Loot Page 6

  Darius grabbed the remote from the table. “Hey, what about the basketball play-offs?” he asked, and changed the channel.

  Someone yelled that it wasn’t fair, and Pete yelled for his remote back, and someone else shoved somebody, and Pete finally got the remote and snapped off the TV with a show of weary authority.

  “Obviously we’re having trouble with our behavior tonight.”

  “That’s okay, Pete,” Darius said. “We forgive you, bro.”

  “Television privileges are canceled. You all have Darius to thank.”

  Everyone groaned and stood up.

  Jules looked stunned as she filed toward the door with Izzy. March pressed forward, trying to get near her. The girls headed down the corridor toward the back door.

  Darius spoke from behind him. “That dude … the jewel thief. He’s your pops, isn’t he? How come you don’t have diamonds on the soles of your shoes?”

  “He didn’t leave me any diamonds.”

  Jules turned. “He didn’t leave us squat,” she said.

  “What about the magic moonstones?” March asked her. “What if that crazy Grimstone lady was right? What if Alfie still had them, and —”

  “You’re as crazy as she is!” Jules pinned him with her furious gaze. “Don’t you get it? He was a jerk, a louse, a loser! He got our mother into stealing!”

  “What does that guy know?” March sputtered. “He’s just looking for ratings!”

  “What do you know? When are you going to stop looking at your father as some kind of hero?”

  “When you stop trashing him!”

  Mandy Sue loomed up in the dim corridor. “What’s going on here? No mixing with the girls, fellas. You know that.”

  “Hey, Mandy Sue, give us a break. For once,” Darius said, disgust clear in his voice. “They were just talking.”

  “Tone!” Mandy Sue said brightly. “Sounded like arguing to me. And that’s not allowed at Polestar, is it?” She shook her finger at March and Jules. “You should be role models for these two. After all, Izzy has tried again and again to mainstream with fosters, and …” She put a heavy hand on Izzy’s shoulder. “… they always kick you back, don’t they, sweetie? She’s so … unwanted. And Darius … a mother in jail, a father who —”

  “Shut up!” Darius shouted, taking a step toward her.

  “Intimidation!” Mandy Sue shrilled. “Pete!”

  Pete rushed down the hallway.

  “Darius threatened me!” Mandy Sue cried.

  “He did not,” March said. “He just told you to shut up.”

  Pete grabbed Darius by the collar. “That’s the last of your chances, Mr. Fray. We’re sending you back to juvie! Let them deal with your attitude.”

  “You can’t do that!” Izzy cried.

  “Oh yes, I can.” Pete pushed his face close to Izzy’s. “Do you want to go back to the psych ward? Just say the word.”

  Izzy drifted near Darius. Both of their faces had gone completely blank. March wished he could do that, put the pain behind a mask. If he stayed here long enough, he knew he’d develop the skill. He’d have to. He’d be one of the walking wounded, like Darius and Izzy.

  The future rushed at him with all its terror. He had to get out.

  He thought of the two jokers, fitting together. He and Jules weren’t the perfect fit. But Alfie had told him to find her, and he couldn’t leave her.

  I’d rather calculate the odds and take the risk than wait for fate to fall out of the sky.

  He needed a plan.

  * * *

  March slept through the alarm and woke up only when Darius shook him. He floated up to consciousness and focused on his face.

  “It’s Jules, man,” Darius said. “She ran away.”

  Well, so much for loyalty.

  “Did she tell you where she was going?” Mandy Sue demanded. Her hands fluttered. “Everything happens to me. There’ll be another investigation … All that paperwork! All those inspectors, asking questions …”

  “Now calm down, Mandy Sue. That doesn’t have to happen.” Pete paced the floor of his office. “I’m sure March doesn’t want his sister to get in trouble — do you, son?”

  When they use the word son, start worrying.

  “Nossir.”

  “Tell us about it. Did she run away?” Pete asked. He gave the appearance of someone barely containing himself from leaping across the room and grabbing March by the throat. “Tell us what you know!”

  “I don’t know anything!”

  “Save it for someone who’s stupid,” Pete spit out.

