by Stuart Gibbs
“It’s proof enough for us to issue a warrant for J.J. McCracken’s arrest!” Esquivel yelled, waving the warrant in the air for the cameras.
The crowd erupted in excitement. Suddenly, everyone was talking at once.
Summer glared at Sheriff Esquivel hatefully. “Yesterday, he acted like this might not have even been a crime. But today, when he can make a big scene in front of the cameras, he’s Sherlock Holmes. What a hypocrite. I’ll bet he doesn’t even believe Dad did this.”
“Really?” I asked. “Then why…?”
“He’s never liked Daddy,” Summer told me. “They went to high school together here and Daddy stole his girlfriend.”
Sheriff Esquivel attempted to lead his officers into the administration building, but Chief Hoenekker and his security team refused to budge.
Hoenekker stepped directly into Esquivel’s path and announced, “You do not have any jurisdiction here. FunJungle is its own municipality and has its own police force.”
“We’re the law here!” Marge added. “Not you!”
Hoenekker grimaced at this, obviously displeased by Marge’s attempt to help.
Before I knew what was happening, Summer was heading toward the admin building. She hadn’t bothered to put her baseball cap and glasses back on, so word quickly spread that Summer McCracken herself was there. The crowd parted to let her through. Lots of people took out their cell phones to take photos and shoot video of her.
Summer made a beeline for Sheriff Esquivel. “If you really care about justice, then why are you hounding my father and not Harper Weems?”
The name of the young billionaire quickly rippled through the crowd; everyone was surprised and intrigued by the mention of her name.
“What’s Harper Weems got to do with any of this?” Esquivel asked.
“Plenty!” Summer declared. “She was even more interested in buying that dinosaur than my father, her own cousin was working as a spy for her at the dig—and my friend found this at the scene of the crime!” She triumphantly held up the pen I had discovered the night before.
I grimaced, worried that Summer was making a mistake. After all, we didn’t have any concrete proof that Jeb Weems had been spying for Harper, and the pen didn’t really tie Harper to the crime at all. But Summer was obviously worked up about her father being accused of a crime, and determined to protect him.
The crowd ate it up. They all gasped at the sight of the pen—even though most of them couldn’t possibly have been able to tell what it was from a distance.
Sheriff Esquivel couldn’t tell either. “What’s that?” he asked.
“Evidence!” Summer exclaimed. “Evidence that you didn’t find because you didn’t even bother looking for it!” She turned to the TV cameras and said, “Yesterday, Sheriff Esquivel questioned whether the dinosaur had even been stolen at all! In fact, he accused the owners and the entire dig team of making the whole thing up!”
All attention shifted back to Sheriff Esquivel, who squirmed uncomfortably before coming up with a new, aggressive plan of action. “Well, it wouldn’t have made much sense to accuse J.J. McCracken of theft in front of his own daughter. You could have tipped him off and then he’d have fled the country on one of his fancy private jet planes.”
The crowd didn’t seem quite sure what to make of that. On the one hand, there was some logic to it; on the other, J.J. McCracken paid the salary of almost everyone there, so no one wanted to be caught agreeing with Esquivel.
Pete Thwacker did his best to come to J.J.’s defense; after all, that was his job. “For the record, J.J. McCracken has never been accused of a crime in all of his decades of business.”
“Maybe he just hasn’t been caught,” Sheriff Esquivel pronounced, then squinted suspiciously at the pen Summer was holding up. “How do I know that even came from the crime scene? Or that you didn’t plant it there to protect your father?”
“Why don’t you ask Teddy Fitzroy that question?” Summer shot back. “He’s the one who found it while you were twiddling your thumbs.” She scanned the crowd, then pointed me out. “There he is!”
Every head in the crowd turned toward me at once. I felt like a squirrel facing an oncoming truck.
“Teddy’s the one who figured out who killed Henry the Hippo when no one else could!” Summer told Sheriff Esquivel. “And he figured out who kidnapped Kazoo the Koala and who was trying to shoot Rhonda Rhino and who stole Li Ping the Panda. He’s ten times the detective you are!”
