The Classy Crooks Club

by Alison Cherry

  I don’t love the idea of getting close enough to a parrot to have a personal conversation, but catching Grandma Jo in the act could mean getting out of her house and going to live with Ben for the rest of the month. Visions of playing Xbox and eating Cheetos with my brother dance through my head, and I can’t help smiling.

  “Wow,” I say. “You’re totally brilliant.”

  “Film the whole thing with your phone,” Maddie says. “That way your grandma won’t be able to deny that it happened.”

  I nod and smile to myself. It’s the perfect plan. I can’t wait to see a bird take down Grandma Jo.

  6

  When I get home that afternoon, my grandmother is furious. I thought maybe she’d go easy on me for sneaking out because her bridge club friends are there, but no—she takes me into the kitchen and yells at me for a good twenty minutes. All I did was go swimming with my best friend, but from the way she’s acting, you’d think I’d stolen all her jewelry and sold it on the black market.

  “You must act responsible, Annemarie,” she snaps at me. “It reflects very badly on me if you get yourself into trouble. I nearly had to call the police when you disappeared, and it would’ve been an unparalleled disaster if people had seen squad cars in my driveway.”

  The fact that Grandma Jo cares less about my safety than how she looks to the neighbors makes me insanely angry.  “I was fine,” I say. “You could’ve asked Stanley where I was. It’s not like I can go anywhere without him.”

  “Since you obviously have too much unoccupied time, you can do some chores for me in the mornings in addition to your afternoon etiquette lessons,” Grandma Jo continues, completely ignoring me. “You will go straight to soccer at the proper time, and you will come straight home afterward. You will not spend any more time with this Maddie character. She’s clearly a bad influence on you.”

  I feel the beginnings of tears pricking in my eyes, but I swallow hard and dig my nails into my palms—I refuse to let my grandmother see me cry. “Maddie’s not a bad influence! Mom and Dad always let me go over there.”

  “I’m not your mother, and you didn’t have my permission to go,” she snaps. “You flagrantly disregarded my instructions, and that is unacceptable. While you’re here, you answer to me and me alone, and if you break the rules, you will deal with the consequences.”

  I think about shouting back that she has no right to talk about breaking rules, seeing as she’s stealing people’s pets for ransom, but I can’t go there until I have the proof I need. “I tried to ask your permission, but I couldn’t find you!” I say instead.

  “Then you shouldn’t have left. It is imperative that you learn patience, self-control, and responsibility.” Grandma Jo holds out her hand. “Give me your cell phone, please.”

  “What? Why? What are you going to do to it?”

  “For heaven’s sake, Annemarie, I’m not going to do anything to it. I’m going to keep it until you’ve proven to me that you’re responsible enough to have it back.”

  “That is so unfair!” I’m so frustrated now that I’m positive I’m going to burst into tears.

  “If you ignore my perception of what’s fair, you can’t expect me to abide by yours,” she says. “The device, please, Annemarie.”

  I dig my phone out of my soccer bag and slap it into her palm a little harder than necessary, and it disappears into a hidden pocket in Grandma Jo’s huge black skirt. Now how am I supposed to record the birds saying incriminating things so I can get myself out of here? I decide I’ll break into the storage room again tonight regardless, just to see what I can find out. If the birds don’t say anything I can use, maybe I can teach them some things that would make Grandma Jo look really bad. I wonder how fast parrots learn.

  As if my grandmother hasn’t tortured me enough for one day, she dismisses me to finish my stupid sewing sampler while she hangs out with her bridge club friends. The absolute last thing I want to do right now is nitpicky, delicate work. I’m so angry I’d like to smash the glass door of the china cabinet into a million pieces with this idiotic embroidery book. But I tell myself I only have to keep it together for a few more hours, and then I can put my plan into action and get out of here for good.

