Squishy Taylor and the Silver Suitcase

by Ailsa Wild

  Then someone else asks a question and the zookeeper’s reply grabs my attention.

  ‘You’re right, there are people who make a lot of money from smuggling black cockatoos to other countries. There are some seriously rich folk who like having these beautiful pets in their houses. But it’s against the law to send them overseas.’

  I nudge Dad and whisper, ‘How could they smuggle them? Wouldn’t they flap and squawk?’ I think about the suitcase my mum packed to go to Geneva. It was big. But Zora wouldn’t be happy in there for a second. And a bird flapping around in a suitcase would be noticed for sure.

  Dad shrugs. ‘Dunno, Squisho.’

  ‘So,’ the zookeeper asks, ‘who would like to pat Zora?’

  We tumble into a queue and the zookeeper asks us to be very calm and quiet.

  I watch the other kids stroke Zora’s feathers while she sits calmly on the zookeeper’s arm. Some of the kids get to give her food. I’m desperate for my turn.

  When I get to the front and step up to her, the zookeper is making a gentle clucking noise with her tongue.

  I try making the clucking noise and Zora turns her head sideways, as if she likes it. I cluck again. Then Zora walks her big, clawed feet up the zookeeper’s arm and onto my shoulder. I’m so happy, my heart swings like a monkey in my chest. Zora is enormous and her black feathers are so beautifully shiny. Her claws pinch through my T-shirt, just a tiny bit. Then she leans down and rubs the side of her beak against my cheek.

  Vee and Jessie giggle.

  ‘She likes you,’ says the zookeeper, taking Zora back off me.

  I say, ‘She’s beautiful.’ I wish I could hold her for longer.

  ‘Yes, she is,’ the zookeeper says. She strokes Zora’s lovely feathers and murmurs, ‘You’re worth a lot of money, aren’t you, my darling?’

  When we get home, Dad leaves us at the lift so he can check the mail.

  As we open our door, Jessie says, ‘Right. I’m going to look up black cockatoo smuggling.’

  ‘And then can you see if Mr Hinkenbushel arresting the Dodgies is in the news?’ I ask.

  ‘Sure.’ Jessie nestles down on the couch while Vee gets out the bread and Vegemite. Baby is asleep, so I push him quietly into Dad and Alice’s room.

  Just before I close the door, Jessie squeals, ‘Ewwww!’

  Jessie’s not usually a squealer, so I ignore the fact that she just woke up Baby and come running to see what she’s found.

  There’s a picture on the screen of a sad-looking black cockatoo in a cage with bits of its feathers missing and patches of red skin.

  Baby is crying because he wants to get out of his pram and Vee is saying, ‘What? What? Let me see!’

  Jessie skips to the next image. It’s a row of small black cockatoos lying down in a suitcase, with their eyes closed.

  It stops being ‘ew’ and starts being really sad.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Dad asks, pushing open the door. ‘Why aren’t you looking after your brother? What have you found?’

  He takes Baby out of the pram and comes over to see.

  ‘Oh, Jessie. That’s enough now,’ Dad says.

  I can hear in his voice that he wishes we hadn’t seen those pictures.

  Jessie flicks away by changing the search from ‘images’ to ‘news’.

  The first headline says: BLACK COCKATOO CASE CONTINUES TO BAFFLE CUSTOMS POLICE.

  A flood of baby black cockatoos, which can only have come out of Australia, has entered the black market in the US and Japan. But how are they leaving the country? Some suspect an inside job.

  I think about Zora on the zookeeper’s wrist. You could tell that Zora is loved, and that she’s properly fed. Her life isn’t that bad. But she must still be sad not to be in the wild. How much worse is it for all those baby creatures being smuggled in suitcases? Some people are really, really mean.

  Baby is wriggling his way out of Dad’s arms, so Dad puts him on the floor in front of us. Baby gets himself up onto hands and knees, but he can’t crawl yet. All he can do is rock forwards and backwards. And he loves it.

  ‘Well,’ Dad says, reading over our shoulders, ‘that answers your question about how they smuggle the animals, Squishy. It looks like they use a sedative.’

  ‘What’s a sedative?’ asks Vee.

  ‘It’s a kind of medicine to make them sleep,’ Dad says. ‘Hopefully it means the poor critters don’t notice they’re trapped in a suitcase.’

