Pish Posh (9 page)

“What are you doing?” Ms. Piff asked suspiciously, entering the room with a box of tissues in her hand. Clara straightened up quickly.

“This is mine,” she said, clutching the goldfish picture tightly to her chest. “I drew it for Dr. Piff.”

“That thing? Take it, I don't mind. It was in the garbage pile anyway. ” She indicated the mess of papers on the floor.

“You were going to throw it away?” Clara cried.

“We can't keep all my father's junk, you know.” Then, seeing that she'd offended Clara, she added, “Well, for heaven's sake, he had the thing up on his wall for years! That should make you happy. ”

It didn't. In fact, it made Clara miserable. She felt ensnared in a horrible tangle of guilt and sorrow. She'd banished Dr. Piff from Pish Posh, and he'd died right afterward. And he had kept her picture up on his office wall for so many years. How must he have felt that night when she told him he was a Nobody? Clara's eyes grew hot, and a strange, thick sensation in her throat made her press her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

Clara tried to remember when she first met Dr. Piff, but couldn't. He just always seemed to be standing on the edge of her life—calm and quiet, and watching her with his small, intelligent eyes. Now he was dead. He was not a Somebody or a Nobody anymore. He was simply gone.

“So, do you need these?” Ms. Piff asked impatiently, holding the box of tissues out toward Clara.

Clara took a deep breath. No, she was not going to cry. Decidedly not. Absolutely not. She shook her head.

“No?” Ms. Piff said. “Well, I wish you'd make up your mind. Okay, then”—she gave Clara's back a little nudge with the tips of her fingers—“off you go.”

Clara sidestepped away from Ms. Piff, knelt down quickly, and went to grab the old envelope. But before she could pick it up, Ms. Piff's hard black heel clamped down on the file.

“I don't believe that belongs to you,” she said.

“It's going to be thrown out anyway,” Clara protested. “You said this is the garbage pile.”

“The garbage pile, not the free-to-a-good-home pile,” Ms. Piff replied tartly. She pinched her fingers into Clara's shoulder until Clara stood, and then all but shoved Clara out the door. But before she left, Clara whirled around.

“Dr. Piff was
not
a slob!” she cried, making Ms. Piff's auburn eyebrows rise nearly to her hairline. “He stacked his plates for the busboys. And his hair was always neatly combed!” It was a weak defense of Dr. Piff, and she knew it. So did Ms. Piff, who dismissed her outburst by shutting the office door in Clara's face.

Clara turned and walked back down the hall, feeling furious with Ms. Piff but even more furious with herself. She'd had her hand right on the envelope, which contained—she was certain—the answer to Audrey's secret. Now the envelope would be thrown out. Audrey the soup cook had won.

Suddenly, a thought occurred to her, one that she had not bothered wondering about before. Why had Dr. Piff mentioned the “most peculiar and mysterious thing” if he had not wanted her to figure out what it was? Surely he knew that she would insist upon finding out what it was. Had he deliberately sent her on a quest? Yes, now that she thought of it, she was almost certain that he had.

She felt her muscles tighten and her spine draw up. Lifting her glasses off the top of her head, she replaced them on her nose. The world dimmed through the dark lenses, and as she nibbled on the ends of her hair, her brain began to churn. She was determined that she would not let Dr. Piff down again. And when she was determined to do a certain thing, that thing was as good as done.

I
t took Clara exactly three and a half minutes to figure out what she needed to do next. Outside Dr. Piff's office, she fetched a cab, and a few minutes later she was on Annabelle's doorstep, pressing the doorbell.

It was Annabelle's father, Mr. Arbutnot, who came to the door. His pleasant face looked distressed, but when he saw it was Clara, his expression brightened instantly.

“Annabelle's friend, isn't it?” He ushered her in immediately and beckoned her to follow him upstairs, explaining as they went, “Annabelle locked herself in her room yesterday, and she won't speak to me at all, or even open her door.”

“What's wrong with her?” Clara asked.

“Oh, let's just say she's never handled change very well. ”

At the top of the stairs, he turned down a short hallway, and knocked on the first door to the left. There was no answer.

