“Where’s Mom, Kate? Where’s Tiffany?” Carson kept saying. “I bet the terrorists got them.” (Carson had been worrying a lot about terrorists lately.) “Do you think the terrorists got them? Do you, Kate?”
But then, all at once—silence. Carson was like that. He could be right in the middle of a major anxiety attack and suddenly—clunk! Sound asleep.
Kate leaned over to check and, sure enough, he was still conked out in the front seat. She checked the time again and snorted. Then, in a very refined, adult-sounding voice, she said, “We just have to pick up Tiffy’s new skirt, dear. Would you mind staying in the car to keep an eye on Carson and Fifi? We’ll be back in ten minutes.” And then in her own voice she added, “Gimme a break, Mom!”
Gimme a break, for sure! How could anybody in their right mind believe that it was possible to take a teenager like Tiffany Nicely into a clothing store and be out again in ten minutes?
Putting her hand on the door handle, Kate considered—also for the umpteenth time—going into Macy’s to look for them. She’d have gone a long time ago, except that would have meant leaving Fifi and Carson alone in the car. And a public parking lot didn’t seem like a particularly good place to leave a hysterical poodle and an unconscious kid. Peeking over the front seat again, Kate nodded. Yep. Unconscious was the only word for it. She sighed and sank back on the seat.
Fifi was pawing at the window now and her yips were getting louder. In desperation Kate grabbed the poodle around the middle, flipped her over, and began to scratch her stomach. Stomach scratching usually took Fin’s so-called mind off her problems, at least for a while. It worked. Fifi’s lips pulled back in a doggy grin and one hind foot began to twitch. Kate sighed. Long-term scratching could get pretty boring, but anything was better than long-term yipping. So Kate went on scratching—and Fifi went on twitching.
Several more minutes had passed when, so suddenly that it scared Kate half to death, the peacefully twitching poodle exploded into a yapping tornado, ricocheting joyfully from one side of the car to the other. And sure enough, there they were, the long-lost Nicelys—Mom and Tiffany.
“Well,” Kate said, glaring at Tiffany, who was carrying two Macy’s shopping bags and looking very pleased with herself. “That must have been the longest ten minutes in the history of the world!”
Tiffany opened both doors, pulled Carson out of the front seat, and dumped him across Kate’s lap. Carson went on sleeping.
“What’s eating you, twerp?” she said to Kate as she climbed into the front seat.
Kate folded her double-jointed little brother into a knobby blob on the seat beside her. Glaring at the back of Tiffany’s stylish hairdo, she said, “I’m late! Humongously, fatally late. That’s what’s eating me. I promised Aurora I’d be home by four to work on our science project. She probably gave up and did it herself, and our procedure rules say that we have to do it together.”
“Yuck,” Tiffany said, pretending to gag. “Everybody is so sick of hearing about your big old super-secret science-fair project. I mean, it’s been going on practically forever. When is this stupid science fair going to be over with, anyway?”
“Next month,” Kate said. “The Annual Interschool Science Fair is going to be held next month, and Aurora and I are going to win.”
Tiffany had tipped the rearview mirror and was using it to check her makeup. “Next month!” she squealed around the lipstick she was slathering on her lips. “Another whole month! I can’t stand it.”
“What’s it to you?” Kate said.
“What’s it to me? Well, for one thing, there’s the smell. Whatever secret project you guys are working on, I know one thing about it. It stinks.” Staring at herself in the mirror, Tiffany wiggled her lips together like a monkey eating a banana, checked the results, and then said, “And you stink! Haven’t you noticed, Mom? Whatever it is she’s doing over there at the Pappases’, it definitely makes her stink.”
“Tiffany dear,” Mrs. Nicely said absentmindedly as she waited for a chance to get out of the parking lot into the rush-hour traffic. “Stink is not a nice word to use about your sister.”
“But she does, Mom,” Tiffany said. “Haven’t you noticed? Every time she comes back from the Pappases’ lately she smells awful. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”
“I don’t stink,” Kate said. “We always wash our hands after—”
“After what?” Tiffany turned around quickly and gave Kate a sneaky smirk. “After what, sister dear?”
