Minerva Clark Goes to the Dogs (19 page)

I skipped downstairs, enjoying the way my skirt went all floaty with each step. I was still staring down at my hem when I stepped out of the back door. Between the driveway and the house, there is a narrow bed of dirt where nothing ever grows. Every year my mom would
stick some plant in there and water it to death, and fertilize it, but nothing ever took hold.

As I passed the bed, I noticed something small and shiny. I bent to pick it up.

It was a small red gem, a diamond you could have mistaken for a piece of broken glass.

Mr. de Guzman asked us to bring the diamond to the house. As Mark Clark and I drove up, Chelsea opened the front door to greet us. Winkin', Blinkin', and Ned squirted out the door, ran around in delirious doggy circles. Winkin' or Blinkin'—I could never tell them apart—dashed with his tongue hanging out to the center of the lawn and started digging. Ned trotted up and leaned against my shins, waiting for me to reach down and pet him. I ran my hand up and down his thick white fur with its lone ginger patch over his shoulder. I still could not believe that he wasn't good enough to be a show dog. To me, he was the best dog ever.

“Oh my God, this is soooooo amazing!” Chelsea jumped around in her striped halter top and torn jeans, clapping her hands and patting me on the back with both hands. It occurred to me that some people are born to be cheerleaders, and Chelsea de Guzman was one. “Let's see, let's see, let's see.”

I'd wrapped the diamond in some Kleenex and stuck it in an empty case of dental floss, just like Mrs. de Guzman
said she used to do. Chelsea gasped when she saw it. “It's in
there
? Eeew!”

“What do you mean? It's just dental floss.”

“I don't know,” she said, then laughed and skipped inside.

Mr. de Guzman didn't seem to think there was anything strange about the dental floss case. He took the case from me and led us all into his study. He had thick gray hair that was cut to curl over his ears in a fashionable way, and white movie star teeth. “You caught me just as I was leaving for my golf game. You golf, Mark?”

“Not if I can help it,” said Mark Clark.

“That's how I feel,” said Chelsea. “Daddy makes me go anyway.”

Mr. de Guzman sat down at his desk and turned on his gooseneck lamp, even though it was broad daylight. I leaned over his shoulder. He smelled like cinnamon and aftershave.

“I am frankly stunned at what a nuisance this diamond has turned out to be. I was just doing this as a favor to Rodney in exchange for credit at the end of his film. You know, sort of a product endorsement thing.”

He took out a small round magnifying glass—a jeweler's loupe—and a pair of tweezers and laid them on the blotter, then dumped out the Kleenex-wrapped gem. He carefully unwrapped it, rolled it around on the blotter with his finger. “The lesson to be learned here …” he
said, as he put the loupe to his eye, and plucked up the diamond with his tweezers.

I thought he was going to say that you should be more careful with such a rare and valuable thing as this.

“… is that beautiful gems make people do crazy things. We always thought of Frank as one of the family. Who could imagine he'd get up to something like this.” He shook his head. Mr. de Guzman was pretty handsome for a dad.

“The FBI is going to investigate,” said Mark Clark. “From what Minerva says, Frank and his partner don't seem like rocket scientists.”

“I think they'll be surprised to find it's much tougher to move these loose gems then people think,” said Mr. de Guzman.

He put the loupe close to his eye, brought the diamond up to the loupe.

“Maybe the diamond is cursed,” I said. “Like the Hope diamond.”

Mr. de Guzman had an easy laugh. He wasn't as stern as I remembered him to be the day I saw him in his gray suit at parent conferences. “I seriously hope not,” he said.

He put down the loupe and the tweezers and turned and looked at me. “You're a pretty unusual girl, aren't you?” he said.

“I don't think so,” I said. “I'm probably taller than most girls my age.”

“This diamond is a fake, Minerva. I'm sorry you went to so much trouble to find it.”

“What do you mean?”

“It's cubic zirconium. Probably worth about thirty bucks.”

“I don't understand. I found it in the dirt beside our back door. It came straight out of the craw of the pigeon Frank was using to move the diamond.”

“I don't know what to tell you. It's not the diamond I purchased in London.”

