Finding Elmo

by Monique Polak

  “Na, I’m all ri—,” I said, but then I changed my mind. “See Mr. Singh over there at the back of the store? Could you grab that tray from him? Just don’t let the samosas get jammed at one end.”

  Someone clapped their hands at the front of the store. “Mr. Morgan,” a woman called out, “time for your speech, sir.” Straightaway, people quieted down and headed to the dance floor, where a microphone was set up.

  I grabbed two glasses of wine and hurried over to where Mr. Morgan was standing with his friends. The woman thanked me when I handed her a glass. “Richard,” she said, holding her glass up to toast Mr. Morgan, “to a wonderful host and devoted friend.”

  “Why, thank you.” Mr. Morgan sounded embarrassed. Then he turned to face me. I figured he wanted to give me a few more orders before making his speech. “Who’s that child?” he asked, pointing at Rodney. “And why is he wearing that ridiculous outfit?”

  “He’s—uh—a friend of mine.”

  Mr. Morgan smirked. “I want him out of here. Now.”

  I tried to keep my voice low. Sure, it was Mr. Morgan’s party, but Rodney wasn’t causing any trouble. “His mom’s just—”

  Mr. Morgan turned his back and began walking to the dance floor. People clapped as he passed.

  “Tim!” a small voice called out. Rodney was pushing through the crowd to get over to where I was. Why hadn’t he gone to get the tray of samosas like I’d asked him to? And why was his face so pale?

  Rodney’s hand was over his mouth. His other hand was pointing at the palm tree. “E-E-lmo’s not on his swing,” he stammered. “Where’d he go?”

  chapter seven

  Problems have a way of seeming really bad at night when you’re lying in bed and it’s too dark for shadows, but it was morning and I wasn’t feeling any better.

  “You’re telling me there’s been a birdnapping?” the police officer asked. He was jotting down notes on a pad of paper. From where I stood, the notebook was upside down, but I could make out the words Four Feet and Feathers and cockatoo—mostly black, some red.

  “This is the first time I’ve heard of a birdnapping.” The second police officer nudged the first one’s elbow.

  “He is a very valuable bird,” I said, hoping this would make them take Elmo’s case more seriously.

  The first officer raised one eyebrow. “I see. How much is a bird like, what did you say his name was aga—?”

  “Elmo. His name’s Elmo.” My nerves were shot. Elmo was gone. Birdnapped. What if he was locked up in some gerbil cage—or worse, a cardboard box?

  “How much would you say a bird like Elmo is worth?” The police officer made a dollar sign on his note pad.

  “About two thousand dollars,” Dad said.

  I hadn’t been able to look at Dad all morning. I was too angry. This was his fault. If he hadn’t rented out the store for the party, I’d still have Elmo. It didn’t help that Dad was taking Elmo’s disappearance so calmly. Wasn’t he worried? Didn’t he have a heart anymore?

  The second officer whistled. “Two thousand for a bird? Geez, if I had that kind of dough, I’d take a cruise.”

  I felt my face get hot. “Cockatoos are like people,” I said.

  “Look, kid, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” the second officer said. “Don’t go getting worked up. Why don’t you tell us some more about Elmo? He’s black with a brown head, he’s got some bright red on his tail feathers and he’s almost a foot and a half long. Anything else we should know?”

  “Here,” my dad said, reaching into his pocket for his wallet. “Here’s a picture of Elmo with Tim.”

  I’d never seen the picture before. It shows Elmo perched on my forearm, looking up at my face. Looking at the picture made me feel even lonelier.

  “Does this bird of yours say anything?” the first officer asked.

  I shook my head. “Nope, not a word. Cockatoos are smart, but they’re not talkers.”

  “How much do those birds go for?” the second officer asked, pointing in Winifred and Hubert’s direction. They were back in the aviary, confined to their cages until Elmo was found. If only Winifred and Hubert could talk. Really talk, not just imitate what people say. Maybe then they could tell us what happened to Elmo.

  “They’re more expensive,” Dad answered. “They go for over three thousand apiece.”

