"Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief" by Wendelin Van Draanen, Chapters 13–19

Now it’s one thing that he scared me to death. It’s another that he made all that racket.

“You’ve had your little look-see. Now skedaddle!”

Marissa makes a beeline for the door, but I grab her by the shirt and kind of bungee her back.

He gives me a hard look, then says, “Hey...you’re the gal that was here the night of the ruckus.”

There’s a wall of mirrors on both sides and they’re a little bit warped, so you’re surrounded by a lot of mutant reflections of yourself.

“With a vise grip or pliers or something. At least that’s what the cop said.”

Then she laughs and says, “He hasn’t got enough initiative to pull something like this off. Teej is much too lazy.”

We wind up in the middle of a bunch of gnarly bushes and garbage, fenced in by chain-link on one side with really high cinder-block walls on either end.

“Where do you get off going in there like that? You rile people up and then I have to talk myself blue in the face trying to convince them there weren’t any clues then, there aren’t any clues now, and there are never gonna be any clues!”

“Listen, girl, you stay away from this hotel, and you stay away from police business. I don’t have the time to deal with your shenanigans!”

He gives me a smug little smile. “I know what you’re trying to pull here.”

“You think I can’t see through all of this? You write a threatening note to an old woman and then, to throw the blame on a burglar you claim you saw, you manufacture a clue and pretend you found it over at the Heavenly Hotel.”

She flips through the phone book, muttering, “I’m going to give that obnoxious toad a piece of my mind....”

She flips it over and says, “Striking, isn’t it?”

“Sounds to me like the man is playing the commodities market. Maybe futures, maybe options. Whichever, it’s a surefire way to lose a bunch of cash in a hurry.”

Let’s say your broker calls you up and tells you that the price of, say, silver has never been so low, and that you could make a quick buck by investing in silver options. He tells you that in all of human history, you could never get silver for less, and he’s sure that because of some happenings in, let’s say, Japan, the price of silver will go through the roof by the end of the week.

“I think so. And I think it’s Maynard’s money.”
Hudson shakes his head. “Maynard should’ve given him the boot years ago. The boy’s a leech.”

Miss Pilson was still talking to herself in Old English, Mr. Tiller was still moving X around the chalkboard, and Mr. Holgartner showed the second half of another video that had more static than socks on polyester pants.

He says I have to wear a bandage just in case it was broken or fractured or something. He says that if anything happens to it in P.E. he doesn’t want the school to be liable or something.

Yes, I know what the doctor says! I just had a very enlightening conversation with Dr. Gant.

Then she starts blubbering. “Oh come on, you guys...she made me do it! I didn’t know! How was I supposed to know?”

Then she goes on and on about how him wearing his ring on the index finger of his left hand is so significant and how if he ever gave it to a girl it would mean something.

And I’m standing there feeling horrible, looking back and forth from the money on the ground to Marissa running toward the escalator, and I’m about to go chasing after her to explain everything when Heather reaches down and snags the wad of bills.

Trouble is, they would’ve called in Officer Borsch and I would’ve been stuck talking myself blue in the face to someone who wasn’t about to believe me. Not unless I could clobber him over the head with some proof.

I jump out from behind the hedge and I’m about to hop off the planter when Oscar grabs me by an ankle. Now this is no feeble grab—it’s like a tourniquet around my leg.

I jump out from behind the hedge and I’m about to hop off the planter when Oscar grabs me by an ankle. Now this is no feeble grab—it’s like a tourniquet around my leg.

And I was slipping along the dirt, trying to stay up on the edge where the ground was a little bit drier, when this gigantic dog comes charging up to the fence, snapping and growling and barking, trying to crash through the pickets.

And Oscar’s in the middle of pulling himself out of the Dumpster when a mangy orange alley cat comes streaking across his back and hits the ground running.

“I guess he really did think I was making it all up. I mean, he said he thought I’d forged it, but I figured maybe he was just in a bad mood.”

“Apparently he’s quite a lowlife himself—long history of lawbreaking and overnighters at the jail house. I don’t think we’ll have any problem getting information out of him, although we might not need it. They’ve found quite a bit of incriminating evidence in that ice cream cart.”