Riley Mack and the Other Known Troublemakers

by Chris Grabenstein

  “Jamal?” Riley’s head bobbed toward the motor scooter. “Can you pop open that cargo box?”

  “Is a pig pork?” said Jamal as he pulled a soft cloth wallet out of his back pocket. It held all sorts of slender metal tools that sort of looked like a combination of nail files and dental instruments. “C’mon. Let’s go crack that sucker open.”

  “What do you mean you’re closed?” they heard Briana declare much too loudly from up at the front entrance to the Pizza Palace. “Your advertisements clearly state that you are open until nine!” She was loudly enunciating every word so Riley and Jamal would know what was going on inside the building.

  “Hurry,” said Riley as Jamal worked a metal pick with a squiggly head into the keyhole.

  “You know,” said Jamal, jiggling the stainless steel tool, “this cargo carrier is big enough to hold a puppy.”

  “I know,” said Riley. “Come on. Open it.”

  “Hi, Nick!” they heard Briana shout from out on the sidewalk. “How are your parakeets? Is that a new T-shirt? Oh, I like the hairnet, too.”

  The lid on the hard plastic trunk sprang open.

  “What’s that?” said Jamal.

  Riley reached in and pulled out a rubber Halloween mask.

  “Meet Emma’s Martian,” he said, holding up a green alien face with two Ping-Pong-ball-sized eyes; a tall, wrinkled forehead; and stubs where his antennae had broken off.

  Riley zipped open his backpack and found his miniature flashlight. He shone its beam around the inside of the hard-shelled carrier. The light glinted off a clump of shiny, curled hairs.

  “Noodle’s golden locks,” said Riley.

  “You want to tag and bag the forensic evidence?” asked Jamal.

  “No need. We know Nick did it. And this motor scooter? That’s what made those puttering rocketship sounds Emma told me about.”

  “Miss Bloomfield,” a voice boomed from the front of the Pizza Palace. “Where are your hippy-dippy parents?”

  Riley, of course, recognized the voice. The blowhard. Police Chief Brown.

  “At home, sir. Watching that movie about Woodstock. Again.”

  “Go watch it with them. This restaurant is closed.”

  “Yes, Chief Brown,” Briana chanted in a singsong voice meant to be heard a block away. “Sorry, Chief Brown. I was just hungry for pizza, Chief Brown. Say, who is that attractive elderly woman spitting into the paper cup?”

  “My mother. Now go home before I call yours!”

  Good work, Riley thought. Briana had let him know Grandma Brown was in the house, further cementing the connection between Grandma, Nick, and the stolen dog.

  Riley’s eyes swept up and down the dark lane.

  There was a boxy truck parked at the far end of the alleyway. As his eyes adjusted, Riley could read Grandma’s Antiques painted in frilly letters over the cab.

  He whipped out his cell phone. Speed-dialed Jake. Phone pressed to his ear with one hand, he grabbed his backpack with the other and sprinted toward the truck. Jamal was sprinting right beside him.

  Jake picked up. “Riley?”

  “Hey. If I turn on the GPS locator in a cell phone, can you track it?”

  “Definitely. If I know the number and we spend a few bucks on one of the web-based tracking services, we can follow it wherever it goes.”

  “Cool. Hang on. Jamal?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Come with me.”

  They scooted around to the rear of the truck. The roll-down door was shut and secured with a combination lock.

  “You want me to pop this lock, too?”

  “Exactly.”

  “So, tell me, Riley Mack: Is this some kind of initiation or something? If I pass, can I join your crew?”

  “Just crack the lock, okay?”

  “I got you. We’re gonna steal back all the fifth-grade loot Grandma’s been peddling in her tent, right?”

  “No. I want to add something to her stash.”

  “Add something?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re whacked, you know that, Riley Mack?”

  “Yeah. Come on. Hurry.”

  Jamal grabbed hold of the combination lock and pulled down hard to tighten the hasp. Riley thumbed the controls on his cell. Turned off all the alerts. Activated the GPS.

  “Can you do that any faster, Jamal?”

  “Maybe. If I, you know, didn’t have to answer so many questions while I was doing it.” Jamal clicked the dial clockwise. Felt it stick. Moved two numbers farther. Rotated the dial counterclockwise. Found the second sticking point. Now he clacked it clockwise until it hit the sweet spot.

