck with it, after you took off.”
Gus leaned over for a closer look. “What is it?”
I kept ignoring him, hoping he’d get the message.
“You need to help me eat this,” I said to Margaret. “And hurry, before my mom comes over here.” I looked out the corner of my eye. Sure enough, there sat the Carrot, glancing my way. Henry was on Dad’s lap, probably trying to get out of eating his own measly portion of vegetables. I groaned when Granny Goose joined them. She hooked Pickles up to her chair and waved at me.
“I can’t,” Margaret said. “I’m allergic. If I ate that, it would give me terrible hives. And then my parents would have to rush me to the hospital emergency room. And then I’d probably get put in insensitive care or something.” She took a bite of her fried chicken.
“You mean intensive care,” Gus said. “Not insensi—”
“Since when are you allergic to cucumbers?” I said to Margaret.
“That’s cucumbers?” Gus doubled over, snorting into his hand. It sounded like he’d hawked up a hair ball or something. “No way. It looks more like pickled toads.” Margaret laughed so hard she spit a piece of chicken across the table.
“Oh, very funny. You both crack me up.” My throat tightened when I looked at the nightmare on my plate. “This is something Granny Goose made. My mom’s forcing me to eat it.”
“Granny Goose?” Gus said. “You mean the save-the-animals lady? Hey, I heard she’s got a three-legged alligator that sleeps by her bed.”
Margaret’s blue eyes widened behind her glasses. “Really? She’s so cool. I love how she rescues all those poor animals.”
“She may be cool, but she’s a terrible cook,” I said.
“How do you know?” Margaret said. “Maybe it doesn’t taste as bad as it looks. You haven’t even tried it yet.”
“No, but I’ve smelled it, and so have you.” Of course Margaret could act all la-di-da, because she wasn’t the one who’d gotten stuck with a pile of slug guts. “Besides,” I said, “Granny Goose belongs to my mom’s cooking club, and I heard some of the members talking about the awful stuff she makes.”
“Actually,” Gus said, “it doesn’t look that bad. Slide it over here. I’ll try some first.”
Before I could answer, he’d already snagged a droopy cucumber from the side of my plate. He popped it in his mouth. His face puckered up like my great-grandma’s when she’s not wearing her teeth. “It’s pretty tasty,” he said through pursed lips. “Really.”
I sighed. This wasn’t looking good, but I had to get it over with. My mom kept glancing my way, and she’d even done some kind of pantomime thing with her hand going from her plate to her mouth that I knew meant, “Eat those cucumbers.”
I jabbed a slice with the least amount of sauce and lifted it to my mouth. But my fork stopped in midair, because something on the plate caught my eye.
Something gold.
Something heart-shaped.
Something that definitely wasn’t a cucumber.
Chapter 4
The First Whiff of Trouble
“Hey!” I said. “What’s that floating in the cucumbers?”
All three of our heads dived forward at the same time, and Gus’s forehead knocked into mine. “Ouch! Watch it,” I said, rubbing my eyebrow.
“There’s nothing floating in there,” he said.
“Oh, yeah?” I pushed the heart-shaped object to the side of my plate. “What do you call that?”
“I’d call it a heart, but it isn’t floating. It was buried.”
I ignored him and started wiping sauce off the heart. It didn’t take but a few swipes to see it was covered with sparkly deep-red stones.
I picked it up. “Gosh. This looks like solid gold.”
Margaret grabbed my hand. “Quick! Drop it! Don’t even breathe on it.”
I flung the heart down, my breath shooting out in quick spurts. “Why? What’s wrong?”
Margaret threw a napkin over it. “Just act normal. Don’t let on like anything’s out of the ordinary.”
“Me act normal? You’re the one who’s acting weird. I just want to look at it.” I reached for the napkin.
She pushed my hand away. “No. We can’t let anybody see it. We can’t…tell…a soul.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” she whispered, “Granny Goose will get thrown in jail.”
