What Could Go Wrong? (17 page)

It wasn't very satisfying, but it was the best he'd agree to. Charlie was still grumbling when the three of us went to bed, leaving Agent Santori and Aunt Molly still talking.

I kind of wished I had a girl cousin to stay with me in the empty room where I'd spread a sleeping bag. Even Cheryl would have been better than no company that first night; I suspected I might have nightmares after what we'd been through that day.

After I got into my pajamas, I went out to get a drink and heard Aunt Molly and Agent
Santori laughing. I stopped in the darkness of the hallway and listened.

“You wouldn't believe the audacity of that kid,” he told her, and I knew he was talking about Charlie. “Absolutely demanded to know about the case before he'd tell me what he knew. And he stood right there holding that case that probably had a million dollars in it and let me think it was his own! Those kids had every intention of opening it up and seeing what was in it before they told me what they had.”

He laughed, and so did Aunt Molly “That's our Charlie,” she affirmed.

Why is it that grown-ups will bawl you out like crazy for doing something, and then laugh when they tell another grown-up about it? I remember, my mom did that when she told Dad that Max had cornered a skunk in the toolshed. Come to think of it, I don't believe
Dad
was too amused. Grown-ups are sort of hard to figure out sometimes. Of course it was
his
tools in the shed, not Mom's.

I got my drink and went on to bed, and to my complete surprise I didn't have bad dreams after all.

For the next three days we grabbed the morning paper before we set out for Golden Gate Park or Fisherman's Wharf and for riding on the cable cars and taking a cruise around San Francisco Bay. We divided it into sections to look for the story, but it was never there.

And then on the day we'd been at the beach and gotten half-sick on hot dogs and potato chips, and nobody wanted any supper, Eddie turned on the TV and gave a cry of triumph. “Hey, listen to this! This has got to be it, doesn't it?”

And there it was, the feature story on the six o'clock news.

A man named Bernard Berry, who owned automobile dealerships all up and down the West Coast, had been indicted, and a number of his employees with him. It sounded as if Mr. Berry had gotten rich selling new and used cars, but he wasn't satisfied with that. So he went into another business on the side: selling stolen cars. Some of them were shipped out of the country, into Mexico and Canada. Others were taken across state lines for sale in other
parts of the United States. And his illegal profits were then moved in to be “laundered” through his genuine businesses by couriers like Mr. Upton and Hawaiian shirt, whose name turned out to be Claude Donovan.

Mr. Berry belonged to the club that used the room where we'd been held captive. He provided his employees with keys for just such emergencies as we had caused by interfering in their delivery of one shipment of illegal cash to a legitimate car agency in Seattle.

Eddie sounded crushed when the announcer went on to a story about the latest jumper off the Golden Gate Bridge. “They never even mentioned
us
!”

“You'd think it would make a better story to say that three kids helped the F.B.I. capture them,” Charlie groaned. “They ought to give us a little credit! After all, we'd taken old Hawaiian-shirt-Donovan off guard and knocked the gun out of his hand before the F.B.I. even got there!”

Aunt Molly had kicked off her shoes and was wiggling her toes. “They've only just been indicted. It'll be months, probably, before they
come to trial. Maybe then they'll mention you kids when the full story comes out.”

Eddie had his forehead all wrinkled up. “They didn't explain everything,” he said. “Like, who put the money in the locker in San Francisco?”

“Somebody who worked for Mr. Berry,” Charlie said immediately. “I bet he had to stash it there in an emergency, see, like he was taking it out of the Bay Area”—that's what all the local people call the cities around San Francisco and Oakland on the other side of the bay—“and he knew the F.B.I. agents were on his tail—”

Charlie spun a wonderful yarn, Aunt Molly said, but we'd probably never learn the whole truth. Actually, we did find out most of it, and as usual Charlie wasn't far from wrong. The real story was so complicated and so almost silly, it made me wonder why anyone would want to be a criminal.

One of Mr. Berry's couriers, named Lenny Kalt, was taking the money his boss had earned selling stolen cars in a second-hand briefcase—the initials didn't mean a thing,
which Eddie thought was very disappointing, since they'd ought to have been a clue—up north to Seattle to deliver to Claude Donovan, or Hawaiian shirt, as we continued to think of him. Only two things happened.

Lenny saw someone watching him—the guy we'd thought was a leftover hippie—and it made him nervous. Then he got sick, and he was in such pain (turned out he had a ruptured appendix and had to be taken to the hospital and operated on, which was where they arrested him), he knew he couldn't carry out his assignment.

He tried to call one of Mr. Berry's other employees to have him come to the airport and take his place, carrying the money to Seattle. But he couldn't get anyone on the phone, and Lenny knew he had to do something right away. I guess he was so sick he could hardly think straight, but he did the best he could.

He put the money in a locker, and because he was afraid that if he got caught the police would figure out what it was for and find all that cash, he didn't dare keep the key on him. So he did the only thing he could think of
before he collapsed and the security people at the airport called for an ambulance.

