The Classy Crooks Club Read online

  “When my daughter saw my calendar and asked why it said ‘HC’ every day from three to six, I told her it stood for ‘Hobby Club,’ ” Edna says. “She thinks we knit and play games and bake things.” Betty and Cookie start giggling, and Grandma Jo smiles tightly, which is the closest she ever really gets to laughing.

  “Baking!” Cookie howls. “I haven’t used my oven since 1975, except as a shoe rack.”

  I’m having a hard time processing all of this. “So, do you steal other stuff, too, or only animals?”

  “We all have our causes,” Edna says vaguely.

  “We rotate being in charge,” says Cookie.

  “Well, most of us rotate.” Betty shoots Cookie a slightly unfriendly look.

  “Betty, you brought your situation on yourself, and you know it,” Cookie says.

  “What situation are you—” I start to say, but Grandma Jo cuts me off.

  “Enough! Right now, there’s a gorgeous green-winged macaw languishing at Fran Tupperman’s house, and we need to get him out. She keeps him shut up in the attic, poor darling. She thinks he makes too much noise.”

  “If she doesn’t even like the bird, couldn’t you ask her to give it to you?” I ask.

  “A bird is not an ‘it,’ Annemarie,” my grandmother says. “Fran keeps Picasso because he can sing snippets of songs. She brings him out to entertain guests at dinner parties.”

  “Nobody would go otherwise,” Cookie adds. “She’s an unbelievable bore.”

  “So, what would you need me to do, exactly, if I joined your . . . heist club?” Saying that feels really weird. This kind of thing only ever happens on TV.

  Betty reaches out and grasps my hand. Her palm against mine is warm and soft and dry, so fragile I feel like I could break it if I squeezed too hard. “You’d be such an amazing asset to us, dear,” she says. “I used to do all the inside work—I could slip into a house and out again like a shadow, with no one ever the wiser.”

  “She really was spectacular,” says Cookie.

  Betty shoots her a grateful smile. “But I had to have this silly hip replaced last month, and let’s just say I’m not as sneaky as I used to be.” She pats the walker sitting beside her.

  “Knock it off, Tommy,” one of the birds contributes.

  “So, you want me to steal the green-winged whatever? Why can’t Cookie or Edna do it?” I don’t even suggest Grandma Jo; there’s no way she could be stealthy with her foot in that boot.

  “We could certainly try,” Cookie says. “But there are so many stairs up to the attic. It would take us ages to climb them, and Fran would probably find us up there in the morning, still trying to catch our breath. But an athletic girl like you? You wouldn’t even be winded.”

  “It’s an easy job,” Betty reassures me. “Edna will pick the lock on the front door and disable the alarm system. All you’d need to do is the snatch-and-grab.”

  Maybe stealing a macaw would be super easy for her ; she doesn’t have a history of birds breaking her fingers. Then again, this bird would be in a cage. If I grabbed it by the top and held it far away from my body, it wouldn’t be able to attack me. “What will you guys do?” I ask Cookie and Betty.

  “We’re the lookouts,” Cookie says. “There’s not a lot of foot traffic in Fran’s neighborhood in the middle of the night, but we’ll distract anyone who happens to wander by.”

  As I’m waffling, my grandmother turns to me. “We could really use you, Annemarie.” She swallows hard, and I wonder if that’s what people mean when they say someone swallows her pride, because the next thing she says is, “I would be very grateful for your help.”

  Having power over Grandma Jo is such a weird feeling. I’m pretty sure I’m going to say yes—this really does seem like a good cause—but I can’t resist being in control for a minute.

  “If I agree to help you, can I have my phone back?” I ask.

  Grandma Jo’s mouth tightens into a thin line, but she reaches into a hidden pocket in her cavernous black skirt and pulls out my phone. It’s disgustingly warm from her body when she hands it back to me, but I’m so happy to see it that I don’t even care.

  “And am I allowed to go over to Maddie’s?”

  “Joining us doesn’t negate the fact that you betrayed my trust today, Annemarie,” Grandma Jo says. “What I said about leaving the house still stands. However, should you decide to join us, you will not be required to do chores, and you will begin training for the heist after your sporting rehearsals every day instead of receiving etiquette and sewing lessons.”

