Kazu Jones and the Denver Dognappers

by Shauna Holyoak

  “Not just any cat,” CindeeRae said. “Mr. Mistoffelees.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “It’s from my very favorite Broadway musical, Cats.” She twitched her kitty nose and did some bouncy ballet moves.

  “You guys coming?” Mom called over her shoulder as Dad pulled her toward our favorite food truck. We hustled after them. March and I taught CindeeRae how to play slug-bug Halloween, yelling out duplicates as we saw them: three Spider-Mans, two Captain Americas, three pumpkins, four skeletons, two zombie cheerleaders, another Goku from Dragon Ball Z.

  We each grabbed an order of mummy dogs with purple and orange Halloween fries, which were really made from two different kinds of sweet potatoes. We ate at a nearby picnic table and strained our necks to see where we wanted to go first. March called the bounce house at the end of the street, while I argued for the haystack maze two houses down; CindeeRae seconded my motion. I liked having her around.

  A big group crowded around the food truck. “Let’s get out of here before that family of Incredibles takes us out,” Dad said.

  As we made our way toward the Pumpkin House, covered in orange lights with a lawn full of jack-o’-lanterns, we bumped into Mrs. Hewitt—well, actually Mom did. She slammed into her hard enough to knock the golden lasso from her utility belt. Mrs. Hewitt took the blow, sturdy as a tree stump.

  “My Lincoln Elementary Singers!” she cried, holding her arms straight out like she meant to hug us. She wore a red wig and bright red lipstick that bled into the lines around her mouth. A white apron cinched her waist and her tights bagged at her ankles, above heavy black shoes with Velcro.

  “I’m sorry,” Mom said, reaching out to steady her. “Mrs. Hewitt, right? District music teacher?” I began to fidget, worrying that Mrs. Hewitt might rat me out for pegging her in the face with a Jolly Rancher, or worse yet, tell Mom I was practicing the duet with Madeleine Brown as punishment for it.

  Mrs. Hewitt nodded like Mom was asking if she were a movie star.

  “You look great,” Mom said. “We are huge I Love Lucy fans.”

  We were; I had watched all six seasons last summer, which we had gotten in a boxed set from my grandma on Dad’s side. Even so, I couldn’t tell who Mrs. Hewitt was dressed as until Mom said so.

  “You all look grand as well,” she said, and winked at me.

  “Do you live here?” Dad asked Mrs. Hewitt.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “I come every night so Pickles can walk the parade.” I hadn’t noticed the wiener dog sitting a couple feet away wearing a pickle costume.

  I shifted my weight from one foot to the other.

  “That’s interesting,” Mom said, which was really a polite way to say weird. They said good-bye, and March, CindeeRae, Genki, and I continued walking toward the haystack maze.

  I caught a glimpse of Madeleine Brown skipping from the witch’s brew to the little stand with a doughnut drop. She was dressed as a pirate and held pirate-twin Catelyn Monsen’s hand. In the other hand she held a leash connected to a collie wearing red-and-white-striped leg warmers and a matching headscarf, the ears poking through the folds.

  They skidded to a stop at the end of the line, Madeleine’s and Catelyn’s hands swinging between them. I paused, and March and CindeeRae walked on without me.

  I stared at Madeleine as she leaned toward her dog to coo and scratch at his ears. And then I remembered her friend list:

  ˙ follows me

  ˙ sits on my feet

  ˙ plays soccer

  ˙ licks my tears

  Madeleine Brown was being serious. Her best friend was her dog.

  When CindeeRae noticed that I wasn’t catching up, she grabbed March’s arm and yelled back to me, “What are you waiting for?”

  I put my finger on my lips to shush her and then pointed at Madeleine and Catelyn.

  CindeeRae spotted them and laughed, her evil cackle echoing down the block. “Look who’s a baby now, dressing up as a pirate for Halloween.”

  I shushed them.

  Genki pulled at the leash, and I smiled. My list had been about March, but I could just as easily have made a list about my puppy.

  Knowing her secret made the embarrassment from lunch disappear. A warmth spread through my chest. As if he understood, Genki looked up and panted at me, his mouth wide like he was grinning.

