Spy in the Alley (14 page)

Tomorrow, nothing. I was taking action today.

After the day camp finished, I escaped my now-ultra-enthusiastic instructor — “Great emoting, Dinah! More of it next time,
please
!” — and took the bus over the Granville Street bridge into downtown. I intended to storm the Wellman Talent office and demand a full confession from Roderick.

I was supposed to get a lift home with one of my day-camp friends and her mother, but I fobbed them off with a story about Madge picking me up. It was only as the bus rumbled over the Granville Street bridge that I realized I didn't actually have any sort of
plan
for storming the Wellman office.

The prudent side of me, tiny as that was, cautioned that barging in and yelling might not be the best strategy.

As the bus descended the ramp, I watched Yaletown rise up at me with its gleaming new condos and mellowing old brown-and-red-brick buildings. Yelling would be so
satisfying
, though, I informed the prudent side of me.

Imagine Roderick involving the Galloway family in his dastardly plans to sabotage GASP. We were just a regular, law-abiding, well-behaved family!

I reached the old-warehouse-turned-trendy-office-building that housed Wellman Talent. By the time I got to the fourth floor, and the Wellman Talent receptionist, I was feeling anything but well-behaved. How dare Roderick, I mean, how
dare
he, mix us up in this?

“Why, hello,” the receptionist said sweetly. “And what show are you in? Or are you doing a commercial?”

It occurred to me that I was still sporting my
Annie
makeup: lots of freckles on heavily rouged cheeks. At least I'd remembered to leave the red wig at day camp.

I glowered at the receptionist. “I'm Dinah Galloway. I want to see Roderick Wellman — now!”

Raising her eyebrows — no doubt she thought I was just another temperamental star — the receptionist lifted the phone.

“Yes, Ms. Cram?” came Roderick's voice over the intercom.

“I — there's a Ms. Galloway here to see you, sir.”

“Excellent,” Roderick exclaimed jovially. “Send her in.”

I could see Roderick in a large room at the end of the hall. He was addressing a group of people, telling them how “fantasmo” things were.

There were several smaller rooms on either side of the hall leading to the large room. From one of these smaller rooms, just as I was passing, a blood-curdling scream rang out.

Needless to say, I was startled. The odd part was, Roderick wasn't at all. He just kept beaming at the group of people, none of whom even stirred.

I stared into the room beside me. A young woman with buggy eyes and eyebrows plucked to thin, high half-moons sat holding a script.

“Very good screaming, Cindi,” praised a dignified-looking, iron-gray-haired man. “Let's work on it a bit more, and you might get the role in
Hor
rorville
when you audition tomorrow.”

“Ooo, I hope so, Mr. Wellman,” the young woman breathed.

So that was Roderick's dad! I moved quickly past before the next scream erupted. They were kind of hard on the eardrums.

Besides, I had my own
Horrorville
moment planned — for Roderick.

As I approached the end of the hall, Roderick smirked at his audience. “I'm glad Ms. Galloway is dropping by. She's the model you've seen in previous Bonna Terra commercials and ads promoting Fields Tobacco sports events. In fact,” Roderick beamed, “it's part of Ms. Galloway's contract with us that she appear in every commercial and ad we assign her.” He rubbed his hands together.

I leaned against the door frame, too dismayed for the moment to stand up on my own. Madge — stuck in a contract to do photo shoots for a tobacco company! Now that she was a GASPer, she'd hate every minute of it. And what would that do to her budding romance with Jack? Maybe not kill it, but sure wither it for a while, I reflected glumly.

Roderick's audience consisted of stiff, proper types in corporate suits. A particularly starchy-looking man shot his hand up with a question. “Roderick, I was in your office yesterday when you had a rather irate call from some young woman. She was shouting insults at you. Was that not the Bonna Terra girl?” Sniffing scornfully, the starchy man fingered his tie clip — designed, I saw, in the shape of a cigarette pack with several tips jutting out.

“Her? Oh no-o-o-o-o,” Roderick assured him, with a high, phony laugh.