He bought some Scotch tape and taped the key under the counter in a phone booth near the lockers, and wrote down the phone number there on a postcard he got in the gift shop where he got the tape.

What he should have done then, Charlie thought, was send the postcard to Mr. Berry or someone else in San Francisco who worked for him. It turned out, though, that Mr. Berry was a very hard man to work for. He didn't like people who made mistakes, even a mistake like having an appendix rupture. Lenny was afraid he'd lose his job, or even worse. Charlie, of course, was sure Lenny would have wound up on the bottom of San Francisco Bay tied to a chunk of cement.

“People who are really sick,” Aunt Molly said, “don't always come up with the best ideas. Besides, what Lenny did probably would have worked fine—and his boss would never have known the difference—if Gracie hadn't picked up that newspaper at Sea-Tac before the man it was intended for got to it.”

So I guess in a way I
did
help catch the
guilty parties. Because Lenny was trying to keep from losing his job—or worse—he sent the postcard to Donovan-Hawaiian shirt, trusting him to figure out that it was a locker number and a phone number at San Francisco Airport, where it was mailed.

Donovan figured it out, all right, but he didn't get it for a couple of days after the money was supposed to have been delivered to him. Before the postcard showed up, Donovan was frantic. It was a lot of money, and he was afraid Mr. Berry would hold him responsible, and then
he
might have wound up at the bottom of Puget Sound.

Anyway, when the postcard came, he realized what it meant. Only he didn't want to go to the San Francisco Airport and be the one to retrieve the money. He was afraid it might be dangerous. If the police had spotted Lenny before he was taken to the hospital, they might have staked out the locker and phone booth. Mr. Donovan didn't want to be the one arrested if that turned out to be the case and whoever collected the money was caught with it. So he got Mr. Upton to do it.

To make sure it was all kept secret, he made up the code in the paper, folded it, and left it on a particular seat in the waiting room where our flight was going to take off.

Charlie said they did a lot of what he called “cloak and dagger stuff,” meaning the conspirators didn't want to be seen together in case they were being watched by the authorities. Mr. Donovan called Mr. Upton and told him where to pick up the newspaper.

When Mr. Donovan realized
I
had picked up the paper moments before Mr. Upton should have done it, he was furious. He had to risk a personal meeting with Mr. Upton, and told him to hurry up and get a ticket on Flight 211 and get it back. Mr. Upton was supposed to go on another flight. He knew I'd given the paper to Mrs. Basker, but then she gave me back the crossword puzzle with the code message on it, and everything was pretty confused.

When they realized Mrs. Basker didn't have what they wanted, they figured out that
I
must, so they came after us. (Once Donovan wrote the message in the paper, he destroyed the card, so he didn't remember the telephone
and locker numbers, either.) But that was in Portland, and after. We sure hated to think what would have happened if the F.B.I. hadn't been lurking around keeping an eye on the whole situation.

The Portland business happened because Mr. Donovan decided he didn't totally trust Mr. Upton, and that maybe he'd better be there, watching him pick up the money, but at a safe enough distance so he wouldn't be caught if Upton was arrested. But by then our flight was gone. So Mr. Donovan decided to slow down our flight enough that a chartered plane would catch up with us. He called the airport and reported a bomb on board our plane. He knew that would make them land as soon as they could, and the only airport big enough was Portland. So he came to Portland.

We were delayed there of course, while the crew searched for the reported bomb, and we saw Donovan shortly after his arrival. Mr. Upton was mad because it was clear Donovan didn't trust him, and I guess they argued about what to do next. What they did do, we knew. But whose idea it all was, we weren't
sure. We only knew they were sure angry at each other after they were arrested. Each one blamed the other one for getting caught.

As I said, though, we didn't know all this while we were watching the TV newscast. All we could do was guess.

“You think the newspapers will interview us?” Charlie asked, brightening. “Maybe we'll be on national TV!”

“You better hope you're not,” Aunt Molly said dryly, “or your folks will never let you come down here again.”

“Why not?” I asked. “What could go wrong just flying from Seattle to San Francisco?”

We all cracked up, laughing.

Actually, the next time we went to San Francisco was six months later, and our whole families went, too, for Aunt Molly's wedding. Now we call Agent Santori Uncle Jim, but he still doesn't tell us anything about his cases.

As Charlie says, it's too bad we didn't get to fly by ourselves again. Who knows what might have happened?

DON'T MISS THESE OTHER WILLO DAVIS ROBERTS MYSTERIES:

Surviving Summer Vacation

The View from the Cherry Tree

Baby-Sitting Is a Dangerous Job

Megan's Island

Scared Stiff

The Kidnappers

The Pet-Sitting Peril

Hostage

Secrets at Hidden Valley

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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This Aladdin paperback edition September 2016

Text copyright © 1989 by Willo Davis Roberts

Cover illustration copyright © 2016 by Jessica Handelman

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