Violet snorted soda out her nose again.
Dash burst into laughter. Ethan did too, having already forgotten about being annoyed at the rest of us.
“Pantsing people?” Xavier repeated.
“That’s right,” Summer replied. “They’ve been yanking down the bathing suits of people in the tank with them.”
“Men or women?” Ethan asked.
“All men so far,” Summer said.
Dash seemed disappointed by this. “How many times has it happened?”
“A couple,” Summer told him. “Thankfully, it’s only happened to one guest, though.”
“So who else got pantsed?” asked Ethan. “One of the trainers?”
Summer didn’t answer, but her eyes flicked to me, which was enough answer for everyone else. They all turned my way.
“A dolphin yanked down your bathing suit?” Dash asked me.
By this point, my face had flushed so red, I couldn’t possibly deny it. “Yes,” I admitted.
Dash and Ethan howled with laughter. Summer joined in as well. Violet tried to contain herself, like it was bad manners to laugh at me, but she couldn’t rein it in.
Only Xavier stood up for me. “It’s not that funny,” he said.
“Actually, it was,” Summer corrected.
“What happened?” Dash asked Summer. “Give us all the gory details. How many other people were around?”
I winced, hoping Summer wouldn’t tell the whole embarrassing story. To my relief, she noticed my discomfort and altered the facts. “No one else was there,” she said. “Only me, and I didn’t really see it. It was before the park opened. The dolphin pulled down Teddy’s suit, and Teddy pulled it right back up again before I even knew what was going on.”
Either the others didn’t believe this, or they didn’t want to believe it. “That’s it?” Ethan asked. “That’s the whole story?”
“That’s the whole story,” I repeated. “And then another dolphin did it to a guest yesterday.”
“Now, that was funny,” Summer said, trying to get the story off me. “A dolphin pulled the guy’s suit down and he freaked. He hit the dolphin, and then the dolphin bit him on the butt.”
The guys all laughed at this, though Violet looked concerned. “Was the dolphin hurt?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “And the guy wasn’t either. But his family was really upset. So one of the trainers asked me to help figure out who taught the dolphins to yank down people’s suits in the first place.”
“They don’t think the dolphins could have just figured out how to do it on their own?” Violet asked.
“They’re pretty sure someone got into the tank and taught them how to do it,” I said.
“And they asked you to look into it?” Xavier said. “Instead of Li Ping’s disappearance? ’Cause it seems like Li Ping is a lot more important than dolphins stealing a few bathing suits.”
“She is,” I agreed. “But the FBI doesn’t want my help.”
“So who do they suspect?” Xavier asked.
“I don’t know,” I lied, then gave Summer a glance. I hoped she’d follow my lead and not spill the beans about what we’d learned from the FBI. I was quite sure the FBI wouldn’t appreciate our doing that.
Summer got the message. “They won’t share anything with us.”
“Whatever,” Dash said. “Who stole her?”
“Animal traffickers,” Xavier told him. “People who bring exotic species into this country to sell as pets.”
Ethan snickered at this. “And you thought my chupacabra idea was stupid?”
“Animal trafficking is a huge business,” Xavier said defensively. “Like, billions of dollars a year, easy.”
“But not in this country,” Dash said. “That happens other places, right?”
“No, it happens right here,” Xavier said gravely. “All the time. I know people like to point the finger at China and other countries, but according to the World Wildlife Fund, Americans buy just as many illegal animal species as China every year. Maybe even more.”
“What kind of animals?” Violet asked.
Xavier grinned at her, seeming pleased to have her attention. “All kinds. Mostly, it’s smaller things like birds, monkeys, and reptiles, but they even move bigger animals. Not long ago, I heard US customs busted someone trying to sneak a drugged tiger cub into the country inside a suitcase.”
“Ugh,” Summer groaned. “What kind of sick jerk would do something like that?”
