LIAM JUMPED TO his feet when we raced into the front room. “Did you bring the cookies?” he asked eagerly.
“Yeah.” Buzz tossed a cookie into his mouth. “We already ate the ones you brought before, and Liam didn’t get any.”
“Sorry, dude.” Brayden gave Liam a friendly punch on the shoulder.
Somehow I’d nearly forgotten that our friends were out there. Yikes! How were we supposed to explain what we were doing?
Mom obviously decided there was no need to explain at all. She just headed straight for the door. “Stay here, kids,” she tossed over her shoulder as she grabbed her jacket. “Ms. Church should arrive soon. My sister will wait with you.”
“Huh?” Megan jumped up, too. “Wait, where are you going?”
“Hold on, Deidre,” Aunt Cheryl put in. “I’m coming with you.”
“No, you’re not,” Mom said.
“Yes, I am.” Aunt Cheryl might be the only person in the world who isn’t afraid to stand up to Mom when she’s acting all strict and scarymama. “How else are you going to get there? I’ll drive us.” She glanced around the room. “All of us.”
Suddenly everyone seemed to realize that something was happening. The entire group gathered up phones and jackets and rushed for the door.
“Good thing Mom has the van,” Steve commented.
I’d almost forgotten about the van. We’d all made fun of it for years. The thing was huge. Still, there was no way all fifteen of us could fit.
Aunt Cheryl grabbed two sets of keys from the little table near the door. She tossed one set to Mom.
“You can take Charles’s car,” she said. “Follow me.”
It was a tight squeeze, but we did it. Cassie, Megan, and Biff rode with Mom in Uncle Charles’s hatchback, with Brayden and his cast in the back. The rest of us went in the van.
The salon was only a few blocks from El Mercado, but it might as well have been on a different planet. Instead of the tidy, tourist-packed streets, there were just a few warehouses and run-down businesses. A homeless man was slumped on the sidewalk, snoring loudly.
“Ew, what are we doing here?” Abby exclaimed.
Liam peered out the window. “Are we getting our hair cut?” he joked.
I looked over his shoulder. One of the businesses on the block was a beauty salon. The sign was small and dingy, but there were several people inside.
“We think Lavender might be here,” I told Liam and Bianca quietly.
Emily overheard me and gasped. “Really?” she cried. “Let’s go get her!”
“Stop!” Aunt Cheryl exclaimed.
But it was too late. Everyone was pouring out of the van. I shrugged and followed.
Mom was climbing out of the car nearby. “Hold up, people!” she yelled. “Stay right here—the police are on their way.”
“Oh, yeah? Can’t handle it yourself, huh?” Gabe muttered with a sneer.
I wasn’t sure whether Mom had heard him. If so, she wasn’t letting on. Cassie and I had learned that most of the time the best way to handle Gabe was to ignore him.
Everyone started milling around near the van. I guessed we were making quite a ruckus. For one thing, the homeless guy woke up and stretched, peering at us curiously through a pair of dirty sunglasses.
Also, a woman came out of the beauty shop. She was a little older than Mom, with dark hair and a pinched, suspicious look on her face.
“Who are you?” she snapped. “This is a place of business, not a schoolyard. You’re disturbing my customers with all this noise.”
Mom stepped toward her, going into police officer mode, even though she wasn’t wearing her uniform. “You work at this place?” she asked.
“I own this place.” The woman crossed her arms over her chest. “Why?”
Mom put out her hand, and Megan handed over her phone. Mom held it up in front of the woman. “Have you seen this girl?”
Cassie sidled over to me. “Megs had a photo of Lav on her phone,” she whispered.
I’d already figured that out. Now I was waiting to hear what the salon owner said.
“No,” the woman said, barely glancing toward the phone. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have customers waiting.”
“Hold on.” Mom’s scarymama voice could stop a runaway train. The woman paused. “This girl is missing, and a witness placed her at your salon.”
“A witness?” Abby whispered loudly to Emily. “What witness?”
I winced. Mom was so intent on finding Lavender that she clearly didn’t realize she was on the verge of giving away our secret!
“Nobody,” I whispered to Emily and Abby. “It’s, um, a police technique.”
The salon owner was glaring at Mom, looking mulish. Meanwhile the homeless guy had lumbered to his feet.
“Hey,” he called in a raspy voice. “You kids looking for the other rich girl?”
Megan spun to face him. “What did you say?”
“Kids, get back in the car,” Mom ordered.
But Cassie took a step toward the homeless man. “Did you see a girl our age?” she asked. “White girl, dark hair, blue shirt?”
