“Good news!” someone yelled over my shoulder. “Looks like everything’s been fixed. Someone try the mike.”
The next thing I knew the Princess had the microphone, acting like some big shot stage manager. “Testing. One, two, three. Testing. One, two, three.”
Gus broke free of the tap dancers and made his way to the edge of the stage. He leaned over so I could hear him. “Here’s the thing. There’s only two acts in front of us, so—”
“Hey you!” Angel’s voice blared from the speakers. “Gus Kinnard. Quit talking to your girlfriend and get behind the curtain.”
Gus rolled his eyes and kept whispering. “Go on to Simply Paris, okay? But don’t go in the patio by yourself or anything; it’s too dangerous. Just keep an eye out and wait for us. We’ll dump the instruments and be over there as quickly as possible. Fifteen minutes, max.”
“Psst, Lindy!” Margaret hissed from behind him. Her eyes looked big with worry. “Be careful. Don’t let them see you.”
“Ahem.” Mr. Austin cleared his throat from the far side of the stage. “Let’s go, Gus and Margaret. Backstage, please.”
So now it was up to me—all by myself—to start the perp patrol at Simply Paris.
Chapter 33
The Rendezvous
According to the courthouse clock, I had ten minutes before the meeting at François’ café. So I didn’t exactly have time to stand around feeling sorry for myself because I’d lost my partners. I took off across the lawn, turned onto Orange Blossom Avenue, and followed it until I was standing across the street from Simply Paris. A sign on the door said, CLOSED THROUGH JULY 4TH FOR PATIO RENOVATIONS.
I couldn’t chance running into François outside his kitchen, so I circled the block until I found the alley that ran behind the patio. There wasn’t a soul in sight, not even a delivery truck. I stood at the alley entrance, swatting gnats from my face, trying to gather my nerve. The sun sizzled overhead like an electrified lemon, singeing my feet to the ground, frying every thought that crossed my mind.
Simply Paris sat five buildings down on the left. I swallowed a gulp and started toward it, one cautious step at a time, as if I were playing hide-and-seek with a pack of alley cats.
When I reached Shear Magic, I peeked through the salon’s back door window. The hairdressers must’ve left early to watch the festival finale because all the lights were out. Good. At least I wouldn’t run into Cricket again.
I edged toward the corner of François’ patio. The sudden crunch of tires over gravel stopped me cold. Uh-oh! Someone had turned into the alley from behind me. I ducked into a dark, narrow space between the patio and Shear Magic. I’d barely gotten situated behind a cluster of ivy before Leonard’s rusty pickup truck rattled by. It pulled into the parking lot on the other side of the alley.
Leonard got out of the truck, holding a Winn-Dixie bag. The Pitayas!
I squished deeper into my hiding nook and watched him cross the alley. He pushed on the wrought-iron gate, but it didn’t open. He looked around, then punched a button by the Simply Paris sign on the fence.
Bzzzz!
I peeked around the ivy. Leonard set the bag down. He shuffled his feet impatiently, then jabbed the button again, three times, like he was poking someone in the chest.
Bzzzz! Bzzzz! Bzzzz!
“Oui, oui,” called François from inside the patio. “I am coming. Patience, s’il vous plaît. No need to fatigue the buzzer, my friend.”
I heard a scuttling across the patio. The gate swung open.
“Hello, hello, and a fabulous day to you, monsieur,” François sang out. Gosh. His cheeriness surprised me. For someone who was pulling off a million-dollar heist, he didn’t sound the least bit nervous.
Leonard muttered something, then picked up the bag and disappeared through the gate. Now I could barely hear them, and I couldn’t see through the iron posts of the fence because it was so thick with ivy and honeysuckle. I’d have to move closer. I crept toward the gate, stopping just short of it. It hung open by a millimeter.
I caught a glimpse of François’ white hat, bobbing up and down as he spoke. “Pay close attention, please, monsieur,” he said. “I shall review my diagram with you in great detail.”
A diagram? Since when did you need a diagram to talk about stolen heirlooms?
