by Linda Johns
“Nothing’s missing. There weren’t any threats. It’s so embarrassing, but I think someone came into my house and … and … cleaned it up.”
“Cleaned your house? That sounds like the kind of burglar we could all use,” Calvin said, starting to joke until he saw the look on Grace’s face. “I’m sorry, Grace. I still think we should call the police. There was an intruder in your home. You, of all people, should know how important it is to report things. You tell us that all the time at our Block Watch meetings.”
Grace agreed to let Calvin make the call to the police. She must be really committed to being Block Watch captain because she had the police precinct phone number memorized, so she didn’t have to tie up 911 lines with a non-emergency call. I handed Calvin my phone just as Mom rushed into an introduction.
“I’m Maggie West, and this is my daughter, Hannah. We’re house-sitting for Happy and Frank Parker,” Mom said.
“And taking care of their cats,” I added.
“That in itself is a big job! Imagine, five cats,” Grace said. “It’s nice to meet both of you, although I’m afraid this isn’t the best way to welcome you to the neighborhood.”
“It is an unusual way to meet our neighbors,” I said.
Calvin ended the call and said the police would come to Grace’s house within the next thirty minutes. “I’d wait with you, Grace, but I need to be downtown in a half hour.”
“I know you don’t know us yet, but I’d be happy to wait with you,” Mom said. Grace looked relieved. It would be kind of creepy to go back into one of these huge houses knowing that an uninvited guest had just been there—and maybe still was there. Unfortunately, I sort of said that out loud.
“It’s kind of creepy to go back into a big house right after a B and E. The intruder may even still be there,” I said.
Once again, my mother glared at me.
But Grace laughed. “You certainly speak the lingo, talking about a breaking-and-entering offense. I’m sure everything is fine, but, just in case, I would certainly appreciate the company.”
CHAPTER 5
GRACE LIVINGSTON LIVED down the block in a two-story white house with a wrap-around porch. The porch was like an outdoor living room, with big comfy-looking couches and chairs, a coffee table, a wrought iron and glass table for eating, a rocking chair, and a porch swing. It looked like the cover of one of those home decorating magazines.
Grace bent down and moved a potted plant a few inches. “I’m going to have to find a new place for my key,” Grace said.
“You don’t mean you hide a key outside?” Mom said. “Under a flowerpot?”
“Another embarrassing thing to add to my list.” Grace sighed. “I’m afraid I do. Whenever my son comes home from college, he almost always manages to forget his key. We tried hiding an extra in one of those hollow rocks you can buy, the kind that have a secret place for a key and then are supposed to blend in with your other rocks. But twice the gardener moved it and I spent fifteen minutes on dark, rainy nights lifting up every rock trying to find the right one. I had hoped that my new hiding place was so clichéd that no one would think a Block Watch captain would do something so unsecured.”
I noticed an ACE Security Watch sticker on the narrow window next to the front door. “What’s that sticker mean?” I asked.
“Nothing. I canceled the security system two years ago,” Grace said. “Nora, our cat, kept setting off the burglar alarm every time she came in and out of the kitchen cat door. I’d hoped leaving the sticker up might deter burglars.”
The porch was immaculate, except for a tiny bit of dirt near a flowerpot. “Did the intruder knock over the flowerpot?” I asked.
“It was upright when I got here. But that’s the first thing I noticed. It looks like it was moved just a few inches. I assumed I’d forgotten that I’d moved it before my walk, even though I don’t remember doing anything like that.”
We followed Grace through the front door. The inside of her house was similar to ours—I mean, the Parkers’—house. A grand staircase stretched up to a landing on the second floor, the dark wood gleaming and inviting a ride down the banister. She led us into the living room, which had two separate seating areas. It looked pretty tidy all right, but I guessed that if Grace had a gardener, she probably also had someone come and clean her house.
“Maybe we should make a list of what’s different, Grace,” Mom offered. “Take your time going around and see what you notice. Hannah and I can take notes.”
Grace opened the drawer of an antique cabinet and took out two notepads and pens for us.
“I don’t use this room much, so it never gets too messy. Yesterday was the day Dana came to clean, too,” she started.
“Didn’t you say it was cleaned up today?” I asked, confused because it now sounded like it had already been clean.
“I should have said tidied up. My house was clean, but things are … rearranged. Those two chairs used to be over there,” she said, pointing. “That glass bowl was on the left side of the table. I’d left The New Yorker open to an article I was reading, but now it’s stacked up with the other magazines. Oh! The magazines are in a different order.”
“They’re arranged by size,” I said.
“And the stack itself is neater,” Grace added. “Let’s see. I’m sure this bowl of rocks and sea glass was on the side table next to the lamp. Oh! That’s strange.” She picked up a polished rock, about two inches long and one inch high. “This isn’t mine.” She held it out for us to see. The rock was black with a symbol etched into it. It looked like kanji, characters used in Chinese and Japanese. I quickly sketched the symbol. I’m studying Japanese at Cesar Chavez Middle School, and kanji is just one of three scripts used in Japanese. Each symbol means a specific word. There are tens of thousands of kanji symbols in Japanese. This one looked familiar to me, but I might just be thinking that because I wanted it to look familiar.