“Daddy, that's totally impossible,” cried Chelsea. “It has to be the diamond. Minerva like practically got killed trying to help me. She's my best friend!” Chelsea slung her arm around my shoulder and hugged me to her. “I like that skirt,” she said.

“I just don't know what to tell you,” said Mr. de Guzman. “We do appreciate what you've done for us.”

I sat down on one of the white couches. I stared at the matchy matchy paintings on the wall. I drew Ned up onto my lap.

“I think I know who's got the real diamond,” I said.

“You do?” asked Chelsea, her eyes wide. “Cool.”

It
was
cool, because Mr. de Guzman had an expression on his face that said he was all ears, and Mark Clark didn't attempt to silence me by saying, “I think that's enough mystery solving for one day, Minerva!” They looked at me, and they waited.

I thought back to Sylvia's conversation with Tonio, the one conducted all in Spanish. I realized now that she hadn't wanted me to understand. I thought back to the small silver packet Tonio had produced there at the shed, with the diamond stuck to the duct tape. The diamond hadn't looked special, because it wasn't special. Sylvia had instructed her devoted brother to bring another gem, pried from one of her own pieces of jewelry. By the time Frank would have sent Oreo out to McCarthy and McCarthy would have recovered the diamond from Oreo's craw, Sylvia and Tonio would be back in Puerto Vallarta. Frank had tried to double-cross Sylvia, but it was Sylvia who'd wound up double-crossing Frank. Even though Tonio and Sylvia hadn't started out as partners in crime, they'd ended up that way.

The night before, the patrolmen had given Mark Clark a phone number to call if he thought of anything else. He called the police. Mr. de Guzman smiled and said, “You
are
an unusual girl.”

After we left the de Guzmans' house Mark Clark and I picked up Jupiter at the humane society. He was in a nice cage in the small animal section, with a tag on his cage that said: “I'm lovable, but I like to stick my nose into other people's business!”

Just for the heck of it Mark Clark marched up to the
front desk and asked whether Frank was working that day. The woman working there said she'd heard he'd up and quit. We went around to the junkyard urban wilderness in the back to see if we could find my phone. There was yellow crime scene tape strung across the gap in the chain-link fence. Mark said to forget the phone, he'd buy me another one. But then I saw something glinting in the sun. I ducked beneath the tape, trotted through the weeds and debris, and snatched it up. I wiped the dust from it with my hand. The battery was dead, but otherwise it looked as if it still worked.

When we got home Morgan was in the backyard, stretching his sleeping bag out on the picnic table.

“Better move that before Mom gets here,” said Mark Clark. “She called and said she might be early.”

Morgan ignored him. I asked him how the desert was, and he asked me did I find out anything about that diamond. I said I did. He said good.

Sometimes it's just so nice having brothers. Things wouldn't be so simple when mom showed up. I ran into the kitchen to put my phone on its charger. Mark Clark's phone rang. It was the police.

“Some detectives went over to Sylvia Soto's apartment,” said Mark after he'd hung up. “She and her brother have apparently cleared out. Their apartment was empty, and the brother didn't show up on Rodney
von Lager's movie set today either. They've put out an all-points bulletin for them. And for Frank, too.”

“Do you think they'll actually catch them?” I asked.

“If they do, I'm sure they'll let us know,” said Mark Clark.

My question about whether the police would ever find Sylvia was answered later that day, when I went to Chelsea's house to hang for a bit. She'd called and asked me to come over. I grabbed my phone and set out.

I passed the mailman on the front walkway. He said “howdy” as he went on his way. Chelsea stood in the doorway with an armful of magazines and catalogues, reading a postcard, her eyebrows crinkled with confusion or worry or something. I'd never seen her look that way.

“And I thought we got a lot of dumb catalogues at our house,” I said, nodding at the pile of slick catalogues.

“This is bizarre,” she said.

She handed me the card.

As postcards go, it couldn't have been more boring. On the front it said Portland International Airport in fancy writing, and pictured a big silver jet on the runway, with snowy Mt. Hood in the background. I turned it over. It was addressed to “Chelsea and Her Nosy Friend.”

“I guess you're the Nosy Friend,” said Chelsea.

The card read:

Mi Amigas:

I just wanted to say … you are both GEMS! Well, got to catch my plane. Tonio says hello!