“Sure.” The man’s smile was toothless and rather cagey. “I’ll show you where she is for a dollar.”
“Get out of here,” the salon owner snapped. “Ignore him,” she told Mom. “He hangs around all the time trying to trick people into giving him money.”
“Hmm.” Mom glanced at the homeless guy. “Sir,” she addressed him brusquely, “if you’ve really seen a girl around here, you’d better tell me about it. The police will be here shortly, and they’ll be very interested as well.”
The guy held up both hands in a gesture of surrender. “No, never mind,” he said. “The lady’s right, I don’t know nothing.”
“Wait.” Cassie shot an annoyed look at Mom. “You’re scaring him off, and he might be our only witness!” She stuck her hand in her pocket and pulled out a dollar bill. “Here—now show us, okay?”
The man grabbed the dollar eagerly, shoving it deep into the pocket of his dirty gray pants. “This way,” he said, shambling toward the corner of the building.
“Stop!” the salon lady exclaimed as we all followed. “This is private property. I’ll call the police!”
“No need,” Mom told her. “As I mentioned, they’re already on the way.”
Aunt Cheryl was still trying to convince our friends to stay back. But I was right behind Cassie and Mom, who were right behind the homeless man.
“I’m serious!” The salon lady continued to bluster the whole way down the alley. Soon we reached a window at the back of the building.
“She’s in there,” the homeless guy said.
I rushed forward, pressing my face to the window. Cassie was doing the same.
“It’s her!” she shouted. “Hey, Lav! Out here!”
We were looking into what appeared to be a small apartment behind the shop. Lavender was inside, lounging on a dingy plaid sofa reading a magazine. She looked up when Cass knocked on the window.
Before I could see her reaction, I heard sudden movement behind me. It was the salon owner—she was taking off back toward the street.
“Hey!” I yelled. “She’s running away!”
Mom pushed past me at a run. “Stop right there!” she shouted.
The woman had a pretty good head start. But I guessed Mom’s cop voice really carries. Because a second later, the B Boys appeared at the end of the alley. When they saw the woman running toward them, they linked arms, forming a human chain to block her way.
“Move!” she shrieked, skidding to a stop to keep herself from plowing into them. “What are you doing?”
That was all it took for Mom to catch up. She grabbed the woman by the arm and bustled her around the corner and into the beauty shop. Aunt Cheryl made the others stay outside, but she let Cassie and me past.
Two women were in the stylists’ chairs when we entered, while a third was leaning against the counter nearby. All three of them stared as Mom marched the owner past them.
I glanced around the salon. “Look, there are the posters,” I whispered to my sister.
“Yeah.” She wrinkled her nose. “They’re even weirder in real life.”
There was a door at the back of the salon. Mom insisted that the owner unlock it and let her through. Beyond was a dimly lit hallway, with several doors opening off it.
“Stay here, girls,” Mom ordered sternly. “Just in case.”
Just in case of what? I wasn’t sure, but she was using that scarymama voice again, so I obeyed. Cassie did too, though she leaned so far forward through the doorway that I was afraid she’d tip over.
“What’s going on?” One of the customers came toward us, hanging on to her protective cape to stop it from slipping off. “Who is that with Anna?”
“Our mother,” I told her.
I kept watching as the salon owner unlocked another door at the far end of the hallway. A second later Lavender burst out, waving a magazine and yelling something about her phone.
“Oh, right,” Cassie said. “I almost forgot the one about her phone getting smashed. No wonder she didn’t answer any texts.”
I’d mostly forgotten about that vision, too. But there was no time to ponder it. Lavender was barreling toward us, still yelling. I took a few quick steps back so she wouldn’t run me over.
“I can’t believe this!” she was shouting. “Did you find the lying creep who locked me in here? Because he said he was taking me to a sample sale, but instead he dragged me to this gross place and broke my phone . . .”
As she continued to rant, I leaned toward Cassie. “What’s a sample sale?” I whispered.
“It’s when designers sell off extra clothes super cheap.” She sounded distracted. “I’ve never been to one, but they’re supposed to be awesome.”
I supposed that explained why I’d had a vision of Lavender getting kidnapped, even though I usually only saw good stuff happening. In the vision, Lavender must still have thought the guy was dragging her off to that imaginary sample sale. Which would have been a good thing in her eyes.
“. . . and so I was stuck in there for, like, hours,” Lavender was complaining. “With nothing to eat, and nothing to do.”
“Except read magazines, right?” I joked, trying to lighten the mood a little.