  “Hurry up, Kazu.” March waved me toward them, standing at the back of the haystack line. Genki and I ran to catch up.

  We sat at a picnic table waiting for the puppy parade while eating “poisoned candy apples”; they were covered in a shiny black glaze that tasted like cotton candy. Mom and Dad had run into some friends and were drinking cider together one table down.

  “What’s next?” CindeeRae asked.

  On the far end of Sleepy Hollow, a man dressed like a circus ringmaster motioned for the crowd of costumed dogs and their humans to form a single line. Genki lay at my feet, pooped from a long night of peopling.

  “We need more clues,” I said, rubbing his belly with my foot.

  “We’ve looked everywhere,” March said. “What else can we do?”

  The ringmaster blew his whistle and motioned the parade forward. “The Monster Mash” blared from one of the Sleepy Hollow houses as dogs and people began the slow march through the neighborhood.

  “The hack,” I said, barely able to hear the words myself. This time when I spoke, my voice squeaked. “We didn’t know what we were looking for before, but Crowley’s got to communicate with his partners somehow. We need to check his e-mail again.”

  March and CindeeRae sat up taller. Hearing the excitement in my voice, Genki stood and dug his snout into my side, whining, and I couldn’t tell if it was because he was worried about me or wanted help taking off his hot-dog costume.

  The front of the parade drew closer, and smack-dab in the middle, Madeleine Brown and Catelyn Monsen walked their pirate dog. Behind them Mrs. Hewitt pranced next to Pickles.

  “Let’s check the hack tomorrow,” CindeeRae said. “After school?”

  “Tomorrow, after school,” I agreed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Madeleine Brown and Catelyn Monsen ducked behind the book-fair display in the library, their faces drawn. March and I side-eyed each other before sneaking around a spooky-book tower to listen in on their conversation.

  Students who were up-to-date in the fifth-grade genre challenge filled the library. Eavesdropping in a small space filled with chatter tested our keenest spy skills. But we were real professionals, and March got to work blocking the noisiest of kids away from our target.

  He grabbed a book in one hand, splayed its pages, and held it open with a thumb, moving back and forth behind me as if enthralled with the story. He mumbled apologies as he pushed into kids, like a human bumper car, clearing a quiet perimeter around Madeleine’s hiding place. I leaned into the book display and strained to hear her and Catelyn talking.

  There were whispers and…crying? Catelyn mumbled, “It’s okay, they’ll find him,” while it sounded like Madeleine was weeping. I turned to meet March’s eyes, raising my brows in confusion. I couldn’t even picture Madeleine Brown crying. I spun back and leaned closer to hear her sputter, “We’ve had Lenny since he was a puppy. Now I may never see him again.”

  I backed away from the Halloween book display, a cramp pinching my side. Grabbing March’s arm, I whispered, “I think Crowley stole Madeleine’s dog.”

  We were halfway to our reading classes before we realized March had taken the library book without checking it out.

  Hating Madeleine Brown wasn’t nearly as fun now that she was sad. She stood in the middle of the choral risers wearing dark jeans and a black sweater. Her face was splotchy, like she had a rash, and her hair hung past her shoulders in stringy strands. Her friends, usually bouncing and giggling around her, watched her from the corners of their eyes.

  Mrs. Hewitt was preparing us for the Halloween assembly, where each class performed two songs. The fi
fth grade would sing “Ten Little Witches” and “Gory Monsters Galore,” which ended with a chorus sure to inspire a handful of nightmares:

  The gory monsters roam the street,

  Looking for a simple treat.

  Trickers, oh, look mighty tasty.

  Run like lightning, super hasty.

  The song was just missing a line about ogres picking their teeth with children’s bones. Even so, I caught myself wishing Denver’s monsters were purple cyclopes or slobbery beasts. Mr. Crowley was the worst kind of scary; he was real.

  Mrs. Hewitt showed everyone how to sing from their diaphragms, pushing at a spot below her chest and singing words that began with HA. HAppy HAndy HAmmer HAnky HA HA HA! She reminded me of a teddy bear with a sound box hidden in the stuffing, the kind that you had to push on just right to make the plush laugh or sing or growl.

