Madhattan Mystery (4 page)

“I know a better spot,” Kim Ling said, waggling her finger. “Follow me, but keep quiet. I've been avoiding the tenants like the plague ever since the blackout.”

The girl was a major pain, that was for sure, but with criminals parked across the street possibly sizing Lexi up for who knows what, she didn't think twice. She quickly ripped the article out of the
Times
and shoved it into her back pocket, grabbed her ice cream and her brother, and
followed Kim Ling into the brownstone. A lizardy-looking guy slithered out of Apartment 1R and right past them carrying too many shopping bags.
Does anyone ever say hello in this town? Do people even know their own neighbors?
There was a pasty-faced man peeking out of the same apartment, but when he saw the kids approaching, he quickly shut his door.

“Ew, what smells?” Kevin asked.

“Blanca, Eddie-Spaghetti, Mao-Mao, Simba, the Colonel, and Mrs. Wigglesworth,” Kim Ling said, leading them up the stairs. “Cats. They belong to Mr. Carney. That was him just now. He's certifiable. Oh, and Gingersnap.”

“Kim!
Dios mio
!” came ringing from above before Lexi could ask Kim Ling about the shopping-bag-man. The silhouette of a woman with an armful of screaming baby was pacing on the second floor. “I miss all
mis programas
on the
televisión
.”

“
Sí, sí
, I know, Mrs. Rivera, please be patient.
Sea paciente, por favor
.”

They ran into a whole hodgepodge of fuming tenants on their way up, most of them just shadows in the dark. Except for Miss Carelli, who appeared in a greenish toga and wielded a flashlight.

“What was that?” Kevin puffed. “The Statue of Liberty?”.

“Miss Carelli, an opera singer,” Kim Ling said over her shoulder. “She always wears costume pieces from her shows. I'm guessing today's ensemble is from
Antony and Cleopatra
.”

Lexi swallowed hard. It was eerie how the name Cleopatra came out of Kim Ling's mouth just seconds after Lexi had found that newspaper article. And as they reached the top landing, something else was bugging her. In the time it took to climb six flights, Kim Ling had exhibited a freaky ability for remembering cat names, a semi-knowledge of opera, plus conversational foreign language skills. Lexi wondered if she was one of those scary-smart kids with a brain the size of Utah.

“Okay, listen up—I'm gonna need you guys to keep low to the ground,” Kim Ling said with the authority of a police academy field-training officer. “We're exiting onto the roof past a burglar alarm with extremely sensitive sensors.”

“But there's no electricity,” Kevin reminded her.

“Battery backup. And we
do not
want to set it off under any circumstances. Got it? Good. Now just do what I do.”

She ducked down and carefully scooted across the floor sideways like a Dungeness crab, then slowly slid flat-backed up the heavy metal door with her face in sharp profile.

Is she kidding with this?
Lexi wondered if a breeze was worth such a crazy maneuver. She took a deep breath and an even deeper plié and, thanks to having two years of ballet under her belt, wound up safely next to Kim Ling—in fifth position. She turned to see how Kevin was doing when—
RIIIIIIIIIING
—the bone-rattling alarm went off. Kevin and rocky road were flying through the air.

“Great!” Kim Ling barked. “I said, ‘do not under any circumstances set off the alarm,' and he freakin' sets off the alarm.”

“Sorry.”.

“It was an accident.” Lexi grabbed her brother and led him onto the roof deck away from the deafening noise—and Kim Ling.

A few seconds later, the alarm stopped screaming and Kim Ling tore out of the building and hurled the rocky road into a trash can where Kevin was standing. “Snaggit! You are such a little klutz.”

Lexi's face went hot. “Listen, he said he was sorry, didn't he? No need for name-calling. And why do you keep saying ‘snaggit' anyway? That's not even a word.”

Kim Ling looked at her with the eyes of a girl who had surprisingly met her match. “Blame my parents,” she said in a normal conversational tone. “They charge me fifty cents every time they hear me swear. I had to start making up my own PG-rated curse words—either that or take out a loan.”

Lexi willed what could have been a smile into a scowl and sauntered over to the edge of the roof. “Kev, come here. You can totally see the river and clear into—I don't know where.”

“New Jersey,” Kim Ling offered. “The armpit state.”

