Summer of the Spotted Owl (11 page)

Underneath the ribbons was a rectangular, clear plastic packet with green showing through. I tore the packet open. The green unfurled — an inflatable turtle!

“Wow,” I said, gulping down the last of the second cupcake. “Thanks!”

“Read the card,” Zoë urged.

I untangled a small envelope from the ribbons. Inside was a silver card with stilted writing:

Sorry about the crash into the pool. Sorry for
scaring you. Sorry I wrecked your turtle. Hope this
replacement turtle makes up for it.

—
Rock Cordes, Jr.

p.s. Sorry.

Zoë explained, “I told the councillor about the pranks and your turtle. He spoke to Rock Junior. We're all very — ”

“Please.” I held up a sticky hand. “I don't think I can handle another apology. Anyhow, this is really nice of you guys. I can spend the rest of the afternoon floating on my new turtle and reading
Deathstalkers Conquer Jupiter
.”

“Er— right,” Zoë said uncertainly. Then her doll-like smile twinkled back. “I have a gift for you too, Dinah, because I know how much you like hang gliding.”

She handed over another envelope. Inside, not, as I'd feared, another apology, but — wow. A pass for two to a High Spirits Hang Gliding show, July 17 on Grouse, where, as the pass said,
High Spirits' own instructors will swoop
and dive for your viewing pleasure
. Not only that, but there'd be food as well: barbecued hot dogs, salad buffet, French fries and make-your-own sundaes.

“Double, triple wow,” I exclaimed.

Zoë patted my shoulder. “You choose a friend to bring along, and I'll take you both there myself. And you're not to worry about Rock Junior. He's been told to stay away from this street. He's caused you and your neighbors enough trouble!” She teetered off on her spike heels to the pink car.

“Wait,” I said as she prepared to take off again, Glinda-like, in a swirl of pink. “Do you happen to know if Rock Junior, has a buddy who's bald?”

Zoë stared. “A bald buddy,” she repeated, puzzled. “No, I can't say that I do. But then Rock Junior would hardly confide in me about his social life.”

When Madge
got back and let me in, I faxed my memo off to Jack. Then I tried out my new turtle.

“Bombs away!” I shouted at an incoming hang glider. But the fun had gone out of the game for now. I was too bothered about Jack.

What if he went the rest of his life without speaking to me? Suppose he and Madge had kids. Jack would refuse to introduce them to me. One day little Madge Junior might paw through a box of family photos and find a snap of a pudgy, bespectacled, red-haired girl.

Who's this, Dad?

Oh, that's Aunt Dinah. We don't mention her name in
this household.

And
r-r-rip
! Jack would tear up the photo.

By now tears were flowing down my face and onto the turtle. I did the only thing I could do when I felt miserable. Tumbling off the turtle, I swam over to pool's edge, climbed out and sang.

Without you, dear,
I don't know what I'd do-hoo-hooooo …

That song was in my head a lot these days. Not only because Talbot was adapting it to electric guitar. I kept remembering how Dad sang it to
his
Sweet Sue, Mother.

The hedge rustled. Too big a rustle to belong to a cat. I switched to humming. I tiptoed over to the jittery leaves. Stopped humming and listened.

“Isn't it fantastic?” A young man's voice, whispering. “No way I'm gonna give up now. We'll have her outta here in no time!”

I wrenched leaves and branches apart. Just as I thought: Bald Guy! I'd caught him scheming into his cell phone about the pranks against Rowena. He was set on driving the poor woman from her house. Dang, and we'd thought the pranks were over.

Seeing me, he paused in mid-gloat. “Er … I'll get back to you,” he mumbled into the cell and shut the power off.

“Uh, look, Dinah —”

“Don't Dinah me, you wiener,” I fumed. Make that
mega
-wiener. He must've been eavesdropping like crazy to know my name. I pointed a well-hedge-scratched finger at his cell phone. “I bet the person you were talking to was Itchy, right?”

Bald Guy regarded me oddly. “It's hard to tell over the phone.”

“Not ‘itchy.'
Itchy
,” I explained. “Rock!”

“Rock? Naw, I don't want to talk about Rock to you. What I'd like to know is —”

I let go of the leaves. They closed over his face. “Prankster!” I yelled through them. “Trespasser!”

