Digging For Trouble

by Linda Fairstein

“You didn’t do it, Katie. Sometimes, I just miss him more than you can imagine.”

  I was named Devlin after my father. He was Lulu’s only son—Devlin Atwell. But when he was killed in an explosion in Paris during my mother’s pregnancy, not long after they were married, my mother decided to give me her surname, since she knew we would now be a family of two. That’s why I’m Devlin Quick.

  “Do you think about your dad a lot?” Katie asked.

  “Every day,” I said. “Wouldn’t you?”

  All I had were snapshots of him with my mother—looking so happy to be with her—or pictures from when he was growing up. I look a lot like him—tall and dark-haired. The same light eyes and smile, once I got my braces off. And I had all the incredible stories my mom liked to tell me about how smart her Devlin was, and how brave.

  “It’s not the same thing, Dev, but you know how my dad feels about you. You’re like a second daughter to him. He’d do anything for—”

  “Thanks, Katie.” I was grateful to her dad, but no one could ever replace my own father, in my mind.

  “You’re going to do it, Dev. I feel sure,” Katie said. “You’re going to find his killers.”

  My dad had been a journalist—an investigative reporter for the Wall Street Journal. He’d covered international politics and been in war zones around the world. A lot of people thought—and Lulu was one of them—that he’d been working undercover as a spy for the CIA, but my mother told me to ignore that idea.

  I’d sworn to Katie and to Booker that I would devote myself to finding out who killed my dad. I knew that all my sleuthing was practice for the day I could take on that job for real.

  My mom, Blaine, had been a major crimes prosecutor before she was appointed to be the police commissioner. She had a reputation for being fierce and fair and fearless—at least, that’s what Mayor Bloomfield said about her the day she was sworn in. I don’t think she would have flinched at the sight of a scorpion or a rattler. I admired everything about her, and would settle for fair and fearless if I could follow in her shoes. I’d leave the fierce quality to others.

  If anyone could solve the cold case of my father’s murder before I got old enough to do it, it would be my mother.

  “I guess you don’t want to talk about it anymore,” Katie said, pausing for a few seconds. “I understand that. So what are we going to do this week?”

  “I’m going to sleep really late, for sure.”

  “Me too.”

  “I’ll probably hit some balls in Central Park with Booker,” I said. He was on the Hunter High School tennis team—the best public school in the city. “Then go to my grandmother’s for dinner.”

  “Do you have swim practice this week?”

  “Yes. I can’t wait to get back in the pool.”

  It was always quiet when I did my laps in the Ditchley pool. Once I dove in the water, all the chatter and bad thoughts that swirled around me seemed to evaporate. I focused on my stroke and my speed and got totally in the zone where I was most comfortable.

  “Once you tell me your practice schedule, we can pick the days to hang out together,” Katie said.

  She reached out her hand and linked her pinkie with mine. I smiled. It was a familiar move and a sign of our friendship. I squeezed her finger tightly.

  “Deal,” I said. “I know my first workout is Monday. Not sure about the rest.”

  “I’ll check the movies that are playing,” she said. “You go back to your book.”

  “Long John Silver. He’s a really good villain,” I said. “A pirate with one leg and a very old parrot.”

  “Is the parrot crested?” Katie said, playfully jabbing me in my side. “Could be related to my dinos, you know.”

  I laughed. “Maybe so.”

  I saved the last few chapters of the book to read for when I got into bed later on. When I liked a book, I wanted to stretch out the ending for as long as I could—to stay in the story and mingle with the characters. Every good book opened another world to me.

  We landed at LaGuardia Airport at 6:30 p.m. Katie and I grabbed our carry-on luggage and followed Mrs. Cion off the plane, through the terminal, and downstairs to baggage claim.

  We were walking toward the carousel to wait for our luggage when I spotted my mother coming toward us. Sam Cody, her detective bodyguard and great friend, was a couple of steps behind her.

  I broke into a run, dropping my bag when I reached her. I threw my arms around her neck and hung on to her for as long as I could, until she broke away and held me at arm’s length.

