Molly Moon Stops the World (7 page)

“Welcome to the Château Marmont.”

Everyone was very excited to have arrived, although they were all dazed and dehydrated from the plane, and their eyeballs felt as dry as if they’d been rolled around in tissue and then put back in their sockets. Ascending in the elevator to the hotel’s reception area, Molly realized what an odd-looking and scruffy party they made, with boxes of mice and parakeets and Nockman with a nine-o’clock shadow around his chin where he hadn’t shaved.

The foyer of the hotel was very smart and dark, with tall ceilings and a stone floor. Next to it was a grand sitting room that was packed with people. A few looked up disapprovingly at the gaggle of children. Nockman walked off to find the men’s room.

Molly went to the front desk to check in. A receptionist with a skin like an unpeeled avocado looked worriedly at Roger, who was hugging a small palm tree in a pot.

“Is he with you?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Molly. “He’ll calm down in a minute—he’s just got I’ve-been-on-a-plane-too-long-itis.”

The receptionist looked at the five children in front of him.

“I’m afraid I can’t check you in until a responsible adult arrives.”

“Uurrgh,” growled Molly. “Honestly, we’re just as responsible as them.” And to avoid wasting any more time, she zapped the avocado man’s eyes until he was ready to do exactly what she asked. Then she organized where everyone would sleep.

As the receptionist smiled obediently, Mrs. Trinklebury arrived. She was late because she’d found herself in the elevator with the famous actor Cosmo Ace. She’d followed him up to the seventh floor and into the fitness rooms, where she’d watched him pedal an exercise bike. Molly realized that Mrs. Trinklebury was going to love the Château Marmont.

Nockman took the key to his room and disappeared up the stairs with his birds and his luggage. The rest of the party followed a bellboy outside.

In the gardens, where it was now dark, steel heaters like tall, stubby umbrellas showered down heat on guests at tables beneath them.

As they weaved along a path between urns of pansies, Molly overheard snippets of conversations:

“Steve says he loves your screenplay but he wants Spelkman directing it.”

“But Spelkman stinks. His films are slop. He can’t get performances out of actors. Oh, no, this is terrible.”

“It’s the only way, Randy.”

“Now listen, Barbara. I don’t want anyone who
eats meat
doing my hair or my makeup, or my nails or anything. Is that clear? I don’t want any of that bad energy near me.”

“Okay, Blake.”

“So what are you wearing to the Academy Awards, Jean? Remember, it’s watched by people all over the world.”

“As little as possible.”

They walked along a jungly path overhung with rustling palm trees and lined with staghorn ferns. Mrs. Trinklebury and Roger’s bungalow was situated near a sunbathing garden where a waterfall cascaded down from rocks into a swimming pool. Roger patted the trunk of a broad-leafed ficus tree, and the hotel parrot squawked at him from its cage.

The others followed the bellboy again, to the top of a
narrow stone-stepped path, where they came to the best bungalow of all.

It was perfect for Petula, because it had a fenced lawn in front of it with a little wooden gate. It was a modern rectangular building whose whole front was made of glass. Inside, there was a big sitting room with an Lshaped sofa and a TV, and a small kitchen area to one side.

“Someone will come in and clean up whenever you cook,” said the bellboy.

On top of a counter was a basket full of potato chips and candy.

“We’ll replenish the snack basket every day.”

Gemma started to flick through the hotel’s leatherbound brochure.

“Look! There’s a hotel film library and it’s got hundreds of films to borrow. An’ music …” Gemma spent the next ten minutes on the phone, calling the others in their rooms. She took room service orders, and twenty minutes later the food arrived on trays under silver lids. Steaks, French fries, milk shakes, and, since they didn’t have orange squash concentrate, Molly ordered some grenadine instead. The room-service waiter explained that this was made from pomegranates and was a fruity syrup that was supposed to be mixed
with lemonade, and when it was mixed with ginger ale, Americans called it a Shirley Temple cocktail.

Molly sipped the concentrated grenadine from a glass full of ice. She knew that Shirley Temple had been a child star in the 1930s, and this made her think of Davina Nuttel. She hoped she was safe, wherever she was.

Molly woke in the middle of the night, her body thinking that it was morning. Back in Briersville, it was already ten A.M. She found it difficult to go back to sleep because Gerry’s mice were on their squeaky exercise wheel and, outside, a tree creaked noisily.