“Well now,” François said. “First things firstly. I do hope you have procured the tools we will need for this endeavor, as I have nothing to offer but fillet knives and meat cleavers.” He laughed—a high-pitched trill that made my skin crawl—then said, “But you, my friend, are aware of that, n’est-ce pas? Any questions, sir?”
“Yeah,” Leonard said, “I got a question.”
“Spill it out then, monsieur.”
I shoved my face through the ivy for a better look.
“What the tarnation—”
“Tarnation? You must pardon me, monsieur. I am not familiar with this coarse American slang, if you please.”
“What the heck were you talking about in that phone message you left?” Leonard grumbled. “You say only three hundred dollars for all this?”
“Monsieur, you ask too much of me. I’ve good-naturedly agreed to increase the original amount by one hundred dollars. What more do you want?” François threw his hands in the air. “As I’ve explained until I’m purple in the face, I simply cannot…”
His voice faded as he moved toward the far end of the patio. Leonard followed him, mumbling one-syllable replies. Before long they both were hunched over a table near the dining room entrance. François didn’t seem angry anymore. In fact, he looked ecstatically happy. He started leaping around Leonard like a ballet dancer, gesturing wildly at whatever was on the table.
I didn’t have a clear view, but I figured Leonard had dumped everything out of his Winn-Dixie bag, and it was the sight of all those Pitaya eggs that had François so tickled. I had to find out.
I pushed the gate.
Crrreak. I drew in a sharp breath and froze—not blinking an eyelash—until I was sure they hadn’t heard me.
They kept talking. I slipped inside and dropped to my knees. Swiftly, silently, I crawled around the outer edge of the patio, darting from table to table until I got close to Leonard, François, and their pile of eggs.
“Is this not absolutely enchanting, monsieur?”
Really close…
“My lady of Paris will look stunning adorned with these rubies. Wouldn’t you say so, my friend?”
So close….
“Voilà! The vibrancy of color is out of this universe. Would not you agree?”
As Leonard mumbled an answer, my shoulder bumped into a chair, causing its legs to scrape against the concrete. François jerked his head back. “What is that noise?” he said, cupping a hand to his ear.
I dived under a nearby utility table. Luckily, it was covered with a long tablecloth. I took a shaky breath and peeked out from under it.
“Mon Dieu! It must be a rodent,” François said. “I cannot tolerate those creatures in my establishment. I will check behind this buffet counter. You look under that tablecloth, monsieur. If we find it, I shall remove its head with my meat cleaver.”
Clomp, clomp, clomp. Leonard’s boots were headed straight toward me.
My heart stopped. My lungs froze. There was nowhere else to hide. In two seconds, I’d be face to face with Perpetrator Number One, Leonard Snout.
“Oh, for the sake of Peter,” François said. “It must have been those cumbersome boots of yours scuffling about that I heard. Never mind, my friend. Now, back to our task at hand.”
I gasped for air. When I finally had the nerve to peek out from my hiding spot again, Leonard and François had returned to the table. I still couldn’t see what was on it.
By now I lay in a pool of sweat, my legs cramped and twitching. Where, where, where were Gus and Margaret? I was sure fifteen minutes had come and gone; they should’ve been here by now.
“If you please, monsieur, let us step i
nside a moment, in the comfort of air conditioning. I shall prepare us both an iced latte and then show you something of profound interest.”
Leonard shrugged. He pulled off his dirty straw hat and tagged along after François.
The second they disappeared through the door, I whished out from under the table. I jumped up and ran to see what they’d been looking at, expecting to find the rest of the eggs, along with Mrs. Grimstone’s heirlooms. I had the perfect plan, too. Since I had the locket with me, I’d hide it on the bottom of the stack so it would blend in with the other heirlooms—of course I’d have to scratch my picture out of it and replace it with Angel’s, but I should have time to do that—and then I’d race back through the alley and find a phone and call the cops.
That was my plan, all right.
But it backfired.
Chapter 34
The Dirty Truth
I checked on top of the table, under the table, behind the table. Nothing. Not one piece of jewelry. No diamonds. No Pitayas. The closest thing I saw to an heirloom was a plastic spoon on the ground. What I did see, though, were stacks of landscaping magazines and pictures of patios and flower gardens—lots of them—along with an open notebook. My stomach did a nosedive when I recognized François’ handwriting at the top of the page.
