Kazu Jones and the Denver Dognappers Read online

  As if he knew something was wrong, Genki sat at my feet, whimpering like he did around big groups of people. I patted his head, trying to calm him, but my own fears distracted me, and I soon found myself missing his head completely and pawing at the air, which only made Genki whine louder.

  Was Geezer really grateful for the work I did, or was he mad that I had made up the story about the electronic notifications in order to get his e-mail address? And did he realize that it was all a trick to hack his computer?

  While I wanted to believe the note was innocent and only pointed out a simple misunderstanding, I couldn’t help but worry that he was onto us. I paced the garage, taking deep breaths while I counted slowly. Genki followed, trying to lick my fingers on the move.

  The only person I could tell about the note—March—would be so freaked-out that he would cancel our mission. No amount of Janken would convince him otherwise, and I couldn’t complete this mission on my own. We’d lose our only chance at gathering evidence that could prove James Crowley was the Denver Dognapper. I was not going to let that happen.

  After school, Mrs. White had me weed her flower patch and spray down her driveway for five dollars. She sat on the porch and chatted while I worked, the afternoon warmer than usual for October. Her husband was always the main topic of conversation.

  “Did I ever tell you Nile was an entrepreneur? Always inventing gadgets that could make life easier.”

  I nodded as I added to the weed pile at my side.

  “If I had the money, I’d produce all those gadgets and open a store where people like me could come and find contraptions that would improve their lives. In fact, just between you and me, I’m working on opening up a little shop in his remembrance, named after my Nile.”

  She took a long swig from her iced tea and then shook the glass; the ice clinked inside.

  “I’m impressed with your work ethic, Kazuko,” she said. “Is that a Japanese thing? Because I don’t see many kids your age who work as hard as you do.”

  The question needled my chest. It sounded like a compliment but didn’t feel like one. “My friend March is doing homework right now, and it’s Friday. And his teacher doesn’t even give homework on Fridays.” I grabbed a pile of weeds and dropped them into the plastic bin. I had already finished spraying down her driveway. “He works hard, too, doing different things. I’m saving for an iPad.”

  “And you deliver papers every morning.” She sucked air through her teeth while shaking her head. Even though she said lots of weird stuff about me being Japanese, Mrs. White was one of my favorite customers because the first of every month she always left a ten-dollar tip in her newspaper box. “That’s discipline.”

  “I guess.”

  “Did you know they used to make newspaper carriers collect payments? It was part of their job. Every month, our paperboy Sean would show up at our door, sheepish as ever, asking for six dollars and twenty-eight cents. He looked like Oliver Twist with his hands held out. Please, sir, I want some more.” She held her own hands out, cupped like a beggar’s, and spoke the last part in a British accent. I looked up at her from the flower patch. Mrs. White and Mrs. Hewitt would make great friends.

  “Anyway,” she continued, “can you imagine not getting paid until you collected all the money the newspaper charged every person on your route?”

  “No,” I said, going after a dandelion cluster with the weed puller. “Mom hates school fund-raisers where we have to collect money door-to-door. I wouldn’t be doing my paper route if we had to do that.” I sat back on my haunches, imagining the Denver Chronicle reinstating that policy. We would quit, and I could sleep in, poor but well rested.

  “Anyway,” Mrs. White said. “They stopped that after the girl disappeared.”

  I dropped the weed puller. “What?”

  “Oh, you wouldn’t have heard—it was way before you were even born. Nineteen ninety-three, I think.”

  “A papergirl disappeared?”

  “Her name was Loralee Sanders. She was collecting money in Clinton, suburb up the road? And they think this crazy bat—faithful Chronicle subscriber—kidnapped her.”

  I stood, my hands hanging limp at the end of my arms. “What? That really happened?”

