by Ann Cameron
Published by Yearling, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books a division of Random House, Inc., New York
Text copyright © 1988 by Ann Cameron
Illustrations copyright © 1988 by Diane Allison
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eISBN: 978-0-307-80017-6
Reprinted by arrangement with Random House Young Readers Group
v3.1
In memory of Ernst Hacker—
and for everyone who dares to dare
A.C.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
1. Crimebusters
2. We Talk Things Over
3. We Meet the Mighty One
4. I Tell a Story
5. We Capture the Great Goo-Goo
6. A Conference
7. Trees Again
8. We Watch the Wizard
9. We Report
10. We Test Eugene
11. The Light at the End of the Trail
About the Author
1.
Crimebusters
It was a morning when the sun stayed in bed.
It was a morning when the clouds had pillow fights.
It was a morning when it looked like it could rain rubber boots, submarines, lost pirate ships, sunken treasures, or a whole new world.
My best friend, Gloria, my little brother, Huey, and I were in the post office, mailing some letters for my mother. When we finished, the rain started. We couldn’t leave.
We were alone in the post-office lobby. The rain was pounding down on the roof.
Gloria and I stared out a window. We couldn’t see anything but water.
“This is like living in an aquarium!” Gloria said.
“When can we go home?” Huey asked.
“Don’t worry!” I said. “Someday—tomorrow, next week, next month—it’s got to stop raining.”
We looked around the lobby. There was a poster explaining how to collect stamps. There was a notice about how much it cost to mail things. There was a bunch of papers hanging on a hook on the wall.
Gloria took the papers off their hook. We looked at them over her shoulder.
Every page had a set of fingerprints at the bottom and two photos of a person in the middle. In big letters at the top of each page it said WANTED! CITIZENS’ ALERT!
“Reports on criminals!” I said.
“Right!” Gloria said. She started reading out loud. “ ‘Evelyn Gertrude Smith. Held up freeway tollbooths in Ohio. Stole seven thousand five hundred thirty-one dollars and twenty-five cents in quarters.
“ ‘Ernest “Moonface” Wallace. Rustles cattle to save them from slaughterhouses. Sells them to rodeos.
“ ‘Eugene George Johnson, “the Great Imitator.” Twenty-one years old. Uses many names. Has struck in thirty-two states. Robs banks while pretending to be bank worker. Has photographic memory. Talks in a strange private language. Also speaks Chinese. Five feet ten inches tall. Has small scar above right upper lip. Hobby: cooking. Twenty-five-thousand-dollar reward for his capture.
“ ‘Mildred Miller. Grade school art teacher. Hijacked airplane in Oregon. Parachuted out over Montana with all the passengers’ money and jewels.’ ”
Gloria stopped reading. “How could a teacher become a criminal?” she asked.
“Remember Miss Reasoner?” I asked. “Our art teacher? Remember the day Bobby Sloan filled a water pistol with paint? He accidentally squirted it in her hair when he was aiming for somebody else. Remember when she took his squirt gun away? She said, ‘You children may drive me to crime!’ ”
“But Miss Reasoner wouldn’t ever become a criminal!” Gloria said.
“Maybe not,” I said. “But there sure is a lot of crime around.”
“A crime could happen right here,” Gloria said.
“Look how dusty these papers are!” I said. “Nobody has read them in weeks.”
“Grownups should be studying these! They should keep up on crime!” Gloria said.
“It’s too bad grownups aren’t more like us,” I said. “We’d be great at catching criminals.”
“We would?” Huey asked.
“Of course we would!” Gloria said.
“We could do it!” I said. “We could be secret agents. Nobody would even notice us, because we’re kids. And all the time, we’d be protecting people—maybe even saving their lives.”
“We might get a big reward,” Huey said.
“We’d be heroes,” I said.
“It’s lucky we have bikes,” Gloria said. “We can hunt for criminals all over town.”
“All over town?” I said.
“Sure!” Gloria said.
“There’s just one problem,” I said. “Dad told us he doesn’t want us to go too far from home this summer.”
“How far is ‘too far’?” Gloria asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Look at it this way,” Gloria said. “We won’t go to New York. We won’t go to Paris. If we find a criminal leaving for Tokyo, we just won’t follow her. So, we won’t go far from home.”
I thought about it. I thought about accidentally going someplace Dad wouldn’t like—and then saying, “Dad, we thought far meant Tokyo.” I didn’t know how he would take it.
“Julian,” Gloria said. “What trouble could we get into?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
Actually, I couldn’t see any trouble coming. But that’s how I am about trouble.
“All right,” I said. “We’ll do it. We’ll be crimebusters.”
I went to the window. It had stopped raining. The sun had come out. It looked like a whole new world.
2.
We Talk Things Over
We got on our bikes and rode to the city park. Huey rode on the back fender of my bike. We sat on the steps by the statues, where no one could hear us, and started planning.