  “I thought I just did,” March said.

  It took several long moments for Pete to comprehend that he’d been insulted. He pointed a crooked index finger at March.

  “You are a troublemaker,” he said. “You’re going to wind up just like your roommate!”

  “Pete, what are we going to do?” Mandy Sue wailed.

  “We’re going to sit tight, that’s what. Chances are the little lady will realize how good she has it here at Polestar, and she’ll find her way home. We’ll think of a story and whatnot, and we’ll tell you, March, and you’ll stick to it, you hear me? Answer me!”

  “Sure. I’ll stick to the script.”

  Pete leaned over and fixed his bloodshot gaze on March. “You better be telling the truth. I got my eye on you.”

  * * *

  March was heading up to bed the next evening when he heard the TV blaring the news. He stopped in his tracks outside the den when he heard the word heist. A penthouse robbery on the Upper East Side of New York was baffling police. A diamond and sapphire necklace and a moonstone ring had been stolen from television reporter Michelle Westlake.

  He stood watching the coverage, watching it the way Alfie would have watched it. For the details.

  Security system was on. Motion sensors did not trip. Doors still locked in the morning. The only thing they found were two small holes drilled in the skylight. Lobby surveillance tapes were being studied. A new cleaning crew had been hired, but the superintendent didn’t know anything about it.

  March watched blurry surveillance photos of a cleaning crew moving through the lobby. He saw a tall man in a painter’s cap who looked vaguely familiar. And a shorter fellow with a backpack vacuum who kept his face down and away from the camera. He rubbed his knuckle against his lip.

  Every sensor in March’s brain lit up.

  It wasn’t a he. It was Jules.

  How could he be sure?

  He just was.

  Jules … with all her talk about Alfie, she was the biggest liar ever.

  March took the stairs two at a time. He burst into the room. Darius was shoving things in a duffel.

  “I’m out of here tomorrow, Marco,” he said. “Bounced.” He looked up and caught March’s expression. “Don’t get all emo on me, bro. You got to learn not to make attachments.”

  March was breathing hard. He crossed the room to his backpack and took out Alfie’s list. He spread it on the desk.

  “I found Jules,” he said.

  “Good. She okay?”

  “Seems like it. She just pulled off a major jewel heist.”

  “Yeah. And tomorrow I’m heading to Harvard. Early admission.”

  March leaned against the desk. “I didn’t go to school much. I went to Alfie McQuin’s Homeschool for Thieves instead. He taught me about cons and heists. How a heist could be the most perfect con ever. How details matter. He had favorite heists of all time, and I just figured out that this” — and he slammed his finger on the paper — “is a list of them. Number three? Vacuum packed? That’s how the heist last night was done.”

  “What heist?” Darius said. “You mean that television reporter? Are you saying that your sister, Jules … stole her jewels?”

  March nodded. “And I think she did it with Oscar Ford, the guy on TV the other night.”

  Darius leaned backward. “I gotta sit down.”

  “Jules used a vacuum cleaner �
�� an industrial one, the kind you wear on your back, and I’m guessing it had a boosted engine. They got in as cleaners, and she stayed behind — probably hid in an AC duct. Meanwhile Oscar goes up to the roof and drills two holes in the skylight. Later that night he drops down the sling from there — the kind of thing Jules used in her act. She gets out, winds herself into the sling, and hangs over the jewelry. She sucks up the necklace with the vacuum. Then she hides in the duct again, and Oscar pulls up the sling. She gets out the next day before the theft was discovered, but after the security system is turned off. Nobody checks their valuables before they turn off the system. Probably the maid comes in, inputs the code, gets the coffee going, or whatever. Jules waits for her chance and splits.”

  “That’s a movie,” Darius said. “My dad was a Hollywood producer, and he would have snapped that stuff up.”

  March tapped the paper again. “It’s happened before, just in a different way. There were these famous heists in France that really made Alfie laugh. At this supermarket chain. How the money was handled was like this — a tube would suck it from the registers right into the safe. So the thieves broke in, and they cut into the tube, stuck in a modified vacuum hose, and just sucked the money out of the safe. They pulled off a whole bunch of heists doing that.”

