Jessi and the Jewel Thieves Read online

  I called Stacey to let her know I was about to head back to her dad’s apartment, and she agreed to meet me outside. Then, after I’d said good-bye to Mr. and Mrs. Walter and thanked them for dinner, Quint walked me downstairs.

  “So you’ll come over first thing tomorrow, right?” he was saying as we walked through the big door that led from the lobby to the street.

  I was about to agree when I saw something that made me gasp. There, in front of Quint’s building, stood Red and Frank. My heart started to pound, and I turned to Quint, speechless. He grabbed my arm and steered me past the men, down the block, and around the corner. I was sure the men were right behind us, but I was too afraid to look over my shoulder to check. So much for never seeing them again. I was terrified. They were following us already!

  Quint hailed a cab that was speeding by. “Stacey’s waiting for you,” he said. “We’ll talk tomorrow. There’s no time now.” He opened the door for me and I slid in, unable to say a word. “I can go into our building through the back way,” he went on. “Don’t worry about me.” He gave the driver Stacey’s address, called good night, and closed the door. The cab took off before I could say a thing.

  I tried to compose myself as the cab sped toward Stacey’s. I didn’t want to seem upset in front of her, or even tell her about what had happened. I had the feeling that she might not like my playing detective, and I knew that since she was feeling responsible for me she would probably try to talk me out of it. On the other hand, I didn’t feel I could back out on Quint now; we were in this together.

  I was calmer by the time the cab pulled up in front of Stacey’s building. In fact, I was able to act normal, and I don’t think she noticed a thing. We headed up to the apartment, and I asked her if I could call Mallory to find out how Becca was doing.

  “Sure,” she said. “Dad and I are going to be in the living room, watching a movie. You can use the phone in the kitchen.”

  I did want to ask Mal about Becca, but I was also dying to tell her what had happened that night. I knew she’d be fascinated. I dashed into the kitchen, grabbed the phone, and dialed quickly. Mal answered. “It’s me!” I cried, knowing she’d know who “me” was.

  “Jessi!” she said. (See?) “How’s New York?”

  “You won’t believe what happened,” I replied. “But first, tell me how Becca’s doing.”

  “Wellll … not so great, actually. She’s having a tough time.” Mal sounded pretty serious, so I sat down and got ready to listen. My news would have to wait.

  Mal had reason to sound a little overwhelmed. She might have been exaggerating just a tiny bit — I mean, calamitously? — but from what I heard, Becca was quite a handful.

  When I called her that night, she sounded as if she were about ready to hand in her Baby-sitter’s License.

  “Jessi,” she said, “you know you’re my best friend. And you know I love your family. But your little sister can be a —”

  “A real pain,” I said. “I know. I love her, too, but I had a feeling this weekend wasn’t going to be easy for you.”

  “I really feel sorry for her,” said Mal. “I mean, she does feel awful and lonely and abandoned. But what can I do? I’ve made everything as nice as possible for her, but I can’t make you and your family appear out of thin air.”

  “I know,” I said. “But we’ll be back soon. I guess that’s what you have to keep telling her.”

  “It doesn’t do any good,” said Mallory, sighing. “She wouldn’t eat dinner tonight, and she wouldn’t play with the other kids after dinner, and now she says she can’t sleep.”

  “No dinner?” I asked. I was surprised. Becca usually has a good appetite.

  “Well, she did manage to swallow some of the chocolate pudding we had for dessert,” admitted Mal. “Once I coaxed her into it.” She giggled a little. “Now, if only I could get her to sleep —”

  “Try Charlotte’s Web,” I suggested. “Read a chapter aloud to her. That always works.” I spoke quickly. I was a little impatient with all this talk about Becca. I mean, I did care how she was doing, but I had more important things on my mind. It was time to change the subject. “Mal,” I said, “listen to what happened.” I told her what Quint and I had seen and heard. I didn’t leave out any details, either. It made a good story.

  “Wow,” breathed Mal when I’d finished. “This is awesome! You actually saw two guys planning a jewel heist. I can’t believe it.”

