Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief (12 page)

NINETEEN

The first thing Tall 'n' Skinny wanted to do was call “our” parents. Marissa was quick: “They're gone for a few days on business.”

Tall 'n' Skinny frowned. “Do you have a number where you can reach them?”

“Uh, no. They usually just call in at night.”

“Don't they have a pager?”

Marissa shook her head.

“Hmmm.”

You could tell he was going to keep asking questions until he found a way to talk to somebody, so I asked, “Would you like me to call my grandmother?”

He tugged on his mustache and nodded. “I think that would be a good idea.”

So I called Grams and gave her a rough sketch of what was going on. Then I handed Tall 'n' Skinny the phone and while he was talking to her, I discovered that Tall 'n' Skinny has a name. It's Sergeant Jacobson. I kind of uncovered the nameplate on his desk. I also found a picture of his daughter, who's probably just a little younger than I am. In the picture she's holding this snake and it looks like she's about to use it as a jump rope.

Anyhow, after Sergeant Jacobson got off the phone, he brought us sodas and then opened up this big tin of M&Ms and said, “Help yourself.” Then he made some phone calls and pretty soon he says to us, “They'll have that ice cream cart picked up shortly, and we've got a team at the Heavenly now, questioning the manager.”

After that, he starts filling out a bunch of forms. When he gets to the part about how come Marissa and I have different last names when we're sisters, well, I'm sweating it out pretty good. I kind of look down and say, “My mom ran off when I was pretty young. I'm Marissa's foster sister.” He didn't ask me any more questions about it so I guess he believed me, and I didn't feel bad about lying because it's not that far from the truth.

Then he asks to hear the story. The whole story. He even wants to hear the part he'd already heard that first night at the Heavenly Hotel. So I tell him, and when I get to the part about going on the roof of the mall and how I'd seen Oscar sitting all by himself, buffing his glasses, he says, “You were on the roof of the mall?”

Marissa looks at me like, I told you it was against the law! but I just nod and tell Sergeant Jacobson how I hadn't thought anything of Oscar buffing his glasses at the time, but that later I started thinking that it's just not something a blind man would worry about doing.

“You could see him cleaning his glasses from the roof of the mall?”

“Through binoculars, sir.”

He shakes his head and laughs. “Those binoculars again.” Then he says, “I should start carrying a pair. Of course I've never even thought to go up on the mall roof....”

Marissa kind of wiggles in her seat. “I've been up there too! It's really cool. You can see everything!”

Sergeant Jacobson tugs on his mustache a little. “Did you see all this through binoculars, too?”

I jump in and say, “Oh no, sir. I saw that before. Marissa went up with me today, and that's when I figured out where the napkins came from.”

“The napkins?”

“You know, the Double Dynamo napkins? Like the one we found at the Heavenly Hotel?”

“What napkin did you find at the Heavenly Hotel?”

Well, I'm figuring out in a hurry that Marissa didn't have time to tell him anything about napkins, and that Officer Borsch never said a word about it, either. “You know—the napkin with the writing on it? The one that matched the napkin that was left under Mrs. Graybill's door?”

He throws up his hands. “What? Wait a minute. Slow down.” He leans forward and asks, “What note?”

Now let me tell you, in my stomach there's this giggle that's just dying to get out. I slap it down and say, “Didn't Officer Borsch tell you any of this?”

“Noooo.…”

I shake my head. “I guess he really
did
think I was making it all up. I mean, he said he thought I'd forged it, but I figured maybe he was just in a bad mood.”

Sergeant Jacobson's eyes pinch closed and he leans back in his chair like all of a sudden he's got a splitting headache. “And
why
would Officer Borsch think you'd forged it? What was written on the napkin?”

“HH four twenty-three. You know—Heavenly Hotel, room four twenty-three. Gina's room?”

He nods. “All right...and why did Officer Borsch think you'd forged it?”

So I tell him about the note that was left under Mrs. Graybill's door and how Mrs. Graybill thought I had written it. Then I tell him how when I'd found the napkin rolled up on the hotel fire escape I'd given it to Officer Borsch right away to prove that the thief had left the note under Mrs. Graybill's door.

Sergeant Jacobson twists a few hairs of his mustache. “And Officer Borsch didn't believe you?”

I shake my head. “No, sir. Like I said, he accused me of writing both notes.”

He bites the inside of his cheek for a minute, then says, “Will you excuse me? I'll be right back.”

Well, he's not leaving to shake more creamer in his coffee. He's off to have a little chat with Officer Borsch. And while he's gone Marissa and I dig into those M&Ms. You wouldn't believe how many we ate. By the time Sergeant Jacobson came back we'd chomped down so many that even Mikey would've been proud.

Sergeant Jacobson has the napkins with him and he flattens them out on his desk. “Just from looking at it right now, I'd say the handwriting matches.” He flips them over. “And they're both Double Dynamos.” He looks at me. “So you noticed the napkins matched and you noticed him cleaning his glasses—was there anything else?”

“Well, yes, sir. Sort of. See, Gina had told us that she had been talking with some friend of hers out in front of Maynard's. She didn't know her friend was in town and she wound up telling her where she was staying and how she had to go to the bank to start an account because she didn't like carrying around so much money. She told me she didn't remember anyone listening to their conversation, but you don't think of Oscar as being an eavesdropper. I mean, everybody knows he's blind and almost deaf. He's always bending his ear and acting like he wants you to speak up, so that's what everyone does. And when he's around, people don't quit talking about whatever they're talking about—they just figure he can't hear them anyway.