  “You don’t look half bad for an Annie Oakley wannabe, Dev,” she said. “Can you ride a horse yet?”

  “I missed you so much, Mom,” I said, kissing her on the cheek before wrapping my arms around Sam Cody. “You too, Sam.”

  She greeted Katie’s mom and gave Katie a big hug, too.

  “You won’t believe what Katie found yesterday, Mom. I think she’s going to have her own wing at the museum.”

  I was babbling on to her and to Sam about the small bones and Ling’s teeth and the clutch of eggs. The trail hikes and horseback rides, learning to fish and river rafting—all of which had been so much fun—took a definite backseat to our two-day dino dig.

  “I told Dev we’d save you a trip to the airport, Blaine,” Mrs. Cion said. “I told her I’d ordered a car service to take us all home.”

  “I know that,” my mother said, flashing her warmest grin. “Sam and I just finished up at a crime scene a bit ago, and I was anxious to see Dev for myself. You know how that is.”

  Except when my mom was away on business, or I went off with Lulu for a grandmotherly spree, we didn’t spend much time apart.

  “I understand completely. Dev’s back in one piece, Blaine. We never saw the first bear, despite the girls’ fear.”

  “I know I overreacted,” my mother said, “but once the sheriff called me, I—”

  “The sheriff called you?” Katie and I shouted out the words at exactly the same time.

  “The Sweet Grass County sheriff?” I asked. “Why would he do that? Just because I fell in some mud?”

  Mrs. Cion didn’t look pleased. “You girls told me it was no big deal.”

  “I wanted to tell you, Mom, when we were at the rodeo. I started to say that Kyle saved Dev’s life.”

  “She did try, Mrs. Cion,” I said. “I’m the one who stopped her from telling. I figured if Katie told you, you’d tell my mom, and I had sort of hoped that wouldn’t be necessary.”

  “Your life?” my mother asked, gripping my arm. “Someone had to save your life?”

  Our quiet little reunion was becoming a frantic melee.

  “Calm down, everybody,” Sam said.

  “It was a mudflat, Mom. Kyle pulled me out of it and I’m fine.”

  I didn’t need to tell her that at the time I was sinking down, I wasn’t sure I’d see the sunset that night. She had a pretty good imagination of her own.

  “Devlin, you’d better spill the beans,” Sam said. “Everything that went on.”

  Sam and Lulu were the only people who almost always used my proper name. I liked that.

  “Why did the sheriff call?” I asked. “Professional courtesy?”

  “He called to tell me that you girls were witnesses to a trespass on the dig site,” my mother said.

  “We weren’t witnesses to anything, Mom!” I said, standing my ground, a bit louder than I should have been. “We saw tracks in the dirt the next day. No people, no evidence of a crime.”

  “How shaky were your observations?” Sam asked, winking at me. “Was it after the earth almost swallowed you up, Detective Quick?”

  “Just before that, to be exact, Sam. All Katie and I have is circumstantial evidence, and we weren’t the least bit shaky at that point,” I said. “No one knows if anything was taken.”<
br />
  “You girls didn’t tell me about that, either,” Esther Cion said. “A crime at the dig site? I’d never have approved of this trip. I don’t know what my husband was thinking.”

  “You’re not grounding me, Mom, are you?” I asked. “I promise we didn’t do anything wrong. Katie was really the star of the whole operation.”

  “Of course you’re not grounded,” my mother said. “But you will have to cooperate with the sheriff, girls.”

  “You mean we have to go back to Big Timber?” Katie lit up, no doubt thinking of Kyle Lowry.

  “No. But you’ll have to come to One PP with me on Monday. Sam will monitor a call between each of you and the sheriff.”

  The address of the NYPD headquarters was One Police Plaza, although most detectives liked to joke that the letters stood for the Puzzle Palace.

  “But Dev’s got swim practice,” Katie said, her voice coming close to a whine.

  “There’s nothing more important than solving a crime, Katie,” I said. “I’ll catch up on my crawl another day.”

