“Going to practice, Mom!” came Darren’s foghorn voice from inside the house. “I’ll just grab a Gatorade first.”
Uh-oh. Ben withdrew the device by its long handle and ducked into the bushes, peeking in over the sill with one eye.
After a moment, Darren appeared, a half-gallon jug of Gatorade in his meaty fist. Hastily, Ben dropped out of sight and pressed himself up against the side of the house.
Darren strode over to his bag, uncorking the bottle and taking a long pull. Then, in a single motion, he threw the window wide and dumped the rest of the contents into the bushes.
The big boy smiled in satisfaction at the cry of shock that came from below.
“Hey, Slovak,” he called out the window. “You stink at spying. Tell Bing he better not even think about trying to pin this rap on me. Got it?”
Drenched, muddy, and thoroughly humiliated, Ben crawled onto the Vader lawn in retreat, the metal detector dragging behind him.
“And you owe me a Gatorade!” Darren shouted after him. “You made me spill this one!”
A damp and sticky Ferret Face glowered plaintively up at Ben from his collar. A quick murmured “Sorry, pal” was all the apology Ben had time for. He had to drop the metal detector at home and meet the rest of the team at school before calisthenics.
Melissa pulled the papers from her printer and stuffed them in the computer bag that served as her backpack. Ever since the fiasco at Konrad’s, she had been monitoring the e-mail of the four suspects, Celia White, Darren Vader, Tony Bartholomew, and Dr. Egan.
The meeting place was Ben’s locker. This was for two reasons. First, it was close to the entrance, so they could run outside quickly when calisthenics started. And second, it was right next to Griffin’s locker. That closed vented door — and the friend who was not there to open it — served as a reminder that they could not give up until they had won justice for The Man With The Plan.
Ben, Pitch, and Logan were leaning against the beige metal row when Melissa arrived. Only Savannah could not attend. Since the discovery of the command center, her parents had been watching her every move. To leave for school an hour early would have seemed suspicious when so much heat was on. Savannah was walking on eggs.
“Celia White’s a dead end,” Pitch was telling the others. “There was nothing but junk in her desk.” She turned to Ben. “Any luck with Vader?”
“If getting slimed with Gatorade counts, it was the luckiest day of my life,” Ben replied bitterly. He squeezed the front of his sweatshirt, wringing out a trickle of yellow liquid. “His gym bag’s clean, though. The metal detector didn’t beep.”
“I struck out with Tony Bartholomew,” Logan confessed, shamefaced. “I used the Stanislavski method to portray his cousin from Arizona, but he saw right through it. I probably didn’t have enough time to prepare for the role.”
“Probably,” Pitch agreed sarcastically. “Either that or he recognized a kid he sees around school every single day.”
“I might have something on Tony,” Melissa ventured, taking the papers from her bag. “He sent an e-mail asking about Super Bowl rings and how much they’re worth. That could be because he’s trying to sell one.”
“Or he could just be pricing them since he thinks the missing one is his,” Ben said with a sigh. “Face it, we’re right back where we started. We can’t even totally rule out Dr. Evil. Just because the ring wasn’t in the box he brought to Konrad’s doesn’t mean he hasn’t got it stashed someplace else.”
Melissa parted her curtain of hair to reveal a furrowed brow. “There must be something we’re missing here.”
Pitch nodded slowly. “You know what always bugged me? How could a Super Bowl ring sit in the custodian’s supply closet for all those years without anyone noticing it?”
“Maybe nobody recognized it for what it was,” Logan suggested.
“No way,” Pitch countered. “Mr. Clancy’s head practically exploded when I mentioned the sixty-nine Jets, and he’s in that closet, like, twenty times a day. I say we check it out.”
The storage area doubled as offices for the building custodians. It was located down a half flight of steps by the back entrance. On one side of the space was the school’s loading bay. On the other, the staircase continued to the furnace room in the basement.
The team approached cautiously, hugging the banister. The storeroom was off-limits to students. No one wanted to have to explain what they were doing there.
