Minerva Clark Goes to the Dogs

by Karen Karbo

  When no one was home, Casa Clark felt enormous. We called it Casa Clark because, unlike every other old wood-shingled bungalow on our street, ours was a stucco box that looks like a Mexican restaurant. It used to be pink, but before my parents got a divorce they painted it light brown. It has three floors and a brass fireman’s pole that went from the third floor straight into the kitchen, which I used to love as a kid, but now is sort of an embarrassment. I don’t know why.

  I woke Jupiter up from his nap. Jupiter is my ferret. His cage is kept behind the grand piano in the living room. He was dead asleep, snoring inside a black denim pants leg. Jupiter loves nothing more than sleeping inside a pants leg. He has a whole assortment of pants-leg sleeping tubes, and as a result my brothers and I have a whole assortment of cutoffs.

  I tried to cuddle Jupiter under my chin, but he threw himself out of my arms and ran across the hall to the dining room. He took three mad laps around our big table, leaped on a chair, then onto the table, where he knocked over a near-empty carton of milk that had been sitting there since breakfast. It spilled onto the open newspaper.

  I stared at the empty red and white carton, lying on its side. The sight of the milk-soaked newspaper gave me an idea. I tugged my phone from my back pocket and punched in Chelsea’s number, scooped Jupiter up, and dropped him back into his cage. He didn’t like this at all. He thought we were going to play, and we were, until the spilled milk gave me an idea.

  “Chelsea, it’s me, Minerva Clark. The girl who bought your ring, you said she was in line in front of you at the coffee place?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “What did she order and how did she pay?”

  “What did she order? Coffee. That’s why it’s called Coffee People. ’Cause people buy coffee there.” She giggled for no reason. Like many girls in our grade, Chelsea had a laugh that sounded practiced.

  “Just a cup of coffee? Not a latte or something more complicated?”

  “Complicated how?”

  “You know.” I started feeling a mood coming on. Was Chelsea being dense on purpose? “Like a half-caf, half-decaf soy macchiato, extra hot.”

  “She did, actually. I remember because I started feeling totally tweaked that it took her so long to explain exactly what she wanted. It was already almost ten thirty.”

  “How did she pay?”

  “With money?”

  “Did she use a card? A credit or debit card?”

  “Definitely. One of those. There was some something about the receipt. She gave the cashier person the wrong one and they traded. Then she threw it away anyway.”

  “You saw her throw it away? You’re sure?”

  “Positive. I remember being at amazed at how long her hair was. And the only time she was standing with her back to me was when she was at the garbage can, sticking the receipt through the little flap thingy.”

  “I thought you said she was in front of you.”

  I could practically hear Chelsea roll her eyes. “She was. But we were too busy talking about my ring for me to notice, you know?”

  “Perfectimento. I know how we can find her. Meet me at the airport in half an hour.”

  2

  Chelsea did not want to go to the airport. She was exhausted. Her mom had just dropped her at home, then gone straight back to the hospital. How was she supposed to get to the airport, anyway? Chelsea was a girl full of excuses for why something couldn’t happen. Maybe this had to do with being good in algebra, at which yours truly sucked beyond belief.

  I told her there was a good chance that the name of the lady who bought her ring was at the airport, and if she wanted to find her, we had to go now. We didn’t have a minute to waste. I told her to take MAX, and meet me at the airport in front of Page and Turner Books on the main concourse at 1:00.

  Chelsea said she’d never been on MAX, which was completely untrue since I remembered at least three times our class took MAX downtown on a field trip. MAX stood for Metropolitan Area Express, and was a teenager’s best friend. You could get anywhere you needed to go around town on MAX, and it was well lit and completely safe and had no more bad smells than you would encounter on the city bus. Chelsea whined that she didn’t know where the closest MAX station was (“My family doesn’t really do public transportation”), or how much it cost, plus how was she supposed to sneak out of the house?

  “Chelsea,” I said, “if you can’t figure out how to sneak out of your own house, then I can’t help you.”