  It still doesn’t seem very kind to me.

  ‘But,’ Dad says, in a finishing-up kind of voice, ‘let’s turn this thing off and have a game of cards.’

  ‘Yeah!’ I say. I love it when Dad has time to play cards. I still want to look up the Dodgies’ arrest but we can do that later when Dad’s busy.

  We sit around the table and Dad gets everyone a juice with ice. We leave Baby rocking on his hands and knees on the floor because he still seems to think it’s fun. Jessie shuffles and deals. She’s amazing. Her hands flick-flick-flick like some kind of ninja. I wish I was that good.

  Just as I’m about to play the first card, Dad groans. ‘Oh no!’ he says.

  ‘What? What?’ we all ask.

  ‘Oh bugger, bugger, bugger!’ Dad slaps his knee.

  I punch him on the arm. ‘What is it, Dad?’

  ‘I left the holiday chocolate in the car last night!’ he declares, like it’s the worst tragedy ever.

  ‘Holiday chocolate!’ Vee says.

  ‘Wooo!’ cheers Jessie.

  ‘I’ll go get it!’ I shout and jump out of my seat.

  ‘It’s probably all melted and horrible,’ Dad says. ‘I’m sure you don’t really want it.’

  ‘We do! We do!’ Jessie and Vee chorus while I grab the car key from the hook by the door and race out. I catch the lift down to the basement and run to our car.

  The packet of chocolate is on the front seat and it’s shiny and beautiful. It feels a bit goopy when I grab it, but not too bad. I lock the car, run back to the lift and press ‘11’ for our floor.

  It only goes up one floor and when the doors slide open Mr Hinkenbushel is waiting in the foyer. He steps in next to me.

  Perfect! I’ve been wondering about the Dodgies all day.

  ‘Did you arrest those people with the DNA yesterday?’ I ask.

  He stares at me. ‘How did you know about –?’ he begins. Then he shakes his head. ‘You can’t know about –’

  I grin at him. He didn’t see us there on South Lawn watching him chasing the Dodgies.

  He scowls down at me, but it’s not as scary as it used to be. Scowling is just his normal face. Shouting is when he’s actually scary. ‘You are the nosiest darned kid around,’ he growls. ‘And no. I didn’t arrest them yet. Because I still don’t have the evidence to prove it was them.’

  He didn’t arrest them yet. Which means they’re still on the loose!

  The lift stops at our floor and we both get out. Mr Hinkenbushel mutters something to himself. All I hear is ‘incompetent scientists’ and ‘newfangled technology’. When we reach his front door he doesn’t even say goodbye. That’s the kind of cranky he is.

  I wonder what the Dodgies did and what evidence he still needs.

  And I know something he doesn’t know. The Dodgy Duo are planning to be at the museum tomorrow.

  I think about knocking on his door to tell him, but he probably wouldn’t believe me. He’d probably shout spit at me and go all red in the face. I hate it when he does that.

  I think about it. The only other option is for us to track down the Dodgy Duo at the museum.

  Squishy Taylor, ninja-detective.

  In the morning, as soon as I hear the kettle boil, I do a Drop-to-Running descent. It’s the quickest way from my bunk bed to the kitchen. I skid up to the stove in my socks.

  ‘Morning Alice, can we go to the museum today?’ I ask. I asked about seventeen times last night, but Alice and Dad wouldn’t answer.

  If we can’t have a beach holida
y, the least they can do is let us be detectives.

  Alice is in her sleeping shirt with Baby on her hip. She squints at me. She’s not wearing her glasses.

  ‘Squishy, it’s the holidays! You don’t even get out of bed this early on a school day.’

  I take Baby so she can make the tea. Baby laughs and gets his hands tangled in my hair.

  ‘Pleeease?’ I beg.

  ‘You’ll have to ask your father,’ Alice smiles.

  ‘Today,’ Dad announces, in a sleepy voice from their bedroom, ‘we’re taking Baby on his first trip to the museum.’

  ‘Woohoo!’ I shout, and spin Baby around until we both nearly crash into Alice and her hot tea.

  Time to track down the Dodgies.

  ‘Let’s do the Dinosaur Walk!’ I shout, as soon as we’re through the museum turnstile. I haven’t exactly forgotten the Dodgy Duo, but the Dinosaur Walk is so cool. We all love it, for different reasons.

