Nanny X (6 page)

“Lovett already has a slogan,” I said. Our slogan is You'll Love It in Lovett. It's on lots of bumper stickers.

“We could have coconut stands on every corner,” said the mayor. “We could build a coconut monument and add ourselves to the D.C. monument tour. Think of the tourism! We could serve coconut ice cream. That'll get the kids liking coconut! We could host a Coconut Ball! On Easter we
could send hundreds of coconuts to the president. They could roll coconuts instead of eggs on the White House lawn!” He took another sip of his smoothie, then rubbed his hands together.

And we'd thought our nanny was crazy. The mayor was nuts.
Coconuts
.

“What's the name of this coconut distributor?” Nanny X asked, kind of casually. But I knew the answer was important.

“Big Adam's Distribution,” he said. “This smoothie came from Big Adam himself.”

“And you get along with this Big Adam?” asked Nanny X. “He wouldn't try to harm you?”

“Harm? Say, what is this? Of course we get along.”

“Just making sure,” said Nanny X. “I know that you believe the, er, attempt on your life came from that young boy, but I have other suspicions. I just want to make sure you've checked out Big Adam thoroughly, that you're sure he's a legitimate business operator.”

“Of course I'm sure,” the mayor blustered, which is another reading connection word. “He gave me a full PowerPoint presentation. A
PowerPoint
.”

“I see,” Nanny X said. “Is there anything else you can tell us that will help our investigation? Anything at all?”

“Sure,” the mayor said. He was really angry now. “Why don't you go investigate why birds fly south in the winter? Or why Nolan's Market was out of bananas this morning? Why don't you investigate that? Big Adam's Distribution is a legitimate company, and my guess is they'll be breaking ground for a new headquarters in that park by the beginning of May.”

“Not if I have anything to do with it.” Nanny X was angry, too. She moved out of the room so fast that the flowers on her hat looked like they were blowing in the wind.

Okay, so maybe our nanny wasn't
totally
crazy. I guess she could have bought the badge on the Internet, but the mayor getting hit by a coconut one minute and drinking a coconut smoothie the next had to be more than a coincidence. If Nanny X thought the coconut was a real clue, well, maybe it was. Two things I didn't get, though: 1. If the mayor was friends with the coconut people, why would they want to knock him out? 2. If Nanny X was undercover, why did she show the mayor her badge?

Nanny X had spent the entire morning moving in slow motion. Now she was walking down the street so fast, Jake and I had to run to keep up with her. So did Yeti. Eliza rode along in the stroller, laughing all the way.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“To talk to Daniel.”

“Are you mad at the mayor?” asked Jake.

“He is arrogant and naïve,” she said, puffing a little. “But he's right about one thing: We haven't proven anything
about anything. I suppose I'm a bit mad at myself, going in with only half an accusation. But I'm certain Big Adam's Distribution is bad news.”

“The initials even spell BAD,” said Jake, who, like I said, is obsessed with initials.

Nanny X stopped so fast we nearly ran into her. “I hadn't thought of that.” She parked the stroller by a low concrete wall, and pulled a flat packet of baby wipes out of the diaper bag. She opened the blue lid, but instead of wipes we saw a tiny keyboard and a computer screen.

“This gives me direct access to 149 crime databases all over the world,” she said, punching in a code followed by the words “Big Adam's Distribution.”

A moment later two dozen reports popped onto the screen. She opened a few of them, but they weren't complete. One labeled Profile just read:

Owner first name:
Big

Owner last name:
Adam

Manufacturing history:
Unknown

Full-time employees:
Unknown

Sector:
Industrial goods (and unknown)

Environmental impact:
Unknown

Summary:
Big Adam's Distribution filed corporation papers last year in 17 states, including Alaska, and looked, for a time, like a company to watch. However, the papers filed were incomplete, and though it was reported Mr. Adam had paid visits to industrial sites in both West Virginia and Wyoming, no known businesses opened as a result. Likewise, no state administrators recalled meeting Big Adam himself. Our crime investigation unit linked a company called B.A.D. with the so-called
“coconut bombings” on Roosevelt Island and an unparalleled theft from the Gudula Diamond Center in Italy, as well as the disappearance of famed geologist Hubert Snavely. But our unit has no proof at this point, only speculation that there is something nefarious at the root of Mr. Adam's company. Mr. Adam himself has been hard to trace, and is rarely spotted in public.

Code:
Old mackerel

“Is that for real?” I said. Just when I was starting to believe her, she brings up a website that talks about fish.

“This particular database ranks suspects by odor instead of by color or number,” Nanny X explained. “Old mackerel has one of the foulest odors imaginable. The fact that they used mackerel as opposed to, say, some type of cheese tells me plenty. The use of a fish indicates that there's something fishy about Big Adam, which, of course, we already know. And as you can see, they suspect plenty but they've proven nothing. It'll be up to us to do that.”

I wondered why someone who knew all about fish odor packed anchovies for lunch, but I didn't ask. Nanny X flipped down the top of the baby wipes and marched us into the police station. Stinky's mother was standing in front of the desk, talking to one of the officers. She had the same dark eyes as Stinky, and the same smile, only now she wasn't using it; she was yelling. Stinky's nanny, Boris, stood next to her, talking calmly. With his island accent he always sounded calm, even when he wasn't.

“Oh, but he's never been in trouble of any sort,” Boris was saying. “He has no previous offenses, you have no right to hold him—”

“Tell it to the judge,” the officer said.

