Bounced

by Ted Staunton

  The SUV guy shook his head. He looked at me. The cube van driver looked at him. Wiley Kendall looked at them both. The SUV backed up and rumbled away.

  Wiley Kendall shot me a you were lucky look and turned to the other driver. “Kendall?” the man said. His voice was a gruff whisper. His beard and moustache were black, his hat was a cowboy one too, only leather, with a flat, floppy brim all the way around. He had on mirrored aviator sunglasses. A stained blue bandana was knotted at his neck. “Delivery for you.”

  Wiley Kendall wiped his face. “Where’s Jenn?” I wondered the same thing.

  “Order desk. I’m deliveries today.” He reached a clipboard out of the van. He was big bellied under one of those orange reflector vests. He had leather work gloves on. “Sign here.”

  Wiley Kendall frowned and signed. “What’s your name?”

  The man started, then coughed, “Lamar. Lamar Del Ray. Where you want it?”

  The voice and mirrored glasses creeped me out. I was glad when he left. Things might have worked out better if he’d never arrived.

  CHAPTER 3

  World’s Best Bounce

  Zal and CC left too, when the coast was clear. CC had a saxophone lesson. Zal had to practise for a magic show at a seniors centre. I promised to get the ball back.

  After lunch, Wiley Kendall had me repaint the bench, clean up paint spots and straighten the garbage bins. That ball had done a number, I can tell you. It had also disappeared. I searched a long time after Wiley went in, but didn’t find it.

  Then I swept the already-clean hallways. I figured that after what happened, Wiley Kendall might be extra picky, and I didn’t want to get docked any pay. Clutching the broom handle, I remembered the hollow sound it made hitting the floor, and just like that a Nick Storm mystery idea popped into my head. Why then, I don’t know. Who knows how you get ideas?

  Anyway, by the time I finished sweeping I had it all worked out. Here’s what it was: one night this museum caretaker has the alarm off while he sweeps. He gets knocked out and someone steals the famous Lamar diamonds. The cop, Inspector Chase, figures on international jewel thieves, but Nick Storm notices a bouncy ball in a far corner. Chase says some kid must have dropped it, but Nick’s not so sure. He solves the case when someone bumps the caretaker’s broom. It thuds, not clatters, and Nick instantly knows there’s something in the hollow handle. Sure enough, it’s the stolen jewels. The caretaker is the thief. He stashed the jewels in the broom and knocked himself out with the bouncy ball. It was supposed to bounce away, so no one knew how it happened, but it didn’t bounce far enough.

  Cool or what, huh? I even had a title: Bad Bounce. All I had to do was write it. I’d done enough for one day, though. I put away the broom and went up to our apartment, where I got a cold drink, turned on the radio and grabbed a World’s Best.

  When Aunt Jenn got home, the news was reporting a bank robbery in the east end. She didn’t even take her boots off, just clomped in, snapped off the radio and turned to me. She had her tornado look in her eye. When Aunt Jenn got mad, which wasn’t often, things swirled up fast. The storm didn’t usually last long, but you remembered it. I guessed Lamar Del Ray had told her about something hitting the van. I should have thought of that.

  I was almost saved by a knock on the door. It was Wiley Kendall. “Ahem, don’t mean to intrude.” Wiley Kendall did a lot of aheming around Aunt Jenn. Men tended to. It probably didn’t help Wiley Kendall that Aunt Jenn was taller than he was too.

  “What’s up, Wiley?”

  “Well, uh, you know me, Jenn: Wiley by name, not by nature. No, ahem, beating around the bush. Duncan was slinging this all over the place.” He handed her the missing bouncy ball. “Couple of, ahem, complaints. Dented a car hood too.”

  “You don’t say. Thanks, Wiley, much appreciated. I’ll deal with this.” She shut the door on him and the conversation. Not on me, though. “Disappointing, Skeets. I heard about this already. It was stump toad dumb, which is not your thing.” She held up the ball. “What if you’d broken something and we had to pay damages?”

  “What’s a stump toad?” I asked.

  “Don’t change the subject. Kids going to Studies Institute are smarter than that. You apologize to Wiley?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, sorry.” She was right, but I was kind of mad at Wiley Kendall for ratting me out. He could have just given me extra work or something. I tried to change the subject again. “Who’s Lamar Del Ray?” I thought I knew everyone at Aurora B.