Pantelli strolled round the side of the house. “Hey, cool! I talk to plants too, Di. According to
Junior Botanist
magazine, chatting with plants encourages 'em to grow. I don't know about
insulting
'em, though,” he finished doubtfully.

“One of Rowena's pranksters is behind the hedge,” I said loudly, so Bald Guy would hear.

“Gee, I dunno, Di. Maybe instead of hollering you should be phoning the police.”

From the other side of the fence,
crackle
!
crunch
! Bald Guy was fleeing.

We ran round to the front. There was always a chance we'd glimpse Bald Guy climbing into a car and be able to memorize his license plate.

Some chance. In true Bald Guy fashion, he'd vanished into thin air.

Rowena, however,
was bicycling toward us, her long gray hair flying out from under her helmet. The bike's wicker basket was loaded with bags from the market. She sure grocery-shopped a lot, I thought. Holy Toledo, the woman must eat almost as much as I do.

Brrring
!-ing her bell, Rowena waved to us. The next moment, braking by the curb, she tossed us each a Granny Smith apple.

Her cheeriness faded when I told her about Bald Guy.

“I hope you didn't try to follow him, Dinah,” she said worriedly.

“Bald Guy's too wily to be followed,” Pantelli replied. “He's slick as maple syrup. Speaking of maples, Rowena, I notice that one of yours is developing a case of —”

“I'll tend to it,” Rowena interrupted. “At least, someone will. And soon.”

“Are you converting to the neighborhood's tidy-garden routine?” I asked. “What about the virtues of being starkly different?”

I'd meant this as a joke, but Rowena didn't laugh. Instead, at a fast clip, she bundled her bags up the porch steps and into her house.

Pantelli and I checked Rowena's front and back yard for crudely lettered signs, which seemed to be Bald Guy's calling card. Nothing today.

“Guess we scared him off,” I told Pantelli.

Chapter Eleven
You Mean Trespassing Is Illegal?

O
kay, so Madge had forbidden me to go to the Cordeses. But she'd said “you” couldn't go, that is, me.

She'd never said “you plural” couldn't go, that is, me and two friends.

It's amazing what good grammar can do for you.

Talbot, Pantelli and I trudged up Capilano Road to the address Mrs. St. John had provided: 28 Antinucci Road. It was farther than we thought. By the time we turned right on Antinucci Road, we were practically limping.

Number twenty-eight was a red-brick house with white trim. Pantelli eyed the arbutus tree in front. “They're overpruning that,” he said critically. “Next year the leaves may be too traumatized to bud.”

He marched up to the tree, took out his cracked magnifying glass and examined the bark.

Talbot and I shrugged at each other. Stepping up to the door, I crashed the door knocker, a brass angel, against the white-paneled door several times.
Wham
!
Wham
! I used all my strength. This was fun.
Wham
! I couldn't understand why Mother refused to get a door knocker for our house.

The door whipped open. “Do you
mind
?” demanded a stocky woman in a beige pantsuit. “We're trying to entertain our guests, not deafen them.”

Uh-oh. This wasn't a promising start.

“I bet you're Mrs. Cordes,” I said chattily. I craned around her. Past a marble foyer and through a massive picture window, I saw dozens of guests milling about on a deck. They were drinking from tiny teacups and tucking back dainty, crustless sandwiches. I loved dainty, crustless sandwiches. They were so efficient. You could polish off two or three at once.

I spotted Itchy standing rather unhappily with a tray of sandwiches. He glanced through the picture window. I waved. He shoved the tray at the nearest guest and fled.

“Young woman, who
are
you?” Mrs. Cordes snapped.

Talbot, whom grown-ups always like, put on his most winning smile. “Actually, we were hoping to —”

“And what is that boy doing?” Mrs. Cordes glared at Pantelli, who was on the front lawn, carefully stripping off a piece of bark from the arbutus tree. Removing an envelope from his pocket, he laid the bark strip inside and sealed the envelope.

Pantelli called back, “I'm going to take this home and study it under my microscope, ma'am. I want to see if you've traumatized your bark.”

Mrs. Cordes reddened from the neck up, like a thermometer filling with mercury. “Make fun of me, will you? I'll get the police after you, m'boy!”

