“The best place to begin our investigation,” Summer told me as we headed out of the Polar Pavilion, “is by finding out what the FBI has learned.”
“How?” I asked.
“We spy on their investigation.”
“And how are we supposed to do that?”
“Just leave it to me.” Summer grinned proudly. “I have a plan.”
We passed through the exit doors and were walloped by the heat. It was like being transported from Antarctica to Texas in an instant.
Even though Summer was doing exactly what Marge wanted us to do, I still felt I should be the voice of caution. It was one thing to snoop around a bit to get Marge off my back. But I knew we could get in a lot of trouble by crossing the FBI.
“Molly warned us not to interfere with her investigation,” I said.
“Because she wants all the glory of solving this for herself and the FBI. Which is really selfish. She’s not thinking about Doc or Li Ping. She’s only thinking of herself.”
“So is Marge. She only wants to show up her sister.”
“At least she asked for our help. And for once, she’s right. You’re smarter than the whole FBI, Teddy.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Sure you are. You’ve solved every case you’ve ever had. If anyone can crack this case, it’s you. Man, it’s hot. Want a frozen fruit bar or something?”
FunJungle Emporium, the site of Summer’s “shoplifting,” loomed ahead. I’d allowed Summer to treat me to a snack there dozens of times, but now things had changed.
“I’ve been thinking,” I said, “maybe you shouldn’t just grab food at the Emporium whenever you want. Someone might think you’re stealing it.”
“But I’m not. Daddy already paid for everything. If some dumb security guard tries to bust me, I can just call my father.”
“I didn’t mean a security guard. I meant a tourist. What if someone recognizes you and films you grabbing food without paying for it and posts it online? That would look pretty bad.”
A frown spread across Summer’s face as my point sank in. “What if we were really stealth?” she suggested. “If no one sees us, no one can film me.”
“What if we just paid for our snacks like normal people? I’m sure you can afford it.”
“Not right now,” Summer groused. “I’m not carrying any money. Are you?”
“No. Doesn’t your father have an account in the park? Could you just take the stuff to the register?”
“I could, but then I’d have to call attention to myself, and I’d get stuck taking selfies with tourists for the next twenty minutes instead of figuring out who took Doc and Li Ping. Speaking of which, we should get on that.” Summer cast a longing look at FunJungle Emporium, probably imagining the aisles of frozen treats inside, then turned her back on it and launched into a long diatribe about how spying on the FBI was really the right thing to do. The gist was that if we all really wanted to rescue Doc and Li Ping, then the more people looking for them, the better, and if Molly O’Malley couldn’t share like a decent person, then we owed it to Doc and Li Ping to find out what she knew. I realized there’d be no chance of talking Summer out of this. Once she got an idea in her head, you couldn’t dislodge it with dynamite.
So I tailed along after her, figuring the worst that could happen was that Molly O’Malley would get annoyed at us and tell us to beat it. (My chances of getting in trouble were always diminished when Summer was around, because no one wanted to risk J.J. McCracken’s wrath by punishing his daughter.) This way, I could at least claim to Marge that I was trying to help her out—and it gave me something to do with Summer besides going around FunJungle for the thousandth time.
We passed into the employee section and headed to the administration building. Most people needed a special ID badge to enter Admin, but Summer simply waved to the guards and breezed right through the security area. Since I was with her, no one batted an eye at me. We then rode the elevators up to the top floor, where J.J. had let the FBI set up camp in the conference room next to his office.
There was a large reception area outside J.J.’s office. Usually, lots of people were gathered there, waiting to meet with him. J.J. owned lots of companies, which did everything from making laundry detergent to building bridges, although FunJungle was now his main priority. Most of his businesses were headquartered in San Antonio, but since J.J. was the boss, any time he had to be in a meeting, everyone came to him. Today, however, the reception area was almost empty. J.J. had cancelled everything to deal with the panda crisis. The only person waiting was Juan Velasquez, the driver of the Panda Express. He was slumped in a chair, asleep, apparently worn out from the long drive.