“Yep. That’s a fact,” Gus said, as if he knew exactly what she was talking about.
“Jail? Why would Granny Goose get thrown in jail? She’s not a criminal.”
“Haven’t you heard about the robbery?” Margaret said. “That’s Mrs. Grimstone’s gold locket. It got stolen from her house.”
“For real? It belongs to Angel’s mom?” I said.
Gus shook his head. “Nope. Her grandmother.” He scooted his chair around the table and parked it an inch from mine. “I read it’s embedded with rubies, probably worth twenty thousand bucks, at least. Let me see it.” He reached in front of me for the napkin.
I knocked his hand aside, then checked to make sure my mom wasn’t watching before uncovering the locket myself. It sure did look like rubies, expensive ones, too. But then what did I know? The fanciest jewelry my mom owned was a shell necklace I made for her way back in kindergarten.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “How do you know about any locket getting stolen from the Grimstones?”
“It was in the paper this morning,” Margaret said.
“But this might not be the same locket. Maybe this is a piece of Granny Goose’s costume jewelry that fell in the cucumbers while she was cooking. Or maybe it came off her goose’s collar or something.”
“Yep. That’s it all right,” Gus said. “There was a picture of it on the front page of the paper. Man, what’re the odds of this happening—like one percent, maybe?”
Something clicked in my brain, and I thought back to breakfast, when Mom had handed my dad the newspaper and said, “Look at that. Right here in Bloomsberry. I hope they find the thieves.”
I hadn’t heard the rest of their conversation, because Henry had chosen that very minute to snatch my flute and run outside.
“Actually”—Gus went on—“a bunch of stuff got stolen from the Grimstones—all kinds of diamond jewelry, some rare coins. Pitayas, too. Six of them.”
“What are Pitayas?” I said.
“Jeweled eggs,” Gus said. “They’re named after the Russian guy who designed them, and they’re made out of gold and emeralds. Mrs. Grimstone owned the whole collection.”
“My mom said there’s a huge reward out for the heirlooms,” Margaret said.
My fingers curled around the locket. I licked my lips, barely able to utter my next words. “How much?”
“Five thousand dollars,” Gus said.
“Oh, wow!” I sprang from my seat. “Come on. Let’s find Officer Moore. I saw him earlier in a broccoli costume.”
Margaret grabbed my hand. “Wait. What’re you doing?”
“Hel-lo-o…What do you think I’m doing? I’m going to give this to the cops and collect the r
eward. We’ll each get twenty-five hundred dollars. That means I’ll be able to go to band camp.”
“No, you’re wrong,” Gus said. His eyes narrowed into minicalculators. Click, click, click. “One thousand, six hundred, sixty-six dollars, and sixty-six cents, with two cents left over. That’s what we’d each get.”
I couldn’t believe this kid. First he’d butted in on our lunch, and now he wanted to snag my reward money. I mean, it was me who nearly ate the locket. Did he actually think I’d split the money three ways? Well, I had news for Gus Kinnard—he wasn’t getting a penny. I turned to leave.
“But it doesn’t really matter. We won’t get the reward anyway,” he said.
“Why not?” I narrowed my eyes at Mr. Know-It-All.
“Because that locket is just one piece out of a dozen or so. And it’s not even the most valuable. Some of the other things, like the eggs, are worth at least five times more.”
“So what?” I said, but I could feel my happiness bubble deflating, like a bike tire with a slow leak.
“Think about it,” he said. “Why would Mrs. Grimstone pay the whole reward for the least valuable piece? We wouldn’t get more than a hundred dollars, tops. Thirty-three apiece after we split it up.”
“Sit down, pleeease, Lindy,” Margaret said. “Gus is right. Besides, we can’t turn that locket in yet, anyway.”
“Well, we can’t keep it. We’ll get in big trouble if we don’t give it to the cops.”
“I don’t want us to keep it,” Margaret whispered. “But if we turn it in right this minute, the police will ask where you found it. And then they’ll think Granny Goose stole it, because you found it in her dish of cucumbers. And then she’ll go to jail. For certain. Maybe for life.”
