A Recipe for Robbery (15 page)

T
he key clicked in the lock.

I kept my head down, eyes closed. For some reason, the darkness felt safer.

Pickles cooed on my lap. My arms tensed around her. The door creaked.

“Watch out, Brad,” Cricket muttered. “Someone's on the floor. Over there.”

My eyes inched open. Brad stared at me from the doorway.

Cricket shoved him aside. When she recognized me, her face darkened. “You? What're you—”

“Oh, thank goodness you heard me!” I said,
faking a sniffle. “I'm watching Mrs. Unger's goose today, and she got loose. She ran in the back door of your salon, and I chased her into this room. Then wham! The door locked behind me. We've been so scared. We, uh…didn't know what to d-do.” I wiped my eyes and snorted into the crook of my elbow. “Did we, Pickles?”

“Why, you little…” Cricket started after me, but Pickles cackled and honked and snapped at her.

“Aaaagh!” Cricket screamed, ducking behind Brad. “Oh, my God! That goose terrifies me. Get it out of here.”

“Stay cool, babe. I'll take care of this,” Brad said.

He took a couple of steps toward me and Pickles. I sniveled some more, squeezing fat tears from my eyes. “Please don't hurt the goose. It's not her fault she's acting so wild. She's just upset because Mrs. Unger got thrown in jail.”

“What?” Cricket's eyes narrowed. “She's in jail?”

“Oh, haven't you heard?” I said. “Mrs. Grimstone
was right. It turned out Granny Goose was the heirloom thief. The police arrested her at the festival. I saw them. That's why I'm taking care of Pickles.”

Brad looked at Cricket, a sly smile on his face. Had he believed me?

“I don't trust her,” Cricket said, shooting sparks at me with her eyes. “And look.” She pointed at the top shelf. “The duffel's gone.” She kicked a bunch of nail polish bottles. They spun across the floor toward me, causing Pickles to honk again.

I glanced up at the window. Where were Gus and Margaret?

“Okay, kid,” Brad said. “No games here. You need to give us the duffel. Now.”

“Oh?” I acted surprised. “Do you mean that brown bag with S
HEAR
M
AGIC
embroidered on it?”

“Yeah,” Brad said. “That one.”

“I don't have it. Honest. Your, uh, receptionist has it.”

A look of panic crossed Cricket's face. “Marcy?”

“Yeah, that's her,” I lied, and my heart bounced around my chest like a Ping-Pong ball. I had to stall them until Margaret found help. “She was out back in the alley when I came after Pickles. She was acting kind of strange, you know, like she was in a really big hur—”

“Shut up!” Cricket said, then turned to Brad. “She's lying.” She tore through the supply room, tossing packages aside, checking under boxes, searching the shelves. “Where…is…it?”

“I swear I'm not lying.” I scrambled up from the floor, clinging to Pickles, but she was getting restless and hard to hold. “Marcy has it.”

“I said shut your mouth.” Cricket pulled Brad aside and whispered something to him.

He looked my way and nodded, and icy fear hit me like a stun gun, freezing every organ in my body.

Luckily, Pickles wasn't frozen…

P
ickles went berserk, squawking, hissing, screeching, snapping. She broke out of my arms, landed on the floor, then lit into Cricket's ankles.

Cricket kicked at her, screaming like a banshee, “Kill it! Kill it, Brad!”

Brad swore and lunged for Pickles, but I snatched her first. I flew out of the room and escaped through the back door of Shear Magic, panting for breath.

“
Mon Dieu
!” came a cry from down the alley. “It's the girl and the goose.”

François?

I swung around, nearly fainting with relief. My rescue team was on its way: François waving cooking utensils, Leonard lugging a shovel, and my two best friends, whirling toward me like a wind gust.

Brad started off across the alley. “Stop, crook!” François shouted. He dived toward Brad, swatting at him with his tongs.

Then Leonard took over. He grabbed Brad's shoulder, shoved him to the ground, and held him in place with the shovel. “I got him now,” Leonard said. “He ain't going nowhere.”

“But the Cricket?” François said, looking all around. “She has escaped,
n'est-ce pas?
”

“In Sh-Shear Magic,” I said, still trying to catch my breath. “She may be trying to get out the front.”

“Aha!” François clicked his tongs together. “I'll be back.”

Margaret scooped Pickles up, and then she, Gus, and I ran after François. He'd managed to corner Cricket by the front door. When she saw us and
realized she couldn't get away, she slid down the wall and buried her face in her hands, crying.

And that's when the cop car pulled up in front of the salon.

