The Great Bike Rescue (7 page)

I almost thought I had it. I pulled ever so gently…nothing. Rats!

I crawled out slowly so I wouldn't hit my head again. Riley was sitting on the sofa, a look of complete confusion on his face.

“Your dad undid my lock?” he asked. “Your dad's the bicycle thief?” He realized what he'd said and began to shake his head. “No way. Not a chance.”

“Dad's not the thief,” I said. “But he
can
open locks like yours. He learned when he was a kid. That's why he was so sure when he told me a kid could have stolen your bike. Except he was trying to hide it because I think he thought it might corrupt me.”

Riley grinned.

“Awesome,” he said. “Confusing…but awesome!”

I glanced over at the lock and then back at Riley. This was getting to be way too much trouble.

“I give up,” I said. “Tell me the combination.”

“I forget,” he said.

“Riley! You were going to blurt it out two minutes ago. You can't have forgotten.”

“Yeah, but if it makes your dad this happy, do you really want to spoil it for him?” asked Riley. “Hey—maybe this is turning into some kind of father-and-son bonding thing. Cracking combinations together. Do you think that's it?”

Riley comes up with the strangest ideas.

“I don't know what it is,” I said. “I can't figure out my dad.”

“You can't figure out the lock either,” said Riley. “Hang on. Hang on. Don't get steamed. You've got the first number right.”

“I do?”

“Yup,” said Riley. “But not the second one.”

“Is the second one close?” I asked.

Riley shrugged.

“It's within five places,” he said. “Oops. Gotta head home.”

Within five places
wasn't any help at all. The numbers only went from one to six. But I was encouraged just enough to crawl beneath the TV again.

At supper that evening, Dad and I ate out on the back deck. Riley's chain lock was wrapped around the railing. Yup, I'd done it. It had taken me awhile, but I'd figured it out. Mind you, Riley wasn't going to be pleased next time he came over and tried to undo his lock. After I'd opened it on my own, Dad had shown me how to put the numbers in a different order. We'd had a good time together. Maybe Riley had been right about the father-and-son thing…in a weird way.

But I hadn't yet got the details out of Dad about his own bike-stealing days. I was waiting for the right moment. Which was now.

“So you really stole your teacher's bike?” I asked.

“I moved it,” said Dad. “That's all, Levi. It never left school property.”

“Where did you move it to?” I asked.

“The fence, right nearby,” he said.

I knew there had to be more.

“Where else?” I asked.

“The bike stand. In the little kids' playground.”

“Where else?” I asked.

The tips of Dad's ears were turning red again.

“The roof,” he said.

“You climbed up on the roof of the school? Dad! That wasn't responsible! What if you'd fallen off the ladder? What if the bike had fallen off the roof and hit someone?”

Dad sighed.

“No, Levi. It wasn't responsible,” he said.

“And if I ever catch you doing something like that, I'll be very, very upset and you will be grounded for the next ten years.”

I knew he meant it. Well, not the ten years of grounding, but he would be really upset. Dad takes his parenting seriously.

But still, it's kind of nice to know your dad is human.

Chapter Ten

Emily Grimshaw. Emily Grimshaw. One way or another, her name kept coming up.

It was Wednesday, day twelve for my missing bike. For Riley's, it was day eleven. When he phoned with the latest update, I could hear in his voice that he was losing hope.

“Someone took my reward posters down,” he told me with a sigh. “Mom says that most places only leave them up for two weeks, so there's no point in replacing them. We posted ads online instead.”

“I didn't take the posters down, Riley,” I said.

“I know,” he answered. “I think it was Emily. She hinted at it when she stopped me the other day.”

See what I mean about the way her name kept turning up? And what was it between my friend and my nemesis? He sounded discouraged about our bikes, but he didn't sound mad at Emily about the posters.

“Did you mention a reward online?” I asked.

“No. Mom almost had a heart attack when I told her that it could be rewarding the thief. No more money.”

“Good,” I said. “It's better that way.”

“I guess,” said Riley. “Anyway, what I really called to tell you is I can't hang out this afternoon because we're visiting my grandma. Sorry, but Mom says I have to go.”

Riley has so much family around that he gets tired of visiting them. I've got grandparents, but they live on the other side of the country.

“That's okay,” I said.

After we hung up, I sat looking at the phone. It was the downstairs one that stores numbers and lists the last thirty callers. I scrolled through the list. Because business calls go to Dad's cell, there weren't a lot of calls on our home line. At least half of them were from Riley. Others were long-distance numbers or “unknown” callers, which are usually telemarketers.

But one listing was different. It was from the previous Wednesday, the day Dad said a girl had called and Emily had later shown up at my door. I was pretty sure the call was from Emily. I didn't exactly want to call her back. Talking face to face would better.

I knew how to get an address from a phone number. I turned on Dad's laptop and typed the number into the search bar. Two minutes later I was headed out the door
.

In my part of the city, the older houses are on the other side of Battersby Street, where Spoke and Rim is located. The fancy houses are on the ridge above the river, where the man who thought he'd found my bike lives. The address I'd found online was in a different area. I'd never been to it before. The houses weren't as fancy as the ones above the river, but they were big. Who says crime doesn't pay—at least, in Emily's case.

The house was white, with stonework along the front. My plan wasn't complicated. I was going to knock on the door and ask Emily what she'd meant when she said the reward posters might mess things up.