“We need a motto,” I said.
“ ‘All for one, one for all,’ ” Gloria said. “We’ll stick together, no matter what happens! No matter how big the danger!”
“We need a secret code,” Huey said.
“How about a warning?” I suggested. “Always alert.”
Gloria and Huey nodded.
“If we see danger,” I said, “we’ll say, ‘A.A.’ If you hear us say that, Huey, it will mean you should stop talking.”
“Okay,” Huey agreed.
I was glad. If Huey stopped talking when I said “A.A,” I wouldn’t have to step on his foot anymore to stop him. The way things were, sometimes I stepped on his foot too hard. Even worse, sometimes I couldn’t reach it to step on.
“If a situation is too dangerous,” Gloria said, “we need an escape code.”
“Make like a tree, and leave,” I suggested.
“Or just, make like a tree,” Gloria said. “That’s faster. Can you remember it, Huey?”
“Make like a tree!” Huey said, and he wiggled his hands in the air like leaves.
“Remember, Huey, if we say, ‘Make like a tree!’—run!”
Huey said he would.
I figured we were ready for practically anything.
3.
We Meet the Mighty On
e
We went over to Gloria’s house and had lunch. Afterward we started patrolling, riding our bikes around.
It seemed like criminals were staying away from us. By the middle of the afternoon it was really hot, and we were tired.
Around four o’clock we decided to patrol supermarkets. We thought some criminal might go there to get food and take it back to his hideout.
Everything was normal in the first three supermarkets—kids crying, mothers or dads pushing shopping carts, kids trying to ride the carts like scooters, people knocking over hundreds of cans of tuna fish, kids demanding a certain kind of candy advertised on TV.
The fourth supermarket was one I’d never been to before.
We patrolled the same way we had patrolled the others—checking the parking lot first, looking for guns in the backseats of cars, dead bodies, things like that. No luck.
We stopped and looked at a dog inside a car.
“Isn’t he cute?” Gloria said. She wants a dog even more than Huey and I do.
She touched the window glass, and the dog tried to sniff her hand. Then he looked at her very hard with big brown eyes, and whined, and panted a little, and panted a little more. He put his big, shaggy paws against the window.
A woman came up behind us. “It’s a crime!” she said.
“We aren’t doing anything!” Huey said.
“Not you,” the woman said. “The car. The dog. The windows. It’s a crime!”
She pushed by us and went toward the store.
“What’s the crime?” Huey said.
“We have to investigate,” I said.
“Here, pooch!” Gloria called, and put her hand against the window. But the dog didn’t jump up again. He just looked at Gloria, and whined, and dropped his head against the seat.
“That dog is sick,” Gloria said.
“It must be really hot in the car,” Huey said.
“I wonder how long he’s been in there,” I said.
“He needs to get out,” Gloria said. “The sun has made that car like an oven. That’s what the crime is—that he can’t get out. We have to tell the person who owns the car!”
“Let’s get the license number!” I said.
“We went around to the front of the car to find the license plate. Gloria wrote it down: MIGHTY-1.
Then we went into the store and asked for the manager.
A small man came down from the high booth where the money and receipts are kept.
“I’m the manager,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
“It’s about a dog,” I said. “A dog stuck in a car. The windows are closed, and he looks sick.”
“He probably is sick,” the manager said. “He could even die on a day like today if he’s left there too long.”
“Here’s the license number,” Gloria said. She showed him her notebook.
“ ‘Mighty-one’!” said the manager. “Hmm!” He climbed into his booth and used the microphone.
“Will the owner of a car with the license plate Mighty-one come to the manager’s office?” he said.
Then he climbed down from the booth and stood with us, and we waited to see who would answer his call.
A man came toward us. He was the biggest man I ever saw. He must have been practically seven feet tall. He had two huge bags of groceries that he was balancing on his shoulders. He was wearing shorts, and a T-shirt that said RAMBO! He had muscles every place on his body that you could have a muscle, and he looked mean.
I pictured myself getting mashed, pictured Dad standing by my bed afterward, shaking his head sadly and saying, “Julian, you went too far.”
Huey looked from the man’s toes up to his head and back down again, three times, and whispered to the store manager, “When he gets here, why don’t you talk?”
The manager smiled. “You children just speak up,” he said. “You can do it.”
“I’ll do it,” Gloria said. “I love dogs!”
Just then MIGHTY-1 came to a stop, practically on top of us and big as a skyscraper.
He looked at the manager. “So what did you call me for?” he asked.
Gloria looked up at him. “You have a dog?” she asked.
“So what?” MIGHTY-1 said.
“It’s too hot to leave him in a car with the windows rolled up. He could die,” Gloria said.
MIGHTY-1 glared at her. Then he glared at the manager. “You called me over here to let three little kids mess in my business?”
“The children are right,” the manager said.