Kate smirked back. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
Mrs. Nicely had been busy beating out a bright red sports car but, once out into the line of traffic, she finally got around to answering Tiffany’s question. “Noticed—a smell? Well, I did notice something the other day. But I thought it was just Carson.” She glanced back over her shoulder at the unconscious lump in the backseat. “His room, that is. I thought the smell was probably coming from Carson’s room.”
“Yeah, Tiff,” Kate said triumphantly. “That’s all it was. You were just smelling Carson’s room.” Carson’s bedroom, where he kept a huge menagerie of weird bugs and animals, always had a very strange odor.
Tiffany shook her head. “No, that wasn’t it at all. She wasn’t anywhere near Carson’s room at the time. And she definitely smelled like a garbage pail.”
“Now stop that, Tiffany,” Mrs. Nicely said firmly, and Tiffany, after giving Kate a final over-the-shoulder sneer, stopped.
Kate ignored her. She was checking the time again when Carson opened one eye and mumbled something.
“Fish,” he said. “Kate smells like dead fish.”
Kate gasped and sniffed her hands. They smelled okay to her. She glared at Carson but both his eyes were closed again. “Carson,” she whispered softly, not wanting Mom or Tiffany to overhear. “Carson?” But there was no answer. He’d either gone back to sleep, or he was doing a good job of pretending.
Kate sniffed her hands again, thoughtfully. Had she really been going around smelling like dead fish all this time? And it had been a long time. It had been way back in January that Mrs. Davis, the fifth-grade teacher at Beaumont School, started talking about the rules for the science fair. And the very first rule had been to get started right away, even though the fair was months away. So Kate and Aurora had picked out a hypothesis (which, according to Mrs. Davis, was a kind of educated guess) and started in right away on their experiments to prove that their hypothesis was correct.
That had been a long time ago. But, as Mrs. Davis kept pointing out, you needed to get an early start because some experiments took a long time to complete. Kate sighed. Mrs. Davis had certainly been right about that!
Kate sniffed again thoughtfully and, as the car turned into the Castle Court cul-de-sac, got ready to jump out and run.
Chapter 2
ARI PAPPAS WAS IN his favorite observation post (the cherry tree in his front yard) writing in his notebook and waiting for the Nicelys’ Lincoln Continental to come down Castle Avenue. He’d been there for a long time. Long enough to finish his article on how many of the teachers at Beaumont actually ate the crummy stuff in the school cafeteria. And there’d even been time to get started on his next expose story, the one about the principal’s new toupee.
Besides writing, he’d also observed quite a lot of stuff. He’d watched the Daily Journal being delivered all around the cul-de-sac, and Mrs. Grant and Mr. Brockhurst getting home from work. He’d also noticed some strangers in a black van who drove around the cul-de-sac two times and then parked in front of the Andersons’ house. He’d checked his watch and jotted down the exact time of each observation, because that was what investigative reporters were supposed to do.
But in all that time—no Lincoln Continental. He was beginning to feel stiff and uncomfortable and a little bit cold when a superclean and shiny dark-blue car finally came down Castle Avenue. He nodded and smiled. Okay! Kate was here at last! Sitting back, he put his pencil behind his ear and waited for his s
ister to appear.
“I give her about five seconds,” he said out loud. “One, two, three, four, four and one-half …” And there she came. Just as Ari got to five Aurora Pappas flew out the door, skimmed down the front steps, and headed toward the street with her huge mop of curly hair floating out behind her.
Ari shook his head, wondering how Aurora did it. Either she’d been sitting near a window all this time, or else she just knew that Kate was arriving, in the strange way she had of knowing all sorts of mysterious things. But however she managed it, she came flying out the front door at almost the same moment that Kate Nicely jumped out of her mother’s car and started across the street.
