The Great Bike Rescue (8 page)

“I'm still trying to figure out that part myself,” I answered truthfully. I thought I knew at the time, but now I wasn't so sure.

Dad took his coffee upstairs. I took my dishes to the sink. That's when I realized the message light on the phone was blinking. I pushed the button. A girl's voice came over the speaker.

“Levi. Meet me tomorrow. Ten o'clock at the corner store. Be there.”

You guessed it. Emily Grimshaw.

Chapter Eleven

Sometimes you don't know what you're going to do until you do it.

I'd planned on ignoring Emily. It was one thing for me to track her down and surprise her with questions. It was another thing entirely to show up because of a message that sounded like a royal decree. But at ten o'clock the next morning, I found myself walking past the corner store. Emily fell into step beside me.

“Okay,” she said. “I know where the bikes are being stashed.”

There was a determined energy about her today. It was as if something had been decided and, one way or another,
things
were going to happen. If I was going to be part of it, I wanted details.

“Where?” I asked.

“I can't just tell you. I have to show you,” said Emily. “Otherwise you won't understand.”

Alarm bells went off in my head. I didn't trust Emily Grimshaw.

“Are some friends of yours waiting there to beat me up?” I asked.

“I don't have any friends…not even when they're the same age as me and live right next door,” said Emily.

That one I could ignore for now.

“Are you one of the people stealing bikes?”

“I don't steal,” she said.

That one I couldn't ignore. I turned and walked in the opposite direction. Two steps and she'd caught up with me.

“Borrowing is different from stealing,” she said.

I walked faster.

“When you're little, you don't always know the difference,” she said, keeping pace.

Ha! When you're six you know the difference. I didn't say it. I kept walking.

“Okay, in grade one I was kind of a weird little kid,” she said. “Get over it. Do you want to know where the bikes are being stashed or don't you?”

I stopped. I looked at her. I opened my mouth to say something, realized I'd just come as close to hearing an admission of guilt from Emily Grimshaw as I was ever likely to hear and closed it again.

“Look, let me make this easy for you,” she said.

With a flick of her fingers, as slick as any thief, she grabbed my cap from my head and raced away.

Emily Grimshaw drives me crazy!

I took off after her. Across Battersby and through a parking lot. Along the side street. Through a drive-through. Across a playing field. Down three more blocks. We were headed in the general direction of the bike shop. Were those guys involved after all? I didn't want those guys to be involved!

Nope, we turned again. The houses were getting older. The neighborhood had a harder edge. Past a school, down three more blocks, across a park, and abruptly Emily ducked into an alley. I found her waiting beside an overgrown hedge, my cap held out before her. I grabbed it.

We looked at each other. Something had shifted. For a heartbeat, Emily Grimshaw was unsure of herself. Not scared, but a tiny bit worried. She didn't know, not for sure, what I was going to do next.

The decision was mine. Stay or go. She knew it. And I knew it.

Back when I was six, I would have grabbed my stuff, gone back into my house and sulked. But I wasn't six anymore.

“I didn't run all this way for the exercise,” I said. “Or for my hat.”

Emily nodded. She made a little motion with her hand.

“The garage behind the purple house,” she said. “But wait until I'm at the fence. There's a dog.”

That's all I needed. An unfamiliar part of town. A back alley. And a mean dog.

“He's not mean,” said Emily, reading my mind. “He's a nice dog, but he's noisy. Once I start feeding him, he'll be okay. But be really quiet. And be careful. Don't do anything stupid.”

From a rolled bulge in her T-shirt, she produced a crumpled fast-food wrapper with a half-eaten breakfast bagel and two sausages. The perfect sisters hadn't quite got it right.

“The reason you raid the garbage bins is for the dog!” I said.

“Don't worry,” said Emily quickly. “It's from this morning, and it was right on top of the bin. I don't give him anything rotten that might make him sick.”

She headed for the fence corner farthest from the garage. Either the dog knew her footsteps or he smelled what she was holding. He didn't bark. His nose appeared at one of the gaps.

Emily broke off a piece of bagel. It disappeared beneath the nose. She looked back at me and nodded.

Quietly, I walked down the alley. The garage was old, with gaps around the back door. I pressed my face against the wood. It was dark inside, but the smaller side door into the yard was open and letting in sunlight. My eyes slowly adjusted until I could see.

Handlebars. Wheels. Frames. My heart began to thump like crazy. There weren't just a couple of bikes inside. There were lots of bikes—all shapes and sizes and makes. I couldn't believe how many bikes there were!

And then I really couldn't believe it. In the rectangle of light splashing in from the side door, I saw the seat of Riley's bike. I squinted to see the rest of the frame. Yes—Riley's bike! It was leaning against other bikes, but it wasn't buried by them.

Now my heart was really pounding. I didn't see my own bike, but I didn't care. Riley was my friend. I had to get his bike!

I looked for a handle on the garage door. It was snapped off. The garage must only open from the inside. I'd be crazy to open the garage door anyway.

