Swindle Read online

  “What do you want it for?” she asked dubiously.

  “It’s a project for school,” Griffin replied, pleased that it was only half a lie, thanks to Mr. Martinez. “Town history, that kind of thing. Our job is to get a floor plan of a house built in the twenties or thirties.”

  “Well, all right,” she said grudgingly. “But you have to go and wash your hands.”

  “Man, I am insulted,” Ben complained as the two stood in the men’s room, scrubbing. “Does she think we crawled here through the sewers?”

  “It’s the skate park thing all over again,” Griffin muttered. “They treat kids like garbage in this place. If we can manage to photocopy those plans without drooling on them, she’ll consider it a miracle. Just keep your cool. The last thing we need is for her to start asking too many questions.”

  Back at the desk, there was good news and bad news.

  “I couldn’t find 531 Park Avenue Extension,” Mrs. Abernathy explained, “so I brought you the blueprints for 1414 Lakewood Road.” She held up a cautionary finger when both boys opened their mouths to protest. “Hear me out. You’re studying town history, and this is a part of it. Between 1925 and 1927, a builder named Gunhold put up six homes in Cedarville, all exactly alike. One was 531 Park Ex. Another is 1414 Lakewood. So this is the blueprint for the house you’re asking about, since the plans are exactly the same.”

  Under Mrs. Abernathy’s watchful eye, Griffin and Ben photocopied the drawings and left the town hall. Seconds later, the papers were spread out on a park bench as the boys tried to make sense of them.

  “Who can read these things?” Griffin wondered aloud. “Where’s the back door? Maybe we could get in that way, where Mr. Mulroney couldn’t see us.”

  Ben squinted at the main floor layout. “I think it’s a side door. There’s nothing in the back. It’s a solid line. Anyway, all the doors and windows will be covered by the alarm.”

  Griffin stared at the plans until he felt his eyes crossing. “If I ever say I want to become an architect, hit me with a shovel. I can’t get a sense of the house from this. We’re going to have to see the real thing.”

  “Oh, sure,” Ben said sarcastically. “Swindle’s going to invite us in for the grand tour.”

  “Probably not,” Griffin agreed. “But the people at 1414 Lakewood might.”

  “Why would they?”

  Griffin grinned. “Let’s go over to Burger King and pick up some ketchup packets. I’ll explain on the way.”

  When the lady of the house opened the door of 1414 Lakewood Road, the sight that met her eyes told a chilling story. Two boys stood on her front porch, the smaller of them dripping blood from a badly scraped arm.

  As usual, Griffin did the talking. “My friend fell off his bike! Can we please come in and use the phone to call his mother?”

  “Of course!” she exclaimed. “But first we need to wash that arm so it doesn’t get infected! Come with me!”

  “Thank you,” whimpered Ben. He hoped she attributed the weakness in his voice to shock rather than fear their hostess might clue in that the blood on his arm was really meant to be dolloped on French fries.

  The woman hustled him up a flight of stairs and into a small white-tile bathroom.

  “Wash your arm with soap,” she instructed, rummaging in a drawer for antiseptic and bandages.

  “I’ll wait down here,” Griffin called from below. He was already busily scouting the rooms and hallways, looking for an entry point from the outside. He felt a shiver of excitement as he looked around. Yes, he knew this wasn’t really Swindle’s house. Yet it was supposedly an exact replica. This was like being behind enemy lines. The heist was almost under way.

  He unfolded the blueprint of the first floor, matching up walls and doorways. Front door … side door … some of these windows would be big enough to crawl through …

  But what about the alarm?

  Wait a minute — the basement!

  He found the entrance and flitted silently down the cellar steps. The windowless basement was entirely underground, with no access to the outside. Another dead end.

  In the second-story bathroom, Ben had finished washing the ketchup off his arm. It was a good thing he’d had that wipeout in front of the Bings’ FOR SALE sign, he reflected. The scrapes were legitimate, even if the blood wasn’t.

  “See?” said the woman, spreading ointment on his skin. “It’s already starting to scab over. You’re a fast healer.”

