Vanishing Acts

by Leslie Margolis

“Okay, this has gone too far,” said my mother. “We want to help, but obviously my daughter is innocent, and she has homework—you know, since she is in the seventh grade.”

  “We can’t keep you here against your will,” Rudy said, throwing up his hands. “And I think we’re about done here, anyway. Thank you for your time, Maggie.”

  “Wait!” I said. “I’ve answered all of your questions, and now I have one question for you.”

  The detectives all looked at one another, surprised, I guess. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to question them. Okay, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t, but there was something I had to know. “What did the ransom note say?” I asked.

  “We never claimed there was a ransom note,” Officer Flinti said.

  “You didn’t tell me, but I overheard,” I admitted.

  No one looked at me. They seemed embarrassed, uncomfortable.

  My mom put her hand on my shoulder. “Honey, we should go. That’s not the kind of information they can share with civilians.”

  Just then Rudy coughed. “No, it’s okay. Someone leaked it to the press, and it’s going to be all over the media tomorrow morning anyway. So we can tell you.” He flipped through his notes and then read the message. “It said, ‘We have the boy. Don’t bother looking. You’ll never find him.’”

  Chapter 15

  My mother and I didn’t speak for the entire six-block walk to the subway. Nor did we say anything as we headed down the dirty concrete steps, or through the squeaky turnstile, or onto the platform. We both seemed too upset, too worried about poor Seth. That note.

  As our train rumbled into the station, I decided something. I’d already tracked down stolen dogs and found a giant fortune. I couldn’t think of any reason why I couldn’t rescue one missing movie star.

  I’d launch my own investigation, find those kidnappers, and save Seth Ryan.

  In fact, I knew just where to begin.

  Chapter 16

  Beatrix and Sonya were more than willing to help out, which was lucky for me. Not only did they love Seth Ryan, they also knew more about the guy than anyone I’d ever met. So first thing Saturday morning, I went straight to Sonya’s house.

  “Welcome to our first official emergency meeting of the Seth Ryan Fan Club,” said Sonya as I joined them on her bedroom floor. She knocked a miniature gavel on the ground. “I feel like we should make up T-shirts or something.”

  “This is serious business,” said Beatrix.

  “I know. I’m totally serious.” Sonya pushed her braids off her shoulders and pouted, insulted. “T-shirts don’t mean ‘not serious.’ It’s the opposite—they’re to commemorate the moments leading up to our rescuing of Seth Ryan from some evildoer.”

  “You love saying ‘evildoer,’ don’t you?” I asked, since I’d already heard her say it three times in the past hour.

  “I do,” Sonya said with a small shrug. “I can’t help it.”

  Both she and Beatrix were already wearing matching “I Seth Ryan” shirts, but I didn’t bother pointing this out. Instead I said, “Let’s hope we track down Seth before any T-shirts would make it back from the printer.”

  Sonya frowned, thinking. “Then maybe we should pre-order victory shirts.”

  “My mom says I have to stop spending my allowance on Seth Ryan memorabilia,” said Beatrix. “Or, as she calls it, ‘Seth Ryan junk.’ But we can figure that out later. Let’s just get started. Everyone present, say ‘aye.’”

  “Aye,” said Sonya.

  “Aye,” said Beatrix.

  “Do you two go through this every week?” I asked, since it was just the three of us on Sonya’s bedroom floor.

  “Just say ‘aye,’ “ Beatrix told me. “We’re running out of time.”

  “Aye,” I repeated.

  Sonya looked around the room. “Should we wait for Lucy?”

  “No, she called and said she had too much homework this weekend,” said Beatrix.

  “But we have all the same classes, practically, and there’s actually not that much work,” I said.

  “We’re not here to talk about Lucy,” said Beatrix. “We’re here to find Seth Ryan. Oh—and to welcome you to the official club.”

  Sonya turned to me with a serious expression. “Maggie, do you agree to uphold our founding principles and to accept all the rules and regulations of the Seth Ryan Fan Club?”

  “Um, what are those rules?” I wondered.

