by Karen Karbo
Just for the heck of it Mark Clark marched up to the front desk and asked whether Frank was working that day. The woman working there said she’d heard he’d up and quit. We went around to the junkyard urban wilderness in the back to see if we could find my phone. There was yellow crime scene tape strung across the gap in the chain-link fence. Mark said to forget the phone, he’d buy me another one. But then I saw something glinting in the sun. I ducked beneath the tape, trotted through the weeds and debris, and snatched it up. I wiped the dust from it with my hand. The battery was dead, but otherwise it looked as if it still worked.
When we got home Morgan was in the backyard, stretching his sleeping bag out on the picnic table.
“Better move that before Mom gets here,” said Mark Clark. “She called and said she might be early.”
Morgan ignored him. I asked him how the desert was, and he asked me did I find out anything about that diamond. I said I did. He said good.
Sometimes it’s just so nice having brothers. Things wouldn’t be so simple when mom showed up. I ran into the kitchen to put my phone on its charger. Mark Clark’s phone rang. It was the police.
“Some detectives went over to Sylvia Soto’s apartment,” said Mark after he’d hung up. “She and her brother have apparently cleared out. Their apartment was empty, and the brother didn’t show up on Rodney von Lager’s movie set today either. They’ve put out an all-points bulletin for them. And for Frank, too.”
“Do you think they’ll actually catch them?” I asked.
“If they do, I’m sure they’ll let us know,” said Mark Clark.
My question about whether the police would ever find Sylvia was answered later that day, when I went to Chelsea’s house to hang for a bit. She’d called and asked me to come over. I grabbed my phone and set out.
I passed the mailman on the front walkway. He said “howdy” as he went on his way. Chelsea stood in the doorway with an armful of magazines and catalogues, reading a postcard, her eyebrows crinkled with confusion or worry or something. I’d never seen her look that way.
“And I thought we got a lot of dumb catalogues at our house,” I said, nodding at the pile of slick catalogues.
“This is bizarre,” she said.
She handed me the card.
As postcards go, it couldn’t have been more boring. On the front it said Portland International Airport in fancy writing, and pictured a big silver jet on the runway, with snowy Mt. Hood in the background. I turned it over. It was addressed to “Chelsea and Her Nosy Friend.”
“I guess you’re the Nosy Friend,” said Chelsea.
The card read:
Mi Amigas:
I just wanted to say … you are both GEMS! Well, got to catch my plane. Tonio says hello!
Adios!
Sylvia
“What do you think it means?” asked Chelsea, turning and leading me into their all white living room.
I laughed. “That we’ll never see them again. Unless we go to Puerto Vallarta.”
Chelsea sat on the edge of the white sofa, smoothed her hair against her head. “Well, here’s the thing,” she said. “My mom has a question for you. My mom is so lame sometimes. She tries to be cool, but sometimes she is just lame.”
“What’s the question?” I asked.
“You don’t have to say yes. I mean, just because we’re best friends, don’t think you have to do it. I know sometimes—like with Julia last year when she wanted me to go to that dance at her boyfriend’s school way out in some horrible suburb—I can’t even remember where—you just feel like you have to, but you don’t have to. This is a way bigger thing than some stupid dance.”
It’s a good thing Chelsea was the breed standard of cute, because otherwise she was sure annoying. “What. Is. It?”
Then, at that moment, before Chelsea could say another word, my cell phone made a sound I hadn’t heard in the longest time, the semi-embarrassing tring-tring-triiiiiiinnnnng that tells me I have a message.
“Hold on a sec.”
I popped my Bluetooth over my ear. I had three messages.
All from Kevin.
“Minerva, it’s me, Kevin. I’m somewhere … around Missoula? We just got phone service. I’ll call you back.
“Minerva, okay, your phone’s still not on. We’re in Idaho or something. I really tried to call, but there was no phone service. Oh, man. I hope you’re not totally mad at me.”
“Min? We just stopped at a 7-Eleven and I got you some of those tropical Starbursts that you like. Well, actually, I got about a dozen packages, so I could pick out all the kiwi banana ones. Those are your favorites, right? Call me!”
Before this moment, I never knew what people meant when they said they were in a swoon. But now I was in one. I felt as if I was going to float up to the ceiling like a birthday balloon. Each new message was better than any Christmas present I’d ever received. I sat down on the sofa.
