Nanny X (11 page)

“A hiding place?” Boris guessed.

“I didn't get a good look at what he was hiding in there,” I said. “But yeah.”

Boris took the bib, which he'd ejected from the car dashboard, and handed it to Stinky. “If I'm not out in seventeen minutes, you will contact the police, yes? Give them these coordinates. They'll come.” He handed the diaper bag to me. “Eliza may need a change.” He cracked open the side door of the airplane hangar, and slid inside.

I jiggled Eliza up and down. Stinky looked like he'd been through this before. Lots of times.

“So how'd you get out of jail?” I said.

“That call from your mother. After she told them that thing she told them, she faxed them a letter. And she called the judge. And she mentioned a lawsuit. But she also said I wasn't a flight risk and the nearest detention center was in Lorton, and couldn't they just release me to my mother and Boris? Then the judge talked to me and I told her what you said, about how I couldn't have thrown anything because
my hands were full. She seemed to believe me. She didn't drop the case because the mayor didn't drop the charges, but she thought it was okay to let me out on bail.”

“How much?” I asked, putting Eliza on the ground. She picked up a stick and banged it. I was afraid she was going to poke her eye out, but even that seemed safer than handing her something from the diaper bag.

“Eight thousand dollars.”

“Whoa.” I had never known anyone worth eight thousand dollars before. But I was still mad at him for keeping his secret for so long.

“You always complained about Boris,” I said. “All of those lentils.”

“Yeah, well, if you had to eat as many lentils as I eat, you'd complain, too,” said Stinky.

“You mean the lentils weren't just a part of his cover?”

“I wish.”

“Why didn't you tell me about him? About
you
?”

“It was a secret,” he said.

“Well, why didn't you tell me after you saw Nanny X? You knew she was in NAP, didn't you, when you saw her at the park?”

“I suspected. But I was a little busy
being arrested
, remember? And you were only supposed to find out when your nanny thought you were ready.” Stinky looked at me and smiled. “I guess she decided you were ready pretty quick. Boris didn't decide I was ready for two and a half years.”

“Yeah, but you were like three years old when your mom hired him,” I said. Still, I grinned back. “Where was he, anyway? While you were at the park?”

“He was checking out a pickup truck that was parked in the cul-de-sac. Someone stole some diamond necklaces from Bell's Jewelers this morning, and Mrs. Bell said they
got away in a red truck. My mom's really mad he wasn't with me, but it wasn't all Boris's fault. I'm allowed to go to the park by myself, usually.”

“They may not let you anymore,” I said.

Just then, a truck turned down the road and the three of us scrambled to the other side of a small hill, flattening our stomachs against it.

“That's the same truck that was parked near our house,” Stinky whispered. “I know it is.”

The doors opened, then slammed, and we peeped over the hill to see what was going on. Two men got out. But that wasn't all.

“Boris was
totally
wrong about Big Adam working alone,” I said. And I was wrong about the monkey. First because it wasn't a monkey; it was a chimp. And second because it wasn't one chimp; it was about twenty of them—enough to eat all of the bananas at Nolan's Market. Enough to do some serious damage if they were under the control of an evil bad guy. Big Adam's partners got them into formation, and they started marching toward the airplane hangar. They opened the door that Boris had sneaked through, and stepped inside, two by two.

I looked in the diaper bag to see if there was anything that could help us. But there were no baby objects labeled Press Here in Case of Chimp Attack.

“Has it been seventeen minutes yet?” I asked. Something in the diaper bag must have doubled as a stopwatch. But what? The pacifiers?
Moo, Sweet Cow
?

And worse than that: How were we supposed to even call the police if seventeen minutes had passed? I didn't have my own cell phone—I wasn't getting one until I started middle school. Stinky didn't have a phone, either. Which meant that we had only one form of communication left, and I wasn't sure how to use it: Nanny X's exploding diaper.

Big Adam stood in front of us with his blender.

Behind him, I noticed something moving in the shadows near one of the doors to the outside. Boris! Stinky's nanny! Nanny X must have seen him, too. I could tell by the way she tried to keep Big Adam focused on us.

N.A.P. Nanny Action Patrol. I guessed Boris was a member, too. He seemed like he was pretty good at the secretagent stuff. He made it halfway across the room without Big Adam seeing him. Three-quarters of the way. He had almost reached Big Adam when the door to the hangar opened and two huge men walked in. It didn't look like they were on our side.

“Oy!” one of them said.

Big Adam turned toward the voice, and of course he saw Boris. The two men went charging toward Stinky's nanny. They were followed by a whole army of chimps. I had named the smoothie chimp Howard after Howard Wallace, my
favorite baseball player. If I was stuck there long enough, I would have to come up with names for the new chimps, too. And it looked like we were going to be stuck: The men, who were Big Adam's assistants, I guess, tied Boris to a chair like the rest of us. Boris didn't look worried, though. He looked almost happy.

He caught Nanny X's eye and gave her a wink, the
Don't worry
kind.

The new chimps weren't as nice as Howard. When they started screaming “
eeee chee chee
” it didn't sound like they were making conversation; it sounded like they were out for blood.

Big Adam stood in front of Boris. “Who are you?” he said. “How did you get here?”

Boris didn't answer.

He just sat there looking happy and mysterious, which made Big Adam crazy.

Finally Big Adam gave up, and he and his two assistants started loading some coconuts into the back of his small, orange plane. That's when Ali came in, carrying my little sister. She hadn't gone home and taken the Keep Out sign off her door. She'd tried to find me. She
had
found me. Stinky was with her, too. On the bright side, if he was free, that meant we'd successfully completed one of our missions. But there was a bad side, too, because he was about to be trapped by somebody else.