“You bet we will,” said Mrs. Malloy. “Where is she?” The officer pointed, and Mrs. Malloy walked out of the office. Boris followed, giving a slight nod to Nanny X and a wink to me and Jake. I waved, wondering why Boris hadn't been with Stinky when the whole thing started.

Nanny X approached the officer slowly. The flowers on her gardening hat gave her some extra height.

“We're here to see Daniel Malloy,” she said.

“You have to be authorized to do that,” said the officer, whose mustache covered half his face. “Or you have to be his mother. And you're not. The mother went that way.” He pointed in the direction Mrs. Malloy had gone. “So if I had to make a guess, I'd guess you're authorized to leave.”

“Oh, I'm authorized to do much more than leave.” Nanny X reached into her diaper bag and yanked out the badge she had shown to the mayor. It flashed in the fluorescent light.

“Oh, I'm so
sorry
, ma'am.” Now the policeman sounded overly polite, like he was trying to be nice, but it was pretty obvious he didn't want to be. “I didn't realize you were with
NAP
.”

“There are probably a great many things you don't realize,” Nanny X said.

“And these children?” the officer asked, glaring at us.

“These children are with me. Any courtesy extended to NAP officials must also be extended to them.”

“And I suppose the dog—”

“The dog, too.”

I didn't think we were going to get in, but the officer stood up and led us down the hall, mumbling things like “no choice” and “government” and “they could have at least sent the FBI or the CIA.”

We found Stinky Malloy in a tiny room inside the police station. They hadn't put him in a jail cell. But the room didn't have any windows, and it smelled like a school cafeteria
before all of the garbage is thrown away. There was a chair in there, the hard plastic kind. Stinky sat on the floor with his arms around his knees.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi.” For some reason he looked smaller than normal, maybe because he wasn't towering over me the way he usually did. His hair was in his eyes and his chin stuck out a little, like he was ready for a fight. “I'm glad you were able to make it to the meeting.”

“This is our nanny,” I told him.

“Hello, Daniel,” our nanny said. “You may call me Nanny X.”

Stinky stood up and shook her hand. “Did you see Boris?” he asked. “And my mom? They were just here.”

“And now they're with the judge,” said Nanny X. “But I expect they'll be back soon. Meanwhile, we'd like to ask you a few questions, if we may.”

“Go ahead. Everyone else has.”

“How did you know the park was in trouble?” she asked.

“I'm very concerned about the environment,” he said. “And it wasn't a secret, was it? It was in the newspaper.”

“Ah,” said Nanny X. “Go on.”

“We live right behind that park. If they put a factory there, we'll be living behind a factory.”

“So you would stand to lose a lot if the park became a factory?”

“Sure I would,” Stinky said. “So would the whole town.”

“Touché,” Nanny X said. “But that does speak to motive. Now: You didn't throw any rocks at the mayor?” The way she asked it, it didn't sound like a real question. Stinky seemed to know she was on his side.

“I only picked up one rock today,” he said. “I was still holding it when they grabbed me.”

“And they assumed—”

“They thought since I was holding that rock, I must have thrown the first one. But that's not why I had it.”

“You thought it was a geode?” Nanny X remembered. Of course she did—she remembered everything.

“Exactly,” Stinky said. “I was saving it for later. Sometimes you can't tell it's really a geode until you crack it open. Now they're saying I can't even have it back. It's evidence.”

Then
I
remembered something. “What hand were you holding the sign with?” I asked him.

“My right,” he said. “I'm a righty.”

“And you had the geode in your left hand?”

“Yeah,” he said. “It was too big to fit in my pocket.” He looked down at his jeans. “I guess these are kind of small,” he said.

“Then you couldn't have thrown the rock,” said Jake. “It's hard to pitch when your hands are full.”

“Exactly,” I said. Sometimes my brother and I still think alike. Unfortunately, all of this mentioning of hands made me want to chew my fingernails, but I fought it and kept talking. “You couldn't have thrown anything at the mayor, even if you wanted to.”

“Well,
maybe
he could have,” Jake said, backtracking and spoiling the whole idea. “But he couldn't have thrown it very
hard
,” he added, unspoiling it. “Whoever hit the mayor had a really hard throw; otherwise he wouldn't have gotten knocked out.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Nanny X smiling again. “Make sure you pass that nugget on to your lawyer, Daniel,” she said. Then her lips resumed their normal position. “You do agree someone threw something, though, correct?”

“Sure, anyone could see that,” Stinky said. “I don't think it was a rock, though.”

Jake and I exchanged looks. Yeti drooled on Eliza's foot.

“Why not?”

“Well,” said Stinky, “if it was a rock and it was really as big as it looked, the person who threw it would have to be really strong or use an industrial-strength slingshot or something. Most of the people at that protest didn't look like they could throw very well. No offense.”

“We don't think the mayor was hit by a rock, either!” I blurted out.

“See!” Stinky said. He pushed his hair out of his eyes. “What do you think it was?”

Jake and I looked at Nanny X to see if it was okay to tell. She gave us the nanny nod. “A coconut,” we said.

“Hmm,” Stinky said. “Coconuts are heavy, but they're not as dense as rocks, even with the milk still inside them.” He paused a minute. “But why would someone throw a coconut at the mayor?”

I shrugged. That was what we were trying to figure out.

“Did you happen to see what direction it came from?” Nanny X asked.

“No,” Stinky said. “I was looking toward the stage, not away from it. And my sign was kind of blocking my vision.”

“Could it have come out of a tree?” asked Nanny X.