Has Anyone Seen Jessica Jenkins? (7 page)

I could hear Dad snoring. I was listening outside the door. I couldn’t hear Mom hissing at him to
stop
snoring, which meant she was probably asleep, too.

I tiptoed past, avoiding the squeaky floorboard, and crept downstairs. I sneaked across the hall, through the kitchen, and onto the back porch, where I carefully slid the bolt and slipped outside.

There was just about enough light from the streetlamp at the front of our house to see what I was doing. The recycling was in plastic bins at the side of the yard. I opened the first bin I saw. It was full of plastic bottles. Carefully pushing it aside, I moved on to the next one. Paper. Yes! I crouched down and began to rummage my way through four weeks’ worth of cereal boxes, junk mail, packaging, newspapers, and magazines.

This wasn’t going to be easy.

Eventually, I reached the bottom of the bin. No tissue paper at all. I looked around. There were more bins. I opened a couple more. Cans in the first; glass in the second. Then I came to the final one, right in the corner of the yard. As soon as I opened the lid, the first thing I noticed was a whole bunch of “happy birthday” wrapping paper. Bingo!

I rummaged through the wrapping paper.
Come on, come on, it must be here somewhere
. I was starting to get a cramp from crouching down next to the bin when I spotted it. Tissue paper! Scrunched up into a ball inside a piece of wrapping paper. I opened it up and studied it as well as I could in the dim light. Yes! A label! I ripped off the label and shoved it in my pocket. Then I straightened my legs and went to stand up. Only, I lost my balance and fell onto the bin behind me, which I’d piled on top of another one. Unfortunately, I hadn’t stacked it properly, and it fell with a clatter, tin cans spilling everywhere.

Nooooooooo!

I held my breath again and listened. Nothing. I was safe. I just needed to —

Wait. A light had come on in the kitchen. Someone was coming. I didn’t have time to run away, and the bins were too small for me to hide behind. There was only one thing I could do. I closed my eyes, cleared my mind, and turned invisible.

“Hello?” Dad was standing in the back doorway in his pajamas, his hair sticking up in a sleepy mop. He was holding a rolling pin. “Who’s there? I know there’s someone out there. You’d better show yourself or there’ll be trouble.”

If I hadn’t been so concerned with making sure Dad didn’t notice me, I might have laughed. I mean, did he really think any serious burglar would be afraid of a middle-aged guy in striped pajamas trying to sound tough as he stood yawning in the doorway with a rolling pin in his hand?

“I’m warning you.” Dad raised his voice and held the rolling pin a bit higher. I crouched low and focused hard on keeping myself invisible. I mean, I know he wasn’t exactly scary in his PJs and holding a kitchen utensil, but I wasn’t a hardened criminal and Dad was never in a good mood if he was woken up. Plus, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to come up with a decent explanation for why I was crouched down among the recycling bins in the middle of the night.

And then, just as I was starting to get a cramp in my knees and wondering how long this standoff was going to last, something wonderful happened.

The neighbor’s cat, Monty, leaped across the fence into our yard.

Dad jumped so hard he dropped the rolling pin. Then he peered into the darkness. “Monty, is that you?”

Monty skipped over to the shed next to the back door. Dad stepped out to pick him up. Monty purred like a motorcycle engine and rubbed his head against Dad’s chest.

Dad tickled Monty under his chin. “Darn cat. You had us worried for a minute there. Darn Christine, too, forgetting to lock the back door,” he said. “All right, be off with you, now. I’m going back to bed. And, unlike Christine, I’ll lock the door behind me. What do you think, Monts? That a good idea?”

Which was when I realized I had to act fast. If I didn’t get into the house before Dad, and he locked the door behind him, it could be a long, dark, cold night for me out here in the backyard.

Dad was still tickling Monty’s neck. I seized the moment. Extricating myself from the bins with a light-footedness a ballerina would be proud of, I tiptoed across the yard, edged past Dad, and zipped through the back door, seconds before Dad bent down to put Monty on the ground. With a final pet of the cat’s head, he turned and came back in the house.

I was halfway across the kitchen as I heard him close the door behind him. I ran upstairs as quickly and as quietly as I could, crept into my bedroom, and finally let out the breath I’d been holding since I’d made a dash for the back door.

I listened as he crossed the landing and closed his bedroom door behind him. Only then did I feel safe to put on my bedside light and pull the label out of my jeans pocket. I held it up to the light.

Tiger’s Eye
, it said in a fancy, swirly font. That must be the name of the shop where my necklace had come from. There was an address under the name — 132 Beacon Street, Penbridge.

My heart took a leap. I didn’t recognize the address or the shop name, but at least it was in Penbridge. It couldn’t be too far away.

It took me hours to fall asleep after that. My mind wouldn’t switch off. All I could think was that maybe Izzy and I could go to Tiger’s Eye over the weekend. And that perhaps it would finally lead us to some answers.

On Saturday morning, I was at Izzy’s before she was even dressed. I waited for her to wolf down her breakfast and throw on some clothes, then I dragged her out of the house.

I’d checked out the route on my computer before leaving home, and I ran it by Izzy as we walked up to the bus stop at the end of her road. “We get the number seventeen into town and get off at the Memorial Gardens. Then we hang a left up Waterloo Road, and Beacon Street should be the third on our right.”

Half an hour later, we were turning onto a long street with houses at each end and a row of stores in between; Beacon Street.

Tiger’s Eye was right in the middle. We stopped outside and peered in. The window was filled with glass cases of jewelry, shelves of wooden animal ornaments, and colorful silk scarves. A smell that I recognized as incense wafted out onto the street, together with a tinkly tune that might have been panpipes.

