Dangerous Deception

by Peg Kehret

  Jelly Bean was back in class, using crutches. Signatures and drawings now covered his whole cast. He said, “My best thing is that my brother came home from the hospital.”

  Crystal waved her hand wildly, trying to get Mrs. Reed to call on her. I thought she would talk about aliens, but when it was her turn she said, “I saw a Sasquatch! I found its tracks and followed them along the edge of a creek.”

  “Where was this?” Mrs. Reed asked.

  “In Victory Creek Park.”

  Here she goes again, I thought. Reports of a Sasquatch, or Bigfoot, had surfaced for years in Washington State with some people believing the large furry animal/person was real and others convinced it was a myth or a hoax. Sasquatches were usually reported deep in the woods, far from populated areas.

  Victory Creek Park is a small city park that has a playground and a few picnic tables. One side abuts the parking lot of a large grocery store. The chances of a Sasquatch, if there are such creatures, in that area seemed unlikely and if there had been one, surely Crystal would not be the only person to notice it.

  Mrs. Reed opened her mouth as if to dispute what Crystal had said, then hesitated and said, “Next, please,” and Hunter told about visiting the Museum of History and Industry.

  When it was Abby’s turn, she said, “I can tell a best thing but I also have a worst thing that happened.”

  “Go ahead,” said Mrs. Reed.

  “The best thing was that I got a laptop computer from my parents for my birthday. It was the only thing I really wanted, but I didn’t expect to get it. I was thrilled when I unwrapped that gift. I spent the next five days on it. I opened an e-mail account, and I surfed all kinds of interesting websites and watched funny videos on YouTube.”

  She paused. Her bottom lip trembled and tears pooled in her eyes. “Then the worst thing happened.” Her voice dropped almost to a whisper, as if she had to force herself to say the words. “Someone broke into our house while we were at a movie and stole my laptop.”

  There was a collective “Oh,” as the class reacted to Abby’s news.

  “The burglar took our TV, too, which was almost new, and the Blu-ray player that my parents gave each other last Christmas. My dad had left some cash in his desk drawer, and it was gone.”

  “Did you call the police?” Lauren asked.

  “Yes. The police came and made a list of everything that was missing, but they didn’t hold out much hope that we would get any of it back. The officers said there’s been a rash of home burglaries in Cedar Hill in the last few months. Most of what’s been stolen has been new or nearly new electronics. They suspect it’s some kind of professional ring that has a fast and efficient way to get rid of the stolen items.”

  “My aunt’s house was burglarized, too,” Hunter said. “Someone broke in while she was at work and stole her computer and her TV and her new camera. The computer had personal information on it and the thief got her credit card and bank account numbers. Aunt Karen found out about the theft when the credit card company called her because a bunch of stuff that wasn’t the kind of thing she usually buys had been charged on her card, and they wanted to be sure she was the buyer. She hadn’t bought any of it.”

  As I looked at Abby’s tearful face and heard what had happened to Hunter’s aunt, I thought about No Help’s apartment full of TVs, computers, and other electronic merchandise. What if he was the thief? Maybe he was part of the ring that the police suspected was operating in the area. Stolen goods might be stashed at his apartment while he advertised them for sale on eBay or craigslist. Maybe right at that minute Abby’s new laptop was sitting in apartment 4 of the building on East Sycamore Street.

  I still had the photos of his apartment on my phone. Even though I had not shown them to anyone, I hadn’t deleted them. Now I decided that I couldn’t keep that information to myself any longer. If I had a clue or evidence that might help solve the burglaries, I needed to give it to the police.

  Instead of going straight home after school that day, I went to the Cedar Hill police station. It’s next door to the post office, so I had been past the building many times, but I had never gone inside before. As I climbed the concrete steps and pulled open the front door, my mouth felt dry, and I glanced back toward the street to see if anyone was watching me.

  An information counter stood inside the door. A thick Plexiglas shield rose from the top of the counter toward the ceiling. It looked like the ticket window at a movie theater, with just enough room between the bottom of the window and the counter to slide your money in and get the tickets back.

  I didn’t see a person, but there was a round silver bell with a sign that said RING FOR SERVICE. I tapped the bell, and it dinged. A uniformed officer appeared on the other side of the window.

  “I’m Lieutenant Benson,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

  “I was looking for a friend’s missing cat,” I said, “and I knocked on her neighbor’s door. When he answered, I saw a whole lot of TVs and computers in his apartment. It seemed odd for one person to have so many. Then at school today my friend said her laptop and her family’s TV got stolen, and another classmate said his aunt’s house was burglarized and the thief took her computer. I wonder if maybe the apartment full of electronics that I saw is connected to the burglaries.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “When the man went downstairs and left his door open, I took a couple of pictures.” I found the first photo on my phone and passed the phone under the glass to Lieutenant Benson.

  “There are two more pictures,” I said. “Hit the down arrow.”

  She did. “Where were these taken?” she asked.

  I gave her the address and she wrote it down.

  “Who lives there?”

  “I don’t know his name. My friend used to live in the apartment next to his, but she’s moved away.”

