Who Stole New Year's Eve?

by Martha Freeman

  I wiped my eyes. I realized I was crying.

  Where was Yasmeen?

  And where was my mom?

  The noise echoed in my skull for several seconds; then it got eerily quiet; then I heard the sirens again. Within moments, police cars screamed up, then a fire engine, and after that two ambulances. Eve, Sophie, and I watched speechlessly while the emergency workers poured out of their vehicles, shone spotlights on the wrecked building, and put up barriers and yellow police tape to seal off the area.

  Within a few minutes, the fire guys had suited up and swarmed the wreckage. In all the chaos, it was hard to see exactly what was happening, but eventually the EMS people pulled two backboards out of the ambulance.

  “What are they doing now?” Eve asked.

  “They’ve got patients,” Sophie said.

  “Come on,” I said, and we headed for the emergency vehicles and what was left of RSF-Z.

  Approaching the taped-off boundary, we saw Officer Krichels, who put up his hands to say Stop. “Hi, kids. Now, you know I can’t let you come any closer. It’s too dangerous, and we’ve got our work to do.”

  “Is my mom—?” I tried to ask. “Yasmeen—?”

  Officer Krichels looked really serious. “They’re going to the hospital,” he said, “and that’s all I can tell you ’cause that’s all I know.”

  Suddenly Bub was there—he had come up behind me.

  And I was never so glad to see anyone in my life.

  “I’ve called your dad, Alex, and Yasmeen’s parents,” he said. “They’ll meet us at the hospital. Your parents are coming, too, girls. Hop in my truck and let’s go.”

  Lying on beds in the hospital’s emergency room, Mom and Yasmeen both looked terrible. They had braces around their necks. Their faces were pink-splotched and scratched. They were hooked up to beeping machines that read their heartbeats and blood pressure. Hanging from metal poles next to their beds were bags of clear liquid connected by tubes to their bandaged arms. The doctor explained there was medicine in the liquid to kill germs, replace fluids, and help them sleep.

  It was scary seeing them that way. But they were alive. I tried to concentrate on that.

  “Detective Parakeet’s body has had a severe shock, and we won’t know about the extent of her internal injuries for a while,” the doctor explained to my dad and me as we stood by her. “Luckily, the burns seem to be superficial.”

  Only a green curtain separated Mom’s bed from Yasmeen’s, and I could hear Yasmeen trying to say something. Her parents were in the hall talking to a nurse, so I went around and bent down next to her. “What, Yasmeen? Can I get you anything?”

  “Unh-unh,” she croaked, and I could barely hear her. “I just wanted to tell you . . . that superficial . . . means . . . not deep.”

  I reported this conversation to Sophie, Eve, and Bub a couple of minutes later. They were in the waiting area outside the emergency room.

  Bub tried to laugh, but it came out like more of a sob. “Now I know”—he wiped his eyes—“she’ll be okay.”

  A few minutes after that, Professor Henry arrived, no longer looking anything like the confident scientist from the Jensens’ disaster party. Instead, he looked sad and uncertain. When he tried to give Eve a hug, she pulled away.

  My dad came into the waiting room at almost the same moment. The doctor was getting my mom ready to move her upstairs. We could go see her in her own hospital room later.

  Compared to Professor Henry, my dad—proprietor of Pie in the Sky Pies—looked totally intimidating.

  “Well?” was my dad’s greeting. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

  Professor Henry sighed. “ ‘I’m sorry’ is inadequate.”

  “It would be a start, though,” Dad said. “And after that—how about if you admit responsibility?”

  “I am sorry,” Professor Henry said, “from the bottom of my heart. And I won’t make excuses for myself. This dream of mine—grassoline—has overcome my good sense and my moral sense, too. I see that, after what’s happened tonight. I only hope the damage isn’t permanent. Your wife? Ms. Popp? How are they?”

  “The doctors don’t know yet,” Dad said. “They’re doing tests and will assess again in the morning.”

  Before Professor Henry could reply to that, Sophie cut him off. “I’ve got some questions for you.”

  “Sophie,” I said, “at this point, shouldn’t we let the police—?”