  I grab the pram and one-foot-scoot Baby across the shiny floors. Dad grins and follows behind us.

  The Dinosaur Walk is a whole hallway of full-sized dinosaur skeletons. It’s the best. I love how they tower so high it turns us into puny insects. It feels like we could just be squashed into the ground.

  Vee spins around, trying to see all the dinosaurs at once, calling, ‘Imagine riding one!’

  ‘Imagine if we could climb them like a climbing frame,’ I say, standing under an enormous skeleton.

  Jessie steps up next to me. ‘Imagine being part of a dig and discovering a new kind of dinosaur.’

  ‘Try this,’ Vee says. She lies down on her back under the bones of a huge Tarbosaurus, staring up at its massive teeth. ‘Eeeek! It’s going to eat me!’

  So fun! Jessie and I scramble to lie down next to her.

  I look up. The big dinosaur head above us looks like it’s about to swoop down and pounce. ‘Ahhhh!’ I squeal and start laughing.

  Baby waves his arms and shouts, bouncing in his pram. Dad unclips him and puts him down next to me, but Baby doesn’t care about the dinosaur. He gets up into his crawling-not-crawling position and rocks.

  He leans his drooly face over mine, and I gently jiggle him closer to Vee.

  Jessie tells us about which dinosaurs ate which other dinosaurs. Then Dad points into the next room.

  ‘Hey kids, it’s your zookeeper friend from yesterday.’

  ‘Where?’ I ask.

  We clamber up and run to see.

  The next room is dark, with lit-up displays around the edge of the room. There’s a glowing sign that says ‘Endangered Species of the World’.

  On one side there’s a screen with beanbags spread out in front. Our zookeeper is on the screen, talking. As she talks, the video shows animals next to a map of Australia. First the map has a big green splodge, showing where the animals used to live. Then it shrinks to a tiny red dot to show where they live now.

  ‘Here in the museum,’ says the zookeeper, smiling, ‘they hold a massive DNA bank of thousands of Australia’s endangered species.’

  The image zooms across what looks like lots of fancy fridges in a row and then back to the zookeeper. She smiles to the camera and starts saying something else.

  But I don’t hear her because Dad asks, ‘Hey, what did you do with your brother?’

  We look around at each other with wide eyes.

  ‘Oh no!’ I gasp.

  ‘We left him with the dinosaurs!’ Jessie says and we bolt back the way we came.

  I can see straight away that Baby is not where we left him. We skid to a stop, bumping into each other as Dad jogs up behind us with the pram.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Dad says, but he doesn’t sound OK at all. He’s staring around and his face has gone whiter than usual. ‘Baby will be fine. It was only a couple of minutes.’

  But Baby is definitely not here.

  ‘I’ll run to the front desk,’ Dad says, spinning on his feet. ‘You three stay there,’ he calls over his shoulder.

  I’ve never seen Dad run that fast in my life.

  I can’t believe we left Baby by himself and now he’s gone.

  Jessie and I stay exactly where we are, but Vee starts running around the Dinosaur Walk.

  ‘Baby … Baby, where are you?’ She sounds frantic.

  I lean on the pram and stare at Jessie. ‘What are we going to do?’ I whisper. ‘What if the Dodgy Duo took him?’

  Dad comes back with a man in a museum uniform and Vee runs towards us from the other direction.

  ‘As I said, sir,’ the museum man is saying, ‘lost children are usually found very quickly. Often at the cafe with a friendly stranger feeding them ice-cream.’ He smiles reassuringly. ‘The announcement should come on at any minute.’

  Right then, a voice comes over the loudspeakers. I can hear it echoing through the whole museum.

  ‘Attention! If anyone has discovered a lost Baby, please make yourself known to the museum staff immediately. I repeat, if you have found a Baby, please report to the museum staff immediately.’

  The museum man says, ‘All the museum staff will be looking for him now, sir. We’ll probably hear from the cafe any minute.’

  Dad nods. ‘I’ll look that way.’ He points back along the dinosaurs. ‘Squishy, will you stay with this man and the pram? Jessie and Vee, go and look that way.’ He points towards the Endangered Species room.

  We all nod and they run off. I sink down next to the pram with my head in my hands.

  ‘Don’t worry, sweetheart,’ the museum man says, ‘your baby brother will be back with you in no time.’

