by Robin Yardi
She scrambled outside.
“Did the truck come?” Beanie shout-whispered.
“Nope,” Mattie said. “Not the truck, but . . . somebody came.”
Beanie’s mouth plopped open. “Who?”
“Whoooooo do you think?” Mattie said.
Mattie pointed to the window box. “The truck didn’t come, but the owl came and did this.”
She leaned close to the window box, with Beanie teetering on her tiptoes beside her. “See the owl tracks?” Mattie traced the outlines of the three-taloned prints. “And look, the owl drew two little lines in the dirt before it flew away. They’re a message!”
“Whoa!” Beanie said. “What do they mean?”
“I don’t know,” Mattie said, shrugging her shoulders. “It’s got to be a clue, though.”
“Got to be,” said Beanie, bopping her head yes.
Mattie took more pictures, trying to capture the talon prints and lines in the window box too. But those didn’t really come out either. Not even when she shined her flashlight on them. She stared into the trees, hoping to see the owl again, but she couldn’t spot him in the dark. So she hustled Beanie inside and closed the door without creaking it. Beanie didn’t even ask about Sasha, and she was back asleep before the frogs were singing again. Mattie fell asleep listening to the crickets and the tree frogs. They gave a rhythm to the puzzle she turned over and over in her brain.
Two little lines. Two little lines. Two little . . .
The Banana Boat
Bite sized banana fritters dripping with orange-blossom honey syrup and served piping hot with a generous dollop of tangerine whipped cream
Monday morning, Mattie and Beanie slept late. It was already hot in the trailer when Mattie threw the covers off. She jiggled Beanie awake.
“Where’s Sasha?” Beanie asked, staring at the empty couch and rubbing the crust from her eyes.
Mattie shrugged. “She went home. She was too mad about me waking her up to listen about all the clues last night. Let’s get breakfast—we can fill her in later.”
Mattie led the way across the parking lot to the donut shop.
Not for donuts.
Aunt Molly was surprisingly strict about sugar for a gourmet donut baker. It wasn’t Sunday, they’d already used up their sleepover donuts, and Beanie’s birthday wasn’t until Wednesday. Besides, only Beanie would get that donut.
Beanie burst though the jingly door and hustled to her favorite booth. Out-of-town customers smiled at the little girl in rainbow-striped pajamas. Mattie walked by, trying not to attract any extra attention. Aunt Molly pushed the buttons on her cash register, making it click and bing like music. Martín manned the sizzling fryer. Paper bags crackled as Molly dropped donuts inside them. Chairs scooted as people sat up or settled in. Even a Monday was big business at Owl’s near the end of the summer. But despite the noise, Mattie’s mind felt quiet.
Two. Two, two, two. What did the owl’s message mean? There were two scratches. Two lines. Two people by the truck. Mattie wondered if those lines could be an eleven, but she shrugged that idea away. Owls, even amazing ones, probably didn’t know how to write.
In a lull between customers, Aunt Molly plopped down next to Mattie and put three warm foil-wrapped breakfast burritos on the table. To make Monday breakfast special, Aunt Molly always traded goodies with the restaurant up the road.
“Morning, Beatrice,” Aunt Molly said. “Where’s Sasha? Still asleep?”
Beanie, her head half buried in an egg, cheese, and soy sausage burrito, made an indiscernible noise. Aunt Molly laughed.
“What did you say?” Aunt Molly asked.
Beanie wiped her eggy mouth on her wrist. “Sasha woke up grouchy about the—”
Mattie kicked at Beanie’s feet under the table and mouthed no, so Beanie wouldn’t say anything about the owl’s newest clue.
Beanie wiggled her eyebrows like she was onto the game and dove back into her breakfast.
“Why don’t you take Sasha a burrito?” Aunt Molly asked. “Burritos make everything better. Even not getting enough sleep because your friends were giggling too much.”
A new rush of customers crowded through the door. Molly smiled at the girls and swooped back to the register.
Mattie leaned toward Beanie. “You can’t say anything about the owl until we have more evidence,” she whispered. “Grownups just don’t get it.”