  No more sewing? That’s the best news I’ve heard in weeks. And if I do really well with the heist training, maybe my grandmother will actually see that my athleticism is useful, even if it’s not as ladylike as sewing your name onto a pillowcase. Maybe she’ll stop looking down her nose at me every time I go to soccer or mention my skateboard. Maybe, for once, I’ll feel like the two of us are on the same team.

  “That seems like a good compromise,” I say, trying to make my voice sound as grown-up as I can.

  “Needless to say,” my grandmother continues, “should you decide to participate, we will require absolute discretion from you. If you speak of this to anyone else, I will know, and I will make you very sorry you let our secrets slip. Is that understood?”

  Her tone sends a shiver down my back, but I look my grandmother straight in the eye and smile. “Don’t worry; I can keep a secret,” I say. “Count me in.”

  7

  It’s really late by the time Grandma Jo’s friends go home, and I should be falling asleep on my feet. But I lie awake most of the night, hugging Hector the armadillo and mulling over everything I’ve learned tonight.

  My grandmother is a crook.

  All my grandmother’s friends, including sweet blue-haired Betty, are crooks. Classy crooks, but still.

  I am about to become a crook.

  Worst of all, I have to keep this information to myself. How am I supposed to hide it from Maddie? This is the weirdest, freakiest thing that’s ever happened to me, and I can barely keep from telling my best friend what I’ve gotten her for her birthday every year.

  When a sliver of morning light starts to creep through my curtains, I finally give up on trying to sleep. It’s a good thing there’s no soccer on Fridays, because there’s no way I’d be able to concentrate today. My grandmother is already at the table when I come downstairs, and I kind of expect her to shoot me a conspiratorial smile now that we’re planning to do something illegal together. But she doesn’t even look up from her paper.

  “Good morning, Annemarie. How did you sleep?” she asks, like last night wasn’t the weirdest ever.

  “Not very well, honestly,” I say. “I couldn’t stop thinking about—”

  “I’ll have the cook make you some warm milk before bed tonight,” she says, cutting me off. “It’ll help you sleep.”

  Wow, I guess I’m not even allowed to talk about this stuff when nobody else is around. So I shut up and nibble on an English muffin, trying not to think about how gross warm milk sounds.

  When Grandma Jo finishes her breakfast, she dabs her mouth with her napkin and pushes her chair back. “I have things to attend to. I trust you can entertain yourself in a ladylike manner until the bridge club arrives?”

  I roll my eyes. “Yeah, I think I can handle that.”

  “Good.” She gives me a stern look. “Don’t disappoint me, Annemarie.”

  I end up taking a stack of comic books, a blanket, and a glass of lemonade out into the backyard and sprawling on the grass in the sun all morning. I’m probably not lying in a super ladylike way, but there are tall hedges around the entire yard, so it’s not like any nosy neighbors can report me to Grandma Jo. I’m almost starting to feel relaxed when my phone rings and Maddie’s picture pops up on the screen. I consider not answering—I don’t want to lie to her about what happened last night—but I’m going to have to get it over with sooner or later. It’s probably easier to do it
on the phone than in person, anyway. I can always tell when Maddie’s lying to my face because she scrunches up her chin in a certain way.

  “Hey,” I say, hoping my voice sounds breezy and casual.

  “Hey!” Maddie says. “What’s going on over there? Tell me everything!”

  “About what?” I say.

  “About what?! Seriously? About the storage room full of exotic birds, you weirdo! Did you break in again? What did you find? Are the birds really stolen? Did you tell your brother? Is he going to let you move in?”

  I want to tell her everything so badly, but my grandmother’s face pops into my head: If you speak of this to anyone else, I will know, and I will make you very sorry. “Oh, right.” I sigh. “You can’t laugh at me, okay? ’Cause I feel really stupid about this whole thing.”

  “Are the birds not stolen after all?”

  I swallow hard and pull out the explanation I thought up while I was trying (and failing) to sleep. “Turns out my grandmother’s animal rescue league is renovating the building where they usually keep the rescued animals, so she volunteered to keep them in her storage room in the meantime.”

