A Recipe for Robbery

1.
Veggie-licious…(Not)

2.
If It Wasn't for Henry's Balloon Hat…

3.
Angel with an Attitude

4.
The First Whiff of Trouble

5.
Gus Kinnard Is NOT My Boyfriend

6.
The French Connection

7.
The Scene at the Scene of the Crime

8.
Sly like Spies

9.
A Grim Encounter

10.
Just the Facts, Please

11.
Who Framed Granny Goose?

12.
An Eggstremely Eggciting Discovery

13.
Ducks in Diapers, Etc.

14.
Not So Clueless Anymore

15.
Partner Problems

16.
Getting Nowhere Fast

17.
Conspiracy Theory

18.
The Tattletale Threat

19.
Friendship Fiasco

20.
François Flips Out

21.
Parlez-vous français?

22.
Translation=Suspicions Confirmed

23.
Plotting and Planning

24.
Heartless

25.
Low-down and Blue

26.
A New Day Dawns

27.
Countdown to Trouble

28.
Impostor!

29.
Getting to Know Gus

30.
Poor Pitiful Pickles

31.
Preparations…

32.
Henry's Heavy Heart

33.
The Rendezvous

34.
The Dirty Truth

35.
Shear Madness

36.
Someone Please Call 911!

37.
Tongs and Shovels and Bad Guys

38.
Forgotten Heart

39.
Grand Finale=The Trio Triumphs

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

cu*cum*ber (kyoo kum ber)
n.
1. a creeping plant,
Cucumis sativus
, occurring in many cultivated forms. 2. the edible, fleshy, usually long, cylindrical fruit of this vine. 3. a member of the kingdom Plantae and the class Magnoliopsida, primarily devoured in the
fresh
, or
pickled
form, and recently deemed unfit for human consumption in the
cooked
, or
stewed
form by me, Lindy Lou Phillips.

“Y
uck!” I nudged my best friend, Margaret, and pointed to a bowl on the serving table in front of us. Long, wrinkled greenish things were floating in some kind of thick sauce.

Margaret's eyes widened. “What is that stuff?”

I lifted the lid for a better look. A glob of sauce oozed down the side of the bowl and onto the tablecloth. It looked like a mixture of curdled milk and motor oil.

“It's something one of the Tarts made,” I whispered. That's my mom's cooking club—the Bloomsberry Tarts, to be exact. It's named for our little town of
Bloomsberry, Florida, also known as the Cucumber Capital of the World.

Every June the Tarts help organize the Bloomsberry Cucumber Festival in honor of our local vegetable and fruit farmers. The club's members whip up gobs of veggie dishes for the big event, and some of them even dress in vegetable costumes and ride in the Main Street parade—like my mom. An hour ago, she'd been the carrot riding on my dad's fire truck. Dad and my six-year-old-brother, Henry, had been on the truck with her, dressed like beets.

Up until this year I'd always played along.

“You ready to become a radish, Lindy?” my dad had asked earlier that morning. He'd just come out of the bathroom, and his hands were dark red from the gel he'd used to color his and Henry's hair. “Your mom has the costume ready.”

I'd stared at him for a couple of seconds, tongue-tied. I didn't want to make my dad feel bad, but I'd
been plotting for a while on how to get out of this family tradition. “Uh, well, Margaret and I were kind of planning to, um—”

“Lindy says it's dumb to dress up like vegetables,” Henry called from the bathroom. “She's not gonna do it this year. She says you and Mom will have to tie her up and drag her with you before she—”

“Those were
not
my exact words,” I'd said. “And how come you were eavesdropping on my private phone conversation, anyway?”

Dad just laughed. “It's okay, kiddo. Guess you've finally outgrown the costume thing, huh?” He'd been right about that. No other sixth grader in Bloomsberry (that I knew of, anyway) wanted to ride the Sizzler in a smothering hot radish costume.

After watching the parade and checking out the midway rides, all Margaret and I had in mind was finding the perfect lunch: corn dogs, french fries, and strawberry shortcake. But those lines were already a mile long, so we'd decided to cruise the main food
tent to see what else looked good. That's how we'd ended up at the Tarts' serving table; it was the only one without a line. My mom had even made a giant sign that said, F
REE
! V
EGGIE-LICIOUS TREATS FROM OUR
T
ARTS TO YOUR HEARTS
, but so far only a few people had trickled over to check it out.