“It’s even worse for the smaller animals,” I said. “Sadly, traffickers usually aren’t very careful with them. They just go out into the wild and steal them, and for every one that gets to a buyer safe, a bunch die in transit.”
Violet gasped. “That’s horrible!”
“I know,” Xavier agreed. “But the people who buy these exotic animals don’t care. There wouldn’t be a trafficking business at all if people weren’t willing to pay thousands of dollars for something that ought to be in a zoo or the wild instead.”
“And you think these people actually stole a panda from a moving truck?” Ethan asked doubtfully.
“You think a chupacabra stole a panda from a moving truck!” Xavier retorted.
“Chupacabras are far faster and more powerful than anyone realizes,” Ethan told him. “The government bred them to be living weapons. Only, they turned on their creators.”
Xavier rolled his eyes, then returned his attention to the rest of us. “A panda is probably the gold standard of exotic pets. There are less than three thousand of them on Earth, and no matter how much money you have, there’s no way to get one legally. The Chinese government won’t let it happen. So they’re probably worth hundreds of thousands of dollars on the black market. If not millions. Li Ping was already inside our country. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the traffickers to snatch her. If they had a buyer willing to pay serious cash for Li Ping, it would have been worth the risk.”
Summer sat upright, remembering something. “Teddy! Isn’t there some rich lady who lives up by Waco with a whole zoo full of exotic animals? Dora Peacock?”
“Flora Hancock,” I corrected. “I actually met her at FunJungle yesterday.”
“What?” Summer said accusingly. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”
“It didn’t seem that important,” I replied. “And a lot of other stuff was going on.” I gave her a pointed look. Summer was aware I’d been threatened by James Van Amburg, but that was also information that the FBI didn’t want us sharing with the public.
“Right,” Summer said, backing down. “So what happened with her?”
“Not much. I was watching that crazy rally outside Panda Palace with one of the keepers, and she came over to us. She’d come to FunJungle to see Li Ping and wanted to know if we could tell her anything about the crime.”
“Do you think she might have been connected to it?” Violet asked excitedly.
“If she had stolen the panda, why would she then come all the way to FunJungle to see it?” Dash asked condescendingly.
“To make everyone think she hadn’t stolen the panda,” Violet replied sharply, annoyed by Dash’s tone.
“I don’t think she was involved,” I said. “I think Dash is right. She seemed genuinely upset that Li Ping wasn’t there . . .”
“She could just be a good actress,” Summer pointed out.
“And from what I know about her, she’s bought all her animals legally,” I continued. “I don’t think she deals in the black market.”
“How can you be so sure?” Xavier asked. “For all we know, she could be the animal trafficking queen of Texas.”
“There are plenty of other people who own exotic animals,” I said. “I’ve heard that there are more than four thousand pet tigers in Texas alone. That’s more than there are left in the wild. Anyone who owns a tiger might have wanted a panda, too.”
“Why would someone like that even have to bring traffickers into it?” Dash asked. “If they wanted a panda badl
y enough, and they had the cash to get one, couldn’t they just put together a team to steal it themselves?”
Everyone considered that, then conceded Dash had a point. “I don’t see why not,” Summer said.
Dash pressed on. “So imagine one of these collectors is already a criminal. Like a drug lord or something. There was this guy named Pablo Escobar down in Colombia who had a private zoo. With zebras and hippos and everything.”
“Oh yeah!” Xavier chimed in. “I heard about him! After the feds raided his compound and captured him, most of the animals escaped into the rain forest. A lot of them got eaten, but the hippos are still running wild down there.”
“Yeah, right.” Ethan laughed.
“It’s true,” I told him. “My dad went down there to take photos of them for National Geographic a few years back.”
“No way.” Ethan stared at me, jaw agape. “That’s insane.” It seemed odd that he was having a harder time believing this than the idea of a covert government-designed coyote lizard that was sucking goats dry all over Texas.
