Sammy Keyes and the Power of Justice Jack (11 page)

Heather Acosta would have a field day.

And I’m torn between thinking the whole scene’s cool, and thinking it’s just really bizarre, when a voice behind us growls, “Since when does giving out six jackets rate news coverage?”

Well, there’s no doubt that the voice belongs to Officer Borsch. But what I
am
doubting is the number of jackets. “It was more than that, wasn’t it?”

He sucks on a tooth. “I can count to six.”

And that’s when something hits me. “Hey, he didn’t give out Hudson’s jacket. I wonder where that went.”

“Hudson got suckered into giving up a jacket?” Officer Borsch asks.

“Well, I don’t know about
suckered
. But it was a really cool jacket. Like something out of an old war movie.”

Officer Borsch mutters, “Probably kept it.” Then he adds, “And why’d he choose the station steps? Why not over at the Salvation Army or St. Mary’s Church or somewhere that makes
sense
?” But before I can tell him, Beats me, he comes up with his own answer. “He thinks he can fool people into believing he’s real law enforcement by being seen on the station steps, that’s why.”

I eye him and say, “Are you thinking about kicking him off?” because I can tell he’s itching to.

“I’m going nowhere near him while cameras are rolling. It’s lose-lose. Either I come off as the heavy, or I get sucked into lending him credibility.” He gives his tooth a good slurp. “Looks like his little sideshow’s about over anyway.”

And it might have been, except right then Justice Jack spots Officer Borsch. “Commissioner!” he bellows across the street. “Join us!”

Officer Borsch groans, “Noooo.”

Well, Officer Borsch isn’t budging or even acknowledging him, so Justice Jack calls, “Commissioner!” again, and this time everyone on that side of the street turns around to see who Justice Jack is hollering at, including Zelda Quinn and her cameraman. And I’m sorry, but I do
not want to be any part of a newscast where I’m standing by a
cop
, either.

Heather Acosta would have a field day.

And Danny Urbanski?

He’d start calling me a narc again, seeing how he accused Casey and me of being the ones who got him arrested.

Which, for the record, Casey had nothing to do with.

“Not good,” Marissa says, reading my mind.

“Sorry, Officer Borsch, but we’ve gotta go. Good luck with the Jackman.”

He snorts and grumbles, “He’s a jack
ass
, if you ask me.”

So Marissa and I hustle out of there, and as we make our escape onto Cypress Street, Marissa grins at me and says, “I kind of like that our town has its own superhero.”

I grin back. “Only in Santa Martina.”

So the good thing about running into Justice Jack was that it cooled things down between Marissa and me. Nothing had changed, really, but I felt a lot better, and I think she did, too. And since I didn’t want to heat things up again, when we got to Hudson’s, I just told her, “Be careful, okay? And call me whenever you want.”

Then I got my skateboard and headed back to the Highrise.

I was so preoccupied with Marissa and Danny and poor Billy that I didn’t think about Mrs. Wedgewood until I was sneaking down the hallway and into our apartment.

“Grams?” I whispered after I’d slipped my skateboard under the couch. “Grams?”

The bathroom door was closed, so I just tapped on it twice and said, “I’m home,” figuring she’d give me the Wedgie Woman update when she got out. Then I went to the kitchen to find something to eat, because I was starving!

There was leftover tuna salad in a small bowl in the fridge and some Triscuits in the cupboard.

Good enough for me!

So I sat at the table and shook a ton of Tabasco on the tuna and ate straight out of the bowl.

“Meow!” Dorito said, rubbing against my leg.

“Sorry!” I mewed back. “It’s spicy!” I rubbed him and whispered, “Don’t tell Grams, okay?” because Grams hates it when I’m on the loose with hot sauce.

I ate fast, too, partly because I was so hungry, and partly because I didn’t want to be scolded for eating right from
the bowl, or for “ruining” the tuna with hot sauce … or for eating it all up!

But as it turns out, I didn’t have to eat so fast because I’d practically licked the bowl clean and Grams still hadn’t come out of the bathroom.

Now, okay. When I’m doing my business, I do not like people tapping on the bathroom door, telling me I’m running late or taking a long time.

You think I don’t know that?

So I didn’t exactly want to go up and rat-a-tat-tat Grams. But I started getting the feeling that something was off. Not
wrong
, but not
right
, either.

