Minerva Clark Goes to the Dogs (11 page)

I wasn't listening and didn't care. Mrs. de Guzman's coffee was churning in my stomach. I imagined it looked like some prehistoric tar pit in there. About half a block away they were setting up lunch beneath a big white tent, and the smell of grilled meat drifted our way and made me feel sicker yet. The film crew was shooting in the shade, but we spectators were stuck on the white sidewalk, baking. I tried to focus, tried to think: What does this all mean?

I wasn't very good at thinking on my feet. I was like Jupiter, who, once he found a treasure—one of my old My Little Ponies, or a chewing gum wrapper—hid it in a secret spot, to be examined later.

A few things made no sense. First, if Tonio and Sylvia were partners in crime, why hadn't Sylvia been home since yesterday? That left me with the she's-taken-off-with-the-gem theory, but I still didn't think a big sister would do that to a little brother, especially since it looked as if Sylvia was in charge of Tonio, the same way my brothers were in charge of me. Second, what about Shark, the security guard guy? What was he doing in Sylvia's apartment when she wasn't there? Not house-sitting, that's for sure.

I wondered if maybe Shark was working security on the movie, but knew somehow in my bones that that would be too neat. Still, I scanned the crowd for any uniforms. Aside from two Portland police officers leaning against their car, I didn't see any other security-type people.

I had a stomachache. I had a headache. I was hot. I needed to get home, now, so I could sort things out.

Just as I cranked the front wheel of my bike around to leave, I heard Rodney call for a lunch break. Tonio bounded across the street, making a beeline in my direction. He wore baggy jeans with torn knees and a green army jacket. I started to pedal off.

“Hey,” said Tonio. I kept going, hoping he would think that I hadn't heard him. “Dude, you still lookin' for my sis?”

I stopped. “Your sister Sylvia?”

“Only have the one.”

I laughed, even though it wasn't really funny. My heart was beating hard. “Oh, right. I guess she's home now?”

“Don't know. She hasn't been home in like a couple of days. I thought maybe you'd seen her. Normally she calls. I thought you and that other girl might have caught up with her or something.”

“No, not yet,” I said.

“Hey, I gotta eat. You want to …” He started walking toward the white tent, where two long tables of food were set end to end. I followed along behind.

“It's cool you're in a movie,” I said.

He shrugged, took a plate from a stack at the end of the table, and started inching down the food line, helping himself to grilled sausages, roasted potatoes, and salad. I trailed along at his shoulder. “How did you get the role?”

“Rodney came to school. He likes working with real kids, I guess.”

“When was the last time Sylvia was home?”

“It's so not like her. She normally calls me like every hour, man.” He glanced over at me then. I felt as if he was really looking at me for the first time. “I thought you and that other girl were like her friends.”

“No, we don't know her.” I took a breath to steady myself. “My friend sold her a ring by mistake. We were hoping to get it back.”

Tonio stuck a piece of bread on the side of his plate and grabbed a handful of silver-wrapped butter squares sitting in a small bowl. I looked at his profile, his long black eyelashes and perfect triangular-shaped nose.

“I don't know anything about that,” he said. I couldn't tell whether he was telling the truth or not. He wasn't easy to read. I could not get over how much older Tonio seemed than the other boys I knew. There was something
sorrowful
about him, like the worst day of his life hadn't washed over him like it did with most kids, but had dragged him out to sea, where he floated, lost.

“Do you know what ring I mean?” I persisted. We moved down the line, me at his shoulder. The girl behind him in line gave me a strange look.

“Nah, Sylvia loves jewelry. She's got a million rings and bracelets. I just don't get it. Even when she spends the night over with that boyfriend of hers, she tells me, you know? So I don't go worrying. She calls me. No matter what.” He shook his head slowly, rearranged the silver butter pats so they wouldn't fall off the edge of his plate.

“Sylvia has a boyfriend?” A lame question that wasn't really a question, but it would keep him talking.

