by James Leck
“I already know about the betting pool, Valda,” I said, looking pained and rubbing my temples. The last thing I wanted to do was let Valda think she could get involved in my investigation, but in reality I could’ve kissed her. Between Lisa and Valda, this case was starting to shape up. Not only had they confirmed that there was a gambling operation at Iona High, but the fix was in for Montgomery to come out on top. And without Tobias around, it sounded like Iona High was sure to lose.
“You do?” Valda said, looking shocked.
“Lisa Aucoin told me,” I said.
She smiled as if this were the greatest news she’d heard in a long time. The girl was as nutty as a slice of pecan pie. Then, as my grandma came back to the table, she sat back in her chair.
“Gee whiz, this is terrific meatloaf, Mrs. Lime,” Valda said.
“Thank you, Valda,” Grandma said. “It’s nice to know someone appreciates my cooking enough to keep from throwing it on the walls.”
Thursday, March 12, 9:12 p.m.
Grandma’s House, My Room
Valda ate a lot, and she ate it slowly. Then she stayed for tea and cookies. By the time we’d retired to the living room and she’d started telling us about the spoon collection she’d inherited from her Great Aunt Beatrice, I thought even Grandma had had enough of her. An hour later, we managed to nudge Valda out the door. I hightailed it up the stairs, and when I was safely barricaded in my room, I gave Jennifer a call.
“Hi, Jack,” she said, in her bubbly way. “Did you find Tobias?”
“Not yet,” I said, “but I will. Don’t worry about that.”
“But you’ve got some leads, right?”
“I have a few leads,” I admitted. “Say, do you know anything about people betting on the match?”
“Yes,” she groaned. “There are a couple of guys on the football team who are running some kind of pool, but they’re just fooling around. They think this is all a big joke. But the last time I checked, the football team didn’t make it to the regional finals.”
“Do you know anyone I could talk to about placing a bet?”
“You don’t think they’re mixed up with Tobias’s disappearance, do you?”
“I don’t think so, but I have to follow the lead.”
“I know somebody who might be able to act as a liaison for us, Jack. Why don’t we meet tomorrow morning in the cafeteria? Is eight-twenty all right?”
“Sure,” I said, before hanging up. “And don’t worry about breakfast, it’s on me.”
All in all, it was a productive night. I’d managed to find out that the gambling operation was more than just a curve ball that Lisa had thrown my way to keep the heat off her and Max. I was a step closer to a meeting with one of the hoods involved in that numbers racket. And more often than not, where there’s a numbers racket, there are grifters and con-men hanging around like vultures after a fresh kill. But I had a whole night before I could follow that lead, and I wanted to tie up a loose end that was still eating away at me. It was time to take a closer look at Tobias’s Fortress of Solitude: his shed.
Thursday, March 12, 10:37 p.m.
Grandma’s House, The Garage
Thanks to Valda’s ridiculously long visit, my grandma was not in a good mood. I’d never heard her grumble about anything before, but she grumbled all the way up the stairs, she grumbled while she brushed her teeth, and she grumbled when she got into bed. She didn’t stop grumbling until she started snoring at ten-fifteen, and even then, her snores sounded angrier than normal. I stuck around until ten-thirty, then I figured I could slip out of the house without waking her up.
I grabbed the flashlight my grandma keeps in the towel closet, plus the key to the garage, and headed outside. Back before Iona was sold lock, stock and barrel to Luxemcorp Inc., my grandpa was the town carpenter and all-round handyman, so the garage is actually more like a small barn that’s jam-packed with tools from the floor to the ceiling. After a lot of stumbling around in the dark, a few nasty bumps and a couple of choice words, I found the crowbar I was looking for and headed outside. That’s when I bumped into Valda Pernickle.
“Valda, what do you think you’re doing?” I hissed.
“Where’re you going, Jack?” she said, stepping closer to me.