  “Really? That’s so boring!”

  “I know,” I say, relieved that she’s buying it. “You can’t tell anyone, though, okay? Grandma Jo’s house isn’t up to code for this kind of thing, and she could get in really big trouble.”

  “Okay. I know this is weird, but I’m kind of disappointed. I mean, it’s obviously good that your grandmother’s not a criminal, but it was sort of exciting that there was something freaky and mysterious going on, you know?”

  Of course, my grandmother is a criminal, and there are all kinds of freaky things going on. But I just say, “Yeah, I know. Anyway, thanks for helping me investigate, but I guess it’s back to everything being boring.”

  “Do you want to come over?” Maddie asks. “We could play Mega Ninja Explosion. Jordan said I could borrow it.”

  “I really want to, but I’m grounded because I snuck out yesterday. I’m not allowed to go anywhere but soccer.”

  “Seriously? For how long?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m working on it.”

  I hear the glass door of the house slide open, and a voice calls, “Yoo-hoo, AJ!” When I look up, Cookie’s standing in the doorway. She’s wearing a red dress and red tights and motioning for me to come inside.

  “I have to go,” I tell Maddie. “Grandma Jo’s making me do chores.”

  “Ugh. Good luck. Text me later.”

  “I will,” I say. My stomach twists with guilt as I hang up the phone. Then again, it’s hard to feel too bad for Maddie when she gets to play Mega Ninja Explosion all day.

  “Hello, my darling,” Cookie says when I get to the door. “How are you this beautiful morning?”

  “Um, pretty good,” I say. “A little sleepy.  You guys must be tired too.”

  “Oh, I feel fresh as a daisy,” Cookie says. “Follow me!”

  I assume we’re going to the storage room, but Cookie heads for the stairs instead. “We’ve made you a surprise!” she says, and even though I have no idea what’s about to happen, her excitement is contagious.

  I follow her up to the attic, where the rest of the ladies are waiting. They’ve been busy while I was lounging in the yard; there are a whole bunch of storage boxes and old furniture shoved into various shapes in the center of the floor, sort of like a maze. Some of the boxes are stacked up tall and look like they might topple over any second, and some are pushed together in rows. Clouds of stirred-up dust swirl around in the overhead lights like swarms of tiny bugs, and for a second I worry my grandmother’s about to put me to work cleaning. But the ladies are beaming at me, so I’m guessing they have other ideas.

  “Do you like it, dear?” Betty asks.

  “I . . . umm . . .” I look around, hoping there’s a clue I’ve missed. “Of course I do—this looks like a lot of hard work. But . . . what is it, exactly?”

  “It’s your training obstacle course,” Cookie explains. “During the heist, your job will be to navigate quickly and quietly through unfamiliar territory. So we’ve made you a place to practice.”

  “These are for you,” Edna says, holding out a pair of black gloves. “We always wear them for heists so we don’t leave fingerprints behind. They’ll help you get into the right psychic space if you wear them now.”

  “Thank you,” I say. I don’t know what a psychic space is, but when I pull the gloves on, I do feel a little more professional. They’re a perfect fit, lightweight and sturdy, and my initials are embroidered along the wrist cuffs in silver thread. “Wait, did you make these, Edna?”

  She shrugs modestly. “I whipped them up last night.”

  “But you were here last night. When did you sleep?”

  “I don’t really sleep,” Edna says, like this is totally normal. “I get all the rest I need when I meditate.”

  “Let’s get started,” Grandma Jo orders, pulling a stopwatch out of her pocket. “Start here, Annemarie, and let’s see if you can make it to the other side in less than two minutes without any of us hearing you.”