  • • •

  My grandmother goes to bed at exactly the same time she did last night. She’s such a creature of habit that she probably goes to sleep at the exact same time every night and has the exact same dreams, all full of black dresses and old-lady card games and tea. I sit silently for half an hour after her door shuts, waiting to hear her chain-saw snoring start up. It doesn’t, but I don’t hear anything else, either, so I figure it’s probably safe to sneak downstairs. I gather my flashlight and library card and tiptoe down to the storage room.

  It takes me much less time than it did yesterday to open the door, and I think of how proud Maddie will be when I tell her how much I’ve improved.  My heart starts racing when I hear the birds rustling around on their perches, but I know I have to keep it together if I want to execute my plan. “Hi, guys,” I croon softly to them as I reach for the light switch, careful to keep my back to the wall and one arm up to protect my face from attacks. “It’s me. Don’t freak out.”

  The light goes on, and then I’m the one who freaks out. Because sitting on a chair in the middle of the room is my grandmother, fully dressed and wide awake.

  “Just as I thought,” she says.

  “I . . . um . . . I was . . . ,” I start, but there’s absolutely no explanation that makes sense. I mean, she saw me break into the storage room. I can’t exactly pretend I came downstairs for a glass of water and got lost.

  There are several empty chairs arranged in a semicircle, and she pats the one closest to her. “Come here,” she says, and bizarrely, she doesn’t sound mad. “It’s time we had a little chat.”

  I inch toward the chair, glancing behind me every few seconds to make sure there’s no parrot flying silently behind my head, and Grandma Jo raises an eyebrow at me. “Annemarie, why are you walking like that? Are you injured?”

  “No, I . . . um. I don’t want the birds to, like, fly up and attack me from behind?”

  My grandmother sighs heavily. “That’s not going to happen. Their wings are clipped.”

  I’m not sure what that means, but she makes it sound like it’s something to prevent attacks. Maybe it’s like declawing a cat, though all the parrots’ claws look totally intact. I perch on the very edge of the chair, my spine not even touching the back. My heart is pounding even harder than it was last night when I first found the birds.

  “Grandma Jo, I’m so, so sorry,” I say. “I wasn’t—”

  “Quiet,” my grandmother snaps. “We’ll wait for the others to arrive. In the meantime, I’ll make us some tea.” And then she gets up and clomp-click-rustles out of the room with her cane, shutting the door behind her and leaving me alone with the birds. If this is supposed to be my punishment, it’s a really, really good one.

  I sit rigid in my chair in the bird-filled storage room for what feels like forever, wondering who “the others” are and what will happen to me when they get here. Did Grandma Jo call the police? Is it illegal to break into a room in the house where you’re living? I can’t go to jail for this, can I? I twist my bracelet around and around on my wrist.

  The white bird with the Mohawk-style head feathers is sitting closest to me, and when I look at it, it shrieks, “Let me out, let me out!”

  “Trust me,” I tell it. “I know exactly how you feel.”

  But when the doorbell finally rings, it’s not the police—it’s Cookie and Edna and Betty. None of them have taken the time to get dressed, and they tromp into the storage room in their pajamas like this is some sort of bizarre sleepover party. Cookie’s in a red silk kimono with droopy sleeves and a dragon on the back. Edna’s wearing a long, shapeless dress that doesn’t look much different from what she wore during the day, but her hair is up in some sort of turban. Betty has on a flowered nightgown with ruff
les around the neck and wrists, a blue terry cloth robe, and slippers shaped like rabbits, and her hair is in pink plastic curlers. If I’m on trial, this isn’t exactly the scariest jury I’ve ever seen.

  “This is so exciting!” Cookie gushes as she takes the chair next to mine. She gives my leg such a hard squeeze that I flinch. “I’ve always wanted to be called out of bed for a secret meeting! Something to check off the ol’ bucket list.”

  “Definitely,” I say, though I have no idea what she’s talking about. What the heck is a bucket list?

  Betty beams in my direction. “I’m so thrilled you’re going to join us, dear. I knew Jo would come around about you.”

  “I don’t . . . what?” I ask. “Join you?”