  “They vacuumed up money? Sweet!” Darius shook his head. “Does that mean your old man was planning on doing it?”

  “I think so, yeah,” March said. “He knew his way around an AC duct.”

  “So how did Oscar know about it?”

  “The only thing I can guess is that Jules already knew Oscar. He gets out of prison and finds out my dad is planning some heists. He wants in on the action. He recruits Jules. She was conning me the whole time — biding her time. Alfie used to say that ninety percent of a successful heist is planning. He figured out the method. Jules found the list, memorized it, and told Oscar. She could have done it on the plane — snooped while I was sleeping.”

  “That’s some nasty double cross,” Darius said. “You two are related. You just don’t do that to family. I mean, my family, yeah. You can’t trust anybody.”

  March felt a dark tide of rage move through him. His hands shook. Sure, they weren’t close. But he wouldn’t have left without her. He would have watched out for her, just like Alfie had wanted him to. “Well, she did it to me.”

  Izzy suddenly slid out from underneath Darius’s bed. “Welcome to the club,” she said, her dark eyes full of sadness. “Family stinks.”

  “Iz here just sneaked in to see me,” Darius said. “We’ve been taking care of each other for three years now. Don’t want to stop. She was going to see if she could fit in my duffel. Crazy plan, right?”

  “The best plans are crazy,” March said.

  Izzy peered at the list. “So your dad made a list of heists he wanted to do, and the way to do them. But how do you know the targets?”

  “That’s the piece that’s missing,” March said. “I think the answer is here.” He spilled out the contents of his backpack onto the desk. “Here’s what he left me. A book, a key, a deck of marked cards. Whatever the missing piece is, I think Jules figured it out.”

  He looked at the list again, thinking hard.

  “The heist in Amsterdam was number two — Room Service. I know that for sure. Alfie lifted a waiter uniform from the hotel basement. That’s how he got access to the hallways. It only works in big hotels, and you’ve got to be careful, because there’s managers everywhere, and even in big hotels everybody knows everybody. But one of Alfie’s rules is: There’s always a new guy.”

  “So he got into the room that way?”

  “Not the room, the room above. It was empty. He reserved it for a late check-in but he didn’t show up, because then you have to give your passport and ID. He was supposed to rappel down from that balcony, spring the lock on the door, enter, snatch the diamonds, and get out. The target was a jewelry dealer. It all went fine except, for some reason, instead of using the drainpipe to get down, he went up to the roof. I still don’t know why. And that’s when …”

  He suddenly couldn’t say the words he fell.

  Darius shook out the deck of cards. “These aren’t marked cards.”

  “Some of them have numbers on them,” March pointed out.

  Darius shook his head. “That’s not how you mark a deck. You crease a card with your fingernail or bend it. What kind of a criminal’s kid are you?”

  “If your dad was leaving you clues, he’d leave you easy ones,” Izzy said. “He’d have to be sure that you’d get it.” She looked over Darius’s shoulder as he pulled out the cards with numbers on the backs.

  “Look,” she said, putting them in order. “The cards are all diamonds — 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. Maybe he’s directing you back to the list.”

  “Or a straight flush,” Darius noted.

  “The numbers on the 2 card are 104 / 11 1 1 2 5 24 14 28 2 6 20 54 3 26 8 14 2 3 13 13.”

  “Computer code?” Darius asked.

  “Are you a coder?” Izzy asked March.

  He shook his head. “I can log in and log out, but …”

  “A Swiss bank account?” Darius asked.

  “Possibly …” Izzy said. “But why would there be different numbers for each card? Wouldn’t six Swiss bank accounts be overkill?”

  “Not if there were huge piles of cash and jewels,” Darius pointed out hopefully.

  Izzy’s gaze lighted on The Moonstone. “Was your dad a big reader?”

  March shook his head. “Newspapers and magazines and detective stuff.”

  Izzy picked up the book. “This is considered to be the first detective novel ever written.”

  “How do you know these things?” Darius asked.