“Got it,” Beanie said.
Mattie munched and wondered about the owl’s clue. Two what? She had a few ideas, but she wasn’t sure about anything. She wished that she could ask the owl just what it meant, but that seemed impossible.
Mattie eyed the newest line of customers. She’d always loved watching the people line up, loved guessing who they were and what they would order, guessing what they were like. It was something she was good at. But now . . . now they could be suspects too. So maybe she wasn’t so good at figuring people out after all.
Mattie wanted to think that no real customer would dump gloop across the road. Everybody who came into the shop loved Aunt Molly’s donuts . . . right? Still, Mattie was starting to feel sure that the gloopers must have been from nearby. How far would some crook really drive to dump gloop at the side of a road, anyway?
And if they were locals, they could still be hanging around. They could be anybody.
“We should make a list of suspects—you know, do some investigating,” she told Beanie.
“We could check all the parking lots for that stinky truck,” Beanie said with her mouth full.
Mattie nodded all slow. She didn’t think finding the truck would be that easy. Why would sneaks like those gloopers leave such a big clue parked out in the open? But it was possible. And looking for the truck would give Beanie something to do while Mattie and Sasha snooped for suspects. If she could get Sasha to come along.
Mattie snatched up the last breakfast burrito. “Come on—let’s get to work!”
“But it’s Monday,” said Beanie. “We only do check-ins on the weekend.”
“Not campground work, silly. Let’s go get Sasha and check out all the parking lots.”
Beanie bounced up. “Right! That was my idea.”
The two girls waved goodbye to Martín and tossed their crumpled balls of burrito foil into the recycling bin. Sasha’s burrito was still warm when they got to the Little family cabin, but Sasha wasn’t there. Sasha wasn’t anywhere. Beanie and Mattie checked the top bunk and the bathroom and the blanket fort in the living room where Sasha liked to hide out and read. They checked the check-in kiosk and the pool and the basketball courts under the redwoods where Sasha liked to sit and watch the visitor kids. They asked Mrs. Little and Mr. Little and a bunch of the campground guests.
Nobody knew where Sasha was. Nobody had seen her. And Mattie was starting to feel like Sasha didn’t want to be found.
The end-of-summer sunshine made every green leaf shimmer and glow like sequins, and the air smelled of pine needles and burnt marshmallows from the night before. It was the kind of day where nothing was supposed to go wrong. But when Mattie realized that her best friend was serious about ditching her, the sun felt too bright, and all those good smells added up to one big stink. She didn’t want to keep looking for Sasha.
Even if she was pretty sure where Sasha was.
Beanie acted like Sasha disappearing was no big deal, and maybe it wasn’t to Beanie. Your big sister is supposed to want to leave you in the dust every once in a while. But best friends aren’t, especially not in the middle of a mystery. Mattie kicked at the dirt with her sneaker.
“Get your clipboard, Beanie. We’re doing this without her.”
Mattie told Beanie it was her job to write down the license number of any white trucks. But that was mostly so Beanie could keep busy. Really, Mattie was out on the lookout for suspicious people.
As they snaked up and down the campground’s twisty lanes, Mattie wondered if she would recognize the two gloopers during the day. The first p
eople she saw who came anywhere close were a tall mom and a shortish dad with two noisy boys packing up their camper van. Mattie took sneaky pictures of those possible gloopers on the old cracked phone, but it ran out of batteries right afterward.
She wrote down the family’s license number and the campground slot in her little notebook, noting their descriptions carefully. What were they wearing? How tall did they look? How did they walk?
Beanie didn’t seem to notice what Mattie was up to.
She was too focused on her job. She hadn’t found a single vehicle that matched the description yet, but she kept spinning and looking backward and checking around the trees in case she’d spot one.
Farther down the campground lanes, Mattie noticed a really skinny guy reading an old paperback book in a hammock down by the river. In the right clothes, he could have been the taller glooper. But the pudgy mom and almost grown-up teenage son having a splash fight seemed like a better fit. Mattie added them too.
All the suspects she put in her notebook were the right size and shape, but there was something about the way she remembered the gloopers moving that just didn’t fit anyone at the campground. Then, at the end of the loop, Beanie spotted a white truck.