  “It sure did. And you know how they found him? She had a dog that followed her everywhere, and when she disappeared, that puppy never left the man’s yard. His neighbors became suspicious of the guy who had to fend off an angry dog every time he set foot outside his house. Think it was a Doberman mix.” She stood and studied her porch light, covered in spiderwebs. “Maybe you can swing by tomorrow and clean these up.” Mrs. White waved her cane at the webbing spotted with dead gnats and mosquitoes.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “The missing papergirl? That’s a scary story you tell other papergirls around Halloween, right?”

  “Oh no, dear.” She turned around and faced me, her hands clasped in front of her. “That happened. And afterward, there was a real outcry—the whole community came down hard on the Chronicle. I mean, who expects children to act as bill collectors? Ludicrous.”

  I turned back to the flower patch and collected all the weeds I had pulled, dropping them into the trash bin. “I gotta go.” I felt dizzy, and my entire body shivered.

  “Kazuko, sweetheart?” Mrs. White called after me as I crossed the street. “Please come back. I didn’t mean to frighten you. That’s long since over, dear, and you don’t have a thing to worry about.”

  The thought of interrupting my paper route to rummage through Geezer’s garbage didn’t seem quite as harmless anymore. And clearly having a guard-dog extraordinaire wouldn’t guarantee my safety.

  “I’m okay,” I yelled at her, not looking back.

  But I was not okay. Not at all.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  A quick internet search proved that Mrs. White was right. The only thing she had gotten wrong was that it all happened in 1991 and not 1993. Plus, the dog was a shepherd mix about Genki’s size. And even though that looney probably kidnapped Loralee Sanders more than twenty-five years ago, the information still made me sick.

  I closed down the computer and went to my room. Genki followed me into bed, and I took a blanket and made a tent over us. Genki nuzzled my ear while I tried to take a nap, but my stomach was all woozy. Dad knocked on my door after he got home from work; I had ignored Mom’s attempts to lure me from my room, but he was more persistent.

  He pulled the blanket down and poked my ribs with his finger. “Well, your reflexes are working okay.”

  “I’m not sick,” I said. “I just don’t feel like doing anything.” I turned toward the wall.

  He sat next to me on the bed, and the depression in the mattress pulled on my body like a magnet. Genki rolled even closer to me, arching his back so that his chest was in my face.

  Dad rubbed my shoulder. “Would you like to go to dinner at the Golden Buckle for an impromptu Party Night Friday?”

  The Golden Buckle was my favorite restaurant, and not because of the barbecue beef sandwiches with the best sauce on the planet, but because they had a little bucking bronco only kids could ride. My personal best was forty-two seconds; any other night I would have jumped at the chance to beat it.

  “I’m not really hungry,” I said.

  “Okay, Bug, this is where you tell me what’s really wrong. That’s our thing, remember? You tell me anything, and I stay cool as a cucumber.”

  Dad and I made that deal in the second grade when I was afraid to tell Mom I swallowed her pachinko ball, a souvenir she brought back years ago from her first trip to Japan with Dad. The pachinko ball was a silver orb the size of a tiny marble and, according to Mom, was used in Japan’s version of slot machines. I had put it in my mouth to give it a quick taste and accidentally swallowed it. Only after imagining the pachinko ball knocking around my gut like the insides of a pinball machine, building to what was sure to be a painful and slow death, did I finally tell my parents.

  Mom freaked ou
t. We went to the emergency room, got some X-rays, and then the doctor told us it looked like the pachinko ball had already made its way to the resting place of dead goldfishes and swallowed nickels. Later that night, Dad pulled me aside and promised that if there was anything stressing me out, I could tell him and he would never yell at me—which was good, because sometimes Mom could get worked up about stuff.

  I rolled over and looked at him. “Do you think the dognapper is dangerous?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, do you think the dognapper would ever hurt people?”

  He sighed and then sat silent for a second. When he finally spoke, his words came out slowly. “I think the dognapper is selfish and trying to make money in a horrible way, but I don’t think he’d hurt people.”

  “But we don’t know, right? If someone tried to stop him, he could become dangerous, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe,” he answered. “But we don’t need to worry about that. The police are doing their best to find the dognapper, and when they do, Barkley will go back to the Tanners.”

