A Recipe for Robbery (4 page)

A
s soon as Mom and Granny Goose took off across the courthouse lawn, Gus snapped his fingers. “Let's get started.”

“Okay,” I said. “But I want to hide this locket first. It's making me nervous.”

“Let's take it to your garage, Lindy,” Margaret said. “It's so messy in there we'll find all kinds of places to put it.”

She was right about that. The garage was my dad's territory, and he wasn't what you would call a neat freak. But my heart still skipped a couple of beats because when I thought about it, hiding evidence
seemed like risky business. “What if we can't solve this in a few days? You guys will have to go with me to turn the locket back in. Promise?”

“I promise,” Margaret said.

Gus's face turned solemn. “Sherlock's honor. We'll claim we found it on the festival grounds, just like you said before, and then we realized later it was a missing heirloom. Technically, that's sort of the truth.”

“Okay,” I said, relieved to have that settled. “So after we hide it, then what?”

“Then we start investigating, figure out who framed Granny Goose,” Gus said.

“It might be someone with a grudge against her,” I said. “Someone who doesn't like her rescue service.”

Gus shook his head. “Nah. Grudge crimes involving high-ticket thefts are rare—probably ten percent, tops. The motive is greed. The perp framed Granny Goose to take the heat off himself. He dropped the locket in the cukes, hoping whoever found it would
make a big scene, turn it over to the cops. Then
voilà
! Granny Goose takes the rap, and the real thief is off the hook.”

Margaret scowled, plopping her hands on her hips. “One thing's for sure, whoever did this is a totally heartless person.”

“Well, they are
now
anyway.” I pulled the locket from my pocket and grinned, then waved it in front of Margaret, waiting for her to laugh at my joke like she'd been laughing at every little thing Gus said. But she didn't even crack a smile.

“We'll need to get over to Granny Goose's house soon, check things out, ask her some questions,” Gus said. “But first, we should start at the scene of the crime. We'll have a ninety-eight percent chance of getting critical info there.”

“Wow,” Margaret said. “How do you know all this stuff?”

“NSCCB. It's all about checking facts, calculating odds. That's how I solved the May mystery.”

During the whole walk to my house Gus went on and on about NSCCB—yap, yap, yap about crime statistics and club guidelines and how he figured out this and that to win the contest. Margaret lapped every word of it up like she was spellbound, but by the time we opened my garage door, I was ready to cover my ears.

We wandered around for a couple of minutes, looking for the perfect hiding spot. Gus said we should definitely put it up high, on the top shelf of Dad's tools. “Odds are ninety to one he won't find it up there.”

Margaret agreed with him, of course, because she still couldn't get over how he'd won crime buster of the month.

“No. That's not the best place,” I said. Gus may have been a contest winner, but I knew my dad. I stuck the locket, still wrapped in its napkin, behind a container of Grubb's grime remover. “It'll be lots safer back here.” I felt superconfident about that, maybe 99 percent, because I'd never once in my life seen my dad clean grime off anything.

We were standing outside the garage, talking about what to do next, when I noticed the farmer-looking guy I'd seen at the festival. He still had the newspaper in his hand, but I didn't think he was reading it. In fact, I got an eerie feeling he'd been watching us. He crossed the street, climbed into a rusty green pickup truck, and took off.

I started to mention it, but Gus interrupted my train of thought. “You guys ready to hit the crime scene?”

“Sure.” Margaret pulled a rubber band from her pocket and gathered her thick curls into a lopsided ponytail. “Let's go.”

“Hang on a second,” I said. “I've got to check in with my mom first.” I found her upstairs changing out of her carrot costume.

She smiled when I asked if I could hang out with Gus and Margaret for the afternoon. “I'm tickled you two are warming up to him. You know, I saw his dad at the last PTA meeting, and he mentioned how
lonely Gus has been since Antoinette's death. Jack's worried about him, says he doesn't seem to have any friends and that kids tease him because he's a bit of an egghead.”

Well, she had that right—the egghead part, anyway.

Mom checked her watch. “Remember to be home by three-thirty, and not a minute later. We've got a busy afternoon lined up. And remind me next year not to cochair this festival.”

