The Magician's Bird (16 page)

Laurie shook her head. “Oh, no, you don't. You don't breathe a
word
of this. Not until we
all
decide what we're going to do.” She held the papers to her chest. She was prepared to stuff them down her shirt if she had to.

“She's right,” Bud said quietly. “No one says a thing. Not yet. Agreed?”

Calliope looked from Misti and the bird to Bud and then to Laurie. “Fine. Agreed,” she said. But the gleam didn't leave her eyes. If Calliope said she agreed, Laurie had to believe her, but she still had a bad feeling about it in the pit of her stomach.

Laurie looked at the papers in her hand. “There's more here. It's not just the letter. There's a thing signed by Officer Martin, and some more papers, and . . . this.”

“What is it?” Misti leaned in to look.

“It's a photo. Of . . . I don't know, actually. A bunch of guys.” Laurie passed the photo to Calliope and handed the rest of the papers to Misti.

“Well, I recognize this man,” Calliope said, pointing at the photo.

Bud took the photo and looked closely at it. “It's not Marchetti.”

Calliope smirked. “Nope. It's Wayne LeFranco. Walker LeFranco's dad.”

Note left on door of shed

Headline on
Daily Herald
website

Headline on
Morning News
website

Text message from Montana Judkin to Calliope Judkin

“I think it's safe to say we've got the real bird,” Calliope said, after reading over the letter from Alphonse Marchetti.

“Duh,” said Bud, watching as Misti read the other
papers. Her eyebrows were shooting up as she read and her eyes kept widening. “What does that stuff say, Misti?”

“Oh, man, you guys.” Misti's eyes shone. “This is going to be so awesome. Check it out. I mean, if I do it right.”

Calliope frowned. “Do what right?”

“Watch. Just watch.” Misti leaned over the bird and then, really casually, tapped it on the head three times, followed by two taps to the tail. Then she counted to three and tapped the head again once.

Nothing happened.

“Yeah, that was great,” Calliope said. “So anyway . . .”

“No, wait! Wait, just hold on.” Misti consulted the papers and leaned over the bird again, lightly tapping the head three times and the tail twice. “One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand,” she counted carefully, and then tapped the head again.

The Marchetti Bird fluttered its head and then tucked it under one wing.

“Oh, man, this
ROCKS
!” Misti said, jumping up and bouncing in a circle. “You know what this is? These are the instructions telling how you get the bird to do all of its stuff!”

Calliope looked doubtful. “I don't recall reading anything about Marchetti bopping his bird on the head.”

Misti shook her head. “No, I'm just doing that because I'm lame and don't have it down. According to this, when you know the timing of the sequences, you barely have to touch the bird. So it would just look like I was swirling my hands around her in a magicky way.”

“That's pretty awesome, Misti,” Laurie said, watching her jealously. Misti was controlling the Marchetti Bird. How cool was that?

But the bad feeling in her stomach wasn't going away. Laurie cleared her throat. “I don't see how this is going to work, though, do you?”

“What do you mean?” Bud said, watching as Misti concentrated on the papers again. As soon as she put them down, he was totally going to try that tapping thing.

Laurie frowned. “What do we do? We've got evidence now. Do we just call Principal Winkle and tell him about all this stuff?”

“Well, it's proof, isn't it?” Bud said. Misti didn't look like she was planning to put down those papers anytime soon.

“Yeah, but I just don't know how seriously they'll
take it if it's just handed to them by a bunch of kids.”

Bud bit his lip. She had a point. When he and Laurie had found the treasure at the beginning of the school year, it had been great, but it had been a bone of contention for some of the staff at the school. Betty Abernathy, for one.

“Well, sure they will,” Bud said doubtfully. “They'll have to take it seriously.”

“But do you think they'll make the connection? Between LeFranco's dad in the picture and what's happening now? Because it's pretty obvious to me that LeFranco's dad was one of Bull Stratton's bruisers, and what LeFranco's doing now is all connected.” Laurie pointed at the picture on the coffee table.

“Yeah, I think you're right.” It was clear to him anyway, from the papers in the bird.

“But can you picture a bunch of kids saying, ‘Hey, Mr. Big-Time News Editor-in-Chief, your dad was involved in organized crime'? I mean, that's the
MOB
.” Laurie shrugged and flopped back in the chair melodramatically. “Oh, what difference does it make? Even if they do make the connections, they'll push us to the side anyway. It'll be all over for us. No more secret room. No more bird.”

“No!” Misti said, grabbing the bird. “We can't tell them, then! Not yet, okay?”

“But if we don't tell them, they'll shut down the school!” Laurie didn't want to hand over the bird and the room, but what choice did they have? The bird was the key to everything.

Calliope stood up. “That's why we should take it to my friend at the newspaper. He'll control the story, which means
we'll
control it. Plus we'll take LeFranco down for sure!” Calliope squatted next to Misti and the Marchetti Bird. “We've got the real bird! They'll know it's true!”

“No! That's why we don't say a thing until we've figured out what to do. Because once we tell, there's no going back. I just wish we could take down LeFranco and save the school without losing everything else.” Laurie sighed. She wanted to make sure they were doing the right thing. But no matter what they did, they were going to be losing something.