  “What police?” Sophie said. “Your mom’s not going to be doing a whole lot of detecting for a while yet. I say we help her out.”

  Professor Henry smiled grimly. “I don’t mind answering your questions, uh—what’s your name, again?”

  Sophie put out her hand. “Sophie Sikora. And this is Alex Parakeet. We’re your neighbors on Chickadee Court. And I guess you remember your daughter—even though you hardly ever have time for her. We’ve been investigating. The first thing I want to know is, when did you start chewing sunflower seeds again?”

  Dad and I looked at Sophie like, Wha’? But Eve giggled, which was a pleasant sound under the circumstances.

  “How did you know about that?” Professor Henry asked. “Never mind—it doesn’t matter. Probably a month ago, right before we moved. I was under a lot of stress. But I had to do it in secret because my wife doesn’t approve.”

  “Maybe, if you don’t mind, you could back up a little,” I said. “What was your plan, exactly? I mean, I figured out there’s a volatile chemical in the fracking liquid, a chemical you think will work as a catalyst for making grassoline, so you had it frozen into ice sculptures.”

  Professor Henry looked surprised. “My wife told me about your reputation as a detective, Alex. I see it’s deserved.” He took a breath. “Well, all right. I may as well explain it all. The plan was to transfer the sculptures to RSF-Z after Ice Carnival ended. But then the weather forecast called for warming. I was terrified they might melt. And if they did—”

  “Ka-boom!” Sophie threw her hands in the air.

  “Uh, yes. Basically,” said Professor Henry. “So my students and I gathered the sculptures from downtown in the dead of night. I knew I could count on them to keep quiet about it. And then I went over to Chickadee Court in my old truck and collected Eve myself.”

  “By ‘gather them up,’ you mean you stole them, right, dear?” Mrs. Henry had come in from the parking lot.

  “It was in the best interests of science, not to mention the environment,” Professor Henry insisted. “Grassoline—”

  Mrs. Henry cut him off. “Grassoline is not going to do a thing for Yasmeen or Detective Parakeet.”

  Professor Henry hung his head, and there was an uncomfortable silence.

  Bub broke it. “What you’re saying, Professor, puts me in mind of something my friend Al told us the other day. He mentioned how it’s pretty near impossible to get a permit from the state for hauling explosives.”

  Professor Henry nodded. “That’s right, and that’s why I was forced to enlist my brother-in-law’s help to hide the chemical in ice sculptures.”

  “Uncle Jim was in on this?” Eve said.

  Professor Henry nodded. “He thought finding a use for dirty fracking water would be good for everyone in the end. Besides that, I promised him a share of the proceeds from grassoline. Anyway, we didn’t have time to wait for state permits if we were going to be the first to market with our product. The competing team from my old university has been hot on our heels.”

  So Sophie was right, I thought, in a way. The motive was money. Professor Henry wanted his kind of grassoline to win the race—because if it did, he and Mr. Yoder and the college and a lot of other people would make a ton of money.

  I remembered something else, too. Hadn’t my mom’s annoying tipster—the one who turned out to be Professor Olivo—warned about “poison bombs on the highway”? So he wasn’t crazy! He knew Professor Henry was looking for a volatile catalyzing chemical, and he was afraid Professor Henry might be willing
to take a chance and transport it illegally, too.

  A nurse appeared at the emergency room door. “Which one of you is Alex? Could you come back a moment?”

  I figured it was Mom who wanted something, but it was Yasmeen. This time she was sitting up. Her parents were standing beside her cot. They nodded hello to me but never took their eyes off their daughter.

  “Alex,” Yasmeen whispered. “I have to tell you something.”

  “Oh, honey,” said Mrs. Popp. “Don’t tire yourself out.”

  “It’s important.” Yasmeen tried to shake her head but couldn’t because of the brace around her neck. She couldn’t open her mouth very wide, either, which made her hard to understand. “My brain’s all fuzzy—or I would’ve thought of it sooner. It’s about Luau. Is he okay?”