Gus stuffed a handful of cherries in his mouth before saying, “Maybe noth lifth, but sheel get at leaf tin yearths, wiff time offth for good beha-for.” He spit the seeds toward the ground, and—oh, jeez!—a couple of them ended up on my lap.
“Thorry,” he said, picking at some gunk behind his lip.
Talk about annoying. I flicked the seeds back at him and dragged my chair all the way around to the other side of the table, so I was facing both of them.
“Granny Goose isn’t a thief,” I said to Margaret as I sat back down. I mean, how could anyone believe something that ridiculous? In fact, Granny Goose was probably the most kindhearted person in the whole state of Florida. I’d known about her animal rescue since I was a little kid, when she’d helped save the two abandoned kittens Margaret and I dug out of a Dumpster. They both were skinny from worms and covered with fleas. But thanks to Granny Goose, who nursed them back to health, they’d grown up to be fat, fluffy cats. I’d kept Pixie, and Margaret had Trixie. And Granny Goose had done it all for free, too.
“Nope. I won’t take a cent,” she’d insisted when my dad had tried to pay her. “I’m just happy to help these little critters out.”
Mom said that after her husband died, Granny Goose had carried on his business of animal rescue—he’d been a veterinarian—except she refused to charge people.
I scratched my head, totally puzzled. “This doesn’t make any sense. How could the locket have wound up in her cucumbers?”
“The evidence points to her being the perpetrator,” Gus said, “but I’ll give it ninety-nine to one she’s being framed.” He reached across the table and helped himself to a huge swig of my pink lemonade.
I scowled at him, snatching my glass before he could finish off the ice.
As I wiped the last bit of cucumber off the locket, I thought about what we should do. My parents would say to turn it in, even if it meant we didn’t get any reward. But then there was Granny Goose to think about. Suppose she got put in jail for something she didn’t do? As much as I hated to admit it, Gus was right. The evidence pointed to her.
“What if I just said I found the locket on the ground?” I suggested. “Then the cops wouldn’t suspect Granny Goose.”
“Well, sure, that could probably work,” Gus said. “But I know how we can keep her out of jail and earn the whole five thousand dollars—no sweat.” He plopped his elbows on the table and rested his chin in his hands, staring at me. “Wanna know how?”
I ignored the WARNING: TROUBLE AHEAD sign flashing in the back of my mind. Instead, all I could think about was the money: 1,666 crisp one-dollar bills, stacked on my dresser. It would be all mine, and it would more than pay for band camp. My heart did a little swing dance as I pictured myself at the governor’s mansion with a brand-new flute and a wad of cash in my backpack.
I sat straight up and looked Gus Kinnard in the eye. Because for once in his life, he might say something I actually wanted to hear.
“Yeah,” I said. “How?”
Chapter 5
Gus Kinnard Is NOT My Boyfriend
“It’s simple,” Gus said. He wiped a glop of mashed potato from his chin, missing half of it. “All we have to do is find the real perp before the cops do.”
Perp? As in perpetrator of a million-dollar heist?
Did Gus actually believe the three of us could hunt down a mastermind criminal all by ourselves? His idea was way crazy. Too crazy—I knew that. But I wanted that reward money, and I couldn’t stop the boing, boing, boing of my heartbeat.
Margaret gasped. “You really think we can prove Granny Goose didn’t steal the locket?”
“How?” I whispered, as if the deal were sealed and we were all of a sudden conspirators. “We’re not exactly detectives, you know. It would take forever.”
“Nuh-uh,” Gus said. “There can’t be that many suspects. The newspaper said it looked like an inside job—maybe even someone who knows the Grimstones. Bloomsberry’s a small town.”
He tossed a cherry in the air and caught it in his mouth. “Granny Goose is innocent, and we can prove it. I’m really good at solving crimes. Actually, I just won an award for it.”