His receptionist, Lynda Hayes, manned a desk nearby. Lynda was in her sixties and had worked for J.J. since he’d first started out. She had actually been a friend of J.J.’s mother, and she claimed to know J.J. better than he knew himself.
Lynda normally was calm as could be, but that morning, she seemed overwhelmed. She was frantically running through phone calls, switching quickly from one line to the other. “J.J. McCracken’s office. No, I’m sorry, he’s not available . . . J.J. McCracken’s office. No, he isn’t speaking to the press today, I’m sorry . . .” She gave us a quick wave as we entered, then pointed to the phone, signaling that she couldn’t talk.
As we neared her desk, we could see that she was streaming a 24-hour news channel on her computer. The reason Lynda looked so harried instantly became clear: Word of Li Ping’s disappearance had gotten out.
A banner on the screen proclaimed PANDA-MONIUM: CRISIS AT FUNJUNGLE! One of the big national news anchors, a woman named Heather Smith, was giving an update on the story. With her perfect hair and gleaming teeth, she looked like a female version of Pete Thwacker. “FunJungle has not issued any statement about the disappearance of Li Ping,” she announced. “Although sources say the Chinese government is outraged and that the FBI is now involved in the investigation.”
“Oh no,” Summer gasped. She turned to Lynda and asked, “When did this happen?”
Lynda mouthed, “About an hour ago.”
I checked my watch. It was 10:45. It surprised me that we’d missed word of this, but then, there were no TVs anywhere in the park.
“Daddy must be having a heart attack,” Summer sighed.
On the computer monitor, Heather Smith said, “Now joining us to discuss the trials and tribulations of running a business like FunJungle is Walter Ogilvy, chairman of the Nautilus Corporation.”
I instantly felt a chill go up my spine.
I had nearly died because of Walter Ogilvy.
He was J.J. McCracken’s major business rival. The two men loathed each other. They were constantly trying to one-up each other, battling for control of the marketplace in several different arenas. The difference was, Ogilvy had no morals at all. J.J. wasn’t exactly a saint, but next to Ogilvy, he seemed like one.
For example, Ogilvy had been behind sabotaging the shark tank at FunJungle. He had always claimed J.J. had stolen the idea for FunJungle from him; he’d planned to build a rival park called ZooTopia that had never gotten off the ground. Now he was determined to ruin FunJungle’s success. He’d hired a thug named Hank Duntz to collapse the pedestrian tube that went through the shark tank and make it look like an accident. Unfortunately, I’d been inside the tube when it collapsed—along with Marge O’Malley and a police officer named Bubba Stackhouse.
Ogilvy had never admitted to the sabotage, of course. In the months since the shark tank incident, he and J.J. had been suing and counter-suing each other. Each had a huge stable of lawyers to sic on the other, and every time one got some traction, the other would bite back. Even though Hank Dunst had named Ogilvy as the man who’d hired him, that had been rejected by the courts because they felt Hank had been under duress when he confessed. (We had locked him in a room with an angry, poop-throwing chimpanzee to get him to admit the truth.) Since then, Hank hadn’t said another word to implicate Ogilvy, which both my parents suspected meant Hank had been paid off by Ogilvy to take the fall for him.
And yet, here was the national news, inviting Ogilvy to talk about FunJungle. Ogilvy wasn’t appearing on the program in person: He was simply phoning in while they displayed a photo of him. He didn’t look particularly evil. He was in his seventies but looked much younger. (Summer claimed this was due to millions of dollars’ worth of plastic surgery.) He had silver hair and wore the same kind of fancy suits that Pete Thwacker did. Even though Mom hated the man, she still admitted he was handsome.
“I can’t believe they’re letting that skunk on the air to talk about this!” Summer exclaimed. “He doesn’t know anything about pandas! He’s just going to bad-mouth my father.”
I shushed her, wanting to hear what Ogilvy had to say.
“Mr. Ogilvy, you once considered opening a theme park very much like FunJungle,” Heather Smith began, “but you ultimately chose not to, claiming the risks were too great. . . .”
