Bounced

by Ted Staunton

  I went through it the way we’d planned: how Zal, CC and I were trying to catch the Borsalino Bandit to get the reward and help our families with school fees, how we’d figured out a pattern to the robberies (I let Zal explain that part; the sergeant was impressed), how we’d staked out the plaza but only CC had seen what happened.

  Then CC described the man she saw walk into the bank, and how she’d run out from Gator Aid and dumped Bob into the robber’s car. She said she didn’t know the kind of car, but the licence had been something like AW5. Marty/Lamar said he ran the business but had been out at the time and got back just after and that Bob was indeed gone. “Lamar Del Ray,” he introduced himself. “But I run the store as Marty Raymond.”

  “Duncan named a Lamar Del Ray in his message,” said Sergeant Castro. “That you? He seems to think you did it.”

  “I got confused because I was excited,” I said quickly. “I was trying to say CC thought the robber looked like him.”

  “Okay,” Sergeant Castro said. “So, CC here put a snake in the robber’s car, whatever it was. How come the robber didn’t flip out? I, personally, would go through the roof.”

  “Either the dude didn’t mind snakes,” said Marty/Lamar, “or, more likely, ’ol Bob headed right under the nearest seat. Milk snakes are hiders.”

  “And now there’s a snake in Ms. Fortune’s car.” Sergeant Castro turned to Aunt Jenn. “Where was your car yesterday, Ms. Fortune, and where were you?”

  “I took it to work at Aurora B Nurseries,” said Aunt Jenn. “I was there all day, except when I took a late lunch and drove over to Woodside Market to do our shopping. I was working overtime — it’s that time of year — and I knew I’d be too tired after.”

  “What time did you shop?”

  “Around two, I think. It took a while. It was a big shop.”

  “It was,” Wiley Kendall agreed. “I helped her bring it in.”

  “You went straight to the grocery from work?”

  Aunt Jenn nodded. “It’s not far.”

  “And your car was unattended in the lot while you shopped. How long?”

  Aunt Jenn shrugged. “Forty minutes? Like I said, it was a load.”

  “Was it locked?”

  “Probably not. I know I should. Still have some small town in me, I guess.”

  Sergeant Castro folded his arms across his chest, considering. “The robbery was around two-twenty. Woodside’s six or seven minutes away, tops. Someone could steal your car, use it for the robbery and return it before you even knew it was gone. Stranger things have happened. Let’s have a look at the car.”

  Outside, it was already almost as hot as the day before had been. Detective Yee was in the unmarked cruiser, parked behind Aunt Jenn’s twined-off Toyota. She got out and nodded to us.

  Sergeant Castro said, “We have a partial plate number, AW5.” Detective Yee jotted it down. We all looked at Aunt Jenn’s licence: OKG 853.

  “This one is registered to a Jennifer Anne Fortune, of this address,” said Detective Yee, nodding at the plate.

  “Well, yes, that would be me,” said Aunt Jenn.

  “This the car?” Sergeant Castro asked CC.

  She shrugged. “It was like this. I only know trucks. These all look the same.”

  “You’re not alone. We had witnesses say Toyota, Honda, Nissan and, believe it or not, a Hummer.” Sergeant Castro stepped over the twine and peered in the car. He drew back quickly and turned to CC and Marty/Lamar. “How about the snake? Geez, it looks like a rattler.”

  “Milk snake,” CC snorted. “They’re harmless.”

  Marty/Lamar said, “Can I?” and pointed at the twine.

  “May I,” CC corrected.

  Zal and I glared at her.

  “Go ahead,” said Sergeant Castro. They both stepped over the twine and looked in, CC right behind.

  “Hey, Bob,” said CC. “Snakes I know.”

  Shut up, I thought.

  “Well, it is a milk snake,” said Marty/Lamar. “Can’t say if it’s Bob. The markings don’t differentiate enough, you know? And snakes often get into strange places on their own. I took one of these out of a house near here a while back. In the dryer, came in through the vent.”

  “Geez,” Sergeant Castro grimaced. “They common around here?”

  “There’ll be a few. Not much habitat in the city. They eat rodents, mostly, so definitely some in Oakwood Park.”

  “Been there lately, Ms. Fortune?”

