My legs are shaky and tired, but I push myself forward. Mr. Bixly’s car is nowhere in sight, but I know he went down this street. I run past an antiques shop, a clock repair shop with grandfather clocks in the window, and El Toro Mexican Restaurant.
The loud sounds of the street are so different from the zoo. A food truck beeps as it backs into an alley, and another truck pours concrete on the opposite side of the street. Construction workers yell to be heard over the noise.
My leg muscles burn with exhaustion. Suddenly, I realize what I’ve done. I’ve left the zoo. Alone. I’ve left the bus and I have no radio. But I’m not turning around. My aching legs are firmly pounding the pavement and going where I want them to go.
Find the Fenn fortune.
Find it.
I chant the words in my head with my running rhythm.
The next few buildings are an insurance office and a boutique. The radio plays loudly through the open door of the boutique, and large industrial fans blow air through the windows. The air-conditioning must be broken. The fans aren’t going to help much in this humid heat.
I can’t keep running. My legs don’t even feel solid anymore. I slow to a walk, which becomes a shuffle, and I think I’ve lost Mr. Bixly and my chance to find out what he’s up to. Every building has either a driveway or a parking lot in back. I look for the bright blue ZOOMNGR car in every single one. But no luck.
Suddenly, someone gasping behind me taps me on the shoulder. I wheel around. It’s Fisher, heat flush in his cheeks and sweat dripping down his forehead.
“Lex…,” he says between breaths, “I’ve been calling your name for two blocks!”
“You’ve been behind me this whole time? How?”
Fisher rests his hands on his knees, catching his breath. “I…I saw you on the sidewalk by the woods.”
“Wait…really?”
“Yeah, I was coming back from Sebastian’s birthday party.”
“You were on that bus on the way back to the zoo!”
Fisher nods and wipes his forehead with the back of his arm. “Man, I need a drink. You don’t have any water do you?” He looks at my hands, which are holding Miss Amanda’s photo albums. And then his eyes widen as he notices the rest of me. “Lex! What happened to you? Your leg is bleeding, and your hair…” He stops, clearly embarrassed that there is no good way to finish that sentence.
“I know.” I run my hand over my hair real quick and try to smooth it. I have never cared how I look in front of Fisher, but right now, I care a little. It’s a weird feeling. I’m still not sure why Fisher is talking to me again all of a sudden, or why he would care enough to follow me after I ditched him at the baseball field.
“Are you okay?” he asks. “What are you doing all the way out here by yourself?”
“I’m okay.” I stick my leg out and turn sideways to examine the streaks of dried blood. “This is from a nasty stick in the woods.” I hold out my scraped fingers. “And this is from climbing out of Miss Amanda’s trailer window with these.” I show him the albums. “They’re full of pictures from her circus life—her memories. Stupid Bixly had her trailer towed away.”
“Bixly did that? Today?”
I nod.
“Wow.”
“And I figured out that Miss Amanda hid the fortune in a box inside the old passenger train car, and Roger found it. Then I overheard Roger talking to Mr. Bixly, and I think Mr. Bixly may have taken the treasure.”
Fisher coughs a little in surprise. “You figured out all that?”
“Yeah, and so I’ve been trailing Mr. Bixly. He was driving his car all wild and crazy, and I think maybe he’s going to a bank or something.”
“You mean with the treasure?”
“I don’t know exactly, but I think he has it, so I followed him.” I let out a sigh. “But I couldn’t run fast enough, and I lost him. You wanna help me look?”
“Of course,” Fisher says. And things finally feel like they were between us before all the gift shop trouble and the baseball misunderstanding and the extra chores. I still have some fixing to do, though, I think.
“Are you going to be in trouble for being out like this?” I ask. “Does your mom or dad know where you are?”
Fisher shrugs. “Does Roger?”
“No. I dropped my radio when I climbed out of the window at the Old County Bank.”
