The Best Mistake Mystery

by Sylvia McNicoll

  Two tall, domed bins stand at the edge of the parking lot, and that’s where the dogs and I head. Because the garbage cans had been knocked over and dumped so often by raccoons or teenagers, the city replaced them with these. They’re cemented to the ground, and the chute at the top has a lever to fool the animals, and some people, too. With Ping and Pong yanking me around, I juggle to push the smelly bag through the hole in the dome.

  “Why did you put dog doo into the recycling bin?”

  “You’re following me.” I turn to face Renée.

  “The path leads this way.”

  She’s right, of course, about the path as well as me dumping the bag into the wrong container. I pushed the bag into the blue bin. The black one is for trash. “I made a mistake, all right?” Number three for today.

  “You’ve probably spoiled all the recycling.”

  I frown and think about fishing through the bin for that bag, but it’s too tall, and I can’t see through the chute to find it. “Not the worst mistake I’ve made today.”

  “You never know,” she says with a shrug. “I mean, how a mistake will turn out. Need help with the dogs?”

  How can this recycling-bin error turn out well? I wonder. “No thanks, dog walking is my job. I’m responsible for these guys. And they don’t like just anyone.”

  Meanwhile, Ping wags his whole butt at Renée. His tail propels him into a flip so that he lands on his back, close to her feet, angling for a belly rub. And still he wags.

  “This one likes me fine.” Renée crouches down to pat him. “Wow, he’s fuzzy.”

  Pong brushes against her for attention, too, whipping his long tail. She reaches to stroke his back, double-handed patting now. “This one’s smooth.” She squints at me through her glittery glasses. “Why would anyone choose such different dogs?”

  “Because … well, the Bennetts rescued Pong from Florida. He’s a retired race hound and came with the name Pong. Then, when Mrs. Bennett started her new job with the airlines, she adopted Ping from the shelter to keep him company.”

  “What a coincidence! She found a dog with a name that matched the greyhound’s.”

  “Of course not. She just named him Ping to be cute.”

  At that moment Ping snaps at Pong.

  “Do they even like each other?”

  “Not much.” I shrug. “They’re still adjusting.”

  “Let me take the little guy.” Renée grabs his leash.

  “No.” I grab it back. “He’s the hardest one to control.”

  Ping rolls over and sits up, head cocked like he’s ready to listen. Renée holds out her hand and he places his paw in it. A perfect shake and perfect dog behaviour, all for Renée. Maybe little dogs like smaller people.

  “Okay, fine.” I hand the leash back.

  A flock of gulls squats down by the football field. When one gull lifts off and flies over us, Ping’s calm ends. He leaps into the air, barking. Rouf, rouf, rowf!

  “Can we let them chase the birds?” Renée asks.

  “Absolutely not.” I point out a sign that shows a stick man holding a leash attached to what looks like an elephant. “All dogs must be on leashes.”

  “That’s a dog? Looks like a pterodactyl to me.” Renée drops Ping’s leash. “Whoops, my bad!” She winks at me as Ping tears after the gulls.

  I shake my head at her.

  “What? Technically, he’s still on a leash. Let Pong go, too. C’mon, it’s only fair.”

  Ping’s legs turn into wings, his ears, happy flags in the wind. Such joy. I shouldn’t do it. I know I shouldn’t. Still, I release Pong’s leash, too. He sails after Ping, legs stretched full out, long snout open in a big toothy grin.

  The gulls leap into the air, screaming insults at the dogs. Pong circles the field after one of them; Ping circles after another. Too late, I spot the skateboarder rolling down the path. Both dogs abruptly halt their bird chase and switch their attention to the wheels rattling over the pavement. They break into a gallop after them.

  day one, mistake four

  Letting the dogs run free tops all the mistakes I’ve made today. Mistake number four, if I’m counting, but it only happened because I listened to Princess Einstein. Ping leads the charge, baring his teeth, growling himself into a froth — a fuzzy streak aimed at those rattling wheels. Pong makes his quiet stealth-lope after Ping, toward the guy on the board.

