THE CRIME
The way Mrs. Boone was screaming—one panicky squawk after another, with heaving gasps of breath in between—you’d think aliens had invaded the Perro del Mar Bed and Breakfast and were pulling out her thick, glittery eyelashes, one by one. It was an overreaction to the lights going out, for sure, but Mrs. Boone has a way of convincing people to go along for the ride. Mr. Boone and my younger sister, Elvis, were right there with her, shrieking loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear.
“Rondo, if you did this.” Epic’s big-brother voice was right in my ear. “Tell me now. I don’t want to have another…”
I tuned him out, clipped a mini flashlight to my notebook, and scanned the shadows in the dark lobby. I had nothing to do with the power going out. Not that Epic—or anyone else in this house—believed me. Whenever something goes wrong at the Perro del Mar, our family’s dog-friendly bed and breakfast, they all look at me first. Mom. Dad. The guests. Even their dogs. For real. There was a mini schnauzer in Room 5 who’d been giving me the evil eye all week. Whatever. It didn’t matter what they thought. If they paid attention, they’d know the truth.
I focused on documenting the points of entry.
Front entrance—blocked: film equipment.
Back door—wide open.
“What are you writing? Are you even listening to me?” My brother was irritated. Which, unfortunately, had been kind of his thing lately. Mom and Dad called it the Eighth Grade Grumps. I called it a waste of energy.
“If you want to help,” I said. “We need an inventory.”
“Of what?”
“People.” It seemed obvious, but Epic stared at me like Mrs. Boone’s eyelash-plucking aliens had slurped up my brains. “Never mind, I’ll do it myself.”
Mom had gone to check the circuit breaker. Dad was gathering every flashlight in the house. Most of the film crew was outside, where they’d been getting ready for the big rooftop scene in which an Italian greyhound (or Iggy, as the Boones liked to say) would jump out the second-floor window, walk along the roof’s edge, leap to a lower ledge, and then attack an actor like the dog’s best friend’s life depended on it.
It was an impressive stunt, and it ought to be, because the dog trainer had rehearsed it approximately one bajillion times over the past two days. That guy was intense. He didn’t allow anyone “nonessential” on the second floor during rehearsals, prep, or filming. Especially not kids. Even more especially: not Mr. and Mrs. Boone. It didn’t matter that their Iggy, Pico, was the whole reason Bentley Knows was filming on location at the Perro del Mar. The dog trainer didn’t care.
“The most important thing for canine actors is focus,” he’d said. “How can they focus with excitables around?”
That’s why, while Mrs. Boone and the rest of the “excitables” were downstairs in the lobby screaming, only the dog trainer, the actors, and a few handpicked, unexcitable members of the crew were upstairs with the canine performers.
I’d barely completed the inventory when the lights flickered and turned back on. When the Boones and Elvis stopped screaming, the house got extra quiet. Which, weirdly, felt more stressful than the noise.
Mrs. Boone’s eyelashes fluttered.
Mr. Boone sighed.
Elvis stood on her tiptoes to peek at my notebook, and I clicked off my flashlight. Epic flinched at the sound.
Then—predictably—a voice from outside shouted into a bullhorn. I’d already guessed what he was going to say.
“Attention! Attention! All hands! We’re missing our canine actors!”
“I tried to tell you,” I said.
But nobody listened because Mrs. Boone shrieked, “Dognapped!”
Members of the lighting crew raced upstairs.
People with clipboards raced down.
“Pico’s been dognapped!” My sister’s voice broke with a suspiciously dramatic squeak. Sure, El had tears coming out of her eyes, but she was also bouncing on her toes with excitement, her blond curls looking even wilder than usual.
Epic, on the other hand, had gone ghost-white. He’d give up Robotics Club for Pico Boone, that’s how much he likes that dog.
“Call the police!” he said.
Mr. Boone shook his head in a panic. “We know who can find him faster.”
Exactly. Me. Why ask the police to start from scratch when I had on-the-ground, real-time information? I’d been watching everyone at the Perro for days. I knew who the suspects were, and I had experience exposing criminals. I glanced at my notebook. It was no coincidence that the most likely culprits were missing from my inventory. All I had to do was find them.
But Mr. Boone wasn’t talking about me. Instead, he held a cell phone in his gigantic hand, his dark lips practically swallowing the speaker end of the device.
“Call the Department of Lost Dogs!” he barked.
It was a low blow. Here I was, ready to launch a full investigation, but the Boones trusted telepathic dog psychics more than they trusted me.
At least, they did until the cheerful operator on Mr. Boone’s speakerphone explained that 9:00 P.M. was “after hours” and the Department of Lost Dogs only had one animal communicator on duty.
“Leif is on another call,” the chipper voice said. “He’ll be free in forty-five minutes. Would you like to leave a callback number, or would you prefer to hold?”
Mrs. Boone, tear-streaked and shaky, tugged at her husband’s arm and pointed at me. Finally. Except, instead of asking me to investigate actual facts and clues, she went a different direction.