  “I read,” she said distractedly.

  She turned to a page. “Do you have a pencil and paper?” she asked. “This could be a book code.”

  Darius looked at March. They both shrugged. “Best to let her fly,” Darius said.

  Glancing from the playing card to the book, Izzy began writing down letters.

  H E I N M U L D E R

  She pushed the paper toward March.

  He let out a breath. “Hein Mulder was the mark. The jewelry dealer in Amsterdam. How did you do that?”

  “The first number — 104 — is the page number. Then notice the spacing? The first number is the line, the second number is the space. So, I counted eleven lines down, and the first space was the letter H in the word he. And so on. If we go through the numbers on these cards, we’ll get the rest of your dad’s targets.”

  “She’s a genius,” Darius said. “Have I mentioned that?”

  “The weird thing is that there’s nothing on the aces,” Izzy said. “So there’s no way to know who the target is for the first heist.”

  “Let’s just keep going,” March said.

  It took a while, but soon they had a list of names.

  M I C H E L L E W E S T L A K E

  D O L O R E S L E O N

  B L A N C H E P O T T A G E

  R E N E E R O O T E R

  “Michelle Westlake is the TV reporter who got ripped off yesterday!” March said. “She goes with Vacuum Packed. So Dolores Leon must go with Surfing Murph.”

  “Any clue what Surfing Murph means?” Darius asked.

  “Sure. Easy one,” March said. “Murph the Surf was the nickname the press gave the guy who pulled off a heist at the Museum of Natural History in New York City back in the sixties. They got in through a bathroom window and stole the Star of India, this really famous star sapphire.”

  “So if we plop Dolores Leon and Museum of Natural History into a search engine, we might get some kind of match,” Izzy said. “We can look it up on Pete’s computer.”

  “How? It’s almost lights-out.”

  “He’s always snoring by eleven. Just leave the back door open for me. I’ll be back.”

  * * *

  At midnight the house was dark and quiet. Pete’s office
was locked, but it took less than a minute for March to break in.

  Izzy’s slight fingers flew on the keys. “Dolores Leon, Museum of Natural History … Whoa. She’s donating her famous necklace, the Widow’s Knot, to the museum’s Gem Folklore exhibition — like, famous jewelry pieces that have a story behind them. They’re throwing a big fancy party at the museum to honor her.”

  “What’s the Widow’s Knot?” March asked.

  “It’s an amber gemstone with a clasp of two moonstones. You think Jules is going to try to steal this next, ha-ha?” Izzy mimicked Mandy Sue’s fake laugh.

  “Moonstones again,” March murmured.

  “Like the show?” Darius asked. “The magic moonstones your pop stole?”

  “My dad didn’t believe in magic,” March said. “He believed in cash.”

  “Word,” Darius said.

  March felt something stir inside him, some small flame that kicked into life and became a blaze of certainty. He leaned over Izzy’s shoulder and studied the necklace. This collection of stones and metal was his ticket out. He could feel it. That’s what Alfie would want. His father would’ve been devastated thinking about March in a place that smelled like cherry mouthwash and “nobody cares.” He’d want him to grab his fate and make it dance. That’s why he wrote down the heists. March knew it now. Alfie never wrote down anything; it was all in his head. He’d left him a message, and it was find the stones.

  “I’m going to steal it,” he said.

  “Yeah, right.” Darius reared back. “You’re serious? That’s crazy.”

  March nodded. “For sure. And you two would have to be crazy to join me.”

  Darius and Izzy exchanged a glance.

  “Just … go?” Izzy looked uncertain.

  “Leave all this?” Darius asked, with a sardonic twist to his mouth.

  “What have you got to lose?” March asked. One corner of his mouth quirked upward. “Creamed corn?”

  They waited for first light, and they ran all the way to the station. The grass smelled sweet and damp. The moon was still hanging on, not giving up on nighttime, even though pink was streaking through the stacked clouds in a sky so charged with dark, luminous blue it seemed electric. They ran, laughing at nothing except the fact that they were running, flying down blacktop roads, past the dark windows, gulping down morning air.