“Annabelle? Honey? Your friend—” He paused here and whispered to Clara, “I don't think I know your name.” She told him, and he called through the door, “—your friend Clara is here to see you.”

There was silence at first, then, “Tell her I'm sick.”

“You don't
sound
sick, ” Clara shot back. Silence again. Then, in another minute, the door opened a crack. Mr. Arbutnot gave Clara a soft, encouraging pat on her back and left her.

“I'm not in the mood for company,” Annabelle said squarely, then started to close the door. But Clara wedged her foot in the opening.

“I didn't come here to give you any,” Clara said.

“I already returned your pearls,” Annabelle said glumly. “What more do you want?”

“I'll tell you if you let me in.” With a quick shove, Clara pushed open the door, sending Annabelle backward a few steps. Annabelle's room was a mess, with crumpled clothing strewn across the floor and a spill of magazines beside her bed. But Annabelle herself was in even worse shape. She was dressed in a pair of wrinkled flannel pajamas, and her hair was sticking out every which way.

“When's the last time you combed your hair?” Clara asked. Annabelle scowled and hastily ran a hand through her disheveled hair. Then she turned her back to Clara and sat down on her bed.

“What's the matter with you, anyway?” Clara asked, folding her arms across her chest.

Annabelle turned around, and Clara noticed that her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, as though she'd been crying.

“Everything. ”

If anyone else had said this, Clara would have dismissed them as being overdramatic, but there was a truly desperate tone to Annabelle's voice.

“What happened?” Clara asked.

“My father has decided to go legit. No more burglarizing. No more jewelry heists. He's going to be a full-time hypnotherapist! And I'm supposed to be a full-time normal kid. I'll have to do things like join the school chorus and have slumber parties and worry about which lip gloss to wear... oh, cripes, can you even
picture
it?” she wailed. In truth, Clara could not picture it. Then she remembered why she had come in the first place... and suddenly she felt just as rotten as Annabelle.

“That's bad. Bad for both of us.”

“Why for both of us?” Annabelle asked.

“Because I came here to hire you and your father to steal something for me. ”

“Really?” Annabelle perked up at this, and her eyes suddenly looked a little less mournful. “Steal what?”

“Nothing valuable,” Clara said a little cagily, suddenly aware that she didn't want to tell Annabelle everything. “Just a manila envelope from a doctor's office.”

“A doctor's office, huh? Okay, okay...” Annabelle was out of bed now, heading for her desk and looking, miraculously, fully recovered. “What's the address?”

“What does it matter?” Clara shrugged. “Your father won't do it.”

“That doesn't mean
I
can't. ”

Clara toyed with this new idea. Could Annabelle do it on her own?

“Your father would kill you,” Clara suggested.

“Not if he doesn't know. Now come on, what's the address?”

Clara told her, and Annabelle immediately sat down at her desk and booted up her computer.

“What are you doing?” Clara asked.

“Pull up a chair. I'll show you.”

Annabelle logged on to the Internet and plunked in a Web site address. On the screen, a Web site popped up: The American Association of Burglars, Crooks, and Ne'er-Do-Wells. In the corner of the screen was an animation of a man with dark beard stubble and a black mask across his eyes, who kept putting one finger to his lips and saying, “Shhhhhh.”

“You have to be a member, ” Annabelle explained as she entered a password. “It costs a heap of money, but they have a great database. ”

Annabelle's password was accepted, and the screen changed to a search engine. This time the animation of the grizzled burglar winked through his mask. Annabelle typed in the address of Dr. Piff's office, and immediately a photo of a high-rise building appeared on-screen.

“That's Dr. Piff's office building!” Clara exclaimed, and no sooner had she spoken than the image changed to a three-dimensional drawing of the high-rise, which turned around and around, so that you could see every angle, with all the floors visible. Little coins of different colors flashed in different parts of the building—green, silver, and gold.

“What do the coins mean?” Clara asked.

“Oh, they just tell you which offices have anything worth stealing. Green means there's some stuff worth taking, but nothing to write home about. Silver is better, and gold means you've hit the jackpot. But see what's inside some of the coins?”