So I finally went and tapped on the door and said, “Grams?”

No answer.

So I tried the door, and when I discovered it was unlocked, I opened it.

No Grams.

And I’m standing there feeling pretty stupid when I hear a little thump come through the wall that our bathroom shares with Mrs. Wedgewood’s bathroom. Then there’s another thump.

And another.

It’s a strange kind of thumping, too. A
small
sound. Like someone’s knocking quietly.

And r-e-a-l-l-y slowly.

Now, if Mrs. Wedgewood had been a normal neighbor, I would have just thought, Hey! She’s back! But the Mighty Wedge is not a normal neighbor. And the Mighty Wedge doesn’t make small sounds. From falling off the toilet, to
pounding on the wall for help, to lumbering across the floor with her walker, to
breathing
, everything Mrs. Wedgewood does is seismic.

Especially when she’s in the bathroom.

And that’s why a little lightbulb finally pops on over my head. “Holy smokes!”

I hurry to the front door and check the hallway to make sure the coast is clear, then I slip out of our apartment and tiptoe down to Mrs. Wedgewood’s.

I try the knob, and when it turns, I look over both shoulders quick, then whoosh inside the Wedge’s apartment, lock the door behind me, and beeline over to the bathroom.

And sure enough, there’s my grandmother, nosing through the Wedge’s drawers.

I just stand in the doorway with my hand on my hip, watching her, waiting for her to notice me. And after checking out the medicine cabinet, she finally does.

“Samantha!” she gasps, grabbing her heart.

I shake my head. “Unbelievable.”

“I was just looking for clues as to her whereabouts!”

“In her bathroom?”

“I’ve heard you’re supposed to look in the most unlikely spots! That if you can think of it in ten minutes, it won’t be there. I thought maybe she—”

“Shhh!” I poke a finger in the air because something just went
click
.

“What?” Grams asks, but then we hear a woman’s voice say, “Quick! Get in!”

I swoop inside the bathroom and close the door enough
so we can both hide behind it, but leave it open enough so I can still see through the crack between the hinges and the doorframe. And there, across the living room, go Screwdriver Sally and Blue—the same two old biddies who’d been trying to break into the apartment earlier.

Screwdriver Sally pulls two empty pillowcases from under her sweater. “Here,” she says, handing one to Blue. “Anything that looks like we could pawn it.”

Blue nods. “I’ll start in the bedroom.”

“You’re going for the jewelry!” Screwdriver Sally says, like she’s accusing her of something.

“So? We’re splitting everything. Find what you can out here.”

But Screwdriver Sally shakes her head. “I’m coming with you.”

“What if Rita shows up? Someone needs to stay out here on watch!”

“Why would Rita show up?”

“She has a key!”

“She told Vinnie she doesn’t!”

“Well, everyone still
thinks
she does, and that’s the whole point! No one will suspect us—they’ll think it was her!”

But Screwdriver Sally isn’t about to let a little thing like getting busted stop her from keeping an eye on her partner in crime. She follows Blue into the bedroom, going, “Well, I’m coming with you.”

The instant they’ve left the room, I scoot Grams along so I can get out from behind the door, then I grab her hand and put my finger in front of my lips. “We’ve got to move
fast
,” I whisper. I pull her out of the bathroom,
across the kitchen, and through the front door. Then I yank her back inside our apartment, flip around quick, and lock our door. “Good grief, Grams, what were you
thinking
?” She’s shaking like mad, so I grab her hand again and drag her into the kitchen. “You have to call Mr. Garnucci. Now.”

“Why?”

“Tell him you hear noises next door. Tell him you think Mrs. Wedgewood’s apartment is being ransacked.”

She just stands there, so I snatch the phone off the hook, dial, and stick the receiver up to her ear. “Yes, Vince?” she says when he answers. “This is Rita. I’m terribly frightened. It sounds like Rose’s apartment is being ransacked! Yes … yes, I’m sure! Can you please hurry? Yes … yes … I’ll stay right here.”

“Perfect,” I tell her when she hangs up the phone.

“How can you be so calm?” she asks. “We almost got caught!” Then she says, “I can’t believe they walked right inside someone else’s apartment! The nerve!”