  There was no place in the world—well, maybe a library or a pool or the Museum of Natural History—that I loved to be more than in the Puzzle Palace. It was my mother’s workplace, but for me it was a dazzling open house filled with smart cops and fascinating forensic tools used to investigate every kind of high crime and misdemeanor.

  I was trying to hide my excitement at the prospect of roaming the halls of headquarters again—maybe getting one of the commissioner’s cops to do background checks on the senior dig team members—so I looked down at the tips of my shoes and suppressed a big smile.

  My mother lifted my chin to look me in the eye. I did my best to be serious. “Can I count on you, Dev? Will you come down and talk to the sheriff?”

  “Sure, Mom. Katie and I will be there.”

  “But, Dev—” Katie interrupted again.

  “I’ll take care of you, Katie. We can handle this,” I said. “Why don’t we go check the carousel for our bags?”

  It was clear my younger sidekick didn’t recognize the importance of the opportunity that had fallen into our laps. I’d take her aside and convince her.

  “I knew you’d be up to the task, kid,” Sam said, tousling my hair. “There’s a bit of the devil in you, as Sergeant Tapply likes to say. And I can always use a partner in crime.”

  11

  I was sorely tempted to bring my shiny new miniature police badge—the one that Liza and Booker and I had each been given in a ceremony at One PP after we solved the theft at the library. But my mother said I had to keep it on my dresser at home, since it wasn’t exactly the real deal.

  By the time I woke up on Monday morning, it was after eight o’clock. Sam had picked my mother up at seven. Natasha was just coming back into the apartment with Asta, the dog we had rescued from a shelter two years ago, after his morning walk. It was my responsibility to walk him, but Natasha was nice enough to let me sleep in.

  I stopped to scratch Asta behind his ears and tell him it was no fun to be gone without him.

  “It’s good to have you home, Dev,” Natasha said. “You’ll have to tell me all about your trip tonight.”

  “I’m glad to be back. Paleontology is hard work,” I said, opening the refrigerator to get some juice and an English muffin.

  “I bet it is.”

  Natasha had been orphaned as a teen in Moldova, which was once part of the Soviet Union. She’d been a victim of human trafficking—brought here to work on a farm, without pay—until the NYPD broke up the criminal ring. Then Natasha met my mother during the prosecution of the evil guys who had brought her to America. My mom admired her courage, and cared a lot that Natasha was really alone in the world. Now she lived with us—like the older sister I had longed for—while she attended Columbia University.

  “Your mom said to tell you that a detective would be here to pick you, then Katie, up at ten o’clock,” said Natasha. “Want me to scramble some eggs? It can give you the protein you need for your big day.”

  “Thanks, but I’m so egged-out from breakfast on the ranch every morning. Besides, it’s not such a big deal,” I said. “The discovery Katie made is so much more important than whatever the guys on the bulldozer didn’t find, so far as we know.”

  A really nice detective from the 19th Precinct had been assigned to drive Katie and me to One PP, which was near the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge in lower Manhattan. She talked to us all the way downtown about the cases she was working on. I was pretty calm to begin with, but her stories helped keep Katie’s nerves in check.

  Sam had left our names at the security checkpoint outside the front door. We each showed our school IDs to the officer in charge, and he let us pass through the metal detector.

  Andy Tapply met us when the elevator doors opened on fourteen.

  “Hey, there. It’s Quick and Cion,” he said, greeting us as Katie and I stepped off. “Has the right ring for the name of a prime-time cop show, now that you’re encountering trouble everywhere you go.”

  “Cion and Quick,” Katie said, shaking Tapp’s hand. “I’ve got the lead in this one, Sergeant. While Dev’s doing laps, I’ll be rehearsing for our premiere with the Ditchley drama club.”

  “Hey, the last thing the commissioner needs down here is drama. We’ve always got a little too much of that going on.”

  Tapp had been a sergeant in the detective division—the Major Case Unit—when my mother handpicked him to run her office. Tapp was good-natured and very smart, and always seemed to have time for me when I called.