  The first officer tapped his pen against the tip of his nose. “Looks like whoever took your bird wasn’t much of an expert, or he’d have gone for one of those parrots. Can either of you think of any suspects? Anyone who’d want to steal your bird or cause trouble for the store?”

  “Nope,” Dad said.

  “Me neither,” I added.

  The first officer turned to my dad. “I suppose you contacted your insurance company.”

  My dad dug his hands into his front pockets. “Well, actually...I was hoping you guys would be able to help us get Elmo back. Things here have been a little slow—” he hesitated for a moment “—and I haven’t kept up with the insurance payments.”

  If I hadn’t been so angry with my dad, I might have felt bad for him. Even I knew how important insurance was. If I were running the store, I’d never let the payments slide, no matter what.

  The two officers exchanged a look. “We’ll do what we can,” the first one said, handing my dad a business card. “But you haven’t given us much to go on. Let us know if you come up with any suspects.”

  Half-empty wineglasses had been left on the shelves, and paper napkins were scattered over the floor. But my dad didn’t make me help with the cleanup. He must have realized I blamed him for Elmo’s disappearance.

  “Why don’t you go for a walk?” he suggested. “See if you can find anyone who knows something about Elmo.” It was the most he’d said to me since our argument in the bathroom.

  I felt a little better as I headed for the food court. If the police wouldn’t do anything, well then, I’d start my own investigation.

  I heard Sapna’s bracelets jingling before I saw her. “Great-uncle told me about your bird. I’m so sorry for you, although I never had a bird myself.”

  “The police just left.” I stopped to clear my throat. It was hard for me to talk about Elmo without getting emotional. “They said they didn’t have much to go on.”

  “Well, what are we going to do?”

  I liked the way Sapna said “we.”

  “I guess we look for clues,” I said.

  Mr. Singh leaned over his counter. “Any word on Elmo?” He wiped his fingers on his apron, leaving behind thick orange streaks.

  “Nothing yet,” I told him. “But everyone liked your food.”

  When Mr. Singh smiled, the gold fillings in his mouth gleamed.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t get to taste the cake,” Sapna said. “My mother says I’ve always had a sweet tooth. Even as an infant.”

  I turned to look at her. “What cake?”

  “The party cake. I was loading a platter with tandoori chicken when I noticed the cake deliveryman. I offered my assistance, but he said he wasn’t going far—that he was on his way to your store. I couldn’t tell what sort of cake he was carrying because it was wrapped in white plastic. Personally, I like chocolate, bu—”

  “Sapna,” I said, choking on my words. “There wasn’t any cake at the party.”

  chapter eight

  My dad was on the telephone.

  “It’s about Elmo,” I whispered.

  “Just a second,” he said, mouthing the words.

  I shook my head no. I couldn’t wait. Not even for a second. Why didn’t my dad understand how important this was?

  “Sapna saw a cake deliveryman walking into the store last night. Only there wasn’t any cake,” I said without stopping for air. Sapna was next to me, nodding. “You’ve gotta let the police know.”

  “I’ll call when I’m off the phone,” he said, covering the receiver and waving us out of his office.

  I scanned the surface of my dad’s desk.
His ledger book was open. I saw the edge of a business card with the logo for the Montreal Urban Community Police on it—a crest with a blue cross—peeping out from underneath it. I reached for the card and put it on top of the ledger book.

  “Hey,” my dad muttered, “don’t mess with my papers.”

  I pretended I hadn’t heard him. It was easier than getting into another fight. And right now, I didn’t have time to argue. “Don’t forget to call,” I said.

  Mr. Singh spotted Sapna and me walking through the food court. He was sprinkling some spices into a pot. “Sapna!” he called out. “I won’t need your assistance until noon. Why don’t you help this young man find his bird?”

  I sighed as we left the air-conditioned mall. I’d forgotten how hot and humid it was outside.

  “Can you remember what the cake deliveryman looked like?” I asked Sapna when we reached the sidewalk at the edge of the parking lot.

  “He was tall. Then again, next to me, everyone seems tall. I’m only five-foot-one.” I’d noticed how if you asked Sapna a question, she told you a lot of stuff besides the answer. “He was wearing a chef’s hat. Not especially becoming on such a tall person.”