  Oh my gosh, I had totally forgotten my cat! “I don’t know. He was acting strange. Dad took him to the vet, but that was before—”

  “Alex, listen,” Yasmeen interrupted, and the rest came out in breathless gasps: “Luau might be sick. I took him over to the Henrys’ front yard today. I needed him to keep Marshmallow out of the way while I looked for clues. When we were there—he drank some of the melted ice . . . from where Ice Eve was standing? I didn’t think anything about it till tonight when I saw that the sculptures weren’t made out of plain water. Alex, listen. You have to find out if your cat’s been poisoned.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  I didn’t sleep that night.

  Except I guess I must have. Because otherwise, how come I woke up the next morning?

  It was New Year’s Day, Eve’s birthday, the first day of the year—the worst day of my life.

  Luau wasn’t sitting on my chest or swishing his tail in my face the way he should have been. He was at the vet’s, and the vet couldn’t promise he’d ever come home.

  My mom was in the hospital.

  My best friend was in the hospital.

  Along with Sophie and Eve, I had solved a mystery—but I didn’t feel good about it. How could I feel good when my new friend’s dad would probably have to go to jail?

  I washed and got dressed and went downstairs and played video games. Dad knew how I was feeling and didn’t even bug me to do anything useful. He just came in, said hello, and left me alone. The plan was to go to the hospital after lunch. That was when the doctors were going to decide about Mom and Yasmeen coming home.

  At eleven o’clock the phone rang, and Dad picked it up in the kitchen. Was it the vet? I went to find out.

  “Mr. Parakeet, yes,” Dad was saying, “and don’t tell me because I know it’s a funny name for a cat owner. How is Luau doing?”

  For a few moments, Dad’s face didn’t give anything away. He just listened and nodded and then—finally—he smiled and gave me a thumbs-up. I didn’t even realize I’d been holding my breath till I grabbed a gulp of air so big it made me cough.

  Luau was going to be okay!

  In the car on the way to get him, Dad told me what the vet had said. It turned out to be lucky Yasmeen had told me when she did about Luau drinking the ice-melt. The chemical in the melted ice smells good to dogs and cats, but in their bodies it acts a lot like antifreeze, the stuff you put in cars. Pets drink antifreeze sometimes because it’s sweet, but it’s also deadly poison if you don’t act fast.

  “Hey, guy—how ya feeling?” I picked Luau up off the table in the vet’s examining room. When I held him close, he clutched me with his claws. Alex, get me out of here. There’s not a comfy cushion in the place.

  Luau wasn’t the only one who got to go home that day. So did Mom, and so did Yasmeen. The doctors said they had been lucky, too, and their injuries weren’t severe. Neither one of them could remember exactly what had happened, but they must have been clear of the warehouse before the blast.

  I spent the rest of the day nursing patients, and I didn’t mind at all.

  My mom was what’s known as a good patient. She liked staying in bed with a book and having Dad and me bring her tea. She worried that the cuts on her face might scar, and she didn’t like aching all over, but otherwise she said it was like a vacation. She also said thank you a lot.

  The only bad part was she kept mussing up my hair the way I hate.

  Yasmeen and Luau, on the other hand, were terrible patients.

  Luau, being a cat, was happy to lie around 99 percent motionless. But he was 100 percent full of complaints. The pillow was lumpy. The sun was in his eyes. His medicine tasted awful. He was extra-grumpy because before we left, the vet had said he should go back on a diet—no more kitty treats.

  Then there was Yasmeen. She couldn’t stand to stay still. Her mom had to threaten to tie her down. “And the piano is definitely off-limits,” Mrs. Popp said.

  Jeremiah was delighted about that last part. “You heard Mom,” he said. “ ‘Definitely off-limits.’ ”

  “Go away,” Yasmeen told Jeremiah. “Please.”

  She was on the sofa in the den. I was sitting next to her in a chair. Everything hurt, she said, and she didn’t feel like reading or watching TV.

  “Do you feel like talking?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “But what?”

  “There’re still some things about the case I don’t get,” I said. “Like were you following me yesterday when I was downtown?”

  “Not exactly following,” she said. “I think I actually went downtown before you did. I talked to Tim Roberts.”