“She met him at the humane society, where we got
Chichi.” He nodded over to where the black pug was sitting on someone's lap. “The guy's okay, but I can tell he's trying to get on my good side. Nice, but phony nice, like he wants something. He told me once as a joke that he volunteers at the humane society just to pick up chicks. ‘Girls really dig a guy who loves animals,' he says. He dates my sister and he's telling me this?” We were at the end of the buffet. He leaned down and grabbed a cold can of Dr Pepper from an ice chest.

Suddenly, I thought of too-nice Shark, holding what had to be Sylvia's cosmetic case, turned half inside out, smiling in a way that looking back seemed phony nice indeed.

“Is her boyfriend a security guard?”

Tonio raised his dark eyebrows. “Yeah, how'd you know?'”

I was saved from having to say how I knew by the short boy in the white T-shirt playing the Frodo character who strode over on his short bowed legs. He looked older up close—maybe in his twenties—and couldn't have been more than five feet tall. Like Tonio's, his plate was piled high with as much food as he could fit on it. Hanging on a thick silver chain around his neck was a ring. The ring of the title, I guessed, set with a huge red stone in its center. It was as big as a marble. It looked like a piece of cinnamon candy.

“Nice ring,” I said. “That's, uh, not real is it?”

“You like it?” he said. Frodo had a deep voice and some type of East Coast accent, and a big smile that made his whole face crinkle up. His blond hair curled over his ears.

“Sure,” I said. “It's … big.”

He took it off the chain around his neck and tossed it at me. “It's yours. Compliments of another fine Rodney von Lager production.”

“Wow. Thanks,” I said. I was completely confused. “Don't you need it?”

Tonio laughed. “We got about a hundred of those.”

“It's a piece of junk,” said Frodo.

“That's bizarre,” I said. “I thought Rodney von Lager was all about being authentic and stuff. This is so …”

“Big and fake?” said Frodo.

“Well, yeah. You'd think he'd use something that at least looked real,” I said.

“Yeah, well,” said Frodo. “He was working on having this mysto ring made using a real diamond. A red one, or a pink one, something like that. It was so we could like feel the power and attraction of beauty and money and yadda yadda yadda, but the jeweler crapped out on us.”

“That must have made him really mad,” I said, half convinced by this whole conversation that it was indeed Rodney who'd put Sylvia up to buying Chelsea's ring.
I went back and forth—it was a Rodney/Sylvia scheme, no it was a Tonio/Sylvia scheme. Heck, maybe they were all three in it together.

“Not at all, actually. Not having the ring made Rodney rethink the whole scene. He decided that it'd be better to make a statement about how we risk our lives for things that turn out to be worthless or meaningless. Something like that. You know, all that glitters is not gold. Now he's totally into the big fake stone. I heard him tell the art department guy that the stone didn't even look fake enough.”

I couldn't believe this. “So he doesn't even care? He doesn't feel cheated, or ripped off, or … or …” The moment the words leaped from my mouth I could tell I sounded too concerned. I mean, why would the fate of Rodney von Lager's red diamond mean anything at all to me?

“Nah, he's over it,” said Frodo.

But suddenly, I felt Tonio's eyes on me. I glanced over. He was staring at me, lips pursed, eyebrows pinched together over his big brown eyes. For the first time I could read his face. He was trying to put two and two together, and was winding up with five. Me. Chelsea. The ring Chelsea sold his sister. His sister missing. And now mention of Rodney's red diamond, which also for reasons that weren't common knowledge, also had disappeared. I stared right back at him.

Tonio and the actor playing Frodo—whose name turned out to be Dusty—sat down at the end of a long table covered with a white tablecloth. There was a spare folding chair next to them, so I sat down, too. Dusty snuck me a soda from the ice chest. They ignored me, talked about when they were getting paid, and how they were going to spend the money. Dusty mentioned a college fund and a new deck for his skateboard. Tonio said he was sending most of it to his grandma in Puerto Vallarta, for an operation she needed. He didn't know what it was.

At that moment, Rodney clapped his big hands and asked everyone to please listen up. He had an announcement regarding the schedule.

Tonio and Dusty stood up, dumped their paper plates. It was obviously time for me to take off.

Tonio said, “You'll let me know if you hear anything from Sylvia, won't you?” Was it my imagination, or was there a new intensity in his voice?

I lied. I said sure.

