“Okay,” her mom said. For a second, she looked like she was going to say something else. But she didn’t.
Upstairs in his bedroom, Oliver was video chatting with Frankie about his suspected move.
“Belchertown?” Frankie exclaimed. “Is that even a real city?”
“In Massachusetts.”
“C’mon, it has to be a made-up place. Like Timbuktu or Walla Walla.”
“Those are real places, too, Frankie.”
Oliver hadn’t meant to get into it, because saying it out loud made it seem all the more inevitable. But Frankie didn’t miss much, and when he asked Oliver why he’d been acting all quiet and moody lately, Oliver finally told him.
“Dang,” Frankie said. “This really blows.”
Matilda Sandoval’s face popped up on the screen. “What blows?” she asked nonchalantly.
“Whoa! Where the heck did you come from?”
It was a fair question, seeing as how a girl they had only met this morning had now, somehow, just joined their video chat.
“You look down, Oliver,” Matilda said, leaning in closer to her screen to get a better look at him.
“I think my mom and I might have to sell the house and move to Belchertown, Massachusetts, and live with my uncle.”
“Seriously,” Frankie said. “Did she just hack into our video chat?”
“I’m sorry, Oliver,” Matilda said. “Though if it makes you feel any better, Belchertown does have a very low crime rate. Mostly petty burglary, some insurance fraud.”
“Thanks, Matilda,” Oliver said.
“No problem,” Matilda said. “And, um, I’m sorry about lunch today.”
“It’s okay,” Oliver said. “We’re cool.”
“Yeah?” Matilda said, smiling for, Oliver realized, the first time since he’d met her. “Thanks. See you tomorrow.”
She disconnected, vanishing just as quickly as she’d appeared.
“Man, I’m telling you,” Frankie said. “That girl is weird.”
Oliver didn’t see it that way, though. She was odd, there was no way around that. But the way she introduced herself in class and how she came up to them at lunch, that took nerve. It had to be tough, moving all the time, always being new. What was really weird was how she hadn’t given up and become that quiet kid who disappears in the back row and does their best to stay invisible.
Weird, and also impressive.
Mrs. Figge left around eight thirty, and Oliver went downstairs to ask his mom if she needed help cleaning up.
“You’re sweet,” she said. “But there’s not much. I’ve got it. So, how was your first day?”
“Okay,” Oliver said. “We saw a video on that Oglethorpe guy. The one they renamed the school after.”
“Oh yeah?” his mom said. “I actually grew up with him, you know.”
“Really?”
His mom nodded. “We used to walk to school together.”
“Wow,” Oliver said. “He was really smart, huh?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Kind of felt bad for him, though,” Oliver ventured. “Even when he was winning all those awards and everything, he still looked sad.”
Oliver’s mom thought about this for a moment. “Well,” she said wistfully, “Preston always had an easier time with numbers than he did with people.”
“Miss anything?” the big man said as he emerged from the kitchen with a heaping mug of hot cocoa.
“Nah, just saying good night to the kid,” said the other man, who was sitting at the dining room table and listening in on a black headset.
It was a strange scene. The two men were lying low in a cute little bungalow house in a neighborhood only a couple of miles away from Oliver’s. But there was nothing cute about all the high-tech computer equipment on the table or the lack of serious furniture. There wasn’t anything that could be considered “décor,” suggesting that the house was being used less as a home and more as some kind of command center or lair.
Sullivan, the man with the cocoa, was massively built with an open, almost friendly face. He was the kind of guy people call a “big teddy bear.”
Of course, people tend to forget that technically a teddy bear is still a bear.
The man listening on the headset was Gilbert. A sour, imposing man with beady eyes and a compulsive need to constantly squeeze his purple tension ball, Gilbert was, more by default than merit, the brains of the pair.
Sullivan sat down next to Gilbert and put on his headset as well. “She told him about Massachusetts yet?” he asked, a curious little tremble in his voice.