  March towered above everyone on the top row, three up from Madeleine. He was serious about singing, and I could hear his tenor voice clearly, like he was exaggerating for a laugh. When I tried sending him a warning look, he flashed me our secret hand signal—Taco Monster—and kept singing.

  Madeleine looked at him over her shoulder, but her face remained expressionless. Any other time, March would have been the target of a verbal Madeleine dart, and her friends would have erupted in laughter. But something about the way she turned back to face the front of the class, her eyes flat and dark like buttons, made me feel sorry for her.

  Mrs. Hewitt now pantomimed the signs that went with each line of the song. She used clawed fingers when singing about monsters, a hand visor when searching for treats, a tummy drum for tasty “trickers,” and then the running man on the final line warning everyone to flee.

  “Creepy, right?” she asked the class after she finished, breathing heavily from the effort.

  She stood before the class, her arms held forward like a zombie’s. Maybe more strange than creepy, but it worked for her.

  After music class, as we walked up the stairs, Madeleine caught up to me and grabbed my arm; her fingernails dug into my skin. She whispered in my ear, and her breath was hot. “You know who the Denver Dognapper is. If you don’t let me in on it, I’m going to tell the police.”

  My ear felt wet, and I tried to wipe it dry with my shoulder. “The joke’s on you,” I said. “We already told them, and they don’t care.”

  She stopped walking, and for a minute I thought she would drop to the floor in a tantrum. Instead she marched forward, her face hardening to stone. “I need to get Lenny back. You have to tell me what you know.”

  Rule #2: Do not share operation intel with anyone else. But we had broken that rule when we told CindeeRae that we suspected Crowley was the dognapper, and she probably blabbed about it with her stage voice so that Madeleine finally overheard.

  “We have some information,” I admitted. I couldn’t even hear my own whisper over the hallway chatter. “When we know more, we’ll tell you.”

  As soon as I said the words, my limbs felt heavy.

  Madeleine stopped at the bulletin board outside Mr. Carter’s class. “I want in. Now.” Her eyes flashed, but for a moment I caught a glint of despair. I remembered her best friend list, and I imagined Madeleine’s pirate puppy licking her tears, sitting on her feet, and following her to the soccer field.

  “Please?” she added.

  March and CindeeRae were going to kill me.

  “Did you hear?” CindeeRae plopped into the seat across from March and me at the back of the school bus. She had given our driver a permission slip to ride with us to March’s stop so we could search the hack for more clues.

  “You mean about Madeleine’s dog being swiped from Sleepy Hollow last night?” I said, realizing that if March and CindeeRae felt bad enough for Madeleine, they might not be angry at me for inviting her to help us.

  “She cried through most of social studies,” March said.

  I frowned at that information, trying to build sympathy for our nemesis.

  “It makes me hate her less,” CindeeRae said, gazing out the back window as the bus pulled from the turnout. “Maybe Lobster and her dog are friends now. Wouldn’t that be weird?”

  “Lenny,” I said.

  “What?” March asked.

  “Lenny,” I said again as March and CindeeRae studied me. “Her dog’s name is Lenny.”

  “Look!” March pointed out the window as we passed the front of the school, and CindeeRae crowded next to us to get a peek.

  Madeleine and Catelyn were walking toward the pickup lane, Madeleine wilting with each step, as if standing upright all day had finally taken its toll. Madeleine’s mom waved the two girls toward her, and when Madeleine reached the car she collapsed into her mom’s arms. I couldn’t tell from where we sat, but I imagined her mom’s eyes were red-rimmed like CindeeRae’s mom’s had been a couple weeks ago. Do all moms give their kids rides home from school when their pets have been dognapped?

  “That’s horrible.” CindeeRae backed into her own seat and deflated into the cushion. “I remember that feeling.” She shook her head like she was trying to dislodge the memory from her brain.

  Now was the perfect time to break the news. “Speaking of horrible things,” I said. “Madeleine somehow kinda heard that we know who the Denver Dognapper is.”

  “She what?!” March’s voice was shrill, pinging off the walls of the school bus.

  “I know, right?” I folded my arms over my chest, annoyed. “How did that even happen?” I looked from March to CindeeRae, letting my gaze linger on the newest member of our team.

