The Homemade Stuffing Caper Read online

  “Then she’s gotta be a he,” I blurted out.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The old woman’s not a woman. She’s a man. She … I mean, he’s just trying to throw us off his trail … and … I know exactly who took the birds—and where they are. Well, not exactly. I don’t have an address or anything, but I know the general area.”

  “Well, let’s go,” she said.

  “It’s not quite that easy. We can’t just barge in there. I need to discuss it with my partner first.”

  “Your partner? You mean Eugene?” she said.

  I wasn’t sure she was ready to hear this, but she’d find out sooner or later. “No, not Eugene. I’m talking about Henry.”

  Scarlett threw her head back. She wasn’t pleased. “Henry? You’re kidding, right?”

  I avoided eye contact. “No, I’ve asked him to join us on the case.”

  “Why does he have to help? We don’t need him.”

  “Listen, if you really want to find Socrates, if you care about him as much as you say, then you have to understand that we stand a much better chance with Henry than without him.” There. I’d said it. I’d thrown it back in her court. What could she say now? She had to buy into the plan.

  “You are afraid to go to this farm, aren’t you?”

  “What are you talking about? I’m not afraid of anything. I just think that arming oneself with the proper personnel is the only way to guarantee a successful mission.”

  “So, what’s waiting for us at this farmhouse that’s got you so nervous?”

  She just wouldn’t quit. I had half a mind to tell her everything. That’d show her.

  “Maybe I’ll just go over there myself,” she said.

  “And come face-to-face with a killer—is that what you want to do?” I couldn’t help myself.

  “A killer?”

  “Listen, we figure that the birds were taken to a farm. And I think that the farm in question is owned by one Rupert Olsen, who Henry and I just happened to see drive off with a bunch of dead birds.”

  “Dead?”

  I was sorry I had said it, but it was too late. “Yes, dead.”

  “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe you saw anything like that. I think you’re just trying to scare me into backing out of this whole thing. You’re just afraid to go over there.”

  This girl had become completely unreasonable. Was this the same Scarlett Alexander who for the last several years had made me weak in the knees? Had she gone completely nuts?

  I knew that I’d been whining about wanting a shot at the big score for years, but did she really expect me to just march up to some lowlife and ask him if he was the one behind the missing birds? The dead birds? There was no reason to take that risk. We just needed to wait it out, scare up some new evidence, analyze our findings, and if it took a few weeks, so be it.

  I took a deep breath. The more I listened to my own reasoning, the more I realized that she was right. I was uneasy about meeting up with this character. I was afraid. I didn’t like the feeling. When Eugene told me that this mystery man had been in and out of jail, I should have been salivating. This was exciting stuff. Instead I was sweating. I began to rethink what I really wanted out of life. Was I going to freeze every time danger presented itself? I never thought I’d react that way. Over the years, I had myself convinced that if I was ever fortunate enough to find myself embroiled in the type of case found on the pages of a Sam Solomon novel, I’d be in my glory.

  Maybe I’d been fooling myself all along. Maybe I should have been satisfied with the measly mysteries I was able to solve from the comfort of my garage. Nothing dangerous about that.

  But I did know one thing—even if this case proved perilous, and even if I decided to abandon the big score in the future, I knew that I had to honor my commitment. I had taken on a client. I had promised results. And I had to see it through, no matter what.

  “All right, then,” I said. “Tomorrow—I’ll meet you in front of your grandpa’s shop at about nine o’clock—nine o’clock at night, that is. And we’ll go check out that farm for ourselves.”

  “We’ll go check it out? Why do you need me?”

  “Just a minute ago, you said you were gonna go over there yourself. Do you want to go or not?”

  “Well, I only said that because you seemed too scared to do it alone.”

  “Now who’s the scared one?” It was a cheap shot, I know, but it had to be said.

  Scarlett needed to digest that thought for a moment. She seemed uncertain of what to do.

