Sammy Keyes and the Wild Things

“So?”

  “So how does he know someone’s got a condor? All he knows is someone shot a condor.”

  “But . . . how do you know what he knows? Maybe Quinn’s talked to him! Maybe Robin has!”

  I gave her a wry smile. “Or Janey?”

  Then Gary said, “Are you sure he didn’t say, ‘Who shot the bird?’ ‘Who shot’ and ‘who’s got’ sound a lot alike.”

  “Yeah,” Cricket said. “And how do Janey and Oswald connect with Grayson Mann?”

  “You’ll see.” We were across the street now, and as we moved through the parking lot, I kept a sharp eye on the door that Janey had come through earlier. “Right here’s good,” I said when we were close enough but not too close. Then we all crouched behind a silver minivan.

  Less than a minute later the door where we’d seen Janey opened.

  A man stepped out.

  He didn’t look left, he didn’t look right.

  He just headed straight for Oswald Griffin’s SUV.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  When my mom moved to Hollywood, she became someone I barely recognized. She changed her hair, her makeup, the kind of clothes she wore, her birth date. . . .But the thing that bugged me the most was that she changed her name.

  She became Dominique Windsor.

  I think it was partly the name itself that I hated. It was so aristocratic, daaaaahling.

  And so phony.

  We got into a huge fight over it when I was down there visiting her, and to make a long story short, one of the things that changed after we made up was her name.

  I really, really, really wanted her to go back to being Lana Keyes, and she did.

  Which, it turns out, is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever wished for. I mean, you see Dominique Windsor scroll by on the credits of some television show and there is no connection to me. You see Lana Keyes scroll by and, bingo, I’m busted.

  So I don’t know what I was thinking, wanting her to switch back to her real name. Maybe I thought she’d also switch back to being a real mom.

  That was quite a while ago, and let’s just say there’s been a lot of water eroding the bridge since then, so I don’t know if it’s possible to ever go back to the way we were before she left. Especially now that she’s flirting around with Warren Acosta.

  Anyway, the point is, I have experience with stage names. Lots of it. So when Cricket whispered, “Why is Grayson Mann getting in Oswald Griffin’s car?” I whispered back, “He is Oswald Griffin. Grayson Mann is his stage name.”

  “But . . . how do you know that?”

  “He’s getting in Oswald Griffin’s car, right?” I shrugged. “And who’d hire a newscaster named Oswald?”

  The SUV blazed out of the parking lot, so I stood up and said, “Let’s go!”

  “There’s no way we can tail him,” Gary said. “My truck’s way too loud.”

  “So true.” I looked at the registration paper. “But I’m betting he’s headed to three twenty-two South Lucas Drive. Anyone know where that is?”

  Gary nodded. “It’s actually pretty near our house.”

  Cricket did not look happy. “But . . . what are we going to do when we get there?”

  “Depends,” I said.

  “On . . . ?”

  “On whether he’s there or not.”

  “Look,” Gary said as we piled into his truck, “I think you need to explain this from the top.”

  So I said, “Okay. Remember how we saw that KSMY video of Grayson Mann on your computer and—” But after Gary fired up the motor, it was way too loud to talk. So I shouted, “I’ll tell you when we get there!”

  We roared across town, and when we found South Lucas Drive, Gary tried to just putt down the street, but that was like trying to get a lion to meow.

  “You were right!” Cricket said when she saw the SUV. “He’s home.”

  So we parked half a block away and watched.

  “He didn’t back up to the garage,” I said, not really knowing if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

  “You think it’s in there?” Casey whispered.

  “It being the condor?” Gary asked, then looked over his shoulder at me. “Explain, okay?”

  I took a deep breath. “Grayson Mann did those news segments for KSMY about a month ago. He was up in the forest, getting the tour of the Lookout, helicoptering around the canyon, getting the scoop on the ‘plight of the condor.’ Footage and a contact number are available on the Internet.”

  “Check,” Gary said.

