Chirp

by Kate Messner

  Mia nodded. “I told my mom yesterday.”

  Anne Marie raised her eyebrows. “How did that go?”

  “It was good,” Mia said. “Really good. I mean, it was hard, too. But I’m glad I told her.”

  “Me too,” Anne Marie said. “But I want you to know that has nothing to do with why I’m interested in this project.” She turned her clipboard so Mia could see. It was covered with notes from her presentation—everything from the farm’s expansion possibilities to Clover’s social media campaign and Anna’s harvesting robot. Anne Marie had scribbled other little notes, too.

  Expected growth potential?

  Other possibilities for automation?

  “I’m a businesswoman, Mia. A very successful one. And I didn’t get here by investing in things because I felt sorry for people or because I just like them. I’m successful because I’m smart, and I know a promising opportunity when I see it. You showed me one today.” She held out the business card again. “We believe in your project. We can help with the business plan and provide the funding your grandmother needs to make this work. We believe it’s essential that women support other women. But make no mistake, we’re doing this because we want to make money. And we think your grandmother can.”

  This time, Mia took the card. “Thank you.”

  “Mia, you ready?” Clover was standing there with the poster board.

  “Oh!” Mia had forgotten why she was in a hurry. “I have to go. But thanks! Again!” She and Clover hurried out to the car. Mia put her duffel bag with the moose in the trunk, and then the girls piled in the back seat, where Mia told Clover everything Anne Marie had said.

  “That’s amazing!” Clover said.

  “I can’t wait to tell Gram!” Mia was clutching the business card so tight it was getting sweaty. She tucked it in her back pocket so it wouldn’t be in shreds by the time they got to the farm. “I just hope everything’s still okay,” she whispered to Clover. It was ten minutes to one now. If they didn’t beat Mr. Jacobson back, there might not be a farm to invest in.

  Clover’s mom had to stop for gas, which made Mia want to scream, but she told herself that waiting another three minutes was better than running out of gas.

  Finally, they pulled into the cricket farm parking lot, and Clover’s mom dropped them off. “His car’s not here,” Mia said as they headed for the door of the farm. A wave of relief rushed over her. Now they could go inside and talk to Gram about the angel investors and figure out how they were going to—

  “Here he comes,” Clover said.

  Mia froze as Mr. Jacobson pulled into his parking spot. Her duffel bag full of moose felt heavy on her shoulder. She was going to have to do this.

  Mr. Jacobson didn’t seem to see them. He and another man Mia hadn’t seen before got out of the car. Mr. Jacobson opened the back hatch and pulled out a big plastic bin. Mia’s heart raced. “We can’t let him go inside with that!”

  “How are we going to stop him?” Clover whispered. “We don’t even know if that’s—”

  “But it might be! And if it is, there’s nothing we can do once it’s inside.” None of it would matter. Not their business plan or the open house tomorrow or Anne Marie and Miranda’s investment. If that virus got into the farm, it was over.

  Mr. Jacobson and the other man started for the back door of the warehouse. Mia ran around in front of them.

  “Hi, Mr. Jacobson!” she said. “Can I help you carry that?”

  “No thanks!” he said. “Just some supplies we need to upgrade the sewing machines. My new employee, Mitch, is an expert with machines. This is his first day in town, and we need to get going so I can show him around.”

  “Can I see?” Mia was desperate. “I like sewing.”

  He laughed. “Nothing interesting.” He started to step around her.

  “Wait!” Clover ran up to them. “Can we interview you for our camp project? We have to talk to successful entrepreneurs.”

  “I’d be happy to do that,” he said, “but it’ll have to wait.” He looked at Mia, still standing in his way. “We need to get going now, I’m afraid.”

  “What’s in that box?” Mia blurted out, louder this time.

  Mr. Jacobson’s eyes narrowed. He heard Mia’s question as a challenge, and that was fine. That’s how she’d meant it.

  Her heart was thumping so wildly, she was sure he could hear, but she didn’t move. She thought about Clover facing down that awful swimsuit man on the beach, and Anne Marie firing her old boss, and her mom putting up with so much at her first law-firm job. And Gram. Mia thought about Gram, and she stayed put.