  “I guess … I guess I’ll meet you there tomorrow night then,” she said.

  “Can I really count on you showing up?”

  “I’ll be there,” she snapped.

  “You should know—I’m bringing Henry along.”

  “Oh, I can hardly wait,” she said sarcastically.

  CHAPTER 12

  The Poultry in Motion Caper

  On Saturday morning, Henry stopped over at the house and we made one last attempt at decoding the note. We tried every possible combination of letters and numbers we could think of. Nothing made any sense. And if that wasn’t bad enough, we still didn’t know where we were headed tonight. If Scarlett’s grandpa was right about there being a half-dozen farms in the area, how could we possibly know which one was the Olsen farm? I supposed we’d have to visit all of them just to be sure. That could take all night. And what if we got caught? Would they charge us with trespassing and lock us up? This whole thing was starting to sound like a very bad idea.

  “Why don’t we just ask Eugene where this farm is?” Henry said.

  “Like he’s gonna tell us,” I said. “He made it very clear that we were to stay away from there. He’d never divulge the location, trust me.”

  “You got a phone book?” Henry asked. “Maybe Olsen’s in there.”

  Why hadn’t I thought of that? Sometimes I get myself so caught up in a case that I miss the obvious. I ran downstairs to the living room and found the phone book buried under some magazines. I raced back to my room.

  “Got it,” I said. I opened it up to the Os and began searching for Olsen’s name. We soon found more names than we were expecting.

  “There’s Olson with an o and Olsen with an e,” Henry said. “Which one is it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Let’s see if we can figure it out from the addresses.” I knew that a farm would have to have a rural address of some kind. It wouldn’t be a normal street or avenue or lane or anything like that. A minute or so later, we were back at square one.

  “All of these addresses are in town,” Henry said. “I recognize most of the streets. Olsen must be unlisted.”

  “So now what?” I said.

  “We could go on the Internet and search for him that way,” Henry suggested.

  I slammed the phone book shut. “Absolutely not,” I said. Henry just didn’t get it. Sam Solomon had no problem tracking down leads long before the Internet ever existed. If I was forced to use new technology to solve a case, I’d feel like I had cheated.

  “Just a suggestion,” he said. “But if you want to do it the hard way, it’s fine with me.”

  I sat on the bed and stewed for a minute. I was determined to figure this out with the same tools that Sam had used.

  “Let’s just put this on the back burner for now,” Henry said. “Why don’t we go ask your grandma to help us decipher that note we found? Then we’ll worry about locating the farm later. Okay? We’re running out of time, Charlie.”

  I sighed. I hated having to ask for help again. I really wanted to figure this one out by myself, but Henry was right. Time was now the enemy.

  “I guess so,” I said reluctantly. “Let’s find her.”

  We did a quick search of the house. No Grandma. My mom was in the kitchen cleaning up after breakfast.

  “Mom, do you know were Gram is?”

  “The Pocono Five Hundred,” she said with a smirk.

  �
��Huh?”

  “Look in the garage,” she said.

  When we found Gram, she was sitting behind the steering wheel of the minivan wearing a helmet and dressed in full racing attire. She rolled the window down and stuck her head out.

  “Hey, Johnson, you ain’t got nothing,” Grandma yelled out. “You drive like an old lady.” She then proceeded to turn the wheel back and forth in an animated fashion and made engine sounds with her mouth. “Vroom, vroom.”

  I was a little uncertain about interrupting her, especially in the middle of a race. But we were on deadline.

  “Gram, can we bother you for a minute?”

  She looked in our direction. “Gotta make a pit stop anyway. Watch your toes, boys.” She turned the wheel toward us and made a screeching sound. “Errrrrr.” She climbed out of the window feetfirst and landed with a thud on the garage floor. “Fill ’er up, gents,” she yelled out to her imaginary crew. “You got thirty seconds, fellas,” she said to us, “and no autographs.”

  I reached into my pocket for the note and handed it to her. “We need your help again.”