She wished that she was in this luxurious hotel to enjoy a vacation, not to embark upon an uncertain mission. Investigating Primo Cell had sounded dangerous back home. Now it felt impossible, too. Molly considered what exactly she and Rocky should do, now they were in Cell territory. Definitely, the most important thing was to find out whether Cell was behind Davina Nuttel’s kidnaping and, if he was, to find her.

As Molly tried to get to sleep, two images from the file of photographs that Lucy had given her kept returning to her mind. One was of Cell in hunting clothes with a half-cocked rifle under his arm and two
lifeless pheasants over his shoulder. The other was of him on safari, with a larger gun and his foot resting on the flank of a large dead antelope.

Molly reached down the bed to stroke Petula. Primo Cell most certainly liked killing things.

E
arly next morning, Gerry tapped on Molly’s bedroom door, waking her up. He was wearing swimming trunks, water wings, and a huge hotel bathrobe that trailed on the floor.

“Comin’, Molly? Breakfast is by the pool. We’re gonna ‘ave pancakes.”

For a moment, as the sun washed into the room, Molly was still half dreaming that she was back at Happiness House on a boiling hot morning. Then the memory of what she had to do today drowned her carefree thoughts. She groaned.

Half an hour later, Molly and Rocky were sitting in their pajamas on the floor in Molly’s room. The contents of Lucy Logan’s briefcase were spread out before them.

“Okay,” began Molly, “to find anything out, we’re going to have to check out Primo Cell’s home
and
his headquarters
and
the stars he’s hypnotized. If we do all that, we may find something out about Davina.”

“I suggest,” said Rocky, “that we get Nockman in here, ask him what he needs for lock breaking and computer-code cracking, and then, tonight, when Cell’s office building is empty, we should break into it. If Lucy is right, and he is planning to hypnotize and
keep
hypnotized thousands, maybe millions, of people, and if he’s already got hundreds under his control, he can’t have all the details in his head. He’ll have to keep files—either written down or in a computer. And there has to be a secret place where he keeps them—in a locked cabinet or a locked room. I bet there’s something there that will tell us whether he’s had anything to do with Davina Nuttel.”

“But why his headquarters tonight? Why not his home?”

“Because he’ll be asleep there, Molly. Wake up.”

“Okay, okay.” Molly pulled the map of L.A. toward them. “His headquarters are in Westwood, near Beverly Hills. We can catch a sixty-seven bus.”

“The bus?”

“That will make us inconspicuous. We’ll take Petula
and we’ll look like a couple of kids walking the dog with our—um—uncle.”

Thirty minutes later, Mr. Nockman stood docilely in front of them. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt decorated with exotic birds and a pair of flowerpatterned Bermuda shorts that Mrs. Trinklebury had bought him. His mouth hung open, so Molly could see he had six or seven fillings. Petula sniffed at his hairy flip-flopped feet.

“I hate to hypnotize him again,” said Molly. “He was doing so well. And I really hope that doing something criminal doesn’t make him miss his old life.”

“We’re not interfering with his self-improvement,” said Rocky. “It’s just one night, and it’s all for a good cause. He won’t remember he’s done it.”

“Okay,” said Molly, concentrating. “You, Nockman, are going to accompany us tonight. You will tell Mrs. Trinklebury that you will be doing some work for the Benefactor—you know, the man who Mrs. T. thinks sends us money at the orphanage. Say you’re changing his front door locks for him.”

“Yes.” Nockman nodded.

“You must bring everything you might need for opening locks, for breaking codes of combination locks, and for cracking codes to access files in computers.
Imagine you are going to be robbing a very secure office. Is there anything special you need?” She paused while he thought.

“I—vill need—explosives.”

“Well, I’m afraid you can’t have them. They’re too noisy, and they make too much mess.”

“Some locks,” said Nockman, shaking his head, “may be impossible—to open.” Molly looked at Rocky worriedly. They couldn’t use explosives. They didn’t want Cell knowing they’d broken in.

“No one is to know about this,” said Rocky.

“No—vun.”

“Meet us outside the hotel entrance at ten tonight,” said Molly. “Now, go and spend the day with your birds and Mrs. Trinklebury. As soon as you leave here, you will come out of your trance.”

Nockman nodded like a programmed robot and plodded away.

