The Great Bike Rescue (4 page)

“Close enough,” said Riley.

He locked The Flame to a No Parking sign near the front of the store. He was using his brother's double-deadbolt Krpytoloc—a zillion times better than his old lock. Safe.

The bike store must have been a gas station and car garage a million years ago. On the left side was a small area with windows where the till and office were, along with a few posters and a couple of fancy new bikes. On the right was a larger area that would have been used by car mechanics but had been turned into the shop itself.

There were wide doors front and back, and inside was a cool cement cave. It was hard to see at first, but all my other senses knew where we were. Smells of oil and rubber. The clink of tools. The whir of a chain being freewheeled and a soft click as it smoothly slipped from one gear to another.

Gradually, objects grew out of the shadows—a workbench, scattered tools, bikes partly assembled…or partly disassembled. It was hard to tell which. There were two men working in the shop but no other customers. The secondhand bikes were along the far wall. All kinds. All sizes. That's where we headed.

“Look them over really carefully,” I whispered to Riley. “They might have decals or spray paint to disguise them. Or parts switched up. Like the neat seat you had on your bike switched over to a different bike entirely or—”

A gruff voice interrupted.

“Forget it. We stay away from that kind of business.”

Riley and I jumped about a foot. An older man was standing behind us, wiping his hands on a rag. He wasn't pleased.

“I don't deal in stolen bikes. Or parts from stolen bikes.”

“We don't mean on purpose,” said Riley. “But you might get fooled sometimes by someone else who brings one in.”

It was pretty fast thinking on Riley's part, but the man wasn't impressed.

“Nope,” he growled. “I'm the owner, and we don't deal in stolen bikes.”

He pocketed the rag and gestured to the tall skinny guy who was working at the bench along the other wall.

“That's why I hired Sammy. Sammy can smell funny business a mile away.”

The skinny guy looked up at us and grinned. He was missing a couple of front teeth, which gave him a jagged smile, kind of like a jack-o'-lantern. Creepy.

“Should be able to,” he said. “I stole enough of them in my time.”

“That's awful!” I said, the words flying out before I could stop them.

Sammy laughed. It was an evil laugh that echoed on the cement. Riley and I looked at each other. Who was this guy?

“Don't sweat it,” said the older man. “Sammy likes to put on a show, but he's come over from the dark side. Whose bike got stolen?”

“Mine,” said Riley and I together.

This time, Sammy's laugh was even wilder. The owner turned to him.

“Aren't you due for a coffee break?” he suggested.

Sammy shrugged, picked up something from the shelf behind him and headed out the door.

“Okay,” said the owner. “Let's look on the bright side. You're angry now, but this can be an opportunity. You're going to need new bikes. I've got some great secondhand ones at good prices.”

I shook my head. I'd have to save birthday money, Christmas money and maybe get a paper route. But Riley's eyes lit up. If the posters didn't work, he was hoping the insurance would come through.

Bikes with a zillion gears. Bikes made of fancy metal. Riley began to get really interested in one with super shocks. I could feel myself getting peeved at him. Getting a new bike didn't make the stolen part right! What about our old bikes? They weren't fancy, but they were great anyway! I liked my bike. I wanted it back!

Settle down, I told myself. It wasn't Riley's fault that insurance doesn't cover bikes that aren't locked—not that we had bike insurance anyway.

I followed them around. The old guy really did know a lot about bikes. He liked them too. You could tell. He talked about gear ratios, fancy metals, cables and brakes. It was all interesting, but after a while it was kind of hard to concentrate. It's not like I could actually buy one. I started to lag behind. That's when I began to think more clearly.

Why were we trusting someone just because he was old, friendly and liked bikes? Maybe our bikes
were
here, hidden somewhere that we didn't know about. And what about Sammy? Had he really reformed?

That's when I spotted him coming back inside. He was carrying a cup of coffee in one hand and a bike in the other. It was a small red bike with bright tongues of yellow and orange fire.

“Riley!” I called.

“What's u—” began Riley.

He stopped mid-sentence as he realized why I'd called him.

“Don't look so surprised,” said Sammy. “You guys should be used to your bikes being stolen by now.”

He lifted The Flame to the holder on the bench.

“This bike needs a tune-up. Who's got the key?”

The lock was still intact and still on the bike. The bike was still in one piece. Everything was the way we'd left it—except that it wasn't fastened to the sign post outside anymore.

“But…” I began.

“How…?” began Riley.

Sammy reached to the shelf to return the object he'd taken earlier. I could see now that it was a wrench, a larger wrench than anyone would use for a bike.

And then I heard a strange wheezing sound behind me. I turned. The owner's shoulders were shaking as he tried to hold back the laughter, and tears had started to run down his face.

“You kids,” he wheezed. “You kids make it way too easy.”

Chapter Six

At least this time we didn't lose the bike. Sammy oiled the chain, adjusted the brakes and filled the tires. Free of charge.

But still. Three times in a row!

“He cheated,” said Riley as we made our way home. “Thieves aren't supposed to unbolt the sign and lift the bike over top of the post. And they both thought it was way too funny.”

“I'm just glad he didn't use a cutting torch on your brother's bike lock,” I said.

Riley shuddered. Maybe that's why, very soon after, he came up with a plan of his own. Tuesday night, he showed up at my door with a new poster.

“
Reward—no questions asked
,” he read. “My mom's putting up the money.”

There are a lot of things I don't know, but I do understand what “no questions asked” means.