  “There’s only one so far. You must really like Seth Ryan and promise not to do him or his image any harm,” said Sonya.

  “Oh, okay. I agree. Obviously, since I’m trying to help Seth here. So can we get on with things? I figure we should review anything and everything we know about the guy. That way we’ll know where to look for clues, and we can also come up with a list of suspects.”

  “No problem.” Sonya reached under her bed and dragged out the enormous and obviously titled Seth Ryan Scrapbook. Then she heaved it into the middle of our circle.

  “So you went for the extra-big notebook?” I asked.

  “Nope. This is just the first one,” said Beatrix, pulling out another. Both notebooks were green—Seth’s favorite color. “Let’s start from the beginning.” She opened the notebook to page one. “Seth was born on a cold wintry night in January. Same year as all of us! Sadly, his mother died soon after his first birthday. She got this rare and extremely aggressive form of cancer before he even learned to walk.”

  I shivered. “That’s terrible. Poor guy!”

  Beatrix and Sonya nodded, and then Beatrix cleared her throat and continued. “That meant his father took care of him, solo, in Buffalo, New York. That’s upstate—almost in Canada.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Seth told me he’s from Buffalo.”

  Beatrix looked up from her notebook, exasperated. “Okay, we know you got to hang out with Seth Ryan last week, but you don’t have to rub it in!”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “Let’s just skip to his first big break,” said Sonya. “I doubt all this other stuff is relevant, and we don’t know much about Seth’s first year.”

  “Okay, you’re right.” Beatrix turned the page. “When Seth was little, his dad owned a used-car lot called Bill’s of Buffalo.”

  “His dad’s name is Bill,” said Sonya.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I figured.”

  Beatrix went on. “He put Seth in a local car commercial when Seth was one and a half. In it, Seth was shown driving an old red pickup while singing the Bill’s of Buffalo theme song and wearing a blue cowboy hat.”

  “Even back then, people noticed his smile. How it kind of lit up his whole face,” Sonya said.

  I bent over the notebook and looked at the baby pictures of Seth. It was true. “He already looked like a star. Even as a baby.”

  “He has the kind of face you can’t forget, which is exactly what an advertising executive from New York City thought when he was in town for business and happened to turn on the TV in his hotel room,” Sonya explained.

  “It was serendipitous, really,” said Beatrix. “This man was supposed to fly in and out of town on the same day, but then Buffalo got slammed with five feet of snow. No flights were getting out, and they even closed all the roads out of town. The guy got stuck in Buffalo for three whole days. He was flipping through the channels on the TV in his hotel room, looking for the local weather, when he became mesmerized by a singing, smiling boy.”

  “Do you guys know what Seth was singing?” I wondered.

  “Do we?” asked Sonya. She and Beatrix smiled at each other and then jumped to their feet.

  “We are Buffalo Bill’s

  Next to the old mill

  Right off Route Ten

  And we’ll tell you again

  We are Buffalo Bill’s

  Next to the old mill

  Right off Route Ten

  Don’t mistake us for a hen

  Come on in

  Don’t be shy

  We’ve got ca
rs, trucks, and smiles

  All of which will run for miles!”

  I laughed and clapped as they took their bows. “That was awesome. Have you guys been practicing?”

  “No, we’ve just seen the commercial a bunch of times on YouTube. Want to check it out?” asked Sonya. She grabbed her laptop and found the commercial before I had time to agree, although I would have.

  On the screen, a baby Seth sang his heart out like a pint-size pro. He had the same shaggy dark hair, big brown eyes, and magical smile.

  “He’s so cute,” I said. “And he looks so much like himself. I mean, I guess that doesn’t make a lot of sense, but—”

  “But I know exactly what you mean,” Sonya agreed. “He’s, like, a natural-born star. Even as a baby.”

  “Exactly,” I said, marveling at the clip. “It’s wild.”

  “The advertising executive was in the middle of casting a national diaper commercial, and after he saw Seth in the car ad, he knew he’d be perfect,” Beatrix explained. “So he called Buffalo Bill’s and asked where he could find the kid. When Seth’s dad answered, he thought it was a prank call. Because why would someone from the city be in Buffalo? And calling during a blizzard? That’s why he laughed and hung up.”