Margaret leaned toward the motor oil casserole. She pinched her nose and glanced back up at me. Her eyes were crossed. “Oh, gross. It's sour cream. Quick! Put the lid back on.”

I should've taken her advice. Instead, I stuck my face within an inch of the muck. So close I could count the peppercorns on top of it.
Whew
. I nearly passed out.

“Hey, I know what this is,” I said. “It's cream of alien fingers, sautéed over worms and—”

“Go ahead!” boomed a woman's voice from behind us. “Try some of it, girls.”

I spun around, nearly swallowing my tonsils as a two-hundred-pound cucumber shoved her way
through a couple of Tarts and a farmer-looking guy and barreled toward me. A fat, long-necked goose waddled at her heels. I knew right away this particular cucumber was Mrs. Evelyn Unger, the wacky old lady who lives near our school and collects more stray animals than Barbie has bikinis. It's because of the pet goose she's always got tagging along that we kids call her Granny Goose.

Before I had a chance to get away, Granny Goose took a ladle and dumped three heaping mounds of the stuff on my plate. We're talking a Mount Everest of mushy crud.

“These are my swamp-dilly-scrumptious stewed cucumbers,” she said, grinning at me. “That sauce bubbled in my Crock-Pot all night long. It's one of my best recipes. Pickles here adores it. Don't you, love?” She tugged at the leash in her hand, and her goose honked.

Then she leaned toward me, dropping her voice like we were undercover FBI agents working a top
secret case. “But I want human opinions, if you know what I mean. I can't really trust a goose, for goodness' sake.” She thumped me on the back and hooted with laughter before going on. “Listen up. I'm entering this recipe in the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Cook-off, and I need to know if all my ingredients complement the cucumbers. So after you eat it, give it to me straight, honey. Is it too heavy on the mushroom paste?”

Mushroom paste?
Whoa. I had to swallow twice to keep my breakfast of Fruity Bears from crawling back up my throat. I turned to Margaret for help, but she wasn't standing beside me anymore. She'd already moved to the far end of the table and was helping herself to some mashed potatoes.

I squirmed under Granny Goose's smiling gaze, secretly plotting what I could do with her cucumbers. Just when I decided to accidentally trip and spill them all, I noticed my mother—otherwise known as Miss Perfect Manners—standing on the other side of the serving table with Henry. I groaned. Mom still had
on her carrot costume, and the steely gleam in her eyes warned me she was totally into this vegetable thing.

I really couldn't risk making my mom mad, because I planned on begging her for something huge later that evening. So I took a deep breath and smiled at Granny Goose. “Er…thank you very much, Mrs. Unger. This sure does look interesting. I'll let you know about the mushroom paste.”

“Yes, and it smells delightful,” Mom said.

Oh, yeah? I thought. Since when does fungus smell anything but raunchy?

“I'm sure Lindy will enjoy a few of these cucumbers before her
dessert
,” Mom said. “Isn't that right, dear?” She helped herself to a microscopic spoonful, then dribbled some onto Henry's plate. His eyes rounded with alarm, like he'd just been handed a hornets' nest. But when he started to whine, Mom gave him the Look.

I covered my mouth and snickered, thinking
how funny it was that Henry, who always whined his way out of eating anything but chicken nuggets or macaroni, had finally got stuck with a vegetable.

He scrunched his eyes at me, and Mom must've heard my smothered laugh, because that's when I got an even sterner version of the Look. Now, if you knew the Carrot, you'd know the Look meant this: “Do not even think of spilling those cucumbers, Lindy Lou Phillips, if you want to live to see your twelfth birthday.”

If I was going to get rid of the cukes, I'd have to be tricky about it.

I
couldn't chance getting caught throwing Granny Goose's food away. Not today, anyway. I'd been doing all kinds of things to impress my mom for the last couple of weeks—stuff like cleaning lint out of the dryer, fluffing the pillows on her bed, and taking out the trash without being asked. I'd scrubbed the gunk from under the toilet seat, too, even though it made me gag the whole time. I figured the more mature and cheerful I acted, and the more I pointed out all the helpful things I'd done, the better chance I'd have of changing her mind about my going to summer band camp with Margaret.