  We spotted the van at the same time. It was white with rusty spots over the tires and the words Bob’s Bakery written on the side in curly letters. Next to the lettering was a cartoon of a dog wearing a chef’s hat.

  The first thing we did was check the doors. All locked. Rats! We tried peeking inside, but we couldn’t see through the tinted windows. There was more lettering next to the picture of the dog. “Dog-gone good,” I said, reading the words out loud. “I wonder what Bob knows about birds that are gone.”

  The address was on the side of the car too. Bob’s Bakery was out on Lakeshore Drive. “You said you like chocolate, right? How ‘bout donuts?” I asked Sapna.

  “We don’t get donuts in India,” Sapna said. “Other sweets, but not donuts. Have you ever tasted a gulab jamun? They’re made with condensed milk.”

  I’d bicycled to the mall, and so had Sapna. We’d even parked our bikes in the same rack. Only hers—Mr. Singh had borrowed it from a friend of a friend— looked like it came from the Middle Ages. It was rustier than Bob’s van.

  We rode single file. I didn’t have to turn around to check that Sapna was behind me. I could tell from the squeal of her brakes.

  A bell on the bakery door jingled when we walked in. The next thing we heard was high-pitched chirping. Sapna raised her eyebrows.

  “Cockatoos don’t chirp,” I told her. A brass cage hung behind the cash register. Inside a yellow canary watched us from his perch.

  “So you like birds?” a man’s voice asked from the back of the store.

  He wore a chef’s hat. But he wasn’t tall.

  “Is that him?” I whispered to Sapna.

  Sapna shook her head no.

  I cleared my throat. “We, uh, saw your van at the Lasalle Mall and we wondered if—” I stopped myself. We wondered if you stole my cockatoo. Of course, I couldn’t say that.

  “My van?” When he clapped his hands, a puff of flour drifted to the floor. “It’s been missing since yesterday. I filed a police report, but when I phoned this morning, they said it still hadn’t turned up. You sure it’s mine?”

  “Dog-gone good,” Sapna said.

  The man grinned. “That’s it, all right. Hey, did it look okay? Not too beaten up? The police figured some kids probably took it for a joyride.”

  “It looked fine,” I said. “Except for all the rust.”

  “So tell me something,” he asked, “how come you two came all the way out here?” He looked at Sapna and me, and I knew he was sizing us up. “By the way, I’m Bob. How about something to eat? On me. After all, you two detectives found my van before the cops did.”

  “We’re looking for a cockatoo,” I told Bob in between bites of my second donut. “He was birdnapped last night from my dad’s pet store. Sapna saw a tall man wearing a baker’s hat in the food court outside the store. He was carrying a cake—”

  “Only there wasn’t any cake at the party. There were only appetizers—and wine. Lots of wine,” Sapna added.

  Bob nodded. Even his canary, who had stopped singing, seemed to be listening. “I didn’t have any cake deliveries last night,” Bob said. “But the van was full of supplies— platters, a chef’s hat, plastic...”

  “White plastic?” Sapna asked.

  “Yup,” Bob said. “Listen, how about the three of us head for the mall? You might want to have a look inside my van.”

  “That’s just what we were thinking,” Sapna said.

  “I’m no expert, but if you ask me, no kids’ve been in here.” Bob was sitting in the driver’s seat of the van, leaning forward to inspect the ashtray. “No cigarette butts, no beer bottles.”

  “What about this plastic?” Sapna pointed to the backseat, where an industrial-size roll of white plastic wrap was lodged in one corner.

  Bob reached for the roll. “Hard to say if anything’s missing. But the chef’s hat is gone. I always leave it right here,” he said, patting the passenger seat. “People like it when you wear a chef’s hat. Makes the cakes taste better.”

  I crawled into the back of the van, scouring the worn gray carpeting. Nothing there but bits of dried icing and some loose change. Without meaning to, I sighed.

  “You mustn’t give up, Tim. If you give up now, you might never find your bird,” Sapna said.

  I didn’t tell her she was making me feel worse. Why’d she have to talk about never finding Elmo? Instead I dropped my eyes back to the ground.