  “Is it all right if I download these pictures?”

  “Yes. That’s why I came; I want you to have them.”

  I waited while she hooked up my phone to her computer and downloaded the three pictures.

  She gave me back my phone. “Have you shown these pictures to anyone?”

  “No.”

  “Does the man who lives there know you took them?”

  “No. He was out in back banging on the Dumpster because he thought there was a reward for Sophie’s cat.”

  “Do you live with your parents?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Do they know you’re here?”

  “No. They don’t know about the man or the pictures.”

  Lieutenant Benson raised her eyebrows as if to say, Oh? Why not?

  “It’s kind of complicated,” I said. “I already got in trouble for going to Sophie’s house alone, and it would be worse if my parents found out I had met this man and photographed his living room. I had decided not to show the pictures to anyone but when Abby told how her house was burglarized and the thief stole her new laptop, she was crying and I felt sorry for her. I realized by not turning in my pictures, I might be helping whoever stole from Abby get away with it. I want them to get caught. I want Abby to get her laptop back.”

  “We’ll want to pursue this,” Lieutenant Benson said. “I’m glad you decided to bring in your pictures—and I think it would be a good idea for you to tell your parents exactly what you’ve told me.”

  She gave me a form to fill out: name, address, phone, the reason I was there, and permission for the police department to download the photos. I decided to use my middle name so I wrote Louise Rushford. If my tip worked, and they caught the burglar, a nosy reporter might learn who the anonymous informant was, and publish that information. I felt safer not giving my full name.

  There was a section for minors to list the names and addresses of their parents. I wondered if Mom and Dad would learn about the pictures whether I told
them or not. If Mom got a call from a police officer who said she was calling about me, Mom would have an anxiety attack for sure, and I’d be grounded for the rest of my life, but it was too late to back out now.

  I filled in the rest of the form accurately, signed it Louise Rushford, and gave it back. “What will happen now?” I asked.

  “We’ll find out who lives at the address where you took the photos. We’ll go there and have a talk with him.”

  “Maybe he has a legitimate reason to have all that equipment. Maybe he’s running a business,” I said.

  “Maybe.” Lieutenant Benson did not seem convinced of that.

  I wasn’t, either. Someone who did not have paper and a pencil did not seem a likely candidate to be running his own small business, and if the items in his apartment had been legitimately for sale, he would not have tried to hide them from me.

  “Actually, the man is a slime ball,” I said. “He threw Sophie’s cat in the Dumpster. If I hadn’t heard Midnight meowing and rescued him, he would have died.”

  “That’s animal cruelty,” Lieutenant Benson said. “If you want to file a complaint, we might be able to charge him on that, too.”

  “I can’t prove that he’s the one who threw Midnight in the Dumpster, although he admitted that he did it. I really don’t want him to find out that I alerted you. He won’t know I turned in these photos because he doesn’t know I took them, but if I file an animal cruelty complaint, he’ll know it came from me.” I tried not to think about the fact that, although No Help didn’t know I had taken the pictures, he did know I had looked in the door of his apartment. And he knew where I lived.

  Lieutenant Benson nodded. “Thanks for bringing your pictures, Louise,” she said. “They might be the break we need on a lot of burglary cases.”

  As I left the police station, I felt good about what I had done. All the way home I debated whether to tell Mom and Dad about the pictures. On the one hand, I was already in hot water for not telling my parents about a problem. If I kept this information secret, and they later found out about it, I would be in even worse trouble with them.

  On the other hand, I had turned my evidence over to the police and I did not intend to have anything more to do with the matter, so what would be gained by getting Mom and Dad all worked up now? My involvement in the case was over.

  Or so I thought.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  My letter to Sophie came back with the envelope stamped “No forwarding address. Return to sender.”

  How can three people disappear without a trace? It seemed as if someone, somewhere, must know how to reach Sophie’s family if I could only figure out who that someone was.

  The next day I listened to local news, traffic, and weather on the kitchen radio while I fixed breakfast. As I poured milk on my cereal, I heard the announcer say, “A suspect was arrested in Cedar Hill last night on multiple burglary charges. Police believe Donald Zummer may be responsible for more than twenty local residential burglaries in the last two months. An anonymous tip led them to his apartment on East Sycamore Street, which was filled with stolen items. When the suspect answered the door, officers served him with a search warrant, which led to Zummer’s arrest. He will be arraigned today at nine a.m. in District Court.”

  I pumped my fist in the air. An anonymous tip! That was me! No Help had been arrested because of the pictures I took.

  I was bursting to share this news but since no one knew what I’d seen in No Help’s apartment, or that I had taken pictures, or that I had given the photos to the police, there wasn’t anyone who would understand my excitement.

  Mom was upstairs getting ready for work. I hoped if she heard the news report on the car radio she would not remember that Sophie had lived on East Sycamore.

  I didn’t want to confirm that danger lurked in the neighborhood where I’d gone alone.

  As soon as I got to school, I told Abby about the news report. “Maybe it’s the person who broke into your house,” I said. “Maybe the police will recover your laptop and you’ll get it back.”

