Framed (13 page)

T
he pack rat.

Savannah was right!

Of course she was right. This was the girl who had taken the meanest guard dog on Long Island and turned him into her best friend. When it came to animals, Savannah Drysdale was money in the bank.

Griffin and Shank watched, mesmerized, as the little rodent sniffed his way up to the trap. An inch before the opening, he hesitated, weighing the pros and cons — the irresistible scent of Rendezvous in Paris versus the danger of the unknown. The shiny ball of foil seemed to sway the decision. In a single bound, he raced into the cage, snatched up the prize, and turned to make his exit.

Too late. The door snapped shut, cutting off his escape.

“We’ve got him,” Griffin breathed into the walkie-talkie. “He’s in the trap.”

“Mr. Clancy?” Ben asked in amazement.

“The dirty rat is caught,” said The Man With The Plan.

By eight o’clock, there was still no sign of Dalton Davis at the Four Corners diner, and the Bings were nearly frantic.

Mr. Bing was pacing in the parking lot, talking on his cell phone with the switchboard at Davis, Davis, and Yamamoto. When he returned to his wife, his face was gray.

“Dalton Davis is at the opera.”

Mrs. Bing was devastated. “The opera? Then why on earth would the man tell us to —” Light dawned. “There was never any meeting, was there?”

Her husband shook his head grimly. “We’ve been hoodwinked.”

“But by
who
?” she demanded.

When the answer came to them, they both blurted it out in near unison.
“Griffin!”

Mr. Bing tossed some bills on the table and joined his wife in a mad dash for the van.

The pack rat cowered in the trap, hugging the ball of foil to his belly, peering furtively out at the six team members who now surrounded him.

So this was the guilty party, the lowdown punk who had stolen Art Blankenship’s Super Bowl ring and framed Griffin in the process. Not Mr. Clancy or Dr. Evil or Celia White or Tony. Not even Vader, Griffin’s worst enemy. This tiny, frightened rodent.

Savannah rubbed at moist eyes. “He’s just so small and scared and helpless. We must seem like giants to him. Look — he’s protecting the ball of foil. We outweigh him by a factor of a thousand, yet he’s standing up for what’s his. How honorable is that?”

“You can’t have honor if you go to the bathroom in the same place where you sleep,” Pitch put in. “No offense, Ferret Face,” she added to the head poking out of Ben’s collar.

“Assuming he’s the thief, this little monster almost got me thrown in juvie,” Griffin reminded them darkly. “It might still happen if we can’t pull this off.”

“You can’t blame an animal for following its natural instinct,” Savannah insisted.

“You can if it ruins your best friend’s life!” Ben snapped back.

“That’s why it’s called
nuisance
wildlife,” Shank explained patiently. “If these critters were a party to hang out with, they’d call it something else.”

“We’re wasting time,” Griffin reminded them. “Let’s start Phase Two.”

Shank popped the cage door and reached inside, but the frightened pack rat slipped away from his meaty hand. Several more attempts yielded the same result.

Savannah elbowed him out of the way. “He’s petrified.” From her pocket, she removed a restaurant-sized peanut butter packet, smeared a small streak across her palm, and held it just inside the trap. “All right, cutie-pie. Here’s a treat for you.”

The anxious rodent hesitated, clinging to the ball of foil as if trying to hide behind it.

“It’s okay,” she crooned.

When Savannah resorted to this tone, she was like Dr. Dolittle. No animal could resist. Sure enough, the pack rat abandoned his prize and went for the peanut butter, whiskers twitching.

She drew the little creature up and out, petting him gently as he lapped at the snack. Then, with
her free hand, she drew a tiny leather harness from her backpack and slipped it over the head and front paws.

“I’m not even going to ask why you own a thing like that,” Pitch commented.

“I sized it down from a Chihuahua leash so I could exercise my hamsters,” Savannah explained.

“Couldn’t you just put them on one of those wheels?” Ben asked curiously.

“Running on a wheel is pointless,” Savannah replied with contempt, “and they know it. It depresses them.”

Shank took the fishing rod from Ben, tied the end of the line onto the harness, and began to unspool the reel.

Savannah set the pack rat down. “Okay, cutie-pie. Lead us home.”

Toenails scrambling on the hard floor, the creature took off down the hall, with the team in pursuit. Shank was in the lead, reeling like mad, increasing the speedy rodent’s head start, but keeping it in visual range.

Griffin was right on his heels, breathing a silent prayer with every step. If Mr. Clancy went for another snack break, there’d be no avoiding him this time.

“How do we know he’s going to take us to the ring?” puffed Melissa, struggling to keep pace.