  “New. He keeps to himself.” Aunt Jenn yanked her workboots off, letting them clunk to the floor. She marched into the kitchenette and got a beer. By now the tornado had pretty much blown out. “Anyway,” she said, “lesson learned? We’re smarter than this?”

  I nodded again.

  “All right then. Let’s get to what we should be talking about.” She put down her beer and walked back to the door. “Good news, Skeeter: Studies Institute is going to help some with your school fees. You got a bursary. They’ve sent us a cheque for three thousand dollars. That’s why I was late. I stopped off to get this.” She reached in her tote bag and handed me a phone, not a smart one, but still. “You’re back in the loop, kiddo. And Monday I’ll take the computer in and we’ll get Internet back too.”

  “Wow, thank you.” I held my new phone as if it were made of gold. This was huge stuff for us. Aunt Jenn’s own cellphone was so old people asked to look at it. We’d had to drop TV and the Internet back when Aunt Jenn got let go by the bank. Our computer had a virus. We used the computers at the library instead. That was another reason we went there so much.

  Aunt Jenn laughed and snatched the pizza menu from under its fridge magnet. “Try your phone. Anything but pineapple.” I grinned. She said, “You know every student at SI is given their own laptop, Skeets?”

  “Yeah, you told me before.”

  “Just do well, bud. I don’t want you—”

  “I’m not going to drop out.”

  “Good. With a real education you won’t wind up like Grandpa, getting laid off all the time.” Grandpa worked in a mine. I didn’t know what I wanted to be but I didn’t plan on being a miner. I didn’t say that. She went to get her beer. “CC and Zal in on this today?”

  I shrugged. She handed me the ball.

  “Glad you didn’t tell. A Fortune always takes one for the team.” She took her beer out on the balcony. I guessed she was after a cigarette. Aunt Jenn tried not to smoke around me, but I knew she kept a pack in a little plastic container out there. Sometimes at night I’d hear her sneak out there after she thought I’d gone to sleep. This time she surprised me. She came back in with the pack and dumped it in the garbage. “And you know what, Skeeter? I can take one for the team too. I just quit smoking.”

  “Again,” I said. I’d heard this before.

  “Yeah, again. But this time think of the cigarette money I can save for SI. That’ll motivate me. And on a more important topic, if you really want to have fun with one of those balls, find a school hallway with metal lockers on both sides. Wall ball. Throw hard for the top and see how many bounces you get wall to wall before it hits the floor. The sound is fantastic.”

  “How do you know?”

  She winked. “None of your business, mister. Call it a mystery.”

  That reminded me of Bad Bounce. I ordered the pizza, then told Aunt Jenn my story.

  “You are so right for that school, Skeets.” She hugged me, I squirmed, and she went in to get cleaned up and make a salad. I wondered if SI would have a hall with metal lockers.

  CHAPTER 4

  Boyfriend Bounce

  Things took a different kind of bad bounce the next day, when we went for groceries. A stained blue bandana was lying in the back of our old Toyota. “Hey,” I said, “that Lamar guy—”

  Aunt Jenn turned red as her hair. “I gave him a lift partway home.” She stuffed the bandana in her pocket. “I better return it tomorrow. Say, did we get yogurt?”

  We both knew
we’d bought yogurt. You could tell she was avoiding something, and I had a bad feeling what it might be. If there was one thing Wiley Kendall and I agreed on, it was Aunt Jenn and boyfriends. Wiley Kendall didn’t like them because he wanted to be one; I didn’t like them, period. She hadn’t had a boyfriend for a while, but all at once I suspected something was up with creepy Lamar Del Ray.

  Over the next while, I was like Nick Storm on a case, hunting for evidence. Aunt Jenn didn’t go on dates or get flowers, but her moods got wacky: sometimes she’d be all jazzed up, sometimes tired and grumpy. Mind you, she got that way every time she tried to quit smoking, but now it was worse. And every time I mentioned Lamar Del Ray, she’d change the subject. That said love to me, but I needed more proof.

  Then other worries came bouncing in at all kinds of crazy angles. With the Internet back, there were emails from Studies Institute and I found out how much it cost to go there: twenty-five thousand dollars a year. That was a lifetime of me helping Wiley Kendall and way more than a three-thousand-dollar bursary. Aunt Jenn was working so hard. Could we do it? Even worse: If we did, what if I couldn’t live up to that best she wanted for me?

