Kazu Jones and the Denver Dognappers Page 4

  Genki was crazy for squirrels, so Mom could only roll the windows down halfway. “Ew,” she said, watching him through the rearview. “I forget how slobbery he gets on car rides.”

  It had been months since Mom had driven me, so I had to remind her which houses got the newspaper. She would pull up in front of each, and I would run through front lawns, tossing papers onto doorsteps. People liked it when they could reach the paper without stepping outside; I think that’s why I got such good tips at Christmas.

  I tried to act natural as we rounded the corner of Morningside onto Colonial Avenue, passing Eleanor Fitzman’s house on the corner. Mom rolled to a stop in front of March’s house, which glowed white in the moonlight even though I knew it was really yellow.

  I tossed a paper at March’s porch and accidentally hit the door. In the quiet morning, the paper banged against their screen like a baseball. I half-expected March’s bedroom light to turn on, but the house remained dark and silent.

  Mom pulled up to the creepy house at the end of the street where I thought I had seen someone peer at us through the blinds yesterday morning. I stood in the middle of the walkway, ready to toss a paper to the porch without getting too close. But then I noticed a bag hung over the door handle, and I knew I’d have to grab it.

  The first Monday each September, Mom printed off a note that I stuffed in every newspaper, thanking customers for leaving their porch lights on and recycling newspaper bags. We only used the bags when it rained or snowed, but they were expensive, and I paid for them out of my newspaper money. So every now and then someone hung a bag full of recycled newspaper bags from their door handle, and I took them home.

  I tiptoed toward the door. If there’s one thing I’d learned from my paper route, it was the older the customer, the earlier they woke up in the morning. This guy was a geezer and might open the door as I grabbed the bag, like the chain saw dude at a spook alley. My fingers brushed the doorknob as Mom rolled down the window. “Kazuko,” she barked. “Hurry.”

  I jumped—squeaking a bit—then grabbed the bag and ran back to the car.

  “My, aren’t we jumpy,” she said as I climbed into the front seat.

  “You scared me, Mom. Don’t do that.”

  She smiled and then changed her mind. Barkley. I knew that’s what she was thinking as the smile faded from her face.

  While Mom made breakfast I sorted the newspaper bags in the garage. Genki dragged the ratty garage blanket from behind Dad’s tool cabinet and began kneading it into a nest.

  There were two sizes of newspaper bags: yellow for the fat Sunday papers, and orange for the dailies. Geezer had stuffed probably a year’s worth of newspaper bags into a Walmart sack. Two hampers sat in the corner of our garage packed with recycled newspaper bags, and as I pulled the bags out, one by one, I placed them in their designated baskets.

  Genki stretched and tugged at the blanket to get his nest just right.

  “We’re not going to be here very long,” I told him. He’d get comfortable about the same time I was ready to go back inside. Without looking at me, Genki pawed at the fabric, turning a slow circle around his shabby mound.

  I separated the recycled bags into the two bins. Some people twisted each bag into a knot, thinking somehow that might help me. Those were the worst because they took longer to untangle. Others smoothed each bag out and then stacked them on top of one another so they looked like the sleeves newspaper bags came in. While these people had far too much time on their hands, they were my favorite because that made reusing the bags easier. Others stuffed them into a sack without any pattern or purpose. Geezer was that type of person, which was better than the knotters, but not quite as good as the smoothers.

  Genki, satisfied with his blanket nest, circled it once more before plopping down.

  I pulled out a fistful of bags as Mom opened the garage door from the kitchen. “Breakfast is ready.”

  “Just a minute.”

  “This morning I made your favorite.” The smell of bacon wafted by, and she waved me in. Genki lifted his nose in the air, catching the smell, and then hopped up and trotted into the house.

  “Traitor,” I grumbled.

  I wished parents realized that being extra nice made kids nervous. Mom and Dad worried about missing Barkley, and worried that I worried about missing Barkley. And believe me, I worried. But making bacon and Belgian waffles for breakfast made me feel worse about it all, like when Mom made a cake after my gerbil, Snickers, died. It felt like celebrating bad fortune, and that only seemed to invite more of it.

