A Recipe for Robbery (2 page)

“O
h, my God!” Angel screeched. “You did that on purpose.” Her cheeks puffed out like a blowfish's, and I seriously thought she was going to spit on me.

I wasn't exactly on Angel Grimstone's list of Top Ten Cool Kids to Know. Actually, I'm sure I topped her list of Really Pathetic Losers to Avoid. We both played flute in the Bloomsberry Elementary band, and Angel had been steaming mad ever since I'd won first chair in January. Talk about a bad sport; she told everyone the only reason she'd lost was that I'd done something to mess up her flute.

The Princess snatched a sparkly tiara from the
ground and checked out the damage to her dress. Tears streamed down her face, leaving a trail of blue mascara. Her two friends, Lisa and Caroline, gave me dirty looks.

“That was, like, so totally rude, Lindy,” Caroline said. “You totally ruined Angel's dress.”

“Stupid idiot,” Angel said. She wiped a blue smudge off her cheek and glared at me.

I glared back at her. “Actually,
idiot
, you're the one who bumped into me.”

“Did not.” Angel tossed the rest of her shortcake at me and stomped to a nearby table. Lisa and Caroline followed. They hovered over her with napkins, scrubbing the strawberry glaze even deeper into her white dress.

I quick checked my new purple T-shirt for damage. It was covered with whipped cream and a few loose strawberries, which I popped in my mouth, but not the first bit of stewed cucumbers. I didn't know whether to be disappointed or relieved. Not
that I wouldn't have loved to see every last bit of that mushroom paste on the ground, but there's no way my mom would've believed it was an accident.

“Oh, Lin-deee,” Angel sang as I took off. “I know why you're in such a hurry. You can't wait to go sit by your new boyfriend, Mr. Sexy-phone player.”

Boyfriend?
My cheeks burned as Angel and her friends snickered behind my back. What made them think that Gus Kinnard, the saxophone-squeaking nerd, was my boyfriend?

I hurried away from their laughter, making a quick stop for pink lemonade before plopping on the chair next to Margaret. Whew. What a morning. I wiped the sweat off my sticky forehead. It wasn't even the hottest part of the day yet, but already I felt more cooked than one of Granny Goose's cucumbers.

“Cool hat,” Gus said from across the table. “You got another one?”

Ignoring him, I turned to Margaret. “You're not even going to believe—”

“Guess what?” Margaret grabbed my arm. She was so breathless with excitement she didn't seem to notice the pile on my plate. “Gus is going to band camp, too, and he just got a letter in the mail. It says the camp instructors are going to pick the thirty top-performing kids to play in a special concert at the governor's mansion. Ohmigosh. You've got to talk your parents into letting you go, Lindy. What if we get chosen?”

For a split second I forgot about the lunch disaster. My mind spun forward like a time machine, whirling me into the future. I saw myself in Tallahassee on the governor's lawn, right after my perfect flute solo. Electricity pulsed through the audience. “Bravo!” they cheered, jumping to their feet. I bowed once…twice…

But then the goose honked, and I snapped back to reality. I glanced over at my parents' table, remembering their hushed conversation last night, right after Dad had taken the call from the roof repair guy.

“We're getting slammed with home maintenance
this summer,” he'd told Mom. “The estimate for a new roof is a couple of thousand more than I anticipated.”

“That's not to mention Henry's new glasses,” Mom said. “And something's wrong with the computer. I hate to say it, but it looks like we'll have to nix the you-know-what.”

Margaret nudged me, her face still beaming, and my heart sank like an anchor in quicksand. How come it was always
my
family that didn't have money for the big stuff, the fun stuff, like extra-long weekends at Disney World and this band camp trip? And what if Margaret—and even Gus, by some miraculous accident—got chosen for the governor's concert and went to Tallahassee without me?

“Eew.” Margaret pointed to my plate, and I shoved the no-money thoughts from my mind. “Why'd you take such a big serving of that?” she said.

“I didn't take it. I got stuck with it, after you took off.”

Gus leaned over for a closer look. “What is it?”

I kept ignoring him, hoping he'd get the message.

“You need to help me eat this,” I said to Margaret. “And hurry, before my mom comes over here.” I looked out the corner of my eye. Sure enough, there sat the Carrot, glancing my way. Henry was on Dad's lap, probably trying to get out of eating his own measly portion of vegetables. I groaned when Granny Goose joined them. She hooked Pickles up to her chair and waved at me.

“I can't,” Margaret said. “I'm allergic. If I ate that, it would give me terrible hives. And then my parents would have to rush me to the hospital emergency room. And then I'd probably get put in insensitive care or something.” She took a bite of her fried chicken.

“You mean
intensive
care,” Gus said. “Not insensi—”

“Since when are you allergic to cucumbers?” I said to Margaret.

