Successful spying consists of 50 percent preparation, 30 percent inspiration, 20 percent perspiration, and 10 percent action, which adds up to 110 percent because a great spy gives it her all and then some.
— Rule Number 35 from Rules for a Successful Life as an Undercover Secret Agent
“Stanley, have you ever seen the guy in the plaid shirt before?” I asked.
“Half the people in there are wearing plaid.” Stanley drained his cup.
“Never mind.” I finished my milk too. “Let’s just go.”
We’d walked for about five minutes, just past the outskirts of town, when Stanley stopped, pointed to a spot about halfway up a Douglas fir, and quietly took out his camera. He started snapping photos. A small bird with yellow and black feathers flew by. Stanley’s face lit up. “That’s a yellow-rumped warbler! Or maybe a Townsend’s warbler.” He checked the pictures on his screen. “Definitely not an orange-crowned warbler. Their body feathers are completely yellow.”
Stanley could spot a bird that weighed less than half an ounce hiding in some tree branches twenty feet away, but he couldn’t notice the man dressed like an outdoors store mannequin smirking at me. But that was exactly what made my friendship with Stanley easy. He never asked questions about my life’s oddities, like not seeing my parents for ten days, even though my mother worked next door to my house.
During our hike, I learned all about Townsend’s warblers. Apparently, while they liked to munch on spiders and leaf-hoppers, their absolute favorite meal was stink bugs, which I’d smelled a lot of back in the summertime.
Once we reached our favorite tree grove (now with no stink bugs — thank you, warblers!), Stanley took out his tripod and lens case. Each month Stanley documented the grove, from snow-covered to spring buds, from summer’s wild glory to fall’s amazing colors.
Each time, he’d re-measure the exact distance from the trees and the camera’s angle. Fortunately, we had a lot of notes, a sketch of where the camera should go, and a photograph taped inside his notebook. That had been a two-camera day so Stanley could photograph where his camera was located while he was taking photos of the trees and wildlife.
After Stanley was sure he had replicated the setup perfectly and started taking photos, I wandered away. Just ten feet off the paved path, voices carried through the trees and undergrowth, offering odd bits of other hikers’ conversations as they passed.
Up ahead, a black-tailed deer munched on grass. I stood absolutely still for a while, fascinated. After several minutes, I felt the oddest sensation on the back of my neck — prickly and warm — like I was being watched. I breathed in, trying to ignore it, but the feeling wouldn’t go away. Mount Rainier had its fair share of predators: black bears, mountain lions, coyotes, foxes, and even mountain goats (mean, smelly, and known to head-butt hikers). Slowly, I turned my head to my right. A twig snapped on my left. I whipped my head around. Through the evergreens, a flash of blue and green plaid caught my eye. It appeared that the person was quickly retreating.
The plaid kept up a steady pace and I followed. After a few minutes, the evergreens became too thick and I lost track of the blue-green flashes. I kept going for another minute, then looked up to see where the forest canopy cleared. I darted through the trees, keeping the clearing in sight, and found my way to the paved path within minutes. A group of hikers was drinking water and snapping photos of the foliage. “Did you see a man in a blue and green plaid shirt?” I asked.
“Are you lost, sweetie?” one of the women asked.
“No,” I said, aware that valuable time was ticking away. “Did you see him?” I looked up and down the path, but there was no sign of Mr. Odd Sock.
“A shirt like mine?” one of the men asked. The blue and green checks on his shirt were too small. “I’ve seen a couple.”
“Where are your parents?” the woman asked, looking concerned.
I pointed in the direction of Stanley. He was practically family, after all. “Bye,” I said as I beat a hasty retreat toward our tree grove.
“Ready, Mabel?” Stanley asked as he looked up from putting his camera, lenses, and tripod away. “Where were you?”
“I was just watching a deer,” I said. Get a grip, Sunflower, I told myself. Somehow using my code name helped calm my nerves. Maybe it had been someone else in blue and green looking at wildlife.
Stanley nodded in understanding. “You should ask your parents for a camera.”
On the hike home, Stanley talked about the things he’d observed in the tree grove: a red fox out for a stroll, a golden-mantle ground squirrel, which looks like a chipmunk but doesn’t have facial stripes, and a new collection of bat houses posted on trees.
We arrived in Silverton with seven minutes to spare. As per the Pear family protocol, it was time for me to hang out at the Spoon (Saturday hours were noon to four p.m.). Stanley walked me to the museum, then continued home to upload his newest photo collection. He contributed to a Mount Rainier nature blog. His posts got a few hundred visitors each month and I was usually the first to comment on them.
