Tj and the Rockets (7 page)

“Sure,” I said. “But we've already got dangly toys at the store.”

“This is different,” said Seymour. “Hold this open.”

I held open the door of a chute. Seymour loaded it with Ping-Pong balls.

“I tried crumpled balls of paper at first, but they were too lumpy and jammed it,” he explained. “And I can't use anything too heavy or it might hit him in the head and knock him out. Ping-Pong balls are perfect.”

I began to try to figure out how it worked. A connected to B connected to C…? Seymour went in search of T-Rex.

He didn't have to look far. Both T-Rex and Alaska were watching from the kitchen doorway. Cats are snoopy. They wanted to know what was happening.

“Jiggle the string to get his attention, but not too hard,” said Seymour. “We want T-Rex to set it off himself.”

I gently jiggled the string. In a flash, T-Rex was across the floor and watching the string with bright hunter's eyes. He batted it once. It swung. He batted it twice. It bounced. He batted it a third time.

SMACK SMACK SMACK SMACK SMACK SMACK…

Forty million Ping-Pong balls exploded out of the chute and bounced around the room like crazed popcorn. Both cats disappeared instantly.

Seymour and I stood in the middle of the room staring at each other. I could tell by the way his hairs stood on end and his eyes were wide that he'd been just as surprised as I'd been.

“It's supposed to launch them one at a time!” said Seymour. “It never did that before.”

He spent the next hour trying to fix it. The hinged part just wasn't strong enough to be used over and over again.

“There are some hinges at the store,” said Seymour. “Do you think your mom and dad would give me a discount on them?”

I looked at Seymour. I still didn't want to tell him about Mom and Dad suspecting him, but I'd finally come up with a plan, and I was definitely going to need his help.

I told him the part I could tell him. I told him about Mr. G. and the shoplifting.

Chapter 10

We had to catch Mr. G. in the act.

Whenever Mr. G. got off work, he had a routine. He went to the back room to grab his jacket, but he didn't put it on right away. He carried it bunched up under his arm and went to the front to tell Mom he was leaving. After that he walked through the store—sometimes along one aisle, sometimes along another. He left by the back door. His car was always parked across the alley, and he tossed his jacket inside before he climbed in and drove away.

“Whatever he steals, he must wrap it in his jacket. Once it's in the car, he's home free,” I explained to Seymour. “We have to be at the back door. We have
to bump into him or trip him or grab his jacket… anything to get him to drop what's inside.”

“Maybe I could invent some kind of beeper that goes off,” said Seymour.

“That's what the security man is trying to sell Mom and Dad. If we prove that it's Mr. G., then they won't have to spend all that money.”

And Seymour would be cleared for good. That's what I kept reminding myself because it felt pretty weird to have a plan to trap someone I'd actually liked.

That Thursday, Mr. G. had a later shift than usual. Seymour and I had been at the store about an hour before it got close to the time he was getting off. We'd kept extra busy to avoid talking to him. Seymour had been helping me clean and reorganize the pet supply shelves.

“Are you really, really sure it's Mr. G.?” asked Seymour.

“It has to be,” I said. “Who else could it be?”

“What do you think he'll take?” asked Seymour.

“Usually it's something on one of the lower shelves,” I said. “Not really low down but not really high up either. He could already have it wrapped in his jacket, but my guess is he actually picks it up on his way out of the store at the end of the day.”

Seymour nodded.

“And it's usually on one of the end shelves for some reason.”

“Hey,” said Seymour, “that lady looks a lot like your gran, except for the knitting bag. Your gran doesn't do ordinary things like knit.”

“Soap,” I said.

“What?”

“That's what she always buys. A bar of soap.”

“Weird,” said Seymour. “I think I'll go check out the hinges. I want to see what size might work for my Amuze-A-Kitty.”

It would have all been okay if the restaurant man hadn't come in. He needed coffee filters, and the kind he wanted weren't on the shelves. I had to go into
the back room to look for more. I thought I'd hear Mr. G. when he came to get his jacket. I guess I was making too much noise shifting boxes to hear, and when I finally found the filters and turned around, Mr. G.'s jacket was gone.

I hurried into the store. I quickly handed the restaurant man the filters and headed off to look up and down the aisles. I didn't want to spook Mr. G., but if I could actually see him wrapping something in his jacket, I knew I wouldn't be so worried about the plan.

It was too late. I'd gone one way and he'd gone another. He was already almost out the back door. I could see his head just passing by the mirrors along the back wall. Seymour should have been there. Where was Seymour?

If I hurried maybe I could barrel out the back door and run into Mr. G. after all. I took off down the aisle.

And that's when someone tripped me.

“Seymour!”