 

An hour or so later, after the cops had taken Brad and a sobbing Cricket to the station, a bunch of us were still gathered on François' patio: Margaret's parents, my parents, Gus's dad, Leonard, Pickles, and some other townspeople who'd already heard the news.

“Whatever were you thinking?” Mom said for the fiftieth time. “Why on earth didn't you tell us…What in God's name did you expect…” Scold, scold, scold. She hadn't left my side since Dad, Henry, and she had run in the front door of Simply Paris.

My dad still looked a little shaken, as if he'd just put out a five-alarm fire. He hadn't said much, only a few stern statements like “Don't ever pull a stunt like
this again” and “We'll talk some more about this at home.”

Henry, on the other hand, treated me like a rock star. “Did you really catch a thief, Lindy?” he kept asking me, until Mom hushed him.

Margaret got the same kind of reaction from her parents. I couldn't tell what Gus's dad was thinking, except his eyes seemed to shine with pride when the captain of the police force shook our hands.

François flitted from table to table, taking drink orders and boasting about his role in the capture of Cricket and Brad.

“
Mon Dieu!
” he said, putting his hand to his heart. “When I thought that child was in danger,
madame
, my adrenaline began to steam. To my fiancée, I said, ‘You call the police, Greta, and I shall go after the girl. She may be near the door of death.'

“Thank heavens,” François said. “I succeeded in frightening that villain senseless with my tongs, or I and these children would surely have been minced
into meat by him.
Oui
, he was a wild one, but…”

He was still boasting as I finally got away from the crowd with Margaret and Gus. We found a table on the far side of the patio. “I can't believe it,” Margaret said. “I thought for sure François and Leonard were the thieves. Just think, Lindy. You might've been kidnapped if Gus and I hadn't shown up at the right time.”

“The right time? Are you serious? You guys were supposed to have been there lots earlier. How come it took you so long?”

“Well,” she said, “the first thing is that the sound system broke down again, right after you left. It took them ten more minutes to fix it. And then, well…”

Gus's face turned red. “Uh, it's kind of my fault. I kept, uh…”

“Squeaking,” Margaret said. They started talking at the same time, telling me how Angel had a total meltdown on the stage because of Gus's squeaking.

“No one could hear her during the trio part,” Margaret said.

“It turns out my reed was split,” Gus said. “So Mr. Austin stopped the whole concert to get me a new one, and then, uh, something else happened, and we couldn't get out of there.”

“What else?”

“This part is my fault,” Margaret said. “Right when Mr. Austin handed Gus the new reed, Pickles pooped on Mrs. Grimstone's shoe.”

“Really?” I put both hands to my mouth, laughing. “How did that happen?”

“Remember how I had Pickles tied next to the stage?” Margaret said. “Mrs. Grimstone was sitting in the front row so she could get pictures of Angel, and Pickles's leash was a little longer than I thought…”

“It held up the whole show,” Gus said. “We had to clean it up and tie Pickles somewhere else, and then we got back onstage, and I, uh—”

“Kept squeaking!” Margaret said.

“Yeah.” Gus shook his head. “The whole thing was kind of like a comedy of errors.”

“It might've been a comedy for you guys,” I said, “but…” I'm not sure why—maybe it was something like posttraumatic stress syndrome, or the thought of the fun they'd had without me again, of the squeaking and Angel's temper tantrum and the goose poop—but a tear almost pushed its way out of my eye. I sniffled and wiped my hand across my face. “For me, it wasn't funny at all. It was like being in a horror show.”

Then, to my surprise, another tear popped out and trickled down my cheek. And all I could do was sit there, thinking what a big crybaby I must look like.

M
argaret jumped out of her chair and wrapped her arms around me. “I'm sorry, Lindy. Gosh, I would've been scared, too, if I were you.”

“We really wanted to get over here,” Gus said, “more than anything. I kind of panicked when I had Mr. Austin breathing down my neck, Angel crying, everyone laughing at me. I thought you'd be safe, you know, just spying on Leonard and François from the alley. If I'd known about the trouble you were in, I would've jumped off the stage and run right over here.”

“Me, too,” Margaret said, wiping her eyes. “Gosh,
Lindy. You're my very best friend. I'd never want you to get hurt.”

Her very best friend?

I grinned and elbowed her in the side. “It's okay. The important thing is, we proved Granny Goose wasn't the thief. Right?”

“Right,” Margaret said. “And all her animals still have their home. Maybe she can even get François to help her come up with a recipe to win that cook-off contest, too. That way she can expand the rescue service.”