Eventually all three wound up leaning on the low wall that trimmed the rooftop, staring in silence at the pinkish submarine-shaped clouds floating in neat rows across the
sky. Lexi could feel her tension melting away along with the French vanilla as she handed the pint to Kevin. Finally, that cool breeze they had been looking for wafted up from the Hudson River and kissed their faces.

“It's nice on the roof, isn't it?” Kim Ling said dreamily. “Pots of hydrangeas, patio furniture … since we installed the alarm, hardly anyone ventures up here anymore. Well, except three-R. She likes to sunbathe without a top.”

“Really?” Kevin asked.

“Stick your tongue back in your mouth. She's, like, seventy.”

Everyone laughed out loud—even Lexi. But she quickly snuffed out any glint of joy with tightly folded arms. “You sure seem to have your nose in everyone's business.”

“I'm going to be an investigative journalist. Nosy will come in handy,” was Kim Ling's oddball response. “Sorry I tore your head off, Kevin. I get like that sometimes.”

“That's okay. Want some ice cream?” he asked her as his face turned three shades of blotchy red. “Before it's total soup?”

“Nah, I don't do dairy. Lactose intolerant.”

Lexi froze.
She did
not
just say that!
Almost against her will, Lexi's hand slipped into her pocket and pulled out the sample of Dairy-Eze Chewables she had taken from the human milk carton in Grand Central. On the back it read,
Fast-acting dietary supplements for lactose intolerance. Enjoy the dairy foods you love without stomach upset
. Was this some sort of weird fate? Lexi, not wanting to mess with the power
of the universe, begrudgingly handed Kim Ling the free sample. “Here, knock yourself out.”

“What?” Kim Ling looked down and her eyes widened. “
Gracias
, Lexington Avenue! Man, I hope you're around if I ever need a kidney.”

Lexi had to admit that Kim was kind of funny—for a psychopath. But it hardly made up for her quick temper, made-up curse words, and the way she tromped around like she was queen of the universe. Lexi could never imagine being friends with this girl. Witty, city, brainy, zany. She seemed totally in control and Lexi was anything but. Together they were like a left-to-right-hand handshake—they just didn't fit.

Lexi quickly polished her spoon on her shirttail and was handing it to Kim Ling as a final goodwill gesture when the burglar alarm went off again and Aunt Roz came barreling through the door.

“There you are!” she cried, her hands covering her ears. “Oh, that wretched, wretched sound! I thought you kids were on the front stoop but Miss Carelli told me she saw you heading up—oh, Kimmy, make it stop!”

“What is it?” Lexi shouted with a pang of concern. “What's happened?”

Aunt Roz waited for Kim Ling to rush into the building and turn off the alarm. “It's your father,” she said, panting. “Nothing's wrong. He phoned from Paris and wants you to call him right back—before he and Clare leave the hotel.”

Kevin bolted through the door and thundered down the steps followed by Aunt Roz, but Lexi stayed put.

“Lemme guess,” Kim Ling said, inching toward her. “Not getting along with the new stepmom, eh, Cinderella?”

“Why would you think that?”.

“Don't kid a kidder, kiddo. It's written all over your face.”

Lexi closed her eyes, wishing Kim Ling would disappear.
Why is there never a fairy godmother around when you need one?

The ringing in her ears must still be from the burglar alarm, she was thinking, but when her eyes popped open she realized the noise was coming from the street. Kim Ling was back at the roof's edge, and when Lexi joined her, the sound of at least fifty screaming sirens was piercing the air.

“A fleet of squad cars,” Kim Ling reported at the top of her lungs, “parading around town! It usually happens when the city's on high alert, like, if there's a bomb threat or a major crime—to warn criminals they'd better watch out.”

“So many flashing lights!”.

“It must be because of that Cleopatra jewel heist. You've heard about it, right?”

Lexi stiffened. “No electricity, remember? I—don't have a clue what you're talking about.”

As the motorcade disappeared down West End Avenue, Kim Ling turned and headed for the door, but with the
smuggest look on her face. “Uh, that newspaper headline sticking out of your back pocket begs to differ.”

“Oh, yeah,” Lexi muttered. “Right.”

And she was left alone, biting her bottom lip and staring into New Jersey.