It didn't take much brilliance to deduce that Starchy was a Fields Tobacco executive. He whined on, “All this presupposes
our
signing a contract with
you
. Granted, these GASP demonstrations seem to be fizzling, and public opinion is turning against those young idiots, what with all their spray-painting and so on. We just need to feel comfortable that everything will go smoothly, Roderick. See, we at Fields Tobacco, along with Bonna Terra, like to be sure we're on
terra firma
, if you get what I mean.”

“Don't you worry,” Roderick promised, after out-laughing Starchy for an embarrassingly long time. “Everything is under control.”

He held up a piece of paper and a fountain pen. “Now let's put ink to paper, and seal the agreement. But first, as I mentioned, you're about to meet the stunningly elegant Madge Galloway. You'll be impressed. She's the embodiment of every image we're trying to project: coolness, classiness, slim sophistication … ”

Wiping at some of the fake freckles that, in the heat, had began to run, I marched purposefully into the room.

Roderick and his audience gawked at me.

Admittedly, I wasn't at my visual best. Aside from the smudged makeup, I had grape-juice stains on my T-shirt, shorts and shoes, the result of a satisfying food fight at lunch. So I was a chubby eleven-year-old, and not quite the model of cool sophistication Roderick had just described. I didn't think they had to appear
that
dismayed.

“Yeah, I'm Dinah Galloway,” I informed them, “and I'm here to spill the dirt on Roderick Wellman, professional dweeb.”

“No, no,” gasped Roderick. Blanching, he began to twist his pointy head back and forth like a weathervane caught in a tornado. “You're ruining my presentation … Somebody get her out of here.” Feebly, he began to snap his fingers.

“Roderick has been sicking weirdos on my family and friends,” I told his guests. “One shaped like a box, one with buckteeth — ”

The one with buckteeth emerged from an adjacent room. Summoned by Roderick's snapping fingers, he hung awkwardly about in the doorway, ogling the people in the corporate suits.

“Remove her, please,” Roderick said, with a distasteful grimace in my direction.

Theo bore down on me.

“Look here, Roderick,” a woman began un

A scream from Cindi cut her off. Cindi, I decided, had the right idea.

“HEL —” I started to yell, but Theo clamped a skinny hand over my mouth. He stuck his other hand under my armpit and wrenched me off the ground with surprising strength. These skinny types sure could be wiry.

“It's fine, it's fine,” Roderick soothed his guests, as Theo carried me, squirming like a fish on a hook, into an adjoining room. “Yaletown is becoming more upscale, but we still get these loony types wandering in from time to time. Pay no mind to this unpleasant intrusion. Now, back to the business of signing our contract.”

“Stop!” I tried to yell behind Theo's hand, but it came out as “Mmmpp!!”

Theo kicked the door shut. He lifted me higher, so he could glower into my face. “Now you gotta behave. Be a sport, and I'll let you out in an hour.”

We were in a storeroom with wall-to-wall filing cabinets, except in one corner.

“A broom closet,” he mused. His teeth splayed in a grin. “Guess that ought to hold ya.”

He hauled me over to it. To open the door, he had to remove his hand from my mouth.

“‘Be a sport!' ” I protested indignantly. “I don't think
you're
being much of a sport! Have you ever heard of kidnapping and forcible confinement?”

He shrugged. “Not the company's fault if you were snooping around and accidentally locked yourself in the broom closet.”

Yet another scream from Cindi echoed through the office. Theo chuckled. “No point in you making a commotion, kid. No one will pay any attention with that going on! Now keep a lid on it and in a while I'll buy ya an ice cream cone.”

With that, he shoved me in the broom closet and slammed the door. I heard a soft click as he slid the outer bolt into place.

Chapter Seventeen

Broom-closet blues

In books, closets have fake backs to them. These yield easily to Narnia, or else to convenient secret tunnels. The broom closet in the Wellman Talent storeroom failed to be that helpful, even though I heaved at the back of it with my shoulder. The frustrating thing was that I
knew
the wall was thin, and therefore must be flimsy. I could hear the murmur of voices from the boardroom.

With my other shoulder I tried forcing open the broom-closet door. As a result I then had two bruised shoulders. Great — they matched! I tried screaming. As Theo had predicted, thanks to the already screaming Cindi, there was no reaction at all from the boardroom.