  She grinned. She seemed to enjoy playing this little game. The note said:

  11-24-12-18 11-24-12-18

  16-24-12-14-7

  14-7-18-13-13 26-5-26-13 14-7-18-13-13

  18-24-12-14-13 14-7-18-13-13 11-24-12-18

  “We tried to decode it ourselves, Mrs. Collier,” Henry said. “But we just couldn’t figure it out.”

  As Gram studied the note, her expression turned serious. And then just as quickly, she was smiling again. “It’s similar to the last one, but this time it’s backward.”

  “How do you mean?” I asked.

  “Well, the letter k is still the number one. Then this fellow went backward and added two—so the j is a 3—and he did so all the way to the beginning of the alphabet.” She paused momentarily and studied the note. “Then he seems to have assigned the number two to the letter z. And likewise went backward adding two at a time and ending with the letter l.” She held up the note. “Do you see? This code is actually much simpler than the last one.”

  I understood the pattern but was amazed at how quickly she had figured it out.

  “So what’s this one say?” Henry asked.

  “Looks like another address, but this time he spelled out the numbers,” Gram said. “Let’s see now: Four four … South … Three nine three … Route Three Four.” She smiled. “Forty-four South Three Ninety-three Route Thirty-four.”

  “Where’s that?” Henry said.

  “Clear as I can tell, it’s about three miles north of town in an unincorporated area.”

  “What’s over there?” I asked.

  “It’s all farmland. This is probably the address of a farmhouse.”

  Henry poked me in the ribs and nodded. He was thinking the same thing I was. This was the address we’d been looking for. Olsen had written down the location of his farmhouse and given it to Sherman that night. It all made sense. Maybe that would be the next drop-off site. And all of this had been served up and handed to us on a plate by Grandma. In less than a minute, she had managed to decipher the mystery note and had pinpointed the location of the farm all in one motion. She was something else, all right.

  Gram handed the note back to me. “Well, gotta run, gentlemen.” She climbed headfirst through the window and back into the driver’s seat. She stuck her head out and looked back. “We ready to go, Smitty?” She smiled, waved to her crew and sped off. “Vroom, vroom.”

  We spent the remainder of the day planning out our course of action. All the while I was feeling a little guilty about deceiving Eugene. But I knew that if I informed him of our intentions to pay Mr. Olsen a visit tonight, he would never allow it. I figured that if we found what we were looking for, he’d be okay with it after the fact. At least, I hoped so.

  I was also feeling pretty guilty about the lies that Henry and I had told our parents. We each had said that we were sleeping over at the other’s house tonight. We were praying that our moms never got wise and decided to check up on us. But we didn’t want to have a curfew hanging over our heads. There was no telling what we were in for. It was best not to have someone waiting up for us.

  We left the house after dinner and went over to Henry’s for a while. We thought it best to make appearances at both locations. At about eight fifteen, we hopped on our bikes and headed out. We arrived at our destination a couple of minutes before nine o’clock. The only light on at the barber shop when we arrived was the red-and-white pole in front. Scarlett was running late. We parked our bikes in the doorway and sat down on the front steps.

  “So, I never asked you—what did Scarlett say when you told her I was joining the team?” Henry said.

  “To be honest, I don’t recall.”

  He grinned. “Your nose is growing, Charlie.”

  I knew he’d never believe me.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “We’ve worked with difficult clients before. You don’t gotta like ’em. It’s just business.”

  I smiled.

  “Then again,” he said. “When Scarlett sees me in action, things could change. Who knows?”

  I chuckled.

  A few minutes later, Scarlett rode up. We stood to greet her. Henry made the mistake of glancing at his watch. She took it the wrong way.

  “I got caught by a freight train,” she said. “Is that all right with you?”

  Henry shook his head. He was taking the high road. At least he was trying.

  “Well, are we ready to roll?” I said.

  “I still don’t see why you need me,” Scarlett said.