It didn’t work. Lavender spun around and glared at me. “Are you kidding, Caitlyn?” she snapped. “All the stupid magazines back there are like three months out of date. Ew!”
With that, she hurled the magazine she was clutching at my head. I sidestepped, and it fell to the floor.
Lavender glared at Cassie, too. “It took you guys long enough to find me!” Then she blinked at the homeless man, who had followed us into the salon. “Ew, who’s that?”
I frowned. “As a matter of fact, he’s the person who helped us find you,” I replied, a little annoyed by the way she was making faces at the homeless guy. Okay, yeah, he smelled a little, and his ragged clothes weren’t exactly the type of high fashion that Lavender Adams preferred. Still, she didn’t have to be so rude all the time, right?
“Yeah,” Cassie told her. “He saw you through the window and brought us to rescue you.”
“Really?” Lavender blinked, suddenly looking much less annoyed. “Oh. Um, thanks.” She stuck her hand in her pocket and pulled out a wad of cash. She took a step closer to the homeless man, wrinkled her nose in distaste, flung the money at him, and then rushed past.
“Whoa!” The man’s eyes widened as he bent to pick up the money, which was fluttering to the floor. “Tell your friend thanks!”
Just then there was a commotion of engines and the whoop of a siren outside. The cops had arrived.
“Come with me,” Mom told the salon owner. “I’m sure the officers will have a few questions for you—especially about whether you know the young man they already have in custody.”
Suddenly the woman looked nervous. “What? No, please. It was all me,” she babbled. “My son didn’t have anything to do with this!”
“Her son?” Cass echoed as Mom dragged the woman out. “I guess that’s why she let him hide Lav here.”
“Yeah.” I smiled at her. “And we didn’t even have to change the future this time to save the day.”
AN HOUR OR two later, Cassie, Mom, and I were finally back at Aunt Cheryl’s house. We’d spent most of the time in between at the precinct waiting around while the paperwork got done. Another couple of cars had gone to return Lavender and the others to the main group up at the River Walk, but we’d asked to come here.
Cassie checked the time on her phone as we knocked on the door. “We can’t stay here long—the buses are leaving in an hour.”
“I know.” Mom nodded to Steve, who’d just opened the door. “But first we need to talk this over.”
Soon we were inside. Uncle Charles was there by now, too, looking big and comfortable and friendly as he always did, though he wasn’t quite as smiley as usual. “Everything okay?” he asked when we entered, his concerned brown eyes sweeping over all three of us.
“Fine.” Mom shot a look toward Aunt Cheryl. “Did you . . . ?” she began.
“I filled him in,” Aunt Cheryl said. “But never mind, y’all will need to leave soon. Want something to eat?”
“No thanks,” Mom said before Cassie or I could respond. I was a little disappointed. Lunch seemed, like, a million years ago, and my stomach grumbled at the thought of Aunt Cheryl’s corn bread with Uncle Charles’s homemade blackberry jam.
I forgot about eating as Mom started telling the others what had gone down at the precinct. “. . . and the man they brought in still isn’t talking about why he lured Lavender away from her friends, even after she ID’d him,” she was saying. “So officially, we still don’t know why he did it.”
“Except that we totally do,” Cassie said. “I’m sure he came to try to get that key chain back.”
“But why?” I wondered aloud. “What’s so important about it?” I glanced at Mom. “Except to you and our dad, I mean.”
“Good question.” Mom stared into space. “I can’t imagine how anyone else would even know about it. I’d nearly forgotten it myself.”
Steve perched on the arm of the sofa. “So did you figure out what that message means?” he asked Mom. “Heart you from UK to CA—what’s up with that?”
“Well, John and I met in England—the UK.” Mom glanced at Cass and me. “And we were living in California when the girls were born. That must be what it means.” She frowned at Steve, as if not quite satisfied with her own theory. “Or if it’s not, then I have no idea why John—or someone else—would scratch those words on there . . .”
She looked so perturbed that I stepped over and patted her on the arm. Just as I did, the room disappeared just long enough for a brief vision to take its place—a vision of Mom smiling and stroking a big, colorful parrot.
Weird. But probably not worth mentioning, I figured, since Vision Mom had looked kind of hot and sweaty and was dressed in shorts and a thin T-shirt, which meant it probably wasn’t going to come true anytime soon.
See? I’m learning from Cassie, I thought with a slight smile, making a mental note to tell my sister about the new vision later. She’s always telling me that fashion is super important—and I guess occasionally, it actually is!