  Then I hung up on her. Chelsea would think up one excuse after another if I didn’t just put an end to the conversation by hanging up, a technique I learned from watching detective shows with Quills. He is such a fan of Law & Order he taught himself to play the theme song on his bass. The phone calls are very short on that show, in case you haven’t noticed.

  I changed out of my jean cutoffs and black Green Day T-shirt into a pair of jeans that hadn’t been cut off yet and another Green Day T-shirt and slid my feet into my new turquoise Chuck Taylor high-tops, which I’d supposedly got to replace my purple ones, but here is a secret about Chuck Taylors—you never replace the old ones, they are just retired to the back of the closet. I stuck my hair on top of my head, brushed my teeth, made sure I had my house keys—I am dead meat if I forget my house keys and have to call one of the brothers—grabbed my hoodie, and set out down the hill toward the MAX station.

  On the way, I called Mark Clark to let him know I was going over to my friend Chelsea’s for a while. Technically I was going to the airport to help my friend Chelsea, but Mark Clark didn’t need to know this. He would only worry. Our house rule was: When no one was home I could leave as long as I called the Brother-in-Charge and let him know where I was going. As long as I locked the house up properly and was home at the time I gave, no one asked questions. Or not more than about fifty, anyway.

  The sun was a pale gray ball high in the sky behind the dull clouds. Still, it was warm, and all the roses were in bloom. That’s how you know summer has arrived in Portland—it’s warm and cloudy instead of cool and cloudy. I walked along, swinging my arms, glad to be out of the house. I tried not to feel deprived because I was the only girl my age on the planet who did not have an iPod. I also tried not to think about Kevin. I didn’t think it was good for my sleuthing to be obsessed with someone who was only my almost-boyfriend. Anyway, he was coming home next Friday, 168 hours, give or take.

  Suddenly, I heard a strangled screech. I looked up to see a hawk with a brown-spotted underside flying low overhead, with something in its talons—a small opossum or a rat that was cranking its skinny tail round and round in fear.

  I slammed my eyes shut and pulled my hoodie up over my head. I couldn’t stand the image of that little creature being carried away. I hated hated hated birds. Every few years I had a terrible bird experience. My first memory of a bird was in preschool. I got bit on my pointer finger by a duck while trying to feed it a piece of stale French bread. A few years later there was a chicken at some petting zoo that pecked at the back of my hair. Then there was that scary movie called The Birds that I watched at my friend Hannah’s birthday slumber party one year. I don’t know why we were allowed to watch it. It’s an old movie from a time long ago when men and women used to dress up every day just to walk around. Birds invade a town and break into homes and peck out people’s eyes. If I ever wanted to give myself a good shiver just for something to do, I thought about that stupid movie.

  Even though the hawk was now just a speck in the sky, gliding away over the gray roofs, I sprinted down a cross street in the opposite direction, hoping he was too busy with his baby opossum to notice me. I ran as far as I could with my eyes closed, in case he decided to circle back and peck my eyes out.

  I was sweaty from running, especially my scalp. I tied my hair in a knot. We Clarks are a family of sweaty heads. Even Morgan, who is my youngest older brother and has the thinnest hair of all of us, gets a bad sweaty head from time to time. I wished I’d left my hoodie at home. I
took it off and tied it tight around my waist. At the MAX station I sat down on a bench to wait.

  No one I knew paid much attention to other people’s parents. They all faded together: a bunch of old people who complained about their aching knees and listened to National Public Radio in the car. I did remember Mr. de Guzman, though. At the last parent/teacher conference of the year, Chelsea had the slot before me. The conferences were held in the cafeteria at card tables set in a long row. Unlike all the other dads, who showed up in business-casual khakis or jeans, Mr. de Guzman wore a suit and a red tie. He made notes on Chelsea’s papers with a gold pen. He looked much more serious and rich than the rest of our parents. He was intimidating.