I looked at Izzy and swallowed. “I’m nervous.”

“Me too,” Izzy replied. “But we’re here now. And, anyway, what’s the worst that can happen?”

I was fairly certain that the worst that could happen would be someone in the store instantly realizing that I was some kind of superhuman superfreak, kidnapping me, locking me in a dungeon, and experimenting on me for the rest of my life.

I didn’t say any of that, though. Instead I shrugged and tried for a smile.

“Come on.” Izzy pushed the door open, jangling a wind chime on the other side. I followed her in.

Inside, the shop was quite small. Cabinets and shelves lined every wall, all of them packed tightly with crystals and necklaces, bracelets, and animal ornaments that looked as if they’d come from every country in the world.

The shopkeeper was tall and wiry, with glasses perched so far down his nose I was surprised they stayed on. He was sitting on a stool behind the front counter, muttering to himself as he shuffled through paperwork. “Now, then, where did I put the . . . ? Ah, hmm, it was here before, and now it’s . . . hmm. Well, I never . . .”

I coughed gently. The man looked up. He pushed his glasses up his nose and squinted. Looking from me to Izzy and back again, he nodded briskly.

“Yes?” he said. “Can I help you?”

Which was when I realized that we hadn’t actually discussed what we were going to do once we got here. We stared silently back at him for a moment. Then I pulled myself together. If I didn’t want him to get suspicious of me, it was probably a good idea to stop acting weird.

“We were wondering if you have any crystals we could look at.” Great. It wasn’t exactly hard to see that he had an entire shop full of crystals.

The man opened his arms to encompass the shop. “One or two,” he said.

“Rose quartz, in particular,” I went on, holding my breath. Why did I say that? He was
bound
to know why we were here now!

“Our most popular crystal,” he drawled.

“Really?” Izzy stepped forward. “A friend of ours bought some from here recently.”

The man seemed to be stifling a yawn as he continued to shuffle papers. “I’m not surprised. Rose quartz looks pretty and, you know, roses, romance, and all that.”

“Maybe you’d remember our friend?” Izzy continued.

“I probably won’t, actually,” the man replied. “The number of customers I get in here, there’s no way I can keep track of them all.”

I looked around the empty shop.
Seriously?

He stopped what he was doing and looked up. “What does this person look like?” he asked.

“Well, she’s tall with a smiley face. She usually has her hair tied back and it’s kind of long and dreadlocky,” I said.

The man frowned and went back to his paperwork.

“And she wears odd clothes.”

He looked up. “Oh, hold on a second. I think I
might
remember her. She was wearing a long yellow cardigan with a kilt with a pair of green tights.”

That sounded like Nancy. In fact, I was sure of it. I knew the cardigan he meant. It also had pink flowers on it, but I didn’t point that out.

“That’s her!” I said.

“Came in twice, actually,” the man went on. “First time on her own, then she came back the next day with a man.”

With a man? I didn’t know Nancy had a boyfriend. I made a mental note to find out more the next time she came for dinner.

“In fact, I couldn’t tell you much about her, but I remember the man very clearly,” the shopkeeper continued. “We had a long conversation about the crystals. He wanted to know all about which ones I had, where they came from, who my suppliers were — all sorts of things. He was a very good customer. The kind you want to look after. He bought a huge boxful of crystals. Said he wanted one of every single type that I had. Paid cash as well.” He shuffled through his paperwork again. “In fact, now that I think about it, he was
particularly
interested in the rose quartz.”

My heart leaped into my mouth. I tried to squeeze a few words around it. “Did he say where he was from?” I asked in a squeak.

The shopkeeper frowned again. “Actually, he left his business card.” He pulled out a card from underneath a pile of receipts and waved it vaguely at us before dropping it back on the pile. I couldn’t see what it said.

Izzy was peering at the card. She reached inside her bag and pulled out her notebook and pen. Then she glanced at me and gave me a quick nod. I knew what she was thinking. We needed this man’s details. He might be our next clue. Someone showing that much interest in the rose quartz, and knowing Nancy — sure, it might all just be a coincidence, but right now it was the best lead we had.

I pretended to be interested in a huge wooden bird hanging from the ceiling on the other side of the shop. “I wonder if you could tell me about this,” I asked, pointing at it.

The man’s eyes brightened. “Ah, the eagle mobile. Now, this is a very special bird,” he said, coming out from behind the counter and leading me across the shop. I followed him to the eagle and watched, feigning fascination, as he pulled on a hidden cord that lifted the bird’s wings. Actually, it was very pretty. The way the wings rose and fell was so lifelike, it mesmerized me for a moment.

Then Izzy coughed and I remembered our mission. I glanced across the shop to see her putting her pen and notebook away in her bag. She must have noted down the necessary information.

“Well, thank you for your time,” I said to the man. “It’s a lovely shop and we’ll come back again.”

“Not buying anything?” he asked.

I felt guilty. Despite what he’d said, I got the feeling he hardly ever had any customers. I glanced at a basket full of random stones and crystals next to the register. It had a sign above it saying,
SALE. EVERY ITEM IN THIS BASKET $2.50
.

I rummaged around the basket, looking for something I liked. A couple of things caught my eye. A stone that reminded me of a beautiful pebble I’d found on vacation on a beach when I was about seven. It was bright turquoise with black squiggly lines running all over it. Another stone looked a bit like a Life Saver — white with gray splodges and a perfect hole in the center. The shopkeeper said it was called howlite.