“Well, what if there’s some new guy like Pablo Escobar?” Dash asked. “And he wants a panda. Maybe it’s one of these new big-time drug dealers down in Mexico. They all have their own private armies. It’s probably not too hard to move a panda over the Rio Grande without getting noticed. Drugs and guns get moved across it all the time. So this drug dealer sends a team of his guys to West Texas, and they hit the truck and run the panda south of the border.”
“But what about the ransom notes?” Violet asked.
“A diversion,” Dash declared. “To throw the FBI off.”
Everyone seemed to buy that as well. It all made a surprising amount of sense to me. I hadn’t thought about a major criminal wanting to steal the panda for himself, rather than hiring a middleman to do the job, but it seemed completely plausible. Far more plausible than the Nature Freedom Force ransoming the panda.
Only, the FBI had made it clear that they had no interest in hearing from me.
On the other hand, they might listen to J.J. McCracken, who would always listen to his daughter. I turned to Summer. “Could you . . .”
“Tell Daddy about this?” she finished, holding up her phone. “Already on it.” She set about texting him.
“You should tell him about the chupacabra, too,” Ethan suggested.
Dash and Violet both pelted him with crumpled napkins.
The bell rang, signaling the end of lunch. The entire cafeteria echoed with a collective groan as all the students realized it was time to return to class. Everyone at our table stood slowly, milking our remaining free time for as long as we could.
I grabbed the trash from my sack lunch and looked to Summer, who was still texting her father. “Want me to toss your stuff too?”
“My hero,” she teased, but she flashed a smile that said she really did appreciate it.
Xavier looked to Violet. “I’d be happy to take your trash.”
“Aw, thanks,” she said, sliding it over to him.
Xavier beamed as though a princess had knighted him, which confirmed my suspicions that he had a huge crush on her. This wasn’t exactly incredible detective work, though. Most boys in my class had a huge crush on Violet. Xavier eagerly grabbed her garbage and headed to the closest trash can with me.
“You really don’t know anything else about the Li Ping case?” he asked me.
“I don’t,” I lied. “The FBI doesn’t want me involved.”
In truth, I would have loved to tell him what was really going on, from my infiltrating the mobile unit with Summer to being threatened by the man in a panda costume. I hated keeping secrets from friends. But the FBI had warned me to keep my mouth shut, and I knew that if I told Xavier only one thing, he wouldn’t be satisfied. He’d hound me until I’d shared everything, and then he’d probably tell Violet, who’d tell someone else, and word would eventually get back to the FBI that I was shooting my mouth off. It was easier to simply pretend that I knew nothing at all, no matter how much Xavier grumped about it.
“I’ll bet you know more than you’re letting on,” he said accusingly. “You always do.”
“Not this time,” I replied.
Before Xavier could argue this any more, TimJim Barksdale came along. The Barksdale twins were bullies and idiots. A lot of kids joked (behind their backs) that they’d been born with only one brain to share between them—and that it was defective. Since they were always together and no one could tell them apart, we all referred to them as TimJim.
“You’re actually throwing food away?” either Tim or Jim taunted Xavier cruelly. “I thought you ate everything you saw, Fatso.”
Xavier did his best to ignore them, knowing that any response he gave would only get him in more trouble.
As he went to dump his trash, though, TimJim swatted it out of his hands, scattering it all over the floor.
“Hey!” Xavier shouted before he could think about it.
“What?” Tim or Jim challenged, looming over him. “You got a problem with us?”
“TimJim!” Dash yelled. “Back off!”
TimJim turned, startled, to see Dash and Ethan glaring at them. My friends were much tougher and stronger than they were, and TimJim knew it. They quickly raised their hands, showing they meant no harm. “We weren’t causing any trouble,” one of them said.
“Pick that trash up,” Ethan told them, and they instantly scrambled to do it.
Xavier and I laughed at this.
“Laugh now, while you can,” Tim or Jim threatened us. “You won’t be smiling next year, when your boyfriends graduate and won’t be here to protect you from us.”