I waved good-bye and bounded down the steps—two at a time—and that's when I started feeling kind of bad about Gus. No wonder he was lonely. His mom had died in a car crash just last July, his only brother was away at college, and I'd heard Mom say his dad worked all the time. I made a silent vow to be nicer to Gus Kinnard.

About ten minutes later my vow got seriously tested.

 

“Wait a minute,” I said when Gus slipped through an open gate into Palmetto Estates, where the Grimstones lived. I read the sign over his head: W
ELCOME TO
P
ALMETTO
E
STATES
: L
UXURY
L
IVING AT
I
TS
M
OST
E
XQUISITE
. WARNING! G
ATED COMMUNITY
. R
ESIDENTS AND GUESTS ONLY
. A
REA PATROLLED BY SECURITY GUARDS
. V
IOLATORS PROSECUTED
.

“Shouldn't we find another way in or something?” I pointed to the surveillance camera.

Margaret chewed at a cuticle, looking around nervously. “Do you think someone's watching us, you know, like from a guard tower?”

“Nah,” Gus said. “Don't sweat it. My dad comes out here all the time to see the Grimstones; he's their attorney. He says that fifty percent of the time there's no guard on duty.”

After five more minutes of walking, Gus finally stopped us across the street from the Grimstones'. He pointed at the bright green hedge surrounding their front yard. It'd been clipped, shaved, buzzed, and styled into different sea creatures. “Cool, huh?” he
said. “My dad says some famous artist from Miami does their shrubbery. He says they have the biggest flower garden he's ever seen in their backyard, too.”

We crossed the street to the Grimstones' property, then poked our heads between a bushy dolphin and a giant sea horse. Their house was huge, more like a mansion. A pebbled pathway lined with palm trees, flowering bushes, and mermaid fountains wound through the yard and up to a wraparound porch.

“The
Sentinel
said there wasn't any sign of forced entry. That's why the cops think the thief must be someone they know,” Gus said.

The front door opened. Margaret gasped. She dropped to the sidewalk, snagging her glasses on the sea horse. They bounced off my toe and landed under the dolphin. She dived after them, falling facedown on the concrete.

A shrill voice rang out from the door. “That is
exactly
what I told Howard. I said, ‘I will
not
hesitate to call the police at the first whiff of intruders around here, even if they are nothing more than children.'”

I
didn't move a muscle. Gus stood next to me, frozen solid as a Popsicle. Margaret stayed sprawled on her stomach on the sidewalk. You would've thought she was dead, except her hand crept across the concrete and fumbled under the dolphin for her glasses.

A second person appeared on the porch. I stared at her for a second before recognizing the white-blond hair gelled into spikes, the leopard tank top and stretch pants, and the floppy leopard bag hanging off her shoulder. “Hey,” I whispered, “that's Cricket from Shear Magic. What's she doing here?”

Cricket headed down the porch steps and around
a pebbled path toward the driveway. “You know, Mrs. Grimstone,” she called over her shoulder, “if I were you, I'd have security out here patrolling twenty-four seven.”

“Believe me,” Mrs. Grimstone said from the porch, “I am considering it. And thank you again for returning my neck scarf, Cricket.” She patted her puffy auburn curls. “Now, about my hair…I'm not wild over that tint you used Tuesday. There's still some irritation behind my ears, and I think the color should be deepened. I'm going to have you redo it tomorrow after my pedicure.”

“Uh…sure. I'll see what I can do.” Cricket closed the door to her car and flicked an index finger in a quick wave to Mrs. Grimstone. “Take it easy.”

“That's precisely what I intend to do. Howard and I are staying in for the day. No Tart activities for me, I'm afraid. I'm anxious to get a progress report from the police.” The front door closed behind her.

Cricket revved her motor a couple of times before backing out of the driveway.

I dodged around the corner of the hedge, pulling Margaret with me. We watched the car roll down the street.

“Hey,” Gus said. He'd wedged himself behind some bushes that ran alongside the Grimstones' house and was pointing at a screened porch in the back. “That's Mr. and Mrs. Grimstone. Let's crawl back there. We might hear some details about the robbery.”