Patio Plan: A Flowering Extravaganza. Featuring the exotic, edible night-blooming pitaya—Belle Ruby!
Patio designed by François Pouppière.
(Implemented by Leonard Snout, under the guidance of François Pouppière).
All of a sudden a five-thousand-watt lightbulb exploded in my brain. I staggered backward. Because now I knew what this meeting was really about. And it didn’t have the first thing to do with Mrs. Grimstone’s heirlooms.
We’d been wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. So wrong I couldn’t stand to think about it. François hadn’t been planning a heist with Leonard. He’d been planning a flower garden for his patio.
I looked around. Dirt—tons of it—was shaped into little black mountains inside decorative brick hedges. Empty, ornamental flower pots were stacked everywhere. Concrete statues and fountains were lined against the patio fence. In the middle was a jeweled towering statue and on it, a plaque that said, THE EIFFEL TOWER, 1889: FRANÇOIS’ LADY OF PARIS. And there were signs, gobs of them I hadn’t noticed until now, scattered throughout the patio, popping out of every imaginable spot. Signs that said: PARDON OUR SOIL, PLEASE! A FLOWER/FOUNTAIN/AND SCULPTED PATIO GARDEN EXTRAORDINAIRE IS NEXT ON FRANÇOIS’ MENU. IT WILL FEATURE OUR STUNNING, NIGHT-BLOOMING PITAYA.
The sound of voices startled me. They grew louder, with laughter sprinkled in.
I dropped on all fours again and scurried around the edge of the patio, like the giant dumb bunny I was. I headed straight for the gate. It locked behind me. I leaned against the fence to catch my breath. My face was seriously on fire, and it wasn’t because of the scorching sun.
François and Leonard weren’t crooks. The real crook was still on the loose, and the heirlooms—except for the locket and the egg—were long gone, and I was partly to blame.
I’d messed everything up by being so crazy over winning that reward, by not telling about the locket. If I’d turned it over to the cops right off the bat, maybe they could’ve found the real thief. And now I had the locket, burning a hole in my pocket. How could we return it to the police without telling the truth about what we’d been doing?
The worst thing of all was Granny Goose. We’d let her down. I still didn’t doubt her innocence, not for a minute. But how could we prove anything now? Our suspect list was all washed up.
I sighed as I pulled myself up, wishing I felt half as happy as the accordion music coming from inside Simply Paris. I couldn’t quit thinking about the stupid things I’d done over the last three days: eavesdropping on the Grimstones, calling Leonard, sneaking into François’ office…it all brewed in my brain like a pot of burned coffee. I wanted to go home and crawl under my bed, hide from the world, but I had to wait for Gus and Margaret. I wiped the sticky sweat from my neck. What was taking them so long, anyway?
I headed down the alley to look for them. When I reached the back door of Shear Magic, my toe knocked against a container: SureFresh wintergreen mints, Cricket’s brand. I hadn’t noticed it earlier; she must’ve just come to the salon. I leaned over to pick it up, hoping to find a couple of leftover mints, when I saw a single key on the pavement next to the container. It was marked SHEAR MAGIC SUPPLY ROOM. I glanced at the salon’s back door. It was opened partway. I pushed on it, thinking I should at least drop off the key.
I took a few steps into the short, dark hallway. Cricket was in the front by the receptionist’s station, pacing the floor. Just as I started to call out to her, someone rapped on the salon’s front window. “Brad!” Cricket yelled. She flew to the door, unlocked it, then threw her arms around the same blond guy she’d been with at the Tarts’ tent on Thursday.
“What took you so long? Oh, my God, I’m a wreck! I thought you weren’t going to make it back,” she said, burying her face in his shoulder.
Brad locked the door behind him. “Calm down, babe. I told you I’d be back this morning. Everything’s settled. My fence in Miami’s going to take it all.”
Fence?
I backed into the shadows of the hallway, my heart racing. Thanks to Gus and NSCCB, I knew what a fence was.
“What’s going on?” Brad said. “My cell’s about dead. You kept breaking up. You say they suspect the goose lady?”
