Madhattan Mystery (14 page)

Lexi's nose crinkled. “Subway?”

“Yeah, it's right on Broadway and—” Kim Ling gasped with realization and her slapping flip-flops slowed down. “Don't tell me you've never been? You must! It's the quintessential New York experience!”

“Are you kidding? If my aunt ever finds out we took a subway on our own, she'll tell my dad and he'll hang us by our thumbs from the top of the Empire State Building.”

“Oh, they don't allow that.”

Lexi didn't think that was funny. She was already up to lie number gazillion-and-one with Aunt Roz. And what about Kevin? It was bad enough making him go along with all the lies and rule-breaking, let alone forcing him into another dark tunnel. No, she'd use what was left of her emergency twenty dollars for a cab, if necessary, but definitely no subways.
No way. That's where I draw the line
. So how they all wound up, a few minutes later, waiting and wilting on the humid subway platform under Seventy-Second Street was anybody's guess.

“Okay, listen up,” Kim Ling said in her drill sergeant voice. “You have to watch out for jerks on the subway train. Not the weirdos—well, them, too—but I mean the sudden jerks when the train stops and starts. All the clueless tourists go flying if they're not hanging on. It's hilarious.”

“I'm sure,” Lexi said. Yeah, she had let Kim Ling get
her way, as usual, but as it turned out, Kevin seemed happy as a clam—make that a baked clam, considering the sweltering heat. He was obviously putting on a brave front, but whatever. Lexi kept a firm grasp on him anyway, so he wouldn't accidentally roll onto the tracks with those Heelys he was wearing. After all, it was Friday the thirteenth, the unluckiest day of the year.

Lexi dug past the rabbit's foot, laminated four-leaf clover, and nine lucky pennies she had stuffed into the pocket of her cargo shorts earlier for maximum protection against bad luck, and pulled out the crumpled article from the
Post
. She waited for Kevin to pop in his iPod earbuds, then slapped it over to Kim Ling. “Here, read. The FBI thinks the jewel heist was an
inside
job.”

“That's yesterday's news, my friend,” Kim Ling said, and zipped through the entire article in the time it would have taken Lexi to read the first paragraph. “Hmm, the
Post
, no wonder. Yeah, according to CNN, the person of interest, Benjamin Deets, used to be director of security at the Met, but they gave him the ax because of, quote-unquote, ‘suspicious behavior.' Translation: the slime bucket was caught on a security cam ripping off pricey stuff from the gift shop. The Met finally came clean this morning.”

“And he'd worked in security at Grand Central before that too,” Kevin said, tearing out his earbuds. “Remember? When we saw the FBI snooping around the lost and found?”

“Oh, that's right!” Kim Ling said.

“And in case you didn't know, they just searched his
apartment, his storage unit, his gym locker,
and
his mother's house in”—Kevin whipped out his cell phone and read from the screen—“B-A-Y-O-N—”

“N-E,” Kim Ling finished. “Bayonne, that's in Jersey.”

“And came up empty—meaning no jewels, no nothing. Total goose egg.”

“Huh.” Kim Ling scratched her neck. “He probably knew all the obvious places would be searched immediately, so it makes sense that he'd want to hide the booty somewhere really obscure.”

“Like an abandoned train station.”

“Exactly. Wait, how're you getting reception down here?”

“I'm not. My friend Billy texted me, like, five minutes ago, from space camp. He's really into this whole crime-solving thing too.”

“What?” Lexi said. That was news to her. “Since when?”

“Since he blew chunks in the Multi-Axis Tumbling Trainer. It really grossed him out. He says he'd rather be solving a real live crime, like us, instead.”

“Kevin, you shouldn't have blabbed!” Lexi took in a deep breath and reminded herself to lower her voice. “Why're you being so sneaky about everything all of a sudden—pretending to listening to music and eavesdropping on us just now?”

“You should talk. You're, like, the queen of eavesdropping.” Kevin jammed his earbuds back into his ears. “Isn't that what started this whole thing?”

“The kid has a point,” Kim Ling said to Lexi with a
crooked shrug. “Anyway, back to Deets. His life apparently fell apart after the Met canned him, and he ended up taking a job as a groundskeeper in Central Park—before vanishing off the face of the earth, that is.” She slid her phone out of her back pocket and jabbed at it until a picture came up. “So?” she said, holding it in front of Lexi. “Is he one of the dudes you saw in the Whispering Gallery?”