  “Enough of this nonsense, girls.” He started to go around Mia, but his keys slid off the top of the bin. When he put it down to pick them up, Mia didn’t even think. She yanked the lid off the box. It was full of dead crickets.

  The other man—Mitch—snatched the lid from her and shoved it back onto the bin. “You must have grabbed the wrong box,” he told Mr. Jacobson. His voice sounded familiar to Mia.

  “Of course!” Mr. Jacobson turned to Mia. “These are crickets I bought from your grandmother.”

  Mia stared at him. “No you didn’t!” She stood in front of him with her arms crossed. She was terrified, but more than that, she was angry. “You got those crickets from that farm in Quebec that got wiped out by the virus. And now you’re trying to bring them here!”

  “Virus? That’s ridiculous.” Mr. Jacobson’s voice had a shaky edge to it. “I’ve done nothing but support your grandmother ever since she got here.”

  “By spying on her? And on us?” Mia unzipped her duffel bag and yanked out the moose. “We found the bug in your stupid moose’s ear.”

  Just then, the cricket-farm door opened, and Syd came racing out, wagging her tail. Mia waited for her to bark at the stranger. But Syd didn’t bark at Mitch. She ran up to him, flopped down on his foot, and rolled over for a belly rub.

  Now Mia knew where she’d heard that voice.

  “This isn’t your first day here at all!” she said. “You helped him bring in the fruit flies! And I bet you messed with Gram’s thermostat and freezer, too!”

  Mr. Jacobson’s face was so red Mia thought he might burst into flames. He grabbed the moose out of her hands and shoved her backward so hard she stumbled over the curb and fell.

  “Hey!” Clover ran to help Mia up. Mr. Jacobson picked up his bin, whirled around, and hurried to his car.

  Mia was shaking. Her hands were scraped from the sidewalk, but she couldn’t think about what was safe or what was smart. She wanted him to know he hadn’t won. She put her hands on her hips and stood up as tall as she could, kung fu mantis–style. “We know what you did!”

  “Congratulations, Nancy Drew.” He shoved the box and the moose into his trunk. “But if you don’t have the moose, you don’t have the evidence.” He looked at Mia over his shoulder. “And you know what? I never even needed these infected crickets because your grandmother’s just a delusional old lady who’s going to run her little business into the ground all by herself, and then I’ll be able to take over her lease and expand my warehouse. But thanks for the entertainment.” He slammed the hatch. Then both men got into the car, and they peeled out of the parking lot.

  Mia sat on the curb and tried to catch her breath. Syd waddled up and licked her elbow.

  “I don’t even know what’s going on anymore. I figured he was working with Mr. Potsworth, but now it sounds like it was all him, wanting more warehouse space.” She shook her head. “I guess it doesn’t really matter because he’s right. Without the moose, we’re kind of done.”

  “But we’re witnesses,” Clover said.

  “We’re kids,” Mia said. “And he’s a successful business owner.” She sighed. “I should have held on to the moose.”

  “At least he’s gone,” Clover said, pulling Mia to her feet. “We need to tell your grandmother about all this now, don’t you think?”

  Mia nodded and followed Clover inside. />
  “Hey, girls!” Gram said. “How was your competition?”

  “Good,” Mia said. She didn’t know where to start. “But we have to talk to you about something else.”

  They told her everything. Mia thought Gram would freak out, but she just listened. Her eyes looked so mad Mia thought they might burn a hole through the wall. When they finished, Gram nodded sharply. “All right. At least we know what we’re up against now.”

  “Are you going to call the police?” Mia asked.

  “I will,” Gram said, “but I’m afraid they won’t have much to work with.”

  “Can’t they go to his house and search it?” Clover asked.

  “Not without a warrant.” Mia had picked up enough law from Mom to know that.

  “They’d need actual evidence for that,” Gram added.

  “And we lost the evidence with the moose,” Mia said.

  “No you didn’t!”

  Anna came racing into the room with her laptop under one arm.

