Authors: Carol M. Tanzman
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Mysteries & Detective Stories, #Performing Arts, #Dance
The simultaneous ringing of cell phones pulls us apart.
“Sorry,” I mumble.
“I didn’t mean—”
“Forget it. Didn’t happen,” I say.
Jacy takes the call while I hurry out of the bedroom. By the time I reach my phone, lying on the coffee table, the call has gone to voice mail. Just as well. I don’t want to talk to anyone, including Clarissa.
I busy myself in the living room. Fold a wrinkled sweater, stack the newspaper Mom left in scattered sections. When Jacy enters, I can’t look at him.
“I think I’ll see if Mr. Ryan is home. Tell him about Samantha. Maybe we’re wrong about Andrew. Maybe he should talk to that survivalist guy—”
“Sure, but I mean, I thought we were going to forget what just happened.”
“We are,” I hurry to say. “I just figured you wouldn’t want to talk to Ryan right now.”
“I do. I mean, if you do. Unless you don’t want me to.”
“I do. We can go together.”
“Okay. Give me half an hour. I’ve got to deal with something.”
It’s too awkward to ask what it is.
“Meet in the lobby at, like, 2:45,” he says.
After he leaves, my mind spins. What on earth happened?
Who started it? Does it even matter? It’s a mistake. Jacy and I know everything about each other. My ChapStick fetish, his no underwear. Ohhh! My face gets warm at the thought of Jacy naked.
I return Clarissa’s call but don’t tell her what happened. Sometimes, you’ve got to resist the urge to give TMI. Otherwise, I’d have blurted out the fact that Jeremy Carl Strode is a rather excellent kisser.
Jacy’s on the stoop by the time I get downstairs.
“Nice out,” I say, because it’s better than the old “How about dem Yankees?” my Tío uses whenever he wants to avoid something. Especially since the Yankees don’t play in winter and Tío Marcos never
kissed
the person—for the very first time—just thirty minutes before.
“Crazy,” Jacy mumbles. “Freezing in November. Spring in late December.”
“Global warming. I don’t get how some people refuse to believe it’s happening!”
Jacy starts to talk about his weather-related computer project. I don’t ask about his partners. If one of them is
quiksilver,
I don’t want to know.
We reach the deli. I glance into the plateglass window. Mr. Ryan’s wedged into the back booth that practically has his name etched into the leather. His plate’s pushed to the side,
coffee cup drained. He has on tiny white earbuds and gazes intently at his laptop.
The restaurant is nearly empty. Doris, behind the counter, sets racks of clean glasses onto shelves. They clatter so much it’s a wonder the glass doesn’t shatter.
“Mr. Ryan!” Jacy says. “Just the person we’re looking for.”
Ryan, wearing a blue-and-green lumberman’s shirt, snaps down the computer lid. His earbuds tangle and one pulls out of his ear.
“Sorry we startled you.” I’m about to tell him about Samantha when Jacy’s fingers dig into my arm. His face turns street-mime white.
“You okay?” I ask.
He shoots me a look I can’t read. “Dizzy…”
He plops onto the leather banquette opposite Mr. Ryan.
“Did you eat anything?” That’s the first thing Mom asks whenever I feel weird.
Jacy nods.
“Put your head down,” Mr. Ryan advises.
Jacy does as he’s told. After a while, he looks at me. “I must be coming down with something. We should go back home.”
“Sure,” I say. “But—”
Jacy jerks me toward the door. “Come on, Ali! I really feel sick!”
“Slow down. Especially if you’re dizzy. You’ll trip.”
He forces himself to walk slower. “Don’t look back.”
“Why? What’s wrong? Did something happen with your eyes—”
He pulls me to the sidewalk, then into the alley. Safe behind a Dumpster, Jacy glances back. No one’s there.
“Would you please tell me what’s going on?” I whisper.
“Did you hear what was playing on Ryan’s laptop?”
“Excuse me?”
“When the earbud fell out,” Jacy says. “He shut the computer but it caught on the cable—”
“Okay…?”
“Did you hear anything?”
I shake my head. “Doris was making too much noise—”
“The Clash,” Jacy says.
My breath gets stuck at
pause.
“Are you sure?”
“Never been so sure of anything in my life. It was your song, the one from the concert.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. It could be a coincidence.”
Jacy shakes his head. “You’re the one who said there aren’t any coincidences. Did you notice how fast he shut the laptop when he saw us?”
