The Classy Crooks Club Read online

  But the weirdest thing is that I’m definitely the only person in the room. Where’s the guard? Where’s the screaming girl? As I struggle to calm down and make sense of everything, a big gray parrot with red tail feathers cocks its head, stares right at me, and opens its beak.

  “Let me introduce you to my trusty knife,” says a familiar raspy voice.

  And then the bird next to it, which has a yellow front and blue wings with one yellow feather right at the tip, goes, “Walk the plank, matey!”

  Oh my God. I am so stupid.

  It’s not like I didn’t know parrots could talk—everyone knows that. But I guess I thought they all said stuff like Polly want a cracker! and I’m a pretty bird! Who the heck teaches their birds to threaten people?

  My grandmother, apparently. This is so twisted.

  “Let me out, let me out! ” shrieks another voice near the back of the room. It sounds like a woman, but I trace it to a white bird with yellow feathers that stick up in a line on its head like a Mohawk. It stretches its wings a little, screams one more time for good measure, then hops down to a lower perch and starts nibbling on a toy. From the other side of the room, another large gray bird opens its beak, and the creaking door sound I keep hearing comes out.

  Okay, I definitely did not know birds could do that.

  There’s clearly nobody here for me to rescue, so there’s no reason for me to linger in this horrible, bird-filled room any longer. I’m about to go upstairs and have a good, long think about everything I saw, but then I notice a couple of terrariums in the corner. There aren’t any birds over there, so I make my way toward them, skirting the edge of the room carefully and trying not to make any sudden movements. Inside are a couple of gigantic snakes, coiled back and forth on themselves like someone squeezed them out of a frozen yogurt machine. One of them is bright green and another has brown patches on a tan background. They both look super dangerous, and I wonder if either of them is an anaconda. A little farther back, there’s another terrarium holding a lizard with a spiky ruff of skin around its neck. And in the very back, almost hidden behind a stack of cardboard boxes, there’s a big metal cage with a large cat curled up in the corner. A really large cat . . . with spots.

  That can’t possibly be a baby jaguar, right?

  A small gray bird across the room croons, “You’ll be safe here with me, pretty.  You’ll be happy here with me.”

  It sounds exactly like my grandmother.

  And that does it—I am officially too freaked out to spend one more second in here. I don’t know what is going on, but I’m 150 percent sure I want nothing to do with it.

  I turn off the light, shut the door behind me, and bolt.

  5

  I’m nervous about going down for breakfast the next morning, sure I’m going to hear more screaming from Grandma Jo’s personal zoo the second I hit the first floor. But the house is quiet and still, like last night never happened, and for a minute I wonder if I dreamed the whole thing. Grandma Jo is in the dining room, reading the Wall Street Journal and sipping tea (of course). She doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would have a storage room full of exotic animals, especially considering how strict she is about following the rules. But I guess I don’t really know my grandmother any better than she knows me.

  There’s a ton of food laid out on the table—a fruit plate, a basket of muffins and pastries, tiny pots of butter and jam, a dish of scrambled eggs, and a plate of bacon sitting on a doily. All of this can’t possibly be for us. “Hi,” I say. “Are there people coming over?”

  Grandma Jo looks around like my question doesn’t make any sense. “Not to my knowledge.” She takes a tiny sip of tea. “Annemarie, you weren’t by any chance in my study last night, were you?”

  I open my eyes wide, which I’ve heard is supposed to make you look innocent. “No, of course not.” Technically, I wasn’t in the study—I just reached my hand in to turn on the light. Fortunately, she doesn’t ask about the storage room. If she knew I was in there, who knows what she’d do to me. Probably chop me into pieces and feed me to her giant snakes.

  “I know I told you that hallway is strictly off-limits,” Grandma Jo continues as though I haven’t said anything. “And yet when I woke up this morning, the study door was open and the light was on. How do you explain that?”

  I shrug. “Maybe the cleaning lady left it on?”