  “Me neither,” I said. “But it really happened. It’s just like a movie, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” answered Mal. “Except for one thing. When you watch a movie, you get to go home later on and forget about it. But this is as if you and Quint are in the movie! Jessi, those guys might be after you. What are you going to do?”

  I heard the fear in Mal’s voice, and somehow it made me want to pretend I wasn’t scared at all. “We’re going to crack the case, that’s what we’re going to do. We’ll take care of the thieves before they can do anything to us. All we need is a little concrete evidence, and then the police can take it from there.” I sounded so confident that I almost convinced myself.

  “Well,” replied Mal, “all I can say is good luck. And be careful! Those guys could be dangerous.” She paused for a second. “Jessi?” she said. “Becca’s calling me. She’s supposed to be sleeping on a cot in Vanessa’s and my room, but she’s saying she can’t get to sleep. I better go.”

  “Okay. Good luck, yourself. Remember, Charlotte’s Web usually does the trick. Try the chapter where Wilbur first meets Charlotte.”

  Mal told me later that her conversation with me was a real bright spot in her evening. It was good, she said, to talk over the “Becca problem” with someone who knew Becca well. It was also good to be distracted by my news about the jewel thieves. Ever since I’d left, Mal had been thinking about nothing but Becca and her needs, and she was beginning to get tired of the subject. Especially since, no matter what Mal did, Becca refused to cheer up.

  This had started as soon as I’d left Becca in the Pikes’ driveway. As I’d walked toward Stacey’s house, Mal had taken Becca’s hand. “Come on, Becca,” she’d said. “Let’s go inside and drop off your bag. Then we can join the scavenger hunt. Everyone’s waiting for us!”

  “No,” said Becca. She put her duffel bag down on the driveway and sat on it. “I’m staying right here until my family comes back.”

  Mal almost giggled, but she managed not to. “Becca,” she said. “You can’t do that. It’s going to get chilly when the sun goes down. And besides, you’ll want dinner and a bed later on.”

  “Will not,” said Becca. “I’m an orphan, and orphans don’t need anything from anybody.”

  “You’re not an orphan,” said Mal patiently. “Your family will come back soon, and mean-while you’re an honorary member of my family. And even orphans need to eat and sleep and — get hugs.” Mal reached down as she spoke and gave Becca an especially nice hug. Becca burst into tears. Mal squeezed her harder, and then gently helped her up and into the house.

  Once Becca had been persuaded to part with her duffel bag (which wasn’t easy), Mal rounded up the other kids and told them it was time for the scavenger hunt. “Becca and Claire will be one team,” she said. “I’ll help them until I have to go to the Baby-sitters Club meeting.”

  Claire jumped up and down. “Yay!” she said. “I get to be on Becca-silly-billy-goo-goo’s team!” Claire is five, and she can be pretty silly sometimes.

  “Vanessa and Nicky and Margo will be another team,” Mal went on.

  “I have to be with two girls?” asked Nicky. “Ew!” Nicky’s eight, and like most eight-year-olds, he pretends that girls are poison. In reality, he loves his sisters and likes the attention he gets from them. Vanessa is nine, and she’s kind of dreamy. She wants to be a poet when she grows up. Margo, who’s seven, is much more practical than Vanessa. In fact, at times she likes to try to run the Pike household. She’s been in a bossy phase lately.

 
; “And the triplets will be the last team,” Mal went on. She would have liked to separate the triplets and put them on different teams, but she knew they wouldn’t stand for it. Jordan, Adam, and Byron, who are ten, stick together like glue. They’re identical in looks only, though. Adam and Jordan are both crazy about sports, while Byron is more quiet and sensitive. Jordan takes piano lessons. Adam wants to learn how to scuba dive someday. The triplets can be a handful, but that day they were no match for Becca.

  “I don’t wanna go on a scabenger hunt,” said Becca as soon as Mal had finished making up the teams.

  “It’s scavenger hunt,” said Mal. “And I bet you don’t even know what one is. It’ll be fun, I promise. See, what we have to do is find the things on these lists. The first team to find all their items wins.” Mal had made up three lists, with pretty simple things on them. This was going to be a short scavenger hunt.

