Minerva Clark Goes to the Dogs (3 page)

Even though the hawk was now just a speck in the sky, gliding away over the gray roofs, I sprinted down a cross street in the opposite direction, hoping he was too busy with his baby opossum to notice me. I ran as far as I could with my eyes closed, in case he decided to circle back and peck my eyes out.

I was sweaty from running, especially my scalp. I tied
my hair in a knot. We Clarks are a family of sweaty heads. Even Morgan, who is my youngest older brother and has the thinnest hair of all of us, gets a bad sweaty head from time to time. I wished I'd left my hoodie at home. I took it off and tied it tight around my waist. At the MAX station I sat down on a bench to wait.

No one I knew paid much attention to other people's parents. They all faded together: a bunch of old people who complained about their aching knees and listened to National Public Radio in the car. I did remember Mr. de Guzman, though. At the last parent/teacher conference of the year, Chelsea had the slot before me. The conferences were held in the cafeteria at card tables set in a long row. Unlike all the other dads, who showed up in business-casual khakis or jeans, Mr. de Guzman wore a suit and a red tie. He made notes on Chelsea's papers with a gold pen. He looked much more serious and rich than the rest of our parents. He was intimidating.

I found a seat on the train beside a lady in a black jacket and black pants, her roller suitcase tucked in front of her feet, tapping madly on her Palm Pilot. She was a businesswoman on the way to go on a business trip, obviously. That's one thing about MAX—you can always tell what people are up to by what they're wearing and what they're carrying. I found a stale Starburst in my back pocket. If there's one thing I like more than
a stale piece of red licorice, it's a stale kiwi banana Starburst. It's my favorite candy, hands down.

The airport is only twenty minutes from our house, and MAX lets you off right at the terminal. The doors whooshed open, and people hurrying to catch their flights swarmed around me. I was early. I could take my time. I'd told Chelsea to meet me in front of Page and Turner Books on the main concourse. At our airport—and maybe at all airports—there are a lot of fancy shops selling expensive stationery, jewelry and glass bowls, carved wooden animals, woolen blankets, work-out clothes. Stuff you would never need to take with you on an airplane. Page and Turner was almost exactly across the way from Coffee People.

It was 1:10, then it was 1:20. I listened over the loudspeaker to one boarding announcement after the next. It was 1:30. There was a table stacked with books on sale in front of the store, which I thumbed through for half a lifetime. Inside the shop, the lady behind the register kept glancing out the window at me, as if I was going to steal something. A man who smelled like beer stood staring at the display in the window, then dabbed his eyes with his knuckles and wandered away. I kept looking over at Coffee People, to see how my plan was going to work.

I told myself that if Chelsea wasn't here by 2:00 I was leaving, but then there she was, hurrying toward me in
her lime green platform flip-flops, holding her dark blond hair to the sides of her head. It was wet. There were two fresh Band-Aids on her suntan legs, from where it looked like she cut herself shaving. She wore a pink and green flowered pleated skirt and a faded pink T-shirt that said PUGS NOT DRUGS across the front, over a picture of a tough-looking pug. She wore rubber bracelets and a couple of gold necklaces and smelled like lemon and vanilla and in general looked as if she was going to a dance and not to the airport to dig through the garbage, which was part of my plan.

Of course, Chelsea didn't know that yet.

“I was starting to think you weren't coming.” I was surprised at how relieved I was to see her. The idea of trudging back home without having a new mystery to solve depressed me. I thought of an entire summer of boring chores and notes from my brothers tacked to the refrigerator.

“Sorry I'm late.” She dug into her tiny green leather purse for some lip gloss, which she rolled on her already-glossy lips. “Did you get the ring?”

“Uh … no?” Chelsea apparently thought I would just magically produce it. She wanted the ring found, but she wanted it delivered special delivery right to her front door. “We're here to find the name of the lady who bought it from you. We need to figure out who has it before we can get it.”

“Oh. Right.” She sighed, patted her hair. “You're such a brainiac these days, I thought maybe you'd gotten it all figured out while you were waiting. Well, now what?”

