Eagle’s presence made everyone quiet — the kind of quiet that feels loud. The kids breathed a sigh of relief when they got to Mrs. Sharpe’s block.

“My place for lunch?” Tommy asked the other four. “My mom’s at work. She won’t mind.”

Ms. Hussey cleared her throat. “Never announce an empty home,” she said, her voice clipped. “Well, I’m off to do some work in my classroom.”

“My mother’s having lunch with the other trustees today,” Mr. Devlin said. “Won’t you come for lunch, Isabel? And oh! Let me introduce all of you to my cat, Rat-a-tat. He’s visiting, too, since I couldn’t leave him behind in New York.”

Isabel, Petra thought. I’ll bet she doesn’t like him calling her that.

A cat that looked more like a small lion with a bushy tail rushed over, meowing loudly. “Thought I’d forgotten about you?” Mr. Devlin asked, and stooped to rub his ears.

“Awesome name,” Tommy said.

“Gangstery,” Calder added.

Both girls reached to pat Rat-a-tat, but he hurried toward Mrs. Sharpe’s front door. Once there, he reared up on his hind legs and rested huge, hairy paws on the wood. Zoomy followed and knelt down, his nose inches away from the cat’s ruff.

“Hungry boy,” Mr. Devlin said. “Just like me.”

Tommy wondered, Is that a warning? Like one of them might bite? The cat, ignoring Zoomy, looked back and blinked his green eyes pleasantly.

“Well?” The man blinked at Ms. Hussey, as if copying his cat. “Ratty and I request the pleasure of your company.”

Tommy was backing up now. “Guess we’re off. Come on, Zoomy. Later.” He wasn’t sure what else to say with Mr. Devlin there. He also didn’t know whether he should be inviting Ms. Hussey over to eat with them. She never went to their houses, but … there was always a first. Did she need an excuse to say no? But if they invited Ms. Hussey, it would be rude not to include Mr. Devlin. Tommy shuffled his feet, kicking at a pebble.

“I’ll call you guys later,” Ms. Hussey said, her voice still formal but a bit less tight. “I have some ideas for this investigation.”

The kids left with a wave and no one looked back, even though they all wanted to. Would Ms. Hussey go inside the house with this guy, and should they be worried?

Abruptly Zoomy announced, “There’s a collar under all that fur, and it has some kind of communication switch on it. I’ve seen them before. I think it’s the kind that can either record or track, so someone can find you. Does a bunch of things.”

“So maybe Mr. Devlin’s a spy! And we caught him,” Calder announced.

“Thanks to sneaky you,” Tommy said to Zoomy, who held up a fist for bumps.

“Or maybe Mr. Devlin works for Ratty,” Early said.

“And speaks cat.” Zoomy grinned.

“Speaking of spies,” Petra said, “shouldn’t we have some private way we can communicate around grown-ups? You know, like a Pig Latin that would let us say stuff and not be understood.”

They walked the rest of the way to Tommy’s happily trying out codes and forgot, for a moment, all about cats and art and difficult adults.

A shiny black car with a driver slid slowly down the block behind the five. As they ducked in the back door of the Robie House, an old hand covered with rings pointed in their direction. Another old hand, also in the backseat, waved through the air as if to say, How could you think of such a thing? Not that!

The hands flew to left and right, chopping the air as the car sped off.

*  *  *

“Whinigo winigants binigalinigo — yipes! — ninigeinigy sinigandwinigi — whoa! — chiniges finigor linigunch?” Tommy asked, unlocking his door. “Man, I sound brainy,” he panted. “And talking that way takes all day.”

“Inigi dinigo!” Zoomy shouted.

“This would look plenty confusing if we wrote it down, but if we can speed up and say it fast, it’ll be close to uncrackable.” Petra practically skipped into Tommy’s apartment.

“Yeah, it’s awesome even when we’re beginners,” Early said. “If we practice and get smoother, we’ll be chinigampinigi — wait — inigon spinigiiniges!”

“Not to leave out Ms. Hussey, just the police or Mr. Devlin or the trustees. Whinigen winige ninigeiniged tinigo kinigeinigep iniga sinigecriniget. Oooh, I love it!” Petra purred, plopping down next to Goldman. “Now we’re talkin’, we could take this iniganinigywhinigerinige.”

“And it even works with pinigentinigominigin — oh, man! this’ll take me all week — inigoiniges. Scinigaz!” Calder crowed. “That word’s gotta be longer than the alphabet.”

“Okay, it seems like we’ve gotten through some firsts today. How about linigunch?” Tommy asked. He brought a package of baloney, a jar of mayonnaise, bread, chips, pickles, and butter knives on the table. “Help yourselves. And Zoomy and Early: We three always had some kind of trinigeinigat when we needed a pat on the back during other adventures. Like, blue M&M’S, red gummy fish, or chocolate. Anyone got an idea for what the five of us can use?”

“I do!” Zoomy said immediately, his mouth already full. “Beans! Dilly beans. Gam’s always got a big jar in the truck. Won’t cost us a penny.”

“But don’t those make you finigart?” Petra said.

Calder laughed and a piece of baloney shot out of his mouth and into Goldman’s bowl.

“Scaz, you knucklehead!” Tommy shouted. He reached for the runaway baloney just as Goldman swallowed it. “Now it’ll be all your fault if he turns into a carnivore. He may start trying to eat my fingers! He may jump out of his bowl and launch an attack while I’m asleep!”

Goldman burped and a large bubble rose to the surface.

“Hey, that gives me an idea,” Calder said. “I wonder if the trustees were really fighting? Maybe they were just feeding us that idea. Like it was all baloney, ha.”