“Good work,” said Rocky, yawning. “We might as well go down to the pool too. We’ve got the whole day to spare. I want to practice my diving.”

“What, and get recognized again?” said Molly sharply. “Who knows who’ll be down at the pool? If Cell really is who Lucy says he is, he’ll maybe have spies about. We can’t risk it.”

Rocky breathed out exasperatedly. “I suppose you’re
right.” He picked up a photograph of Cell and began to draw a beak and wings on him.

In the distance the hotel parrot squawked, “Have a nice day, have a nice day.”

Molly closed the curtains against the sun, and picking up the hotel’s video-rental menu, she resigned herself to a day of watching movies.

A
t ten that night, Molly left Mrs. Trinklebury sipping a pink drink and eating pretzels in the hotel lobby, where she was blissfully happy to be overhearing Hollywood gossip about the Academy Awards. She was completely ignorant as to where Molly, Rocky, Petula, and Nockman were really going.

Outside, they made their way to the bus stop across the street from the hotel’s driveway. Molly and Rocky were wearing canvas hats to help hide their faces. Nockman was dressed in a black turtleneck and black trousers. He was carrying a small canvas bag that Molly supposed had tools in it.

“You look, erm, professional,” said Molly.

“Sank you,” said Nockman.

“It’s his cat-burglar look,” Rocky whispered in her ear. “I hope it’s not
too
professional looking. We don’t want to look suspicious. I’ll take the tools.”

Petula sniffed the air. For some reason it was full of the scents of lots of dogs very nearby. She looked around and saw behind her a huge cutout of a dog’s face. Below it were the words
BELLA’S POODLE SALON AND DOG HOTEL
. Although the writing didn’t make sense to Petula, the smells did. Her nose sensed a Labrador, a Yorkshire terrier, a bulldog, and some sort of oriental-smelling dog. There were other dog breeds she didn’t recognize at all. On top of all their scents were shampoo smells, perfumes, and the aromas of essential oils. The place was obviously a dog beauty parlor. Petula hoped that after they’d done whatever was making Molly nervous, she’d get to go there for a wash and blow-dry.

“Arrooof!” she barked at Molly, to show her what she’d found. But Molly hardly heard her. Scary thoughts were rolling around and around her brain like snakes on roller skates.

Perhaps, she thought, Primo Cell had other hypnotists working in the building—big thugs who worked all night as security guards. What would she and Rocky say if they were caught? How would they explain Nockman,
who would be standing there all dopey and hypnotized? To Molly it felt as scary as diving off a boat into the sea where lots of sharks swam.

“Do you think he works late?” she asked Rocky nervously.

“Nah,” Rocky replied. “He likes to go out at night with all his famous pals. His hypnotized celebrities, I mean. You can bet he’ll be in a fancy restaurant somewhere.”

The blue-and-white sixty-seven bus shook them from their worries by stopping with an air-expelling sigh. They climbed aboard, and fed the meter with tokens they’d bought at the hotel. Molly was glad it was practically empty.

The bus chugged westward. On both sides of the streets were interesting buildings. The Cowboy’s Retreat was a log cabin fronted with flashing neon lights. The Emerald Crown was a hotel shaped like a wedding cake with a carpet that rolled down to the road like a green beach meeting a tarmac sea. They passed another GANDOLLI FOR PRESIDENT poster. It was next to a giant lizard-shaped billboard above a record store. The purple Groovy Lizzening reptile was wearing sunglasses and earphones and looked much more cool than the cheesy cowboy-hatted politician. Crowds of people swarmed around the
entrance to a music venue called Whiskey-A-Go-Go. A slat board on the side of it showed who was performing tonight.

“Wow, I’d like to go there,” said Rocky.

Molly was looking at a person sitting under a lit-up sign that read
STAR MAPS FOR SALE HERE
.

“What are star maps?” she asked the bus driver.

“They’re maps that have all the streets in Beverly Hills and Hollywood on them, and they’re marked to show you where all the stars live,” he told her, repositioning one of his ornamental cactuses on the dashboard.

“What?” said Molly. “You mean the maps show you
exactly
how you can get to the stars’ houses?”

“Yeah, of course. You can see what the outside of their homes look like, but you can’t go near ‘em. They got security and guards—otherwise fans would be crawlin’ over their grounds.”