Flailing her thick arms, she stomped toward Pantelli. His eyes widened fearfully; he began backing away. “Dinah, maybe this wasn't the best idea,” Talbot murmured.

“Are you kidding? Don't you remember how our principal, Ms. Chen, is always yakking to us about challenges in life also being opportunities? Well, Pantelli's challenge at this moment is our opportunity.”

I didn't wait for Talbot to agree, because I suspected he wouldn't. Instead, as Mrs. Cordes stalked toward Pantelli, I slipped inside the house.

I charged
across the foyer, Talbot following reluctantly. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a movement.

It was Itchy, poised in mid-flight up a winding marble staircase. “I can't believe you'd actually invade my home,” he complained. “You got a new turtle, plus a written apology.

What more do you want?”

“A lot more,” I said. “For example, why did you steal my turtle in the first place? I mean, you'd just
wrecked
it.”

I took a few steps up the staircase. Wisps of cat fur wafted off my T-shirt. Itchy began scratching. His eyes cartwheeled from side to side to make sure no one was listening.

“Th-there were some other pranks I was supposed to carry out, like dumping garbage all over Rowena's lawn, but I didn't. I
said
I had — but they found out I was lying. They blew up at me. Yelled and screeched.” Itchy shuddered at the memory. “So when they told me to land a hang glider at Rowena's, I thought I better bring back proof I'd done it. That's why I grabbed your turtle. I hoped I could fool them. A vain hope, as it turned out. They knew Rowena didn't have a pool in that jungle of hers.”

“So you landed at the Urstads', ” I said slowly. It was occurring to me that, under his itchy skin, Rock Junior wasn't such a bad person.

“Of course I did,” Itchy said peevishly. Both hands were scraping at his scalp now,
bzz
,
bzz
! He backed up the stairs. “I didn't want to bring more bad publicity to Rowena. I knew she'd be the bull's-eye of complaints if people saw her overgrown backyard in a
Bugle
photo.”

He let out a laugh that was a half-sob. “I was so sick of it— all their finely detailed plans, all those blueprints!”

“What plans?” I demanded. “And who are ‘they'?”

Itchy interrupted his scratching to thrust his hands, palms out, at me. “Leave me alone. It's not my fault, any of it. All I want to do is hang glide, get it? They promised I could, once everything was settled.”

“
What
everything?”

“I've said enough— I should keep quiet.”

“No, you shouldn't,” I said, rather helplessly.

Talbot spoke up. “Wait, Itchy. At least tell us if you're the one who phones Sylvester Sloan at the
Bugle
with high-pitched, anonymous tips.”

Itchy paled. “I've said enough,” he protested, in a squeak that sounded awfully high-pitched to me. Like Sylvester's tipster and Rowena's prank caller.

“At least tell me about Bald Guy,” I persisted.

But Itchy was scampering up the stairs. From the upstairs hall I heard a few final scratches and then the sound of a door shutting, followed by the slam of the front door.

Talbot and I peered over the banister. Still a fiery color, Mrs. Cordes stomped across the marble. “Rude boy, saying I'd traumatized my tree. I'd like to traumatize
him
.”

In a second she would stomp past the base of the stairs — and see Talbot and me goggling at her. Uh-oh. There was nowhere for us to go but up.

The upstairs hall
was quiet. From the garden we could hear the tinkle of cups as guests made polite conversation. I could tell it was the polite kind because there were lots of
ooo's
and
reallys
?

“Phew!” said Talbot. “I dunno about this detective stuff, Dinah. What we should do is bolt downstairs and make a break out the front.”

“But we've hardly found out anything.”

A door to our right yawned temptingly. Past a computer station, a window was wide open. It faced onto the backyard. “Hey, we might hear something interesting,” I said.

“I was afraid you'd say that. What frightens me even more is, I'm starting to think like you.” Talbot followed me glumly as I tiptoed over to the window.

Councillor Cordes was right below, beside a table loaded with a platter of raspberry tarts.

“Yes, I keep Zoë hard at work. It's impossible to find good assistants these days, so I figure, when you've got one, work her to the bone!” the councillor said with a nasty laugh and crammed two tarts into his mouth at once.