“Uh, yeah, maybe,” I said. But no way was I going to be the taste tester.

“So how'd you do it?” Gus asked me. “I mean, how'd you figure out Cricket was the perp? At least ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the evidence pointed to François and Leonard. Man. I'm gonna run all this by the NSCCB, see what their take on it is.”

“The evidence
did
point to them,” Margaret said. “Especially all that stuff in the planner. I don't get it.”

“Actually, François was talking about landscaping,” I said. “He's hired Leonard to plant a flower garden, right here on this patio.”

Margaret's hand flew to her mouth. “A flower garden? You mean, that's all it was?”

Gus pulled the planner from his pocket and started thumbing through it. “Aah. That explains the entry about
L
getting to work early. Who's
G
, though?”

“It's Greta, François' fiancée,” I whispered. “She's the one who thought I was the Cucumber Princess. I wonder if the thing about diamonds has something to do with an engagement ring.”

“But then what about the Pitayas?” Margaret said. “How come François talked about them?”

“He wasn't talking about the jeweled eggs,” I said, pointing to one of François' signs. “He was talking about a flower called pitaya. Leonard's supposed to plant a bunch of them back here.”

So then I told them everything that happened at
Shear Magic and how I'd overheard Cricket and Brad. “That's when I knew it was Pickles.”

Margaret looked at me blankly. “Pickles?”

“Boy, that was a long shot,” Gus said. “The odds of animal involvement is only four percent.”

“NSCCB?” I said.

Gus nodded.

Margaret threw her hands up, waving them all around. “Wait a minute, you guys. Pickles
isn't
the robber.”

I laughed. “Don't worry. No one's going to arrest a goose. But actually, she
is
the one who framed Granny Goose.” And then I explained how Pickles had gotten into the shed, found the open duffel bag, and helped herself to the locket and egg. “Remember how she had Granny Goose's serving spoon? She likes shiny stuff.”

“There they are!” a voice boomed. Granny Goose whooshed toward us, her arms outstretched. The next thing I knew I was smothered in her bear hug, hardly able to breathe. Pickles danced around our
feet, squawking and fussing for Granny Goose's attention.

“Hold on to your feathers,” Granny Goose scolded her. “I'll get to you in a minute. I've got to tell these kids how much I appreciate them.”

She moved around the table, hugging Margaret and Gus and then me again. “You nabbed 'em,” she said. “You flat-out nabbed the scoundrels, and if it hadn't been for you, I'd be stewing my cucumbers at the city jail. Why, I can't believe it. You three kids have more sense than the whole darn police department.” She turned to Officer Moore, who'd followed her over to our table. “Isn't that right, Frank? Looks like you could use some tips from these youngsters.”

I heard a snort behind us. Leonard was on the ground, digging in the dirt as he stared at Granny Goose. His face crinkled into a smile.

“Uh-hum.” Officer Moore turned the color of strawberry soda. “I have to say we owe a big round of thanks to these kids.”

“Wish I could've been there, honey,” Granny Goose said to me. “I would've knocked the socks off that Brad character. What's going to happen to Cricket and the boyfriend anyway?” she asked Officer Moore.

Another snort from Leonard, who seemed to be digging his way toward our table. I watched him for a couple of seconds. How come we'd been so scared of him anyway? He didn't seem all that bad. It looked like Pickles was making up to him, too. She waddled his way, and he reached out to pet her.

Officer Moore continued. “I'd like you all to know that Cricket Schaeffer has confessed. Charges will be brought against the two of them. Her boyfriend, Brad Myers, has a rap sheet longer than my arm. He'll be facing some serious time.”

“Such a brute, that man,” François said. He turned to Officer Moore, lowering his voice. “But it is the lovely Mrs. Grimstone who has my sympathies at this moment,
monsieur
. Tell me, please, is she aware of my surprising attack on the criminal and of
my role in the safe return of her heirlooms?”

Officer Moore turned his head slightly and coughed into his fist, but not before his upper lip twitched. Either he was holding in a sneeze, or he'd caught on to François as quick as I had. “Yes,” he said with a straight face. “I believe Mrs. Grimstone is aware of everything that happened today, and she sends her sincere thanks to all involved.”

“Who cares about her thanks?” I whispered in Margaret's ear. “All I want is the reward.” We smothered our laughter with napkins.

Officer Moore looked at me, his left eyebrow arched. “There is one thing puzzling Mrs. Grimstone. Her granddaughter discovered something odd about one of the recovered pieces.”

I sat straight up, feeling the color drain from my face. Oops. How could I have forgotten that tiny detail?