“Maybe your son or someone added the stone as a gift earlier than today,” I suggested.
“I don’t think so. This is my collection of sea glass we’ve gathered together on the beach at Whidbey Island. We always made sure that this was only sea glass, not pebbles or rocks, no matter how pretty they were.”
A quick succession of raps on the front door interrupted our conversation.
“Seattle Police. We got a call.”
CHAPTER 6
MOM AND I stayed until the police had made a thorough search of Grace’s house, inside and out. It takes a long time when your house is a gazillion square feet and, on top of that, it’s more than one hundred years old, so it has all kinds of nooks and crannies for hiding. I listened to Grace give her statement to the two police officers, who, I noticed, weren’t taking many notes. Neither one of them even wrote anything down when she told them about the mysterious rock appearance. They would have been more interested if something had disappeared, rather than appeared. But when you think about it, having something appear is much more mysterious and intriguing.
They gave her a lecture on safety and securing a house, and left a brochure behind called “Stay Safe at Home.”
It was clear to me that this case was mine. It didn’t seem likely that anyone else would believe a woman whose complaint was that her house was tidier and, on top of that, someone had left her a gift.
I wrote Mom’s cell phone number on the back of one of my business cards and handed it to Grace.
“Too bad I don’t have any pets that need sitting. And my son is already a sophomore in college,” she said. “Perhaps I’ll have a few chores and errands for you.” She thanked us for being such good neighbors, and we headed back across the street to our house.
“I can’t believe how big these houses are,” I said, looking at a three-story brick house—complete with turrets and second-floor balconies—two doors down from Grace’s and directly across the street from Libby and Calvin. I noticed a familiar-looking metallic ACE Security Watch sticker in a corner of a window. I hoped tho
se owners were better than Grace at using their alarm system.
After dinner that night, Mom checked through the whole house, making sure that every window was securely closed and that every exterior door was double locked. “None of this ‘hiding a key under a flowerpot’ business for us,” she said, as she handed me my copy of the house key and gave me her standard lecture on being responsible for taking care of the house. This was our job, Mom reminded me, and our clients count on us to make sure their house, their belongings, and their animals stay safe.
We both jumped at the sound of a clunk in the kitchen.
“Meow!” Simon, the biggest of the five cats, announced that he was hungry. We went into the kitchen to make sure everything was okay.
“Simon makes quite a racket when he goes through that cat door,” I said. Mom was down on her hands and knees, presumably looking to see if the cat door posed any threat to our safety.
“I can’t imagine anyone could get in here through that, could they?” she asked me.
“Nope,” I said, picking up Reba in one arm and Dolly in the other and heading upstairs to my room. I was amazed that these two cats, named after country-western singers, were being so quiet and letting me hold them, especially at the same time.
I set my laptop on the desk in the bedroom. I pulled out the sketch I’d done of the symbol on the rock. I went to a kanji Web site and began searching for a match. I tried the word peace, but it wasn’t a match. There are several thousand symbols used in kanji, but fewer than two thousand were used regularly. If it took all night, I would go through all two thousand. But first I’d try a translation site where I could type in English words and see the ideograms. I tried a few typical words that we Americans like to see in Eastern script: earth, water, happiness, calm, and, finally, harmony. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a match,” I said to the cats.
The symbol on the rock left for Grace Livingston was Japanese kanji for harmony. A stone with that inscription would be a nice sentiment and a kind gesture under normal circumstances. But not if the recipient didn’t know how it got there.
I checked online and saw that Lily was online, too, so I opened a chat window.
“We might have a new case,” I typed.
“What’s with ‘we’?”
“You and me. The ace team at solving crimes …”
“At solving crimes no one else cares about.”
“Calling you now …” I typed and signed off.
“Too many words to type,” I said when Lily answered the phone. I filled her in on what had happened with Grace Livingston.
“Creepy,” Lily agreed. “But I read something about how forgetful adults are, and I’m not talking senior citizens and Alzheimer’s. People in their forties and fifties are getting spacey. That’s why there are all those infomercials on TV about boosting your brain power and improving your memory. I’m telling you, there’s a memory crisis in America.”
I wouldn’t exactly call it a crisis, but I let Lily go on a bit while I double-checked the word harmony in different languages. I didn’t really need to prove anything, but it was fun to compare and contrast the interpretations in style even within the same language.
“I’m still going to keep an eye on things. Grace seemed seriously spooked,” I said.
Later that night, I woke up when Simon the cat jumped on my bed. “You’re a big fat noisy guy,” I said. I thought I heard something else. I tried to make my ears superaware so I’d hear anything out of the ordinary. Then again, I didn’t know what was ordinary in this house yet. I tiptoed to the door and looked out in the hallway.
“It woke you up, too?” Mom whispered.
I screeched a little at the sound of her voice.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you,” she said. “It’s just a creaky board on the third step.” She demonstrated by putting her weight on and off the step. “Even a small cat like Jasmine sets it off.”
“Okay, then …”
“Want to grab your blanket and sleep on the couch in my room?” Mom asked.
Sometimes I think my mom is a mind reader. This house was too big, and I wanted to be close to her.
