by Hillary Avis
Bethany leaped to her feet. Loudly, she said, “So sorry, chef. My cat must have followed me here. I’ll take him home right away.” She grabbed Orange Guy—despite his yowl of protest—and jerked her head to let Charley know to follow her. Head high, she marched toward the exit, ignoring the pricking of Orange Guy’s claws as he struggled to escape. Behind them, the café exploded with chatter and laughter as the diners righted chairs and mourned their spilled cups of coffee.
Bethany walked around the corner of the building to release the cat into the alley, but instead of running off, he just twined around their ankles. “Rotten cat. Could have cost Kimmy her job.”
“Aw, he didn’t mean it.” Charley reached down to rub Orange Guy’s cheeks. “I’ll go with Kimmy tomorrow to make sure he’s cared for properly. Maybe then he won’t try to get into Café Sabine all the time.”
“After the ice cream social,” Bethany reminded her. “We have a thief to catch first.”
Chapter 7
Waterfront Park
“SEE THEM?”
Bethany licked the blackberry ripple melting down her arm and scanned the children that swarmed around Waterfront Park. She’d thought it would be easy to spot purple hair in a crowd, but times had changed—the kids’ hair seemed more colorful than the ice cream cones they carried. Pink, purple, blue, and green heads bobbed in every directions. “Not yet.”
“Hate to say it, but I’m kind of wishing we hadn’t banned skateboards in Waterfront Park,” Charley muttered. “That’d at least narrow it down.”
Sandy joined them, clutching a stack of certificates and pink Honor Roll coupons. “Any luck? I need to award the prizes soon, before the ice cream runs out and everyone leaves.”
Bethany shook her head. “I was hoping to spot the purple-haired girl, but I don’t see her.”
“I think I know who you’re talking about. Hangs around the library on her skateboard a lot, right?”
Bethany nodded. “She and a freckle-faced kid are the ones who redeemed coupons at the Honor Roll.”
Sandy nodded. “I’ve seen her. She changes her hair all the time. Might want to look for another color.”
“Thanks, that’s helpful,” Charley said. “Hold off on distributing those coupons as long as you can, OK? Have an ice cream and eat it slowly. Hopefully we’ll find her by then.”
“Fine. I’m going to go see if they have any strawberry left.” Sandy joined the line of kids and parents waiting for ice cream.
Bethany squinted at a cluster of people under a spreading oak tree. “Does that kid in the blue shirt have freckles?”
“Yup.”
“I think he turned in one of the coupons.” Bethany started toward him, but Charley grabbed her arm.
“Wait, just watch a minute to see if the purple girl shows up. We don’t want to tip her off if we can help it—she could destroy evidence if she knows we’re about to identify her.”
Bethany bit her lip as she watched the freckled kid. He looked younger than she remembered, maybe only ten or eleven. At his age, she was playing with Pretty Ponies and learning to ride real ponies at her parents’ country club, not breaking and entering. “He’s just a kid, Charley. Maybe we shouldn’t—”
“Shh!” Charley nodded toward the group. Bethany watched as an older girl joined the throng of students. Her hair wasn’t purple—it was mint green like the ice cream cone she carried—but she was definitely their skateboarder. “Let’s go. Not too fast.”
They strolled toward the oak tree as casually as they could, but Bethany couldn’t help quickening her pace as they got closer. She cleared her throat and tapped the mint-haired girl on the shoulder. “Excuse me, did you stop by the Honor Roll the other day? But you had purple hair?”
The girl looked Bethany up and down, her lip curling. “Yeah? What do you care?”
“And you skate at the library, right?”
The freckled kid crossed his arms. “We all do.”
Charley pulled a notebook from a pocket inside her blazer. “We just want to ask you a couple of questions.”
A murmur ran through the group as the kids looked at each other and took a few steps backward.
“Not all of you, just these two. Names?” The rest of the kids breathed a sigh of relief and took off in chattering groups of two and three.
Mint-haired girl made a face. “Who wants to know?”
Charley flashed her badge. “Newbridge Police.”