Pitch peered around the wall of the landing. No custodians. “All clear,” she whispered.
They stepped out into the loading bay and saw it immediately. Mr. Clancy’s work area was a symphony of blue and white. Colts posters, pennants, and bumper stickers were everywhere. The walls were plastered with photographs of great Colts players from Johnny Unitas to Peyton Manning. A Colts stadium blanket held the place of honor, draped over the custodian’s desk chair.
Ferret Face stopped sucking on Ben’s Gatorade-soaked collar to gaze at so much bright color.
“Whoa,” said Ben. “Now we know why Mr. Clancy always wears that blue and white headband.”
Logan was confused. “I wonder how he got to be such a big Colts fan. I heard he’s from Maryland, not Indianapolis.”
“The Colts used to play in Baltimore before moving to Indy,” Pitch explained. Suddenly, her eyes were wide. “Hold on! Nineteen sixty-nine — Super Bowl Three! The New York Jets beat the Baltimore Colts in the greatest upset in history! Colts fans are still bent out of shape about it!”
“So?” All at once, Ben clued in. “Wait a minute! You’re not saying that Mr. Clancy is so mad about a football game that he stole the ring just so he wouldn’t have to look at it? It was more than forty years ago!”
“He did call it the worst day of his life,” Logan reminded them.
“Dr. Evil said he has the only key to the display case,” Melissa added. “But that’s probably not true. The custodians must have a copy somewhere.”
Ben was unimpressed. “I don’t know, you guys. Isn’t this kind of far-fetched?”
“Probably,” Pitch agreed. “But at this point, far-fetched is the best we’ve got.”
20
The command center was just an attic again. It had taken some doing. Melissa had hauled off her three laptops and their related wiring. The card table and tripod were folded and stowed again. The telephoto lens was in the trash along with the broken glass. Also at the curb, in green garbage bags, were the many pizza boxes, fast-food containers, and drink bottles that had sustained Operation Stakeout through the long, hungry hours.
Now all that remained was to straighten up the chaos caused by Ben and Logan’s wrestling match. How crazy was that? Neither of them would discuss the reason behind their fight, but they were both still mad. Ben refused to talk to Logan, and Logan vowed to exclude Ben from his Oscar party guest list when he got famous.
Savannah got down on her knees and began to toss plastic plates and cups back into an overturned picnic basket. A moment later, Cleopatra was at her side, helping.
“Thanks, Cleo. You’re the best.”
An offended whine came from Luthor as he turned over on a pile of rolled-up carpets.
“Don’t be so sensitive, Luthor. I told you not to eat those lima beans. It’s not our fault you got a stomachache.”
The monkey tossed in the final napkin ring, and Savannah closed and latched the basket. She hefted it and jammed it onto a high shelf.
And gawked.
There, lined up neatly in the space that had been concealed by the basket, was an array of random objects — a silver Olympic coin, a cuff link, a tiny bell from a Christmas wreath, a gold pen cap, a rhinestone earring, a shard of broken crystal, and a gleaming black sequin from an old Halloween costume. It was the strangest collection of unrelated items she’d ever seen. Why, the only thing this stuff had in common was —
When full understanding came to her, Savannah the animal expert sat down in the middle of the floor, gaping in as
tonishment.
Mrs. Bing answered the frantic knocking at the door.
“Savannah, I’m happy to see you, dear, but maybe you shouldn’t be here. I know your mother said —”
“I have to talk to Griffin right now!” Savannah blurted.
Mrs. Bing was worried. “This is just a friendly call, right? There’s been enough trouble already.”
“I promise,” Savannah swore. “I wouldn’t do anything to hurt Griffin.”
Mrs. Bing stood aside and Savannah pounded up the stairs. When Griffin heard this, he’d freak. This was the proof that he was innocent!
She knocked. “Griffin! It’s me, Savannah!” She threw open the door to reveal The Man With The Plan, sitting on the edge of his bed, staring listlessly at the wall. He looked like he’d been in the same position for the past ten hours.