  I found a seat on the train beside a lady in a black jacket and black pants, her roller suitcase tucked in front of her feet, tapping madly on her Palm Pilot. She was a businesswoman on the way to go on a business trip, obviously. That’s one thing about MAX—you can always tell what people are up to by what they’re wearing and what they’re carrying. I found a stale Starburst in my back pocket. If there’s one thing I like more than a stale piece of red licorice, it’s a stale kiwi banana Starburst. It’s my favorite candy, hands down.

  The airport is only twenty minutes from our house, and MAX lets you off right at the terminal. The doors whooshed open, and people hurrying to catch their flights swarmed around me. I was early. I could take my time. I’d told Chelsea to meet me in front of Page and Turner Books on the main concourse. At our airport—and maybe at all airports—there are a lot of fancy shops selling expensive stationery, jewelry and glass bowls, carved wooden animals, woolen blankets, work-out clothes. Stuff you would never need to take with you on an airplane. Page and Turner was almost exactly across the way from Coffee People.

  It was 1:10, then it was 1:20. I listened over the loudspeaker to one boarding announcement after the next. It was 1:30. There was a table stacked with books on sale in front of the store, which I thumbed through for half a lifetime. Inside the shop, the lady behind the register kept glancing out the window at me, as if I was going to steal something. A man who smelled like beer stood staring at the display in the window, then dabbed his eyes with his knuckles and wandered away. I kept looking over at Coffee People, to see how my plan was going to work.

  I told myself that if Chelsea wasn’t here by 2:00 I was leaving, but then there she was, hurrying toward me in her lime green platform flip-flops, holding her dark blond hair to the sides of her head. It was wet. There were two fresh Band-Aids on her suntan legs, from where it looked like she cut herself shaving. She wore a pink and green flowered pleated skirt and a faded pink T-shirt that said PUGS NOT DRUGS across the front, over a picture of a tough-looking pug. She wore rubber bracelets and a couple of gold necklaces and smelled like lemon and vanilla and in general looked as if she was going to a dance and not to the airport to dig through the garbage, which was part of my plan.

  Of course, Chelsea didn’t know that yet.

  “I was starting to think you weren’t coming.” I was surprised at how relieved I was to see her. The idea of trudging back home without having a new mystery to solve depressed me. I thought of an entire summer of boring chores and notes from my brothers tacked to the refrigerator.

  “Sorry I’m late.” She dug into her tiny green leather purse for some lip gloss, which she rolled on her already-glossy lips. “Did you get the ring?”

  “Uh … no?” Chelsea apparently thought I would just magically produce it. She wanted the ring found, but she wanted it delivered special delivery right to her front door. “We’re here to find the name of the lady who bought it from you. We need to figure out who has it before we can get it.”

  “Oh. Right.” She sighed, patted her hair. “You’re such a brainiac these days, I thought maybe you’d gotten it all figured out while you were waiting. Well, now what?”

  “Now we go into Coffee People and hope they haven’t emptied the garbage since you were here a few hours ago. You said the lady bought her drink with a credit card. See that big metal garbage can across from the counter where you pick up your drinks? Was that the can where you saw her throw away her receipt?”

  I tipped my head toward Coffee People. Through the glass doors that opened up onto the concourse you could see everything: the glass pastry case, with its small piles of scones, cookies, and Danishes; the curved counter; and beside it, a tall stainless steel garbage can, into which a customer was slipping the wrapper from a straw.

  “Yeah,” said Chelsea. She wasn’t looking at Coffee People at all, but was staring at me with the same fearful look you get when a teacher asks to see you after class.

  “Here’s the great thing. Coffee People’s got their orders all computerized. I’ve been watching. It’s not like Starbucks, where they call out the drinks. Watch the girl take the orders. She taps it into the cash register, then it pops up on the display by the coffee machine. Whatever complicated drink the lady ordered is probably written on the slip, along with the time she ordered it, which was sometime between ten o’clock and ten thirty, right?”

  “Minerva, I am not going to go through the garbage.”

  “How else are we going to find the receipt?”