I blink at her. “Hello? Like you didn’t do the same thing?”

“I had a key!”

“They did, too! I locked the door after I came in!”

“You did?”

“Yes!”

“How did
they
get a key?”

“I have no idea!” I fly around grabbing my backpack and checking for anything that might give me away, then head for her bedroom. “I’d better hide.”

Dorito’s already in the closet when I duck inside it.
And I just sit there, in the dark, petting my cat for what seems like forever, until finally Grams peeks in and says, “He’s here!”

“It’s about time,” I grumble.

After a few minutes she pops back and says, “I’m going over!” Then after that she comes hurrying back every now and then to give me an update. “He caught them red-handed!” “The pillowcases were stuffed full!” “They’d disconnected her DVD player!” “They emptied her freezer! Her
freezer
.”

She was gone for a long time after that, and when she finally came back, she opened the door wide and said, “Everyone’s gone.”

“Everyone?”

“Well, I tipped off Gwenith and she took care that the rest of the building heard.” She hrmphs. “And they thought they could frame me!”

My legs are super-stiff, so I kind of groan as I stand up and say, “They weren’t going to frame you, Grams. They were just going to let everyone else
assume
it was you.”

She hrmphs again. “Same thing.”

I shake my head. “I thought you didn’t
care
what happened to Mrs. Wedgewood. Why would you risk going over there?”

“I didn’t think I was risking anything! How was I to know that Fran and Sally would trick Vince out of a key?”

“They tricked him? How’s that?”

“I’m not sure, but that’s what he was yelling at them. I’ve never seen him so mad! I hope he gives those two the boot!”

“But not you, right?”

“I wasn’t cleaning out Rose’s apartment! I didn’t go in there with pillowcases!” She rolls her eyes. “You should have seen those two! They looked ridiculous!”

All of a sudden I’m picturing them, blue-haired and beak-nosed, hunched over with their pillow sacks flung over their shoulders, wearing masks and stretchy suits—one yellow and one red—with thick black rubbery old-lady shoes on their feet and black gloves on their hands.

They have big screwdrivers.

In holsters.

And then Justice Jack appears in between them with his big Hefty sack flung over his shoulder and—

“Samantha?”

“Huh?”

“Did you hear a word I just said?”

“What’s that?”

“I was telling you about this.”

She’s holding a sheet of lined paper that had obviously been folded up quick because the creases are pretty crooked. It had also been ripped out of a spiral notebook, because there are little frayed ends poking out everywhere.

“What is it?”

She opens it better and hands it over. “I don’t know, but there were pages and pages and pages like this. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.”

I study the paper, and she’s right—it is strange. It’s like lab notes with rows and columns of numbers, and lots and lots of little fraction exponents. Which would seem to make it some kind of scientific notes, but (a) Mrs. Wedgewood
doesn’t seem like the scientific kind at
all
, and (b) there are also words. Words that have nothing to do with any kind of lab or science. Words like
Tripteaser
and
Over-n-Out
and
Dusk Before Dawn
and
Inevitable
and
Just Kidding
and
Sexy Librarian
.

I look at Grams. “
Sexy Librarian?
What
is
this?”

“Exactly.” She shakes her head. “It seems that there’s a whole side to Rose we know nothing about.”

I snort, “Hard to believe,” because after the number of times Grams and I have hoisted her back onto her toilet, after finding her upside down and backward and bare-bottom-up, I was sure we’d seen
all
sides of her.

But this
was
strange.

“Did you notice the numbers only go from one to six?” I ask her.

She looks over my shoulder and points to a bunch of big numbers in the margin. “What about this over here?”

“Yeah, I don’t know.”

The phone rings, and since we’re standing right by it, we both jump. But when Grams picks it up and says hello, she’s steady as can be. “Oh yes,” she says, winking at me. “Isn’t it scandalous? … Unbelievable.… You’re right—I can’t
imagine
doing something like that!”

I shake my head and roll my eyes.

My own grandmother.

Sneaky, sneaky, sneaky.

That night I had a dream that old biddies were rappelling down the side of the Highrise on fat ropes, wearing stretchy suits and masks and
capes
. They had empty pillowcases clamped between their teeth, and came to a stop outside our window and started trying to break in with a screwdriver and credit card.