“I just need to do some work for the case,” I said, stepping back. I felt a headache coming on.
“That’s exciting,” she squealed. “Can I come? Please?”
“Gee, that would be great, Valda,” I said, squeezing the crowbar, “but I think I need to go alone. Two people on a delicate job like this is definitely one too many.”
“Where are you going?” she said, stepping up and grabbing my hand. “Will it be dangerous?”
“Well, Valda,” I said, feeling the weight of the crowbar in my hand, “let’s put it this way: if both of us go, then one of us won’t live through this night.”
“Wow,” she said, stepping so close to me that our noses were almost touching. “That is dangerous.”
“Very dangerous. Extremely dangerous,” I said, twisting my hand free and stepping back again. This time I bumped into the wall of the garage. I had nowhere left to run.
“Be careful, Jack,” she said, stepping up again. And then, faster than you can say “sneak attack,” she was kissing me square on the lips.
I’m a gentleman, but I couldn’t bring myself to kiss her back. That didn’t seem to bother her. Once she was done, she stepped back with a sly smile plastered on her face. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
And then she disappeared into the darkness of the night.
Thursday, March 12, 10:48 p.m.
13 Oort Cloud Court, The Poe Residence
Valda was clearly insane. The kind of crazy that can really make a guy sweat. But fortunately, it was a cold night, and it didn’t take me long to clear her out of my head. It was cold enough for me to wish I’d worn my parka instead of my leather jacket, and cold enough to start wishing for a wool hat halfway to the Poe residence. But there was no time to turn back. My grandma is a very predictable sleeper, and thanks to my constant insomnia, I knew that she’d be up for a trip to the facilities by twelve-thirty; you could set your watch by it.
As you know, Doc, insomnia just means that you can’t fall asleep at night, which is a very convenient excuse to stay up late and watch movies. That sounds great for a couple nights, or even a week, but it gets old pretty fast. Especially when all you want to do is grab a couple of hours of shut-eye to clear the cobwebs out of your head.
So, I had just under two hours to get the job done and slip back into bed. If Grandma happened to peek into my room and I wasn’t there, I’d be grounded until I was ready to leave for college.
I slunk onto the Poe property via the neighbor’s garden and decided to suss out the place from behind a short evergreen. From there, I was pretty sure that I could see weak beams of light creeping out from the cracks of the shed’s front door. I have to admit that I got a little excited, and I started toward the shed without thinking things through. It was an amateur move, and I paid the price. I’d only managed to take nine or ten steps before a security light flicked on from the side of the Poe house, illuminating the entire backyard. I froze for a second and then made a beeline for the shed. I hugged the side wall and crept behind the shed, where I figured I was hidden from the light’s sensors. After a minute of me standing like a statue, the lights went out, and I started moving again.
Luckily, there was a small window at about head height on the shed’s back wall. It was frosted and I couldn’t see in, but I could tell it was pitch black inside. The light I’d seen coming out of the front door was either wishful thinking on my part, or the floodlight had warned Tobias that someone was coming and he’d made things get dark PDQ.
I jimmied the thin edge of the crowbar into the frame of the window and applied pressure. First there w
as a high-pitched creak, and then a loud pop as the metal latch on the inside snapped off. I slid the window open, flicked on my flashlight and scanned the shed. It was dark inside, but I could see enough to know that Valda hadn’t been joking; Tobias had transformed the joint into a nice little study. Along the right wall was a sturdy-looking bookcase that stretched from the back to the front of the shed and reached from the floor to the ceiling. It was packed with books. On the left side, a whiteboard had been screwed into the wall. It was covered in grids and tables, each one filled with numbers. I figured Tobias must’ve been practicing his math. Directly below the window was a wooden desk. On it was a closed laptop and a stack of textbooks. Other than that, the shed was empty. I turned the flashlight off, stuck it in my pocket and hoisted myself up.