  CindeeRae twisted her fingers on her lap. “I was defending you, Kazu.”

  “Defending me from what?”

  CindeeRae jutted out her lower lip and sighed, the force blowing up her curly red bangs. “Madeleine and Catelyn were making fun of Detective Jones in science class a couple days ago, and I couldn’t let them say that stuff about you.”

  “What did you say?” March leaned forward in his seat so he could drill CindeeRae with his squinty eyes.

  “Just that Kazu’s already figured out who the Denver Dognapper is.” She shrugged. “They didn’t even believe me—they laughed and called me Little Watson.”

  “Now that she knows,” I said, as if everything that happened next was out of my control, “she’s forced herself into the group. Her mom’s dropping her off at March’s this afternoon.”

  “What?” March squealed again, this time his voice shriller than before. “Kazuko Jones, what are you talking about?”

  “She was sad, guys.” I tapped my foot on the floor, staring at the green backrest of the seat in front of us. “Maybe she can help.”

  “Help make the dognapper cry?” CindeeRae shifted in her seat to display perfect, board-straight posture. “Because the only thing that girl is good at is being mean.”

  “She’s going to help us solve the case,” I said, feeling for the first time like my detecting hobby had become a little too complicated, even for me. “It’s going to be fine.”

  Even though March and CindeeRae didn’t respond, their matching glares told me they didn’t agree.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CindeeRae, Madeleine, and I hovered above March at his computer. Even Madeleine’s swollen eyes hadn’t done much to persuade March and CindeeRae that she would make a good member of our team. And when the first thing Madeleine did was make a crack about March’s space-themed room being the perfect place for a spacey kid, any sympathy we might have had soured on the spot.

  We watched March use his smarty-pants hacking skills to run a bunch of e-mail searches, finding nothing. He changed tactics and started looking for e-mails sent on the date of each dognapping, with me using the Sleuth Chronicle to guide him through the timeline.

  When a search on Lenny’s snatch date returned nothing, Madeleine barked, “Did you search for ‘dognapping’?” It sounded more like a command than a question.

  “Anything with the word dog would have shown up when I
ran that search,” March said. “Like, forever ago.”

  “Plus.” CindeeRae’s voice was sharp and theater-loud again. “The dognapper would be pretty stupid to use those words if he was trying not to get caught.”

  Madeleine stepped back and rolled her eyes.

  CindeeRae was right. Crowley was smarter than we thought; he covered his tracks, even in his in-box.

  “How about something like transport or delivery?” CindeeRae’s voice had quieted as she focused on sleuthing. She was a natural at detecting. “He must be replacing the word dog with something else, but he’d still need to schedule times to meet with people and make deliveries.”

  “Good,” I said, catching her eye and smiling.

  March punched at his keyboard, running a series of searches without finding anything suspicious.

  Madeleine pulled away from the group and dropped into March’s rocket beanbag, which he’d had since kindergarten. She hit the bag with such force, I expected tiny white balls to shoot from the stitching. It wasn’t a big-kid beanbag. “Maybe they call each other instead. You know, because it leaves less evidence.”

  March’s fingers froze over the keyboard, and the flutter of excitement in my chest turned to an anxious quiver. Madeleine had a point; the Denver Dognapping Ring might be avoiding e-mail because it left a trail. If there was still no evidence from March’s hack, where else could we search for information on the doggie-holding headquarters?

  The four of us exchanged looks, and I said, “Keep running your searches, March. CindeeRae, Madeleine, and I will review all our evidence to see if we missed something.”

  I grabbed March’s Christmas safe from his desk and had CindeeRae and Madeleine turn around while I pulled the key from beneath the mattress on the top bunk of March’s bed. Giving them the okay, I opened the safe and spread all the contents on the floor. Printouts of Crowley’s internet bookmarks, order history, web cache, and bank account information were fanned out on the rug. From the Sleuth Chronicle I pulled all the newspaper articles and the dog food receipt, adding them to the display. After a pause, I set the open notebook, with all my case notes, on the floor as well. CindeeRae and I stood back and eyed the evidence.