  I tugged at the fringe on my fleece blanket. “I hope so.”

  “I know you’re afraid, Bug,” he said. “But you know you’re safe with us, right? Your mother and I aren’t going to let anything happen to you. Or Genki.” He reached across me and scratched Genki’s tummy.

  I nodded, and I knew he meant it. But Dad couldn’t protect me from a mission he knew nothing about and a potential dognapper who also happened to be the creepiest guy on my paper route. Maybe it would be best if March and I canceled Operation: Expose James Crowley.

  What if that also meant Lobster was never returned to CindeeRae Lemmings or Barkley stopped being the Tanners’ practice baby? What if that meant more dogs went missing when March and I could have stopped it?

  “Come on,” Dad said, pulling me up and slinging me over his shoulder. “Let’s go to dinner, watch a movie, and remember what it’s like to just be a kid, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, knowing I would have to pretend.

  “Mom, guess what?” I asked, trying to sound natural. It was Sunday morning, and we huddled on the sectional in our living room. Mom and Dad read the paper while I made a list in the Sleuth Chronicle of everything March and I needed for Mission: Geezer’s Garbage Raid.

  “What?” She leaned against Dad’s chest as she turned the page, holding the paper at arm’s length as she did. They were cuddling in the corner of the couch while I stretched out on the sofa’s long arm. Genki lay on the floor in front of me while I patted his back with one slippered foot. Lazing around our living room was a Sunday morning tradition that sometimes lasted until lunch. Usually I hated the quiet, slow pace of Sundays, but today I had a plan that depended on Mom being chill.

  “March wants to train as a sub.” I pretended to concentrate on my notebook, and the words blurred together as I kept my expression blank.

  She folded the paper in half and set it on her lap. “Really? For three years that boy has refused to sub your route, and suddenly he has a change of heart?” She sat up and tossed a look over her shoulder at Dad. “It’s still dark at six in the morning, and I know Candy and Marshall aren’t going to drive him around that early.”

  I looked to the ceiling, posing thoughtfully. “Something about turning eleven has changed us, Mom.” March’s birthday was two days after mine, at the end of August, making us the oldest kids in our class. While we had been eligible for kindergarten, having turned five less than a week before school started, both our mothers had apparently been afraid we were too socially immature. That meant one more year of intensive preschool before we both endured the most boring year of kindergarten ever. Maybe that’s why March and I had gotten into record-breaking trouble that year, and also why Principal Smith recommended we never share a classroom at Lincoln Elementary again. And we hadn’t.

  Mom studied my face. “Really? Like how?”

  “Like we’re not afraid of the dark, and we like earning our own money, and being responsible for something.” I tapped my pencil on the notebook.

  She nodded. “Okay. Tell him we’ll pick him up at six fifteen tomorrow morning.”

  “But…”

  Mom had already opened the paper again but dropped it to peek over the top. “But what?”

  My mind scrambled to think of a reason Mom shouldn’t be driving us on the paper route tomorrow. “But when he subs, March won’t have anyone to drive him. It’s better if we ride our bikes so he can get used to that.”

  This time she set the paper on her lap, and it covered her like an apron. “Kazu, we’re just trying to be extra safe!”

  “And we will be—March will be with me. And Genki—he’ll protect us.” Genki sat up and looked at me, waiting for the punch line. I grabbed his ears and turned his face toward my parents, hiding behind his head and speaking in a deep, raspy voice. “Look how scary I am.”

  Dad tried not to laugh while Mom shook her head at me. “You and March are still kids, and Genki, intimidating as he may be, is a dog and the target of dognappers. He may not be able to protect you from a predator.”

  I imagined us staring down a T. rex on Colonial Avenue, right outside Geezer’s house, Genki going all were-monster.

  “Then let me take the phone. I’ll text if anything happens.”

  Dad leaned forward. “Kazu,” he said in his deep, serious voice, “I agree with your mother. You and March are smart and mature kids, but Genki is a rare dog—he’d be a real catch for this dognapping ring.”