  Grandma Jo comes in with a tray of tea things before they can say anything else. Even though it’s the middle of the night, she’s brought all the proper serving things: saucers, little silver sugar tongs, a separate plate of lemon slices. “Be quiet,” she snaps at Betty. “She doesn’t know anything yet.” Everyone’s silent as she pours tea into five matching china cups, and then she settles down in her chair and looks at me expectantly. “Go on, Annemarie, show them what you did.”

  I feel like 90 percent of this conversation is happening over my head. “What I did with what?”

  She rolls her eyes. “What you did with the door.”

  “You want me to open the lock again?”

  “Have you done something else to the door of which I’m not aware?”

  “No, I . . . no.”

  “Out you go, then.” She shoos me out of the room, shuts the door between us, and clicks the lock into place. At least I’m separated from the birds now. And the tea.

  I can hear Cookie’s excited murmurs on the other side as I do my trick with the library card. When the bolt pops open a few seconds later and I step back into the room, she and Betty break into riotous applause. Edna holds her hands above her head and wiggles her fingers, which seems to be her weird way of clapping.

  “AJ, darling, that was amazing!” raves Cookie. “Such finesse! Where did you learn to do that?”

  “The Internet?” I say.

  “Amazing device.” Cookie shakes her head. “My granddaughter told me you can learn to build explosives on the Internet! Can you believe it? I must try it sometime.”

  Grandma Jo is not to be distracted. “I’ve changed my mind,” she says to the other ladies. “I think we should use Annemarie. Let’s put it to a vote. All in favor?”

  Three gnarled hands shoot into the air. “Aye,” all the ladies chorus.

  “Then it’s decided.”

  Cookie springs out of her chair and hugs me, her kimono sleeve flying up to hit me in the face. “I’m so glad to have you in our society,” she says, planting an enthusiastic kiss on my cheek. “It’s going to be wonderful!”

  I twist away. “Could someone please tell me what’s going on here?” I say. “It’s the middle of the night, and you guys are making me demonstrate my lock picking and talking about secret societies, and we’re in a storage room full of stolen birds, and everyone’s acting like this is completely normal, and none of this is even remotely normal!”

  “Jo, I thought you didn’t tell her about the birds,” Betty says.

  “I didn’t.” My grandmother turns on me, her eyes full of steel. “Why do you think these birds are stolen?”

  “The Internet,” I say again.

  Cookie shakes her head. “Remarkable.”

  I wait for someone to tell me there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for all these animals, one that doesn’t involve my grandmother’s being a criminal, but nobody does. “So these birds are stolen,” I say, letting that sink in. I can’t wait to see the look on Maddie’s face when I tell her I was right. Bird babysitting service, my butt.

  For the first time I can remember, Grandma Jo actually looks uncomfortable. “It depends on what you mean by ‘stolen,’ ” she says.

  “I mean they don’t belong to you.”

  “Wild creatures don’t belong to anyone,” Grandma Jo says. “They belong to themselves.”

  “That’s your excuse? I can’t believe you! You’re always talking about being a respectable lady and following the rules and how actions have consequences, and this whole time you’ve been stealing other people’s birds and snakes and jaguars? If you want me to return them for the reward money, I am not doing it. That’s—”

  “It’s not a jaguar,” Edna says. “It’s an ocelot. Jaguars are much larger.”

  “I don’t care what it is! It’s not yours!”

  “Sit down and listen!” snaps Grandma Jo. “There’s no reward money involved. You don’t understand anything that’s going on here.”

  “Then explain it to me!”

  “Sit down, AJ,” Betty says much more gently, patting the empty chair next to her. “We’ll tell you everything. We promise.”

  Betty seems like the most trustworthy person in the room, and she looks like she’s totally okay with everything that’s going on here. Maybe it’s worth hearing out my grandmother and her friends, just for a minute. I sit.

  “What your grandmother has here is a sort of safe house for animals,” Cookie begins.

  “The so-called animal rescue league I work for is useless at rescuing animals,” says Grandma Jo. “They’re stellar at throwing galas, but when it comes to taking action, they’re absolutely abysmal. There’s so much red tape that nobody ever manages to rescue any animals, and the poor innocent creatures languish in terrible situations while those cowards drink champagne and congratulate themselves on being so noble.”

