“Can I please see my mother, Chief Brown?”
“Say ‘pretty please’ and I’ll think about it.”
Riley said it. Heck, he’d say anything if it helped get his mother out of this mess. And then? He’d deal with the bullying blowhard police chief. He’d deal with him big-time.
“I didn’t do anything, Riley!”
“I know, Mom. But tell me what they think you did.”
They were sitting side by side on a flimsy cot bolted to a cinderblock wall in a cramped jail cell. The floor was rough gray concrete. A shiny steel sink and toilet were attached to the far wall, only six feet away from the bed. The door was made of solid steel bars. The tiny window, too.
“Did you call the army base?” his mom asked.
“Yeah. They’re sending down a lawyer. Guy named Cameron Williams. Dad’s friend, General Morgan, says he’s the best.”
“Good. Thanks.”
“Unfortunately, Mr. Williams can’t get here till tomorrow morning. He’s wrapping up a trial.”
“So I have to spend the night in jail?”
“Unless we can come up with fifty thousand dollars in bail money.”
“What about you?”
Riley took her hand. “Don’t worry about me, Mom. I’ll be fine. I can stay over at Mongo’s or Jake’s.”
“Oh, Riley. I wish your dad were here.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
His dad’s words came ringing back: “Protect your country, protect your family….”
Riley’s duty was clear: his dad was busy protecting the country. That meant Riley was in charge of protecting his family.
“The more I know,” he said, “the more I can do to help.”
His mom took a deep breath. “They say I robbed Mrs. Rollison, one of my regular customers. That I took three thousand dollars out of a cigar box and fudged the deposit slip, changed her four thousand into a one thousand.”
“She made her deposit in a cigar box?”
“She’s a little eccentric. She’s also hard of hearing and, I think, legally blind.”
“When did you supposedly steal this money?”
“Monday. Five twenty p.m. There was a time stamp on the deposit slip.”
“Did they check the security tapes?”
“What?”
“There’s a video camera focused on your teller cage to make sure you, or whoever is working window three, isn’t taking home any free samples. I saw it the last time I dropped by to bum pizza money.”
“Mr. Weitzel didn’t mention any security tapes.”
“Interesting,” said Riley. “Weitzel’s the guy with the shiny teeth, right? Always telling people to call him Chip?”
“That’s right.”
“What’s his story?”
His mom shrugged. “I don’t know him all that well.”
“Good for you,” said Riley. “He seems kind of skeevy.”
His mom actually smiled. “Skeevy?”
“Simultaneously sketchy and sleazy.”
“Then Mr. Weitzel is definitely skeevy.”
“Okay,” said Riley, “Monday was the day you had to open up the bank in the morning, am I right?”
“That’s right. I almost forgot. Mr. Weitzel wasn’t feeling well. Said he needed a sick day, even though he did show up for work later that afternoon. Oops.”
“What?”
“I forgot to destroy the access code for the back door! I wrote it down on a slip of paper, even though it was ridiculously simple. But I got so busy, I forgot to tear up the code!”
“Where is it?”
“In my purse.”
“And where’s your purse?”
“They confiscated it out front. Right before Chief Brown took my fingerprints and made me pose for a mug shot.”
“Do you remember anything about Monday, late in the afternoon? What were you doing between, let’s say, five and closing time?”
“I was working my window and we were busy—we’re always busy right after five, people get off work and…”
She stopped.
“And what?”
“Mr. Weitzel asked me to run to the drugstore for him!”
A chief’s deputy clicked up the corridor.
“Did you do it?”
“Yes!”
The deputy rattled his nightstick against the bars. “Okay, kid. Visiting hours are over.”
Riley stood up.
“Don’t worry, Mom,” he said. “I’ll go get you your medicine.”
She gave him a very quizzical look, which Riley immediately countered with the slightest head bob toward the guard at the door.
“And then,” he said, “we’re gonna get you out of here. I guarantee it!”
“Let’s go, kid.” The guard held the door open and jerked his head sideways.
“I need to get my mom something out of her purse.”
“What? A nail file so she can saw through the bars?”
“No. Her heart medicine. So she doesn’t die.”
Okay, it was a big fat lie, but it shut the guy up.
And, when they let him rummage through his mom’s purse, looking for her heart medicine, Riley was able to palm the access code to the bank’s back door.
As for the medicine? That was easy. He sent that deputy back to his mom’s cell with a couple white Tic Tacs.
41
RILEY INFORMED HIS CREW OF his mother’s arrest and called an emergency meeting at the Pizza Palace for 4:30 sharp.
First order of business: dealing with Nick the busboy, who was hovering near their booth, again.
“So where’d your cousin go?” he asked Briana.
“Beulah? Oh, she and her daddy packed up their limousine and took their private jet back to Dallas last night.”
“They put the limo on a jet?”
“Yes. It’s a very big plane. Did I mention how rich they are?”
“Yeah,” said Nick, sounding dejected. “But if she still wants a dog…”
“She’ll totally buy it somewhere else! Did you know that the lady who runs Pampered Pedigree Pooches is a whackadoo? My cousin told me she actually went running into the backyard with a shotgun and started shooting it and stuff!”