  “That would be so cool,” she said.

  Seeing her smile and the hope in her eyes made me doubly glad that I had turned in those pictures. I hugged the secret to myself the whole day.

  I watched the TV news that night, but there had been a terrible tornado in Oklahoma that killed twenty-four people so any story about a local burglar got bumped in favor of storm-chaser video and grim photos of flattened buildings. I wondered what had happened during No Help’s court appearance, but I didn’t know how to find out.

  The next day before class started I asked Abby if her family had heard anything more from the police.

  “My dad called Lieutenant Benson, the police officer who is working on our case,” she said. “The suspect pleaded not guilty and was released on twenty-thousand-dollars’ bail. Dad asked about our stolen things. The police need to photograph all the items, and record and check serial numbers. Then they release the property to the victims as quickly as possible. Lieutenant Benson said she would call as soon as she knew if any of what they retrieved belonged to us.” Abby smiled. “We thought our things were gone for good and we didn’t know where.” Like Sophie, I thought. She’s gone for good, and I don’t know where.

  “Now,” Abby said, “I might get my laptop back.”

  Class began. Mrs. Reed showed us a film about the planets. Ordinarily, I would be interested in astronomy but that day my mind kept wandering back to Sophie, trying to think of some way to contact her.

  After recess, Mrs. Reed told us that our school would be participating in a Career Day event at the high school. “Please ask your parents if they might be willing to speak for ten minutes about their career,” she said. “We especially need people in the medical field, and an attorney.”

  “Will there be a landlord?” asked Crystal.

  “I don’t think any real estate investors are represented,” Mrs. Reed said. “Do your parents own rental property?”

  “They don’t own it. They rent it, and if our landlord will be there, I’m not going. My aunt and uncle moved out of the unit next to ours, and the landlord won’t give them back their damage deposit because he says their sixteen cats ruined the carpet. That carpet was a wreck before they ever moved in, and the fridge never worked right, and my uncle’s going to sue the landlord for ten million dollars and when he wins, he’ll give some of it to me, and . . .”

  “Thank you, Crystal,” said Mrs. Reed. “Class, please open your math books to page sixty.”

  Usually I tuned out when Crystal got off on one of her rants, but this time I felt like cheering. Crystal had given me a great idea.

  I asked Lauren if she still had the phone number for the company that owned the apartment where Sophie had lived.

  “Why do you want that?” Lauren asked.

  “Listening to Crystal talk about her aunt and uncle’s cats made me wonder if Sophie’s mother had put down a damage deposit when they moved into their apartment. If she did, there might be money due to her, and if she had money coming, she would let the landlord know where to send it. She would never walk away from money that was owed to her.”

  “We already tried to get information from the landlord’s company and they wouldn’t tell us anything,” Lauren said.

  “I want to try again. Maybe I can talk to someone who’s an animal lover. That’s how I got the secretary at Sophie’s school to tell me Sophie’s last name. I asked how she would feel if someone had her dog and didn’t know how to get it back to her. Maybe if I tell the landlord that I found Sophie’s cat and need to let her family know that Midnight is safe, he would either tell me how to reach her or pass along the message.”

  “I don’t think I saved the name and number,” Lauren said, “but if I found it online once I can find it again. I’ll look when I get home.”

  She called about
an hour after I got home and gave me the information I needed. I called the office of Winkowski Associates. I couldn’t get through to Mr. Winkowski, but I told his secretary that my friend’s family used to rent an apartment from Winkowski Associates and that they had lost their cat when they moved. I laid it on as thick as I could, telling her that Sophie’s mother had been sick and that Midnight was Sophie’s best friend.

  “I found Sophie’s cat,” I said. “I brought him home with me, but I don’t know how to get hold of them to tell them that I have him. I’m trying to get a message to Sophie’s family to let them know.” I told her Sophie’s last name and the address where she had lived.

  “I can’t give out any information on a former renter,” she said, “but I’ll see if we have a forwarding address. If we do, I’ll write to the family and tell them that you have their cat.”

  I thanked her, and gave her my contact information. I couldn’t think of anything else to do to find Sophie. I hoped Sophie’s mother had given the landlord a forwarding address, but did she even know where her family was going when they left? Maybe they were in one of the homeless shelters. Perhaps they were staying temporarily with a friend. They might have gone to Mexico to be with Sophie’s grandparents, although that seemed unlikely. Where would they get the money for plane tickets?

  Meanwhile, clever Midnight had taken to rubbing on Mom’s ankles and purring. From there, he advanced to jumping into her lap whenever she sat down, and curling into a fur doughnut. Since he also got along well with Waggy, I could tell that Mom wouldn’t mind keeping him.

  When I told her I wanted to use my allowance to buy a plastic litter pan because the cardboard box had started to stink, she agreed it would be a good idea. She even drove me to the pet store to get one and while we were there she bought more canned cat food, a collar, and a bag of furry toy mice.

  On the way home, Mom said, “I’m going to take Midnight to the vet. He needs to be vaccinated and I want to be sure he doesn’t have any health problems. We’ll make an appointment to have him neutered, too.”