None of us talked much on the way to the race tracks. And we especially didn’t talk about Abby. We mostly just passed the time by talking about the current baseball season and how bad the Cubs sucked that year, which Staples found hilarious, of course. But then, he was a spoiled Yankees fan, so who cares what he thinks. At least Vince and I like a cool, authentic team, and once the Cubs finally break the curse, it will be a real championship, not a purchased one. Today’s Yankees fans don’t know what it’s like to earn anything, the real way. But whatever, back to the story.

I have to admit that racing go-karts with Vince and Staples was pretty fun. Afterward we were all in pretty good moods. Which is why I thought during the drive back to our houses that it might finally be safe to bring up what had happened in Thief Valley. It seemed like the only time Staples was truly genuine was when his sister was involved or connected in some way to the conversation or events.

“So, TV Elementary is a pretty rough scene, huh?” I said.

“Yeah, did you see that yeti pummeling those kids?” Vince said, taking my lead.

I waited nervously to see how Staples would react. I shifted my leg back as far as I could. It couldn’t handle another shot today. There was already a deep purple bruise developing where Staples had gotten me the first time.

But he didn’t reach back again. This time he just nodded calmly.

“Yeah, I went there back in the day,” he said. “It’s always been tough. Kids there like to . . . well, assert themselves a little more than usual, I guess. That’s part of why I want to get her out of there. I mean, going to that school and living with those foster parents . . . that’s two strikes against her having a good childhood and turning out happy as an adult.”

I nodded.

“Makes sense,” Vince agreed.

“If I get custody of her, then she can go to your school, since I live in your district. You guys like it there, right?”

I laughed.

Staples gave me a confused look in the rearview.

“Things are great there,” Vince assured him. “Mac’s laughing because we turned ourselves in, exposed our business last year—something we’d never thought we’d do—all because of how much kids love that school. So, yeah, I think Abby would be much better off there than Thief Valley.”

Staples nodded but didn’t say anything else for a while.

“Well, if I told my grandma about this, she’d probably say, ‘Just don’t ever trust a person with three hands. It may seem neat that they have three hands and all, but I ain’t never met a mutie that had a conscience. I also ain’t never met one that didn’t own a lobster for a pet; those muties sure love their lobsters. But don’t ever trust a person that gives a name to a lobster neither.’”

“Mutie?” I managed to ask while laughing so hard I almost kicked the back of Vince’s seat.

“Yeah, it’s what she calls mutants . . . which to her are basically anybody who doesn’t look like they could have starred in The Brady Bunch. Like, at the mall this one time we saw this kid with a Mohawk, not a fake one like tools wear but a real one, like two-foot-high spikes and the sides shaved to bare skin. She just kept screaming, ‘Mutie! Mutie! Someone check its pockets to see if it’s got papers!’ I don’t even know what she meant by that, but I was too busy laughing to ask her.”

“Man, your grandma is the best,” I said through more laughter.

Even Staples was laughing now, too.

Then suddenly he hit the brakes and swerved the car to the curb, nearly taking out a mailbox.

“Hey, you guys want some lemonade?” he said, pointing to a few younger kids with a lemonade stand on the street corner ahead of us. “Come on. This is exactly the sort of thing that Big Brothers were invented for.”

We all got out of the car and approached a small table sitting on the sidewalk in front of a house. A couple of younger kids selling lemonade sat behind it. While it was kind of weird how suddenly Staples had pulled over for this, I couldn’t deny that on a scorching, early-fall day like today some ice-cold lemonade would be pretty awesome.

Two small girls and one boy sat behind the table. They were probably third graders, give or take a year. They had a handmade cardboard sign taped to the front of the table that read: “Ice Cold Lemon-Aid Only $3 Bucks!! A Bargan! Clearance!!!” Three dollars was definitely a little steep for this neighborhood but whatever. They’d figure out how proper pricing could maximize their profit eventually.

Staples ordered three glasses. They poured iceless lemonade into three tiny Dixie cups, and then one of the girls said, “Nine dollars, dude.”

Staples grinned and handed her a ten-dollar bill. “Keep the change.”

We downed our too-small drinks. And I almost had to spit mine out. Not only was it not ice-cold, but it was warm. And it was terrible. Given its color and consistency and temperature, I couldn’t be positive that what we’d just drunk wasn’t actually some kid’s pee with lemon flavoring.

“Yuck!” Vince said while grimacing.

Staples also spit out his nasty lemonade, but he didn’t get upset like Vince and I had. Instead, he just seemed mildly amused by this whole exchange.

“Is this cut?” I asked them. “With water or something? You can’t charge a premium price for a product that’s been cut with water. This tastes like lemon carpet cleaner!”

“We can do whatever we want!” one of the little brats said back.

“But why would you do this?” Vince asked, trying a different approach. “Don’t you want people to come back?”

“They’ll come back because every other stand around here serves the same stuff,” the little boy said. “They’re all owned by the same guy, so people got no other choice.”

“And what about how warm it is? If you advertise ice-cold drinks, then they need to be at least kind of cold,” I said.

“Hey, boss’s orders,” one of the girls said. “Boss says ice is too expensive.”

“Who owns these stands?” Vince asked. “Who is your boss?”