It was just after midnight when the electricity returned to the brownstone and the AC kicked on with a loud rattle. “Hallelujah,” Lexi mumbled to herself. “Maybe I'll finally get some sleep.” The guilt, however, from not talking to her father on the return phone call kept her up long into the night—that and images of creepy jewel thieves and flashing patrol cars. If only the police would hurry up and solve that crime, it would be one less annoying thing to deal with.

Why Aunt Roz woke everyone up at seven thirty a.m. to get to a ten o'clock orientation was yet another unsolved crime. They had arrived way too early, and Lexi and Kevin were sitting on hard folding chairs next to Aunt Roz, doing nothing but stifling yawns and sizing up the other campers trickling into the gymnasium.

“I'll wait just a few more minutes till everyone gets here before I begin,” Mr. Glick, the jittery head counselor,
finally announced into an old-fashioned microphone. He wore a toothy smile and plaid shorts with droopy black socks, putting the
eek
in geek. “In the meantime, folks, let's keep it down to a dull roar, shall we?”

The YMCA, which happened to be only a few blocks away from Grand Central—way too close to where Lexi had encountered the thieves for her comfort—was filling up with kids and parents of every age, shape, size, and ethnicity. In the middle of counting Hello Kitty backpacks, Lexi happened to spot a TV mounted on the wall of an adjacent office with the door half open. She couldn't hear the sound, but a close-up of a gaudy green necklace flashed on the screen.
Home Shopping Network?
Then a chunky gold arm cuff—a jewel-encrusted, ancient Egyptian-looking arm cuff? It wasn't HSN, it was CNN.
Cleopatra's jewels? They found them?
Her heart did a backflip.
Wait. Maybe not
. “Photos courtesy of Cairo Museum” was in teeny print. Now the gray-haired anchorman was onscreen yapping silently. Lexi strained to read the tiny text in the crawler at the bottom of the screen.

WHILE TALKS RESUME ON CAPITOL HILL …
CNN
… NYPD SLOW IN GATHERING CLUES RE: CLEOPATRA JEWEL HEIST. THIEVES STILL AT LARGE AND POSSIBLY ARMED AND DANGEROUS …

Don't freak out! Just put it out of your mind. Think calm camp thoughts. Woodpeckers, canoes, mosquito bites …

“Okay, people, listen up!” Mr. Glick clapped his hands.
“I need seven-to eleven-year-olds to form a line at the table to my right.” He pointed to a foldout table with neat stacks of papers on it manned by a pimply-faced beanpole of a girl. “And twelve- to sixteen-year-olds at my table, please.”

“Why are they putting us in different lines?” Kevin asked as they all stood up, gathering their things. “Nobody said we'd have to be in different lines.”

“It's probably just for registration,” Lexi told him, her eyes still glued to the TV.

“Well, I'd better scoot if I'm going to make it to my callback on time,” Aunt Roz said over the sound of swelling chatter. “Or—oh, Alexandra, maybe I'd better not go. I really shouldn't leave you kids alone.”

“We'll be fine, Aunt Roz.”

“Are you sure? How do I look?” She sprang up and did a little turn, showing off her flowery dress.

“Not a day over twenty-nine.”

“Well, that's not right. I'm up for the role of the mother in the musical version of
The Glass Menagerie
. I was going for over-the-hill and dowdy.”

Lexi was about to backpedal when someone goosed her from behind. “
Ow!
”

“You could never pull off dowdy, Ms. McGill.”

“Kim Ling!” Lexi's jaw actually dropped. “What're you doing here?”

“Stalking you,” she said with a deadpan stare.
“Orientation, whaddya think? Now close your mouth—you're attracting flies.”

“Hey,” Kevin said to Kim Ling, “you never told us you were going to City Camp.”

“You never asked.”

“She's the one who told me about it in the first place,” Aunt Roz said. “I happened to mention it to your dad and the next thing I know—bibbidi-bobbidi-boo, you and Kevin are enrolled!” She grabbed Kim Ling and gave her one of her trademark rocking hugs. “Oh, this makes me feel so much better about dashing off.”

“With all due respect, Ms. M., you're smothering the life out of me.”

“Well, I
am
trying out for the role of a smothering mother.” Aunt Roz released her with a chuckle and began rifling through her tote. “Is your mom here, Kimmy?”

“No. I'm fourteen.”

“Well, I suppose you'll be retiring to Boca Raton pretty soon.”