“Now we go into Coffee People and hope they haven't emptied the garbage since you were here a few hours ago. You said the lady bought her drink with a credit card. See that big metal garbage can across from the counter where you pick up your drinks? Was that the can where you saw her throw away her receipt?”

I tipped my head toward Coffee People. Through the glass doors that opened up onto the concourse you could see everything: the glass pastry case, with its small piles of scones, cookies, and Danishes; the curved counter; and beside it, a tall stainless steel garbage can, into which a customer was slipping the wrapper from a straw.

“Yeah,” said Chelsea. She wasn't looking at Coffee People at all, but was staring at me with the same fearful look you get when a teacher asks to see you after class.

“Here's the great thing. Coffee People's got their orders all computerized. I've been watching. It's not like Starbucks, where they call out the drinks. Watch the girl take the orders. She taps it into the cash register, then it pops up on the display by the coffee machine. Whatever complicated drink the lady ordered is probably written on the slip, along with the time she ordered it, which was sometime between ten o'clock and ten thirty, right?”

“Minerva, I am not going to go through the garbage.”

“How else are we going to find the receipt?”

“What kind of a freak do you think I am? What if someone from
school,
saw us? Uhn-uh. No way.” Her voice got louder and higher. A few passengers hurrying by on their way to the security gate turned and stared.

“I kind of doubt anyone from school will see us,” I said.

“I know you might not care, because you think you're all cool and perfect at all times, or whatever it was that happened to you when you got electrocuted, but I still care what people think.”

“I care what people think,” I said.

“Fine. Whatever. But I am
not
digging through the garbage. I'll do anything else but that.”

“All right,” I said. “You distract the counter girl, while I take out the garbage bag.”

She threw me a look.

“All you have to do is order something and spill it.”

“Like what, a cup of coffee? No way. What if I get some on my skirt? I just got this skirt. It's from London.”

“They have milk shakes, too. They're thicker, they won't splash.”

“This is unbelievably stupid,” said Chelsea, checking her phone to see if she had any messages.

“Come on, Chelsea. While I was waiting I watched the counter girl. She likes things neat. She wipes down
the counter every time she gets a spare minute. Just watch her.”

Chelsea and I looked over. The girl had just finished filling the napkin holder and was wiping it down with a white towel. A flight must have just arrived, because suddenly a herd of people with backpacks and roller suitcases formed themselves into a line.

As we watched, one of the airport janitors shuffled up with his trolley of cleaning supplies. He parked it just outside Coffee People, then strode inside. He said hey to the girl behind the counter. Even from this distance I could tell he was trying to impress her. He talked a lot, but she just nodded. He had a pair of sunglasses on top of his head. He took them off and showed them to her. A clear plastic bag stuck out of his back pocket. She started wiping down the counter with the white towel. He turned, lifted the lid off the can with one hand, and hauled out the garbage bag with the other.

“Come on.” I grabbed Chelsea's arm and dragged her across the concourse. There was no time to lose.

“Hi there, can I talk to you for a minute?” I called out to the janitor. He was just about to tie a knot in the garbage bag and set it on his cart. He looked like he was Mark Clark's age, mid-twenties. He was tall and straight up and down skinny, with a wispy brown mustache and sad eyes. Over his pocket there was a name patch that said LEO.

He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could say anything, I started talking. That's something I've learned. When in doubt, be friendly and start talking. Most people are too polite to just turn on their heel, and while the words are pouring out of your mouth you can think of what you want to say. “Leo, my friend here lost her passport. She thinks she might have thrown it away by accident when she was getting coffee.”

I could feel Chelsea's big blue eyes sending rays of pure exasperation into the back of my head. Of course Chelsea wasn't the type of person to lose her passport—she probably had a designer passport holder that matched her designer suitcase—but I needed to make it sound important so Leo would help us.

Leo let out a huge sigh and dropped the bag. “Knock yourselves out, ladies.”

“I really like your sunglasses,” I said.