Once I was inside, I turned the flashlight on and scanned the room. The bookcase and whiteboard weren’t telling me much, so I took a closer look at the laptop. When I popped the cover open, I was surprised to discover that not only was it still on but there was a spreadsheet minimized in the taskbar. I opened it. Like the whiteboard, the spreadsheet was covered with meaningless tables, each filled with numbers, with titles like VBCham, or FB1, or AATT. It was probably some convoluted physics calculation. But I was curious about when this work had been done. I clicked on the File button at the top of the page, then Properties, and saw that the spreadsheet had been modified only twenty-three minutes ago. Tobias must’ve been in here after all, but the security light had tipped him off. So where was he? Did he sneak out the front while I was coming in the back? I didn’t think he could have escaped without me hearing something. I gave another look around the room. There was nowhere to hide except —
I stepped over to the bookcase and ran my fingers over the books. They looked real enough, but close up, I found out they were just the spines of dead books pasted onto a series of long panels. The entire wall was a fake. I guesstimated there were probably three or four feet of space behind the panels where Tobias could be hiding, which explained how he could disappear so quickly. There must’ve been a secret door somewhere, but I didn’t have the patience to find it. It was time to end this charade, and I was just about to let him know the game was up when an interesting thought popped into my head: Valda and Jennifer had both mentioned that some lowbrow gamblers were betting against Iona to win because Tobias was missing, and they were planning on winning a pile of geetus. But what if Tobias showed up at the last minute? And what if you were the only one who knew he’d be making it to the big game? Seemed to me, if I played this right, I could solve this case and stand to make a tidy bundle of dough on the side. I just needed to make sure Toby didn’t get nervous and fly the coop before I got back tomorrow afternoon to drag him back to school.
“Hello, Jennifer, it’s Jack,” I said loudly, pretending to be on the phone. “I guess Tobias isn’t here after all. I’ll have to let everyone know that he’s still missing, and that he’s definitely not in his shed.” I was hedging my bets that my public service announcement would be enough to convince a Nervous Nellie like Tobias to stay put. This was risky business, but Risk happened to be my middle name. The chumps at Iona High just didn’t know it yet.
Or that’s what I thought, Doc. Little did I know that greed, stupid greed, would be my downfall.
Friday, March 13, 8:02 a.m.
Iona High, The Cafeteria
As it turned out, my grandma didn’t have to use the facilities until nearly four in the a.m. I know, because I couldn’t sleep. I was busy figuring out how much spinach I could earn on this Academic All-Stars gambit. I was confident that a high roller from the City of Angels like myself could walk away with a suitcase full of cash playing in the little leagues of Iona. So I had a little swagger in my step when I walked into the cafeteria that morning carrying two cinnamon buns and two large coffees. I was just about to sit down when Jennifer walked in with a lanky hipster wearing baggy jeans and a sideways baseball cap.
“Hi, Jack,” she said, flashing one of her adorable smiles. “This is Mike.”
“What up?” Mike said, nodding his head to a silent beat and scanning the empty cafeteria.
“I got you a cinnamon bun and a coffee,” I said to Jennifer. “I hope you take sugar and cream.”
“Sorry,” she said. “I don’t drink coffee. It makes me anxious.”
“No problem,” I said. “I’ll have yours, too. I need as much caffeine as I can get. I had a late night.”
“Did you find —” she started, but I broke in before she could bring up Tobias. The last thing I needed was for Mike to know I had the inside scoop on the whereabouts of the missing trivia superstar.
“… the book I lost? Yes, I found it,” I said with a wink.
“Really?” she said, practically jumping up and down.
“Chill, Jenny,” Mike said, coming out of his daze. “It’s just a book.”
“It’s an important book,” I said. “A very important book. But we’re not here to talk about books. We’re here to talk about something more interesting, aren’t we, Mike?”
“Right on,” Mike said with a grin.