A balding man in a linen suit rushed up and put his arms around the shoulders of the two kids. “Hey, hey, hey now! What’s all this? Why are you harassing my children?”
“Oh, they’re yours? Great.” Charley held her badge out for him to inspect. “I just need to ask them a few questions.”
“We think they might know something about the library burglary,” Bethany added. Charley shot her a look, and Bethany shrugged apologetically.
The man turned the kids to face him. “Sloane? Ashford? Is this true?”
A warm breeze ruffled their hair as the kids stood there silently, sneaking sideways glances at each other. Sloane crossed her arms and rolled her eyes. “Don’t know anything about it.”
“You must know something about it! You had those bakery coupons that were stolen!” Bethany blurted out.
Charley cleared her throat, clearly annoyed by Bethany’s interference. “Why don’t we all take a seat and chat for a minute while we enjoy our ice creams?” She motioned to a picnic table nearby. “Mr.—?”
“Collins.”
Sloane and Ashford dragged their feet over to the table and plopped down on a bench. Mr. Collins and Charley took the other side. Bethany hovered around the end of the table, not sure where to sit until Charley jerked her head at the spot next to her.
“OK, I’ll make this easy for you two. We know you had stolen goods on Monday morning, just hours after the library was burglarized and thousands of dollars of computer equipment were stolen. So you either broke into the library yourselves, or you know who did.”
Ashford, the younger of the two children, burst into tears, and his father frowned. “No need to berate them. I’m sure they didn’t do anything wrong.”
Charley pursed her lips. “I’m just laying out the facts so your children don’t get tangled up in lies. This is a serious crime.”
Sloane slapped her hand down on the picnic table. “We didn’t do it, OK? We were just skating and saw someone loading stuff into a van. He told us to keep our mouths shut.”
Ashford snuffled. “We’re not stupid, though. We said he had to pay us or we’d tell.”
His sister glared at him as their father’s mouth dropped open. She finished quickly, mumbling, “He didn’t have cash so he gave us the cookie coupons, blah blah blah.”
“You are in so much trouble,” Mr. Collins said, his whole head turning red. Ashford and Sloane’s eyes grew wide. “I can’t believe you’d do such a thing. My children.”
“It was a mistake,” Bethany said soothingly. “They told the truth, and that’s the important thing. They won’t have legal consequences.”
Charley snorted. “I’ll be the judge of that. They haven’t told me anything useful yet, so I see no reason why I wouldn’t charge them with possessing stolen goods.”
“I know where he lives,” Ashford said quickly. “The guy. We followed him on our boards.”
“And where’s that?” Charley raised her eyebrows. “Address?”
Ashford shook his head and Charley turned to Sloane. She rolled her eyes and blew a wisp of green hair out of her face. “Dunno the number or anything. Near the train station.”
“Can you take us there?”
Mr. Collins stood up from the table. “You are not taking my children to the house of some criminal!”
“It’s an apartment, dad!” Ashford said. His father glared at him.
“I’ll make sure they don’t have contact with the suspect. Would you recognize the guy if you saw him?”
“Yeah, he looks
like a creep.” Sloane smirked.
Her father elbowed her. “Enough. This isn’t a joke.”
Sloane stuck out her bottom lip at the reprimand, and Charley smirked back. “So what does a creep look like?”
Sloane shrugged. “White guy, needed a shave.”
“And he had a robe on,” Ashford added. “Who wears a robe to do crimes?”
Charley blinked. “Like a martial arts robe?”
Ashford let out a groan and rolled his eyes, and suddenly Bethany saw the family resemblance. Add mint-green hair and remove the freckles, and he was a carbon copy of his sister. “Not a ninja robe, a bathrobe.”
Sloane nodded. “It was, like, fuzzy. And dirty. I told you—he looked like a creep.”
A creep in a bathrobe. Something about that description rang a bell. Wasn’t that how Kimmy had described Orange Guy’s owner, the guy who lived behind Café Sabine in the building across from the...