  The lock popped open.

  “Ten seconds. New personal best. That fast enough for you, Riley Mack?”

  “Yeah. Thanks. Help me shove this thing open.”

  They maneuvered the rolling door up an inch or two.

  “Wait,” said Riley. “Close it.”

  “What? I thought we were opening it.”

  “Close it and lock it!”

  “I just unlocked it.”

  “I know.”

  “Oh, you’re being all loosey-goosey again, aren’t you?”

  “No. I just realized that if I toss my cell phone into the back of Grandma’s truck, she’ll find it.”

  “And sell it,” added Jamal.

  Riley nodded. “Hang on, Jake.”

  “I’m hanging.”

  “Jamal, see if there’s a good spot under the truck to stash a cell phone.”

  The wiry little fifth grader slithered under the bumper. “We could put it on top of the muffler. Of course, it might bounce off. Be better if we had some duct tape or something to strap it down with.”

  Riley pulled a roll of silver duct tape out of his backpack. Tapped Jamal on the knee with it. “Here you go.”

  Jamal’s hand found the tape. “You carry duct tape with you all the time, Riley Mack?”

  “Yeah. There’s nothing it can’t do.” He put his phone to his ear. “Get ready, Jake.”

  “Wait a second. What number do you want me to tail?”

  “Mine.”

  Riley handed his cell phone to Jamal, who quickly taped it on top of the muffler, then crawled out from underneath the truck.

  “Let’s go,” said Riley. They ran back to the moped and Dumpster, where Briana was anxiously waiting for them.

  “Where were you guys?”

  Riley smiled. “Up the alley.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Helping Grandma Brown lead us to wherever she hid Noodle.”

  24

  LATE SATURDAY, JAKE’S GPS TRACKING software showed the truck leaving Fairview and traveling about ten miles out into the country, where it remained parked all night.

  “You think that’s where she has Noodle?” asked Mongo.

  “Tomorrow night, we’ll know for sure,” said Riley.

  “How we gonna do that, Riley Mack?” asked Jamal, his eyes fixed on the static star in the center of the glowing map.

  “Easy. We’re going out there.”

  And then Riley explained to Briana what she had to do to help make that happen.

  On Sunday afternoon, Riley and his mom went to the flea market in Sherman Green.

  “This is nice, Riley. I’ve been cooped up in that stuffy bank all week. It feels good to be out in the fresh air.”

  “I figured you might need a break.”

  “You figured right.”

  “Riley? Mrs. Mack?”

  It was Briana and her mother. Right on schedule. Two fifteen p.m. in front of the goat-yogurt stand.

  “Well, hello, Briana,” said Riley’s mom. “Moonbeam.”

  Yes, Briana’s mother’s name was Moonbeam. It probably wasn’t on her birth certificate, but that’s what she called herself. Moonbeam Sunchild Bloomfield. She was wearing a tie-dyed dress that went down to her ankles, lots of beads, rose-tinted sun goggles, and a flower-power headband that put a crimp in her bubbly gray Afro.
/>   “Hey,” she said slowly. “What’s happenin’?”

  “Not much,” said Riley’s mom. “Just, you know, checking out the market.”

  Mrs. Bloomfield nodded very slowly, very thoughtfully. “Far out.”

  “You betcha,” said Riley’s mom.

  “Oh, Riley,” said Briana, “I almost forgot….”

  Riley tried not to grin. “Yes?”

  “I have to do that astronomy project tonight.”

  “Oh, the one Mr. Thorne gave us where you have to go out into the country and check out the constellations and junk?”

  “Yes,” said Briana, playing the script to perfection. “Have you done your astronomy project yet?”

  “No. Hey, maybe we can do ours together!”

  “Cool. Are you free tonight?”

  “What time?”

  “How about my mom and I pick you up at nine? It’ll be way dark then.”

  Riley turned to his mom. “Is that okay, Mom?”

  “What time will you be home?”

  “No later than eleven,” said Briana.

  “You don’t mind driving the kids, Moonbeam?” asked Riley’s mom.

  “Not at all.”