He jumped on top of me and held me down. He had an amazed look on his face.

“It's a knitting bag that steals things. She's invented a knitting bag that steals things!”

“Seymour! Mr. G. is getting away!”

“It's not Mr. G. It's the lady with the frizzy hair. That knitting bag she carries has a trapdoor bottom. She didn't know I was watching. She set it on top of the music box on that end shelf, and when she picked it up, presto—no music box. It was like magic!”

“Where is she?” I asked.

“I don't know,” said Seymour. “I was so amazed I had to come and tell you right away.”

By the time I convinced Seymour to let me up, we could see her pushing through the outside door. Seymour and I raced down the aisle and out the door after her. She must have begun to move a whole lot faster once she left the store, because she was nowhere that I could see.

“There she is!” said Seymour, pointing to the left.

I caught a glimpse of gray frizzy hair just before she turned the corner.

We chased her. Down the street. Around the corner. We had to stop and look again. There she was, almost an entire block away. A white van pulled up beside her. We yelled and waved and began to run again, but if she heard us, she didn't even hesitate. Right before our eyes the soap lady climbed into the van and sped away.

Seymour and I stood with our mouths open. We hadn't even been able to get a license plate number.

“What's up, you two? Something wrong?”

Mr. G. had driven down the alley and spotted us standing on the street waving our arms around. Mr. G.! He wasn't the thief after all!

I felt a wash of shame. And I felt a wash of complete happiness. I didn't have time for either, however. Seymour and I raced across and jumped into his car.

“Follow that van!” called Seymour.

“The soap lady's the shoplifter,” I explained as quickly as I could. “She just climbed into that white van!”

Mr. G. slapped the steering wheel and actually looked pleased.

“Go, go, go!” said Seymour.

“No need,” said Mr. G. “I didn't suspect the soap lady, but I definitely thought
he
was way too slick.”

Seymour and I looked at each other, bewildered.

“I know that white van,” said Mr. G. “It belongs to the salesman who's been trying to sell your mom and dad the security system.”

“You mean they know each other?” I asked.

“You bet,” said Mr. G. “It's a scam. And I think we've just spoiled their fun.”

Chapter 11

“Now let me get this straight,” said Gran. “Your mom and dad suspected Seymour of shoplifting. And you, TJ, you suspected Mr. G. of shoplifting.”

I'd been just as bad as Mom and Dad. I'd suspected Mr. G. without any real proof.

Luckily Mr. G. hadn't found out about it. And Seymour… don't ask me why, but Seymour's feelings weren't even hurt. He was just totally delighted to have been part of catching a couple of crooks. Mom had still apologized to him and given him all the hinges he needed for the next hundred years. Gran was trying to understand everything.

“But it was an older lady who was stealing things? The one you called the soap lady?” asked Gran.

“She was working with the man who was selling the security systems,” nodded Seymour. “The whole thing was a trick to make store owners spend money they didn't need to spend.”

“The police arrested them last night at a store on the other end of the city. They were doing the same thing there,” I told Gran.

“Talk about sneaky,” said Gran, shaking her head in disgust.

“Inventors sometimes do sneaky stuff,” said Seymour. “The man who invented the first shopping carts secretly hired people to walk up and down the store and push them like they were regular customers.

“But he wasn't stealing from anyone,” Seymour quickly added. “He just wanted people to get used to the idea.”

The ear-piercing squawk of feedback on a microphone cut through the air. We were in the gymnasium and it was the
end of the science fair day. Mom, Dad and even Mr. G. had taken turns away from the store and dropped by in the morning. Gran had showed up about an hour ago.

The school principal was at the microphone.

“I'd like to begin by congratulating everyone on the most successful science fair we've had at the school for some time. Well done, everyone.”

There was applause, of course, and then the principal continued.

“The first award I'd like to present is the Information Award. It's based on how well the student can explain his or her project to others. I'd like to commend our winner this year for a very thorough and enthusiastic knowledge of his subject matter. The winner is Gabe.”

Gabe—the kid who hates school! Ms. K. really is a witch. Once Ms. K. had got him to use sports for his science project, he'd gone all out, one hundred and ten percent—isn't that what sports people say?

Gabe hadn't just found out how a speed gun works; he'd also learned how people had first measured speed back when they didn't have regular clocks, let alone stopwatches and speed guns. He'd found out the fastest speed of all sorts of things (including cats, which Seymour and I were resource people for) and made charts comparing them. He'd talked to sports trainers about what types of muscles help people run fast or skate fast or jump high or smack a puck or throw a baseball really hard. And the more he learned, the more he found he liked telling other people about it.

The most amazing part is that when he began to have trouble understanding the science behind it, Mr. Wilson had helped him.