  “Thanks,” he mumbled. “Sorry to bother you.” His mind was downstairs with Griffin. Had his friend made a breakthrough? Had he discovered a way into this house — Swindle’s house, really — that wouldn’t set off the alarm?

  Suddenly the sun burst from behind a cloud, and a beam of light shot straight from the heavens to illuminate the white gauze that wrapped Ben’s elbow.

  Sunlight? But this bathroom had no windows!

  Bewildered, he looked straight up, and there it was. The room was taller than it was wide, with a cathedral ceiling that followed the slope of the roof outside. Dead center was a heavy glass skylight.

  “That’s nice,” he croaked, pointing skyward. “Is it a window, too? I mean, does it open?”

  “It did,” she replied. “We had a special pole to pop it up. But the pole broke years ago, and they don’t make replacements anymore.” She finished bandaging his arm. “Now let’s go down and phone your mom.”

  “You know what? I don’t want to scare her. I’ll just ride home. I’m feeling a lot better.”

  And he was. But it had nothing to do with his arm.

  He had found a way in.

  15

  Antonia “Pitch” Benson opened her locker and shrugged out of her backpack. She was in the process of stowing it on the shelf when the words jumped out at her: TOP SECRET.

  At the base of the narrow space, sitting on her gym shoes, was a printed note on bright green paper, folded twice.

  She opened it up and began to read:

  You have been chosen for your special skills to do something that urgently needs to be done. To learn more, come to the Ballroom at 3:30. Don’t miss this. It will be worth your while — $$$.

  “What’s that?”

  She wheeled around to see Darren Vader craning his neck to read over her shoulder. “Mind your own business!” she barked angrily, snapping the note out of his view. She refolded the paper and pocketed it.

  Now what could that be about? Someone had obviously slipped it through the vents in her locker door. But who? And why her? Her only talent was rock-climbing, and there weren’t any mountains or crags near Cedarville.

  The whole thing was probably just a joke. And if Darren was behind it, she would be expressing her displeasure with her fists.

  She slammed her locker shut. Whatever it was, she’d know at 3:30.

  “Dad, this athlete’s foot itch is driving me crazy! Isn’t there anything we can do?”

  Logan Kellerman had never been so well prepared for an audition. He had rehearsed his line so many times that he knew it inside out. He understood every subtle shade of it, especially his character’s motivation. He was someone who didn’t want to be itchy anymore, and who knew his father loved him enough to buy an exciting new product to make him feel better. The role had become so much a part of him that sometimes he could actually feel the prickling irritation between his toes. There was no way the director of that commercial could overlook his performance. No way in the world.

  “Dad, this athlete’s foot itch —” He was halfway through the speech again when he noticed the green piece of paper at the bottom of his locker.

  You have been chosen for your special skills …

  Special skills. Logan’s heart beat faster. This could only be about some kind of acting job!

  The Ballroom at 3:30. He could hardly wait!

  Melissa Dukakis wasn’t sure what to make of the folded green invitation. She had never been invited to anything before. Special skills. What could that mean? She
was a C student who didn’t know a lot of people and kept to herself.

  Maybe this was a mistake — the wrong locker, or maybe the wrong Melissa. There were several others in the school. That must be it. A mistake.

  She would go at 3:30 — just to explain the mix-up.

  The green TOP SECRET note crumpled in her pocket, Savannah Drysdale stormed past the gym. She’d been halfway home before she’d changed her mind about this meeting. Why lose sleep wondering what all the secrecy was about — as if she didn’t already know. Griffin Bing and his sawed-off sidekick.

  The Ballroom was actually a storage area by the gym. It was piled high with dead tennis balls, shattered Ping-Pong balls, ripped baseballs, cracked golf balls, squashed soccer balls, leaky footballs and basketballs, lopsided medicine balls, untethered tether balls, and balls from sports that no one ever played — bocce balls, water polo balls, rugger balls, and even a few that no one could identify.