“You what?” Fisher’s enthusiastic responses to everything I say are sending little sprays of spit. I make a face at him and wipe my cheek.
“Yeah. After I heard Mr. Bixly say he was getting rid of Miss Amanda’s things.”
“Oh.” Fisher looks like he wishes he hadn’t missed out on all this.
A car door slams, and I turn to look. It’s a white convertible leaving the insurance office.
“Mr. Bixly’s car is blue and it has personalized license plates,” I say.
“Zoo Manager,” Fisher says.
“Yes! Well, the last time I saw him, he turned down this street. I checked all those businesses back there and the alleys. I guess maybe we should keep heading this way.”
Fisher and I walk past a few old houses where people seem to be living in the middle of all these businesses, and I realize this part of town seems old. And that means the EF5 tornado probably didn’t hit this side of town.
“Maybe we could ask someone for a drink,” Fisher says, looking at the houses as we walk past.
“Fisher, if we find Mr. Bixly, I’ll buy you frozen lemonades for life.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” Fisher says.
“By the way, how did you follow me here?” I ask. “There couldn’t have been another bus that fast.”
Fisher takes a few steps up one of the driveways and looks in the back. He shakes his head to tell me there’s no blue car back there. “When I saw you come out of the woods near the road, I thought maybe you needed help. So I caught up with that guy Cory from the gift shop as he was getting in his car to go home, and I asked him to drive me down the road to find you. We saw you get on the bus, and I convinced Cory to follow it.”
“Oh. That was pretty clever.”
“Thanks. And when you got off the bus, Cory’s car was held up in the traffic, so I got out of his car and followed you. I kept calling your name, but you didn’t hear me. Those trucks were too loud.”
“Well, thanks for chasing me while I was chasing Mr. Bixly,” I say. “It’s nice to have you here.”
The next building is an old home converted into a cupcake bakery. The vanilla sugar smell reaches all the way to the sidewalk. Fisher notices a parking area behind the building, so we follow the driveway to the back.
“Um…Fisher?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry again for leaving you at the ball field…and for getting you in trouble before.”
“I know. And you didn’t get me in trouble. You didn’t get me in trouble when we used to go to school together either. You’ve got to give me more credit. I get in trouble all on my own.” He smiles and nods like that’s an accomplishment.
“I worried about that. I didn’t know you knew.”
“Yeah. I think the wind has taught you to worry. You shouldn’t let it do that.”
“Oh,” I say. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, the wind and I aren’t speaking at the moment.”
The clouds overhead have darkened the air so that it feels more like nighttime than afternoon. I need to keep an eye on that. Although I haven’t missed it that much, the wind has been too quiet. You’d think that after years of having it constantly with me, I’d appreciate the silence, but the wind can change in a flash, and I’m worried it’s up to something.
Fisher and I reach the end of the long, thin driveway between the bakery and an auto supply. I doubt this is where Mr. Bixly was headed in such a hurry, and if he w
as, it doesn’t seem likely to have anything to do with the Fenn fortune, but we check to be sure. Five cars are parked on a small concrete pad at the back of the bakery. The ZOOMNGR car isn’t one of them.
Just as I’m about to turn around, I notice an exit driveway out of the parking area. The exit driveway connects with the parking lot of another business on the next street. A sliver of blue pokes out from behind another car.
“Fisher, look!” I run down the connecting driveway, and my breath catches.
ZOOMNGR
Fisher cups his hands around his eyes and peers into Mr. Bixly’s car windows.
“Nothing in here but some old newspapers and soda cans,” Fisher says.
The back door of the building where Mr. Bixly’s car is parked has a small window in it.
“Over there,” I whisper. I listen near the porch first to be sure it doesn’t sound like someone is about to come out the door. When it seems that all is quiet except my raging heartbeat, I climb the concrete steps and peek in the window.