They met on the sidewalk only a few feet from Ari’s tree. “Well?” he heard Aurora say in a questioning tone of voice. He leaned forward, listening intently. “Hey, I’m sorry,” Kate said, and then something about it not being her fault, before they started up the driveway and the sound of their voices died away. Ari rucked his pencil and notebook into his fanny pack, climbed down from his observation post, and, using his best investigative-reporter tailing techniques, followed at a safe distance. He was an expert at safe distances. He knew, for instance, that when you were following Kate and Aurora the distance had to be safer than usual, since Aurora was so good at knowing things and Kate was so good at karate.
Kate was doing a lot of talking—complaining, from the looks of it—and the two of them were moving very slowly. So slowly that Ari had to stop once and duck for cover in a prickly holly bush and again in the backyard gazebo. Crouching on the gazebo floor among his father’s weird sculptures, Ari rubbed the scratches on his arm where the holly bush had got him, and waited for Kate and Aurora to get on with it. To finish crossing the backyard, disappear into the old storage shed, and lock themselves in.
Once or twice he eased up into a standing position and, peeking around the bronze snake that climbed one of the gazebo’s purple roof poles, he peered out. Very carefully. They were still standing there talking. Or at least Kate was talking and Aurora was listening. Ari sat back down again, folded his arms around his knees, and waited. While he waited he thought about the exciting fact that, this time for sure, he was finally going to get a good look at what had been going on inside the old shed.
Up until now, of course, the problem had been the lack of windows. The old storage shed that his mother had used as a painter’s studio when they first moved to Castle Court had lots of skylights—but no windows. Which was fine for a painter’s studio but tended to make things difficult for investigative reporters.
Not that he didn’t already have a pretty good idea about what Kate and Aurora were doing. He knew, for instance, that it had something to do with the science fair that was going to be held next month at Beaumont School.
He had known that for a long time. Ever since the day that he’d just happened to overhear Aurora asking their mom if she and Kate could use the old studio for their science-fair project. Ari’s mother had said yes, of course. Ari knew she would. Diane Pappas, who was a slightly famous artist, was also slightly famous, at least in Castle Court, as an unusual kind of mother. The kind who almost never says no. And besides, there really wasn’t any reason to say no. The ratty old shed had been empty, and more or less abandoned, ever since his parents had built the big new artist’s studio onto one wing of their house.
When Diane had said yes, Aurora and Kate had looked very happy. And Ari himself had been rather pleased. An old deserted shed was not only a good place to do secret scientific experiments, but it was also, as Ari quickly realized, a good place to do secret scientific investigations—since, as far as he knew, there’d never been any kind of lock for the door. But then, almost immediately, Kate spoiled it all by bringing over a huge, shiny combination lock. So far Ari hadn’t been able to figure out the combination, so up until now his investigations hadn’t been too successful. And since Kate had threatened to practice her karate on him if she caught him spying on them again, he had to go about the whole thing very carefully.
Nothing he’d tried had been very productive. Once or twice he had crouched outside the door when the girls were in the shed, but he hadn’t been able to see anything at all, and all he’d heard were some vague mumbles. There had been an interesting smell, however. A kind of repulsive smell, actually, but nothing he could put his finger on. So up until today his investigation of Kate and Aurora’s science-fair project had been pretty much of a flop. But today was going to be different. Today he had a ladder.
The ladder, which his father sometimes used when he was working on a particularly tall sculpture, usually sat against the back wall of the new studio. But late last night after everyone had gone to bed, Ari had carried it out and hidden it in the tall weeds right behind the shed. It hadn’t been easy, because it was a long ladder and pretty heavy. But now all he had to do was wait until Kate and Aurora were busy inside the shed and then creep around it and very quietly lift the ladder up against the wall. And once he was on the roof he could peek down through the skylights—and see exactly what was going on. He could hardly wait. He was crouched down in a “ready-set-go” position when Kate and Aurora finally stopped gabbing and went on toward the shed.
At last the distant mumble of voices stopped, and a moment later Ari heard the creak of rusty hinges. And then silence. He eased himself up and peered around the bronze snake. Sure enough, they’d gone inside. A very few moments later Ari was behind the shed, getting ready to lift the ladder into place.