  “Your mother’s downstairs in a meeting with all the borough commanders,” Tapp said.

  New York City is made up of five counties— separate boroughs—but with one police department that covered all of them: Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island.

  “How about Sam?” I asked.

  “He’s waiting for you young ladies,” Tapp said. “Did they water you out in Montana, Dev? You look an inch taller.”

  “They should have turned the sprinkler on me, too,” Katie said, standing on her tiptoes. “I’ll never catch up with her.”

  “Short has its virtues,” I said.

  “I’m not short, Dev. I’m petite.”

  “Well, you’ll fit places I won’t manage to get into. Sherlock Holmes was a much taller man than Dr. Watson.”

  I knew the corridors of the Puzzle Palace as well as I knew my name. No matter how many times I went to headquarters, I still got a tingle whenever I saw the gold lettering on the door to my mother’s office. The words POLICE COMMISSIONER below her name were bold and bright, and they suited her well.

  “The inner sanctum, girls,” Tapp said, opening the door for us. “Make yourselves at home.”

  Sam was on his phone, standing with his back to us, looking down at the spectacular view of New York Harbor that was spread out beneath us.

  “Okay if I sit at the desk?” Katie asked.

  Theodore Roosevelt had once been the police commissioner of New York, back in 1895. The desk in my mother’s office had belonged to him, and all my friends liked the chance to sit behind it when they visited with me.

  “Absolutely,” I said. “Do you want to go first?”

  “You mean, talking to the sheriff?” Katie asked, running her hand over the smooth leather inlay on top of the massive wooden desk. “We can’t both be on the same call at the same time?”

  “Of course not, Katie. That’s basic police rules,” I said. “No investigator wants us mixing our ideas up. We each have to tell what we remember solo, separate from each other.”

  “Really, Dev? I don’t remember that much.”

  “It will all come flooding back to you when you’re in the hot seat,” I said. “Trust me on that.”

  “Hot seat?”

  “Just an expression, Katie.”
<
br />   That phrase had nothing to do with policing. It’s what Lulu called it when she sat me down to cross-examine me about whatever I was up to.

  “I’ll go after you, Dev.”

  “Good timing, girls,” Sam said, turning his attention to us. “Sheriff Brackley is in his office, and he’s anxious to talk to you.”

  “I’ll start,” I said.

  “Then Katie will have to hang outside there with Sergeant Tapply for a few minutes,” Sam said.

  “I can’t even listen in?” she asked.

  “I don’t want to influence your memory.” It sounded a little harsh, but reminded me of something my mother explained to me about how she had to deal with witnesses in real cases. “It’s my turn to take a seat at Teddy Roosevelt’s desk.”

  Sam dialed the sheriff’s office from the phone on an end table next to the large sofa. When someone answered, he motioned to me to pick up the receiver on TR’s desk, while he stayed on to monitor the conversation.

  “Hello? This is Devlin Quick.”

  It turned out that I was pretty nervous after all. I hoped the gulping noise I made after I spoke my name wasn’t audible.

  “Devlin? Thanks for calling. This is Ryan Brackley. I’m the sheriff of Sweet Grass County,” he said. “Sorry I didn’t meet you when you were out here. And thanks, Sam, for getting us together.”

  I took the sheriff through the details of what happened on Friday morning, from the time I woke up till we went to the foot of the incline, and then when Kyle called us to point out the tire tracks.

  “It’s Kyle Lowry who spotted the tracks, Sheriff Brackley,” I said. “And then an older girl named Ling Soo saw them next. They’re the ones you ought to talk to, if you don’t mind my saying.”

  “That’s on my schedule for today, Dev.”

  The sheriff tried to dig deeper, but there was nothing I’d heard during the night or seen near the trail in the morning that shed any light on the episode, so I didn’t feel very helpful at all. But I know a good investigator can’t make any assumptions.

  When he excused me, I rested the receiver on the desktop, and opened the door to change places with Katie.