Lexi focused in on the black-and-white photo of Benjamin Deets, a man with dark, beady eyes and big teeth. “No. Maybe. I dunno.” That was when the subway train came roaring into the station like a giant, angry bullet and she found herself clamping down on Kevin's shoulders. “It was kind of shadowy in that Whispering Gallery, Kim, and one of the guys had his head turned most of the time. Plus, he was wearing a Yankees cap.”

“What?” Kim Ling yelled over the noise, squinting from the gust of wind.

“I said I'm not sure!”

The subway train screeched to a stop and the doors barely rattled open before a clump of people spilled out. Kim Ling led Kevin and Lexi into the far end of the train car, where they grabbed onto a metal pole hand-over-sweaty-hand.
Slam, whoosh
, and the train took off with the threesome jostling, jerking, and staring out the grimy windows. The subway station smeared into black. Tiny lights zoomed by at dizzying speed like some life-size video game.

“Is he British?” Lexi asked Kim Ling. “This Benjamin Deets?”

“No idea. Oh, that's right, one of the guys you saw was a Brit, wasn't he?”

“Definitely. I'm guessing. Maybe not.”

“She replied with her usual unmitigated conviction,” Kim Ling finished.

Lexi had no idea what half those words meant, but a smirk seemed to be the right response. She couldn't concentrate on the jewel heist anyway, wondering instead how the tunnel could possibly hold up under the weight of the enormous city. And God only knew what her brother must have been thinking under that fake grin of his. “This is fun, right, Kev?” she asked him.

He was nodding along to a song on his iPod but his eyes were spinning. He was probably freaking out from the
EMERGENCY EVACUATION INSTRUCTIONS
posted on the door.

“Yeah, there're some seats over there, Kim. We're gonna go sit.”

She waited for the train to make its first stop and rolled Kevin across the car. He grabbed on to every pole they passed like a jungle monkey until they plopped down next to a toddler in a pointy pink birthday hat, who looked relatively unthreatening. Kim Ling wedged in next to them and the entire row of people had to scoot over.

“Sorry,” Lexi said to the little girl's mother. She had to be the mother—they both had the same auburn hair—just like Lexi and her mom once upon a time. Her stomach was morphing into a bag of rocks again from missing her mom when she noticed Kevin's telescope aimed right at
the same mother-daughter. “Stop acting like a two-year-old,” she said, pushing it down, then quickly turned to the toddler. “No offense.”

The doors snapped shut and the train sped off, sending a plump lady with a Macy's shopping bag toppling onto an old man's lap. “See what I mean about clueless tourists?” Kim Ling said, cracking up.

“Happy birthday,” Lexi said to the fidgety little girl, purposely ignoring Kim Ling. “How old are you today?”

“Oh, she's actually three, but it's not her birthday,” the mom answered. “She's just pretending. Ariel's preschool teacher says we mustn't stifle her creativity. She's in the gifted program.”

And the similarities between this kid and Lexi stopped right there.

“See, you can never take things at face value,” Kim Ling said to Lexi. “Every journalist worth her salt knows that. I was digging up some dirt on Cleopatra last night—everyone always assumes she was this ravishing beauty, right? Wrong! Turns out some British academics found an old coin depicting her with this enormous schnoz and a neck like a linebacker. Never assume. Oh, and wanna know something really disgusting I found out?”

“Yeah,” Kevin said, plucking out his earbuds.

“She ended up marrying her younger brother.”

“No way!” Kevin shrieked.

“And how's this supposed to help us find the jewels again?” Lexi asked.

“It's not. I just thought I'd work it into my report for a little color. C'mon, we have to switch trains!”

In what seemed like a New York minute, they grabbed their things, scrambled out the doors through a tangle of commuters, and found themselves sticking to the seats of yet another subway train, the shuttle bound for Grand Central. This one was packed and felt like an oven.

“It has to be around a hundred degrees in here,” Lexi said as the doors shut out the sound of a wailing saxophone.

“We got a clunker with no AC,” Kim Ling told her. “Tough it out, Dora, it's just one stop. You could de-wig, you know.”