  “Oh, Mom,” said Riley, “I need to borrow Dad’s night vision goggles. To see the stars better.”

  “Okay. Do you know where they are?”

  “Yeah. In my room.”

  At 9:15 p.m., Riley, Briana, Jamal, and Mrs. Bloomfield were parked on a country road in the middle of nowhere, but only a few miles outside the town limits of Fairview.

  Jamal, who was only ten, had told his parents that he and his new friend, Jake Lowenstein, were building a supercomputer in Jake’s basement.

  “Beautiful out here, isn’t it?” said Briana’s mom.

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Jamal.

  “Listen to the crickets. Soak in their wisdom.”

  “Well, we gotta go, Mom,” said Briana. “The stars are all aligned and junk.”

  “Should I come with you kids?”

  “Um, no. Mr. Thorne, that’s our teacher, he’s a real stickler about us doing our own homework without a bunch of help from our parental units.”

  “Groovy.” Mrs. Bloomfield put a New Age tinkly-music disc into the dashboard CD player and closed her eyes. “I’ll just chill. Haven’t done my om chant today.”

  Riley, Jamal, and Briana headed up a rutted dirt road. They could hear Mrs. Bloomfield oming in the distance.

  All through elementary school, Briana Bloomfield had always been one of the most popular girls in whatever school she attended. But then, the minute seventh grade started, for some reason all her girlfriends turned against her, called her Flaky Wakey and Wavy Gravy, like the old Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream flavor. Seemed all the other popular girls had decided over the summer that they were way too mature to hang out with Briana Bloomfield any longer.

  Riley could tell she needed a brand-new set of friends. So he became the first.

  “Sorry about that,” Briana now said. “My mom acts a little goofy sometimes. She’s actually supersmart. Has a PhD.”

  “I think she’s far out,” said Riley with a grin.

  “I can dig her, man,” added Jamal.

  Briana smiled. “Yeah. Me, too.”

  The road soon narrowed as it entered a stand of tall evergreen trees. Riley, Briana, and Jamal were engulfed by darkness and an eerie quiet. The only sounds were the crunch of their feet and the chirp of bugs serenading Mrs. Bloomfield in her hybrid station wagon.

  “You guys?” It was Jake, back in the basement. He had lent Riley one of his spare cell phones and hooked everybody up with linked earpieces.

  “Yeah?” said Riley.

  “You’re close. I’d say it’s only about another hundred yards to where she parked the truck. And Riley? You better move fast. The battery in your cell phone must be tanking. The GPS signal is spotty. Intermittent.”

  “Got you.”

  “You guys find Noodle?” asked Mongo, stationed in the basement with Jake.

  “Not yet, big guy,” said Riley. “But don’t worry—we’re not coming back without her.”

  “Thanks,” said Mongo, sounding kind of choked up.

  “Hey, you’d do the same for us,” said Jamal. “Am I right? Say I needed to employ a little muscle to get back a couple iPods or something…”

  “Jamal?” said Riley. “Focus.”

  Off in the distance, Riley thought he heard a dog bark.

  Briana’s eyebrows shot up. She heard it, too.

  “Come on,” said Riley. “It’s showtime.”

  A gated fence blocked the way forward. The air was scented with the odor of wet hay and wetter animals. On the other side was probably some kind of farm. Riley shone his compact flashlight at a padlock clamped through a loop of heavy chain.

  “I got it,” said Jamal.

  “Hurry,” said Riley.

  Jamal worked a jagged steel pick into the lock. “Ooh. This is a good one. Gonna take a little longer than that cheap motor scooter pop-top.”

  “You guys?” It was Briana. Over in the bushes. Holding open a hole in the chain-link fence.

  “Good eye,” said Riley. “Come on, Jamal. Let’s go.”

  “Wait a second,” said Jamal, twisting and flicking the tool jammed inside the padlock. “Almost got it.”

  “We don’t need to do that anymore. There’s a hole in the fence.”

  “Fine. Sure. Some people are always looking for the easy way.”

  They scrambled through the brambles.

  Briana was already on the other side of the fence.

  Jamal crawled through the hole next, muttering about shortcuts and laziness. Riley was the last one through and made sure to rig the fencing so the breach didn’t show. He tore a small sliver of silver duct tape off its roll, wrapped it around a link in the fence.