I took the bag from him and dragged it over to one of the small metal tables lined up outside the shop. I flashed him a big grin as I sat down and opened the bag. Leo frowned a little, as if he couldn't tell whether I was goofing with him or not.

“We'll try to make it quick,” I added.

He shrugged and looked away, as if we were doing something too personal to watch.

Chelsea sat down in the small metal chair opposite me, muttering under her breath. I hauled another chair
around so the bag was between us. I pulled out the empty paper cups and stacked them on the table. Chelsea pulled out every lipstick-stained napkin and plastic cup lid with the tips of her fingers, as though the cooties were going to race up her arm, into her ears, and straight into her brain. I know I know I know: It
was
disgusting, but it could have been worse. We could be going through a giant landfill in some tropical country on the hottest day of the year. Or hey, cleaning out the fridge at my house.

“We don't have all day,” I whispered. “We've got to pick this up.” I plunged my arm deeper into the bag. I pulled out every smooth slip of paper I could get my hands on and stuffed it into my pocket. People stared at us as they passed, wondering what in the heck we were doing. “Lose something?” snickered one teenaged girl. “A contact lens? Your mind?” Her friends snorted with hilarity.

“You're sure it was around ten thirty?” I asked.

“Didn't I already say that about a thousand times?”

“Look, if you want my help, don't act all stuck-up, all right?”

Chelsea sulked, but dug her arm into the garbage bag.

“Any luck?” said Leo the janitor. He kept glancing over at us, tugging on one end of his mustache, suspicious. “I gotta keep moving here.”

Then, down near the bottom, I pinched a long slip that had curled around a damp cup, hauled it up along
with a few other crumbled bags and grease-spotted paper plates, glanced at it quickly.

She shoots, she scores. I was sure this was it. I leaped up, knocking my chair over.

“Gosh darn,” I said, trying to sound convincing. “It's not here. But thanks anyway.” I stuffed all the empty latte cups, napkins, old newspapers, half-eaten muffins, and all the rest of the trash back into the bag.

“I guess you can probably get it replaced,” the janitor said to Chelsea.

“I—” Chelsea began. I could tell that for a second she'd forgotten the lie about the passport. I grabbed her arm and dragged her down the concourse, toward the escalator.

“We're golden,” I said. I had the name of the lady who'd bought Chelsea's ring. I felt like running, or skipping, actually. I hadn't really thought this idea would work, but it was the only thing I could think of. I could hear Chelsea's flip-flops slapping against her feet as she scampered along.

“Let's see it!” she said.

“Wait until we get downstairs,” I said, hopping on the escalator. I hate the down escalator almost as much as I hate birds; the long sinister-looking metal steps always look as if they're disappearing into nothing, that stepping onto them is stepping over a cliff.

I wouldn't look at the slip until we were on the MAX
speeding back toward Portland. There was a bunch of writing on it, stuff that we couldn't make any sense of, then this: Dbl T Car Sy XX Fmy Latte.

Chelsea grabbed it out of my hand. She had no trouble deciphering the code. “Double Tall Caramel Soy Extra-Foamy Latte. That's it. I'm positive. I remember thinking,
What's with the extra foamy business? Aren't lattes already like halffoam?
”

The time stamped on it was 10:27, and the name on it was Sylvia Soto.

“She totally looked like a Sylvia. I'm sure that's her,” said Chelsea. She kept clapping her hands together. “This really kicks serious willy.”

“Kicks serious
willy
?” I snorted with laughter.

“They say it all the time in London, all right?”

Finding the receipt with Sylvia's name on it may have kicked serious willy, but by the time we arrived at the MAX stop near Chelsea's house, I'd run out of ideas. We had Sylvia Soto's name, but now what? The sun was still a gray ball behind the clouds. I retied my hair in a knot on top of my head. Chelsea could barely sit still. She kept wishing aloud for some hand sanitizer. She wanted to go home and change her clothes.

Since I couldn't think of anything better to do, I said that sounded like a good idea. I figured we could use
Chelsea's computer to Google Sylvia Soto. That would probably be the best way to find her.