  “A few days ago,” Aunt Jenn picked up on Marty/Lamar’s lead. “I take my lunch there if I have the time.”

  “They can go a spell without eating,” Marty/Lamar followed up. “Like I said, be happy as a clam under your seats.”

  Aunt Jenn shuddered. “That thing could have been in there all this time?”

  Sergeant Castro chewed harder, maybe thinking about his own car. Then he got back to business. “So, Ms. Fortune’s car is probable, right size and colour and could have been stolen at the right time to be the robbery vehicle, but we can’t confirm make or model and the plates are different. There is a snake inside, but we can’t positively ID it either and it could have been there a while, so the whole thing could be a coincidence. A strange one, but they happen.”

  He looked at Detective Yee. She shrugged. He looked at his watch. For the first time, I had the feeling we were going to get away with it.

  “Well,” Sergeant Castro said, “I think we’re about done for now. You’ve all been helpful. Ms. Fortune, could we just wrap this up with a look in the back of the car?”

  Aunt Jenn blinked. “Go right on, it’s not locked. I haven’t had it open. I put the groceries in the back seat to take into Aurora B. It is a mess, though.”

  We huddled at the back of the car as Sergeant Castro took a packet of latex gloves from his jacket pocket. He snapped them on and raised the hatchback. Inside was our usual jumble of junk: jumper cables, motor oil and washer fluid, an old blanket, a milk crate stuffed with plastic bags, some planter flats from Aurora B, a sweatshirt I’d been looking for. Sergeant Castro poked around, then lifted a corner of the blanket. Something was underneath.

  He shifted things gently and lifted the blanket higher. There was a licence plate: AHW 055.

  We all gasped.

  “I’ll run it, contact the owner,” said Detective Yee. She shook her head as she turned to the cruiser. “Sometimes people don’t notice. We all take them for granted.”

  “Find out if they were at or near Woodside Market yesterday,” called Sergeant Castro. To us, he said, “Looks as if he switched your plate with one he stole, from the same parking lot, I’ll bet. A double blind. Didn’t have time to ditch it, or he didn’t care. Look here, here, here.” Sergeant Castro pointed at the bottom of the trunk, the stolen plate and the blanket. There were flecks of bright red-orange paint, almost the colour of Zal’s bouncy ball. He lifted my sweatshirt. It was smeared with the stuff. He knelt and peered at Aunt Jenn’s licence plate. “And here too, little specks. The teller slipped a dye pack in with the stolen money. The robber must have got it on himself too.”

  “So somebody stole my car,” Aunt Jenn whispered.

  Sergeant Castro nodded, stood up and swiped at his knee. “Looks like this is the vehicle. Ms. Fortune, we’ll have to leave this car as is for the tech folks to sweep. I wonder if we could just go back upstairs so I can organize my notes and ask you a last couple of questions?”

  I went back up with Sergeant Castro and Aunt Jenn. The others stayed in the parking lot. Sergeant Castro asked Aunt Jenn to go over the times she left work and went shopping. He made more notes.

  “This is one thorough crook,” he said, flipping his notebook shut. “Changing plates on a stolen car.”

  “If Aunt Jenn came back early and her car was gone,” I pointed out, “she’d report it. He wouldn’t want you guys watching for it if he was going to rob a bank.” It was the kind of extra-sneaky thing criminals would do in World’s Best.

  Sergeant Cas
tro nodded slowly. “Good point. Keep your career choices open, Duncan. You might make detective. In the meantime, I’d better get on this. Thank you for your help. This is our first break in the case. The tech team will be over later and I’ll be in touch. Sorry for the inconvenience.” He handed Aunt Jenn his card. “If you think of anything else, let me know right away.”

  We’d done it. Aunt Jenn led us to the door. “I don’t know which gives me the willies more,” she said, over her shoulder, “having my car stolen by a bank robber, or driving around with a snake in it.”

  Sergeant Castro didn’t answer. He was looking at Aunt Jenn’s rear end. Her leather work gloves were crammed into her back pocket. One was streaked with glowing red-orange paint.

  As she turned to face us, he said, “Some crooks switch plates on a stolen car. Not many switch them back again. Ms. Fortune, I’m going to ask you to come down to the station.”