  I dropped the handful of yellow bags into the hamper, reaching in to pull out a stray orange bag. In the bottom was a piece of paper—it looked like a receipt. I fished my hand into the bottom of the bag and pulled it out. It was a receipt, folded in half. I opened it.

  “Kazu!” Mom had opened the garage door wide, and Genki stood behind her. I realized I had scrunched the receipt in a fist behind my back. “You still have to get dressed after you eat. Come inside.” She slammed the door behind her.

  I opened my hand. In the center of my palm lay the now-crumpled piece of paper. I smoothed it out again, the print facing me, and saw that Geezer had purchased just one thing: dog food. Fifteen bags of it.

  And he didn’t even have a dog.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I sat down on the bus next to March and handed him my route list and map while pulling the receipt from the Sleuth Chronicle.

  “What’s going on?” He closed the comic book he had been reading.

  “This.” I took back the papers, handed him the receipt, and pointed to the print beneath the King Soopers logo. “I found it inside a recycled newspaper bag this morning.” My hands still shook.

  Our bus driver followed the same figure-eight loop Mom and I had this morning, only backward. The bus driver picked up March at the top of the loop before backtracking down Morningside and then up Summer Glen. As we passed Geezer’s house on Colonial, I pointed. “The recycled newspaper bag came from that house.”

  He studied the house, on his side of bus, and exhaled. “So?”

  “So? That house doesn’t even have a dog. We need to figure out who lives there.”

  I studied the map Dad had made when I first started the route. It was a perfect miniature of our neighborhood, tucked into the corner where Lakeview Park met Federal Boulevard. The streets in our area created a grid surrounding the park with houses that had once been some of the first and fanciest in town. Now most of the houses looked run-down and had a lot of old people living in them. March’s house and my house were two of the few in our area with kids.

  “March?”

  He stared at the receipt. “This doesn’t mean anything. Maybe he donated all that food to the animal shelter.”

  “Really? What kind of crazy person does that?” I went back to studying my map.

  “I told you, Kazu,” March said. “You’ve got to stop being so nosy about the dognappings.”

  We hadn’t talked about the case since I detected Mr. Mapples’s burial two days ago. A lot had happened since then. A lot that I hadn’t told March.

  I sat up straight and looked ahead, blowing out a long breath. “I have to tell you something, and you can’t tell anyone else.”

  March nodded.

  “You know how I always let Barkley off her leash on the shady path?”

  March nodded again.

  “She ran away the last time I walked her. And while I was looking for her, I almost got run over by a dognapping van.”

  March’s eyebrows nearly touched. “Barkley’s gone?”

  “Yes,” I said, looking back at my map. “And it’s my fault.”

  “Did you tell your mom?”

  “That she was dognapped after I let her off her leash?” I turned to him. “Are you kidding?”

  “If you saw the dognapper, you have to tell her.”

  “I don’t have enough evidence to tell anyone anything yet. And do you remember how much trouble I�
�m in for reporting an old lady who was burying her pug? I’m already banned from calling the police unless someone is bleeding and/or not breathing.”

  March tapped his foot as I went back to studying the map. I said, “Can you imagine what my parents would say if I told them I think Mr. Geezer is the Denver Dognapper?”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” March pushed the receipt back at me, and I slid it back into the Sleuth Chronicle. “You don’t know that he’s the person responsible for all those missing dogs.”

  “Exactly! That’s why we have to do some detective work.” My finger found March’s house on the map and moved down five tiny squares to Geezer’s house: 2736 Colonial. I flipped the sheet over to find the address on my route list.

  “That’s Mr. Crowley’s house,” March said as my finger found the listing: James Crowley. “My parents send us over every year with a plate of Christmas cookies. He’s old and creepy, but he’s not a criminal.”

  “How do you know that?”

  The bus stopped in front of Lincoln, and all the kids began shuffling down the aisle. I opened the Sleuth Chronicle to my Suspects page and wrote James Crowley beneath crossed-out Mrs. Fitzman.