The crowd cleared around me and everyone looked at me expectantly. The TV cameras all pointed my way. So did a lot of cell phones.
I gulped, uncomfortable to be at the center of attention. “Summer didn’t plant that pen at the crime scene,” I told the crowd. “I found it there last night.”
The crowd murmured in response. All eyes shifted back to Sheriff Esquivel.
“And what were you doing poking around a crime scene?” he asked accusingly.
“Yesterday, you said it wasn’t a crime scene!” Summer reminded him. “You didn’t even think that a crime had been committed.”
“Oh, I knew a crime had been committed,” Esquivel said defiantly. “And I knew who was behind it. As far as I’m concerned, J.J. McCracken is guilty.”
“Well, as far as I’m concerned,” Marge shouted, unable to hold her tongue any longer, “you’re an idiot!”
Quite a few FunJungle employees cheered this pronouncement, which encouraged Marge and exasperated Esquivel.
“You can’t talk to me that way!” Esquivel raged. “I’m an officer of the law!”
“Then why can’t you find a clue the way Teddy can?” Marge taunted. “He’s doing a better job than you and he’s only thirteen! Maybe we ought to elect him sheriff next time!”
The crowd was enjoying this. Now several people heckled Esquivel, which rankled him even more. “One more word out of you,” he warned Marge angrily, “and I’ll haul you into jail along with J.J. McCracken!”
“I’d like to see you try, you dipstick,” Marge challenged, and the crowd hooted in response, which pushed Esquivel too far.
“All right, that’s it!” he shouted, and came at Marge, reaching for his handcuffs. If he didn’t have the jurisdiction to arrest J.J. McCracken, then he probably couldn’t arrest Marge, either, but he seemed too angry to care.
Hoenekker quickly stepped between the two of them, trying to maintain some sense of decorum, while Pete Thwacker tried his best to call for order, and Summer kept waving the pen about. The crowd roared with approval. Everyone who had gathered hoping for a spectacle was now getting one. They surged forward to see what was going on, swallowing me up in the crowd.
Esquivel and Marge were ignoring Hoenekker and shouting at each other. And then Esquivel lost his cool and tried to handcuff Marge. Marge responded by slapping him across the face, and then all heck broke loose. Esquivel’s officers and Hoenekker’s officers all jumped into the fray.
The crowd started chanting “Fight! Fight! Fight!” like we were in my middle-school cafeteria, rather than watching a bunch of adults. Everyone was pressing in so closely now, I was finding it hard to breathe, as it was hot and humid and I was being pinioned against Eleanor Elephant, whose costume reeked as though it hadn’t ever been washed (which really might have been the case). I pushed backward through the crowd while everyone else was pushing forward, and finally broke through into daylight again.
I took a few steps back to get a better view of what was happening. I still couldn’t see much over the crowd, but I did catch a glimpse of Marge O’Malley taking a flying leap off the administration building steps onto Sheriff Esquivel.
I could also see Pete Thwacker at the top of the steps, by the front doors of the admin building. I couldn’t hear him over the roar of the crowd, but it looked like he was making a plea for sanity that was being completely ignored.
Summer was by Pete’s side, thankfully free of the chaos, looking a bit concerned by what she had helped start. She notic
ed me and, unable to say anything over the crowd, took out her phone and typed quickly.
A second later, mine buzzed with a text. Loading dock?
I knew what she meant. Given the mob scene in front of the administration building, I couldn’t get to the front doors. But if I circled around to the loading dock, there was another entrance.
Sure, I wrote back.
Summer sent me a thumbs-up emoji, then slipped through the front doors of the admin building while everyone was distracted by the chaos.
I started for the loading dock, but was only halfway there before I got another phone call from the Barksdales. And this time, they were in even more trouble than they’d been in the day before.