“Aren’t you graduating too?” I pointed out.
“Nope,” the other brother said, like it was something to be proud of. “We flunked. They’re holding us back next year. So watch out.”
They plunked the trash in the can and then, since Dash and Ethan were still keeping an eye on them, slunk out of the cafeteria.
I felt my stomach sink into my shoes. I’d already been upset about the fact that Dash, Ethan, Violet, and—most importantly—Summer were moving on to high school next year. But I’d at least expected to be free of TimJim as well. The news that the good kids were leaving and the bad kids were staying really rattled me.
Xavier looked shaken as well. Being a short, hefty kid made him a much bigger target for thugs like TimJim than I was—although I’d had my share of run-ins with them.
“Why do they have to be such jerks?” I muttered as we filed out of the cafeteria. “There’s just no reason for it.”
“Oh, bullying always happens for a reason,” Xavier told me.
I turned to him, struck by the thought. “What?”
“Tim and Jim don’t feel good about themselves,” Xavier explained. “So they try to make themselves feel better by demeaning other people. That’s what the research on bullying claims, at least.”
“Right,” I agreed, although I wasn’t really thinking about TimJim anymore. I was thinking about the other person who’d threatened me recently: the man in the panda costume.
I’d been working under the assumption that James Van Amburg—or whoever it might have been—had threatened me to keep me away from the case. But now that I thought about it, that logic was flawed. After all, the FBI was running the investigation, not me. If anything, all the man in the panda costume had done was reveal his presence in the park—and possibly his identity—which was a huge mistake. So why had he come after me?
As Xavier had said, bullying always happened for a reason.
The man hadn’t threatened me until after he’d seen me talking to Chloé Dolkart outside Panda Palace. He’d even expressed concern about it, asking why I was snooping around.
Which indicated he was worried I’d learned something important from Chloé.
Was Chloé involved with the crime, then? Or did she simply have some crucial knowledge about pandas that James Van Amburg didn’t want me to know? If
she did, Molly O’Malley hadn’t shown much interest in talking to her.
“What’s wrong?” Xavier asked.
I snapped out of my thoughts and realized he was still beside me, weaving through the crowded halls on our way to class.
“What do you mean?” I asked, trying my best to sound normal.
“You’ve been on a whole different planet for the last minute,” Xavier informed me. “You walked right past your locker. Don’t you need books for your next class?”
“Shoot. I do.” I spun around and headed back the way I’d come.
Xavier followed me. “You’ve had an idea about the case, haven’t you?” he asked. “I know that look. You get it when you’re putting things together.”
“I wasn’t thinking about the case,” I told him, but it was a lie.
Someone had to talk to Chloé Dolkart, and they had to do it fast.
PANDA PALACE
My original plan was to convince someone else to talk to Chloé, rather than me. After all, the last time I’d talked to Chloé, I’d been assaulted by a panda with a gun.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anyone from the FBI to do the job. By the time the school bus dropped me off at FunJungle, the feds had cleared out. The panda truck was still roped off as a crime scene, but there was no one around it and the mobile crime unit was gone. If Molly O’Malley or any other agent was still up in the administration building, I had no way of finding out. I couldn’t pass through security without an appointment, and no one was going to schedule one for me.
If Summer had been there, she could have gotten me up. Maybe she could have even encouraged her father to pressure the FBI to talk to Chloé. But Summer had a horseback-riding lesson scheduled after school, and her mother refused to let her skip it. Summer swore she would come by FunJungle as quickly as possible after her lesson, but I was on my own until then.
I briefly considered going to Hoenekker, but I was sure that would be a waste of time. After all, the FBI had dismissed him from their investigation, and he’d never been a big fan of having to work with me; he’d only done it because J.J. had ordered him to. If I asked him to talk to Chloé for me, he’d probably tell me to stick to my own business.