  He’s carrying a binder and is dressed in a white shirt hanging untucked over grey dress pants. Not a skateboarder look. Probably came straight from Champlain High School.

  “They don’t bite!” I call as Renée and I chase after them. “They’re really very friendly.” Lame words that don’t help.

  To avoid running over Ping, the guy flips off the board, landing really hard on the black paved path.

  “Ping! Pong! Come back here!” Renée calls, as though they will listen to her.

  Instead, Ping tackles the skateboarder, licking the guy’s face and wagging his behind. Pong stands close, sweeping the air with his tail. If I waited for the dogs to obey me, I’d be waiting a long time. Instead, I run to them and snatch up the leashes, yanking them away from the skateboarder. “Oh, man! I am so sorry!”

  The guy doesn’t answer for a moment. His knees poke out of his pants, bleeding.

  “Are you all right?” Renée asks. “I can run into the community centre and get some ice.”

  “It’s just a scrape,” he answers, pushing his bangs out of his eyes. There’s something weird about those eyes; they look crossed but they’re not. Maybe because one looks more solid, darker. That’s it, one’s brown and the other is green. Renée’s staring and I shove her.

  “You’re bleeding,” she tells him. “They’ve got a first aid box.”

  “I’m fine,” he repeats. “I’ll clean it up at home.”

  “Why wait? Infection can set in quickly. Have you had a tetanus shot in the last five years?” I ask him.

  “Forget about it. I had my tetanus yesterday.” He sounds annoyed.

  It’s at this point that I reach into one of my pockets for a business card. “We’re so sorry about the dogs. We should have controlled them better.” I hold the card out to him but he’s busy scratching behind Ping’s ears and smiling. A dog lover, phew! “Listen, your pants are wrecked. Send my dad the bill and Noble Dog Walking will cover it.”

  “Dogs did me a favour. Tomorrow, I won’t have to wear these ugly pants to school.” He takes the card anyway. Maybe he knows someone who will need Dad’s services.

  Pong squeezes in for some pats, now, whipping his tail across the guy’s shoulder. The skateboarder reaches way up to stroke his head. “What kind of dog is he?”

  “Greyhound,” I answer.

  “But he’s not grey.”

  “They come in all colours,” Renée explains. “Grey means bright or fair in old English.”

  The guy squints at her

  I shrug. “She studies Wikipedia in her spare time. He’s a retired racing dog.”

  “Must’ve been expensive.”

  “Oh, probably.” Should I have said that? Maybe the guy will think our dog-walking service is only for wealthy dog owners. I pull the dogs away so he can get up. We give him a head start and he skates toward the community centre.

  To be extra safe, we double back the other way, heading for the school again. Ping suddenly leaps into the air, barking like crazy.

  “What is it, Ping? Another bag of dog poop in a tree?”

  “Check out the roof!” Renée points. “There’s a dog running around up there!”

  day one, mistake five

  “Hey, Mrs. Klein’s up there, too.” I point to a wiry, short, red-haired lady. Our latest custodian is roaming the roof with the dog and a policeman.

  “It’s not ball day today, is it?” Renée asks.

 
Once a year our other custodian used to clear the roof of all the balls that landed there.

  “Of course not,” I answer. “Would she throw balls down when there’re no kids around to catch them?”

  “You’re right. That would be no fun. She wouldn’t need the police for that, either. Maybe the dog is sniffing out a criminal.”

  The Ping Pong team pulls us past the baseball diamond and goalposts, and up the hills toward the school.

  “They’re looking for a bomb,” Renée says between breaths.

  “Oh, yeah?” I bluster, so wanting her to be wrong. “How do you know?”

  She points to the white trailer I noticed earlier in the parking lot. “That’s where the bomb squad stores its equipment.”

  She can’t possibly know this. “But the trailer’s not even marked.”

  Renée shakes her head. “Imagine the panic if it were. The bomb squad came to my dad’s bank last February. That’s definitely their trailer.”