“We startled him.”
“Oh, we startled him all right. He was watching you dance on the screen and then, poof, you appear in front of his face.”
I lean against the brick wall. My turn to be dizzy—only it isn’t an act. “What about Andrew?”
“Ryan trapped us. Asked enough questions until it appeared that
someone
you know was the guy. Bet he never even talked to him. Probably made up all that stuff about Andrew’s apartment.” Jacy’s eyes widen. “That’s why he was so pissed about the smell. He would have blamed the survivalist guy if we told him about it. A lot less work than making it seem like it’s Andrew.”
“Hold on.” It’s hard to think straight. “Even if Ryan taped the concert, I never finished the dance. The music stopped in the middle.”
“Exactly. But I sat there with my head on the table for a couple of minutes, right? The song played out and then started again. Which means he wasn’t watching you at the concert.
He was watching you rehearse in your bedroom. He has stuff he didn’t put on the net, Ali. Video he keeps just for himself—”
Omigod! I remember the paranoid feeling I had when I was with Luke. This feels exactly the same. Still…
“You didn’t see the screen, Jacy. We can’t know for sure it’s Ryan. Did you ever smell that woodsy smell when we talked to him? I haven’t. Not once.”
Jacy’s grip on my arm tightens. “Let’s go back.”
“To the deli?”
“Yeah. I’ll say I feel better. You tell him about Sam.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to see if I can get into his computer,” Jacy says. “Maybe he’ll use the bathroom. Or go up front and pay the bill. Then I can check the hard drive. See if there’s footage of you.”
“What if we get caught?” Nervous, I smear my lips with ChapStick.
“If you don’t want to do it, that’s fine. I’ll go myself.”
He takes off but I can’t let him face that guy alone. “Wait up! I’m coming!”
When we get to the deli, I glance at the window.
Ryan’s booth is empty.
Jacy’s arm is on mine as we head down the street. He’s determined to get into Ryan’s apartment.
“Same plan as before. I’ll say I feel better. You explain about Samantha and I’ll try to find out where he leaves his computer.”
“This is crazy—” I begin.
Up ahead, a middle-aged woman exits Ryan’s building. I scoot up the stairs, politely hold the outer door for her so I can catch the inner one before it shuts. Jacy follows me in.
It’s a typical Heights brownstone. Two apartments on each floor. Old-fashioned wall sconces attached to the striped olive-and-tan wallpaper make it possible to see in the otherwise dim hallway. At least I can see.
Jacy blinks. Directly ahead of us is a solid maple stairway. A green runner, like a sluggish river, rolls down the middle of the steps.
“It’s here!” he whispers.
As soon as he says it, I know what he means. The hall has a definite smell. Woodsier than either clove or patchouli. A
field trip to the natural history museum springs to mind. Sage. Used in Native American rituals.
A door above us opens.
Jacy and I freeze. One look at my face and Ryan will know I know. We have to get away—but the brownstone’s front doors are made of wood and etched glass. Ryan will see us running down the stoop. That’s when Cisco flashes into my mind. He entered the studio through the back door. I grab Jacy’s arm.
Footsteps have started down the steps. We’ll never make it out the back in time. I push Jacy into a small recess under the stairwell, force myself in beside him.
Did Ryan see us from his window? Does he know we’re here?
The blood in my ears pounds so hard I’m sure it can be heard.
The person coming down the steps halts for a moment, then goes for the front door. I wait a few seconds before getting up and peeking out the door window. Through the glass I see Mr. Ryan, carrying a gym bag, walk down the stoop.
“He’s gone,” I whisper.
“Time to call in the cavalry,” Jacy says. “We’ve got to get better proof that Ryan did it than just some smell in a hallway. We need help pronto!”
Back in Jacy’s room, Charlie paces. “There’s a camera in your bedroom, Ali. Has to be. That’s how the guy got footage of you rehearsing your solo.”
“Damn! Not just that!” I fumble through my messenger bag, find the note from the florist and toss it on the bed. “Check out the first line. That’s what threw me the night of the concert. At first, I thought you sent the sunflowers, Jacy.”
Charlie reads, “‘Seize the moment.’ Sounds like Strode, for sure. Guess the dude wanted Ali to suspect you, Ace.”
“Asshole!”
Jacy exclaims.
Charlie sits at the desk, types something on Jacy’s laptop.