“Aha!” she squeaked, pointing. “It’s the truck.”
Mattie smiled. It was a truck. And it was the right color. But it was parked right in front of the Little family cabin. And nobody had driven it anywhere in about fifty years because it didn’t have an engine. Or tires.
“Beanie, that’s your dad’s truck.”
“I knew he was acting suspicious,” Beanie said with her hands on her sides, her elbows jutting out like pokey triangles. “Put him on the list. He’s a suspect now.”
Mattie couldn’t tell if Beanie thought the whole investigation was a game. Mr. Little called the old Ford a classic, and Mrs. Little called it junk, but no way could Mattie call it the gloop truck. Still, she played along with Beanie as she eyed a group of teenagers down at the basketball courts.
“Beanie, write down the license number. I guess we can’t rule him out.”
“No way, we can’t,” Beanie nodded. “Last week Mom said she caught him sneaking ice cream in the middle of the night. He could be up to anything.” She looked super serious.
Usually goofing around with Beanie was fun, but Mattie felt like they were running out of time. Today was an investigation. It felt important. And all of a sudden, she was getting a little tired of Beanie. Still, with Sasha hiding out, Beanie was all Mattie had, and Mattie didn’t want to go it alone.
After Mattie was sure she’d added everyone who looked even a little bit like a glooper to her notebook, Beanie swiped two bags of Swedish Fish from the kiosk store when her mom wasn’t looking, and she and Mattie ran back to the donut shop to stake out the parking lot. The noontime rush would bring a fresh crowd of people, and now they were all suspects.
Mattie slipped inside the trailer to plug in Aunt Molly’s old phone, just in case she needed it later. Then they sat in the shade of the cypress trees, watching people park their cars. This time Mattie had Beanie write down the color and name of every car, to keep her occupied.
“Just in case, Beanie,” she said. “Any of these suspects could have a white truck at home.”
Mattie mumbled the car names to Beanie, who scribbled the words and crossed them out again whenever Mattie saw she’d taken them down wrong. Blue Nissan, black Ford, yellow Audi. Silver BMW, red Mini, pink Cadillac. One Hummer, three Mustangs, and a bazillion motor homes. They made it into a game, and every time they spotted a white car, whether it was a truck or not, they ate a gummy fish.
Mattie took notes on all the people who looked like they might be gloopers.
A couple having an argument walked across the parking lot and slammed the doors of their little electric car. The man was tall and skinny. The woman was shortish and round. The angry way they both moved across the blacktop made the back of Mattie’s neck prickle, and the couple’s little Chevy Volt meant that they couldn’t be from too far away. Plus it was white. Maybe they had a white truck too. Or was that the silly kind of thinking she’d used to distract Beanie?
The next person Mattie took notes on was Mrs. Mantooth.
She marched up to the donut shop and blasted past the line of people. Mrs. Mantooth wasn’t a good neighbor. Mattie knew that. But she wouldn’t dump something where it could get into her well water. Would she?
But maybe all her complaining about the water was a trick. An alibi. Mattie had never tasted anything funny in their water, and she didn’t think that any gloop could have seeped down into the well . . . not yet. What if Mrs. Mantooth thought no one would suspect her of dumping in that ditch if she was the first to complain about their water? Maybe that’s how she planned to get a new well pump out of Aunt Molly.
It wasn’t an idea that made much sense, but nothing about Mrs. Mantooth and that well had ever made sense to Mattie.
When they were halfway through their gummy fish, Beanie perked up and poked Mattie in the side. “That guy,” she said, pointing, “is definitely up to something.”
A scruffy-looking man was leaning against the old pay phone at the edge of the parking lot. He ate the banana fritters from one of Aunt Molly’s Banana Boats as he talked, spooning up the syrupy treats from a pink paper tray. Mattie had already ruled him out. Too short. Not stubby.
“He’s just using the phone, Beanie. None of the tourist’s cell phones work here. I think it’s all the trees or the twisty road or something. No way is he a glooper.”