  Sonya interrupted. “The guy called back, but Seth’s dad still didn’t believe him. So finally the guy borrowed some snowshoes and trudged all the way over to Bill and Seth’s house to prove himself.”

  “He offered on the spot to fly Bill and Seth down to New York City for the shoot,” said Beatrix. “And Bill figured, why not? He could use a change of scenery, and Seth always liked airplanes in theory. Why not give him a chance to ride on one in real life? He figured it would be a fluke, a one-time thing.”

  “But it was not a one-time thing,” Sonya said. “The commercial went international and the company sold a record number of diapers.”

  “Seth Ryan became the most famous baby in the world. After the diaper campaign, his image was used to sell baby food, toy trains, Legos, swing sets, toy boats, and organic chicken strips.”

  Beatrix flipped through the scrapbook, showing me all of Seth’s old ads. Each page showed him posing near a product and looking a little bit older. It was funny watching him grow up this way—kind of like his baby book was sponsored by tons of different companies.

  “By the time he was four, he was the most photographed child in the world. According to what we’ve read, his career became difficult to manage, so Bill sold his used-car lot and began representing Seth full time, as his agent. And when that became too complicated, he hired Fiona to act as manager. She’s the one who helped Seth make the jump from modeling to acting. Which meant moving to Hollywood.”

  “How old was he when he moved?” I asked.

  “Eight. That’s when he got his own show: Wonderful Sam. And that’s when his acting career really took off,” Sonya said.

  I flipped through Beatrix and Sonya’s scrapbook and glanced at the countless number of pictures of a smiling Seth Ryan.

  “When he turned ten, he was a huge star,” said Beatrix. “And Fiona and Bill started fighting over his career.” She held up a second notebook. “This book covers the Fiona years: Seth from age nine to the present, when he went from being in movies to starring in movies, and then from starring in a movie a year to starring in two movies a year.”

  “By the time he turned eleven, he had his own lunchbox, an action figure, a line of surfwear, a line of sportswear, sunglasses and sneakers, three official biographies, a coffee table book, and two albums,” said Sonya. “She really did wonders for his career!”

  “Something his dad resented,” said Beatrix. “At least that’s what some people say. Others even claim his dad mistreated him. Stole his money and exploited his image.”

  “Do you think that’s true?” I wondered. I thought back to my encounter with Seth at the Pizza Den. How when his dad came up he acted so vague, clearly not wanting to talk about the guy. Was his dad that awful?

  “Two years ago, Seth broke his arm snowboarding on a half-pipe for a movie about a hotel hit by an avalanche—Snowed Inn. According to some, Seth’s dad pressured him to do his own stunts for the publicity,” Sonya said. “And that’s basically when Bill and Fiona both got lawyers and began fighting for custody of Seth.”

  “Can I see that?” I asked.

  Sonya and Beatrix handed over the notebook. I read a bunch of articles about the battle between Seth’s dad and his manager.

  According to Bill, he wanted Seth to take a break from acting and go back to regular school.

  According to Fiona, Bill was trying to steal money from his son and sabotage his entire career.

  And according to Seth . . . Well, this seemed strange. I read three more articles and could not find any actual quotes or opinions from Seth.

  “This is so weird,” I said. “It looks like Seth never had anything to say about this.”

  “He must have,” said Sonya. “It’s his life.” She read over my shoulder. “But you’re right, there’s nothing here. Funny how I never noticed that before.”

  “Maybe they couldn’t print his statements because he’s a minor,” said Beatrix. “Anyway, in the end the lawyers decided that Seth would become an emancipated minor. That meant he could do whatever he wanted, and I guess he wanted to act, because he chose Fiona.”

  “It seems kind of strange, choosing your manager over your own father,” said Sonya.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Especially when your manager has Fiona’s toxic personality.”