“Who was that?” asked Chelsea. “Your face is all red.”
“Remember that guy I took to the last dance?”
“That total hottie you were slow-dancing with?”
Before I could answer, there was the sound of doggie toenails on the wood floor. It was Ned, on his leash, followed by Mrs. de Guzman.
“Well?” she said.
“Mom! I haven’t had a chance to ask her yet! She was on the phone with her boyfriend. Jeez. She wants you to take Ned,” said Chelsea.
“Ned the dog?”
“Now that we’ve lost our dog sitter, we can’t keep all three of them,” said Mrs. de Guzman. “And you and Ned seemed to have really hit it off.”
In the Clark house we have a motto: It’s always easier to ask forgiveness than it is to ask permission. I hoped the brothers would remember this as I walked home with my new dog, Ned, trotting along beside me on his leash. I’d been held hostage twice this week, and helped break a jewel-thief ring. I’d been traumatized. The least they could do was let me have a dog.
Cloud 9 was way too low a cloud number to describe my mood. It was more like Cloud 999. Kevin would be home Friday! I tried to think of a way to get out of basic electronics, which was coming up.
It was slow going; Ned stopped to mark every tree between Chelsea’s house and Casa Clark. This is Portland, Oregon; there are a lot of trees.
Mrs. de Guzman had packed Ned’s wardrobe of collars and rain jackets, his chewy toys and bowls, into a burlap tote bag from her tote bag collection. She said she had a million of them. They were always the special presents you got for donating money to public television. The bag wasn’t light.
As Ned and I strolled along I couldn’t help wondering whether the red diamond would ever be recovered. Maybe it wasn’t just a face-in-the-crowd diamond after all, but every bit as cursed as the Hope diamond. Look at the stupid things people had done for it. Including trying to sneak it into the country in a cheap six-dollar ring. Of course, people didn’t need a diamond in their lives to do ridiculous things. Love made people just as silly. Look at Reggie and Amanda the Panda, and Frank and Sylvia, and even Kevin, with his dozen packages of tropical Starbursts fruit chews.
I was feeling all wise and happy as I turned up the street that led to Casa Clark. Life could not be better. Then, as I reached our driveway, I spied my mom’s old white Pathfinder parked in the driveway. I knew it was her from the New Mexico plates. The car was covered with dust from the drive. She and her boyfriend Rolando were early.
And then I saw it.
It took a minute to register.
On the back of the car windshield were written the words “Just Married.”
Acknowledgments
My deep appreciation goes to Chris Fletcher and Mitch Finnegan, two fine veterinarians who know about corgis and homing pigeons; Danna Schaeffer, best friend and best proofreader, ever; Melanie Cecka, Deb Shapiro, Stacy Cantor, and everyone at Bloomsbury Children’s; Kim Witherspoon and David Forrer; Karen Rinaldi; Dawn Stuart and Regina Castillo; and, last but not least, Jerrod All
en, my in-house expert on capacitors, Bluetooth technology, and the mysteries of being an oldest older brother.
A word about the Oregon Humane Society: The Portland Humane Society, where some of this mystery takes place, is based on the Oregon Humane Society. Founded in 1878, OHS is one of the oldest animal shelters in the country. It now serves the needs of over 13,000 animals per year, and has one of the highest animal adoption rates in the country. As Minerva will tell you, the facility is most excellent and the animals well cared for. For more information go to www.oregonhumane.org.
Also by Karen Karbo
Minerva Clark Gets a Clue
Copyright © 2006 by Karen Karbo
All rights reserved You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages
Published by Bloomsbury Publishing, New York, London, and Berlin
Bloomsbury Publishing, Children’s Books, U.S.A.
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Electronic edition published in October 2012
www.bloomsburykids.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Karbo, Karen.
Minerva Clark goes to the dogs / by Karen Karbo.—1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Still enjoying her newfound self-confidence, a thirteen-year-old sleuth in
Portland, Oregon, tries to uncover a missing red diamond and gets herself mixed up with
a crooked animal shelter worker and some very strange animals.
[1. Portland (Or.)—Fiction. 2. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Title.
PZ7.K132Mk 2006 [Fic]—dc22 2006006428
First U.S. Edition 2006
ISBN 978-1-58234-678-6 (e-book)