  “Less than a week ago, some man in a cowboy hat, sunglasses, and a T-shirt went into the canyon, shot a wild boar, and used it as bait to catch a condor.”

  “You’re speculating,” Gary said.

  “You’re right,” I said back.

  Something about that made him laugh. “Whatever. Just go on.”

  “Two days after we heard shots in the canyon, Grayson Mann shows up at the Lookout all agitated about having intercepted radio traffic about a shot condor. He wanted the story. Contact him first, remember? Well, I don’t think he wanted the story, I think he wanted to kill the story—or at least control it. Remember that whole bit about Luxton Enterprises? I think that was him trying to steer everyone in the wrong direction.”

  “But how do you know this?” Cricket asked.

  “Just listen,” Gary said. “She’s got license to speculate.”

  Something about that made me laugh. “Well, actually, it’s more than speculation. He did two things when he was up there that make him suspicious. One, it was about ninety degrees out and he had on a long-sleeved shirt.”

  “News guys always wear long-sleeved shirts,” Cricket said. “He probably came right up from the news station.”

  “He wasn’t wearing a tie, and he left his sleeves down because he had a horrible rash on his arms.” I stuck my arms out. “A rash like this.”

  Casey nodded. “Which he got in the same place you did.”

  “That is a real stretch,” Gary said. “Poison oak is everywhere out there!”

  “But it means he was out there! Recently! Or somewhere with poison oak.” Then I added, “And no, I haven’t seen the rash, but there’s calamine lotion in his SUV. And here’s where it really turns from coincidence or speculation to something solid—remember how he went around introducing himself, giving us all business cards?”

  Cricket shrugged. “Yeah?”

  “So think about who was there.”

  She started listing, “Us, Billy, Gabby, Bella, Robin, Quinn, and . . .” She gasped. “Janey! He gave one to Janey—he acted like he’d never met her before!”

  “Exactly. Janey was his decoy. She’s only been in town a little while. And she got a job at the Natural History Museum. Why? So she could move in on Quinn. It was her job to keep Quinn away from Grayson when he broke into the Lookout and when he went down into the canyon.”

  “But wait a minute,” Cricket said. “What about Vargus? How would he know to use Vargus’s name on the rental form for the horse? The only people who know Vargus are Quinn and Professor Prag.”

  “And Robin,” I added. But she was right—how did Grayson Mann know about Vargus Mayfield?

  “Are you saying Robin had something to do with this?”

  “Are you saying Quinn did?” I shot back.

  “Can we get back to motive?” Casey asked. “What’s the endgame? What’s the reason?”

  I shrugged. “Money. I think someone contacted Grayson Mann via the Internet and offered him a huge amount of money for a live condor.”

  “Live?” Cricket asked, and her voice sounded so hopeful.

  I nodded. “If they wanted a dead one, they could have broken into the Natural History Museum—especially since Janey worked there. And with the way condors keep turning up dead, there are probably stuffed condors hanging from a whole bunch of natural history museum ceilings!” I nodded down the street. “I think Marvin’s mom is alive, and I think she’s in that garage.”

  What I di
dn’t say was that now that Cricket had brought up that bit about Vargus, I had my doubts. Maybe Marvin was in Professor Prag’s garage.

  Or Quinn’s.

  Or Robin’s.

  Well, he wouldn’t be in her garage, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be involved. Maybe there was some special breeding program that the government wouldn’t fund! Maybe they’d set up some big underground laboratory for condor breeding! Maybe—

  Casey’s voice shook me from my spiraling thoughts. “What if Grayson Mann doesn’t have it anymore? Or what if he’s got it stored somewhere else?”

  “That would not be good,” I said.

  Cricket shook her head. “Sammy, I don’t like this. I don’t like this one bit. I think we should call the police.”

  “And say what? Santa Martina’s celebrity newsman is a condor poacher, and my proof is that he’s got a rash on his arm?”

  “You could say more than that! Tell them everything you just told us.”