“Train station!” she gasped. Right where the kids said the burglar lived! “Did you notice if he had a bunch of cats?” Charley gave her a worried look.
Sloane shrugged. “We didn’t go in his house!”
“Apartment,” Ashford corrected. Sloane elbowed him.
“I should hope not!” Mr. Collins turned five different shades of purplish-red. “I can’t believe you kids. Following criminals all over town. I don’t want you anywhere near this guy. What if he sees you and retaliates somehow?”
Charley frowned and jotted in her notepad. “We’ll head down to the station and take a full statement, look through a book of mugshots. If they can identify the man who bribed them, they won’t need to ride along. Let’s go.” From her tone, it was obvious she wouldn’t take no for an answer. Bethany started to follow them, but stopped when Charley jerked her head meaningfully toward the bike rack.
“I’ll just go...check on Kimmy?” Bethany guessed.
Charley nodded over her shoulder as she herded the Collins family toward her squad car. Bethany unlocked Daisy and hopped on the bike, pushing off from the curb just as Charley pulled out of the parking lot and headed toward the police station. There was no time to waste, not when they were so close to solving this thing.
She leaned over the handlebars and pedaled faster. She had to get to Café Sabine before Kimmy confronted Orange Guy’s owner. The guy might not be a criminal, but better safe than sorry.
Chapter 8
Café Sabine
DAISY’S TIRES SCREECHED as Bethany braked and pulled up to the bike rack behind Café Sabine. No time to lock up. She ran to the back door of the café and pounded on it. “Kimmy, you in there?”
She glanced at the apartment building on the other side of the alley. It was an ornate building from the 1920s that had seen better days—paint peeled from the window frames and grime from another era streaked the brick. It had a rear exit to the alley that residents used to take out their trash, and a couple of skinny cats were prowling around the dumpster. She recognized Orange Guy’s fluffy tail. She made a kissy noise and Orange Guy bounded over, purring.
“Good kitty.” She scratched his head and he nuzzled her hand affectionately. “You know how to get what you want, don’t you? I need to be that brave. Really go for it and figure out how to run my own business.”
The flick of a curtain in the window of a second-floor apartment caught her eye. Is someone watching me? She squinted up at the window, but she couldn’t be sure. She knocked on the café door again and faintly heard someone call, “Hold your horses!”
A moment later, Kimmy opened the door. She grinned when she saw Bethany and Orange Guy outside. “Hey there.” She closed the door behind her while gingerly balancing two plates and a bowl of water on one arm.
“You’ve got your hands full.”
Kimmy did a little curtsy. “My waitressing days are paying off!” She knelt and slid the plates gently onto the asphalt. Orange Guy bolted over and began lapping up the contents of one of the plates as Kimmy stroked the length of his back. “There you go, boy.”
Bethany breathed a sigh of relief. She was OK.
Kimmy stood and brushed off her knees. “What are you up to?”
“I just came from the ice cream social. Swung by to see if you’ve talked to the Orange Guy’s owner yet.”
“I was going to right now. Want to come along for moral support?” Kimmy batted her eyelashes fetchingly.
Bethany shook her head. “No, wait until Charley gets here. We think he might be—”
The back door of the apartment building clanged open behind her. Kimmy grimaced. “Looks like it can’t wait.” Bethany turned and saw a man striding toward them, his dirty blue bathrobe flapping open to reveal a stained T-shirt and grubby basketball shorts.
“Hey!” he yelled as he approached. “Get away from my animal!”
Kimmy deftly stepped between the man and Orange Guy. “I’m just giving him some leftovers,” she said.
He leaned in and shook his finger in her face, sputtering. “I’ve been watching you! I know you take him in the restaurant!” He grabbed her arm and roughly shoved her aside.
Bethany stepped forward, her ears hot with alarm. “Keep your hands off her!”
He wheeled on her. “What, you’re going to stop me?” He scooped up Orange Guy, and the cat squawked in pain.
Kimmy gasped and struggled to her feet. “You’re hurting him!”
The man sneered. “He needs to learn his lesson—and so do you!” He started back toward the apartment, carrying Orange Guy by the scruff of the neck.