“Ohhhh, I wondered what that thing was,” Beanie said. When the man hung up, Beanie wandered over to poke at the pay phone’s buttons and pretend to make calls.
The pay phone guy tossed the rest of his Banana Boat into the trash as he passed Mattie. Some of the whipped cream didn’t make it in and oozed over the side of the bin. A fly buzzed by. Then ten of them. It was like the day’s whole investigation: a sticky mess.
The Jelly Heart
A heart-shaped yeasted donut, dusted with cinnamon sugar and filled with deep-red cherry jelly. Sweet, tart, and tangy!
An hour later, Mattie and Beanie’s candy bags were empty. The girls hadn’t seen any sign of Sasha, and they’d only spotted two more white trucks. One belonged to the volunteer fire chief, whose favorite donut was a Jelly Heart, which just didn’t seem like a suspicious kind of donut to Mattie. The other truck belonged to the hermit woman who never talked to anybody.
“Look,” whispered Mattie, poking Beanie, who was sprawled in the dirt, staring at clouds.
Beanie popped up and watched Hermit Harriet slam her truck door and lurch across the parking lot. She was about the right size, Mattie thought. Tall and stooped. She could have been the taller person from the night before. But what would Harriet have dumped? She was a carpenter, and that slimy stuff wasn’t sawdust.
Harriet usually wore a beat-up pair of jeans and a short-sleeved man’s shirt. She kept her long hair in a gray bun that was twisted so tight it looked like a hand grenade. She didn’t smile or pass the time with anyone, and whenever she came into the donut shop, all she got was a cup of black coffee.
Never a donut.
Which Mattie did find pretty suspicious.
“Do you think it was her?” Beanie shout-whispered.
Mattie watched Hermit Harriet disappear into the shop.
“Maybe,” she said, writing down Harriet’s license plate.
She was definitely the most likely suspect. Besides being tall, Harriet was grouchy and she drove a white truck with toolboxes in it. Mattie had never seen Harriet Hargrave hanging around a stumpy sidekick, but she’d never seen Harriet with anyone period. The new suspicions made Mattie feel queasy. Even though she’d decided the gloopers might be locals, she still didn’t want them to be anyone she knew. In fact, she kind of liked watching Harriet order her coffee with as few words as possible. She liked the puzzle of people like that. Or she used to. Now she was starting to feel like s
he wasn’t even safe at home.
“I’m bored,” whined Beanie. “Can we go somewhere else now?”
“Fine,” Mattie said.
Mattie knew it was time to find Sasha, even if Sasha wasn’t ready to be found. Mattie wanted to run the list of suspects by her. Sasha was great at being suspicious. The feeling wouldn’t make her queasy. Besides, Mattie was tired of keeping Beanie entertained all by herself.
Since they hadn’t found Sasha in all her usual places, Mattie pretty much knew where she’d gone.
The Riverside Inn.
“Let’s stake out the parking lot downstream, by the inn and the restaurant,” Mattie suggested to Beanie.
Mattie convinced her that it would be easier and more fun to slosh their way toward the inn, splashing down the river rather than walking along the highway. It would take a few more minutes, but Mattie didn’t want to go near that road again. Not yet. People easing their cars into parking spots at the donut shop was one thing. A place where cars went speeding by at fifty miles an hour—that was another.
After about ten minutes of slipping their way over the green stones of the riverbank and through the cool water, they reached a restaurant, a general store, and a twenty-room hotel with a big long parking lot all around it. Mattie panted as they trudged up the nearest bank and into the lot. The restaurant had a country band playing out on the huge deck and an outdoor barbeque smoking too. The parking lot was almost full for some end of summer festival. But Mattie wasn’t looking for suspects anymore. She’d already spotted Sasha sitting on a hay bale at the edge of the deck. Sasha was bopping to the music and sitting next to her other friend.
Christian Castillo.
Christian’s parents managed the inn, and he lived in a special set of rooms upstairs that had no numbers on the doors. Sasha glanced over like she could feel Mattie staring and then looked back at the band, wiggling like the music was the best thing she’d ever seen and Mattie was a stranger.