  “What kind of a freak do you think I am? What if someone from school, saw us? Uhn-uh. No way.” Her voice got louder and higher. A few passengers hurrying by on their way to the security gate turned and stared.

  “I kind of doubt anyone from school will see us,” I said.

  “I know you might not care, because you think you’re all cool and perfect at all times, or whatever it was that happened to you when you got electrocuted, but I still care what people think.”

  “I care what people think,” I said.

  “Fine. Whatever. But I am not digging through the garbage. I’ll do anything else but that.”

  “All right,” I said. “You distract the counter girl, while I take out the garbage bag.”

  She threw me a look.

  “All you have to do is order something and spill it.”

  “Like what, a cup of coffee? No way. What if I get some on my skirt? I just got this skirt. It’s from London.”

  “They have milk shakes, too. They’re thicker, they won’t splash.”

  “This is unbelievably stupid,” said Chelsea, checking her phone to see if she had any messages.

  “Come on, Chelsea. While I was waiting I watched the counter girl. She likes things neat. She wipes down the counter every time she gets a spare minute. Just watch her.”

  Chelsea and I looked over. The girl had just finished filling the napkin holder and was wiping it down with a white towel. A flight must have just arrived, because suddenly a herd of people with backpacks and roller suitcases formed themselves into a line.

  As we watched, one of the airport janitors shuffled up with his trolley of cleaning supplies. He parked it just outside Coffee People, then strode inside. He said hey to the girl behind the counter. Even from this distance I could tell he was trying to impress her. He talked a lot, but she just nodded. He had a pair of sunglasses on top of his head. He took them off and showed them to her. A clear plastic bag stuck out of his back pocket. She started wiping down the counter with the white towel. He turned, lifted the lid off the can with one hand, and hauled out the garbage bag with the other.

  “Come on.” I grabbed Chelsea’s arm and dragged her across the concourse. There was no time to lose.

  “Hi there, can I talk to you for a minute?” I called out to the janitor. He was just about to tie a knot in the garbage bag and set it on his cart. He looked like he was Mark Clark’s age, mid-twenties. He was tall and straight up and down skinny, with a wispy brown mustache and sad eyes. Over his pocket there was a name patch that said LEO.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could say anything, I started talking. That’s something I’ve learned. When in doubt, be friendly and start talking. Most people are too polite to just turn on their heel, and while the words are pouring out of y
our mouth you can think of what you want to say. “Leo, my friend here lost her passport. She thinks she might have thrown it away by accident when she was getting coffee.”

  I could feel Chelsea’s big blue eyes sending rays of pure exasperation into the back of my head. Of course Chelsea wasn’t the type of person to lose her passport—she probably had a designer passport holder that matched her designer suitcase—but I needed to make it sound important so Leo would help us.

  Leo let out a huge sigh and dropped the bag. “Knock yourselves out, ladies.”

  “I really like your sunglasses,” I said.

  I took the bag from him and dragged it over to one of the small metal tables lined up outside the shop. I flashed him a big grin as I sat down and opened the bag. Leo frowned a little, as if he couldn’t tell whether I was goofing with him or not.

  “We’ll try to make it quick,” I added.

  He shrugged and looked away, as if we were doing something too personal to watch.

  Chelsea sat down in the small metal chair opposite me, muttering under her breath. I hauled another chair around so the bag was between us. I pulled out the empty paper cups and stacked them on the table. Chelsea pulled out every lipstick-stained napkin and plastic cup lid with the tips of her fingers, as though the cooties were going to race up her arm, into her ears, and straight into her brain. I know I know I know: It was disgusting, but it could have been worse. We could be going through a giant landfill in some tropical country on the hottest day of the year. Or hey, cleaning out the fridge at my house.

  “We don’t have all day,” I whispered. “We’ve got to pick this up.” I plunged my arm deeper into the bag. I pulled out every smooth slip of paper I could get my hands on and stuffed it into my pocket. People stared at us as they passed, wondering what in the heck we were doing. “Lose something?” snickered one teenaged girl. “A contact lens? Your mind?” Her friends snorted with hilarity.