  But the museum man doesn’t know the Dodgy Duo are in the building. What if I put Baby in danger, just because I wanted to be a detective?

  Dad runs back to me to see if Baby’s been found. Jessie and Vee return and say they couldn’t find him. The announcer does the announcement again.

  I can’t help whispering to Jessie and Vee again, ‘What if it was the Dodgies?’

  Dad is clutching his hands and his eyes are red. ‘I need to call Alice,’ he says.

  The museum man says, ‘Give it another five minutes, sir. No need to scare her unnecessarily.’

  I can’t bear to sit still anymore.

  I wander towards the Endangered Species room.

  The zookeeper is talking about the museum’s DNA bank again. The video must be on a loop. Then a movement catches my eye. Someone small is crawling between the beanbags and then stopping to sit up and wave fat little arms at the zookeeper on the screen.

  It’s Baby.

  ‘Baby-my-baby!’ I call and start crying from relief. ‘You’ve learned how to crawl! We must have missed you in the dark.’

  I swoop down and pick him up and kiss him all over his dribbly face. He laughs and pulls my hair and I run with him back to the Dinosaur Walk.

  ‘Dad, Dad,’ I call, ‘I found him, look!’ I hold Baby up so high I nearly drop him. Dad leaps to his feet.

  ‘Look at this,’ I say and put Baby on the floor. ‘Crawl to Dad, go on, you can do it, crawl to Dad.’

  And Baby starts crawling. He’s a bit wobbly and slow and he’s leaving a dribble path behind him on the floor like a ginormous snail. But he’s crawling.

  We all laugh, but we’re all crying too. Dad picks up Baby and squeezes him tight and Jessie, Vee and I gather around and squeeze Dad and Baby in a massive group hug.

  After a while Dad pulls away. ‘Well, I need a strong cup of tea,’ he says. ‘And I think some people might deserve cake.’

  My bonus sisters and I cheer and we set off towards the museum cafe.

  Dad cuddles Baby close to his chest and Jessie pushes the pram. When we get to the cafe there’s a whole shining window of cakes. One of them looks like a cloud with a billion rainbow-sprinkles on it. Dad says we can have a piece of cake to share if we can agree on which one. We all point at the rainbow cloud at the same time.

  The woman behind the counter laughs and cuts us a huge slice.

  ‘That looks disgu
sting,’ Dad says, grinning at us over his steaming teacup and chuckling.

  We head to a corner of the cafe where there’s a high chair. Jessie sits next to Baby and feeds him his cucumber and sultanas from the snack bag we keep in the pram. I stuff my face with sprinkle-cake. I nearly spit it out again, laughing, when a big squelchy noise comes out of Baby’s bottom.

  Dad hauls him up under one arm, and grabs the nappy bag with the other hand.

  ‘You three, eat your disgusting cake and no mischief,’ Dad says. ‘Promise you won’t move from those chairs?’

  ‘We promise,’ we chorus.

  ‘Because I can’t bear anyone else going missing today,’ he says, clutching Baby. He’s still a bit white.

  ‘We really do promise, Dad,’ I say.

  I watch them head for the bathroom. I’m glad we found Baby, but I realise we’ve been distracted from our main purpose.

  ‘After this, we have to start looking for the Dodgies properly,’ I say.

  Just then, a door near us opens and Vee grabs my arm.

  ‘Look,’ she hisses.

  I hadn’t noticed the door, because it’s not the kind of door visitors are supposed to notice. It blends in with the wall and says ‘Archives: Staff Only’. But Vee’s not pointing out the door. She’s pointing out who just walked through it.

  The Dodgy Duo.

  Growly Voice is carrying a silver suitcase. Red Sneakers is right behind him, softly closing the door. They even look like they’re wearing the same T-shirts as before. Just as dodgy as ever.

  ‘Well, that was easy,’ Red Sneakers says.

  ‘Like stealing lollies from a baby,’ says Growly Voice, with a growly laugh, lifting the silver suitcase like a trophy. ‘Thank you, Partnership!’

  ‘Back to the lab tomorrow,’ Red Sneakers says, sounding happy.

  They basically skip out of the cafe together.

  Jessie, Vee and I stare at each other.

  We caught the Dodgies stealing from the museum. But we can’t follow them now. Not after we promised Dad we wouldn’t move.