  Cookie switches the lights off, and I start creeping forward through the box maze, arms stretched out in front of me like a zombie. I don’t do so well at first—an entire box wall comes tumbling down on me when I turn a corner too quickly—but I soon learn that smooth, controlled movements are the key. I concentrate on shifting my weight carefully from heel to toe as I walk, sweeping my arms in slow, graceful arcs so I can find the walls without knocking anything over. Whenever a floorboard creaks or I brush against a box corner, the ladies hiss, “Freeze!” and I have to freeze in place, barely daring to breathe, for as long as I can. As soon as I get used to one configuration of boxes and furniture, they make me close my eyes while they rearrange everything. Sometimes I have to crawl or limbo through small spaces, and though I doubt I’ll actually have to do that in Fran Tupperman’s house, the fact that I can is pretty cool. Every time I make it through the maze without giving myself away, Betty and Cookie and Edna whoop and cheer and high-five me, and it makes me feel like a celebrity.

  “You’re a natural,” Cookie tells me after a couple of hours, when I’m covered in dust and sore from creeping around. “I’m so impressed, AJ.”

  “Such a competent aura,” Edna muses.

  Betty gives me a huge, warm smile. “You’re a marvel, dear,” she says. “I wish we could keep you forever.”

  I glance at my grandmother, and she gives me a slow nod. It’s not exactly praise; she clearly doesn’t wish she could keep me forever. But at least she’s being respectful, and that’s a big step in the right direction.

  “Thanks for this, you guys,” I say, trying not to sound too cheery and excited. Grandma Jo doesn’t approve of fun. “That was really helpful. Are we practicing again tomorrow?”

  My grandmother frowns. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Annemarie. Hydrate yourself and then come downstairs so we can practice with the birds.”

  I take the bottle of water she hands me, but there’s suddenly a lump in my throat, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to swallow any of it. “Wait,” I say. “Practice how? All I have to do is grab the cage in that woman’s attic and carry it downstairs, right?”

  “Annemarie, we’re liberating a green-winged macaw.”

  I don’t understand why it matters if the bird has green wings or red wings or hot-pink wings with polka dots. “So?” I say.

  “Green-winged macaws are three feet tall from head to tail. The cage Picasso lives in is about as big as you are. Can you carry that down two flights of stairs in the dark?”

  My heart is suddenly doing Olympics-level gymnastics. “I have to carry the bird? In my hands?”

  Grandma Jo sighs and looks at the other ladies like, I told you she couldn’t handle this. “Is that going to be a problem? If so, I need to know now so we can make alternate arrangements for next Friday.”

  I know Grandma Jo didn’t
want to let me be part of this heist in the first place, and if I back down now, she’s going to think she was right about me all along. Plus, then I’ll have to go back to embroidering things and learning to set a table properly. “I never said I couldn’t do it,” I say.

  “Fine. Then come with me.”

  The four of us follow Grandma Jo down the stairs and into the storage room, and I quickly count the birds and take stock of where each one is—I don’t want any of them hiding and surprising me. But they’re all there in plain sight, grooming themselves or eating or shredding their toys. None of them pays us the slightest bit of attention. Grandma Jo fetches a massive red, green, and blue bird from across the room and returns with it perched on her arm. When it reaches up and starts biting the lace around her collar, she doesn’t even flinch. It better not try that with me, or I’m definitely going to scream.

  “This is Fireball,” Grandma Jo tells me. “He’s a green-winged macaw like Picasso. When you hold him, you must keep your arm level, like this, and refrain from making any sudden movements. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” I say. The bird looks perfectly calm and relaxed, but I can’t stop staring at his razor-sharp beak and eye-gouging claws. If I make him remotely angry, I’ll be in trouble. I take a small step backward.

  “Hold out your left arm, please, Annemarie,” Grandma Jo instructs. “You’ll want to keep your right hand free for opening doors and such.”

  Betty gives me an encouraging little nod and reaches out to hold my other hand for moral support. Thank goodness there’s someone here who cares how I feel. I grip her hand tightly, squinch my eyes shut like I do when I have to get a shot, and offer Grandma Jo my arm. Fireball’s weight transfers onto me, but his claws don’t hurt like I thought they would, and he’s not quite as heavy as I expect, either. For a second I feel a little more confident—something that only weighs a couple of pounds couldn’t do that much damage, right? I open my eyes and sneak a peek at him, and he stares right back, tilting his head this way and that.

  “I think he likes you,” Cookie says.