I peer over his shoulder. “What are you doing?”
“He must not be using a regular camera, or you’d have seen it. Has to be a nanny cam. You know, the kind that comes inside a teddy bear so parents can spy on the babysitter.”
“I’d have noticed an extra stuffed animal in my room. I don’t have that many.”
“Maybe there’s one that looks like something you already have.” Charlie leans back. “Check it out.”
I scroll through the photos. “These are too new. Mine are all ratty….”
Jacy thinks. “So he took one of your old ones, hollowed it out and hid a camera inside. He had plenty of time during your Baltimore trip.”
Baltimore.
“What?” Jacy asks me.
“It feels like I’m missing something. Something important.”
Jacy and Charlie exchange glances.
“Think about it logically,” Jacy says. “Like a math problem. Step by step.”
“Okay. Wouldn’t a camera have to be plugged in? No camera has a battery that lasts longer than a few hours.”
Charlie’s eyes gleam behind his glasses. “Good! What’s plugged in where?”
I stare at Jacy’s stuff and imagine my room. “The computer on the desk. Printer. Lamps. The one next to the door and the one by my bed— Omigod!”
“What?”
“My clock radio. The day after we got back from Baltimore, I overslept because the alarm was set for p.m., not a.m. I had no idea how that happened but— What are you doing?”
Charlie’s already pulled up a different spy-cam site. “Do any of these look like your alarm clock?”
I stare at the screen. “The second one. But how—”
“Ryan is one lucky perv. You have the same radio a million other people have. This company takes the five most popular types and puts cameras in them.”
“How would Ryan know what kind I have? I told you. I pulled the blinds down right after I started working on the solo—”
Charlie points to Jacy’s window. “When he first taped your
bedroom from the fire escape, he would have gotten the clock on video. Maybe he didn’t notice it then, but after you closed the blinds, he reviews the tapes, looking for some place to hide a camera. He sees the clock, checks online like I did. He buys the spy-cam version and switches it with yours. Voilà—a direct feed from your room.”
“How did he know we’d be gone for the whole weekend? He’d need time to break in. With Mom asleep in the day, and me home at night, our apartment has someone there almost 24/7.”
“Who knows? Maybe he chatted up your mom on the street and found out about the trip.” Charlie shrugs. “The point is—he got in. The only mistake he made was to set the alarm to p.m., not a.m.”
“What do we do now? Go to the police?”
“We should check the clock to see if Charlie’s right,” Jacy says.
“Won’t Ryan know we’re onto him?” I ask. “At the very least, he’ll figure out that we know
someone’s
taping me. I mean, unless we make it seem like we think it’s Andrew.”
Jacy stops midstep. “We can do that. Or we can knock the plug out—” he makes quotes with his fingers “—
accidentally.
Check it quick, plug it back in. As long as we don’t say anything about Ryan when we’re in the room, there’s no way he’ll know we’re onto him.”
It isn’t until Charlie shows me the camera lens, disguised as a dial in the front of the clock radio, that the truth sinks in. I stagger to the kitchen and collapse into a chair, trying to sort through it all.
“I still don’t get how it works. The camera in the clock radio tapes me in my bedroom but how does Ryan see it? Is
he breaking in to the apartment on a regular basis, changing tapes?” A shudder ripples my body. “Does he sneak in when Mom’s asleep?”
“He doesn’t have to,” Charlie says. “Once he got the spy cam set up, he doesn’t have to break in again
if
he’s feeding the footage into a wireless network. Like at the video store— Oh, man!”
“What?” Jacy and I ask at the same time.
“Do you know your block’s under surveillance?” Charlie asks. “I noticed a camera on a streetlamp when I was walking over here. I assumed it was one of those traffic cams the city uses to catch cars speeding through red lights. But, really, now that I think about it, they only do that at major intersections.”
My head hurts. “Mr. Ryan told me he was watching the street but I thought he meant from the stoop or his window.”
“He’s doing a lot more than staring out a window,” Jacy mutters.
“If we go to the cops with the alarm clock, can we get him arrested?” I ask.
Charlie looks grim. “I’m not so sure. The cops are his friends, right? Why should they believe it’s him, unless…”
“What?” Jacy asks.
“We turn the tables.” Charlie thinks for a moment before pumping a fist into the air. “Oh, yeah! In just a little while we are going to get verifiable proof that Mr. Whatever His First Name Is Ryan is a major sleazeball.”