  CHAPTER 31

  Biggest Bounce

  Aunt Jenn confessed. She didn’t rat us out for helping; a Fortune always takes one for the team. The prosecutor asked for ten years and said Aunt Jenn was robbing banks in revenge for B&G Trust firing her. But when Aunt Jenn’s lawyer got the story out that she was really doing it to afford to send me to Studies Institute, the tables turned. Some of Aunt Jenn’s old bank customers even gave interviews about how great she was. The folks at Aurora B said they’d hold her job for her. What Mother Wouldn’t? read one headline.

  Suddenly Aunt Jenn was some kind of hero. In the end, the judge said the whole thing was obviously out of character and stress-related, and she’d never had a weapon or threatened anyone and he believed she’d make up for her mistakes. He gave her five years, eligible for parole in three, less time already served. What Mother Wouldn’t indeed?

  The police found most of the stolen money in shoeboxes in our basement storage locker. It wasn’t hard to find. The money had to be given back, of course, including what Aunt Jenn had paid the school, so I lost my tuition. The money Marty made on the python sale went to pay Aunt Jenn’s lawyer, and it turned out the bursary was really money she stole too. But the publicity made other things happen. People started a trust fund for my education. We donated the money to a charity for underprivileged kids.

  That’s because I decided not to go to Studies Institute after all. I’m back at Park Lawn. Miss Linton changed grades with me, so I have her for this year too. That’s fine with me. I like Miss Linton, and besides, I’d had just about all the change I could handle then. That was one reason Lamar Del Ray and I agreed that I’d call him Marty, the way I’d thought of him before. Dad was too weird and Marty says he likes it better than Lamar anyway.

  Marty and I stayed in the apartment too. It’s convenient to Gator Aid. Marty and Wiley Kendall get on pretty well, now that Wiley Kendall knows Marty isn’t chasing after Aunt Jenn. Every so often, Mrs. Ludovic has us both over for dinner. Marty gave her an iguana, the brother of Betty, the one he’d sold in the shop. Mrs. Ludovic loves it. It turns out she was a wildlife biologist in her own country before she came here. She named the iguana Boris.

  In fact, of the three of us, only Zal ended up going to SI. CC’s dad got a new job up north where they went to camp and fish, and the whole family moved at the end of summer. We keep in touch online. Next summer, she wants to be a counsellor at a big camp up there. She’s also stuffing a raccoon. You don’t want to see the in-progress pictures. I still hang with Zal. He got his batting average up to .200. He has a big talent show audition coming up.

  Me, I’m busy, helping out at the store. I never did write Bad Bounce. I wrote this instead. It seemed even stranger than anything I could make up. It was also a deal of work and I’m glad it’s done. Miss Linton is looking for an idea for our class play, though, so Bad Bounce might get written yet. I have another idea too.

  For the first few months I didn’t see Aunt Jenn. Marty, Wiley Kendall and Mrs. Ludovic did, and a bunch of other people. I didn’t want to go see her in jail. I didn’t want to see her anywhere else either, truth to tell. I knew she’d robbed the banks for me, but that just made it feel as if the whole thing was my fault. I didn’t want to feel that. Like I said, enough had already changed.

  Finally, Marty took me out there. He said it wasn’t a high-security jail, but it looked secure enough to me. Marty waited for me outside the visiting area. Aunt Jenn and I sat in a room where a bunch of other families were visiting too. The tables and swivel chairs were bolted to the floor and walls, like in a fast food restaurant. We sat side by side. I didn’t want to look her in the eye.

  “How are you, Skeets?” she said. Her red hair was cut short. She had on an orange jumpsuit. It was too big.

  I looked at the table.

  “Fine. Good. Okay. Marty sent you cigarettes.”

  “Thank him for me, but I’ve quit again. School’s good?”

  “Okay. Miss Linton says hi.” I didn’t want to talk about school. School had gotten us here in the first place. I said, “How’s jail?”

  I could feel her winding up for some kind of cheery comment, but finally she just said, “Okay. Fine. Good.” She sighed. “It sucks, Duncan. I hate it here.”

  “What did you do it for?” There, it was out.

  “I had a dream for you.”

  “Don’t say it was for me! It wasn’t my dream.” I clung tight to the seat of my plastic chair. The tabletop had little gold flecks in it.

  “You don’t know yet how much there is to dream about, hon.”