  To take my mind off things, I tried to write my mystery, Bad Bounce, but it turned into a worry too. I knew the story but I didn’t know how to tell it. Where should it start? Who should tell it? How could I make the ending a surprise? If you want to see some ways I tried, I can show you those later too. (See Appendix Two.) World’s Best detectives got to think about one problem at a time. I was swamped. You can see why I kept forgetting to give the bouncy ball back to Zal.

  I guess he forgot too, because he never asked for it. We were all busy. Trout season opened and CC went north with her family most weekends. After school now, she practised fly casting into a tire in her backyard. Zal started baseball practice and went to a magic convention with his mom. I kept an eye out for signs of Lamar romance, puzzled over my story, went to the library and did extra chores for Wiley Kendall to keep from worrying even more about the money.

  Aunt Jenn worked all the overtime she could get. Nights she worked late, I’d have dinner with Mrs. Ludovic, our neighbour next door. We’d watch the suppertime news and Jeopardy!, shouting out the answers. By now it was early June and the local news was reporting a string of bank robberies. The police suspected it was the same man each time. They were offering a reward of fifteen thousand dollars for information, calling him the Borsalino Bandit.

  I didn’t get it until Mrs. Ludovic explained: “Borzaleeno is big hat, fancy hat, like cowboys.” She waved her hands around her head as we watched TV. Borsalino really suited her accent. Onscreen was a grainy shot of a hat and shoulders from a bank security camera. The wide brim of the hat hid the rest. Police said the robber had a beard and wore dark glasses.

  One suppertime I was on Mrs. Ludovic’s balcony, fiddling with the antenna for her, when a noisy muffler drowned out the TV. A dingy SUV I’d seen before pulled up across the street. This time the Gator Aid sign was straighter. The bearded driver looked across at our building. Our eyes locked.

  “Dinner!” called Mrs. Ludovic, breaking the spell.

  I stepped back. The SUV rumbled away.

  I don’t know why, but I texted Zal right off: have your b ball. My phone buzzed. Zal had texted: Bring it Saturday. Ask can you come with me to get new ball glove

  The next bounce of the ball would start connecting the dots.

  CHAPTER 5

  Banjo Bounce

  Of course, that Saturday was the robbery I already told you about. I’d called Aunt Jenn on my phone while I waited in the bank for the cops, but she hadn’t picked up. She never did when she was on a delivery. When I finally reached her, she sounded flustered, and when I told her what happened, she flipped. I think she asked if I was okay four different times. Getting home that night, the first thing she did was hug me.

  “Ohmygosh, Skeeter, I’m so glad you weren’t hurt. Tell it to me again.” I did, as she got us both iced teas. “You didn’t see his face?”

  I shook my head. “His armpit, mostly. And a ball cap. No one agreed on the colour. People said he had a beard and moustache.”

  “And the police think it was this Borsalino Bandit?”

  “Sergeant Castro didn’t say. He said it might be a copycat.”

  Aunt Jenn shuddered. “I just think of you barging into him. He mustn’t have known what to think. What if he’d had a gun?”

  “Does the Borsalino Bandit use a gun?” I asked.

  Aunt Jenn paused. Then she shrugged. “I guess I just figured there wasn’t a gun because he didn’t use it. What did the sergeant say?”

  “Just that nobody was hurt.”

  “Amen to that. Skeeter, I’m too shook up to think, let alone make dinner. If anything had happened to you … Oh my. Let’s get burgers. And a movie, a funny one.”

  You probably noticed the one thing I didn’t tell Aunt Jenn: that I wanted to catch the Bandit. Partly I was scared she’d forbid it, because she worried about me so much. Partly I thought it would be cool to surprise her with the reward money. Mainly, as Zal, CC and I realized riding home on the bus, none of us really had the faintest idea how to catch a bank robber who was baffling the cops. So much for being like Nick Storm. No wonder I was having trouble with my story.

  We’d agreed that Zal would find out everything he could about the Borsalino Bandit online and that I’d ask Aunt Jenn about bank robberies, since she used to work in a bank.