Ali ran straight for me with Eliza, who was carrying a giant stick and waving it around like she was getting ready to hit a home run, or at least a double. She was still waving it when Alison set her on the ground and began to untie me. “Doofus,” she whispered. But she didn't say it like the new, keep-out Ali; she said it like the old Ali, the one who was
ready to do something fun or crazy and thought it was okay for me to come along. The one who was not a Super Snot.

“Well, well,” called Big Adam, because unfortunately, Ali wasn't invisible. “Who do we have here? Really, Nanny Dearest, you've brought me such delightful company today.”

“That's enough, Adam,” said Nanny X. “The game's up.”

“That's right,” Boris said. “Even as we speak, dozens of police officers are on their way to this very hangar. They have our coordinates.”

He smiled and nodded at Ali, who got that same look she gets when our mother asks her if she's remembered to put out the recycling. She leaned over and whispered something to Nanny X, who whispered back and gave her a small smile.

Big Adam shook his head and made a
tsk-tsk
noise.

“The police,” Big Adam said. “
Please
. The girl hasn't called them. And even if she has, we'll be gone long before they arrive.” He spun the propeller on his plane.

“
Seize them!
” he yelled. The chimps surrounded us. A few of the bigger ones moved in on Ali and Eliza.

“No,” I said, standing up, since Ali had undone all of my knots. “Leave us alone.”

The chimps ignored me.

Then, all of a sudden, I heard a shriek. It was Howard. “
Eeee
,” he said. “
Eee-ee-ee
.”

The chimps stopped moving forward. They looked at my sisters. They looked at Stinky. They looked back at Howard.

“
Eee
,” Howard said again.

And then the chimps backed away. They climbed on top of a pile of coconuts and clapped their hands, like they were watching a play. Howard followed them.

“Seize them or I'm cutting you off,” Big Adam said. “No
more bananas. No more coconuts. I'm cutting you off, I'm telling you.”

But the chimps just kept sitting and clapping. Howard looked over at Big Adam and blew him a giant raspberry.

Big Adam turned to one of his assistants. I nicknamed them the Rhinos because that's what they looked like charging across the room that first time. Plus, the place was already kind of like a zoo, with all of those chimps.

“Get 'em, Francis,” Big Adam said.

The Rhino charged. But Stinky charged, too. He ran straight at Francis like a kid who had been falsely accused of a crime, handcuffed, stuck in a tiny room at the police station, and gotten his geode taken away as evidence, and was really, really ticked off about it. While Stinky charged, Ali used her knot-untying skills to free Nanny X, Yeti, and Boris.

“The bag! The bag!” said Nanny X. “Quickly.”

Ali slid the diaper bag toward her, and Nanny X pulled out a diaper—
the
diaper. She handed it to Yeti as if it were a bone.

“Airplane, Yeti,” she said. “Airplane. Go.”

Yeti stood there with the diaper in his mouth and looked at me. I wasn't sure what Nanny X had in mind, but I was glad she had some sort of plan. “Go on, Yeti!” I said, pointing at the plane. “You can do it.”

Just then Mr. Strathmore created a diversion (another reading connection word) by regaining consciousness. “You won't get away with this, Adam,” he said.

“Oh, but I already have,” said Big Adam. He lifted another crate of coconuts and looked at Mr. Strathmore, just as Yeti dropped the diaper inside the open door of the plane.

“I should have known you couldn't be trusted,” Mr.
Strathmore said. “I don't even like coconuts. But all I saw was money.”

Big Adam smiled. “We're not so different, you know,” he said. “That coconut was meant for you, by the way. Hitting my close friend the mayor was a mistake. But it worked out for the best. Because now they're blaming him.” He took one hand off the crate and pointed at Stinky, who was stuck in an armlock with Francis.

“Personally, I never cared for coconuts, either,” Big Adam said, moving toward the cargo hold of the plane. “But I've acquired a taste for them because I like their shells. Oh yes, I
do
like their shells.”

“Smuggling,” Boris called, as Ali finished untying his feet.

“I prefer the term ‘distribution,' ” said Big Adam. “And right now I'm going to be distributing a few things to my private island.”

“Diamonds,” guessed Nanny X.

“You catch on fast,” said Big Adam. “Not that it will do you any good. I think it's time to distribute
you
to my private island as well. I'm sure you'll manage very well there. I recently acquired a geologist who is aiding in my mineral operations. Mr. Snavely could use some help. I hope you like spiders. The island is full of them.”

I guess Mr. Strathmore didn't like spiders; he looked like he had the willies.

Francis the Rhino got Stinky in a headlock with one arm, and picked up a coconut with the other. He aimed it right at our nanny's head.

“No, you imbecile, not
that
coconut!” Big Adam yelled. His face looked pale, like coconut milk. But Francis had already started his windup. I grabbed the stick out of
Eliza's hand and stood in front of Nanny X. I choked up as the coconut came hurtling toward us.
Whack
. The coconut soared through the air and landed at Big Adam's feet. The two halves split apart, and small, shiny things spilled out. They scattered on the floor like frozen tears. Diamonds! My Fantastically Freaky book says that some diamonds came to the Earth in meteorites, but it doesn't say anything about coconuts. My new secret-agent brain told me that these were the stolen Gudula diamonds, and that the person who had stolen them was Big Adam.

Eliza crawled over and picked up a diamond like it was a raisin. “Pity,” she said. It sounded like she felt sorry for Big Adam, but I am pretty sure that was just her word for “pretty.”

“
Those are mine!
” Big Adam yelled. His face turned the color of a strawberry, and I wondered if he had a button on him someplace, because he looked like he was about to explode.