Granny Goose leaned down to adjust Pickles's collar. I said a quick good-bye and started backing away, but I didn't get far. Mom was right behind me. She was talking to her hairdresser, Cricket, about how a trim would “accentuate the auburn highlights” in my dark brown hair.

“See what I mean?” Mom said, brushing the bangs off my forehead.

Both Cricket and the tall blond guy with her eyed my hair as if it were a clump of seaweed. “Yeah, she could use a cut all right,” Cricket said. “Send her in. We'll get those dead ends off.”

“Well, it's not just the dead ends. I'd like it styled, and I want all that shaggy mess out of her eyes,” Mom said. “They're Lindy's best feature. She's the only one in the family with hazel eyes, and you can't see them with that hair hanging….” Blah, blah, blah.

She yammered on, moving up the serving table as she dished out more vegetables for her and Henry. By now he was wearing a pout the size of Texas,
and I knew for a fact a tantrum was brewing.

As soon as Mom had her back to me, I slipped out of the food tent. All I wanted to do was find a faraway trash can, dump the cukes, and then look for Margaret.

I'd taken three giant strides when Mom's voice rang out. “Lindy. Wait up, please. Henry needs a balloon hat.”

I rolled my eyes, but not so she could see me. I felt like pointing out that (A) Henry didn't
need
a balloon hat—he'd already popped two of them earlier, before the parade—and (B) I didn't really have time to look for balloon hats, that I was supposed to be hanging out with Margaret, not my brother. But then I thought about band camp and bit my tongue.

“Come on,” I said, motioning for Henry to follow me. He tore away from Mom, a huge smile stretched across his face.

“Bring Henry to the picnic tables by the courthouse. Your dad and I will be sitting with Evelyn,”
Mom said. She nodded at my plate. “And I expect you to show up with
all
those vegetables intact.”

Well, I was doomed. There's no way I could even dump half of that mess down the trash, because Henry happens to be the world's biggest tattletale. I took off in a huff, wishing I could stuff every one of those cucumbers down his throat.

“Slow down, Lindy,” he whined. “I can't keep up with you.” He hung on to my belt loop as we wove through mobs of walking, talking vegetables, looking for the balloon hat clown. We circled a group of red-hot chili peppers dancing to a calypso band, dodged a couple of asparagus stalks juggling knives, and then stopped to watch a corn-on-the-cob eating competition. One guy had already plowed through twenty-two ears.

“Hey, there he is!” Henry pointed to a pink-haired clown who was twisting giant cucumber balloons into different shapes. We waited in line, got a couple of hats—because Henry begged me to wear
one, too—and then I scanned the crowd, searching for Margaret. I saw her at a picnic table on the far side of the courthouse lawn. Her strawberry blond curls were easy to spot.

Oh. Great. Just my luck. Margaret was sitting within twenty feet of my parents. And not only that, she was sharing her table with a boy.

Wait
. Was that who I thought it was? I shaded my eyes to make sure I wasn't seeing things.

I wasn't, and my luck had just gone from bad to totally terrible.

Sure enough, it was Gus Kinnard, the annoying know-it-all nerd who'd sat behind me in fifth-grade band and squeaked his saxophone into my ears every ten seconds. He practically drove me crazy all year, always acting like he knew the answer to every single thing. And ever since the spring concert, when I'd played my flute in a trio with him on sax and Margaret on trumpet, he'd acted as though the three of us were big buddies or something. Jeez. How did Margaret
get stuck sitting with him? I hoped he didn't think he was going to hang out with us all day.

“I'm going to show Dad my balloon hat,” Henry said, taking off. I charged after him, toward Margaret's table, and I'm not sure what happened next. My hat might've been blocking my vision, or maybe I tripped on my flip-flops, but I didn't see the Bloomsberry Cucumber Festival Princess or her plateful of strawberry shortcake until after we'd knocked into each other and she'd started screaming bloody murder.

I hopped backward, watching a huge, gooey piece of shortcake dribble down the dress of my least favorite person in the world, Angel Grimstone.