“What we need to do is vote,” Laurie said finally. They'd gone over the same points over and over again until she felt sick of the whole thing. “We need to be fair and diplomatic about this.”

“Right.” Bud nodded. “Okay, everyone in favor of telling about the room to bring down LeFranco, raise
your hand.” He looked around. Everyone's hand was raised. “Okay, now everyone in favor of keeping it secret, raise your hand.” Since they'd all voted for telling, there wasn't much point in holding the second vote, but Bud believed in being thorough.

One hand shot up. Bud rolled his eyes. “Misti, you can't raise your hand for both, okay?”

“But that's how I feel!” Misti whispered. “I want to vote for both.”

“Can I change my vote to both? I vote for both too,” Laurie said. Sure, she was sabotaging her own vote, but she couldn't help it.

“NO! No voting for both!” Bud said, although he secretly felt like voting for both options himself. This was hopeless. They weren't getting anywhere. “We'll try again. Everyone who votes for—”

Suddenly Misti grabbed his arm. “Shh,” Misti whispered. “Hallway!”

“LeFranco?” Bud said, hurrying to the door in the corner and listening intently.

“Sounds like it,” Laurie whispered, silently tiptoeing over.

She opened the door carefully and crept out into the passageway, past the library and on to the second screen,
where they'd seen LeFranco's secret meeting before.

It was him.

She could see him with Reginald, and it looked like they were arguing about something. Or at least that's how it looked to Laurie. People don't usually poke each other in the chest in casual conversations, but maybe LeFranco was just different that way.

“Montana said he was on the move,” Calliope whispered. “What are they talking about?”

“I don't know,” Bud whispered. “We can't hear.” He shot her his patented shut-up look. It seemed to work. Calliope jostled for a good position in front of the screen, but she kept her mouth shut.

LeFranco was still poking Reginald in the chest and talking angrily in a low voice. “‘I
can't
' is not an option, Reginald. ‘
I can't
' doesn't help me. Now you figure out a way to make this bird sing, or you'll wish you'd never heard of the Marchetti Bird. And don't even
think
about telling me
you can't
.”

Reginald looked upset. “Look, I've done what you asked. But this bird won't do anything it wasn't designed to do. And this bird wasn't supposed to sing.”

“Then you come up with a reason why it won't. No one knows how the Marchetti Bird worked, Reginald.
Be creative. Find a broken key or something, some reason it's broken. But make it believable. I'll give you twenty-four hours. I'm scheduling another press conference, and this bird had better perform or have a decent reason for not performing.”

“A key, sure.” Reginald nodded, rubbing at his chest. Laurie felt sure he was going to have a bruise. “I can do that.”

“See that you do,” LeFranco sneered. “And give my regards to Eunice and Rosalie.” Without another word, he turned and stormed out of the school.

Reginald stood for a moment just staring at the floor. Then he wiped his hand over his face, took out his rag, and started polishing a plaque on the wall. Laurie turned away from the screen. She couldn't bear to see the look on his face.

“See, I knew that singing stuff would put LeFranco on the run. Ha!” Calliope whispered. “We've got him!” Then she turned and hurried back to the room.

“Who are Eunice and Rosalie?” Misti whispered when Calliope was gone.

Laurie shook her head.

Bud looked at Laurie and Misti. “We have to tell, don't we?”

Laurie nodded. They had to stop LeFranco, one way or another. Reginald didn't deserve to be treated that way. She didn't know what LeFranco had on him, but it had to stop. “You're right. We don't have a choice.”

“So how do we do it?” Bud said solemnly. Now that they'd officially decided to give up the room, it was easier to accept and make real plans.

“Maybe do something with the scavenger hunt? We could pretend we were setting up the hunt and lead them here,” Laurie said. “Then they'd see for themselves. If we play it right, they won't even know that we'd found it all before.”

Bud nodded. “That's good. We could totally do that. We've got that meeting with Miss Abernathy and Principal Winkle anyway,” he said, writing it down on his notepad.

“We need to figure out what LeFranco has on Reginald, too,” Calliope said.

“Add it to the list,” Misti said, practicing making the Marchetti Bird's wings flap. She was getting pretty good. The tapping was much less obvious.

“Can I try?” Bud sidled over to the bird. “What do I do?”

“Just tap tap tap on the butt, pet pet on the wings, and then wait five seconds and tap the nose,” Misti explained. “She's a good bird,” she said gloomily.

Bud tapped, petted, and then counted to five and tapped again. Nothing happened. “Did I do it wrong?”

Misti shook her head. “You did fine. She's just temperamental.”

Laurie tried to smile. She hated to see Misti lose that bird. Sure, it was just a big piece of metal, but the two seemed to have bonded, somehow. And waiting was only going to make it worse. “Right. Well. We know what we have to do. You know what? Forget about waiting for the scavenger hunt. Let's do it now.” She just wanted to get it over with. If she thought for too long about what they were giving up, she'd change her mind.

“Right.” Bud stood up. “Let's go. Then it'll all be over.”