I rode home, wondering all the way whether you could collapse from sweating. Somehow it escaped me that since riding to Chelsea's house and then on to the skate park was all downhill, it would be all uphill on the return trip. I tied my hair in a knot on top of my head, but it was no use. The sweat ran down the sides of my face and into
my eyes. It was now mid-afternoon, the hottest time of the day in Portland, which, as we learned in seventh-grade geography, is a northern city and thus gets its head-sweating heat later in the day than say, a city on the equator.

I stood up on the pedals, struggled and puffed. Mark Clark was right. I needed more exercise. I needed to play tennis or soccer or run around the block in a jogging outfit, like some of the people in our neighborhood. I was perishing of thirst. I thought how rude Tonio was not to offer me water on a day like this.

I avoided the street where the big, possum-eating hawk lived. I was sure he would register my red face, drenched T-shirt, and gasping for air as easy prey, pluck me off the bike, and claw my eyes out. I pedaled faster.

I was never more happy to see Casa Clark, sitting big and Mexican restaurant–like on its hilly corner. As I coasted into the driveway Morgan staggered out of the garage hugging his sleeping bag and tent to his chest. He was going on a camping trip to Eastern Oregon. I dropped the bike in the driveway and lunged for the garden hose. Morgan dumped his stuff next to the picnic table.

“Hey,” said Morgan, “easy on the bike.”

I gulped down as much metallic-tasting hose water as I could possibly hold before wiping my mouth and turning off the spigot. “The thing doesn't have a kickstand, Morgan, what do you expect me to do?”

Morgan laughed. “It's a mountain bike, they don't have kickstands.”

I ignored him. I had more important things to do, like call Chelsea. I popped my Bluetooth around my ear and voice dialed Chelsea's number. She picked up on the first ring.

“You've got to get over here, now,” I said. “Big developments. Remember that dude Tonio at Sylvia's apartment? Her little brother? He's in Rodney von Lager's new movie. And he's worried to death because his big sis hasn't been home for a few days—since around the time she bought the ring. I went to—”

Chelsea let out a big sigh, like air escaping from a balloon. “Minerva, I just can't.”

“Can't what?”

“Whatever it is you want. Come over, get together, rehash this diamond thing. I played eighteen holes with my dad today. Eighteen holes. I'm dead.”

“I think we're really close to figuring out who has the diamond.” Well, not really, but
closer,
anyway. We had a lot more clues and a lot more suspects, that was for sure.

“My dad is going to try to have his insurance pay for it,” said Chelsea. “That's what he told me today. So no worries.”

“What do you mean? I thought because he was sneaking the diamond into the country there was no insurance on it?” I said.

“I don't know!” said Chelsea. “My dad'll work it out! I'm so exhausted. Right now I'm going down to the club with Mom to sit in the Jacuzzi. So, take it easy, all right?”

“Take it easy? What's with you? Someone stole like a million-dollar diamond right out from under your nose and you don't
care
?”

“I care,” she said sleepily, “just not at this exact moment.”

“That really sucks,” I said.

“Oh Minerva, whatever.” And then just like that she hung up on me.

We Clarks tend to be slow-burners. We don't fly off the handle. This is because our ancestors come from England and other places where it never pays to scream and throw a fit. I dialed Reggie. We'd been best friends since we were fetuses. He could stop thinking about Amanda the Panda for three seconds and help me figure out what I had here.

I expected it to go straight to voice mail, and nearly fainted with shock when he answered on the first ring.

“I really don't think you're being fair,” said Reggie. His voice was so low I hardly recognized it.

Huh? He obviously thought I was Amanda the Panda, or someone else, anyway.

“Well, you know that life isn't fair,” I said. “Your dad tells you that about every other day.”

He was silent for a second. “Oh. Hi, Minerva.”

“What's wrong with you?” I asked.

“What's going on?” he said, changing the subject.

“I need an IP. Meet me at the school in ten.” Our school was five blocks away from my house and five blocks away from his house, exactly, and whenever we needed to have a real discussion, as opposed to a random time-wasting IM discussion (yes, yes, even I know that IMing is pointless), we met at the playground.