“But Early and I heard them fighting before you guys got there,” Petra pointed out. “And they’re on two sides of the moving question, so of course their fight is real.”

“But they all want the art found,” Zoomy said.

“Not if one of them has a reason to feel guilty,” Early said slowly. “Maybe they’re more together on all this than they want us to know. We overheard someone mention an ‘event’ they’d all talked about or planned. Maybe one of them did something stupid, like lend their museum key to a person who shouldn’t have been trusted, and now they’re covering it up. At least, in public.”

“But Mrs. Sharpe — she wouldn’t have anything to do with stealing the art!” Petra protested. “I’m sure she wouldn’t. And besides, she wouldn’t fool Ms. Hussey, would she?”

“I don’t think Ms. Hussey knew that Eagle Devlin even existed before he showed up this week,” Early said. “That means Mrs. Sharpe never mentioned him.”

Petra still felt as though she needed to defend Mrs. Sharpe. “So it’s not like she lied, but she definitely kept a big secret.”

“Maybe Mrs. Sharpe is protecting her son,” Calder said. “Even if she’s not sure she needs to. Or maybe it’s Ms. Hussey she’s been protecting, and she didn’t want her to meet or even know about that Devlin guy!”

“Yeah,” Zoomy said. “Maybe he’s trouble.”

“It feels like all of those adults with us in the room today, all eight, were hiding things,” Calder said. “Even if they didn’t want to, like Ms. Hussey. She was pretty weird this morning. Not so open.”

“You mean, like they know stuff they haven’t shared with the police.” Early put down her half-eaten sandwich. “And maybe the guys in black jackets are undercover.”

“I hope they’re on our side,” Tommy said. “Because they seem to be around wherever we are. It’s like someone told them to keep an eye on us.”

Early looked worried. “If that’s true, how do we figure out if they’re good guys? I mean, who do we know is a hundred percent on our side? I guess Ms. Hussey is, but she’s also on Mrs. Sharpe’s side.”

“Goldman,” Tommy said. “And Sarah Chase Farmer, if you believe in ghosts.” Tommy braced himself for questions, but no one asked.

“Good thing we can trust each other up close, with all these deeps,” Zoomy said.

“What are ‘deeps’?” Calder asked.

“Everything that’s past the end of your arm. Everything that’s blurry,” Zoomy replied comfortably. “Like deep water.”

“I like that,” Early murmured, eating again.

“Me, too,” Petra said. “Kind of perfect for right now.”

Goldman nodded and dove for his deeps as Tommy glanced out the window, wondering how Zoomy could both see less and catch more. Maybe deeps could be both bad and good, like so much else that was going on.

Tommy thought suddenly about that silvery laugh in the Farmer. There had been five kids and ten adults … and a whole lot of deeps.

Maybe there’d been more people out of sight — hidden in the deeps — just as there might have been in Powell’s.

“It’s hard to know what you can’t see — like, who’s there but not visible and who’s invisible but still there,” Calder said suddenly, and Tommy elbowed him.

“Hey, you stole that from my head,” Tommy blurted. This wasn’t true, but Tommy suddenly felt like Calder was leaving him behind.

“I think we’re all thinking about the same stuff,” Early said, and the way she said it made Tommy feel less alone.

He tried to sort things out, but these deeps made everything feel distorted. And they changed the rules. If a boot could appear, icy fingers tweak, or a giggle come from nowhere, how could the five decide what was real and what wasn’t?

For some reason, Tommy didn’t dare say this aloud. Whoever else was in the deeps could probably see — and hear — a lot more than they could.

“Scaz,” he moaned. “How can you tell who’s in the deeps?”

“I can’t,” Zoomy said comfortably. “But sometimes I just know.”

“Got it,” Tommy said. He glanced around anxiously, glad they were in his Robie House apartment and not in the Farmer.

*  *  *

After lunch, Early and Petra each headed home. Tommy and Calder walked Zoomy back to the guesthouse he and Gam were staying in. On the way, they’d planned to check on Mrs. Sharpe’s house and make sure Ms. Hussey wasn’t in trouble with Mr. Devlin.

“We’ll listen for screams from inside,” Calder had joked. Now they stood on the sidewalk in front of Mrs. Sharpe’s door.

Tommy thought suddenly of the stone man trapped beneath the lion, but all he said was “Hey, ever thought about how violent all these last names sound when you line them up? Chase, Crunch, Hurts, Cracken, Whacker, Stabbler, Sharpe … and now Devlin. Like you’ve got chasing, breaking, hurting, hitting, stabbing, and now deviling!”

The three laughed, but it didn’t feel too funny.

“Ms. Hussey won’t like us checking on her,” Calder said abruptly. He pulled out the V. “V for vexed.”

“Victim,” Tommy said.

“Vinigerminigeiniger,” Zoomy said.

Tommy smiled. “That’s a winner! The great man’s name is related to vinegar.”

Zoomy grinned happily. “How rude!”

Meeow! Ratty popped out of a bush and rubbed himself back and forth on Zoomy’s legs.

The boys stopped laughing. Zoomy bent over and whispered, “Spies!” into the collar.

Tommy grabbed Zoomy on one side and Calder on the other. The three rushed down the street and around the corner, voices cracking under the strain of the moment, laughing again once they were safely away. Ratty sat calmly on the porch and watched them go. He hopped up as Mrs. Sharpe’s door opened.

Ms. Hussey stooped to pat him. “Where’re the kids? I thought I heard them,” she said, rubbing his ears. “You’re the pussycat who came to visit the queen!”

“Which would make them the mice under the chair,” a man’s voice said behind her.

If the boys had heard, they might have stopped laughing.