  I sighed. “You know, if Officer Borsch wasn’t on vacation, I would. But first we’d have to get someone to listen and actually take us seriously. Then they’d have to go through a bunch of red tape like getting search warrants and all of that.” I held up the garage door opener and grinned. “Why go through that when we’ve got this?”

  Cricket frowned. “Because one’s legal and the other’s not?”

  “We’re not going to break and enter, okay? We’re just going to, you know, press and peek.”

  But the more I thought about it, the more I thought, You know what? This guy shoots things—maybe having the cops on board wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

  So I put my hand out to Casey and said, “Can I borrow your phone?”

  “Watch out,” he said, handing it over. “She’s armed and dangerous!”

  So I called the police station and asked for Debra, who’s the main receptionist there. She gets that I’m not some stupid pesky kid or a juvenile delinquent, and I figured I’d ask her to maybe recommend someone besides the Borschman that I could talk to about taking over the stakeout.

  What I discovered, though, was that Debra wasn’t there. “When will she be back?” I asked.

  “Next week. She’s on vacation.”

  Her too?

  Man.

  So I hung up and gave Casey his phone back, telling Cricket, “I struck out. Sorry.”

  We were all quiet a minute, just staring at the house. But then Cricket gasped real loud, turned clear around to face me, and said, “The transmitter! I’ve still got the transmitter! The one that was on the crow? It’s in my backpack! If we could sneak it onto his car and get a receiver from Quinn, we could follow him anywhere!”

  This time my jaw dropped. “That is genius!”

  She smiled from ear to ear, then scrambled out of the truck. “I’m going to run home. I’ll be right back!”

  It seemed to take her a long time, but when she finally threw herself back inside Gary’s truck, she was beaming. “I made it!” she panted.

  I had to laugh. Pressing and peeking gave her the willies, but she was totally for planting condor surveillance equipment on someone’s vehicle and following them.

  “Check it out!” she said, pulling one thing after another from a small duffle bag. “The transmitter, three kinds of tape, two Velcro straps if you think those’ll work better, gloves, binoculars, and . . . calamine lotion!”

  “Oh, thank you!” I said, snatching the lotion.

  “Gloves?” Gary asked her.

  “I was trying to think of everything,” she said, then shrugged. “You don’t want to leave fingerprints.”

  I chuckled as I coated my arms with lotion. “The girl’s on a mission!”

  “That’s right!” She caught her breath and said, “The whole run home I was thinking, What are you so worried about? We’re not doing anything illegal, and if this guy really shot Marvin . . . if he’s got Marvin’s mom . . . I want to catch him!” She turned to me and said, “What do you think about calling Quinn? Or Robin?”

  I capped the lotion. “We can do that. But I think we ought to first see if we can come up with anything more concrete than a rash.”

  “Okay!” she said, totally accepting that. “So where do we plant the transmitter?” Her face was all flushed, her eyes shining.

  Gary looked back at Casey. “What do you think, bro?”

  “I’d go for the undercarriage.”

  Gary nodded. “I was thinking the same thing.” He eyed Casey. “I’ll plant, you play sentry?”

  “That’s cool.”

  They looked at Cricket and me, and since they obviously had more car experience than we did, we said, “Go for it!”

  Gary turned back to Casey. “So what’s the signal?”

  Casey thought a minute, then barked like a border collie. “Ar, ar, ar, aroooo.”

  Gary grinned. “Let’s do it!”

  They vanished between the fenders of parked cars. And after not being able to spot them for about a minute, I whispered to Cricket, “Can I see the binoculars?”

  “Good idea!” she whispered back, only instead of handing them over, she looked through them herself.

  “You should probably slump.”

  “Right,” she said, sliding down low in her seat.

  “Anything?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t believe how hard my heart is pounding. I’m not even out there!”

  “Can I see?”

  She handed me the binoculars, but I couldn’t spot the guys, either, so I passed them back.

  And then all of a sudden with my naked eyes I see a bike coming down the street.

  It’s blue, with little flashes of orange.

  “Oh, no!” Cricket gasps.

  We hold our breath and perk our ears, but there’s no warning bark. No yips. No yaps. No nothing.