It’s the back room of a store. Both sides are lined with work counters and shelves. Straight ahead, a guy stands at a counter with his back to me. Frank Bixly is on the other side of the counter, talking to the guy, but he’s facing the door and the window where I’ve made myself incredibly visible. I duck down fast.
“What is it?” Fisher whispers, joining me on the porch.
“He’s in there—facing this window.” I motion for Fisher to get down, and he does. “I’m not sure what this place is. It looks like a workshop. There are a bunch of small metal tools on the counters.”
“Hmm. Did you see what he’s doing?”
“Not yet. I don’t know if he saw me out here.”
We wait on the step, crouching by the door, listening for any sign that Mr. Bixly saw me. But nothing happens, so I stretch myself up to the window again, this time keeping my face as low as possible and stopping when my eyes are just over the window’s edge.
The man at the counter has moved away from Mr. Bixly. He brings something over to one of the work counters. He sets it down. His arm is in the way, so I can’t see what it is. He reaches across his worktable for the tools on the shelf above. When he selects a tool and brings it up to his eye level to examine it, I can see what he’s placed on the table.
It’s an old metal box.
And it has the initials A.F. on top.
“Mr. Bixly has Angus Fenn’s box in there,” I say. “I think this is a locksmith’s.”
Fisher’s eyes are wide with adventure. “Wait…how do you know it’s Angus Fenn’s box?”
“I have a picture of it in Miss Amanda’s photo album. The box has the letters A.F. on it.”
Fisher peeks in the window and slides back to the ground. “Yep. And Bixly needs an expert to open it, because he doesn’t have the key. It’s not his box.”
My shirt is stuck to me with sweat. My hair is like a wool blanket on my neck, and sections of it are plastered to my damp face. Despite the cloud cover that has blocked the sun, it’s still sweltering hot and off-the-charts humid.
“We have to get that box before the locksmith opens it and Mr. Bixly takes Angus Fenn’s fortune,” I say.
“I can cause a distraction,” Fisher suggests.
“Maybe we should call the police.”
“What will they do? You have to prove he stole the box.”
“I have a photo of the box, but that doesn’t prove anything—only that it was at a circus and that it’s an old box.”
The air is getting darker directly in front of my face. I look up at the sky, and it has that soupy-storm look with clouds in varying shades of gray to darker gray to nearly black, mixing together like a poison brew. I know this sort of sky all too well. I know it better than most people. Just as I suspected, the wind has been quiet because it was up to something. June is peak tornado season in Nebraska.
“Looks like a big one,” Fisher says, referring to the clouds.
“Yeah. I hope it’s only bluffing.” But I think I know better.
I rest my hand on the warm metal doorknob and peek through the bottom corner of the window again. The locksmith is talking to Mr. Bixly, and the box is still sitting on the back room counter. It seems like the locksmith hasn’t found the right tool yet.
“I’m going to go in there,” I whisper, glancing at Fisher.
“I’ll go around the front and distract them,” he says. “Then you can sneak in and take the box.” A smile breaks through at the corners of his mouth.
I make a quick promise to myself to watch his next baseball game and stay the whole time, no matter what.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
He stands up and takes off running around the front of the building. I watch through the bottom corner of the window. Fisher enters the shop’s front doors.
Mr. Bixly turns when the bell above the door jingles.
“I’ve got a problem!” Fisher says super loud. The locksmith sets down his tool.
“Fisher? What are you doing here?” Mr. Bixly sounds both surprised and annoyed.
“I’ve got this lock I can’t open,” Fisher almost yells.
Mr. Bixly turns all the way to face Fisher. Both Mr. Bixly and the locksmith have their backs to Angus Fenn’s box. I try turning the doorknob to sneak in there, but it’s locked. I stand upright and wave frantically at Fisher through the window. I point at the door and shrug.
Fisher wrinkles up his face at me and keeps talking very loudly. “I can’t open it because it’s not my box. Someone else has the key. What would you suggest?”