  “His wife died two years ago, of cancer or something. He’s probably sadder than he is creepy. He keeps to himself—we only see him a couple times a year. My mom calls him a hobbit, but I think she really means hermit.”

  “And he loves dogs?”

  March shook his head. “Mr. Crowley hates Hopper. When I was seven he yelled at me for letting him pee in his yard. He was so mad I thought the vein in his forehead would explode.” Hopper was the Winterses’ dog, a knee-high, rusty-colored mutt.

  “See?”

  “That doesn’t mean he’s a dognapper,” March said. “Plus, if he hates dogs so much, he wouldn’t go around stealing everyone else’s.”

  March had a point. But the receipt! That was evidence, and we couldn’t ignore evidence.

  I slammed my notebook shut and stuffed it in my open backpack along with the map and route list.

  “Okay. If you don’t think he did it, you won’t mind if we do a little spying. Just to make sure.” The bus driver waved us out and we slowly made our way down the aisle.

  “When you say ‘spy,’ I feel like I’m already grounded.”

  “You are already grounded.” I looked at him over my shoulder. “Me too. But we can still work the case.”

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

  “Don’t be such a guppy, Flounder,” I said, because every time March acted like a scaredy-cat, I called him Flounder. He was silent all the way into the school and up to the spot at the top of the stairs where we parted ways to go to our different classrooms.

  I knew March Winters. He may have been mad at me, but he would come around by the time I had named our operation and assigned him the job of Director of Computer Hacking. He would be unable to resist his life calling as boy genius of all things tech.

  Besides. How could he refuse? We had a crime to solve.

  I grabbed my chocolate milk and took my lunch where CindeeRae sat with a handful of kids from Mrs. Thomas’s class. She picked at the lettuce and tomato slice from her hamburger, which sat open and dry on her tray.

  “That looks gross,” I said, sitting down across from her and waving March over from where we usually sat at the C table.

  “Gee, thanks.” She kept her eyes down while she talked.

  “What I meant was, I can share mine if you want.” I turned my paper bag upside down, each item that dropped to the tabletop making my face burn more.

  When Mom had time, she packed a fancy lunch with a grilled ham and cheese tortilla, apple slices with caramel dipping sauce, and Chex Mix, all covered by a napkin with a gushy love note. But most days, when she scrambled to get me out the door so that she could get to work herself, she packed a quick-and-dirty lunch, like today.

  The two slices of bread, smooshed by the jelly and peanut butter packets she had dropped into a sandwich bag, toppled to the table first, followed by a cracked hard-boiled egg. A bag full of celery sticks tumbled atop a small packet of Oreo cookies, and an apple rolled from the table onto the floor.

  “Sorry.” I blew out an apologetic breath. “Mine’s grosser, I guess.”

  CindeeRae looked up and gave me a crooked smile. “It’s not that bad,” she said.

  I pushed the Oreos to her. “Halfsies?”

  She tentatively opened the package and took two, pushing the rest back to me. We smiled at each other as we ate.

  March sat down next to me with Jared Cramer, his buddy from Mr. Carter’s class. Pat, our friend from second grade, had followed them over and sat down next to CindeeRae.

  “Hey, CindeeRae,” March said as he unloaded his bag, which had some reddish dish in a Tupperware container that he would need to microwave. He swiped my hard-boiled egg and replaced it with a granola bar. He was following lunchtime exchange rules: Everything in the middle of the table was fair game as long as you replaced it with something from your own lunch.

  “That wasn’t up for trade.” I pushed the granola bar toward him. “I was just looking through my lunch.” Eyeing his offering, I changed my mind and pulled the granola bar and the rest of my lunch back.

  Everyone made their own exchanges, which left a bag of carrot sticks, a packet of Fig Newtons, and a banana in the middle of the table. As everyone began eating, Pat got to work pretending to drink his milk through a straw stuck up his nose, alternating gulping noises with choking noises. By the time he got to the knock-knock jokes, CindeeRae was laughing just as hard as the rest of us.