  Coach Nimitz could not bring himself to throw away a ball, and truly believed that one day he would find the right pump or patch. Then all this equipment could be used to promote physical fitness for children.

  It was in this rubber and horsehide graveyard that Savannah found the meeting already in progress. Along with Griffin and Ben, she was surprised to see Pitch, Logan, and Melissa lounging on the soft piles of Phys Ed castoffs.

  “You two!” Savannah spat. “I knew it! This is about your stupid baseball card, isn’t it?”

  “You were right to be angry before,” Griffin told her seriously. “We should have been honest with you from the very beginning. We won’t make that mistake again.”

  Pitch was bewildered. “What baseball card?”

  “Before we go any further,” Griffin said solemnly, “I need your word that what’s said in this room stays in this room. In or out, you can’t tell anybody about this. Ever. This is no kids’ game. There’s serious stuff on the line — serious money, but also serious trouble if anything goes wrong. If you don’t think you can handle it, there’s the door.”

  Nobody moved, not even Savannah, who knew what was coming.

  Pitch spoke up. “All right, Griffin, you’ve got our attention. What’s this about?”

  “A Babe Ruth card from 1920 — the kind collectors pay big bucks for.” Griffin gave them the whole story, from the discovery in the old Rockford house to Swindle’s deceitful flimflam and the unsuccessful break-in at the store.

  “So it’s about the money, but not just the money,” he concluded. “Swindle saw a couple of kids, and he took advantage of us because he didn’t think we could do anything about it. We’re going to show him he was wrong.”

  Logan cleared his throat. “How much money are we talking about?”

  “Equal shares, split six ways,” Griffin replied. “We can’t know the total amount, because it’s being sold at an auction. But the rock-bottom starting bid is two hundred thousand dollars. And Swindle told the TV news he thought it could go for over a million.”

  “A million dollars!” Melissa performed the calculation at lightning speed in her head. “That’s one hundred sixty-six thousand six hundred sixty-six each! I could buy a state-of-the-art computer.”

  “And build a new wing on your house to keep it in,” Ben added.

  “I could afford acting lessons from Sanjay Jotwani,” said Logan dreamily.

  “I could take my family climbing at Yosemite,” exclaimed Pitch in awe.

  Savannah was not as easily impressed. “Yeah, yeah, it’s a lot of money. I’d love to grow up knowing I’ve got enough in the bank to pay my way through veterinary school. Who wouldn’t? But that kind of cash doesn’t come easy. You’re talking about a robbery, not a Sunday picnic.”

  “You’re right,” said Griffin. “Still, if we all work together, we can pull it off. We break into Swindle’s house through a skylight on the roof. Pitch, that’s where you come in. Your job is to get us there.”

  “Like climbing on a building instead of a mountain,” she mused.

  “The house has an alarm system, but the motion sensors will be off. We know this because Swindle has a guard dog that sleeps in the house. The dog’s no joke, but Savannah can handle him.”

  “Deep down, he’s a real sweetheart,” Savannah said fondly.

  Melissa shook her head, clearing the veil of hair away from her face. “So my role is to get to the panel and disarm the alarm?”

  Pitch regarded her in amazement. “You can do that?”

  Ben shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. That’s the last thing we want to do. If anyone shuts down the system, Swindle gets notified by e-alert.”

  Melissa frowned. “So what do you need me for?”

  “You know more about computers than anybody else in this town,” Griffin replied. “Can you hack into Swindle’s e-mail?”

  “Probably. But what for?”

  “We need to find a time when he’s going to be out of the house for a few hours. We can’t have him busting in on us when we’re stealing our card back.”

  Logan was confused. “Where do I fit into all this? I’m an actor, not a burglar.”

  “Swindle lives across the street from the great-granddaddy of all nosy neighbors,”

  “Swindle lives across the street from the great-granddaddy of all nosy neighbors,” Griffin replied. “His name is Eli Mulroney, and he has the whole block under surveillance twenty-four/seven. His chair is pointed right at Swindle’s front door. We need you to focus your acting skills on making friends with this guy so you can distract him during the operation. And you’ll be a lookout at the same time.”