  Of course it is. Princess Einstein knows it all. “We should leave the park, then. Why are we going closer?”

  “Because I want to know more.”

  As we reach the school, Ping wags himself crazy. He rears on his hind legs and bounces on only two paws. Dog body language for Look at me, pay attention to me. Friends, friends!

  Pong wags, too, and his mouth opens into a grin.

  The dog running around the edge of the roof looks like a German Shepherd–retriever cross, gold and black with floppy ears. Sniffing along the edge, he stops to give the Ping Pong team a yip and a wag.

  “Would you kindly leave the area,” the police officer calls down. “Your dogs are distracting Troy, here.”

  “Troy distracted them from their walk.” Renée may think she’s just explaining, but to me, it sounds like she’s back-talking the police officer. “Shouldn’t he be trained to ignore them?” she asks.

  “Yeah, well, no one’s perfect. And he’s bored.”

  “Not finding anything?” I ask, trying to smooth things over.

  “A bologna sandwich,” Mrs. Klein answers. “You kids should eat your lunches.”

  “Clear out,” the cop says more firmly.

  Suddenly, Troy forgets our dogs and rushes off barking. He leaps down to a lower level of the roof, nose down, tail wagging, and sniffs at some large pipes. Those pipes lead to the furnace room.

  “Let’s go,” I tell Renée and pull Pong away from the schoolyard.

  “Wonder what they found …” Renée says.

  I break into a jog now.

  “Slow down. What’s your hurry?”

  “We could blow up!” I answer.

  “Nah. We just have to dive to the ground and cover our ears,” she says.

  “They’ve gone back inside. Troy must have smelled a bomb in the furnace pipes.” My hands get sweaty and I breathe more quickly.

  “Or another bologna sandwich. Don’t you want to know?” she asks.

  “I owe these dogs an hour. A safe hour. We’re heading back toward the library.”

  “Sure, we can check out the school on our way back.”

  “Hurry!” I run again, giving her no chance to argue. We need to put distance between ourselves and a possible explosion. We breeze by the skateboard park. There are some kids riding their BMX bikes up and down, but no one’s in the tennis court. “In here.” I take Pong into the court, and she follows with Ping and shuts the gate. There, I throw the ball for them, and we chase them to get it back. Great exercise … for us.

  When Renée’s phone plays a bar from Beethoven’s Fifth, she checks for texts. “It’s my brother,” she says, as though I’ve asked. “Attila’s in the house now, so I can go home.”

  “Did you just call your brother Attila, as in Attila the Hun?”

  “Yeah, I know, strange name. But my parents are Hungarian. It’s popular there.”

  “Wait a minute, is he the Attila who spray painted graffiti on Champlain High’s wall?” Dad read me the story from InsideHalton.com, so I knew all about it.

  “How many could there possibly be?” she snaps at me. “He cleaned the wall and finished his community service.”

  I wince, starting to feel sorry for her now. “Your parents think you can’t be alone without him there?”

  “Um, no,” she lowers her voice. “My parents are fine with me being alone in the house. It’s me. I don’t like to be by myself.”

  “Bombs don’t scare you but you can’t be alone?”

  “I’m not afraid ’cause I’m with you,” she explains. “In the house, when I’m by myself, I hear noises, and instead of thinking, ‘Oh, that’s just the fridge,’ I imagine things. Like it’s a burglar or a serial killer moving around.”

  “I imagine things, too,” I admit. “Not so much in my own house, though. Dad’s almost always around.” I straighten up and puff my chest out. I like that she’s anxious about being alone; it makes me feel stronger. And I like that I give her courage.

  Out of breath we walk toward the school again. It’s still in one piece, so no bombs went off yet.

  I see a couple of people near the white trailer. One is wearing a helmet and strange bulky green suit and helmet. The other holds a black box of some kind in his hand. Mrs. Watier’s car is gone.

  “Oh my gosh, they must have found a real bomb,” Renée says.

  “Let’s head a different way,” I suggest.