One by one, an army of goose bumps marched up my arms. My mom's face flashed before my eyes: the same face she wore every time she nagged: “If I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times. You must not act on impulse. Just because your friends try something, that doesn't mean you should…” Blah, blah, blah.

But this was a special circumstance.

I checked out the thick, flowering bushes. No one could possibly see us in there. And it wasn't as though we were doing anything really wrong, or bad.
The way I saw it, we were the good guys. So what was the harm?

I dropped to the ground. Margaret followed, even though she looked more scared than I'd ever seen her. We clawed our way through the thick, scratchy bushes, batting mosquitoes and no-see-ums from our faces. Once we were within a couple of feet of the porch, Gus put his finger to his lips. The sound of ice clinking in glasses and muffled voices floated out through the screen.

I cocked my head, straining to hear the conversation.

“That's exactly what I'm trying to tell you, Howard. If you would let me complete a sentence without interrupting—thank you very much—you might understand what I'm talking about.”

“Sorry. Go ahead,” a man mumbled.

“I'm sorry, too, dear. I didn't mean to snap; it's just that I'm so terribly distraught over this. What I was saying is, the detective instructed me to think
things over, to recall anything out of the ordinary.”

Mumble, mumble.

Mrs. Grimstone continued. “You remember, don't you, that the Bloomsberry Tarts were here two days ago for François Pouppière's presentation.”

“Who's Francine Poop-hair?”

“Poo-pee-air! Fran-swa Pouppière. For heaven's sake, Howard, I've already told you—François owns Simply Paris, that quaint little restaurant downtown. He was gracious enough to give a demonstration on soufflés this Tuesday right here in our kitchen. If you weren't always out of town on business, you'd remember these details.”

Then came sniffles and Mr. Grimstone again. “There, there,” he said. “I understand your anxiety over this.”

“Thank you, Howard. Now as I was saying…” Mrs. Grimstone continued, her voice fading in and out. I didn't have a clear view of her, but I could tell she was pacing the porch. “To my knowledge, only
one of the Tarts left the kitchen. She was gone for several minutes, certainly enough time to enter our upstairs study. Oh! If only I hadn't laid those pieces out to be appraised. I'm absolutely sick.”

My cheeks tingled with excitement. I couldn't believe our luck. We were actually listening to the inside scoop about the heist, straight from Mrs. Grimstone's mouth. If we could only get a suspect's name, a description even.

“She followed François around like a puppy, asking him the most ludicrous questions about mushroom paste.”

Mushroom paste?
My ears perked up, like antennae. Margaret nudged me, a worried look on her face.

“Oh. You mean…” Another mumble from Mr. Grimstone.

“No, Howard. I am talking about that character who lives across the pond. It's her goose that's been wreaking havoc in this yard. I've got a hunch she's
our thief, and I am most certainly calling the—”

Margaret clutched my arm.

“Did she just say what I thought she did?” I whispered. “That she's going to call—”

“The cops!” Margaret squealed. “She's going to call the cops on Granny Goose. Ohmigosh. What should we do?”

“We got some good info here, just like I thought,” Gus said. “Let's head over to Granny Goose's, see if she's home. We've got to piece some things together.”

We shot back through the bushes until we'd reached the front corner of the house. We were just getting ready to crawl into the sunlight when an odd-sounding honk stopped us.

Pickles!

She honked again and sped across the lawn, straight for us. She dropped a worn duct-taped wallet from her bill, then wriggled between the branches and squatted on my lap. Not a second later a muddy work boot landed on the wallet, inches from my knee.

“Where the heck's that duck?” a man grumbled. “I'm gonna get rid of that pest if it's the last thing I do.”

I clamped my teeth and held tight to Pickles, praying she wouldn't give us away. I poked a couple of branches aside and peered up through the white flowers.

My heart flipped like a pancake when I saw the straw hat, rumpled overalls and dirty T-shirt. I recognized this guy, all right: the farmer-looking man from the festival. The same guy who'd walked by the garage while we were hiding the locket.

A burly hand yanked the leaves back. “Okay, miss,” the man said. He stared straight at me. “Hand it over.”