  Griffin got up from the flattened exercise ball he’d been using as a beanbag chair. “I know it sounds crazy. And I know it sounds dangerous. But if you break it down into everybody doing their job, you’ll see that no single part is impossible. We just have to put all the pieces together in the right order. We can do this! Now, who’s on board?”

  16

  The silence was earsplitting.

  Finally, Pitch spoke up. “Count me in. Somebody’s got to teach this creep a lesson.”

  Logan was next. “Me, too. It’s the ultimate challenge for an actor.”

  “Easy for you to say,” muttered Savannah. “You’ll be safe and sound across the street. If the cops come, you can tell them you’ve never seen us before in your life.”

  “It may be a break-in, but it isn’t stealing,” Griffin reminded them. “That card is ours. If any stealing happened, it was Swindle who did it.”

  “Sure,” Savannah said sarcastically. “That’s the first thing that pops into a policeman’s mind when he catches you blowtorching a safe.”

  “If you don’t make the payments on your car,” Griffin argued, “they send a guy to repossess it. He steals it just like any car thief would, but it’s perfectly legal. That’s exactly what we’re doing — repossessing a baseball card.”

  Melissa spoke up. “I thought that note was in my locker by mistake. But I guess you guys really did want me.”

  “Of course we did,” Ben assured her. “But are you in or out?”

  “Oh, I’m in,” she confirmed. “It’s the first time anybody’s ever asked me to do anything.”

  Savannah was the picture of outrage. “I would have bet five of those Babe Ruth cards that you guys were going to stand up and tell these two maniacs to stuff it. What’s the matter with you people?”

  Griffin regarded her intently. “It all comes down to you, Savannah.”

  “Yeah, right — like I’ve got a choice,” she raged. “You’ve fixed it so I have to go along, just to protect poor Luthor!”

  Ben couldn’t believe his ears. “Poor Luthor?”

  “I can picture exactly how it’ll play out. You’re going to bumble around that house until he’s got no choice but to bite one of you. Then the ASPCA is going to want to put him down because he’s vicious. Well, he’s not! That’s why I’m going to be there every step of the way — to make sure nothing happens to Luthor.”
r />   “It’s a go, then,” Griffin announced. “The auction is on October seventeenth. That gives us five days to make our move. I don’t have to tell you that total secrecy is a must. You can’t talk to anybody about this, no matter how good you think they are at keeping secrets. No best friends, no favorite grandmothers, no personal life coaches, not even your pen pal who lives in Hong Kong. No one else can find out about this!”

  On that note, a pile of flattened volleyballs sneezed.

  “Bless you,” Ben said automatically. Then, “Hey —”

  Balls began tumbling in all directions as the mountain moved. A head broke the surface of the rockslide as Darren Vader got to his feet.

  “How much did you hear?” Griffin demanded.

  “All of it,” Darren replied cheerfully. “That’s quite a plan you’ve got there, Bing. When the funeral home starts burying people in Ziploc bags, I’ll know some of you fell off the roof.”

  “If you breathe a word of this —”

  “Take it easy, shorty,” Darren interrupted. “I don’t want to rat you out. I want a piece of the action.”

  “What are you talking about?” Griffin snapped. “A piece of what action?”

  “I want in on the heist.”

  “No way,” Griffin ruled. “We picked the team to fit the plan. If we suddenly have an opening for an obnoxious bigmouth, you’ll be the first person we call.”

  “You need me,” Darren argued. “You’ve got a climber, an actor, a computer geek, and a dog handler. But you’re missing one thing — muscle.”

  “A baseball card isn’t very heavy,” Ben said evenly.

  “But people are — especially if you have to lower them by ropes, or pull them up again. Through a skylight, let’s say.”

  “I don’t care how strong you are,” Griffin seethed. “You don’t call the shots. There are six of us and only one of you.”

  “Fine. But if I have to walk out of here, I’m going straight to Mr. Palomino.”