  “The maid wasn’t here yesterday.  You are to stay out of that hallway. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, I get it,” I say. I grab the crispiest piece of bacon from the doily plate, and Grandma Jo glares at me. For a second I think she’s going to smack it out of my hand.

  “You will use silverware while you’re under my roof, Annemarie,” she says. “I will tame you if it kills me. Four weeks with me and you’ll be the very definition of a respectable lady.”

  To spite her, I impale the whole piece of bacon with my fork at once and take loud, crunchy bites. “Yeah, right. Good luck with that,” I say, but she ignores me and turns back to her paper.

  After a few minutes, Grandma Jo gets up. “I have things to attend to,” she says. “You are not to disturb me.  You may go outside and walk around when you’re finished eating.”

  I nod, and she heads toward the forbidden hallway.

  I don’t want to sit here at this massive table by myself, so I grab a muffin and a few slices of cantaloupe and leave the rest of the monstrous breakfast untouched. When I go upstairs to get my shoes, my phone is blinking with a new text from Maddie.

  sorry yr gma’s so evil. wanna come ovr b4 soccr? pool?

  lemme ask, I text back. I’m dying to get out of here, and if Grandma Jo says yes, maybe Stanley will drive me over early.

  I call my grandmother’s name from the entryway, but there’s no answer. She must not be able to hear me from the study, where’s she’s probably attending to all her mysterious secret “things.” I’m not sure how I’m supposed to get her attention when I have to stay away from the forbidden hallway but I’m not allowed to shout, either. I make my way to the very end of the hall and call her name again, but there’s still no answer. Then I hear her voice coming from the storage room.

  “Come here, my pretty,” I hear her crooning. “Oh yes, you’re such a good boy, aren’t you? Such a beautiful boy.”

  “Walk the plank, matey!” shouts the bird.

  “Such a smart boy,” says my grandmother’s voice. I’ve never heard her sound so affectionate with another human being, especially not me.

  Anger wells up in my chest again, just like yesterday. Seriously, why should I even bother asking my grandmother for permission to go to Maddie’s? It’s not like she wants to spend time with me, not when there are creeptastic birds to hang around with. She probably won’t even notice if I leave a couple hours early.

  I go back upstairs and text Maddie: on the way, be there in half an hour. I put my bathing suit on under my T-shirt and shorts, stuff a towel and sunblock into my duffel with my soccer stuff, and go out to the garage, where I’m hoping to find the one person in this house who actually seems to like me.

  Stanley’s out in the driveway with his earbuds in, buffing the silver parts of the town car with a big fluffy rag and doing this goofy dance to the music on his phone. For a second I stand there staring at him—he’s so cute—but then I realize I’m acting like a weird stalker. I call his name, but he doesn’t turn around, so I move into his line of sight and wave my arms. He looks a little surprised to see me, but he doesn’t look embarrassed at all that I saw him dancing. I wonder if I’ll be that confident when I’m in college?

  “Hey, Miss AJ,” he says. “What can I do for you?”

  I should probably tell Stanley that plain AJ is fine, but hearing him call me “miss” kind of makes me feel important and grown-up, so I don’t say anything. “Would you mind driving me to my friend Maddie’s house?” I ask. “It’s right near the soccer field, so you can drop me off now and pick me up at four like no
rmal.”

  “Did your grandmother say it was okay?”

  “She doesn’t care,” I say. It’s not really a lie.

  “Okay, sure,” Stanley says. “Let me get the keys.”

  As we start driving, it occurs to me that Stanley has spent more time at Grandma Jo’s house than I have; he might have some information that could help me. “Have you ever been in my grandmother’s storage room?” I ask.

  “Nope, I usually hang out in the kitchen when she doesn’t need me. Why do you ask?”

  “She’s never asked you to help her carry anything heavy in there? Like, I don’t know, a cage or something?”