“Oh, yeah?” I said, eyeing him suspiciously. “Like what award?”
“The NSCCB mystery of the month. I beat out more than thirty thousand participants.”
“Oh…my…gosh.” Margaret fell against the back of the chair, her eyes lit up like disco balls. “You won that? I can’t believe it. What month?”
“May. So now there’s a eight percent chance I’ll win NSCCBer of the year.”
I glanced from Gus to Margaret, then back at Gus. It felt like I’d popped in on a meeting between a couple of cryptologists. “What the heck is NSPPB?”
“N-S-C-C-B,” Gus said. “The Not-So-Clueless Crime Busters.”
“It’s the coolest online club ever,” Margaret said, still looking dazed by his news. “I just found out about it last week. I really want to join, but my mom won’t let me. She says I’m on the computer too much.”
A tingly, nervous feeling fluttered around my stomach. Gus beat out thirty thousand participants in a crime-solving contest? Gosh, if that was the case, maybe he could find the heirloom thief—with Margaret’s and my help, of course. It’s not like the two of us were dumb bunnies. Besides, I didn’t want Gus getting any big ideas about keeping more than his share of the reward money.
He folded his arms behind his head. “So. You guys want to go along with me or not?”
“I will if Lindy will,” Margaret said.
I looked at the locket again, my heart thumping, and pictured the front page of the Bloomsberry Sentinel: LOCAL YOUNGSTERS NAB HEIRLOOM THIEF; DIVVY HEFTY REWARD! Or even better: TALENTED YOUNG HEROINE ON HER WAY TO TALLAHASSEE; HOPES TO WOW GOVERNOR WITH FLUTE SOLO.
After overhearing my parents last night, I knew in my gut that winning the reward might be my only chance at band camp. I couldn’t stand the thought of not going. The camp lasted two whole weeks, and practically everyone would be there, including Angel Grimstone. In fact, Angel hadn’t stopped talking about camp ever since our teacher announced it. “I’m going to learn sixteenth notes and trills,” she’d bragged. “I’m getting a new flute before I go, too. Grammy says I�
��ll win first chair for sure next year.”
Oooh—my blood boiled at the thought of it. I’d rather be appointed Granny Goose’s recipe-tasting assistant than lose first chair to Angel Grimstone. And what if she got chosen for the governor’s concert while I was home scrubbing toilets?
“Psst, Lindy.” Margaret rapped the table. “Are you going to help find the thief or not?”
I’d just opened my mouth to say, “You bet,” when a giant stalk of broccoli approached us.
Uh-oh. It was Officer Moore. I grabbed the locket and held it to my side, flicking its tiny clasp. If he saw it, everything would be ruined. He circled our table—real slow—all the way around, stopping next to me. He leaned down to fiddle with the cuff of his costume.
He nodded at me and smiled. I smiled back, trying to look nonchalant, as if it were just another average day in my boring life. He got up, tipped his flowered green hat at us, and left.
I sank back in my chair, still flicking the locket’s clasp. It opened. I glanced down, and staring back up at me was the Princess Grimstone. Right there in the palm of my hand, smiling like a hyena and holding a flute to her mouth.
“Aaack!” I tossed the locket on the table.
Margaret picked it up, then clutched her neck and squealed, “Eew! It’s Angel.”
“Let me see,” Gus said.
But right as Margaret started to hand it to him, one side of her face scrunched up like she had a gnat in her eye. She made some kind of weird hissing noise and winked at me about ten times. “Hide it!” she said, flinging the locket back across the table.
“What’s wrong?” My heart started racing again. Was someone watching us?
The only person I saw nearby was a farmer-looking guy in overalls and a straw hat, the same guy Granny Goose had nearly run into earlier, right before she’d dished out her cucumbers to me. He trudged by our table slower than a snail, but he was staring at the newspaper in his hand and didn’t seem to be paying any attention to us.
Something shuffled in the grass behind me, like footsteps.
A Recipe for Robbery Page 2