  “So we can spot it later,” he said. “We might be in a hurry.”

  Because Granny Brown might be chasing after them. With a shotgun or, seeing how she was a farmer, a pitchfork.

  Up ahead, through an opening in the trees, Riley could see a weedy meadow and, beyond that, the silhouette of a short outbuilding of some sort. It was wide, but not very tall. Maybe a chicken coop. Maybe a huge rabbit hutch. The air was fetid. It reeked like the cattle tent at the county fair. Or the urinal in the boys’ bathroom at school.

  “Somebody’s coming!” whispered Briana.

  “Two somebodies,” added Jamal. “I hear voices.”

  “Going to night vision,” said Riley, flipping down the lenses on his dad’s very expensive goggles, which allowed him to see in the dark. He panned to the left, where he saw two green-gray images. Fat man. Waddling woman. He heard their muffled voices. Followed them as they neared the chicken coop.

  That’s when Riley saw the dogs.

  Dozens and dozens of dogs.

  25

  “SHUT UP, YOU MANGY MUTTS!” shouted Chief Brown as he whacked the wooden frame of a raised chicken coop.

  Only it wasn’t a chicken coop.

  It was a dog coop.

  Through the night vision goggles, Riley could make out two rows of elevated cages, each cage maybe three feet wide and three feet deep with very little headroom. There were ten cages in each row, with three or four dogs squeezed into each and every cage.

  Sixty, seventy dogs.

  Mostly puppies. Some older. Some crippled.

  Now that Chief Brown had rattled their cages, the barks and cries of distress were deafening.

  “Shut your yapping traps or nobody gets dinner!” shouted Grandma Brown. She went to a nearby post and flicked up a circuit breaker. Sparks sputtered. Spotlights blazed to life to illuminate all the miserable creatures locked in their even more miserable cages. The infrared signature of the lighting was so intense, Riley had to flip up the night vision goggles to keep from frying his retinas.

  “Dag,” whispered Jamal.

  The horror of the dogs trapped in their filthy cag
es might have been the first thing to ever leave Jamal Wilson speechless.

  “Riley,” whispered Briana. “It’s a puppy mill!”

  The three of them were lying on their stomachs behind the rotted trunk of a fallen tree, maybe twenty yards away from the closest cages.

  “We need to get Noodle out of this horrible place!” said Briana.

  Riley agreed. But first they had to find her.

  “Toss me your field glasses.”

  Briana lobbed Riley her binoculars. He scanned the rickety chicken-wire cages, which were propped up on wooden stilts so the dogs’ poop would fall through the mesh floor to the mud below.

  We should rescue them all, Riley thought. But would that be considered stealing, since Grandma Brown technically “owned” the dogs she was abusing?

  Okay. Tonight’s mission would be a limited one: find and extract Noodle. But Riley knew he’d be coming back for the others—soon.

  He could see that some of the dogs, especially the older ones, looked sick. Weeping red sores splotched their fur. Shrunken bellies tugged down on their chest skin, pulling it tight against exposed ribs.

  Grandma Brown walked up the center lane between the cages, scooping handfuls of kibble from a five-gallon bucket, tossing it into the cages. Dogs fought one another for the measly scraps of food. Jaws snapped. Hackles shot up. The chorus of desperate dog barks was quickly replaced by the violent snarls of starving beasts.

  Riley inched the binoculars to the left and saw Chief Brown, pulling a cell phone out of his bulging shirt pocket.

  “Hello?” he shouted to be heard over the dogs. “Yeah. Yeah. I thought we agreed to eight thousand? Aw, never mind. Ship it tonight. Tonight!”

  Riley inched the binoculars over to the circuit breaker box. It had no door panel on its front and was mounted on a post maybe two feet in front of a corrugated aluminum shed. Riley tilted the glasses down and noticed a coiled garden hose lying on the ground. It gave him an idea.

  “You got your poodle, Mom,” said the chief. “Apricot will be here first thing tomorrow morning. Of course those crooks jacked up the price. Cost me nine thousand dollars!”

  “Aw, quit your bellyaching. We got the goldendoodle for free.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” groused the chief. “So where is she?”