“Jimmy Two-Tone, duh,” she said while rolling her eyes at our apparent stupidity.

Vince and I looked at each other. Why would Jimmy Two-Tone cut corners on something as simple as a lemonade stand? Especially when, up to this point, he seemed to be proving himself as a more than capable businessman. He was doing just fine without opening up a reputation-tarnishing lemonade scam.

Staples smirked at us. “Still so sure that your deal with him was a good idea?”

Instead of answering, I threw the Dixie cup at the little trash can next to the table. It bounced off the rim and landed in the yard behind the kids. Staples laughed while I stomped around and picked it up and then placed it into the garbage can.

I wasn’t sure exactly what all this meant, but I intended to find out.

 

The next morning at school I tried to track down Jimmy to ask him what was going on. But he was nowhere to be found. I checked the East Wing hallway, but the closed-for-repairs sign was up.

So at lunch Vince and I went to find Ears. Ears was my main source of information. He was the biggest gossip in the school and heard everything. If you wanted to know what kind of cereal the kid that sat next to you in science class puked into a cute girl’s lap last year during homeroom one day, Ears could tell you that he had definitely heard that it was Corn Bran with sugar on it.

So Vince and I found Ears behind the old metal slide on the playground to ask him what he’d been hearing about Jimmy. Ears always hung out by the old metal slide, and he was always there with three or four of the more popular girls at school. I had no idea what they talked about all the time, but something told me I didn’t even want to know.

I tapped him on the shoulder right as he was laughing and making fun of how “that girl over there looks like a linebacker in that sweater.”

Ears turned around. Then his eyes widened and he grinned.

“Hey, Mac, Vince. I thought you guys were retired?”

I shrugged, made a face, and then noticeably looked at the pack of girls he had been talking to.

“Oh, right,” he said. “One second.”

He turned back and said something mostly inaudible to the girls, and they all started giggling before wandering over to the monkey bars.

“Better?” Ears asked me.

“Sorry, Ears, it’s hard to kick old habits,” I said. “Anyways, we are retired. I just wanted to ask you a few questions . . . for, ah, mostly personal reasons.”

His smile grew, making his already giant ears stick out even more. He kind of looked like a coffee mug with a handle on each side. Then he held out his hand, palm up. I looked at it, then back at his face.

“Pay the man,” I said to Vince.

Vince sighed and took out a five from his wallet and gave it to Ears.

“Sorry,” Ears said, “but, you know, it’s hard to kick old habits.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “All right, I’m just wondering what you’ve heard about Jimmy Two-Tone’s business? You know, how are things going? Are kids mostly satisfied? Is he delivering on his promises? Solving problems in a timely fashion? That kind of stuff.”

Ears nodded slowly. “Yeah, things have been good mostly. I haven’t heard too many complaints. I mean, word is that a couple of whiners have been complaining that his hired help can be a little mean sometimes, but what do you expect from guys like Justin and Mitch and Lloyd, right?”

“He hired those guys on a permanent basis?” I said, suddenly worried that I’d handed my business over to Staples Junior.

“No, no, I mean, they’re jerks all right, but word is they’ve been pretty well behaved, actually. For them, I mean. From what I hear Jimmy runs a pretty tight ship. He’s fast. And good. Like, he always seems to be prepared no matter what. I’ve actually been thinking maybe he’s a little too good, a little too prepared, if you know what I mean.”

“Well, no, I don’t, actually,” I said.

Ears grimaced like I was asking him to run a mile instead of explain himself.

“Well, remember last week when eleven bikes had their tires slashed?”

I nodded.

“Yeah, our friend Fred was one of the owners,” Vince said.

“Well, several kids whose parents wouldn’t or couldn’t buy them new tires came to Jimmy for help, and he just happened to have a bunch of extra bike tires on hand.”

Vince and I glanced at each other. That was pretty odd, no doubt.

“Maybe he anticipated he’d need them after the first few slashings,” I suggested.

“Yeah, maybe,” Ears said. “But still, you have to admit it was a little convenient.”

“What else?” I asked.

“Then there’s our team’s last football game . . .”

“Yeah,” Vince said. “What about it?”

“Well, not many people heard about this, since it never became an issue, but fans of the other team stole our team’s shoelaces right before game time. The reason no one heard about it wasn’t because the school had emergency laces on hand. What I heard is that Jimmy just happened to have twenty-five sets of brand-new shoelaces with him. The equipment manager bought them off him right then and there. Either he’s psychic, or something fishy’s going on.”

I started to respond but then stopped. What was there to say? Assuming all of that was true, it certainly didn’t look good. Was it possible Jimmy was creating all the problems himself to drum up extra business? That was about as crooked as it gets.

Vince must have been thinking the same thing. “Any rumor out there that Mitch or Justin or Lloyd or maybe even Jimmy himself was involved in the bike slashing or the stolen shoelaces?” he asked.

“Yeah, some kids actually thought that might be the case, but my most trusted sources tell me that the four of them pretty much all have alibis for most of these things. That’s what makes it so weird how prepared he is. Anyway, you guys have your five bucks’ worth.”

Ears walked toward the monkey bars and his snarky popular girlfriends.

Vince and I looked at each other.

“This is getting complicated,” I said.

Vince could only nod in response.