Gilbert waved his hand dismissively as they listened in on Oliver and his mom. “Shut up,” he said. “They’re talking about Oglethorpe.” Gilbert listened some more, then picked up his cell phone and started texting.
“The boss is gonna want to hear about this,” Gilbert said. “Pronto.”
Sullivan wiped his nose with one sleeve, his moistened eyes with the other.
Gilbert finished his text and looked over at Sullivan. “Oh, come on,” he said with disgust. “Are you … are you crying?”
“It’s just not fair!” Sullivan bellowed now that he was outed and there was no point in hiding his emotions. “She’s going to lose the house. She grew up in that house, you know.”
“Geez, Sully …”
“She’s a good mom,” Sullivan whimpered. “She deserves better.”
Gilbert reached over and smacked his partner upside the head. “What am I always telling you, huh?”
“Don’t connect with the mark,” Sullivan said, chastened.
“That’s right.”
Sullivan nodded in shame. Then he considered for a moment. “But, Gilbert?”
“What?”
“She’s not the mark. She’s the bait, right?”
“Sully.”
“Uh-huh?”
“Shut up.”
The shaggy janitor was still getting used to the new job. He finished at the school right around seven, at which time he got into an old Oldsmobile Cutlass and drove to several nearby supermarkets, making the exact same purchase at each one. After he finished his shopping, he came home for the night sometime around nine o’clock.
Home, curiously, was not a house or an apartment, but an old, seemingly empty brick building in the warehouse district.
Once he finished bringing all his bags of groceries inside, the shaggy janitor immediately took off his false hair, placing the wig and fake beard on a small workbench by the door. It was always the first thing he did once he no longer needed the disguise; all that bogus hair really, really itched.
In reality, the janitor was clean-shaven with short-cropped hair, a look he adopted more for its simplicity than its style. After scratching his scalp and rubbing the feeling back into his cheeks, he finally turned on some lights.
Like the beard and wig, the old brick warehouse was itself a disguise. What looked like a run-down old building on the outside was, on the inside, a high-tech command center that would put most spy movies to shame. In addition to a slew of next-generation computer equipment, a dozen video screens hung from the ceiling showing twenty-four-hour news networks, internet feeds, and satellite imagery. Several old-school portable blackboards filled the perimeter of the space, creating a massive semicircle. At the center of the semicircle was a small living area, consisting of a refrigerator, sofa bed, table and chair, Eames recliner, and a makeshift kitchen counter piled with cheap dishware and a microwave.
The table was round and had a chair at one end and four poster-sized digital screens hanging where the other chairs should have been. Each screen displayed a portrait, three men and one woman.
“You’re home later than usual,” a woman’s voice said as the janitor dropped the last of the grocery bags on the table. He looked up as the woman in the portrait came to life. The image was shockingly convincing, the detail so perfect it was all but impossible for the casual observer to really be sure there wasn’t an actual, livi
ng person inside that picture frame.
She was a very serious-looking woman. Though she scowled frequently, her eyes were kind, albeit troubled. She wore a prim dress with a high neckline and kept her hair in a tight, efficient bun.
“Oh,” he said. “Good evening, Marie.”
Marie Curie frowned. “We’re worried about you, Preston.”
The janitor, a grown-up Preston Oglethorpe, gave Marie Curie a wry look.
“Okay, maybe not all of us,” she conceded. “But I am, deeply.”
“I’m fine, Marie.”
“I don’t think you are.”
“Ach, lay off the boy, Marie,” Albert Einstein said, his portrait popping awake to join the discussion. His snow-white hair leaped out in all directions, in contrast to the thick, bushy hedgehog of a mustache planted on his upper lip. The expression on his face was a mixture of weary correction and incorrigible mischief, like an uncle who always tells you that you’re doing it wrong but knows all the best inappropriate jokes.