19 THE COBRA
I almost didn’t answer the phone. I didn’t really want to talk to the Barksdales. But I figured it might be a lead in the Snakes Alive case. Maybe Tim and Jim had heard when Rick’s new shipment was coming in.
So I took the call. I was walking through the alley between the administration building and FunJungle’s veterinary hospital, leaving the crowd behind. “Hello?”
“Teddy! It’s Tim. Jim and I need your help.”
“Again?” I asked, wondering exactly how one family could cause itself so much trouble. “What now?”
“We lost a cobra,” Tim said.
“A cobra?!” I exclaimed. “Where?”
“In our house.”
I heaved a sigh of relief, thankful that they hadn’t managed to lose a venomous snake at a playground or a shopping mall, where the lives of innocent people would be at stake. The only people in danger at the moment were the Barksdales, who had brought this on themselves.
“How did you guys get a cobra?” I asked.
“We returned the anaconda first thing this morning and that jerk Rick wouldn’t give us our money back. He said he didn’t give refunds. All he would do was offer us another snake in exchange.”
“And you took a cobra? Even though they’re deadly?”
“Of course! That’s the whole point. The only other things Rick had to offer were these lame little green snakes and lizards and turtles. No girl is going to be impressed by a turtle.” Tim said this last word disdainfully, the same way he might have said “body lice.”
“Summer and Violet told you they thought having a cobra was idiotic,” I reminded him.
“Rick says they were lying,” Tim replied confidently. “He said all girls are attracted to danger.”
I recalled what Rick had told me earlier that day, about how owning a venomous snake gave you a feeling of power. If I knew any people who would have been susceptible to that pitch, it was the Barksdales.
I arrived at the loading dock, which was on the back side of the administration building. An office supply truck was pulling out. I slipped past it and climbed the stairs to the security door by the dock. “What kind of cobra was it?”
“I don’t know! What’s it matter? It’s a cobra!”
“Here’s a reason it might matter: If it’s a spitting cobra, it can shoot venom into your eyes, which can blind you.”
“That’s a thing?” Tim asked, sounding worried. “Rick didn’t say anything about it being able to blind us! He only said it could kill us by biting us!”
“And you were totally okay with that?” I asked, incredulous.
“He said it probably wouldn’t do that, as long as we were careful and didn’t do anything dumb, like poke it with a stick. Which we didn’t do. But then that idiot gave it to us in this stupid old plastic tub where the lid didn’t fit on right. Only we didn’t realize that until we got it home. We were setting up the cage for it and we turned around and the lid was off and it was gone.”
Summer opened the security door from the inside, allowing me access to the administration building. As I stepped into the blessedly air-conditioned hallway, she pointed to the phone and whispered, “Who’s that?”
I made the stupidest face I could.
“The Barksdales?” she asked, immediately understanding. “What now?”
I flipped the phone to speaker as we walked through the hall. Tim was still railing on about how losing the cobra in the house was Rick’s fault. “He should have put the snake in some sort of special cobra-carrying case, not just a dumb plastic tub. Or at least he should have warned us to shut the latches again if we opened it.”
“There were latches for the lid and you didn’t use them?” I asked.
“Well, how were we supposed to know the snake could open the lid from the inside?” Tim asked angrily. “It’s not like they have hands. Or arms. They’re just tails with heads.”
Summer looked at me with astonishment as she rang for the elevator. “They lost a cobra?” she asked, as quietly as she could.
I nodded my head, then said to Tim, “You’re sure the snake is in your house?”
“No, it’s at the movies,” Tim snapped. “Of course it’s in my house! That’s where it escaped, dummy.”
I didn’t appreciate being insulted by someone asking for my help. I had half a mind to hang up right then and let Tim and his family all deal with the cobra themselves. Only, as much as I disliked the Barksdales, I didn’t want them to die. And I worried there was a decent chance that one of them might kill the cobra before it could attack any of them.
The elevator door slid open and I got in with Summer. “I meant, have you kept all the doors to the house closed so that it can’t escape?”
“Oh. Yeah. We did that.”