  That’s when I saw it. A piece of dark fluff on the floor behind the passenger seat. When I reached for it, I realized it was a feather, a long black feather with bright red speckles about an inch from its base. My heart thumped hard inside my chest.

  Sapna crouched behind me. “Is it Elmo’s?”

  I picked up the feather and slid it between my fingers. I brought it to my nose, and for a second, I smelled pineapple. “It’s got to be,” I said.

  chapter nine

  On TV and in mystery books, kidnappers send ransom notes. They cut letters from newspapers or magazines so nobody will recognize their handwriting. Then they stick the letters together to make sentences like, Leave a bag of unmarked bills near the mailbox and do not contact the police. Or else.

  A shiver ran down my back when I thought of the “Or else” part. It was bad enough that Elmo was gone. But, worse, I worried the birdnapper might not know how to take care of him. Maybe whoever had Elmo wouldn’t remember to change his water, which could cause a buildup of bacteria in the dish. Or maybe they would leave Elmo some place drafty. Even big birds were susceptible to catching colds, and if the infection went into his lungs...

  It had been two-and-a-half days since Elmo’s disappearance, and every time I walked into the store, I asked whether there’d been any unusual phone calls or letters. The answer was always “No.” But then this was real life—not TV.

  Keeping busy helped. When I was cleaning out the dog run—shoveling the poop, then scrubbing the floor with disinfectant—I was too busy to think about Elmo. Even rearranging the how-to-care-for-your-pets books helped.

  But as soon as I stopped shoveling or scrubbing or rearranging, I started worrying all over again. The hardest part was walking through the aviary past Elmo’s empty cage. Amy had covered it with the sheet, and I kept wanting to uncover it. It didn’t make any sense, but I kept hoping I’d find Elmo inside, preening himself or rubbing up against the bars.

  Even Winifred and Hubert seemed depressed. They were in their cages, ignoring each other. It was like they’d called a truce until Elmo was back.

  “I know exactly how you feel,” I told Winifred as I changed the paper at the bottom of her cage.

  Hanging out with Winifred and Hubert reminded me of something one of the police officers had said: “Whoever took your bird wasn’t much of an expert, or he’d have gone for one of those parr
ots.” At the time, I hadn’t bothered explaining that Winifred was a macaw, not a parrot.

  Thinking about the police officer’s words got me wondering about the birdnapper. Why had they taken Elmo, anyhow? There was no ransom note, so maybe the birdnapper wasn’t after money. Which was good because I had a feeling my dad didn’t have any unmarked bills to spare.

  The police officer was right: An expert would have gone for Winifred or Hugo, instead. Unless...unless there was something about Elmo we didn’t know.

  Why hadn’t I thought of that before?

  Dad was out for the afternoon, tied up in a meeting at the bank, so his office was empty. I was in such a rush to get to the back of the store that I didn’t notice passing anything on the way. Not the turtles, or the palm tree, or the fish tanks.

  I heard the quiet hum of Dad’s computer.

  I went straight to Google.

  I started by typing in two simple words: cockatoo and black.

  I got nearly nine hundred and forty-six thousand hits. Wow, I thought, as I scanned the first page of websites that popped up. Most of the sites had been set up by pet owners—people wanting to show off pictures of their birds and hoping to chat online with other black cockatoo owners.

  The fourth entry caught my eye: Glossy Black Cockatoo. Elmo’s feathers were glossy all right. I thought about the one in my front pocket. I’d examined it a thousand times since I’d found it inside Bob’s van.

  But this time, I didn’t reach for the feather. I wanted to keep reading. My eyes raced across the screen, moving faster than my brain.

  “The glossy black cockatoo is native to Kangaroo Island in South Australia,” I read aloud. Cool name for an island. For a second, I pictured Elmo flying across a cloudless sky, a couple of kangaroos on the ground, watching as he passed overhead.

  My eyes pressed forward. In danger of extinction, the glossy black cockatoo is considered priceless.

  Priceless?

  How could Elmo be priceless? We’d inherited him from that old sailor—the one who’d brought Elmo back from one of his trips. Then again, maybe the sailor hadn’t known either.