  “So your grandmother has taken matters into her own hands,” Betty says. “She uses the league to locate animals who live in stifling or unsafe environments, and then we help her liberate them.”

  I think about the time Maddie stole a pack of Skittles from the cafeteria by stuffing them up her sleeve and assured me that she wasn’t stealing, she was liberating them. This seems like pretty much the same thing.

  “What kinds of bad conditions?” I ask.

  “Most of these birds never left their cages before they came here,” Grandma Jo says. She gestures to a gray and red parrot on a perch near Cookie. “Lorna here lived in a cage made of two shopping carts welded together. She was kept in a dark corner, and she didn’t have any toys or even a water bowl. Birds are very social—they need to play and interact with people, and they need affection. Right, Lorna?” She reaches out to the parrot, who hops onto her hand eagerly and climbs up onto her shoulder. Its needle-sharp beak is inches from my grandmother’s face, but Grandma Jo seems completely unconcerned.

  “Let me introduce you to my trusty knife,” says Lorna.

  I scoot my chair backward as far as I can without being rude. “Why does it keep saying that?”

  My grandmother strokes the top of Lorna’s head with one finger. “Parrots can imitate practically any sound, as long as they hear it repeatedly and find it interesting. Lorna’s previous owner must’ve watched the same movie over and over with her in the room. She can also do a creaking door sound and a very convincing scream. Can’t you, my darling?”

  “Why don’t you love me anymore?” demands Lorna, totally out of nowhere, and against my will, I giggle.

  “Okay, so you steal them and then you . . . what, release them into the wild?”

  “Of course not,” Grandma Jo scoffs. “Don’t be ridiculous. These animals were born in captivity. They wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to survive in the wild. I find them homes in aviaries and captive breeding programs, where they’ll be cared for by professionals.”

  It’s not like I approve of stealing people’s pets, but this isn’t nearly as bad as I thought. I mean, no matter how I personally feel about Lorna, it does sound pretty awful to live in a shopping cart in the dark. “How long have you been doing this?” I ask.

  “Oh, for quite some time,” Grandma Jo says.

  “See that portrait over there, dear?”
Betty asks, pointing to the opposite wall of the storage room. I hadn’t noticed it until now, but there’s a big painting of a young woman with her arms around a German shepherd. “That dog was your grandmother’s first conquest.”

  “That’s Grandma Jo?” The girl in the painting does look kind of like my grandmother, but I’m totally thrown off by the fact that she’s smiling and wearing a blue shirt and a white skirt instead of a black dress. “How old were you?” I ask.

  “Twenty-two,” Grandma Jo says. “That’s Byron, God rest his soul. Our neighbor used to beat him, so the day we moved out of that neighborhood and into this house, I removed him from harm’s way. And then I thought, why stop with one?”

  “Wait—I’ve heard stories about Byron,” I say. “Did Dad know he was stolen? Did he know about all your animals?”

  “Certainly not,” Grandma Jo says. “I began renting a storage facility for the other animals as soon as your father was born. I couldn’t possibly keep my projects a secret with a child in the house; children are so indiscreet, and they draw so much attention. Byron was the only one we kept as a house pet. He and I were inseparable.” She gazes up at his portrait, and I swear there’s actual love in her eyes.

  All this information is making my head spin. Not only is prim and proper Grandma Jo a huge rule-breaker, she also used to have a dog she adored, just like I do. I’ve never considered that we might actually have something in common, but if Snickers were being abused, I know I’d do anything to help him, including dognapping him. What she’s doing isn’t exactly legal, but it still kind of makes me respect her more.

  “So, you guys are, like, an animal rights society?” I ask. “That’s what you want me to join? ’Cause I’m okay with that.”

  “That’s part of it,” Betty says at the same time as Edna says, “Not exactly.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Cookie says. “The girl deserves the truth. We’re not an animal rights society, AJ. We’re a heist club.”