“That’s exactly right,” Ogilvy said before Heather could even ask a question. “And sadly, J.J. McCracken is operating FunJungle in a way that amplifies those risks even more. He keeps trying to run that zoo like it’s any other business. But it’s not like any other business, because in a zoo, what you’re selling is alive. When my food division sells a delicious cereal like Frootie Puffs, I don’t have to worry that the Frootie Puffs are going to escape from the supermarket and maim some innocent shopper. But that’s not the case with an animal.”
“Are you implying that Li Ping escaped?” Heather Smith asked.
“I don’t know what happened to Li Ping,” Ogilvy replied. “Except that she’s gone. And the blame for that should be placed squarely on J.J. McCracken. This is merely the latest in a string of serious mishaps at FunJungle, which is evidence that this business is a recipe for disaster. Frankly, I think it’s only a matter of time before a tourist gets hurt at FunJungle, rather than a panda.”
“Cram it, you big jerk!” Summer shouted, then spun toward us. “See? He’s attacking Daddy, exactly like I said he would. And the anchor is just letting it happen. She doesn’t care about Li Ping! She’s only stirring up trouble to get better ratings.”
Lynda took a break from answering calls and muted the program. “Maybe you shouldn’t be watching this,” she said, although she looked equally as angry at Ogilvy as Summer did.
Since Lynda actually had a moment to talk, I took advantage of it. I pointed to Juan and asked, “What’s going on with him?”
“That woman from the FBI wants to interview him.” The tone in Lynda’s voice indicated she didn’t like Molly O’Malley one bit. “She said he couldn’t leave the premises until she’d taken his testimony. Only, she’s been grilling the other driver for over an hour. And poor Juan here’s plumb tuckered out after that drive. He drank three cups of coffee and still nodded off.”
Sure enough, when I listened, I could hear the voices of Molly O’Malley and Greg Jefferson coming from the conference room. “Molly didn’t question Marge?” I asked.
“She’s going to,” Lynda replied. “She told her not to leave the park until then. Lord have mercy, can you believe those two are sisters? They look as much alike as a pea and a poodle.”
“They’re both awfully stubborn,” Summer said. She had calmed down and now turned her attention to why we’d come there in the first place: finding out what Molly O’Malley was up to. She pointed innocently to the room next to the conference room and asked Lynda, “Is anyone using that? Teddy and I have a school project we need to finish by tomorrow.”
Lynda’s eyes narrowed, betraying the tiniest bit of suspicion. “About what?”
“The Battle of the Bulge,” Summer said without blinking an eye. “We’re studying World War Two in American History.”
She sold the lie so well, any doubts Lynda might have had vanished instantly. “Your father has some models of the amusement park set up in there, but I think if you’re careful with them, he won’t mind you using that room.”
“Thanks,” Summer said.
We were heading for the room when we heard voices coming from J.J.’s office. I could recognize J.J. easily, though the other voice was unfamiliar to me. Whoever was speaking was a woman with an extremely strong Southern accent.
Summer paused, so I did the same thing.
Lynda quickly closed the window on her computer screen displaying the interview with Walter Ogilvy, as though she didn’t want J.J. to catch her watching it.
A second later, J.J. exited his office. The woman with the Southern accent turned out to be Chinese. She was only about J.J.’s height, which was shorter than Summer, although she was wearing five-inch heels, so she towered above him. She had a lot of makeup pancaked on her face, and she wore a business suit that looked like it cost a few thousand dollars.
Four other Chinese people were with them, two men and two women. They were all older and wizened and wore traditional Chinese clothing: red jackets for the men and long red dresses for the women, all gaily embroidered with flowers and birds.
“I know it’s a great deal of money,” the woman was telling J.J. “But I also know you have insurance for exactly this sort of scenario. So you won’t eat the cost anyhow.”
“For the last time, Emily,” J.J. replied. “This is out of my hands. The FBI is on the case, and they’re telling me not to pay the ransom. That’s federal policy for dealing with these things. If I pay it, it only encourages similar crimes down the line.”