He’d known it wasn’t going to be easy, and it wasn’t. The ladder was heavy and hard to handle. After several tries he managed to get it up on one end and began to walk it toward the shack. He was almost close enough to begin lowering the top toward the edge of the roof, when he suddenly became aware of a threatening sound. Something was buzzing around his left ear. Something that sounded like a particularly nervous honeybee.
Ari wasn’t too fond of honeybees, and he knew, from painful past experience, that they didn’t like him much either. Hold perfectly still, he told himself. Pretend you’re not even there. Nobody’s here, bee. See, there’s nobody here at all.
But the bee didn’t buy it. Instead it kept getting closer and buzzing louder. But it wasn’t until he actually felt something—like the bee coming in for a landing on the top of his ear—that he jerked his head and tried to duck away. And at that moment the heavy ladder gave a lurch, slipped out of his grip—and came crashing down against the shed roof.
Ari froze in horror. A split second later a loud voice yelled, “Hey! What was that?” And in another split second Ari was off, running as if his life depended on it. Which it probably did.
Chapter 3
HALFWAY UP THE DRIVEWAY, while running at top speed, Ari came to a swift decision. The kind of swift decision that investigative reporters have to be good at making. This time the decision was—forget the cherry tree. Head for the holly bush.
His cherry tree hiding place was farther away, and besides, he was pretty sure Aurora knew about it. And if she did, he wasn’t at all sure she wouldn’t tell, even though he was her only brother and not quite nine years old, which was way too young to be used for karate practice. The holly bush, on the other hand, was closer but a lot pricklier. Ari was way back in the holly bush when Kate came pounding down the driveway. Closing his eyes, he scrunched down among the prickly branches, trying not to say “Ouch.” At least not very loudly.
After a minute he heard other footsteps going by. Softer ones. Probably Aurora’s. Both sets of footsteps came to a stop on the sidewalk only a few feet from Ari’s hiding place.
“Did you see anyone?” It was Aurora’s voice.
“No,” Kate answered, “I didn’t see the little geek. But it must have been Ari.”
For a moment no one said anything. “Well,” Kate said, “don’t you think it was?”
“Well, maybe,” Aurora said finally. “But maybe not. It could have been Bucky.”
Right! Good for Aurora, Ari tho
ught. It certainly could have been Bucky. In fact he’d heard a rumor that Bucky and his PRO buddies were planning to spy on other people’s science-fair projects to get some new ideas, because all the ones they’d tried had self-destructed. “Tell her, Aurora,” he whispered under his breath. “Tell her about Bucky getting new science-fair ideas by spying.”
But Aurora didn’t say anything more and only a few seconds later Kate said, “Well, where are you going, twerp? I thought you were still asleep.”
Ari pushed aside a particularly prickly branch and peeked out in time to see a small, pigeon-toed, bristly-haired figure trudging up the sidewalk. Carson Nicely. “I’m going to Web’s house,” he heard Carson say. “To see Web.”
Just before Ari turned loose of the holly branch so he could stick his punctured finger in his mouth, he saw Carson start on up the sidewalk. But a moment later he heard Kate’s voice again. “Wait a minute. Come back here. I want to ask you something. Did you see anybody running out from behind the Pappases’ house just now?”
There was a long pause. Ari pushed the dangerous branch aside again and saw Carson peering nearsightedly down the driveway. “No,” he said finally. “Who was it?”
“Holy cow!” Kate said in an exasperated tone of voice. “That’s what I was asking you. We don’t know who it was. But somebody just tried to spy on our science project. Or else sabotage it.”
“Sabo … what?” Carson said.
“Sabotage. You know. Blow it up, or steal it, or stuff like that.”
“Ohhh,” Ari heard Carson say. “Ohhh.” He didn’t say anything more but Ari could see that he was nodding his head slowly up and down and his eyes, behind his round glasses, were wide and glassy.
“Oh for Pete squeaks,” Kate said. “You’re no help. Come on, Aurora. Let’s go look for clues. Maybe whoever it was left some clues.”
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