Bethany put her hands on her hips. “You’re the one who needs to learn something. Maybe if you fed him, he wouldn’t come begging all the time. If you don’t start taking care of your pets, we’re going to call Animal Control!”
He turned and came toward her, his bathrobe flapping like the wings of a giant terrycloth bat. “You do, and you’ll never see this rotten cat again.” He made a motion across his neck as though his finger were a knife.
Kimmy choked back a cry, her eyes welling with tears. Bethany heard the faint sound of a police siren. “Keep him talking,” she whispered to Kimmy. “This is the guy Charley’s been after.”
“The guy?” Kimmy asked, and Bethany nodded. Kimmy bit her lip. “Mister, why don’t you just find your cats a new home? You obviously don’t want them.”
It was too late. He froze, one ear toward the street where the sound of sirens was growing louder. The cat yowled in his grip. He whipped his head toward the other end of the alley, his eye calculating. He was going to make a run for it. Bethany bolted to cut him off, and he pulled up short, shaking his head.
“What is your deal? It’s just a cat.”
She eyed him warily as she crouched low over the pavement. “I’m not going to let you hurt anyone else. I know you’ve been stealing from places all over town. You ripped off the library on Sunday night.”
He narrowed his eyes and gave Orange Guy a little shake to discourage his squirming. “How do you know that?”
Come on, Charley. Hurry up! Bethany’s head swam, and she realized she’d been holding her breath. She let it out all at once and shook her shoulders to release the tension. “I’ve been looking for you. I depend on those computers and so do a lot of other people. When you stole them, you stole my livelihood—and I want it back.”
He barked a laugh but stopped and cursed as Charley’s unmarked car sped into the alley, tires squealing around the corner. Charley leaped out of the car and sprinted toward them, pumping her arms as she ran. The man tried to dodge around Bethany, but she swiftly sidestepped to block him again. Exasperated, he flung Orange Guy into Bethany’s face and pushed past her.
It was all Bethany could do to catch Orange Guy and keep him from falling to the ground. She wrapped her arms around the cat and delivered him to Kimmy’s grateful arms just as Charley tackled the creep at the other end of the alley.
“You get him, girl!” she called. With a knee in his back, Charley tightened handcuffs ar
ound his wrists and marched him back to her car.
“Kids ID’d him right away.” Charley put her hand on his head as she put him in the back seat and then shut the door. “You know who this creep is? Runs the Mouse Clique internet café! He’s been putting the hardware from the computers he steals into new cases and renting them by the minute.”
“To poor suckers like me,” Bethany added. “I bet his business has been booming since computers all over town started disappearing. What a racket.”
“Well, the upside is that we’re going to recover all the stolen property. I can’t believe it was right under our noses this whole time! I’m going to get a team out to his café and bring everything back to the station to sort it out.”
“Nice work.”
“Who’s going to take care of all the cats?” Kimmy asked, as Orange Guy purred and she scratched behind his ears.
“Animal Control will be out to transport them to the shelter in a couple of hours.”
Kimmy made a face. “I hate the idea of Orange Guy being in a cage.”
“Maybe he won’t have to be,” Bethany said thoughtfully. She rapped on the window of the car. “Hey!” The guy’s head turned toward her, and she asked Charley, “Can you open it up for a sec? I need to talk to him.”
Charley cracked open the door. “Make it quick.”
“Give me your cat,” Bethany said.
“Huh?”
“The orange one. Just say I can have it.”
The guy snorted. “Why would I give him to you? You messed everything up. I’m ain’t doing nothing you say.”
Bethany couldn’t keep the anger out of her voice. “I messed everything up? You better take a look in the mirror at your cat-starving, bathrobe-wearing, arm-grabbing, library-ruining self. If you don’t transfer ownership of the cat to me this second, she is going to press charges for assault. You OK with that, Kimmy?”
Kimmy held up her arm to show where bruises were already forming. “Sounds good to me.”
Charley’s eyes widened. “He did that to you? I’m gonna—”
