The story broke in the news the next day. My parents, as usual, were furious that we had been solving another mystery they knew nothing about. They grounded me when they found out I’d been held hostage by my store manager.
“Why do you have to keep getting into these situations?” my mother raged. “Why can’t you just play video games like every other kid?”
I was let out for a short reprieve when Nick, Robyn and Alex showed up at the door. “Don’t let him leave the yard,” Mom warned my friends, “or I’m tying him up on a leash.”
“No problem,” Alex said. “We’ll keep an eye on him.”
We sat down under a tree on the grass, and I felt the tension I’d carried for days finally ease. “So, thanks for coming to my rescue, Robyn. But how come they arrested Scott right away? He said that he was going to deny everything and blame it on me. Why didn’t they question him first?”
“Because we heard everything,” Robyn said. “I guessed from the look on Scott’s face that he had clued in to what we suspected. I went back to customer service. I was going to tell Madison everything and call the police. Then the police detective showed up. Scott had actually called her like he said he would—his bad luck.”
“Okay,” I said. “But that still doesn’t explain why the police didn’t give Scott a chance to weasel out of everything. Police don’t usually bust down doors unless they have a reason.”
“We did,” Nick said.
“You called me,” said Robyn. “On your cell phone.”
“No, I didn’t,” I said.
“Yes, you did,” Robyn insisted. “My phone rang when I was back at customer service.”
I thought back to before the fight, when I knew things were starting to look bad. “I tried to call nine-one-one,” I recalled.
“You must have hit the buttons for your contact list and got me,” Robyn said. “Because I picked up and could hear everything that was going on between you and Scott.”
“And then,” Nick said proudly, “she had the most evil idea ever.”
“Remember when Scott paged Madison to come and help at customer service when we were standing there?” Robyn said. “I watched him do it. So I clicked on the paging system and held the phone to it. The whole store heard his confession, heard him threatening you, the works.”
“So there was no way he could deny anything, not with fifty million witnesses,” said Alex.
“And when the fight started, the police officer radioed for backup and went up there right away. She told us to stay downstairs, but there was no holding Robyn back, so we followed her,” Nick added.
“It seemed like that fight lasted for hours,” I said.
“It was seconds,” Robyn said. “Once we knew Scott wasn’t fooling around, we were there right away.”
“Well,” I said, relieved, “Scott will end up in jail for sure, and the food tampering is over. It sounds like everything’s wrapped up.”
“Almost,” said Alex.
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Um, Ms. T is failing us in Foods unless we do a makeup project.”
I clutched my hair with both hands. “Oh, no! Not another cooking project… I can’t handle the stress.”
“Honestly, Trevor,” Robyn said. “You just took down a serious criminal—one who threatened to kill you. Foods class isn’t that bad.”
“Oh, yeah?” I said. “You’ve never worked with Alex!”