“You find him, Rondo,” Mrs. Boone said. “You’re as psychic as the BarkAngels. Ask Pico to show you where he is.”
“And who he’s with!” Elvis nodded like the request made perfect sense, and for whatever reason, Epic didn’t call it out as nonsense.
I knew the Boones. They were not going to let this go.
If I could go back in time, maybe I would have listened to the kid magician and stayed away from the whole dog psychic thing. It had completely spiraled out of control. It had turned my brother and sister against me. It ruined my vacation week. And now Pico was missing and the Boones were going to let the trail go cold. Did they not realize what was at stake here? If I couldn’t find that anxious, shivering dog soon, my favorite television show was going to get canceled.
Someone had to fix it.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll talk to Pico. Then I’m going to look for clues.”
It wasn’t just about the show. I honestly thought if I did this one thing right, we’d all magically go back to getting along. I should have known better. Families don’t work like that. And magic is just a bunch of tricks.
THE PERRO DEL MAR
“Rondo … Rondo … Rondo…”
My sister, Elvis, poked me a few times, then pushed aside one of Mom’s custom-made dog benches so she could slide into the booth, across the table from me. Guest checkout for the Perro had already happened, so the dining room was nice and empty. All the cleaning and room turnover was done. And it was Sunday, the first official day of Restorative Week, which is our nonconformist elementary school’s way of saying Spring Break.
It all added up to one thing. I was on vacation. Or trying to be.
The dining room was empty, but the nearby lobby was filling up with noisy people and their froofy dogs, and now my sister had invaded the corner booth. Elvis swung her feet under the table, kicking me every single time she said my name. I kept my eyes on my book, A Magician Among the Spirits by Harry Houdini, and estimated how long it would take for her to get bored and walk away.
The correct answer to that calculation?
Infinity minutes.
“Rondo … Rondo … Rondo … Rondo … Rondo … Rondo … Rondo…”
I turned the page to a chapter titled “Magicians as Detectors of Fraud” and pulled my feet up out of her reach. El’s almost ten, only a year and a half younger than me, but she’s so small, people who don’t know her treat her like she’s seven. My sister usually manages to work that to her advantage, but every once in a while, it works to mine. She tried a few more kicks, but her short-as-a-seven-year-old legs got nothing but air.
“Rondooooo!” Elvis let her arms and head flop dramatically to the table. “Mom said you have to help me bring a whole bunch of packages upstairs.”
“I cleaned up the dog poo in Room 2,” I reminded her. “That was your room to clean, it was disgusting, and you owe me.”
Instead of being annoyed at my answer, El grinned, satisfied that she’d gotten my attention.
“There’s a crowd lined up outside waiting to see Heaven Hsu,” she said. “Do you think she’s as short as she looks on TV? I mean, on Bentley Knows she’s standing next to a Saint Bernard all the time, so it’s hard to tell. Did you see the film crew is here already?”
Of course I did. The whole reason I’d chosen the corner booth was so I could get some peace and quiet behind the tall booth walls—but also so I could sit on the edge and keep an eye on the lobby. I’d seen every episode of Bentley Knows, and even though I wasn’t going to stand in line and fan all over her, I didn’t not want to know what Heaven Hsu was like in real life.
“Mom and Dad need to step up their security if they’re going to host Hollywood stuff here all the time,” I said, sneaking another look.
“Why?” El leaned forward. “Do you see something? Can our detective agency solve it? I thought of a super-good name. The Mysterious McDade Mystery-Solvers Incorporated!”
“That’s terrible,” I said. “Besides—”
“We’re not doing the detective thing anymore. You both promised.” Epic had caught me peeking around the wall of the booth, and now he stood at the table holding a clipboard and an ancient toy walkie-talkie he’d rebuilt to have longer range and clearer sound. He held up the device. Announced, “I found them,” then clipped the walkie-talkie to his belt.
“I promised not to solve boring mysteries,” I said.
Epic rolled his eyes.
I nudged him. “Could you move? You’re blocking my view.”
“What are you looking at?” Elvis glared at me, then at Epic. “He sees something, but he won’t tell me. He never tells me anything anymore!”
“It’s nothing,” I said. “Not yet. It could be something.”
For the past twenty minutes, most of the people filling up the Perro’s lobby had been members of the Bentley Knows film crew. They were hauling in crates, cords, lighting equipment, and what seemed like a thousand and one duffel bags. The rest were either Bentley Knows fans or the usual tourists collecting selfies in America’s #1 Dog-Friendly Town. The selfie-grabbers never left Carmelito, California, without a pic at the B&B where a world-class jewel thief had gone viral two years ago. Mom and Dad kept saying it was all a fluke. Our fifteen minutes of fame. Things would quiet down and go back to normal. Any minute now.
Epic followed my gaze to the lobby. Elvis stood on her seat to look over the top of the booth.
“I really wanted to do a mystery this week.” She sighed. “Don’t you think that girl on the couch has a cute hairdo? I wonder if I could do mine like that.”
Copyright © 2023 by Josephine Cameron
