“I don’t know.”
A meaty hand descended on his shoulder from behind. “Can I help you?”
March turned and found himself looking at a hard stare. The guy was tall and built, and his manner was polite, but March wouldn’t call it welcoming.
“I came to pick something up,” March said.
“You need the other half of the card.” The man shrugged. “That’s the way it works.”
“Since when?”
His smile was hard. “Since now.”
Jules stepped forward. She held out the other half.
The man raised an eyebrow. He took the card, walked to the window, with March and Jules trailing behind. He held out a hand, and the girl in the coat check — who March now realized strongly resembled the older woman with the red curls — handed him the other half. He placed the two halves together carefully.
Then he turned and grinned, and was transformed into a friendly human.
“I’m Joey Dano,” he said. “And you are …”
“March and Jules McQuin,” March said.
“I thought so. Even though I haven’t seen you since you were knee-high. How’s your dad?”
“Not so good,” March said. “He’s dead.”
Joey Dano’s face crumpled. Tears sprang to his eyes. “No.”
“About a month ago, in Amsterdam. He fell off a roof.”
“Oh …” Joey Dano wiped his eyes. “We grew up together. Did he tell you? No? Alfie would keep that close, I guess. Never wanted to get me in trouble. Liked my burgers, though.” Tears were now running down his face. “Oh man, I’m sorry, kids. Loved your dad, that’s all. Let me get you what he left with me. ‘Joey,’ he said that night, ‘Keep this for me, will you? For as long as it takes?’ God, he was a sight. I cleaned him up, gave him a place to just be quiet, our private dining room, all to himself, gave him food he didn’t eat. I offered him a car, a steak, a bed to sleep in…. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I gotta get to my kids; I just need you to keep this.’ So I gave him the card, a fresh deck, and he ripped it in half, and then he said — and I’ll never forget it — ‘I might not be the one who comes, so it’s gotta be both halves, you understand?’ I’ve never moved anything, never looked; what Alfie said was good enough for me. Whatever it is, I kept it, and now it’s yours.”
All the while he was talking, Joey Dano was moving, going into the coat check, mopping his tears with a handkerchief, and crying again. He handed them a small nylon duffel, light and small enough to carry easily. A getaway pack.
“Thank you,” March said. “But we have to go now.”
“You’ll come back? I’ll feed you, tell you some stories?”
“You bet,” Jules said.
“That’s a promise?”
“It’s a promise.”
They walked out with the duffel. The door shut behind them, and it was quiet again. March hitched the duffel on his shoulder. They walked halfway down the road in the direction of the middle school.
“We’ve got to look,” Jules said. “I can’t stand it.”
“Those trees up there — the pine trees. We’ll stop there.”
They walked into the shade of a massive tree, ducking under the lowest branch. It was pitch-dark here, a green dark that smelled fresh and piney.
March unzipped the duffel.
Inside were a pair of socks, a pair of briefs, and a T-shirt. A toothbrush and toothpaste. A soap dish. A razor. The old-fashioned kind, with the straight-edge razor you lift out and replace. It was just a getaway pack.
“Nothing,” Jules said.
March opened the soap dish. Inside was a bar of soap. No design or name carved in the soap, just a smooth, perfect oval.
“When I was a kid,” March murmured, “Alfie used to carve ducks out of hotel soap.”
“Charming,” Jules said. “So?”
“He was good with a razor blade.”
He reached for the razor, removed the blade, and gripped it. He began to carefully scrape away at the soap. Within a minute or so he felt it hit something. He scraped deeper, then used his fingers to peel away the crumbling soap. The scent of soap mingled with pine.
He brushed the soap splinters away. He held the stone up to catch the faint ray of moonlight that had penetrated the thick green leaves.
The Makepeace Diamond picked up the light and sent it dancing.
Juggling paper bags, March slid the key into the lock.
He walked into the apartment and tossed the bags on the table. “Dinner!”
“It’s about time. I’m starving,” Jules said. She leaped off the trapeze they’d hung in the living room.