“And where are you?”
“We’re outside, keeping an eye on the house. Can you get over here soon? Our parents went out for groceries and Jim and I really want to catch this snake again before they come home.”
The elevator reached the top floor, and Summer and I got off. “You want me to help catch the cobra?” I asked, startled.
“Yeah. You grew up in Africa. So you know how to do this, right?”
“Sure. I also know how to wrestle crocodiles and hypnotize elephants.”
“Really?” Tim asked, completely missing my sarcasm. “Great. The faster you can get over here, the better. Dad’s already super angry at us for what happened to his truck yesterday. If he finds out we’ve lost a cobra in the house, he’ll kill us.”
With most people, I might have assumed that was an exaggeration, but the Barksdales were a brutal bunch. “Tim, I don’t know how to catch a cobra,” I said, following Summer down the hall to her father’s office.
“But you just said…”
“I was joking.”
“This is no time for jokes, Teddy! There’s a deadly snake in my house!”
That you put there, I thought, although I didn’t say it. Instead, I said, “Why don’t you call Rick? I’m sure he knows how to handle a cobra. He’s the one who put it in the tub in the first place, isn’t he?”
“Rick can’t come out until tonight, after his shift is over. And he said it’ll cost a hundred bucks for him to help catch the snake. We don’t have that kind of money! We spent everything we had buying that stupid anaconda from him!”
Summer and I entered the reception area for her father’s office. Lynda, J.J.’s receptionist, was on the phone herself. She waved happily to us and pointed to the couch, indicating that J.J. was busy, so we should make ourselves comfortable.
The reception area always had food and drinks for guests. There was a big bowl filled with snack-size packets of pecans, which was another one of J.J.’s businesses, and two big crystal dispensers, one with iced tea, and the other with ice water with grapefruit slices and mint leaves in it to give it a little flavor. (J.J. disparagingly called this “spa water,” and claimed he found it a little too fancy for his tastes, but Lynda insisted that J.J. could stand to use a bit more class and made it anyhow.) Summer and I helped ourselves to tea and pecans while I thought over what to do.
It didn’t seem like a terrible idea to let the Barksdales wait for Rick and fork over another hundred dollars to him. It might make them think twice about b
uying an animal they had no idea how to care for next time. But two things gave me concern:
First, Tim and Jim probably weren’t patient enough to wait. Or they might fear their parents getting home first. If they tried to find the cobra, they could end up getting bitten, which would be bad. Or they might resort to leaving the door open and flushing it out of their house, at which point there would be a cobra on the loose in their neighborhood.
Second, even if Rick did show up to get the snake, then either Rick or the Barksdales would still have a cobra. If the Barksdales kept it, it was only a matter of time until something like this happened again—and if Rick took it back, he would probably unload it on some other unsuspecting person.
So I came up with another plan. “Let me call the snake team here. Maybe there’s someone who can get out there and help you catch the cobra.” I knew FunJungle had a team of experts on call to deal with any venomous snakes on the FunJungle property itself, as central Texas was home to rattlesnakes, cottonmouths, copperheads, and coral snakes, any one of which might pop up in a public area, where it could threaten the guests—or one of the exhibits, where it could threaten an animal. (Plus, there was still the chance that someday, the escaped black mamba might show up again.)
Tim was so relieved by my suggestion, he actually dropped his aggressive attitude for once. “Really? That’d be great.”
“There’s one catch,” I told him. “If they recover the snake, they’ll need to keep it.”
“What?” Tim exclaimed, already back to his jerky self. “No way! That’s my snake, not theirs!”
“Would you rather it stay loose in your house, then?” I asked. “I’m sure your parents will love that.”
“All right!” Tim agreed. “Fine. Whatever. Send them over. Fast.” He relayed his address to me, even though I had been there only the day before, and hung up.
Summer looked at me and said, “Details. Now.”
“Rick wouldn’t give them their money back for the anaconda. So they traded it for a cobra instead. And then they didn’t keep it locked up tight.”