  “I thought you had a birthday party,” Clover said.

  “I did!” Anna paused to catch her breath. “But we had to stop home first, and while my mom was getting ready to go, I pulled up the moose audio feed on my laptop.”

  “You pulled up what?” Mia said.

  “The audio feed from your moose.” When Mia and Clover still looked confused, she said, “I guess I never finished telling you. When I took the moose home that night to turn it into a double agent, I set it up to transmit. It was kind of a pain because I needed a SIM card, and you have to be eighteen for that, so Prima had to get it for me. Anyway, she helped me connect the microphone to a microcontroller, and that was connected to the Internet via the SIM card to send audio back to my laptop in real time.”

  “What does that mean, like, in English?” Clover asked.

  “It means I have every word of what just happened, recorded right here.” Anna put the laptop down on the lobby table, opened it up, and tapped at the keys. Mr. Jacobson’s voice came out of the speakers.

  “If you don’t have the moose, you don’t have the evidence.” His voice was clear as could be. “And you know what? I never even needed these infected crickets because your grandmother’s just a delusional old lady who’s going to run her little business into the ground all by herself, and then I’ll be able to take over her lease and expand my warehouse.”

  “Thanks for the confession, jerk!” Clover said.

  “Delusional old lady? Run my little business into the ground myself …” Gram’s lips were pressed together tight. She let out a sharp breath. Then she shook her head as if to shake off Mr. Jacobson and his crummy, jerky words. “I’m going to call the police now,” she said. “And then I want to hear all about your competition because we never got to that.”

  After Gram went to her office, Mia turned to Anna. “You are the absolute best,” she said. “You are the techno-geek of all techno-geeks.”

  “Thanks,” Anna said. “I gotta go because everybody’s waiting. I made Dad stop here before the party.” She handed Mia a flash drive. “Here’s a copy of the conversation. I’ll make another backup just in case. Let me know if the police need anything else.”

  When Gram returned, Mia and Clover told her all about the business plan they’d developed for the cricket farm. They showed her their poster board and answered questions about Anna’s cricket harvesting robot. Then Mia handed her the business card and told her what Anne Marie Spangler had said. Gram stared at it, and her eyes filled with tears.

  Gram never ever cried. But her voice broke when she turned to Mia. “You know what? I’d thought about pitching to this investors group at one of their meetings, but I decided they wouldn’t want to hear from an old lady like me.” She looked at Mia. “You were braver than that. And I’m so glad.” She hugged Mia and Clover and said, “Are you girls hungry?”

  “Starving, actually,” Mia said. They’d missed lunch.

  “Let’s order a pizza and get to work,” Gram said. “The police are on their way. And in the meantime, we’ve got an open house to prepare.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Lake Monster Security and Punk-Rock Crickets

  Gram had set up a meeting with Anne Marie for Sunday afternoon, so she pretty much turned the public part of the open house over to Mia, Clover, and Anna.

  Clover set up their Chirp Challenge banner at the sample table. She and Mia made copies of different recipes to give away—chocolate chirp cookies and cricket tacos and apple-kale-cricket smoothies. They had a display of local restaurants and shops that were using Green Mountain crickets as ingredients, and they all had samples, too. There were cricket crispies from the Chocolate Shoppe, and later on, Mom was bringing Thai cricket pizza from Mazzella’s and a cooler full of Creepy Coconut Cricket Crunch ice cream from Tom and Harry’s.

  Dad was there, helping out, too. Mia had asked Mom if she’d talk to him about the Phil thing so Mia didn’t have to go through the whole story again. Dad wasn’t great at talking about stuff like that, but first thing this morning, he’d given Mia a hug and said, “I love you, and I’m so proud of you.” Now he was doing everything he could to make Mia laugh, and she was grateful for that, too. Gram had assigned Dad to blow up balloons. He kept taking big gulps of helium and saying, “Hi! I’m Jiminy Cricket, and I want to be your healthy protein source!” in his silly, high helium voice.

  “You can’t do that once real people get here,” Mia said. “Nobody wants to eat Jiminy.”