“Why don’t you take a load off and enjoy your cinnamon bun while Mike and I go talk shop,” I said to Jennifer, holding out a chair. “I assume cinnamon doesn’t make you anxious, too.”
“Of course not,” she said, taking the bun, “but you’d better come back and fill me in on that book you found.”
“It’s a deal,” I said, then turned to Mike. “Do you mind if we walk and talk?”
“Let’s do it,” Mike said, and we went for a stroll.
Friday, March 13, 8:11 a.m.
Iona High, The Main Foyer
“So, Mike,” I said, acting casual, “what’re the odds on the match tonight?”
“Used to be, when Tobias was around, Iona had two-to-one odds to win. But that all changed when he disappeared.”
“So now it’s two-to-one that Montgomery wins?”
“Three-to-one, actually,” he said.
“That means if I bet ten bucks on Iona, and they win, I’d get thirty bucks?” I asked, pretending I didn’t have a sweet clue how betting odds worked.
“That’s right,” Mike said, and then he whipped out a little black book from his back pocket. “So how much can I put you down for?”
“One hundred bucks,” I said, expecting this guy’s jaw to hit the ground when he heard a number that big being thrown around.
Instead all I got was a frown. “That’s not very much,” he said.
It was very much in my books, but I wasn’t going to let a two-bit crook like Mike know that.
“Well, how does two hundred sound, smart guy?” I said.
“Ah,” Mike grimaced. “I guess that’s all right for a first-timer.”
“First-timer?” I said, with a chuckle. “Kid, you don’t know who you’re messing with.” Sure, it might’ve been my first time dealing with that kind of dough, but I’d laid down a few bets in my time. Why just that past summer, Chuck Smith and I had been laying down quarters on Dodgers’ games, so it’s not like I didn’t know what I was doing. I reminded myself that I was in the driver’s seat on this one; after all, I was the only one who had the inside scoop on the whereabouts of Tobias Poe.
“Well, heck, Mike, I was worried that I might break the bank if I started throwing around some big numbers, but I guess you guys are the real deal. So how about we say six hundred clams. How’s that tickle your funny bone?”
“You sure you want to put down that much?”
“What’s the matter, Mike? Can’t handle it?”
“I’ll have to check with the boss,” he said, slipping the little black book into his back pocket and pulling out his cell. He dialed, turned away and whispered some mumbo-jumbo into the phone. When he was done squawking to his boss, he handed the phone over.
“Are you Lime?” the big boss
asked, in a voice that was deep and threatening. Whoever was on the other end was trying hard to scare me off.
“That’s right,” I said.
“Six hundred bucks is a lot of cash. How do I know you’re good for it?”
I pulled a wad of dough out of my pocket and counted it quickly. “I’ve got ninety bucks on me and the rest in the bank.” (FYI — This was a lie. I’d been spending my allowance from the trust account like it was going out of style. I might have had fifty bucks in the bank on top of the ninety in my hand, but he didn’t need to know that, and I didn’t plan on losing.) “But if you’re worried, I’ll put up my cell and my iPod. You can use those for collateral if I lose.”
I was trying to rope this yahoo into my bet, and I was expecting him to accept that kind of an offer in good faith. Instead, all I got was the silent treatment, and I’m not a big fan of the silent treatment.
“Well, if that’s not good enough, bucko,” I said, a little perturbed by his distinct lack of enthusiasm, “why don’t I throw in my laptop and we can jack up the bet? The laptop’s worth at least a grand, so how about we say an even twelve hundred, with the iPod and the cell thrown in for good measure?”
“I think you’re getting out of your league,” he said.
“You don’t know my league, hombre,” I said. “But if you can’t handle a twelve-hundred-dollar bet, I’ll just have to find a new vendor. Do you know anyone who can handle serious bets?”
There was a long pause on the other end before he mumbled, “Twelve hundred dollars is just fine.”
“Fine,” I said.
“With the laptop, the cell and the iPod as collateral?”
“That’s right,” I said.