“That's cucumbers?” Gus doubled over, snorting into his hand. It sounded like he'd hawked up a hair ball or something. “No way. It looks more
like pickled toads.” Margaret laughed so hard she spit a piece of chicken across the table.

“Oh, very funny. You both crack me up.” My throat tightened when I looked at the nightmare on my plate. “This is something Granny Goose made. My mom's forcing me to eat it.”

“Granny Goose?” Gus said. “You mean the save-the-animals lady? Hey, I heard she's got a three-legged alligator that sleeps by her bed.”

Margaret's blue eyes widened behind her glasses. “Really? She's so cool. I love how she rescues all those poor animals.”

“She may be cool, but she's a terrible cook,” I said.

“How do you know?” Margaret said. “Maybe it doesn't taste as bad as it looks. You haven't even tried it yet.”

“No, but I've smelled it, and so have you.” Of course Margaret could act all la-di-da, because she wasn't the one who'd gotten stuck with a pile of slug guts. “Besides,” I said, “Granny Goose belongs to my
mom's cooking club, and I heard some of the members talking about the awful stuff she makes.”

“Actually,” Gus said, “it doesn't look that bad. Slide it over here. I'll try some first.”

Before I could answer, he'd already snagged a droopy cucumber from the side of my plate. He popped it in his mouth. His face puckered up like my great-grandma's when she's not wearing her teeth. “It's pretty tasty,” he said through pursed lips. “Really.”

I sighed. This wasn't looking good, but I had to get it over with. My mom kept glancing my way, and she'd even done some kind of pantomime thing with her hand going from her plate to her mouth that I knew meant, “Eat those cucumbers.”

I jabbed a slice with the least amount of sauce and lifted it to my mouth. But my fork stopped in midair, because something on the plate caught my eye.

Something gold.

Something heart-shaped.

Something that definitely wasn't a cucumber.

“H
ey!” I said. “What's that floating in the cucumbers?”

All three of our heads dived forward at the same time, and Gus's forehead knocked into mine. “Ouch! Watch it,” I said, rubbing my eyebrow.

“There's nothing floating in there,” he said.

“Oh, yeah?” I pushed the heart-shaped object to the side of my plate. “What do you call that?”

“I'd call it a heart, but it isn't floating. It was buried.”

I ignored him and started wiping sauce off the heart. It didn't take but a few swipes to see it
was covered with sparkly deep-red stones.

I picked it up. “Gosh. This looks like solid gold.”

Margaret grabbed my hand. “Quick! Drop it! Don't even breathe on it.”

I flung the heart down, my breath shooting out in quick spurts. “Why? What's wrong?”

Margaret threw a napkin over it. “Just act normal. Don't let on like anything's out of the ordinary.”

“Me act normal? You're the one who's acting weird. I just want to look at it.” I reached for the napkin.

She pushed my hand away. “No. We can't let anybody see it. We can't…tell…a soul.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” she whispered, “Granny Goose will get thrown in jail.”

“Yep. That's a fact,” Gus said, as if he knew exactly what she was talking about.

“Jail? Why would Granny Goose get thrown in jail? She's not a criminal.”

“Haven't you heard about the robbery?” Margaret said. “That's Mrs. Grimstone's gold locket. It got stolen from her house.”

“For real? It belongs to Angel's mom?” I said.

Gus shook his head. “Nope. Her grandmother.” He scooted his chair around the table and parked it an inch from mine. “I read it's embedded with rubies, probably worth twenty thousand bucks, at least. Let me see it.” He reached in front of me for the napkin.

I knocked his hand aside, then checked to make sure my mom wasn't watching before uncovering the locket myself. It sure did look like rubies, expensive ones, too. But then what did I know? The fanciest jewelry my mom owned was a shell necklace I made for her way back in kindergarten.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “How do you know about any locket getting stolen from the Grimstones?”

“It was in the paper this morning,” Margaret said.

“But this might not be the same locket. Maybe this is a piece of Granny Goose's costume jewelry that fell in the cucumbers while she was cooking. Or maybe it came off her goose's collar or something.”

“Yep. That's it all right,” Gus said. “There was a picture of it on the front page of the paper. Man, what're the odds of this happening—like one percent, maybe?”

Something clicked in my brain, and I thought back to breakfast, when Mom had handed my dad the newspaper and said, “Look at that. Right here in Bloomsberry. I hope they find the thieves.”

I hadn't heard the rest of their conversation, because Henry had chosen that very minute to snatch my flute and run outside.

“Actually”—Gus went on—“a bunch of stuff got stolen from the Grimstones—all kinds of diamond jewelry, some rare coins. Pitayas, too. Six of them.”

“What are Pitayas?” I said.

“Jeweled eggs,” Gus said. “They're named after the
Russian guy who designed them, and they're made out of gold and emeralds. Mrs. Grimstone owned the whole collection.”