“I’ll set the table,” Izzy called from the cushions of the deep sofa. There were four sofas in the living room. They’d soon learned that for movie watching on the flat screen, they each wanted their own space.
She accidentally bumped into Darius, who was standing looking out at the river.
“Just checking up on my yacht,” he said. “Next week, Bermuda.”
A jumble of bikes was tangled up near the front door. A long table ran the length of the room, strewn with Izzy’s motherboards, Jules’s drawings, Darius’s manga, March’s books.
There was an entire cabinet devoted to snacks.
It was surprisingly easy to live on your own. Especially when you buy a whole building.
The other apartments were now used as game rooms, media rooms, and one had been turned into a swimming pool and spa. One was a small gym with a climbing wall (March avoided that one). There was a garden on the roof, and a gardener to take care of it.
That night went down in criminal history as the crime of the new century. Seven magic moonstones had disappeared, along with ten million in bonds. Oscar Ford had vanished.
Blue was cleared of suspicion, but not before becoming a media star. Shortly afterward, she founded her own production company, thanks to a mysterious investor. “Particle Zoo” was a hit on alternative radio stations. She was in talks to develop her own reality TV show.
Mike Shannon was doing camera commercials in Japan. Making a nice living. March had offered a production company a hefty budget to produce them. They’d never go on the air. But Shannon didn’t know that. It was enough to know that Shannon was out of their hair for a good long time.
Hamish had been happy to help them with details of the building purchase, just for the chance to fence the Makepeace Diamond. Now they were even. It was a good start to the next phase of the relationship.
Darius pushed a stack of files and two laptops to the end of the table. He tossed napkins and forks down. Izzy brought plates and a big spoon for the guacamole. Jules handed him a burrito.
“Saw Blue on YouTube today,” Darius said. “She’s up to three million hits.”
“She’s getting famous,” Izzy agreed.
“Just the way she wanted,” Jules said.
The ironic twist to her smile reminded March of Alfie. He missed his father, sometimes so fiercely he wanted to howl, but it helped to have Jules. With a lift of her eyebrow or a sudden smile, he caught a glimpse of his dad every day.
Now when he felt something was missing, he could just look across the room, and there she was.
March pushed aside the file marked POSSIBLE JOBS. He glanced at the thickest file of all: GETTING BACK AT BLUE.
“We have all kinds of time,” he said. “If you’re going to do it …”
“Don’t do it stupid!” they all chorused.
March took a big bite of burrito. Spicy. Just the way he and Alfie liked it.
As Alfie would say:
Living sure is easy when you have twenty million in the bank.
JUDE WATSON is the New York Times bestselling author of four books in The 39 Clues series, including The 39 Clues: Unstoppable: Nowhere to Run. Under the alias Judy Blundell, she won the 2008 National Book Award for Young People's Literature for What I Saw and How I Lied. The Watson crime family lives on Long Island in New York.
Copyright ©
2014 by Jude Watson
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Watson, Jude, author.
Loot / Jude Watson. — First edition.
pages cm
Summary: When Alfie McQuin, the notorious jewel thief is killed on a job, his last words to his son, March, are to “find jewels” and this instruction leads the boy to Jules, the twin sister he never knew he had — and the perfect partner to carry on the family business.
ISBN 978-0-545-46802-2 (alk. paper)
1. Jewel thieves — Juvenile fiction. 2. Twins — Juvenile fiction. 3. Brothers and sisters — Juvenile fiction. 4. Orphans — Juvenile fiction. 5. Adventure stories. [1. Robbers and outlaws — Fiction. 2. Jewelry — Fiction. 3. Twins — Fiction. 4. Brothers and sisters — Fiction. 5. Orphans — Fiction. 6. Adventure and adventurers — Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.W32755Lo 2014
813.54 — dc23
2014001218
First edition, July 2014
Cover art © 2014 by Scholastic Inc.
Cover design and art by Nina Goffi
Author photo by Neil Watson
e-ISBN 978-0-545-63395-6
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
Jude Watson, Loot
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