“Nick?” shouted Tony, the owner of the Pizza Palace. “Delivery! Now!”
“Well, if she changes her mind…”
“Nick?” Tony hollered. “They’d like their pizza while it’s hot, huh?”
“Coming,” he said, and slumped away from the booth.
“Well done, Briana,” said Riley.
“Oh, it’ll get better in about ninety minutes,” she said.
“You made the drop?”
“Yeah. Dawn Barclay, the investigative reporter at channel twenty-three, and I are tight.”
“How come?” Mongo asked innocently. “Does she watch FMS-TV?”
“No, Hubert. That only runs, like, inside the school building?”
“Oh.”
“But she visited my language arts class last winter during career day and we totally hit it off. After that, I texted her a few times, gave her a couple makeup tips, helped her de-dorkify her wardrobe, stuff like that. Anyway, my mom drove me over to the station right after school. I handed Dawn the tape Riley and I edited together, she checked it out and said she wouldn’t be surprised if they ran it at six and eleven!”
“Excellent.” Riley turned to Jamal. “You set for Saturday?”
“Definitely. We are good to go.”
“How’s Ms. Grabowski doin’ with the truck?”
“Six healthy puppies found homes today,” reported Jake. “She thinks Saturday will be the busiest day—if we can keep the Browns at bay.”
“Oh, we can,” said Briana. “Trust me, by this time tomorrow, Chief and Grandma Brown will be pretending they never raised anything on that farm but pumpkins.”
“Okay,” said Riley. “Now all we have to do is break into the bank.”
The Gnat Pack froze.
Jake
lowered his hoodie. “I’m sorry, Riley. I don’t think we heard you correctly. Did you mention something about breaking into a bank?”
Riley leaned down. His friends leaned in.
“The First National Bank of Fairview,” Riley whispered. “Where my mom works. I’m going in there tonight.”
“You’re a whackadoo, too,” Briana whispered back.
“You got delusions of grandeur or something?” added Jamal. “You know what that means, Riley Mack?”
“Yeah. Means I’m a whackadoo. But don’t worry—I know how to disarm the alarm.”
“You. Do. Not!” said Briana.
“Yeah. I do. I can waltz in the back door undetected.”
Jake raised his hand.
“Yeah?” said Riley.
“Excuse me for asking, but why, exactly, do you want to break into the bank, an act considered illegal in most, if not all, of these United States?”
“I need to locate and copy the security camera recording of teller window three from five twenty p.m. Monday. It’ll prove that my mother is innocent!”
And then he gave them all their assignments.
Briana was up first.
She strolled into the bank and found the customer service desk. She hadn’t had time to do a complete costume—just some horn-rimmed glasses, her blond wig with a pink bow, and a pink polo sweater tied around her shoulders.
“Excuse me,” she said to the slightly distracted woman sitting behind the desk.
“Yes? Can I help you?”
“Golly, I sure hope so,” she said, doing her best preppy lockjaw accent. “I’m writing an essay for school on why First National Bank is the best bank in the whole world and I was hoping you could give me a quick tour of your facilities.”
“I’m sorry,” sighed the woman. “Today isn’t a great day for a tour. We’ve had all sorts of…problems. Can you come back tomorrow?”
“I could, I suppose, but, gosh, my essay is due tomorrow.”
“Well, maybe next time you won’t wait until the night before your homework is due to do it!”
Oooh, snap.
“Golly,” said Briana. “That’s such darn good advice, I must remember to tell Daddy all about you.” She opened her notebook and studied the customer service rep’s nameplate so she could jot down the name. “Joyce…Juzwik. Of course my father, Mr. Franklin Pierce Farnsworth, is the one who suggested I write about his bank instead of the Pizza Palace, which I had originally intended to profile in my report.”
“You’re Mr. Franklin Farnsworth’s daughter?”
“Why, yes,” Briana said modestly.
“The Mr. Farnsworth? The Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of First National Bancorp?”
Briana waved the fancy title away with a flick of her hand. “I just call him daddykins.”
Ms. Juzwik stood up. “Well, Miss Farnsworth, I see no need to disappoint your father. Come on. I’ll take you on a tour!”
“Are you certain it isn’t an imposition?” said Briana, pulling a digital camera out of her backpack.
“Of course not.”
“You’re the best, Ms. Juzwik. The absolute best!”
Briana followed the eager young woman around the bank, jotting down notes and snapping pictures of all the stuff Riley said he needed to know and see before he broke in.
42
CHIEF BROWN AND HIS MOTHER met in the diner at six p.m. for the early bird special.
They took stools at the counter.
“You find my dogs?”
“No, Momma. Been busy.”
“Doing what, Lardbreath?”
“Helping the FBI arrest Mrs. Madiera Mack.”
The waitress behind the counter turned up the volume on the TV set because the graphic for an upcoming news story had caught her eye: a cute but emaciated dog trapped inside a cage.
“For more on the local puppy mill, we go now to investigative reporter Dawn Barclay. Dawn?”
The screen filled with shaky, handheld images of what looked like a chicken coop filled with barking dogs.