  “But who knows what Seth’s dad was really like? Maybe worse,” Beatrix said. “Once his dad lost custody, Seth filed a restraining order against him. That means his dad isn’t allowed to come within five hundred feet of him.”

  “He must be worse,” said Sonya.

  “Maybe.” I closed the notebook and tried to make sense of it all. There was too much information. I didn’t know where to begin. What I needed to do was simplify things. “Let’s make a list of suspects,” I said, pulling out my notebook.

  “Good idea,” said Beatrix. “Obviously we should put Seth’s father on the list. And Fiona, too. You know, maybe one of them kidnapped him to get back at the other. It only makes sense, since they’ve been fighting over him for so long.”

  I wrote their names in my notebook and stared at them.

  “Fiona is pretty uptight and overly protective,” I said. “But as his manager, she gets a percentage of his salary. So I don’t know if she would have a motive to kidnap him.”

  “Then it must be his dad,” said Beatrix.

  “Maybe,” I said. “But what kind of dad kidnaps his own kid and leaves such a threatening note?”

  “Good point. Hey, what about that lady, Jenna?” asked Beatrix. “The one who keeps fighting with Jones Reynaldo about filming on her street?”

  “Oh, come on. She’s friends with my parents,” I said. “She probably drives a station wagon.”

  Sonya raised her eyebrows. “Station wagons have oversize trunks. Perfect for hiding kidnapping victims. Plus, she threatened to shut down the movie.”

  I couldn’t deny any of this, but I still had my doubts.

  “I’ll talk to her,” I said, adding Jenna Beasely to the list—just to make my friends happy. “And I can talk to Fiona, too, since we’ve already met a couple of times. Or I’ll try to, anyway.” I looked at my list. “So that’s three suspects. Anyone else?”

  “What about Brandon Wilson?” asked Beatrix.

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  “You know—that other actor we saw on the set of Vanished. He’s got a small part, and check this out.” Beatrix flipped through her scrapbook to an article about Brandon. “Apparently, he was supposed to get the lead in Vanished, but they gave it to Seth at the last minute.”

  I read the piece. Brandon Wilson was quoted as saying, “If it weren’t for Seth Ryan, I’d be the biggest teen sensation . . .”

  “That’s pretty crazy,” I sai
d.

  “We’ll talk to Brandon,” Sonya said. “We need to be at the set tomorrow, anyway.”

  “On a Sunday?” I asked. “With the star of the movie missing?”

  Beatrix nodded. “Jones is insisting that the show must go on.”

  “Interesting,” I said. I kind of wanted to add Jones Reynaldo to the list of suspects, just because he’d acted like a jerk. But I couldn’t think of any motivation he’d have for kidnapping Seth. After all, it’s not like he’d sabotage his own movie.

  “Do you mind if I take this notebook home?” I asked.

  “Go ahead,” said Sonya. “But be careful with it. We’ve already lost Seth Ryan in the flesh; let’s not lose all his pictures, too.”

  Since I passed by Lucy’s house on my way back home anyway, I decided to knock on her door to find out why she hadn’t been at Sonya’s. I also figured she’d want to be filled in on the Seth Ryan search. Except no one answered.

  This wasn’t too big of a deal, I thought as I continued walking down the street.

  Lucy could’ve been lots of places.

  But I never would have guessed she’d be where I found her.

  Chapter 17

  “Um, hi?” I asked, walking into my living room, where Lucy and Finn were playing video games and giggling, so wrapped up in each other they didn’t even notice.

  “Lucy?” I tried again.

  “Hey, Maggie,” she said as she scrambled to her feet.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  She flashed me a guilty smile. “I stopped by to see if you wanted to hang out. And you weren’t here. So Finn invited me in. We were just playing Hoops Away.”

  “That’s Hoops Today,” said Finn.

  “Right.” Lucy giggled. “Hoops Today.”

  “We had plans to meet up at Sonya’s this morning, remember? The Seth Ryan search.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Lucy looked down at her blue Converse high-tops. She’d drawn a little brown owl on each of the rubber tips—owls she now stared at like they were a part of our conversation. “I kind of forgot.”