“Look,” said MIGHTY-1, pointing his finger down at the manager’s nose. “When I bought that dog, they told me he was a strong, healthy dog. They didn’t say anything about car windows. That dog is tough. He can take it.”
I hoped Gloria would say something more. But when I looked around, Gloria was gone!
MIGHTY-1 stuck his chin out. Then he stuck it back in so he could look down and see us.
“Didn’t anybody ever tell you that kids should just mind their own business till they grow up? Especially your girlfriend!”
“She’s not my girlfriend!” I said. “She’s my friend!”
I won’t let anybody say I have a girlfriend—not even a huge, mean man who’s seven feet tall.
“Friend or girlfriend,” MIGHTY-1 said. “Makes no difference. You tell her—”
And then we all saw that Gloria was back.
“You!” MIGHTY-1 roared.
Gloria smiled her prettiest smile. “Excuse me,” she said. “I was checking your car. Your dog just fainted!”
MIGHTY-l’s mouth hung open, like the door of a cave.
“Crumbles fainted!” he said. He dropped all his groceries and ran for the door.
Stuff rolled out of the grocery sacks—a dozen rawhide fake dog bones, thirty-five cans of dog food, a ball with a bell inside, five boxes of Wheaties, Breakfast of Champions, a book called How to Be a He-man, and a magazine with an article called “79 Exercises for Your Toes.”
The manager started picking things up, and we helped him.
Suddenly the manager got a huge grin on his face, just the kind Huey gets. He picked up a book from the magazine rack and stuck it in one of the grocery sacks, under the dog food cans.
The title was How to Take Care of Your Dog.
“Sometimes I have to do mischievous things,” he said. “I just can’t help myself. Now we need to take some water out to Crumbles,” he said.
So we went to the back of the store, put water in a bucket, and took it out to the parking lot.
Crumbles was lying on the ground in the shade. MIGHTY-1 was kneeling next to him, rubbing the dog’s neck.
“We brought some water,” the manager said.
MIGHTY-1 looked up. “Thank you,” he said.
The manager dunked Crumbles’s head in the bucket of water. Then he held Crumbles’s mouth open and poured some water into it.
Crumbles blinked.
“Crumbles! You’re all right! You’re going to be fine! Aren’t you?” MIGHTY-1 said.
Crumbles made a little noise, something like a sigh.
“Oh, my sweet, adorable Crumbles!” said MIGHTY-1, and kissed him on the nose.
4.
I Tell a Story
It was three days later, early in the morning. We hadn’t gotten in any trouble for being secret agents so far. But nothing exciting had happened either.
Since we found Crumbles, we had checked the supermarket parking lots often, looking for dead bodies and sick dogs. We hadn’t found either. We had checked the bank about twenty times, hoping someone would rob it. Nobody had.
We were back at our secret meeting place in the park, trying to think of where we could find criminals.
“A known criminal might go to the hospital,” Gloria said. “To get plastic surgery and change his or her face.”
“Let’s go see who’s getting surgery,” I said.
“They don’t always let children in hospitals,” Gloria said.
I thought about that. I also thought about what Dad would say if he knew we were going to the hospital. I decided he wouldn’t say anything. The hospital wasn’t “far.” It was right downtown.
“It’s a good idea to go,” I said. “If anyone asks us, we could say we’re there because your mother is going to have a baby.”
“Why should it be my mother?” Gloria demanded. “Why not your mother?”
“If our mother ever found out about it, she might not like that story,” Huey said.
“My mother wouldn’t like it either,” Gloria said.
“We aren’t supposed to make up stories,” Huey said. “Especially you, Julian.”
“Suppose we just go, and we don’t make up any story?” I said. “Suppose we just look around fast?”
“Okay,” Gloria said.
“Okay,” Huey said.
Ten minutes later we went through the door of the hospital. We passed the lobby and the gift shop, where people buy presents for their sick relatives and friends. We passed a nursing station. A nurse looked at us. Question marks were spinning in her eyes.
“We’re going to see her mother,” I explained, pointing to Gloria.
I kept walking fast.
“Julian,” Gloria said. “Did you have to say that?”
“Somebody had to make a sacrifice,” I whispered. “It just happened to be you.”
We saw a sign painted in black letters on the wall. It said SURGERY. There was a big black arrow next to it, pointing straight ahead.
We started to slow down.
There were patients in the hall, walking slowly, wearing pajamas.
It didn’t look as if their faces had been changed recently.
“Excuse me,” Gloria said to one man. “What are you having?”
“I had it,” said the man. “Appendix. Out.” He made a gesture with his hand, as if he was pulling something out of his right side.
“Ugh,” Huey said.
“Believe me,” said the man, “it was better out than in. What are you kids doing here?”
“We’re visiting their mother,” Gloria said.
“Maybe you should ask the nurse if you’re in the right section,” said the man. “Oh, Nurse!” he called.