I heard a soft humming as I entered the museum. I bit my lip to keep from calling out. The sound came from the corner, next to the filing cabinet. I couldn’t see over the display cases chock-full of silver spoons. I fought the urge to hum along to the familiar melody. Instead, using my best quiet feet, I inched closer until someone burst out in song.
“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine…”
“Mom!” I dashed around the display case. “You’re home. How was —”
Before I could say Nauru (a tiny island country in Micronesia), she hugged me so tightly my face squished against her shoulder. I didn’t mind one bit.
“While the Nebraska Silverware Association was disorganized,” she said once she had let me go, “I persuaded the top Nebraskan to let me assist in locating the missing documents.” She bent down to kiss my forehead. “Your father helped with their communication issues. Old wiring needs repairing, even in Nebraska.”
No matter how many times Mom said Nebraska, I was sure she and Dad had been in Nauru. Even though they would never directly tell me where they were going, I had my ways of figuring it out.
“So, Moppet, anything exciting to report?”
“Nothing ever happens in Silverton.” How could it when there are only 267 people in the entire town? We’re smack in the middle of the Cascade Mountain Range, right next to Mount Rainier. Don’t get me wrong — it’s not like we’re cut off from normal life or anything. We have satellite TV. Seattle is only two hours away by car. Plus, Silverton has its own airstrip, which makes it very convenient for my parents to fly in and out.
“That’s not true. Things change every day,” Mom said, pulling open the window blinds. “The leaves turned while we were gone.”
“OK, the leaves changed color, we had two pop quizzes in math, it rained yesterday, I turned in my history paper, read Fulton Sisters’ Adventures Numbers Eighty-Five and Eighty-Six, started Eighty-Seven, and Stanley and I hiked this morning. Where’s Dad?”
“He’s refueling the plane and filing our reports,” Mom said. “Any progress on the Great Reverse Heist?”
“Oh yes. I figured out which ones are the stolen items.” I bounded out of the museum, back into my house, and up the stairs to my room. While Stanley busied himself by photographing wildlife, I spent my free time hot on the heels of some very cold theft cases.
Months ago, my mom and dad let me in on one of our family secrets. I didn’t think anything could’ve topped the whole my-parents-are-super-secret-spies thing, but I was wrong. Apparently, my mom’s parents, Carl and Mabel (my namesake) Baies, hadn’t been the most law-abiding citizens. In fact, it could be said (and was said, repeatedly, by the police, the FBI, and the Agency) that they were criminals.
My grandparents had used Le Petit Musée of Antique Silver Spoons as a front for selling stolen goods in the 1960s. They were a minor part of a minor criminal gang, operating in small pockets of the United States. Mom said her parents died before they were ever convicted, so that’s why she and Gertie didn’t know anything about it. It was only when Mom started working for the Agency that she found out because of background checks.
Get this — the stolen stuff wasn’t anything really amazing like money or famous art or diamonds. Nope, it was all old American history type stuff from university collections and living museums — those places you have to go for field trips, where the poor museum guide is dressed up in old-fashioned clothing, using words like “thee” and “thou.” These kinds of places were not known for their security, especially way back then. So my grandparents didn’t have anything super valuable at the Spoon — just dusty old things like maps, letters, and diaries.
Mom never told her sister because she didn’t want to taint Aunt Gertie’s memories of their parents. So I’d been under strict orders to keep that secret from my aunt while my parents had been quietly undoing the damage my grandparents had done. The Great Reverse Heist meant that whenever they found some of the historical American memorabilia, they would extract it (extract means to remove — maybe not totally legally — in spy terms) and return the item to its rightful owner.
One of the best ways of recovering stolen property was going to auctions, which was why I’d spent the last ten days going through the Auction-Goer’s Complete Guide, November Edition. Before they left, my parents told me that two of the items listed were stolen property. They were testing my abilities. So, besides school, eating, and sleeping, I’d been studying picture after picture of Colonial American memorabilia, using clues provided by my parents to figure out what my grandparents had stolen.
In my room, I knelt next to the head of my bed and reached under it to extract the auctioning guide. Strange. I felt nothing. I peered underneath and spotted it by the foot of my bed, about five feet away from where I had placed it before going to sleep the previous night.
An odd, prickly feeling swept up my neck. That catalog couldn’t have moved itself.
I sat back on my heels and peered around my bedroom, and right away, other things caught my attention. My blue sweater was hanging on the back of my chair, instead of on the floor where it had landed earlier. One pile of my books had been straightened. Two of my history books were in my astronomy book pile. My desk drawers were all pushed in. The origami solar system model hung crooked over my dresser. And my trash bucket, which had been full the day before, was empty. I checked the window — locked. I never locked my window. There was no need to in Silverton… or so I thought.
Someone had been in my room.