But the side door was already open. It was inside the yard, but it was right next to the back gate. It would only take a few seconds.

The house was quiet. The dog was still eating. No one else was in the alley. I might never get another chance.

I took three soundless steps and was at the gate. I reached carefully over the top, quietly lifted the latch and slowly began to push.

Bark bark bark bark bark!

An explosion of teeth, hair and saliva rocketed across the yard and slammed into the gate. I fell backward onto the rocks of the alley. Emily came flying around the corner and crashed into me. On hands and knees, she dragged me to cover beneath the hedge.

“Are you nuts!” she hissed.

“Ho…” was all I could manage. The wind was still knocked right out of me.

Bark bark bark bark!

The back door of the house opened. Someone stepped out. We heard a sharp whistle. Once. Twice.

The dog stopped barking, but it was still there on the other side of the fence. I could smell its saliva. Breakfast bagel. Herb and garlic.

Why was I noticing that now? I had bigger things to worry about. Whoever had come out of the house was still standing on the back step. Through the hedge and the fence I could just make out a craggy face that didn't look at all friendly.

Emily and I held our breath. We seemed to wait forever. At long last the man said a single word to the dog. The dog gave a snuffle, trotted back toward the middle of the yard and lay down. The back door closed. Emily and I fled.

At the far side of the school, I finally stopped to pick the gravel out of my hands.

“You didn't tell me the dog was vicious!” I said.

“He's not. He just doesn't know you,” said Emily. “And I told you not to do anything stupid. Even you should know not to mess around with a bunch of serious criminals.”

“A
bunch
of criminals?” I couldn't believe what she was saying. “I thought this was about one guy and some stolen bikes!”

“It
is
about bikes,” said Emily. “But he's got all kinds of people working for him. Who knows what else they get up to?”

“And you were the one who brought me there in the first place!” I said.

“I told you to be careful. I thought you'd understand. But the dog's okay. You saw it. It's a
nice
dog,” said Emily. “And they've got Riley's bike for sure, right? You saw his bike?”

“I saw it,” I said.

“Okay, there's something else you need to know,” said Emily. “There's a black van. It comes by every couple of weeks and hauls the bikes away. Here's the license number. It might help.”

She pushed a scrap of paper into my hand. My mind was going a mile a minute.

“I've got to get Dad,” I said. “We need to tell the police.”

“I know,” she said. “Just two more things. They're both important—really important.”

“What?” I said.

“Make sure you tell them it's a nice, friendly dog.”

“Okay,” I said. “The dog is friendly. Gentle. Feed it a bagel and sausages, and it's the best dog in the whole world. What's the other thing?”

“Leave me out of it.”

Chapter Twelve

If you go on the Internet, you'll find all sorts of stories about how police ignore bike theft and how it takes them forever to do anything. That's not what happened this time.

Maybe the police really did consider it a crime wave. Maybe they were already aware of the purple house and had been investigating it. Maybe Emily's information about the van and the police knowing that Riley's bike was in the garage and that he had proof of ownership were the last tiny bits of real evidence they needed. Or maybe we just lucked out.

But all in all, things happened pretty quickly. Mind you, the two days we did have to wait practically killed Riley.

“I should have been there. Super Riley to the rescue! Why didn't you take me with you?” he asked.

“I would have taken you if I'd known what was going to happen,” I said. “And I tried to get your bike. I really did.”

“But what about Emily? What if the crooks in the purple house find out that she's the one who turned them in? She lives right next door!” said Riley.

Dad had helped me with that part. He seemed to think “little Emily Grimshaw” needed protecting as much as Emily herself did. Not even the police knew about Emily.

“And what if they move the bikes out before the police move in? Emily says that's what they do. She's watched them do it!” said Riley.

Emily's bedroom was on the second floor, looking over the back alley. As for not moving the bikes out, that was something I couldn't answer. The only thing I knew for sure was that neither Riley nor I was going to get anywhere near the purple house to find out what was happening. The police had warned Dad to keep us away. Dad, Riley's parents and his older brother were watching us like hawks.

Then, late on Saturday afternoon, my doorbell started ringing like crazy. It was Riley. He hurried through the door and, as usual these days, brought The Flame right inside with him.

“There was a flash on the early news. Stolen bikes. Full report at six,” he said. “The Flame and I flew like the wind so we could all watch together. Turn on the TV. Quick.”

I called up to Dad and switched on the TV.

“
A surprising result today when city police executed
a search warrant at a house on Fifty-Eighth Street.
”

“That's the house!” I said.

“
Several people were taken into custody. Two
of them were already known to police as part of an
ongoing investigation.
”

One of them was the man with the craggy face who had come out on the back porch. The other was someone Riley and I both recognized.

“The guy from the gas station!” said Riley.

Yup, it was AJ, the one person I'd actually trusted. And this time I really did have one of those flash-like memory sequences that the TV cameras show. AJ directing my attention out the window to the alley. And when I turned back, the door of the storeroom now pulled tightly shut. For his part, Riley simply started shouting at the TV set.