  So after an endless minute of watching her cruise toward the house, I panic and go, “Ar-ar-ar-arooo,” out the window. “Ar-ar-ar-arooo. Ar-ar-ar-arooo!”

  It was a mistake.

  A big, big mistake.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Apparently I’m not very good at sounding like a border collie. After my second yip-yap-yowl out the window, Janey’s focus zeroed in on the truck.

  “Duck!” Cricket cried.

  “Stash the binoculars!” I hissed, laying low behind the driver’s seat.

  Click-click-click-click-click, we heard Janey’s bike approaching. Click-click-click-click-click.

  We were acting suspicious and I knew it, but I was afraid to sit up. Afraid she’d recognize me. And what I was really hoping was that she’d just cruise past or stop before she got to the truck. I mean, come on. What kind of person actually looks into other people’s cars?

  But click . . . click . . . click . . . click . . . click, the bike came closer and slowed, until finally it stopped.

  Cosmic payback, at work once again.

  I knew she was there. I knew she could see Cricket hiding on the floor of the front seat. And rather than just get busted without even attempting to wriggle out of it, I said, “It’s gotta be under there—are you sure you can’t see it?”

  Cricket picked up on what I was doing. “Maybe if I had a flashlight . . .”

  “How about a match?”

  “Are you crazy?” Cricket banged her head getting up.

  I sat up, too, and forced a scream when I saw Janey. I held my heart and said, “Oh, wow . . . you startled me!”

  “What are you two doing?” she said with a smirk. Like she was annoyed, but kinda amused, too.

  “Looking for a dog tag,” Cricket blurted.

  “Yeah,” I said, my mind scrambling around for why we would need a dog tag when neither of us had a dog. “We just got it engraved.”

  “And if we can’t find it, it’s eight-fifty down the drain,” Cricket said. She ducked her head to look under the seat. “It’s gotta be here somewhere!”

  Janey just watched, kinda leaning on the open window. “But what are y
ou doing here? In this truck, which you’re obviously not old enough to drive.”

  “Waiting for her annoying brother to finish returning something to a friend of his,” I said, rolling my eyes. “He takes forever to do anything.” And since I could tell she’d keep right on interrogating us if I didn’t do something about it, I started interrogating her. “Do you live around here?”

  “Just out for a ride,” she said, slick as snake oil.

  Cricket came up from her pretend search and oh-so-innocently asked, “So how’s Quinn?”

  Janey pulled away from the window and tightened the straps of the backpack she was wearing. “You can have him, honey—he’s a narcissistic bore.”

  Cricket blushed, and I guess that was satisfaction enough for Janey, because she laughed and said, “Good luck finding that tag,” and pushed off.

  We watched through the back window as she pedaled down to the first intersection and hung a right. “That was close!” Cricket whispered.

  “I’ll bet she’s got condor food in that backpack. It looked pretty heavy.”

  “It did!”

  Just then the doors flew open and Gary and Casey scrambled into the truck. “Where’d she go?” Gary asked.

  I pointed behind us. “Around the block.”

  “Did you get it planted?” Cricket asked.

  Gary nodded and Casey said, “Man, I blew it. I did not see her coming. I was watching the house.” He looked at me. “Are we busted?”

  I shook my head. “I think we talked our way out of it. But the bad thing is, she now knows this truck.”

  Gary fired it up. “Let’s drive it home and come back on foot.” He pointed down the street. “We could split up and use that hedge and those bushes. Even that tree would work.”

  “All of us?” I asked. “Somebody should stay here.”

  Cricket nodded. “If Janey spots us driving down the road, she’ll expect to see Sammy, me, and Gary.”

  “Which leaves Casey.” I looked at him. “You cool with staying?”

  “Sure,” he said. “You want me to call the house if something goes down?”

  “We’re not even going inside,” Cricket said. “We’ll be right back.”

  So we took off for the Kuos’, keeping our eyes open for Janey. “I’m sure she’s around here somewhere, waiting for us to leave,” I muttered.