“An animal in danger heads toward safety,” Savannah panted in reply. “For a pack rat, that’s his stash.”

Bounced and jostled by the furious activity, Ferret Face became agitated, emitting a series of wild clucks.

Ben recognized the warning signs all too well. “Oh, no you don’t! No throwing up tonight!” He set the ferret down beside him, and the two of them rejoined the chase.

By now, the pack rat had opened up a sixty-foot lead. He turned left, feet skittering, and disappeared around the corner. Instinctively, Shank yanked back on the line, bringing their quarry to a jarring halt.

Horrified, Savannah smacked his hand. “How’d you like to be manhandled by a force a hundred times your own strength?”

Shank stared at her. He was not used to being slapped. But he obediently paid out more slack, and the pack rat was off again. The team wheeled around the bend after him.

A right turn sent them racing through the heart
of the school, past the gym, toward the auditorium. They could hear music from the play and snippets of dialogue. Griffin thought he recognized Logan’s strident voice, but this was no time to lose concentration. The plan had entered its most critical phase and also the most delicate. On the other side of the wall sat hundreds of people. It would only take one audience member en route to the bathroom to sink Operation Dirty Rat.

The pack rat bolted down a side hall, scurrying past a chair that was propping open a heavy metal door. Shank hurdled the obstacle, but the fishing line wrapped under the seat, sending it tumbling into the back of his legs. He tripped and went down, losing his grip on the rod. With a buzzing noise, the reel paid out as the fugitive rodent darted away. Shank clamped his hand on the spool and locked it. Scrambling up again, he rejoined the chase. The door, now free, shut behind him.

Pitch was running so hard that her momentum carried her right into it. She bounced off, wrenching at the handle. The door wouldn’t budge.

Griffin sprinted onto the scene. “Let’s move!” he rasped.

“It’s locked!” she hissed back.

“You mean we’ve
lost
them?” gasped Ben, scooping up Ferret Face, who was scratching at the metal.

“I don’t trust anybody who thinks wildlife is a nuisance,” Savannah added urgently. “It’s
people
who are a nuisance to animals!”

“Never mind that!” Griffin hissed. He was in a full panic, jerking the handle as if he believed he could tear the steel dead bolt clear of its housing. “That pack rat is our only connection to the ring! We’ve got to find him!”

“How are we going to do that?” Ben demanded. “Shank’s got no walkie-talkie, and we can’t exactly yell the school down!”

“There must be some way to figure out where they went.” Pitch looked around desperately. “Where does this door lead, anyway?”

J
ulius Caesar was in his glory. He had just been named the undisputed leader of the Roman Republic. It was his greatest triumph. And Logan was experiencing a triumph of his own — to ace a role before a spellbound crowd hundreds strong.

“Citizens of Rome, I stand before you in all humility….”

Man, this was going well! The people in the front row were practically on their feet, gasping from the effect of his performance. What Logan didn’t know was that directly behind him, the pack rat was scampering from wing to wing in full view of the audience.

“Behold the indestructible city we have built together!”

No sooner were the words past his lips than the giant set poster depicting the Circus Maximus exploded and Sheldon Brickhaus blasted onto the stage, fishing rod in hand, thundering after the rat. He knocked over an aqueduct and flattened the Pantheon before crashing through the background scenery of the Seven Hills of Rome. He was gone so quickly it was almost as if he had never even been there — except for the wreckage he’d left in his wake.

Julius Caesar, Rome’s greatest general, stood in the ruins of his eternal city. Surely Johnny Depp himself had never faced an acting challenge as enormous as the one Logan found himself confronted with. His next line was supposed to be
“Our beloved Rome will stand for ten thousand years!”
But he couldn’t very well say that, could he?
This
Rome hadn’t even lasted until the third act.

What words could possibly rescue the play from this terrible disaster?

Julius Caesar turned back to the audience and gave it his best shot: “You know, you just can’t get good marble these days!”

The show must go on.

Griffin saw the pack rat first and managed to catch up to Shank by the time the burly boy emerged from the backstage corridor. The others converged from all directions, footfalls echoing up and down the halls.

“Where were you?” Griffin panted.

“It’s not good,” Shank admitted, his usual calm a little ruffled. “Julius Caesar says yo.”

“You were in the auditorium?” Ben wheezed. “Did Dr. Evil see you?”

“Everybody saw me! I was on the stage!”

“Oh, no!” moaned Pitch. “Griffin, you better take off. We’re about to get caught, and you can’t be a part of it!”

“This isn’t over yet,” Griffin said through clenched teeth. “If we find the ring, getting caught won’t matter.”