Adios!

Sylvia

“What do you think it means?” asked Chelsea, turning and leading me into their all white living room.

I laughed. “That we'll never see them again. Unless we go to Puerto Vallarta.”

Chelsea sat on the edge of the white sofa, smoothed her hair against her head. “Well, here's the thing,” she said. “My mom has a question for you. My mom is so lame sometimes. She tries to be cool, but sometimes she is just lame.”

“What's the question?” I asked.

“You don't have to say yes. I mean, just because we're best friends, don't think you have to do it. I know sometimes—like with Julia last year when she wanted me to go to that dance at her boyfriend's school way out in some horrible suburb—I can't even remember where—you just feel like you have to, but you don't have to. This is a way bigger thing than some stupid dance.”

It's a good thing Chelsea was the breed standard of cute, because otherwise she was sure annoying.
“What. Is. It?”

Then, at that moment, before Chelsea could say
another word, my cell phone made a sound I hadn't heard in the longest time, the semi-embarrassing
tring-tring-triiiiiiinnnnng
that tells me I have a message.

“Hold on a sec.”

I popped my Bluetooth over my ear. I had three messages.

All from Kevin.

“Minerva, it's me, Kevin. I'm somewhere … around Missoula? We just got phone service. I'll call you back.

“Minerva, okay, your phone's still not on. We're in Idaho or something. I really tried to call, but there was no phone service. Oh, man. I hope you're not totally mad at me.”

“Min? We just stopped at a 7-Eleven and I got you some of those tropical Starbursts that you like. Well, actually, I got about a dozen packages, so I could pick out all the kiwi banana ones. Those are your favorites, right? Call me!”

Before this moment, I never knew what people meant when they said they were in a swoon. But now I was in one. I felt as if I was going to float up to the ceiling like a birthday balloon. Each new message was better than any Christmas present I'd ever received. I sat down on the sofa.

“Who was
that
?” asked Chelsea. “Your face is all red.”

“Remember that guy I took to the last dance?”

“That total hottie you were slow-dancing with?”

Before I could answer, there was the sound of doggie toenails on the wood floor. It was Ned, on his leash, followed by Mrs. de Guzman.

“Well?” she said.

“Mom! I haven't had a chance to ask her yet! She was on the phone with her boyfriend. Jeez. She wants you to take Ned,” said Chelsea.

“Ned the dog?”

“Now that we've lost our dog sitter, we can't keep all three of them,” said Mrs. de Guzman. “And you and Ned seemed to have really hit it off.”

In the Clark house we have a motto: It's always easier to ask forgiveness than it is to ask permission. I hoped the brothers would remember this as I walked home with my new dog, Ned, trotting along beside me on his leash. I'd been held hostage twice this week, and helped break a jewel-thief ring. I'd been traumatized. The least they could do was let me have a dog.

Cloud 9 was way too low a cloud number to describe my mood. It was more like Cloud 999. Kevin would be home Friday! I tried to think of a way to get out of basic electronics, which was coming up.

It was slow going; Ned stopped to mark every tree between Chelsea's house and Casa Clark. This is Portland, Oregon; there are
a lot
of trees.

Mrs. de Guzman had packed Ned's wardrobe of
collars and rain jackets, his chewy toys and bowls, into a burlap tote bag from her tote bag collection. She said she had a million of them. They were always the special presents you got for donating money to public television. The bag wasn't light.

As Ned and I strolled along I couldn't help wondering whether the red diamond would ever be recovered. Maybe it wasn't just a face-in-the-crowd diamond after all, but every bit as cursed as the Hope diamond. Look at the stupid things people had done for it. Including trying to sneak it into the country in a cheap six-dollar ring. Of course, people didn't need a diamond in their lives to do ridiculous things. Love made people just as silly. Look at Reggie and Amanda the Panda, and Frank and Sylvia, and even Kevin, with his dozen packages of tropical Starbursts fruit chews.

I was feeling all wise and happy as I turned up the street that led to Casa Clark. Life could not be better. Then, as I reached our driveway, I spied my mom's old white Pathfinder parked in the driveway. I knew it was her from the New Mexico plates. The car was covered with dust from the drive. She and her boyfriend Rolando were early.