  “Wait . . . what?” So that was why he hadn’t said, “Where’s Yasmeen?” He’d known where she was. She had already been there.

  “I wanted to solve the case as much as you did, bud. Maybe even more, because I wanted to show I’m better than your new best friend, Eve.”

  I let that last part go for the moment. “Hey . . . and did you talk to Coach Hathaway, too?”

  Yasmeen nodded. “I ran into him when I was out looking for clues.”

  “Did you find the sunflower crud?”

  Yasmeen made a face. “Sunflower crud?”

  Ha! Score one for Alex Parakeet. “I’ll tell you about it later. Then did you go to the unfinished house?”

  “I did,” she said. “I know that part was stupid, and I’m sorry, but I was so mad at you—mad at everybody, I guess. Anyway, I wanted to make sure Jeremiah and Billy had moved the lady dancing like I asked them to. Only I slipped and knocked over some boards and made a lot of noise.”

  “And later you went out to RSF-Z,” I said.

  Yasmeen nodded. “With your mom.”

  “What?!”

  “I knew the ice sculptures had to be at Professor Henry’s lab complex. I mean, where else would he have hidden them?”

  “Wait a second,” I said. “You knew Professor Henry stole the ice sculptures?”

  “Duh, Alex.”

  “I don’t get it. How—?”

  Yasmeen reached over and picked up a book, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, from the table next to the sofa. “It’s all here in a story called ‘Silver Blaze.’ The clue that incriminates the murderer is a dog that doesn’t bark. This was the same situation. Marshmallow barks if a snowflake even hits the ground, but he didn’t bark when Ice Eve was stolen in the middle of the night. I wondered why not, and then I remembered that in the story, it’s the dog’s owner that’s the bad guy. In this case, the answer was the same. If the thief wasn’t an intruder, it basically had to be Professor Henry.”

  I couldn’t believe it. “I should have just asked Marshmallow!” I said.

  Yasmeen sighed. “Alex? You’re not going to tell me you can talk to Marshmallow, are you?”

  I shook my head. “Of course not,” I said. “I would never tell you that. But go back a second. What about my mom?”

  “I would have been stupid to confront Professor Henry on my own, wouldn’t I? I needed reinforcements, so I called your mom, and she went with me. It’s useful to have a police officer around, bud. For example, she had a gizmo on her belt that opened the door to the warehouse.”


  “So that’s why the door was unlocked! But she wasn’t inside when Eve and Sophie and I arrived, was she?”

  “She was at her car getting a lantern,” Yasmeen said, “and I guess calling in reinforcements, too. She didn’t realize how dangerous it was in the warehouse.”

  I was getting ready to go home and check my other patients when the phone rang in another room and Mrs. Popp came in, holding out the receiver for Yasmeen.

  “It’s okay with me,” Mrs. Popp told Yasmeen, “if you feel up to it.”

  When Yasmeen was done, she handed the phone to me.

  “Alex?” It was Eve. In spite of all that had happened, she wanted to have a small party to celebrate her birthday. Could I come over later?

  I looked at Yasmeen and she nodded—she was going, so I said I would, too.

  “It’s gonna be tough for Eve now with her dad in trouble,” Yasmeen explained after I had hung up. “I mean, she’ll probably have to go back to California. So—the least we can do is be nice the last few days she’s around.”

  Nobody would blame me if I called Eve’s birthday another disaster party.

  On the other hand, before the bad part happened, Eve told me something amazing: Professor Olivo had talked to the district attorney and convinced him to keep both Professor Henry and her uncle Jim out of jail!

  Say what?

  “Crazy, huh?” Eve said. Like you can imagine, she had a huge grin on her face. “But Professor Olivo figured out it would be good if they could all work together instead of hating each other, since he—Professor Olivo—is interested in fracking and Dad needs the chemical from fracking water to make his grassoline.”

  Yasmeen nodded. “That makes a lot of sense.” The three of us were on the sofa in the basement, where Mrs. Henry had set up games and party food, which—since the Henrys are from California—included guacamole. “And since your dad and your uncle can’t exactly work from jail, they’ll probably stay out.”