  Jared interrupted, whispering, “Guys, guys.” His eyes swung toward the end of the cafeteria. “Look. Here comes Madeleine Brown.”

  She had stood up from the A table with her best friend, Catelyn Monsen, walking toward the exit. She wore baggy athletic shorts and a long-sleeved Under Armour shirt with a zip-up collar and holes in the wristbands for her thumbs.

  “So?” March said.

  “She’s just scary.” Jared shuddered as she neared, still speaking under his breath. “You need more than a Jolly Rancher to take her out.”

  Jared was in our music class and wouldn’t let me forget what I had done to earn my extra-credit assignment from Mrs. Hewitt.

  “Very funny,” I said, just as Madeleine caught us watching her. She studied our group, that same thoughtful look on her face from before, and we all looked away, suddenly enthralled with our lunches.

  Madeleine passed us but doubled back at the last minute. “What are you weirdos looking at?” She leaned over the table, her eyebrows high. Catelyn stood next to her, studying the ceiling like she was bored. I tried to imagine Madeleine singing our detention song to Catelyn and couldn’t picture it. Did mean people have any real friends?

  Everyone at our table watched Madeleine, silently. She unrumpled her own lunch sack and dumped all the garbage from inside onto our table. PB&J crusts, a half-empty Jell-O cup, and orange peels scattered atop our lunch trade.

  “There, more junk for you to exchange,” she said, dropping the sack dramatically on top of the mess she had made before walking away. Over her shoulder she called “You’re welcome” in a singsong voice while Catelyn laughed so hard she snorted.

  We looked at the garbage from Madeleine’s lunch before braving glances at each other. The first one to break the silence was CindeeRae. “She’s the worst!”

  “Told you,” Jared said.

  Pat pretended to sneeze into his napkin, then showed everyone a splatter of mustard inside the folds. “Oh, look,” he said. “I Madeleined all over the place.”

  I laughed with everyone else, even though Madeleine Brown’s garbage piled atop our lunch trade made me feel small. My eyes stung and my stomach burned as I watched her leave the cafeteria. I swung from the bench, grabbed my apple from the floor, and threw it across the room, where it dropped into the garbage can as Madeleine Brown walked out the door.

  “Great sho
t,” March said.

  “I missed.”

  I slumped back into my seat and finished my lunch.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Four afternoons in a row I showed up on March’s porch, a thick manila folder hidden behind my back. And every time March answered the door, he gave me some lame excuse about having too much homework to hang out. Today had to be different.

  “You’ve gotta help me,” I said as soon as the door opened. Only instead of March standing in the open doorway, it was Maggie, his oldest sister and a senior at Lakeview High School.

  “Sheesh, Kazu.” She laughed. “All you had to do was ask.”

  “Sorry. I thought you were March.”

  Maggie was the prettiest Winters girl. She had dark, thick curls and ice-blue eyes, while March’s—and the rest of his siblings’—were brown. She wore thick glasses that made her look super smart. College scouts were begging her to attend their fancy-pants schools when she graduated. She and March were most alike, and she had taught him everything he knew about computer programming—and, as long as his parents weren’t listening, hacking. March would definitely go to a fancy-pants college when he graduated, too.

  “Come in,” she said, sweeping her arm out like a game-show model.

  I walked into the house, nearly tripping over a pile of shoes in the entryway as Maggie moved toward the stairs. The layout of the Winterses’ house was nearly identical to ours, but the atmosphere was completely different. Theirs was artsy and laid-back and a little sloppy, whereas ours was always super neat. Abstract paintings hung from the walls of the living room, except over the mantel, where pictures of the seven Winters kids were crammed. While the walls looked like an art gallery, the floor looked like a daycare center, with stacks of puzzles, games, clothing, blankets, and abandoned art projects scattered throughout the house. But even though it was cluttered, I was always drawn into the happy, warm mess of the Winters family. In my opinion, clutter was cozier than clean. But I would never say that in front of Mom.