  She passed out the lists. “Oh, no,” said Margo, looking at her team’s list. “Where are we going to find a feather duster?”

  “I know!” said Nicky. He put his head next to Margo’s and started to whisper excitedly. The scavenger hunt was on.

  Mal said Becca followed her around the way a puppy follows its mother. She showed no interest in the scavenger hunt; all she wanted was for Mal to pay attention to her. Mal tried to involve her in the game. “Becca,” she said, “where to you think we might find a red sock?”

  “I dunno,” Becca replied. “When do you think my mom will call?”

  Mal rolled her eyes, without letting Becca see. “She said she’d call after dinner,” she told her, for what felt like the millionth time. “How about helping us find some things now? It’ll keep your mind off missing your family.”

  “My family!” Becca wailed. “They don’t love me. Nobody loves me. I’m all alone.” Becca was, at the moment she said that, surrounded by Pike kids. Almost everyone was in the kitchen, looking for things like egg timers, bottle caps, and toothpicks.

  “You’re not alone, Becca,” said Claire helpfully. “You’re with us!”

  “You’re with us, and we’re with you, next time maybe we’ll go to the zoo,” Vanessa rhymed. Becca didn’t crack a smile.

  The scavenger hunt finished up right around dinnertime, just as Mal returned from the BSC meeting. The triplets won by a mile. They’d been able to talk Mrs. Pike into giving them the shoelaces out of her favorite sneakers. That item had completed their list. Mal gave them each a quarter for a prize.

  Dinner in the Pike household is never boring. Mr. and Mrs. Pike don’t believe in fighting with the kids over what they eat. There’s always plenty of food on the table, of all different kinds. That night, for example, the triplets were eating make-it-yourself tacos, Vanessa and Claire were eating the taco filling over rice, Margo was having a peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich (the only thing she eats these days, according to Mal), and Nicky was just eating taco shells with nothing in them.

  Becca wasn’t eating at all. She sat at the table with her hands folded in her lap, doing her best to look like a pathetic, unloved orphan.

  “Becca,” Mal said, “does anything here look good?” She happens to know that Becca loves tacos.

  “I’m not hungry,” said Becca.

  Mal tried to tempt Becca with whatever food she could find in the kitchen, but Becca refused it all. (Except for the chocolate pudding, I guess.)

  After dinner, Mal told Becca she could watch TV with the others for an hour, and then it would be time for bed. Becca sat in the corner of the couch, as far away from everyone else as she could get, and pulled a pillow over her stomach. When the phone rang, though, she jumped up, smiling. “That’s my mom!” she said, looking happy for the first time all day. Luckily, she was right.

  Becca seemed better after the phone call, but Mal still had a hard time getting her into her pajamas. “I’m not going to sleep, so why should I put on my pajamas?” asked Becca logically. Finally, Mal coaxed Becca into bed, and that’s when I called.

  After she hung up with me, Mal returned to her bedroom. She didn’t tell Becca that I’d called, since she didn’t want to excite her. It was getting late. Instead, she pulled her well worn copy of Charlotte’s Web from the shelf, and began to read. Becca listened intently for a while, but her eyelids began to droop before Mal was even halfway through the chapter. Like I said, it always works!

  Beep, beep, beep, CRASH! I heard the noises from the street below. Stacey had told me I’d probably be wakened up by the sound of garbage trucks backing up (that was the beep, beep, beep sound) and by the noise of cans being thrown into the backs of the trucks (that was the CRASH). She was right about the noises, but she wasn’t right about their waking me up. According to the clock on Stacey’s night table, it was only six in the morning, but already I felt as if I’d been up for hours. I hadn’t slept well at all.

  It wasn’t that I was uncomfortable on the futon, or that I was nervous about being in the city. It was that I couldn’t stop thinking about what Quint and I had seen and heard. Jewel thieves! Mean, nasty jewel thieves. Mean, nasty jewel thieves who knew my name!

  They knew what I looked like, too. And they’d probably seen me leaving Quint’s building. I wondered whether they could have followed us and seen me getting into a cab. They might even have gotten into a cab of their own and followed me all the way to Mr. McGill’s building! I wondered if they were waiting for me downstairs.