  Stanley looks super confused. “A cage? No, definitely not. Why would she have a cage?”

  “I mean, I guess she wouldn’t,” I say. “I don’t know, it was the first heavy thing that came to mind. So, um, your grandma and my grandma hang out a lot, right?”

  “Pretty much every day, I think,” Stanley says. “Grandma told me they’ve been friends since the seventies.”

  “Do you know what they do when they’re together?”

  Stanley shrugs. “Probably drink tea and play cards and stuff. Normal old-lady things.”

  “Huh,” I say. I really like Stanley, but I can see he’s not going to be any help. I turn the conversation to soccer instead.

  Half an hour later, we pull up outside Maddie’s house. She’s in the front yard, kicking a ball around with her sister Jordan. When Stanley gets out to open my door, Maddie’s face changes a little, but it’s only a flicker, and then she gives me a sunny wave. Maybe I imagined the uncomfortable expression I thought I saw.

  “Thank you, Stanley!” I call as I grab my bag and jog toward my best friend.

  “No problem, Miss AJ,” he says. “See you at four.” He gets back into the car, and Maddie and I both watch him drive away.

  When he’s gone, she says, “Hey, sorry I didn’t see your texts last night. What happened at your grandma’s house? Are you okay?”

  For a second I think she already knows about the birds somehow. “What do you mean?”

  “You said you hated it there and that she was totally evil. Was the etiquette training really bad?” A horrified look passes over her face. “Wait, you didn’t really have to fold her underwear, did you?”

  I’d almost forgotten about the sewing sampler altogether. “No, but everything in that house is so much weirder than I thought,” I say. “You’re not even going to believe what I found in the storage room last night.”

  Maddie grabs her swim bag, and as we walk to the public pool, I tell her everything. By the time I get to the part about the birds and the snakes and the baby jaguar, Maddie’s so amazed that she forgets to keep walking. She just stands there in the middle of the sidewalk with her bag dangling from one hand, gaping at me.

  “You went bursting in there by yourself ?” she says. “I can’t believe you did that. Why didn’t you call the police?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know . . . I guess I should’ve. But I didn’t think they’d take me seriously unless I had proof, and I wanted to help whoever was in there as quickly as possible.”

  Maddie shakes her head in disbelief. “You are so much braver than me.”

  “I’m really not. I was terrified, especially when I saw all those birds.”

  “You thought someone in there had a knife, and it was still the birds that scared you?”

  My face goes hot, and I shove her shoulder. Maddie’s the last person I’d expect to tease me about this. “Shut up. I feel stupid enough about my bird thing already.”

  “I’m not making fun of you! I’m just saying I can’t believe all that other stuff didn’t scare you.”

  “It did!”

  “But you went in there anyway, you know? It’s like what Mr. Liu always said about bravery, remember? ‘Courage is not the absence of fear . . .’ ”

  “ ‘. . . but the triumph over it,’ ” I finish, rolling my eyes. Our sixth-grade social studies teacher was always making us memorize quotes from famous people, and that was one of his favorites. He must’ve written it on the board a thousand times last year.

  “Whatever,” I say. “The real question is, what is my grandmother doing with all those animals? She clearly doesn’t want anyone else to know about them. It’s incredibly weird, don’t you think?”

  “It is pretty freaky,” Maddie says. “I mean, having one or two birds is normal, but fifteen puts you in Crazy Bird Lady territory. Hey, I bet this is why she made such a fuss about you bringing Snickers over . . . she was afraid he’d smell the birds and go crazy and rat her out.”

  “Oh wow, you’re probably right. Snickers has such a good nose, he would’ve tracked them down in a second.” I picture my dog running in circles outside the storage room door and barking up a storm, and I have a pang of longing for him that’s so strong it hurts. Man, I’d sew a million samplers if it meant my parents would come back and take me home right this second.

  “Do you think Grandma Jo’s training the birds to attack people? Like, to be her own personal army?”