“Hey,” said Grandma Brown, “that’s my—”
The chief clamped his hand over her mouth to shut her up.
“This nightmarish footage,” said the off-camera reporter, “was filmed last night at a local puppy mill called, ironically enough, Pampered Pedigree Pooches.”
“How the blazes did the TV people get this footage?” the chief muttered.
“Channel twenty-three received this video from a young investigative reporter who, fearing for her life, has asked to remain anonymous. Our sources inform us that this vile puppy mill operates in the farm country just outside Fairview.”
“Eat your dinner, Momma,” coached the chief. “Act natural. Stay calm.”
“Stay calm? Those are my dadgum dogs!”
“Shhhh!”
“Don’t you shush me, Marshmallow Butt!”
The chief stood up from his stool and slapped enough cash on the counter to pay for their meal. “Come on, Momma. We’re getting out of here!”
His mother fished her teeth out of the ice water. “Hey,” she said, pointing at the TV. “That’s my dadgum mailbox!”
The chief glanced up.
There, big as all get-out, was a mailbox with 467 Sweetbriar painted on the side.
The chief dragged his mother toward the door.
“Hurry!”
Maybe it was a good thing all the dogs had been stolen last night. Maybe it was an even better thing that Chief Brown hadn’t wasted his day hunting down Alligator Hide McBride or whoever it was that robbed them blind. At least now, when the state’s Animal Welfare investigators swarmed the farm, all they’d find would be empty cages.
With empty dog bowls in them.
And petrified dog poop underneath.
“Crap on a cracker! Come on, Mom. We need to go see Old Man Shelby!”
“Why? He’s a chicken rancher!”
“Exactly! Maybe he’ll sell us some! We need to put something in those cages out back—tonight!”
Meanwhile, Jenny Grabowski was watching the same newscast on a battery-powered TV Jake had set up for her in the back of the pet-supply truck.
She had shut down doggy adoptions for the day and rolled out her sleeping bag in the narrow lane between dog crates. She planned on spending the night with her forty-one remaining rescues, just to make certain they were all watered, fed, and walked.
So, to pass the time, she unfolded a patio chair and watched Briana’s big story break on the local news. After the world saw it, no way were Chief or Grandma Brown going to try to take back the dogs they’d been abusing.
“State authorities have assured channel twenty-three that they will soon shut this puppy mill down,” said the TV.
“Yes!” Jenny shouted, pumping her fist in the air and howling out a few “Woo-hoos” for good measure.
The dogs agreed.
They howled with her!
43
RILEY’S CREW RECONVENED AT 6:30 p.m. at Jake’s house.
Riley would be going into the bank alone; he couldn’t ask his friends to share this particular risk. Breaking into a bank, even if you only intended to steal some digits off a hard drive, was a serious offense.
He did, however, ask them all to help him prep. They met down in Jake’s basement, where they had told Jake’s absentminded-professor parents they needed to dissect a frog and it might take all night.
First up was Briana with photos and notes from her inside surveillance job at the bank.
“Once you come in the back door, you’re in this break room area. Sink. Refrigerator. Coffeemaker.”
“Got it,” said Jake, who had found a schematic of the First National Bank of Fairview’s floor plan on the internet, posted there by the very proud architectural firm that had done the interior renovations five years ago. “The break room is connected to the workroom that leads to the teller windows, right?”
“Yup.”
Jake leaned back in
his computer chair. “We are in total synchronicity!”
“Excellent,” said Riley. “Thanks, you guys.”
“You see the ceiling?” said Briana, showing Riley the next picture. “Okay, there’s, like, this security camera aimed right at the door. So, when you go in, be sure to smile.”
“You’re going to need a balaclava, Riley Mack,” said Jamal. “You know what a balaclava is?”
“Those flaky Greek pastries?”
“No, man. You’re thinkin’ baklava. A balaclava is a knit cap that covers your whole face. A mask. Like the wrestlers always wear. Here.” He tossed a black woolen cap with four holes in it—eyes, nose, and mouth—to Riley. “I found it in my dad’s closet.”
“Is your father a professional wrestler?” asked Mongo.
“No, dude. He just wears this when he goes skiing.”
“Oh.”
“Thanks,” said Riley. “Briana?”
“Yeah?”
“Did the break room have a drop-panel ceiling?”
“Yeah. Like in a dentist’s office, you know?”
“Perfect. That security camera being near the back door might actually be our lucky break.”
“Uh, no. They’ll see you, Riley.”
“Look,” said Riley, “if I’m going to clear my mom, I need to find the security camera footage showing teller window three at five twenty p.m. Monday because I have a sneaking suspicion somebody other than my mother took the cigar box from Mrs. Rollison and monkeyed with her deposit slip. When I find the video recorder, I’ll also erase any images it might have captured of me making my entrance.”
“The data is most likely on a computer hard drive or a DVR,” suggested Jake. “All the closed-circuit camera cables will feed into it.”
“Exactly,” said Riley. “So, I can climb up on the table in the kitchenette, pop up a ceiling panel, and check out the empty space between the drop ceiling and the real one. That’s where they run the air-conditioning ducts, wires, and what I’m looking for: camera cables.”
“Cool,” said Briana.