“So I started thinking—all these burglaries are happening in the same vicinity. Maybe Oscar just cruises around watching and listening to people all day and when he finds out someone's going on vacation or going to be gone, well,
chinga-chinga-chinga
he just goes in and makes himself some quick cash. I think that's probably what happened to Gina.”

Sergeant Jacobson chews on this a minute. “But when did you know it was him?”

So I tell him about planting the money and how Oscar had scooped it up, and then Marissa says, “You know, that money was mine. Do you think I can get it back?”

Sergeant Jacobson nods, then lets out a sigh. “But I'm afraid there will be some red tape.”

“Why?”

“Because I imagine a lot of people will be putting in claims for any money we recover, and there's no way to prove whose is whose.”

I smile at him. “Marissa's money will be easy to spot.”

“Oh?”

“I marked it.”

“You
did?
”

I nod, and they both say, “Well?”

“I wrote ‘I'm the hotel thief' on both of the bills. It's tiny, but it's there.”

Sergeant Jacobson throws back his head and laughs. “Well, that's certainly another nail in the man's coffin!” Then he adds, “His name's not Oscar, by the way. It's Larry Daniels, and his probation officer from South County's been looking for him.”

That makes my eyes bug out a little. “Yeah?”

“He's not somebody I would recommend tackling without backup.” He shakes his head at me. “You've got a lot of bubbles in your soda, young lady.”

Just then his phone rings. He snatches it off the hook. “Jacobson here.” He says a lot of “Uh-huh”s and “Good”s, and pretty soon he says, “Excellent!” and gets off the phone.

He smiles at us and says, “They've got Mr. Daniels' friend from the Heavenly in custody.”

“André?”

“No, no. André's a good man, very cooperative. I'm talking about the man that Mr. Daniels visited.” Then he adds, “André knows our Mr. Daniels as Lew.”

Marissa shakes her head. “So Oscar's really
three
people?”

Sergeant Jacobson nods. “The way I piece it together, Daniels would wear the blond wig when he walked around town, a different one when he was on a job, and then the fishing hat and glasses when he was playing Oscar.”

“So who was the guy he visited at the Heavenly?”

“Apparently he's quite a lowlife himself—long history of lawbreaking and overnighters at the jail house. I don't think we'll have any problem getting information out of him, although we might not need it. They've found quite a bit of incriminating evidence in that ice cream cart.”

I lean forward. “Like...?”

“A few disguises—one was a brown wig and beard and some black gloves. There was also a stash of cash and a few items of jewelry, including a silver-plated watch.”

“Is it Gina's?”

“Sounds like it. Suns and moons on the wristband—”

“That's it!”

Marissa says, “But wait a minute, Sammy. How'd you know he'd be under that big tree?”

“Remember how you laughed at me because those bike tracks didn't go anywhere? Well, I was chasing around looking for Oscar when these bikes came whipping by me through the dirt. And after I saw
their
tracks, I knew that the tracks under the tree couldn't have been made by bikes. They were spaced too regular...too
even
. Like they'd been made by a giant tricycle or something.”

Marissa says, “Like the ice cream cart.”

“Right!”

When Sergeant Jacobson finally gets everything documented, he shakes our hands and says, “Can I give you girls a lift home?”

Well, I don't want to have to walk all the way home from East Jasmine so I say, “No, that's okay.”

He walks us to the front door, and just as we're going down the walkway, Gina comes sailing up in purple and silver scarves. “Hey,” she calls to me, “I just heard!” She plants a great big kiss on my cheek. “I can't believe you caught the guy!” She holds me out in front of her and says, “You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to do your birth chart, that's what I'm going to do. I'll even progress it for you!” Then, before I can say, No really, that's okay, she gives me a hug and runs up the station steps. “Gotta go I.D. my watch and see about my money!”

We watch her swoop into the police station and then kind of shake our heads and laugh. Finally Marissa says, “I've got to go get my bike.”

So we head to St. Mary's, and once we get her bike we sit on the curb for a long time and talk. First about Oscar and everything that had happened, then about people not being what they seem. And when Marissa says, “Yeah, but Oscar's just one guy! Most people are exactly what they seem,” I break it to her about Rockin' Rick. And when her jaw gets back into socket about
that
, I ask her whether she thinks Mrs. Graybill or Officer Borsch could have secret lives as nice people. She just laughs and says, “If Rockin' Rick looks like a dork, then
anything's
possible!”

“What about Heather Acosta?”

“Oooh…” she says. “I take it back!”

We both laugh about that, and then Marissa asks, “You want to come over and spend the night?”

I think about it a minute. “Nah, I want to get home to Grams.”

And I do, even though I know Grams is going to keep me up all night. First she'll want to hear the whole story. From the top. Then she'll want to hear it
again
. Then she'll pull out her boots and my knitting and while I'm sitting there, tangling up wool, she'll blame everything on the binoculars and make me promise never to use them again.

A promise she knows I just can't keep.

Wendelin Van Draanen
has been everything from a forklift driver to a high school teacher and is now enjoying life as a full-time writer. The first four books in the Sammy Keyes mystery series have been embraced by critics and readers alike, and
Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief
received the 1999 Edgar Allan Poe Award for best children's mystery.

Ms. Van Draanen lives with her husband and two sons in California. Her hobbies include the “three R's”: reading, running, and rock 'n' roll.

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