  Maddie looks doubtful. “I don’t think you can train birds to do that, can you? And wouldn’t they have attacked you? Otherwise, it’s a pretty terrible army.”

  “Oh yeah. I guess so.”

  We’re at the pool now, and we both pull out our passes and show them at the entrance. The girl guarding the gate used to lifeguard with my brother, and she smiles and waves at me as we go through. We find two empty chairs, strip off our T-shirts, and start rubbing sunblock onto our shoulders.

  “Okay, new idea,” I say. “My grandma says she does charity work for this animal rescue league. She gave me this huge lecture last night about how people are always buying exotic pets they don’t know how to take care of. What if there is no league, and she made it all up as a front so nobody will suspect she has tons of illegal pets?”

  Maddie rubs some sunblock onto her nose. “But it’s not illegal to have parrots as pets, is it?”

  “No, but what about the snakes and the jaguar?”

  “I don’t know. But we can find out if the league is real, at least.” Maddie pulls out her phone, and I scoot over onto her chair so I can see it too. Her screen has a huge crack running down the middle, but I know better than to ask when she’s going to get it fixed. Her family can’t afford that right now.

  Maddie types Josephine Johansen and animal rescue league into her browser’s search window. A bunch of hits come up, and the very first one is about Grandma Jo getting an award from an animal rescue league called Friends of Fur and Feathers. When Maddie clicks on it, a picture pops up of my grandmother standing with some people in fancy gowns, a parrot perched on her shoulder.

  “I guess the league is real,” Maddie says.

  I take the phone and look at the picture more closely. My grandmother is wearing her usual black dress, and the parrot’s toes are digging into the ruffles around the collar. The caption says, “Benefit honoree Mrs. J. Johansen with animal rescue league directors Barbara Scranton and Kit Golding. Also pictured is Ms. Golding’s blue and yellow macaw, Scrooge.” The bird has a yellow front and blue wings with one yellow feather right at the tip.

  “Whoa, wait a second,” I say.

  Maddie leans in closer. “What?”

  “I think this might be the same parrot that was yelling at me to walk the plank last night. They look really similar.”

  “So?”

  “So, it says here that it belongs to this other lady, Kit Golding. What’s it doing in my grandmother’s house?”

  “Are you sure it’s the same bird? Don’t most parrots look pretty much the same?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. But the one at Grandma Jo’s also has one yellow feather right in that exact spot.”

  “Huh,” Maddie says. “Well, maybe it is the same bird. Maybe Kit Golding’s on vacation and your grandma’s taking care of him until she gets back. They look like they’re friends. Maybe she runs, like, a bird babys
itting service for people who are on trips.”

  That would be logical, but something doesn’t seem right. I type Kit Golding and Scrooge and missing into the search box.

  Just as I suspected, a short article pops right up, talking about how the Goldings’ beloved macaw disappeared from their house a week after the benefit. The reward is listed as $2,000.

  “Maddie,” I say. “What if my grandmother stole him?”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “Look at how high that reward is. Maybe she’s going to pretend she found him and collect the money.”

  “Your grandma’s super rich. She probably doesn’t need two thousand dollars, does she?”

  “But maybe this is how she got so rich.” Another idea hits me. “What if this is what the bridge club ladies want to use me for? Maybe they want me to return the stolen bird and collect the money so nobody will connect it to my grandmother! I am so not doing that.”

  Maddie nods slowly, but I can tell she’s not totally convinced. “I guess that’s possible, but it might not even be the same bird. I definitely don’t think you can confront her about it or go to the police until you have more proof.”

  “How am I going to get that?”

  Maddie chews on her lip for a few seconds while she thinks, and then her eyes light up. “Okay, parrots are pretty smart, right? If the bird in your grandmother’s storage room really is Scrooge, maybe he’d know his name. Maybe he’d know his owner’s name, even. Can you break in there again tonight and talk to him a little—see if you can get him to say something incriminating?”