“Preston, you’re home,” joined in Leonardo da Vinci. “How’s the new job, my boy?”
“Yes,” Albert said snidely. “How goes the toilet scrubbing?”
“I wouldn’t think a patent clerk would put on such airs,” Leonardo quipped. He had long, flowing hair and a beard down to his chest. He looked like a wizard from a fantasy novel, except instead of the pointy hat, he wore a floppy cap that rested rather jauntily on the top of his head.
“Well, seeing as the patent clerk solved the equation of the universe—”
“What about the equation of hair care? Going to get around to that one anytime soon?”
“Will you two knock it off?” Marie interjected.
“Locks of love over there started it,” Albert huffed.
Preston looked at the last portrait, the one of his fourth and final idol, Nikola Tesla. Impeccably dressed, meticulously groomed, and broodingly handsome, he had a penetrating stare that was equal parts sadness, madness, and haunted genius. Unlike the other three, his image remained frozen in portraiture, as it always was.
When Preston had first created the portraits, he spent weeks tinkering with Tesla’s artificial intelligence, convinced there must be something wrong with the programming or the circuitry. But from a diagnostic point of view, everything was working as it was supposed to. Tesla just didn’t want to talk.
Preston walked over to the far end of the warehouse, where he pressed a button on the wall, causing a massive dry-erase board to descend from the rafters. The whiteboard was almost as big as the wall itself, and on it was a flowchart. Starting all the way on the left side was a box with arrows coming out of it, connecting it to other boxes. Then those boxes had arrows coming out of them as well. It just kept going on like that, one box leading to another box, then another, all the way across this giant dry-erase board. And for each box there was a piece of data written inside. Sometimes the data was an event, sometimes it was a date, sometimes it was information only Preston could understand.
“Stop giving me the look, Marie,” Preston said as he stared at the flowchart. She hung behind him now. Preston had hooked up his four heroes to a rack-and-pulley system that gave their screens free run of the warehouse.
“Preston, I’m begging you one last time,” Marie said. “Go to the police.”
“The police,” Albert scoffed. “Bah! They’d be out of their league.”
“It pains me, Marie, but I agree with Albert,” Leonardo said. “I think we’re well beyond the reach of conventional law enforcement.”
“We have to do something—”
“I am doing something,” Preston said, staring fixedly at the wall.
“Relax, Marie,” Albert said drolly. “I’m sure Flowers for Algernon here has it all covered.”
“When Townsend—”
“Don’t!” Preston said quickly. “You know the rules.”
“Fine.” Marie sighed, rolling her eyes a little. “When he gets here, it won’t be a laughing matter, I promise you that.”
“Oh, he’s here already.”
The room got quiet.
“What?” Marie said softly.
“If my calculations are correct, he’s already in town,” Preston said patiently. “And my calculations are always correct.”
“They weren’t in Dayton,” Albert said under his breath.
“Ouch,” Leonardo said.
“Dayton was an anomaly,” Preston said testily. “A fluke. I was compromised and distracted.”
“Oh, and you aren’t now?” Marie countered.
“For the last time,” Preston said even more testily. “I know what I’m doing!”
“Very well, my dear boy,” Leonardo said calmly. “But, if I may ask, what, exactly, are you doing? And what’s in all those grocery bags?”
Preston turned around to look at the portraits.
“Cardamom,” Preston said.
“Cardamom?” Albert said. “What the—”
“It’s a spice,” Leonardo said helpfully. “Member of the ginger family, native to India …”
“Oh, shut up. I know what cardamom is. But why is this idiot hoarding it?”
“Because under the right circumstances,” Preston said, a slightly ominous tone creeping into his voice, “one jar of cardamom can change everything.”