  “But you wrecked everything.” The gold flecks got blurry. I fought to keep my voice from wobbling.

  “I changed everything. Maybe it was time.” She jogged me with her elbow, our first touch. “You wrecked everything.”

  “Me?”

  “You caught me.”

  I turned to Aunt Jenn. Her lips twitched the faintest almost-smile. “There’s not many can say that. And I’ll tell you something else, a secret. Just you and me. I’ve been thinking a lot since I got here. There’s another reason I did it. It was plain wrong and it was stupid, but truth to tell, there was a little thrill. It was fun. Maybe I needed a change too.”

  I kind of glugged, giggled and hiccupped all at the same time. Aunt Jenn smiled sadly.

  “Just sayin’, Skeets. I did a bad thing and I hate that; I can’t help it if I liked it too. Just a smidge. If I’d really been doing it just for you, I wouldn’t have done it. It wasn’t your fault. I think I did it for me too. Maybe you can’t understand.”

  I sniffed. “I think I do. What will we do when you get out?”

  She gave me a hug then. I hugged her back.

  “You know Aurora B says I can have my job back when I get out. Those folks are good to me.”

  “If you want it,” I said. “Maybe it will be time for something different.”

  Aunt Jenn hugged me tighter. “Maybe it will. I’ve got a little for a rainy day. We’ll see when it’s time.”

  I guessed we would. There’d be a lot to see about, but I figured I’d be ready.

  I almost forgot: If you’re wondering, we got the reward. Zal was relieved, let me tell you. His share helped with his school fees, even though it was nowhere near enough. CC bought some stuff and gave some to the kids charity. I didn’t feel right, collecting a reward for catching my own aunt, so I gave my share to the charity too.

  Besides, Aunt Jenn had said she had a little for a rainy day. At first I didn’t understand exactly what she meant. Then one Saturday, doing my eight-plex chores, I bumped Wiley Kendall’s broom as I was putting the mop back in the caretaker closet. The broom handle gave a dull clunk as it hit the floor. I stared at it. I slipped into the closet, turned on the light and pulled the door shut. It was a job of work to get that handle off, but I did it. One end of a piece of string was taped inside.

  I pulled. Out came rolls of hundred-dollar bills, paper-clipped to the string. I counted twice: there were thirty bills — three thousand dollars. Wiley Kendall always said he was wily by name n
ot by nature, so I knew they weren’t his. I put everything back the way I’d found it and got out of there.

  Marty took me to see Aunt Jenn again a week later. By then I’d thought it all out. We talked about this and that.

  “Zal says hi,” I told her.

  “How is Zal?” Aunt Jenn looked tired. Her freckles stood out.

  “He’s okay. He asked me if Wiley Kendall needs any more helpers. I think his family is worried about keeping on paying for Studies Institute.”

  “Don’t we know about that. It’s a darn shame. Did you ask Wiley?”

  “I’m going to. I need the help. I was so tired, I dropped his big broom the other day.” I looked out the barred window. “Made a big clunk. Like in my mystery.”

  I kept on watching clouds.

  Aunt Jenn didn’t say anything. I watched more clouds. She still didn’t say anything. I risked a look. She was staring at me. Her face was dead pale except for the freckles. Was a tornado brewing? She turned to the window. I wondered if she was looking at the bars or the sky.

  When Aunt Jenn turned back, her eyes were clear.

  “I remember that, Skeeter. I’ll leave it with you. You’ll know what to do.” Then she smiled, one of her big ones. It was the first wrap-around, catch the wrong train, sinkaphone on a psychedelic truck, haunted house Aunt Jenn smile I’d seen in ages.

  “You know,” she said, “I had a headache when I came in here and now it’s gone.” She looked out the window again. “I do believe it’s not going to rain.”

  It wasn’t very hard to do. After all, I’d picked up a few tricks from World’s Best. I addressed a bunch of envelopes to Zal’s house, using different pens and printing, and different computer fonts. Then I split the money into unequal amounts and put some in each envelope, wrapped in a note with matching printing that said, “For your school,” or “A donation for your education,” but with no name. I sealed the envelopes, and every time Marty took a road trip for Gator Aid I’d get him to mail one from a different place. They never found out where the money came from, and don’t you tell.