  Anna brought her harvesting robot to demonstrate and set that up on another table to shake cricket condos. “It’s too bad we can’t do an actual harvest,” she said, “but at least people will get the idea.”

  “Where’s Daniel?” Clover asked. “He’s going to love this!”

  “He’s been assigned security duty. With his entire team.” Mia pointed out the window. She’d noticed them when Mom dropped her off. Daniel and a bunch of Lake Monsters players were lurking in the trees around the warehouse. She couldn’t believe she’d thought he might be behind the sabotage. “Gram says they’re going to keep watch all day, just in case.”

  No one had seen Mr. Jacobson or heard from the police since last night, but at nine thirty, half an hour before the open house started, a detective arrived. She went into Gram’s office and closed the door. Ten minutes later, they came out. Gram said goodbye and sent the detective off with a tub of barbecue crickets and a sample of protein powder.

  “Well, we can tell Daniel to call off the patrol outside,” she announced. “They arrested Bob Jacobson this morning.”

  “Yes!” Mia pumped her fist in the air. “Did they find those awful crickets?”

  Gram nodded. “After they listened to the recordings, they went to Bob’s house and set up surveillance. Late last night, they saw him leave with a bin and followed him to a big trash bin behind the hospital. They recovered the dead crickets, and when they confronted him at his house later, he confessed.”

  “So it was just him? He wasn’t working with Mr. Potsworth?”

  Gram shook her head. “Chet Potsworth was pretty pushy about asking me to sell, but I was wrong about him being behind the sabotage. He wasn’t involved in any of it. I feel a little bad about that.”

  “Yeah.” Mia felt a little bad about breaking into his food-processing plant, too, but nobody needed to know about that today.

  “So …” Gram looked at her watch. “How are we doing here?”

  “We’re all set with samples,” Mia said. “We’re just waiting for—”

  “Cricket pizza’s here!” Mom came through the door with five steaming boxes. “Where do you want these?”

  “Right here.” Mia pointed to the display table. “Where’s the ice cream?”

  “In my trunk,” Mom said, and Dad went out to help her bring it in.

  While they dealt with the ice cream, Mia and Clover set up a craft table for little kids. They had crayons and coloring pages and pipe cleaners, so kids could make cricket anten
nae to wear for their Chirp Challenge selfies.

  Clover made a wild orange, pink, and green set of antennae and put it on. “How do I look?”

  “Like a punk-rock cricket.” Mia laughed and took a picture with her phone. She looked around the lobby. It was ten minutes to ten, and they were ready. The samples were waiting. Clover had sent out press releases to all the TV stations and newspapers. Now people just had to show up.

  “Mia, can you come out to the car with me for a second?” Mom called from across the room. “I have more supplies to bring in.”

  “Sure.” Mia followed Mom to the car and waited for her to open the trunk.

  Instead, Mom leaned against the door and looked at Mia. “I was a little late with the ice cream because I was on the phone with Coach Carrie.”

  “You were?” Mia’s heart sped up. “What did she say?”

  “She’d just gotten a phone call from another parent.”

  “Oh no.” Mia’s eyes filled with tears. “No. Who? I should have said something sooner. I’m so sorry.”

  “No.” Mom put a hand on Mia’s shoulder. “It’s okay. It’s not like that. He didn’t seriously hurt anyone. Not that we know of. But there was another girl who felt uncomfortable around him, and when her mom talked with her, she showed her text messages he’d sent that were … wrong. Not the kinds of messages any adult should send a kid. Based on that and what you were brave enough to share, the gym has suspended him, and they’ve opened a wider investigation. With the police.”

  Mia’s head was spinning. “So what does that mean?”

  “They’ll interview lots of people. Everyone he’s had contact with, including at the gym where he worked before. And they’ll make sure that what happened to you doesn’t happen to anyone else.”

  Mia took a deep breath.

  “This is exactly what should be happening, Mia. You did a really good thing.”

  Mia nodded. “Thanks.” She wiped the tear that had escaped down her cheek. “I still think about it a bunch.” She paused. “I might want to talk to somebody else, too. One of those expert people you talked about.”