Clara leaned in closer to the computer screen. In some of the coins was a pair of tiny handcuffs.

“What's that supposed to mean?” she asked Annabelle.

“That means the office has high security... you know, laser beams, high-tech alarm systems-a real nightmare for burglars.”

“Well, what about Dr. Piff's office?”

“What floor is he on?”

“The sixteenth. Office number sixteen seventy-one.”

Annabelle typed in this information, and the sixteenth floor appeared on the screen, with all its flashing coins.

“We're in luck.” Annabelle pointed to the door marked 1671, where a green coin was flashing steadily. “Light security.” Annabelle clicked on the green coin, and then clicked the burglar's nose for more information.

“Easy pickings,” the masked burglar icon growled, “if youse got a thing for stethoscopes and tongue depressors. ”

“There's a single alarm,” Annabelle said, “which I can disarm, no problem. ”

“Good.” Clara sat back in the chair, satisfied. “Then this will be easy. ”

“Hardly.” Annabelle bit at her lower lip, then clicked back to the floor plan of the entire building. “You see, we have to get into the building first, and that's going to be the challenge. We'll have to enter through the front door, and there's a security guard stationed there twenty-four hours a day. ”

“Oh.” Clara slumped back in her chair and sighed. “Then it's hopeless. ”

“Cripes, you give up easily,” Annabelle said.

Clara looked at Annabelle, beginning to get irritated. “All I want to know is whether you can do it or not. ”

“And all I'm saying is there's always a loophole. Well, almost always. See the ice-cream cone? ” She moved the cursor to a tiny icon of a chocolate ice-cream cone in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. “That's a feature called the Inside Scoop. Frankly, it's why most of us burglars are willing to pay so much money to become a member of the American Association of Burglars, Crooks, and Ne'er-Do-Wells. Watch this.” Annabelle clicked on the ice-cream cone, and on the monitor a movie started to play. The movie showed a pale man with a thin, hard face and massive shoulders sitting behind a desk in the lobby of Dr. Piff's office building. The man's body was very, very still, but his eyes were constantly moving between several security monitors that sat on his desk. He put out a finger and touched a button on one of the monitors. Then he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a small rectangular packet, which he quickly tore open. He pulled something out of the packet and began to rub it on his hands.

“Dis here is Stan Heckle, da nighttime security guard. ” The masked bandit icon was narrating the film—you could see his lips moving. “Don't let his pasty-faced mug fool youse. He's a tough customer—smart and mean as sin. In fact, da guy used to be a burglar hisself, in London, till he reformed and became a security guard. He knows all da tricks, and dat makes him dangerous. Also, when Stan catches a burglar, he don't call the police. He takes da matter into his own hands. Like what he did to da burglar last month, for instance ... ”

There was a pause, while the icon's thick black eyebrows rose with significance.

“Well?” Clara turned to Annabelle. “Isn't he going to tell us what happened?”

Annabelle whispered back. “He wants us to ask him what happened. Go ahead. Type it in. But sound like you're very interested. ”

“I
am
very interested!” Clara replied.

What did he do to the burglar last month?
Clara typed the question into the little question box on the upper right-hand corner of the screen. Annabelle stuck her elbow into Clara's side, and Clara added,
I'm dying to know.
She pressed ENTER.

“Are youse sure you want to hear?” the masked burglar asked coyly.

“He's milking this one... it must be good,” Annabelle said. She leaned across Clara and typed,
We're on pins and needles! We're frothing at the mouth with anticipation!!!
then pressed ENTER.

“Calm down, will youse! Okay, here's what happened. Last month Stan caught a burglar in da building. Stan tied da poor guy up, put a gag over his mouth, shoved him in da building's mail pouch, and took him home. Da guy ain't been seen since den. But I'll tell youse what. One month later a body washed up on da banks of da Hudson River, and da burglar's wife said she was eighty-eight percent sure it was her husband. She couldn't be a hundred percent certain, see, since he didn't have a head no more. ”