  I tossed and turned for awhile, trying to fall asleep again. Finally, I gave up and just lay there, thinking. Or maybe worrying is a better word. I knew I’d feel better as soon as I was with Quint again and we started to do some detective work — doing is always better than worrying. But it was too early to get up. I didn’t want to wake Stacey, and I knew Quint’s family wouldn’t be expecting visitors until later on.

  I rolled over and grabbed the book I’d brought. It was Misty of Chincoteague, which I have read probably five hundred times. There’s something wonderful about re-reading a favorite book. It’s just so comforting to follow the familiar words and to watch the plot unfold in the way you know it will. Before long I was swept up in the story, and my worries dropped away.

  “Morning, Jessi,” said Stacey, sleepily. It was about eight by the time she rolled over and rubbed her eyes. “Sleep well?”

  “Sure,” I lied.

  “Ready for breakfast? I bet Dad has bagels and cream cheese and stuff. He always goes to Zabar’s to stock up before I visit.” Zabar’s is this huge food store on the other side of town, near where Quint lives. It sells all kinds of great stuff.

  “I’m starved,” I replied. I was, too. I guess lying awake for hours can really build up your appetite.

  I dressed in my “walking around the city” outfit, and joined Stacey and her dad for breakfast. Stacey was right. Mr. McGill had gone to Zabar’s, and he’d gotten tons of food. I don’t usually eat big breakfasts because I have to keep in shape for ballet. But that morning, I ate until I was stuffed. I figured I’d need my energy. You’d think that being nervous would affect my appetite, but no. I’m hungry no matter what kind of mood I’m in.

  As soon as we had finished eating, Stacey took me downstairs to hail a cab. She knew I was in a hurry to get to Quint’s. “My father wants to take us all out to lunch today,” she told me. “You, me, and Quint. So give us a call in a few hours and we’ll figure out where to meet, okay?”

  “Great,” I said. “That’s really nice of your dad.” We were about to walk out of the building at that point, and I was a little distracted. I peered around, checking to make sure the two men weren’t lurking nearby.

  “What are you looking for?” asked Stacey.

  “Oh, um, a cab,” I said, thinking quickly.

  “We’ll have a better chance out on the avenue.” Stacey led me to the corner where we’d stood the night before. “Why don’t you try hailing one this time?” she asked.

  I watched for a cab, and when I saw one coming I threw my arm up, just as I’d seen Stacey
and Quint do. It worked! The cab veered over to me and pulled up at the curb. It was almost like magic. Stacey grinned at me. “You’re a New Yorker already,” she said. “See you later!”

  I spent the cab ride thinking about — what else? — the jewel thieves. And when I jumped out at Quint’s, guess what I saw? A police car, parked in the street in front of the building next door. The building where they had been having their argument!

  “It’s been there all morning,” whispered Quint, when I mentioned it to him. He and I had escaped from his family as quickly as possible and were alone in the TV room.

  “Maybe the police are already on to those guys,” I said. “Maybe they’re staking out the apartment.”

  “Maybe,” said Quint, sounding doubtful. “Listen to this, though,” he went on. “My dad told me at breakfast this morning that the phone rang in the middle of the night. When he picked it up, whoever was on the other end hung up. It happened twice!”

  A shiver ran down my spine. “Do you think they were calling to check up on you?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Who knows? It could have been just a coincidence. Anyway, should we check up on them?” He gestured toward the window.

  “I — I don’t know. This is making me nervous.”

  “I’m kind of nervous about it, too. In fact, I didn’t sleep very well last night. But wouldn’t we feel better if we were doing something?”

  I guess this is why Quint and I are friends: we really are a lot alike.

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking,” I said. So we walked over to the window and peeked through the blinds. Our window was open, and so were most of the ones across the way, including the one we were most interested in. But nobody was in sight. I started to turn away when suddenly I heard a familiar voice.

  “Listen, numbskull,” it said.

  “That’s him,” hissed Quint. “They must be in another room.”