Where Roderick was presenting Bonna Terra Sports and Fields Tobacco with a dastardly contract that would: a) promote tobacco products as being part of a healthy lifestyle (healthy schmealthy!); and b) seal Madge's fate as the model helping to promote this image.

I tried pounding on the walls and door, but this was difficult because the space was so tight. I tried my only other option. Crying.

“Mom,” I bawled. “Where are you?”

But she wouldn't come. In my usual, irresponsible, act-first-ask-questions-later way, I'd charged off downtown without letting anyone know where I was going.

If my singing instructor could see me now, I thought, he'd give me full marks for emoting. No one could say Dinah Galloway had only volume to offer.

Only volume …

What was I bawling for? I had my own personal godsend. I could
sing
.

I took some deep breaths — not an easy task in that stuffy broom closet. Putting aside everything the instructor had taught me about careful vowel intonations and subtle delivery of certain types of notes, I opened my mouth and simply let loose:

“After you've gone and left me cryin', After you've gone there's no denyin'

You're gonna feel blue And you're gonna feel sad…”

Talk about singing the broom-closet blues.

I knew lots of songs, but I stuck to
After You've
Gone
. I figured that sooner or later someone would get sick enough of hearing it that they'd come to investigate. So I sang, and sang, and imagined my voice volleying down the hall and into each room of Wellman Talent, and hurtling into the offices beyond, and up and down the elevator shafts to other offices. I imagined my voice blasting out to the sidewalk, where the hot dog vendors were set up, so that they'd tip their caps back, glance around and say, “Huh?”

Most important, I imagined it distracting the Bonna Terra and Fields executives, just as their pens were poised over Roderick's contract.

Imagining all this helped me, because it was sort of entertaining, which meant I sort of forgot I was in the broom closet, frantically singing for my freedom. Between breaths I became aware that the murmurs from the boardroom were getting louder, were turning into rumbling and were actually coming from outside the door of the closet

The broom-closet latch was rattled aside. The door was wrenched open. Dignified, iron-gray-haired Roderick Wellman, Sr., peered in at me in mixed anger and bewilderment. “Young woman, that is one heck of a way to audition.”

So, I'd successfully sung my way to freedom. Who needed a file and a saw to get out of prison? My advice — try a particularly loud middle C.

But had I blasted into everyone's eardrums in time? Was the Wellman-Bonna Terra-Fields contract already signed?

Behind Mr. Wellman were Cindi the Screamer, Roderick and all the proper, corporate types. Their distasteful expressions showed clearly that they found the situation most
im
proper.

Besides singing, the other thing I was able to do at great volume and for extended lengths of time was trash Roderick. “Your son is such a
dweeb
,” I exploded. “He got Buckteeth to lock me in here and … ”

I went on furiously, inserting the term
dweeb
as often as possible. Meanwhile, the crowd behind Mr. Wellman parted like the Red Sea. When the last of them separated, Roderick, Jr., was revealed, cringing. And holding the Wellman-Bonna Terra-Fields contract. I squinted. It had black type on it only. No ink. It was
unsigned
. I'd done it! Or rather, my vocal chords had done it. Thanks, guys.

“I — I didn't mean for Theo to shut Dinah in here,” Roderick was bleating. “I just intended, um, y'know, for him to escort her out.”

A pinkly sunburned head popped up above Roderick's. Theo protested, “I was sure I was just following orders, Mr. Wellman.”

Mr. Wellman, Jr., paled. Mr. Wellman, Sr., scowled. “Orders? What orders?”

Roderick was busy loosening his collar, so I piped up triumphantly, “To sabotage Jack French and GASP, of course. To make sure he got his big contract, with Bonna Terra and Fields Tobacco.”

I turned to Roderick and pointed an accusing, makeup-smeared finger at him. “I was wondering why Theo would be so interested in us. Now it all makes sense: he
wasn't
interested in us! The day I first saw Theo,” I went on excitedly to Roderick's dad, “he was using our overgrown path as camouflage — for watching Jack!”

Theo's buckteeth, which he'd been using to chomp nervously on his lower lip, were thrust forward as he broke out in a pleased grin. “And I did a good job of watchin', don't ya think?”