Even the unshakable Shank was starting to get nervous. “She’s right, Justice. You’re in too deep. Let us take the heat.”

Griffin shook his head stubbornly. “If we go down, we go down as a team.”

Melissa pointed. “Speaking of going down —”

They stared. The pack rat was making a bee-line for the storage area and the staircase that led to the basement.

The team pounded down the steps after him, Shank in the lead, reeling like mad.

“Don’t hurt him!” Savannah begged.

“If I can’t keep him close, he’s going to lose us in all this junk!” Shank retorted.

They looked around, catching their breath. The basement was filled with broken desks, extra chairs, rolled-up mats, gym equipment, and hundreds of crates and cartons. At the center stood the furnace. An enormous central boiler fed dozens of pipes and ducts leading upward and outward like the gnarled branches of an ancient tree.

The pack rat led them through an obstacle course, jumping expertly from box to stack to crate.

“He knows exactly where he’s going!” Savannah marveled in a whisper. “Look how sure he is. He’s close to home!”

They watched, transfixed, as their quarry hopped from a file cabinet to the side of the furnace itself. He climbed high on the boiler before detouring onto a pipe, following its length until it disappeared into the suspended ceiling. The last
thing they saw was his long, skinny tail being drawn inside.

“That’s it,” said Shank positively. “His stuff is there.”

Savannah nodded. “Definitely.”

The nuisance wildlife expert and animal behavior specialist were in agreement.

“Wouldn’t you know it,” groaned Ben. “How are we supposed to get way up there?”

“That’s my department.” Pitch adjusted her coil of rope. “One Super Bowl ring coming up.” She scrambled along a series of metal rungs on the side of the boiler and then expertly shinnied out onto the pipe, following the path that their quarry had taken. She moved with athletic grace and ease, completely unfazed by the fact that she was suspended more than twenty feet above the basement floor.

Ben craned his neck to track her progress as she worked her way higher on the pipe. “I know she tries stuff twenty times harder when she goes climbing with her family, but this freaks me out. I mean, one wrong move and she’s a grease spot on the cement.”

“She knows what she’s doing,” said Griffin, but even he seemed tense watching her operate so high up.

As the pipe steepened to vertical, Pitch met the fishing line that was still attached to the pack rat’s harness. She touched it. “He’s stopped,” she called down. “He must be just inside the ceiling.”

Moving slowly now, she inched upward until her hair brushed the suspended ceiling. Then, locking her powerful legs onto the pipe, she carefully moved the tile aside and stuck her head inside for a look.

The crawl space was tight, designed to accommodate ducts, pipes, wires, but certainly not people. A few feet away sat the pack rat, gnawing at the leather strap of the unfamiliar harness. He was surrounded by a vast array of shiny objects — prisms, paper clips, costume jewelry, dozens of colored beads.

And there in the center, pride of the collection, sat Art Blankenship’s diamond-studded 1969 New York Jets Super Bowl championship ring.

“
J
ackpot!”

Pitch thrust her hand inside the ceiling to pick up the ring, praying that the pack rat was a collector, not a fighter.

Frightened, the little animal backed away until it had reached the end of the slack on the fishing line. There he cowered, wide eyed and quivering, as this huge invader approached his precious stash.

The hand drew closer and closer until it was eight inches from the ring.

“Have you got it?” Griffin asked anxiously.

“I can’t reach it,” said Pitch in a strained voice.

“Try harder,” Griffin begged.

“It’s no use. My shoulders are too wide to fit past the ceiling grid. I just need a few more inches….”

“We’ll have to send Ben,” Griffin decided.

“What — up there?” Ben blurted.

“Pitch doesn’t fit, but you will,” Griffin explained. “You’re our tight spaces specialist.”

“Yeah, here on earth. How am I supposed to get up there? Fly?”

It almost came to that. Pitch took the coil of rope from her shoulder and slung it around a horizontal section of heavy pipe, dangling both ends down to the floor. Following her directions, Griffin wrapped one end around Ben’s waist and between his legs, forming a strong harness. Like he was going to the gallows, Ben handed Ferret Face over to the only person he trusted to deal with an apprehensive ferret — Savannah. Then Shank and Griffin began to haul on the free end of the rope, winching Ben up toward the ceiling. He had only one request as he was ratcheted higher and higher.

“Don’t let go.”

Working the makeshift pulley system, Shank regarded him skeptically. “I think your friend up there might be crying.”

“Make no mistake,” Griffin replied confidently. “Ben complains a lot, but when push comes to shove, he gets the job done. If he stays awake.”

“Huh?”