Cricket started pacing again, running her hands through her spiked hair, rambling a million miles a minute: “It’s crazy…doesn’t make sense…two pieces gone…Unger’s been questioned…”
“Slow down,” Brad said. “Tell me what hap—”
“Someone’s been in the shed. I think it’s this kid Lindy.”
Chapter 35
Shear Madness
My head spun as if a hurricane had just roared through it. Trembling, I gripped the handle of the shampoo cart. Me? In Cricket’s shed? Where had she gotten that idea?
Brad reared his head back in surprise. “A kid? What the…Okay, take it from the beginning here, babe. You’re saying a kid was in the shed? How? I locked it Thursday morning, right after we checked everything.”
“She must’ve gotten in where those boards are missing on the side,” Cricket said. “Her and her friends have been hanging around the neighborhood, acting weird. I think they’re playing detective. Anyway, a couple of pieces are missing from the duffel. One of the eggs ended up in Unger’s turtle pen.”
Brad let out a string of not so nice words, then said, “Missing boards? Man, Crick. I told you the shed was a lousy place to hide it.”
“Quit blaming me,” Cricket snapped. “How could I know? It’s a small hole. I never expected anyone to crawl in there. And besides, you’re the one who left the duffel out, not me. It was wide open on the floor. You told me you’d lock it back in the trunk.”
Brad ran his hand through his hair. “Yeah? Well I didn’t think it mattered. I assumed the shed was safe.”
I stayed rooted to my spot behind the shampoo cart, barely breathing as they argued about what was whose fault, where the locket could be, why only two pieces were missing, how the egg had ended up at Granny Goose’s.
“You should’ve been paying closer attention,” Brad said. “You should’ve been checking on that bag.”
“So I’m not perfect, all right!” Cricket yelled. “And why would I need to check on something that’s locked inside a trunk anyway?” Her voice broke, like she was choking back a sob. I peeked around the cart. She gripped a sink basin, her chest heaving with every breath she took. “I’ve been here by myself since Thursday, having to kiss up to Mrs. Grimstone, make sure she doesn’t suspect. I’m ready to crack.”
“It’s okay, babe. I know you’re tense.” He put his arm around her. “Sorry I had to be on the road. But hey, I got everything taken care of, even our tickets. Besides, from what you said, it
’s not us the cops suspect. It’s the goose lady. Looks like we lucked out; we’re in the clear.”
Cricket sniffled again and opened a SureFresh container. She stuck one in her mouth. “Yeah, except for that kid. What’s she up to anyway?” She tossed the mint container on the counter. It clanged and fell to the floor.
Wait a minute…
The mint container.
Pickles had one of Cricket’s mint containers earlier, outside the shed. Could that goose actually have—
“Have you seen the Lindy kid today?” Brad said.
“Yeah, earlier. She and her friends were nosing around Unger’s house.”
It’s a small hole. I never expected anyone to crawl in there, Cricket had just said. Yes. It had to have been Pickles. The duffel was on the floor…open…she likes shiny things…into everything, Granny Goose had said.
“Man. If you’re right and she’s involved, we should get out of here. She could be talking to the cops right now. Let’s get the stuff and go. Where’d you put the duffel?”
“It’s locked in the supply room. Let me get my key to the door.”
I fingered the bumpy ridge of the key in my hand, my heart pounding.
Unless Cricket had a backup key, she and Brad wouldn’t be getting inside the supply room anytime soon. If I hurried, I could beat them to it.
Once I got my legs to move, I slunk along the wall to a closed door. I stuck the key in the lock, praying it would work. My hand was shaking so hard I could barely turn the handle.
Brad rapped his fingers on a sink basin. “Hurry it up, babe. We don’t have all day.”
“Hold on. I told you I’m looking.”
The door opened.
I slipped inside and locked the dead bolt. Cricket and Brad were still in the front part of the salon, arguing. I should have a couple of minutes at least. I scanned the room, hoping the Shear Magic bag would jump out at me. Instead, all I saw were bottles of hair gel, mousse, hair spray, perm solutions, coloring kits, and nail polish, all neatly stacked on open shelves. I took a deep breath and started my search on the bottom, thinking I’d work my way up.
A Recipe for Robbery Page 12