Mom, me, and five cats all slept in the same room for the rest of the night.
CHAPTER 7
AFTER THAT FIRST night of scary noises (which weren’t even that scary), Mom and I quickly got used to the house. It was pretty easy to enjoy living in such luxurious surroundings. This was quite possibly the cushiest job we’d ever had. While I was at school that week, someone came to mow the lawn, someone else came to clean the house, and a third person came to prune the bushes in the front. Not much for us to do but sit back and relax. And take care of five cats.
I think I earned my keep with those cats, however. Feeding them was no big deal, but cleaning out three litter boxes twice a day wasn’t exactly my idea of a good time. I’d been running a little late Thursday morning before school, so I’d skipped the morning kitty-cleanup routine. I was dreading seeing what was waiting for me in the afternoon as I walked home from the bus stop after school.
The garbage and recycling trucks had made their way down our street earlier in the day. One of my regular jobs when we house-sit is to bring the garbage and recycling out to the curb first thing in the morning on garbage day. As soon as I got home from school, I wheeled the cans back to their spots. To potential burglars, empty garbage cans are like a beacon that no one’s home.
This neighborhood was so nice that the waste-management people put the garbage cans upright and put the lids on after they emptied the garbage. On lots of other streets you see the empty cans strewn about, usually on their sides, and often rolling over the curb and into the street.
I unlocked the door to the house, called hello to the cats, put my things down in the entryway, called Mom at Wired (the coffee shop where she works) to tell her that I was home. She reminded me to put the trash can and recycling cart away behind the house.
“I’m already on it,” I said. I went to the sidewalk and secured the lid on the brown garbage can, and started wheeling it to the back. I saw people at two houses across the street doing the same thing. One woman looked up, and I recognized her as the woman with the spiky hair who’d been carrying the yin/yang tote bag the other day. She smiled, waved, and began wheeling the recycling cart to the backyard. At the brick house next door to her, her friend with the apricot hooded sweatshirt was doing the same thing. She looked across the street, but she didn’t seem to see me. The three of us made quite a cacophony (vocabulary word for the week) with our noisy, clunky wheels rolling on the pavement. I came back to get the green recycling container, which, luckily, was also on wheels. The apricot hoodie woman across the street was ahead of me, though. She already had the recycling can behind the fence and was closing the gate. I hoped to catch her eye so I could do the friendly, neighborly waving thing. But she didn’t look up as she headed off toward Volunteer Park. The other woman must have gone back inside her house.
You know how sometimes what you don’t see is what strikes you as odd? That’s what happened. I headed back inside, then stopped and looked back across the street. Something was missing.
Garbage cans! On the east side of the street, the garbage and recycling cans were all put away. On our side, they were all (except for ours) still curbside.
It wouldn’t make sense that everyone on the entire side of the street would already have moved their cans. Grace Livingston’s house was on that side of the street, and I knew she was still at work at the University of Washington. She’d made a point of telling us she worked until five every day.
Then again, maybe Grace and her neighbors had hired someone to put things away during the day while they were at their jobs. These people hired out just about everything, so why not pay someone to wheel your trash cans away?
It was weird, but not criminal. I decided to be neighborly, and I took Libby and Calvin’s cans down their driveway to the outside of their garage. Then I went inside to face the litt
er boxes.
CHAPTER 8
THAT NIGHT, during dinner, Mom got a phone call from Grace Livingston. She was calling an emergency Block Watch meeting.
“You’re not going to believe this,” Mom said. “Two of the brick houses across the street had intruders today.”
“Was anything stolen?” I asked.
Mom shook her head no.
“Let me guess: things were cleaner than when they’d left in the morning?”
Mom nodded.
“Did they find any gifts, like rocks?” I asked.
“Grace asked both families to look around for that specifically. There were rocks at each house. But there was something else. At each house, there was something even odder left behind,” Mom said. “You’ll never guess.”
Whenever someone says “you’ll never guess,” something inside of me takes over and I turn into a Guessing Machine.
“A million dollars … a big-screen TV … a new bicycle … a hamster … a pony … a piñata … fresh flowers …”
“Bingo!” Mom said. “Fresh flowers at one house. You’re coming with me to the meeting to tell what you saw with the recycling. It might be nothing, but it might be significant. Then you’ll get to hear firsthand what was left at the other house.”
I brought my sketch pad with me to the Block Watch meeting, which was being held next door at Libby and Calvin’s house. The adults gathered in the living room. I volunteered to take care of Rachel, partly because I really like her and partly because I wanted an excuse to be on the fringe of the meeting so I could observe everything. Rachel and I set up some crayons and a coloring book at the dining room table.
“What are you going to color?” she asked, concerned that there was only one coloring book, and it was clearly meant for her.
“I have my sketchbook. I almost always have a book like this with me,” I said, showing her some of my drawings. “This way I can draw or color or write whenever I feel like it.” I couldn’t tell if she was impressed because she was already busily intent on her coloring work. Izzie came in and curled up on the floor by my feet. I started sketching random things I saw, beginning with a blue vase that had a silver cut-out pattern on it that made it look like irises were growing all around the vase.