  “Nooooo! I want to take pictures with my phone.”

  “Does your phone have a zoom lens?” The question becomes pointless as she and Ping tear off. Pong drags me after. Closer and closer to the school we go.

  Ping begins barking.

  Something is moving, jerking back and forth, actually. It looks like a remote-control transformer, only it’s the size of Renée, who is on the short side.

  We draw closer. It’s a robot with tractor treads. From its outstretched arms, a large, lime-coloured backpack dangles. Wires hang from the bottom.

  “What is that thing doing with Reuven’s school bag?” Renée asks as she trains her phone in the di­r-­­ection of the robot.

  “Shouldn’t we be diving down and covering our ears?” I don’t ask how she knows whose bag it is.

  We watch as the robot zigs and zags its way to the sandpit. Then, it drops Reuven’s bag into the sand and backs away. Once the robot returns to the white trailer, there’s a loud bang and a burst of sand.

  “I don’t believe it. They blew it up!” Renée says.

  “Did you get a good shot of the explosion?” I lean over her shoulder and she shows me. When I look up again, I see the guy in the strange outfit — he looks like an astronaut — heading for the sandpit.

  When he gets there, he stirs through the sand, putting the bits of Reuven’s bag into a bin. Ping barks like crazy at him but Renée drags him away.

  We walk toward the white trailer, where the robot now stands, motionless. The police officer pulls out a ramp from the back of the trailer. Then, he uses the black remote to manoeuvre the robot slowly up the ramp.

  Ping finds a new reason to bark himself hoarse, which attracts the officer’s attention.

  “Why are you guys hanging around? This site could be dangerous.” His eyes narrow. He looks suspicious.

  “We go home this way, sir,” I tell him. “Over there’s the park exit.” I point.

  “But we were wondering …” Renée smiles brightly.

  This time the mistake of the day isn’t mine. Mistake number five clearly belongs to the Halton Police Department. It’s way worse than allowing the dogs to throw the skateboarder down, way more embarrassing than shouting “Fire!” when there wasn’t one.

  “Why,” Renée asks, “did you blow up Reuven Jirad’s science project?”

  day one, mistake six

  Along with her high-pitched tone, Renée ti
lts her head and squints at the police officer, altogether making it seem like she can’t believe anyone could be so stupid as to blow up Reuven’s project. Over Ping’s barking, Renée continues, explaining to the police officer that Reuven built a mini boom box, how he worked on it for three weeks. I try to quiet the dog down.

  The officer shifts on his feet and winces as he defends himself. “Well, the suspect’s bag was left unattended on the floor near the computers, right next to the furnace room. A strategic area to affect maximum damage.”

  Renée often makes me feel dumb, too, like when we work on math or science together: But why would you do it that way when it’s so much simpler to do it this way? So I nod supportively as I agree with the police officer. “Blowing up the backpack was a sound safety measure.”

  “Well, Reuven is bit absent-minded,” Renée adds, scooping up Ping. Pong stands quietly, leaning against my leg. “But a lot of kids leave their bags in all kinds of places.”

  I nudge her to try to make her stop.

  “Our imaging equipment showed wires.” The police officer’s voice sounds strained. He’s talking through his teeth, which are forced into a grin, maybe to stop him from biting Renée. “And the school received a threat, so we couldn’t take the chance.”

  “We had a bomb threat?” I ask. My mind races. When that fire alarm sounded earlier and we all had to leave without our agendas and homework, Mrs. Watier and Mrs. Worsley must have thought there was a bomb in the school.

  “There now, don’t go spreading that around.”

  “No, of course not,” I say, wishing I could tell everyone in class tomorrow. It would make up for me panicking over the fire alarm. There was a real threat after all.

  “Too bad Mrs. Klein is new,” Renée says. “Mr. Sawyer, our old custodian, would have recognized Reuven’s bag. Still, Mrs. Watier should have known about the science project.”

  Leave it alone, Renée, I think. The officer looks more annoyed with every word from her mouth.