She dropped the bomb. “Griffin, I know where the ring is!”
Four thousand volts of electricity could not have brought Griffin to his feet faster than this statement. “Where?”
“Well, I don’t know exactly, but I know what happened to it. Remember that rat in our house? Turns out it was a pack rat! A pack rat, Griffin! Isn’t that amazing?”
Griffin’s face dropped the distance between I know where the ring is and it was a pack rat. “I’m not following you.”
“Listen — pack rats are attracted to shiny objects — like a retainer, or a Super Bowl ring!”
Griffin frowned. “How could a pack rat in your house steal a ring that’s at school?”
“I’m not telling it right!” Savannah grabbed two handfuls of her own hair. “Okay — pack rats don’t just collect shiny things; they swap their old stuff when they take a new object. What if you lost your retainer at my house — we thought so, remember? The pack rat was attracted by the metal and took it up to the attic. When I was cleaning up the command center, I found his stash — a whole lineup of glittery junk.”
Griffin looked puzzled. “But my retainer ended up in the display case at school.”
“Here’s the thing: Somehow, the pack rat must have crawled into my knapsack, or hidden in my science project or something. That’s how he got out of our house. So there he was at school, with the retainer. And what does he see? A big, gold, diamond-studded ring!”
Griffin was skeptical but interested. “How did he get inside a locked display case?”
“He’s small,” she explained, “and his bones are soft. Rodents can squeeze through a half-inch opening. There’s at least double that gap in the case where the two pieces of sliding glass lock together. It would be easy for him to drag the retainer in and the ring out.” She fixed him with a piercing stare. “Don’t you get it? The ring is in his secret stash, somewhere in the school!”
She expected him to be excited — overjoyed — jumping and cheering. Instead, he lay down on his bed, looking even gloomier than before. His pant leg rode up a little, and she could see the electronic device on his ankle, its indicator light a steady green. She gulped and glanced away.
“Well, I guess anything’s possible,” he said finally.
“Possible?” Savannah was bewildered. “What’s the matter with you? It’s a slam dunk! You don’t even have to find the ring. Just explain what happened.”
“Are you kidding me? That would be like saying the dog ate my homework.”
“Dogs don’t eat homework,” she insisted. “But everybody knows that a pack rat —”
Griffin shook his head sadly. “Not everybody. Only you. Your mind is so into animals that this story is the most obvious thing in the world to you. To anyone else, it’s going to seem like an excuse to get myself off the hook — and a crazy one at that. I’d practically be saying that the pack rat planned all this to frame me.”
“A pack rat is incapable of advance planning and evil intent,” she argued. “You’d be saying that he did what pack rats always do — steal one thing and leave another in its place!”
“If I tell a story like that to Judge Koretsky, my next PEMA bracelet will be around my neck.”
She was adamant. “It’s not a story. It’s what happened. I know it as well as I know my own name.”
Griffin sighed. “Pitch has a new suspect, too. She thinks it might be Mr. Clancy because he’s still mad at the Jets from nineteen sixty-nine —”
“It’s not. I already told you —”
“— and I suppose there’s always the others — Vader, Tony …” He went on as if no one had spoken.
“Grif-fin!”
But as much as she begged, badgered, and threatened him, he would not accept her pack rat explanation as the truth. To him it was one theory of many, and he didn’t try to hide the fact that he considered it to be the wildest of the bunch.
By the time Savannah left the Bing house, she was feeling even lower than Griffin, her feet dragging on the pavement. She had seen him discouraged, flustered, disappointed, intimidated, terrified, and even in the depths of despair. But she had never — not once — seen The Man With The Plan give up.
21
The green warning light on the PEMA bracelet began to flash the instant Griffin stepped off the curb. He pulled up the leg of his jeans and watched with a kind of self-torturing fascination. He didn’t want to see it, but he couldn’t look away, counting one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi…. Sure enough, after ten-Mississippi, the blinking green turned to a solid red.