Missing Matilda * Henry’s Market (over on MacDonald) * Billy Fargus Can’t Feel His Face * Principal Wilson Opts for Rehabilitation * Matilda Returns with Bad News
Oliver spent the next week and a half trying not to think about moving to Massachusetts. During the school day, at least, he had plenty of distractions. Middle school was a big adjustment—lockers, changing classes, and Billy Fargus slowly but surely making his way closer to Oliver and Frankie’s end of the cafeteria table.
“What’s with you?” Frankie asked.
“What?” Oliver said, looking up absently.
“You haven’t even touched your lunch. What gives?”
“Matilda isn’t at school today.”
“So?”
Oliver shrugged. Ever since she’d hacked into Oliver and Frankie’s video chat last week, Matilda had been keeping to herself. She’d say hello to the boys now and then, but she spent most of her free time with her nose buried in her composition book. Especially after school, when she sat under her tree and watched everyone leave, all the while writing furiously in that book.
Though Oliver was curious to find out what Matilda was writing, he was also curious about her. She’d moved around a lot, had to start over at a new school a lot, and as the prospect of moving to a new town and a new school loomed large in his near future, he was interested in what that had been like, not to mention sympathetic.
Oliver was so lost in thought that he hadn’t noticed a shadow descending over him and Frankie.
“Here’s the deal,” the shadow, a.k.a. Billy Fargus, said, leaning across the table and staring at Frankie. “Give me your lunch and you don’t eat today, or I punch you in the mouth and you don’t eat for a week.”
Frankie mulled it over for about a second and a half, long enough to preserve at least a modicum of dignity, and then handed over his sandwich.
“He does make a compelling argument,” Frankie said as Billy Fargus walked away with his lunch.
Oliver took a bite of his own sandwich, then opened it up to look inside. “We should have given him mine,” he said, slumping in his seat. “My mom forgot to buy jelly last night.”
Frankie picked listlessly at Oliver’s chips while watching Billy Fargus savor the gourmet sandwich Frankie’s dad had made for him. The kid couldn’t get enough of it, closing his eyes in delight as he crammed every last morsel into his mouth.
“Chicken pesto on olive loaf,” Frankie said. “That ain’t right.”
“No! No, no, no!” Frankie’s dad wailed from the kitchen as Oliver and Frankie entered the house.
Frankie was unfazed by his father’s cries of distress. “Hey, I’m home,” he called as he
calmly led Oliver into the kitchen.
“Oh, hey, guys,” Frankie’s dad said, hanging up the phone. “Listen, I need a huge favor. I’m all out of cardamom, and the only place that has any is Henry’s Market over on MacDonald, and I can’t go because I have canapés in the oven for the Carmichael party.”
“Fine,” Frankie said, heading back to the front door.
“Thanks, buddy!” his dad called after them.
“Yeah, yeah,” Frankie muttered. And like that, he and Oliver left as quickly as they’d come.
Henry’s Market was a little mom-and-pop grocery store about a twenty-minute walk from Frankie’s house. Frankie stalked with a quick, irritated stride all the way to the market; Oliver had a hard time keeping up.
“Come on,” Frankie said impatiently. He was already at the counter with the cardamom. “Just pick one.”
Oliver stood in the jelly aisle trying to make a decision, but it wasn’t going well. Usually buying jelly was not a challenging undertaking, but the aisle was full of exotic artisan jams. He just wanted basic grape or strawberry—he’d even take blackberry in a pinch—but no dice.
“All they’ve got are these weird flavors,” Oliver said.
“Well, it’s either that or another dry sandwich tomorrow.”
Oliver scowled and reconsidered the selection. He settled on mango-chutney jam and joined Frankie at the counter.
The countergirl rang them up with an exhaustive sigh.
“Here,” she said, pulling a piece of beef jerky from a jar on the counter and handing it to Oliver. “It comes free with the jam,” she said. “It’s, like, promotional.”
Oliver looked quizzically at the jerky.
“Can I have it?” Frankie asked.
“You don’t even like jerky,” Oliver said, handing the stick of dried meat to his friend.
Connect the Dots Page 3