  “Then I’ll figure it all out,” CC had proclaimed. That’s when Zal rolled his eyes and gently dropped the bouncy ball on her head. We’d had to scramble around the bus to find it.

  I couldn’t seem to find the right time to ask Aunt Jenn that weekend. Monday, she was working late again. Mrs. Ludovic asked me to make a grocery run for her: two cans of mushroom soup. I didn’t mind going. I coasted down the hill to the plaza on my bike, rolled past the Goodwill where I found World’s Best and the B&G Trust branch where Aunt Jenn used to work, and that’s when I saw the sign:

  OPENING SOON

  GATOR AID WEST

  HERPETOLOGY HAVEN

  MEETING ALL YOUR

  SNAKE & REPTILE NEEDS

  It was in the window of a vacant store two doors down from the bank. I scanned the parking lot for the noisy SUV: nothing. Inside the store was a jumble of boxes and tools. A couple of the cheesiest fake palm trees you’ve ever seen framed the window.

  I hit the supermarket for Mrs. Ludovic and hustled back up the hill. I wanted to double-check herpetology before I called CC about this. If anyone had “snake and reptile needs,” or wanted to have them, it would be her. But I didn’t want to get caught out on anything. Everyone remembered how she’d gotten our last year’s teacher on whether koalas were bears.

  Online I found out herpetology comes from the Greek word herpo, to creep, and herpetan was the Greek word for reptile. This was the kind of stuff I needed. I called and told her about the sign and the store.

  “Sweet,” she said. “I can’t go check it out now, though. I’ve got my banjo lesson.”

  “I thought it was saxophone,” I said.

  “I switched. Anyway, tell Zal. We’ll go right after school tomorrow. Maybe we can get a cobra or something for his magic act.”

  “It only said ‘opening soon,’ C.”

  “Better early than late. You never can tell.” She hung up. I headed to Mrs. Ludovic’s.

  CHAPTER 6

  Bullfrog Bounce

  The next afternoon, we all rode down to the plaza. A new sign hung in the Gator Aid window: Grand Opening Saturday. Now a counter display case was stocked with merchandise, and lights glowed in big glass boxes.

  “Terrariums,” CC announced. “Hope there’s venomous snakes. Baby Komodo dragons would be cool. You’ve got to get a king cobra or a python, Zal. Imagine pulling one out of your hat.”

  “The rabbit is enough trouble,” Zal said. “You get a cobra.”

  “I’m asking for sure on Sa
turday,” CC said. “C’mon, let’s hit the Trails.”

  The Trails were the best riding around. They were in Oakwood Park, the biggest park in our city. Our neighbourhood bordered its west side. The Trails ran through some killer hills that were also excellent for winter tobogganing.

  I bet I knew why CC wanted to go there. Coming down the last hill, you went past Green Pond. CC always liked stopping there because of what she called its “ginormous amphibian density.” In other words, the place had lots of toads and turtles.

  I guessed that if Gator Aid wasn’t open, she was going to see what she could find herself. What the heck, I thought, if we couldn’t catch a bandit, maybe she could catch a bullfrog.

  Green Pond was usually deserted, but now when we rode up people were clustered at the edge. Parked nearby was a van marked Municipal Animal Control. Everyone was murmuring and staring at the water. We edged closer.

  “What is it?” Zal asked.

  A lady turned to us. “There’s an alligator in there.”

  “Alligator? Where?” CC went up on her toes.

  The lady pointed. I squinted. Green Pond was called that for a reason. It was dark green with a topping of light green scum, and shadowed most of the way around by trees that seemed about to topple into the water. The weird part was that past the trees on the far side, where you’d expect a wilderness, was a road and houses. The SUV with the Gator Aid sign was parked there.

  The sunny part of the pond was choked with bulrushes. A slimy log poked above the surface, barely floating. Beside it, I finally spotted two dark little bumps in the scum. Not far behind them, looking like ripples on the surface, were two rows of wavy lines.

  “It was sunning on the log,” the lady explained. “But when the van pulled up, it slipped into the water.”

  “It can’t be very big.” CC sounded disappointed.

  “Give him twenty years, he’ll grow on ya,” said someone, and I recognized the bearded SUV driver. Now he had on a wide-brimmed straw hat. I eased back a little. “Technically,” he went on, “it’s a caiman, spectacled caiman. Looks a year old maybe, just a baby.”