“It’s a long story. Keep pulling. Nothing can stop us now.”

At that moment, there were pounding footsteps on the stairs, and Darren Vader barreled into the furnace room. “You’re busted, suckers! The minute the play got trashed, I knew it had something to do with you!” His eyes bulged as he caught sight of Pitch, perched at the ceiling, and the rising Ben just a few feet below her position. “Okay, I don’t get it.”

“Beat it, Vader!” Griffin snarled in a strained voice. “This is none of your business!”

“It’s the ring, isn’t it?” Darren was triumphant. “Great hiding place, Bing! A little extreme maybe, but I give you props for picking a spot nobody’s going to look.”

Savannah glared daggers at Darren. “Even you can’t be mean enough to turn us in, knowing what it’ll mean for Griffin.”

“I’m not turning anybody in,” Darren assured them. “So long as I get my fair share.”

“Your fair share of
what
?” Griffin demanded.

“Of the money from when you sell it! I want my cut — plus maybe a little bonus for keeping my mouth shut.”

“Nobody’s selling anything,” came a firm voice behind Darren.

Everyone wheeled. Even Ben managed to dangle in that direction. There stood Tony Bartholomew, a look of grim determination on his face.

“That ring is mine. It’s going home with me.”

“Mrs. Blankenship donated it to the
school
,” Savannah argued. “It was a gift.”

“So how come you hid it in the basement ceiling?” Darren challenged.

“Ignore them,” Pitch told Ben. “Let’s just do our job.” She reached down and guided the hanging boy onto the pipe. The young climber didn’t think she’d ever seen anyone quite so terrified. “It’s no big deal,” she soothed him. “It’s just high.”

Ben was nearly hysterical. “I don’t care about the
high
! I’m worried about how fast I could be
low
again!”

She shuffled over and pushed him into the crawl space. “You see the ring, right? If you can just get your shoulders past that wood frame …”

Other people had best friends, Ben reflected bitterly. Normal ones, the kind that didn’t send a guy into the ceiling of his school’s furnace room to burglarize a pack rat. But there was no way around it. Griffin needed this to happen, and Ben was the
only one who could get in there. Griffin would do the same for him.

Holding his arms in front of him like a high diver, he made himself small and eased through the opening, the wood frame scraping the skin of his shoulders. He reached for the ring at the center of the collection of trinkets, keeping an eye on the pack rat, who was watching him resentfully.

Just as his fingers closed on Art Blankenship’s treasure, the creature darted forward and snatched it with his teeth.

“Hey!”

The pack rat tried to flee, but the fishing line was taut and held him in place a few feet away.

“What’s going on?” called Griffin from below.

“I had it,” Ben tried to explain, “but the rat took it back!”

“Grab it!” ordered Shank.

“I can’t reach him!”

“Not the rat, the fishing line!” Shank yelled. “When we bring you down, he’ll have to come with you!”

Ben snatched at the black nylon fiber, wrapping it around his fist so he wouldn’t drop it. Then he eased himself out of the crawl space and rasped, “Lower away!”

Griffin and Shank began to ease on the rope, raising their end hand over hand, and beginning Ben’s descent. A few seconds later, the pack rat popped out of the suspended ceiling and hung below him, wriggling madly, the gold Super Bowl ring clenched in its jaws.

“Ben Slovak, if you let that poor helpless creature fall, I’ll break every bone in your body!” Savannah promised, watching nervously.

Ben was too terrified to reply. If that rope slipped, breaking every bone in his body would happen with or without Savannah.

“Careful, shrimp,” Darren brayed. “That’s my bank account you’re holding.”

“In your dreams,” seethed Tony.

“The ring goes right back to Dr. Egan,” Griffin said emphatically. “It was already stolen by one rat. I’m not giving it to two others.”

As he spoke, Griffin lost his grip for a moment, and the rope lurched. Shank hung on, stabilizing Ben’s descent. But the pack rat squeaked in fear, and the ring dropped from his mouth.

It fell fifteen feet, hit the floor, and skittered across the cement. It took every ounce of Griffin’s willpower not to abandon Ben’s rope and lunge for it. Darren, Tony, Savannah, and Melissa scrambled
after it. Darren got there first, snatched it up, and headed for the door.

A powerful force grabbed him by the back of the collar and hung on — Shank, with one hand on the rope, and the other on Darren. An instant later, Tony joined the struggle.

“Get
off
!” Still clutching the ring, Darren tore himself loose and barreled for the stairs.

“It belongs to the school!”
Griffin cried.

Darren laughed. “Later, losers!”

The words died in his throat. There in the doorway, observing the action, stood Dr. Egan.