Not an option. Not when we're heading into the danger zone
. The smash of people lurched to one side when the train took off and Lexi almost lost her bag of food. She secured it onto her lap with one hand, slipped her NYC guidebook from her backpack pouch with the other, and began fanning herself with it.

“Oh, I almost forgot—this is huge!” Kim Ling gushed. “Fox News announced this morning that there's even more reward money up for grabs.”

“Right,” Kevin said. “The Mets are kicking in now, too.”

“Not the Mets—that's the baseball team—but the Met, as in Museum of Art. It's up to, like, a quarter mil in U.S. dollars! Just think, red, and it's got your name all over it.”

“Don't call me ‘red.'” Lexi sat back, still fanning herself with a steady rhythm. She had a crazy thought.
Two hundred and fifty thousand big ones would definitely be enough to
support our family for a long time—and, heck, maybe even buy a yacht. Dad could take his time getting back on his feet again—plus, he wouldn't need Clare anymore. Quick annulment. Everyone lives happily ever after on the
S.S. Alexandra—
well, except for Clare, but that's just a plus
.

“D'you guys ever notice how those news anchors sound all sad when they're reporting a tragedy,” Kim Ling said out of the blue, “and then instantly turn happy for a fluff piece? ‘The nation mourned the loss of one of its heroes today when blahty-blahty-blah succumbed to a disgustingly disfiguring disease,'” she said, all serious. “‘And on a lighter note,'” she chirped, “‘Zippy the Penguin at the Bronx Zoo just had chicks!'”

Kevin started snorting and puffing.

“C'mon, that was funny!” He gave Lexi a sharp nudge and her guidebook flew out of her hands and landed on the sandal of the turbaned man in front of her.

Lexi snatched it up. “Sorry,” she mumbled, and focused straight ahead on the man's shirt buttons until her embarrassment faded. A little. When she looked down at the guidebook, she noticed something strange: messy blue ink scrawled all over the back cover. Her first thought was that Kevin had gotten a hold of it. But on closer examination, she realized it was her own handwriting. “Omigod!”

“What?” Kim Ling asked.

“More clues.”

“Where?” Kevin asked.

“Here!” Lexi held up the book and glared at it as if it
possessed magical powers. “I'd jotted them down in the Whispering Gallery, bits and pieces I heard from the men in black. I must've been so freaked, I'd totally blocked it out!”

“Are you kidding me?” Kim Ling said. “Hold still, I can't read it with your hand all shaky.” And she grabbed the guidebook from Lexi and rotated it slowly, making out the words. “
Shoot. Needle
. What is that? It's smudged.
Oval disk
?
Pack
?”

“
Park
,” Lexi said, swallowing hard. “Shoot, needle, oval disk, park. What the heck does that mean?”

“You tell me!”

“I wish I knew.” She hugged the book to her chest, puzzling over the new clues so intensely, her brain ached. “It could all be meaningless.”

Three heads with six wondering eyes slowly came together. And then Kim Ling said what they all were thinking.

“Or it could completely change everything.”

By the time the train arrived at the Grand Central stop, Kim Ling and Kevin had concluded that
shoot
and
needle
were no-brainers. They most likely had something to do with guns and drugs. Lexi agreed, but decided that none of the clues should be tossed aside completely just yet—in case they had it wrong. One thing she knew for sure: she didn't want Kevin tagging along on the next leg of their jewel hunt. It was way too dangerous. He should spend the day at City Camp. Like it or not.

“On my own?”

“Look, one of us has to represent,” Kim Ling told him, “or Mr. Glick and his minions might start calling to check up on us, asking questions. Think of it as a solo undercover operation. You'll get to use all of your prepubescent wiles to keep the bloodhounds at bay.”

“My
what
?”

“Meaning, if anybody asks where we are, make
something up,” Lexi translated. She was getting good at interpreting Kim Lingese. “Just fudge it. C'mon, Kev, we're counting on you.”

“Big time,” Kim Ling added.

Kevin reluctantly agreed, so the girls quickly dropped him off at the YMCA, where the green group was picking teams for Red Rover and the blue group was getting ready to leave on some field trip. According to Kim Ling, Glick was always such a complete mess on split-group days like this that he never got around to taking attendance until the very last minute, and Kevin could easily slip in under the radar.