But now that I was standing in front of her house, I started to rethink things. I didn't like Emily Grimshaw. I definitely didn't trust her. And what if her mom answered the door? Her mom might slam the door in my face, just like last time.

I decided to look around before I started asking questions. I walked to the alley. The garages faced the street, so there wasn't much to see except a strip of gravel and two long, high rows of fence. The third fence on the left belonged to the white house.

Have you ever noticed that if you walk past a tall wooden fence at just the right speed, the narrow openings between the boards seem to join together? It's kind of like flipping through a book with the same image over and over. Your eyes can only see a tiny bit on each page, but your brain puts it all together into a complete picture.

The first time I walked past the fence, I had the pacing wrong. The picture in my brain was just a lot of green grass and a white house with a bit of someone's arm.

I walked back down the alley at a quicker pace. Quicker was better. There were two kids in the backyard. I couldn't quite tell if one of them was Emily.

As I headed up the alley a third time, a head popped up over the fence.

“Hi, Levi. We thought that was you.”

It was perfect sister number one—Julia. What was she doing at Emily's house? Before I could ask, a second head appeared.

“Are you looking for us?”

It was perfect sister number two—May. Weird.

“I'm…” I began to say.

But May had disappeared. Julia took over.

“She's gone to open the back gate,” she said. “Come on in. We're just hanging out in the backyard.”

Click
. The gate opened, right on cue.

I walked into the backyard. I looked around for Emily. She wasn't there. It was just May and Julia. Two matching bikes leaned against the fence. Two blankets were laid out on the grass. Two glasses of lemonade stood on two trays beside them. Had I made some kind of mistake?

“Who exactly lives here?” I asked.

“I do,” said May.

“I live across the alley,” added Julia.

Cornered on home turf with the perfect sisters. Oh no!

“Are you the ones who called me last week?” I asked. “But…why?”

They looked at each other as if sharing some kind of secret.

“Were you really, really curious?” asked Julia. “You would have had to go to a lot of trouble to track us down and get this address and everything.”

“Not that much trouble,” I said.

Another secretive look passed between them.

“Don't worry. Sometimes we go online to figure out stuff like that too,” said May.

“It's not illegal or anything,” said Julia.

“It's how we found out where Luis Marin lives,” said May.

Luis was two years older than us, and all the girls in my grade thought he was cute. What did that have to do with anything?

“I don't get it,” I said. “Did you call me or didn't you?”

May sighed. Clearly, I was missing something. Thankfully, Julia began to explain.

“Neither of us called you, Levi. Some girl knocked on the door. She'd seen us talking to you. She asked if we knew your phone number. We didn't, but we know your last name so we looked it up for her.”

Weird. It had to have been Emily Grimshaw. But Emily already knew where I lived. And even if she didn't, she knew my last name. She could have looked up my phone number herself.

“And then she asked if she could use the phone to call you,” said May. “So I said yes. But you weren't home, so we made her a bunch of sandwiches instead.” May looked at Julia. “Maybe I shouldn't have said anything about the sandwiches.”

“It's okay. It's just Levi,” said Julia. She turned to me. “Don't tell anyone else because we don't want to embarrass her, but…well…once or twice we've seen the same girl hanging around the garbage bins behind the hamburger place.”

“We figured she was hungry and too proud to ask for food, and that's why she knocked on the door,” said May.

“And made up the story about wanting to phone you,” said Julia.

“Except she wasn't hungry. She didn't eat the sandwiches,”said May.

“But she did save them for later,” said Julia.

“But we don't think she was going to eat them later either. She took all the cucumbers out. No one eats cucumber sandwiches without the cucumbers.” said May.

“She rolled the bread up in her T-shirt,” said Julia.

“But don't worry,” said May. “The cucumbers didn't go to waste. I gave them to my grandma, because she says they're good for taking away the puffy skin under her eyes when she's tired.”

I was in a complete daze by the time I left Julia's house. Or May's house. Or whoever's house it was.

All the food talk had also made me hungry. As soon as I got home, I made my own sandwiches—
not
cucumber—and sat at the kitchen table to eat them. Dad came down to refill his coffee. He looked out the window at the deck railing. The chain lock wasn't there anymore.

“Who's learning to crack the combination now?” he asked.

“Riley's brother,” I said. “After that his little sister wants to try.”

“If I've created a family of thieves, I'll never forgive myself,” said Dad, shaking his head.

He topped up his cup and looked at me again.

“Is that where you were this afternoon? Over at Riley's?”

“No,” I said. “I was trying to track down Emily Grimshaw.”

Dad looked thoughtful. He nodded slowly.

“Emily Grimshaw…that's who came to the door the other day. I thought she looked familiar, but it's been years…” He paused again, deep in thought. “Little Emily who used to make you really mad because she always wanted to play but you'd never let her.”

Little Emily! As if she was sweet and innocent!

“She made me mad because she stole my stuff,” I said.

“She was just trying to get your attention, Levi,” said Dad. “It always came back. Well, most of it did.”

“All I remember is the stealing part,” I said. “Especially my toboggan.”

“You never actually saw her with your toboggan,” said Dad.

“She had it, all right,” I said. “The world's sneakiest six-year-old.”

Dad smiled. He actually smiled!

“She was pretty sharp for a little kid,” agreed Dad. And then his expression grew more serious. “I think she had to be, Levi. There were problems next door. It was complicated. The police came by a couple of times. I think her mom was doing the best she could, but there were other people living at the house, and it wasn't a good situation. Why were you trying to track her down?”