  “I thought you wanted to be along for the kill,” I said.

  “Do you always put your clients to work?”

  Henry stepped between us. The gloves were now off. The truce hadn’t lasted long.

  “Let me tell you something, Scarlett. I don’t really care if you come with us or not. As a matter of fact, now that I’ve had time to think about it, I’d prefer that you didn’t. We don’t usually offer the client an opportunity to tag along. We were extending you a rare privilege. You can take it or leave it.”

  Scarlett glared at Henry, then at me. “This is why I didn’t want him here,” she said.

  “Listen,” I said. “I just thought that maybe you wanted to help find the people who might have stolen your grandfather’s bird. And if we somehow find him, then you’d be right there to ID Socrates for us.”

  “Well, you certainly know what a parrot looks like,” she said. “I don’t see what the big deal is.”

  “So does that mean you won’t be tagging along?” Henry said with a smirk.

  “That’s just what you’d like, isn’t it?” she said.

  “I can think of nothing better.”

  “Okay then, in that case … I’m in.”

  Henry wasn’t expecting that answer. And all I could think about was having to referee this verbal sparring match all night. It wasn’t going to be pleasant.

  “This whole thing can’t end soon enough as far as I’m concerned,” she said.

  “For me too,” Henry echoed.

  Someone had to defuse this situation. And it certainly wasn’t going to be either of them.

  “Guys,” I said. “Let’s just do what we came here to do. Let’s go find these birds, return them to their owners, and let’s try to be civil to one another. Okay?”

  I held up my flashlight. “Henry, got yours?”

  Henry held his up.

  “Scarlett?”

  Scarlett checked her jeans pockets, then her jacket pockets. No flashlight.

  “Sorry,” she said. “But I do have this.” She held up her cell phone. “Don’t you have one?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t need one. If Sam Solomon was able to unravel countless mysteries in the pre-cell phone days, I can certainly do the same.”

  “And I don’t have one because my parents live in the Dark Ages and they won’t let me get one until I’m in hig
h school—but if I could have one, I would. Does that answer your question?” Henry said.

  Scarlett looked at us as if we were both nuts.

  With that, we hopped onto our metal steeds and headed north to the city limits. We rode our bikes in a single file. I assumed the lead and attempted to maintain a steady pace throughout the trek. There were moments when fatigue kicked in, and I wanted to pull over. Instead I just slowed down a little. Henry and Scarlett never said a word when I seemed to labor up steep inclines. We traveled down side streets, alleys, through open prairies, and at times, thick brush. We had checked a local map and knew we were headed to a farmstead at the intersection of Route 34 and Prospect Road. It was nearly 9:40 when we reached our destination.

  A six-foot chain-link fence surrounded the Olsen farm. It was a little hard to see in the dark but we could certainly make out a string of barbed wire running across the top. We abandoned our bikes and walked along the perimeter of the property in hopes of finding an entrance of some kind. Within a few minutes, we came across metal gates. An oversize padlock and a thick metal chain held them tightly together.

  “Now what?” Scarlett said. “There’s no way to get in. We may as well go back.”

  Henry chuckled.

  I aimed my flashlight in his direction. “What’s so funny?”

  “I can’t believe the master of mystery, Charlie Collier, Snoop for Hire, would have left home without these.” Henry pulled a small handheld pair of wire cutters from his pocket.

  It was a friendly dig, but I was okay with it. Henry began to cut a hole in the fence.

  “Wait a minute. You can’t just damage someone’s property like that,” Scarlett said.

  “Just whose side are you on?” Henry said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’re doing all of this to help find your grandpa’s bird,” Henry replied. “I can justify it.”

  Scarlett sighed. “This is all so creepy. And I’m scared. Okay, is that what you want to hear?!”

  I was scared too but I couldn’t let on. Henry busily cut his way through the wire fencing. He paid no attention to us.

  “Okay, see if you can squeeze through here,” he said.