  “But how’s March going to practice if we don’t do the route by bike?”

  Mom and Dad looked at each other. Getting a second sub would make family trips much easier. Right now we had to plan around our only sub’s schedule, and he was in high school and quickly losing interest in a paper route that only paid ten dollars a weekend. And while it wasn’t very likely March would change his mind about subbing once we completed the mission, I could still pretend he might.

  “I’ll drop you off at March’s house and wait for you in the middle of Summer Glen Drive,” Mom said, looking at Dad as she spoke. He nodded. “But Genki will stay in the car with me. You can take the cell phone to call if there are any problems when you’re out of sight. Otherwise, I’ll be there to see you complete each loop of the route.”

  Summer Glen Drive was the center of my route’s figure eight. From the middle of the block, you could see the corner of Geezer’s house, where Colonial met Summer Glen, but not necessarily his driveway, where the garbage can would be. If I argued with her now, it would be suspicious—why would I care that much about biking my route with March when I had been relieved that she had volunteered to drive me last week?

  “Okay,” I said. “That works.”

  I snapped my notebook shut, stood up, and ran upstairs to my room, Genki trotting behind me. March and I would have to revise our plan.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  March and I parked our bikes in the middle of Summer Glen Drive, studying the view of Geezer’s house. It hadn’t been hard to convince Mom that March was nervous about making his first paper route run in the dark and wanted to practice in the daylight, but she had made me keep Genki home.

  Summer Glen was long and straight, intersected on each end by my street, Honeysuckle, on the bottom, and March’s street, Colonial, at the top. My route covered both sides of four blocks, and when I delivered papers, I did half of my block before cutting over to March’s on Morningside. All the streets on my route were lined with tall trees whose leaves had already turned orange and red. In the light of dusk it looked like they were on fire, shuddering in the breeze.

  “You can’t see his driveway from here,” March said.

  Not only was Geezer’s house surrounded by trees, but the house across the street from his had a curve of shrubbery outlining the yard, which also blocked the view.

  I whispered back. “If he doesn’t put his garbage can at the end of his driveway—like if he rolls it closer to
the stop sign—she might be able to see us, especially if she parks closer to his house.”

  March nodded. Unlike me, he was relieved my mother would be close enough to wave down should we run into danger. I’m sure he also hoped her presence might prevent us from braving the mission at all, making us both too nervous to act.

  I folded my arms across my chest. Summer Glen Drive was the only road on my route with streetlamps, and the first lamp was a couple houses away from Colonial. I always complained about how dark my route was. As long as there wasn’t a full moon, Geezer’s house would be a black hole.

  “Okay. We’ll be fine,” I concluded. I tried not to think about the note Geezer had left with my tip, or the fact that I was keeping it from March. He would worry—no, be paralyzed with fear—if he thought the old guy was onto us. And if I shared that story about Loralee Sanders, March would probably lose his lunch and run back home, leaving his bike in a heap on the side of Summer Glen Drive. Nope. I’d have to die with my secrets, a thought that had left my stomach in a jumble since Friday afternoon.

  We rode through the first loop of the route, stopping again on Summer Glen Drive. From my basket, I pulled two small backpacks: one for March and one for me. I had gotten them from my years volunteering for the Zoo Crew. They were both yellow and had HIGHLAND ZOO printed on them in blocky white letters. “Inside your pack,” I said, “is a ski mask, a headlamp, and a utility belt.”

  “Who am I, Batman?”

  I ignored him. “We’ll pretend we’re carrying extra rubber bands, the route map, and our cell phones. And we’re not really pretending, because that stuff’s in there with the spy gear.”

  “What’s on the utility belt?”

  I opened the pack and held it within view, not wanting to draw the belts into the open and make passersby nervous. Each belt was a canvas number I’d found in Dad’s old Boy Scout supplies. To each I had attached a flashlight, a pocketknife, mini binoculars, and a kazoo, in case we really did have to get Mom’s attention.