“Well, I can’t help you open something that doesn’t belong to you,” says the locksmith.
Fisher gives Mr. Bixly a wicked look, and with Fisher’s wild hair and excellent smirk, he’s good at it. He leans over the customer counter and points at the box in the back. “Then,” he says to the locksmith, “you can’t open that!”
The locksmith turns around to look at the box, and he sees me peering in the window. He comes over to the door and opens it. “Can I help you?”
Without pausing to think, I slip under his arm and through the open door.
“Hey!” says the locksmith.
Mr. Bixly is blustering like the wind at Fisher, who has opened a swinging half door at the end of the customer counter.
“Over here, Lex!” Fisher calls.
I run to the worktable and grab hold of the metal box, but it’s heavier than I expected. I drop Miss Amanda’s albums on the table, heft the box down, and slide it across the tile floor to Fisher’s waiting hands. He catches it.
“Don’t take my tools!” says the locksmith.
“We won’t!” I grab the photo albums and run after Fisher and the box, through the swinging half door, past Mr. Bixly, who isn’t nearly as fast as we are, and out the front doors of the shop.
We are two doors down the street when we hear Mr. Bixly’s voice explode out of the shop doors.
“He’ll be after us in his car as soon as he can get to it,” I call to Fisher as we run down the sidewalk. “This way!” I point to an alley between two stores. I don’t even notice what the stores are anymore. I only know we have to get to a bus stop before Mr. Bixly gets into his car. The sky is even darker now, and the air has turned an eerie hint of green.
“Fisher!” I point at the sky.
Fisher nods.
He knows it, too.
A twister is coming.
We tear out of the alley onto another street and turn left toward the traffic light. We angle across the street and cut through the grass. There’s a bus stop sign on the next corner, and Fisher and I bolt straight for it.
The buses run regularly through the city, but that doesn’t mean one will arrive just when we need it. We might be running to the next stop and the next one, movi
ng in little segments closer to the zoo, hoping for luck with the bus’s schedule. My feet barely touch the ground anymore. Maybe it’s all the running I’ve been doing lately, and I’m getting used to it. Maybe it’s the exhilaration of finding the metal box with A.F. stamped on top. Maybe it’s that I feel more powerful without the wind speaking to me.
We reach the bus stop, and Fisher sets the box in the grass at his feet. I can tell he’s trying to be careful with it, but it almost tumbles from his hands.
“What…do you think…is in that?” he gasps out between breaths.
“I don’t know. Miss Amanda just said it’s what’s left of Angus Fenn’s fortune.” I look up and down the street for signs of an approaching bus.
The air is very still. If a bus doesn’t come soon, Mr. Bixly will be the least of our worries. We’ll have to find shelter from the storm out here, away from the zoo.
“Maybe we should head to the next—”
Suddenly, Mr. Bixly’s bright blue car appears at the corner. He spots us. He’s waiting for a break in the traffic so he can turn left, and then he’ll catch up to us.
“Fisher!”
“Yeah, I see him.” Fisher picks up the box, and we start running.
Just then, I see the top of a city bus towering above the cars on the road. It’s driving toward us on the other side of the street—away from the zoo. If we can get across the street and wave down the bus, maybe it will stop for us. I grab Fisher’s arm and point across the street. We’re watching for a way through the traffic when the blue car pulls up to the curb.
“Run!” I yell to Fisher.
But Mr. Bixly rolls down the passenger window and says, “This phone call is for the two of you.” He holds his cell phone out, facing us. He has a call in progress, and the phone is on speaker.
“Fisher and Lexington”—Mrs. Leigh’s voice sails out of the phone—“one of Isabel’s sales clerks called to say he lost track of the two of you downtown. What are you thinking? There’s a storm coming!”
“You both need to get into Mr. Bixly’s car right now,” says Mr. Leigh’s stern voice. “He’s going to bring you home. Do you understand?”
The Elephant's Girl Page 18