“My mom said there's a huge reward out for the heirlooms,” Margaret said.

My fingers curled around the locket. I licked my lips, barely able to utter my next words. “How much?”

“Five thousand dollars,” Gus said.

“Oh, wow!” I sprang from my seat. “Come on. Let's find Officer Moore. I saw him earlier in a broccoli costume.”

Margaret grabbed my hand. “Wait. What're you doing?”

“Hel-lo-o…What do you think I'm doing? I'm going to give this to the cops and collect the reward. We'll each get twenty-five hundred dollars. That means I'll be able to go to band camp.”

“No, you're wrong,” Gus said. His eyes narrowed into minicalculators. Click, click, click. “One thousand,
six hundred, sixty-six dollars, and sixty-six cents, with two cents left over. That's what we'd each get.”

I couldn't believe this kid. First he'd butted in on our lunch, and now he wanted to snag my reward money. I mean, it was me who nearly ate the locket. Did he actually think I'd split the money three ways? Well, I had news for Gus Kinnard—he wasn't getting a penny. I turned to leave.

“But it doesn't really matter. We won't get the reward anyway,” he said.

“Why not?” I narrowed my eyes at Mr. Know-It-All.

“Because that locket is just one piece out of a dozen or so. And it's not even the most valuable. Some of the other things, like the eggs, are worth at least five times more.”

“So what?” I said, but I could feel my happiness bubble deflating, like a bike tire with a slow leak.

“Think about it,” he said. “Why would Mrs. Grimstone pay the whole reward for the least valuable
piece? We wouldn't get more than a hundred dollars, tops. Thirty-three apiece after we split it up.”

“Sit down, pleeease, Lindy,” Margaret said. “Gus is right. Besides, we can't turn that locket in yet, anyway.”

“Well, we can't keep it. We'll get in big trouble if we don't give it to the cops.”

“I don't want us to
keep
it,” Margaret whispered. “But if we turn it in right this minute, the police will ask where you found it. And then they'll think Granny Goose stole it, because you found it in her dish of cucumbers. And then she'll go to jail. For certain. Maybe for life.”

Gus stuffed a handful of cherries in his mouth before saying, “Maybe noth lifth, but sheel get at leaf tin yearths, wiff time offth for good beha-for.” He spit the seeds toward the ground, and—
oh, jeez!
—a couple of them ended up on my lap.

“Thorry,” he said, picking at some gunk behind his lip.

Talk about annoying. I flicked the seeds back at him and dragged my chair all the way around to the other side of the table, so I was facing both of them.

“Granny Goose isn't a thief,” I said to Margaret as I sat back down. I mean, how could anyone believe something that ridiculous? In fact, Granny Goose was probably the most kindhearted person in the whole state of Florida. I'd known about her animal rescue since I was a little kid, when she'd helped save the two abandoned kittens Margaret and I dug out of a Dumpster. They both were skinny from worms and covered with fleas. But thanks to Granny Goose, who nursed them back to health, they'd grown up to be fat, fluffy cats. I'd kept Pixie, and Margaret had Trixie. And Granny Goose had done it all for free, too.

“Nope. I won't take a cent,” she'd insisted when my dad had tried to pay her. “I'm just happy to help these little critters out.”

Mom said that after her husband died, Granny
Goose had carried on his business of animal rescue—he'd been a veterinarian—except she refused to charge people.

I scratched my head, totally puzzled. “This doesn't make any sense. How could the locket have wound up in her cucumbers?”

“The evidence points to her being the perpetrator,” Gus said, “but I'll give it ninety-nine to one she's being framed.” He reached across the table and helped himself to a huge swig of my pink lemonade.

I scowled at him, snatching my glass before he could finish off the ice.

As I wiped the last bit of cucumber off the locket, I thought about what we should do. My parents would say to turn it in, even if it meant we didn't get any reward. But then there was Granny Goose to think about. Suppose she got put in jail for something she didn't do? As much as I hated to admit it, Gus was right. The evidence pointed to her.

“What if I just said I found the locket on the
ground?” I suggested. “Then the cops wouldn't suspect Granny Goose.”

“Well, sure, that could probably work,” Gus said. “But I know how we can keep her out of jail
and
earn the whole five thousand dollars—no sweat.” He plopped his elbows on the table and rested his chin in his hands, staring at me. “Wanna know how?”

I ignored the W
ARNING
: T
ROUBLE
A
HEAD
sign flashing in the back of my mind. Instead, all I could think about was the money: 1,666 crisp one-dollar bills, stacked on my dresser. It would be all mine, and it would more than pay for band camp. My heart did a little swing dance as I pictured myself at the governor's mansion with a brand-new flute and a wad of cash in my backpack.

I sat straight up and looked Gus Kinnard in the eye. Because for once in his life, he might say something I actually wanted to hear.

“Yeah,” I said. “How?”