“Riley, ” I said, “that's rewarding the person who stole it in the first place.”

Riley looked surprised.

“That's not it! The money is for whoever
finds
the bike.”

“Nope,” I said. “When you word it like that, it means the crook can bring it back and you won't turn them in to the police. It's like giving Emily Grimshaw money for bringing back my own stuff.”

“Really?” asked Riley. “I don't think my mom knows that. Don't tell her, okay? The posters are already up, and our insurance doesn't cover my bike after all. Besides, it says on the Internet that this is the best way to get a bike back. My brother was searching online for found bikes in case one of ours showed up, and he found all kinds of other stuff. You want to see?”

Dad was busy on the office computer, but I'm allowed to use the laptop in the kitchen. There was a lot of information about stolen bikes on the Internet. There were blogs with people ranting about having their bikes stolen. There were videos from security cameras showing bikes being stolen in alleys and hallways.

There was a story about police using a bait bike to catch a thief, just the way Riley and I had done. Make that
tried
to do.

“And look at this one,” said Riley.

It was a video of people doing research into bike theft. One researcher locked a bike in a busy spot. His helper came along just minutes later, picked the lock and rode away. No one on the street tried to stop him or even phoned the police. So much for Neighborhood Watch.

After Riley left, I kept on looking at Internet sites. I found a newspaper article with the headline
Bike
Recovery Club
. It wasn't in our city, but it sounded like a good idea, so I started to read.

It was a total scam. The operators of the club were stealing the bikes directly from the owners and then charging a “finder's fee” when they returned them. That was even worse than a no-questions-asked reward. It had taken an entire police investigation—interviewing people and gathering evidence—to shut them down.

Was the whole world full of crooks? It should have left me totally discouraged. But it didn't. It made me more determined to get our own bikes back.

Except, what kind of evidence is left after a bike is stolen? And I wasn't the police. I couldn't go around interviewing people.

At least, that's what I thought until I went to the swimming pool on Wednesday morning.

The lessons Dad had put me in weren't much fun, but there were some kids in the class that I hadn't met before. We were having a good time together. A couple of them started telling me about the bike jumps they'd built. They asked if I wanted to ride my bike over after class and try them.

“For sure!” I said.

And then I remembered. No bike.

Have you ever noticed how sometimes when you think you can't do something, if you become just a little bit more determined and turn the idea just a little bit sideways, you can do it after all?

Right after swimming, I headed over to Battersby Street. If I couldn't conduct official interviews like the police do, I could at least hang out and talk to people. I started with AJ at the service station because he was the one person who had actually seemed to care about stolen bikes. I even had a suspect that I wanted to ask him about.

“A man with muscles and tattoos. He usually wears a black T-shirt,” I said. “Do you see him around much? Do you know anything about him?”

“I've see him, for sure,” said AJ. “He shows up once or twice a week, usually in the middle of the day. But I don't know anything about him. You think he might have taken your bike?”

“Somebody must have taken it,” I said. “And it's not just my bike either. My friend's bike was stolen last Saturday from the back alley behind the store.”

“That was your friend's bike?” asked AJ.

“Did you see it?” I asked.

“I wouldn't say that,” said AJ, sliding off his stool and walking over to the window. “I saw some guy riding like crazy out the alley there. It didn't look right.”

I followed his line of sight out the window. He
could
see the end of the alley.

“Did he have a black T-shirt?” I asked, turning back to AJ hopefully.

AJ set a fresh box of chocolate bars on the counter as he pulled the storeroom door shut. He settled back on his stool. He scratched his head. “Don't remember. I only got a glimpse. Saturday was a busy day here.”

“Do you remember anything at all? Could you tell if it was a kid or an adult?” I asked.

AJ thought a moment and then shook his head.

“Nope, I'm not sure,” he said. “I'll try to remember. I'll let you know if I do.”

Next on my list was the waitress at the café. Bad timing. It was lunch hour, and the place was busy. If I wanted to talk to the waitress, I'd have to order something, and even the cheapest thing on the menu board cost twice as much as a slushie.

I headed for the corner store. The guy who worked there might not care much about stolen bikes, but he wasn't mean or anything. He'd probably at least talk to me.

But a woman was working that day instead. She looked grumpy, so I didn't ask her anything. Besides, there were already people lined up at the till.

I wandered around the store instead. Dad's birthday was at the end of summer, and the corner store has all kinds of good stuff—fishing gear, computer magazines, ballcaps with funny slogans.

But I began to get an eerie feeling. It was the feeling you get when you think someone is watching you, but you don't know who. Different customers came and went, but the feeling stayed. I glanced up and realized who it was.

The grumpy clerk was watching me in the curved mirrors up in the corners of the room. If she couldn't see me in one mirror, she moved along the counter until she could see me in another.

It began to be like a game. I'd move and then I'd look up at the mirrors to see which one she was watching me from. And then I'd move again. And look again.

Finally, when there was a lull at the till, she came out from behind the counter and began to walk behind me, peering over my shoulder everywhere I went. I knew what it was about. I turned to face her. I even tried to speak politely.

“You don't need to follow me around. I don't steal things.”

She smiled. It was a nasty smile. She wasn't going to believe me no matter what I said.

I left the store. It wasn't fair—adults got to wander around looking at things all the time. Being a kid didn't automatically make me a thief! But I reminded myself that I hadn't come to Battersby Street to shop. I'd come to gather information.