“Cover that up!” hissed Mrs. Bing.
“It’s okay if I’m going to school.”
“We don’t have to advertise this mess to the entire neighborhood,” his mother pleaded.
Griffin nodded bitterly. “Right, we’ve got Celia White for that.” Her column in Monday’s Herald pretty much implied that Cedarville’s notorious “tween gangsters” had tried to mug Dr. Evil inside Konrad’s to steal the brooch. The woman had to be the worst reporter in history. Where did she get her facts? Even Egan wouldn’t tell a dumb lie like that. “Look, Mom, I’m fine. Well, maybe not fine, but the anklet’s red, and the SWAT team hasn’t come to arrest me yet. You don’t have to hold my hand all the way to the bus.”
“I’m sorry, Griffin. I guess I can’t help blaming myself for all this.”
Griffin was horrified. “You didn’t do anything!”
“Maybe that’s the problem,” she sniffed. “It’s a mother’s job to see to it that nothing happens to her child. But you’re twelve years old. I can’t protect you the way I did when you were three.”
Griffin never thought he’d yearn to be a little kid again, yet being three sounded pretty sweet to him now. Too young to be sent to Jail For Kids; too young to stand before a judge. Those were definitely the good old days.
At school, he went straight to the office, as per Vizzini’s instructions. Even the grandmotherly secretaries looked tougher at JFK, their expressions unforgiving, their lips thin with disapproval.
“My name is Griffin Bing. I’m supposed to ask you to let the police know I arrived.”
Even in this terrible place, where just about everyone was under a cloud, he stood out as the worst of the worst. How had his life come to this?
The morning was lonelier than usual. Sheldon Brickhaus had been standoffish lately. Griffin should have been relieved, almost happy, but it wasn’t working out that way. Shank was psycho, but he was also company. And Griffin was coming to realize that even creepy, dangerous company was better than none at all — especially in a place where the hours passed like months.
By lunchtime, he was physically and emotionally exhausted just from the effort of keeping himself awake. As he crossed the cafeteria, he noticed that his shoelace was loose and flapping. It might have been like this all morning for all he knew or cared.
He set down his tray, lifted his foot to the bench, and grabbed the laces. It was in the middle of tying the bow that he heard the buzz in the cafeteria.
All eyes were on him — not on his face, but on his ankle. The leg of his pants had crept up, revealing the PEMA bracelet w
ith its solid red warning light.
He ate his lunch in stiff-necked misery. How could he have been stupid enough to show the anklet to the whole school? Especially here, where every last one of them knew exactly what it was and what it meant. How could you hit bottom and then keep going straight down?
As the period drew to a close, several students exiting the lunchroom — the cream of the JFK crop, toughest of the tough — made a point of passing by his table. Nobody said a word, but their respectful nods were unmistakable.
They’re acknowledging me — accepting me!
The only thing worse than attending Jail For Kids was belonging there!
At the end of the line was Shank himself. “You’re some piece of work, Justice. You’re bad, you’re good; you’re guilty, you’re innocent. And now this. What am I supposed to make of that little piece of bling on your leg?”
“What’s it to you?” Griffin mumbled, tight-lipped.
The burly boy’s eyes narrowed. “You know what I think? You’re a spy! JFK planted you here to rat on the inmates they can’t control — like me.”
Griffin felt a stab of fear. He could only imagine what would happen to him if a rumor like that got around. “I’m no spy!” he insisted.
“Then explain it for the dumb people!” Shank pressed the tread of his construction boot against the PEMA bracelet. “How does a Boy Scout like you earn one of these?”
Griffin had resolved to share absolutely nothing with his fellow students at JFK — as if revealing a single molecule of his life might make the nightmare real. But once he started to tell the truth, it was a tsunami. He spilled his guts — how the lost retainer in the display case had convinced everyone that Griffin had stolen the Super Bowl ring; how Operations Justice and Stakeout — designed to prove his innocence — had only served to make him look even more guilty; and how none of the other suspects — human or rodent — seemed to be panning out.