“This isn’t a crime against an American citizen,” Emily warned him. “Li Ping is Chinese. You have a lot of business interests in China, J.J. If you don’t want any trouble with them, then I suggest you do whatever it takes to get that panda back.”
J.J. looked extremely concerned by this statement, but then noticed Summer and me. He quickly broke into a big smile, putting on an act. “Hey kids, this is Emily Sun. She works for the Chinese Consulate in Houston. Emily, this is my daughter, Summer, and her good friend Theodore Fitzroy.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet both of you,” Emily said sweetly, as though she hadn’t been threatening J.J. a few seconds before.
“Nice to meet you, too,” I said.
Summer said something along the same lines, though she didn’t seem to mean it.
The other four Chinese people bowed to us politely. I got the impression that none of them spoke English.
“I’ll bet you’re wondering about my accent,” Emily said. “Everyone does.”
“I’m guessing you grew up around here,” I said. “Your drawl is really similar to his.”
Emily looked impressed. “That’s exactly right. My parents immigrated here just before I was born. I was raised in San Antonio. In fact, I’ve never even lived in China.”
“And China still lets you represent them?” Summer asked.
Emily laughed. “I still have Chinese citizenship. Although that’s not even a requirement for my job.”
“Speaking of your job, I know you have a very busy schedule today,” J.J. said, nice and friendly, although it seemed like he was trying to get rid of Emily as fast as he could. “I greatly appreciate you making the time to stop by. . . .”
“Can the snake oil,” Emily told him, dropping the friendly act. “And get Li Ping back.” With that, she spun on her stiletto heels and marched to the elevator.
The other four Chinese people bowed to us once again, then followed her.
The moment Emily’s back was turned, J.J. sagged. He looked as exhausted as Juan did. The events of the day seemed to have taken a lot out of him.
“She came all the way from Houston just to ride you about Li Ping?” Summer asked.
“No,” J.J. said. “She was already here. For the sanctification ceremony for Panda Palace.”
“Oh,” Summer said, like she understood.
I didn’t, though. “What sanctification ceremony?”
“The Chinese take their pandas very seriously,” J.J. explained. “We’re contractually bound to do all sorts of ceremonial things. Like, if we have a panda cub born, we have to wait a hundred days to name it in accordance with Chinese tradition. That whole gang is staying at the FunJungle Safari Lodge. They were going to sanctify the palace for Li Ping’s arrival today . . .”
“Only, Li Ping didn’t arrive,” Summer finished.
“Exactly.” J.J. sighed, then noticed Lynda signaling to him. She pointed to the phone, indicating he had many calls to make. J.J. turned back to Summer. “Sorry, sweetheart, but I don’t have time to chat right now. Word of Li Ping’s disappearance got out and I’m swamped up to my eyeballs. In fact, there’s a good chance I’m gonna be working straight through dinner tonight.”
“I figured as much,” Summer said. “Teddy and I only came up here to get some schoolwork done. We were looking for a little quiet and some air-conditioning.”
“I told them they could use the small office,” Lynda said.
“Great,” J.J. agreed, though he seemed distracted, like his mind was already a hundred other places. “Just be careful with all the stuff in there, okay?” He then asked Lynda, “What’s going on with the feds?”
“I haven’t heard a peep out of them in over an hour,” Lynda reported. “They’re still in there with the other driver.”
J.J. looked at Juan, who had remained sound asleep on the couch despite everything that had happened. J.J. looked envious of the man. “Call Harry Boudreaux from my insurance company,” he told Lynda. “I don’t care where he is or who he’s meeting with. I need to talk to him now.” Then he went back into his office and shut the door.
Summer looked after him for a moment, then whispered to me, “C’mon. Let’s find that panda fast so Daddy doesn’t have to deal with this anymore.” She purposefully strode into the small office.
I tailed after her and shut the door behind us.
The small office wasn’t really that small; it was merely dwarfed by J.J.’s enormous office next door. At the moment, it was being used to plan the newest section of FunJungle, the Wilds. While the rest of the park was designed as a zoo with a few somewhat educational thrill rides, the Wilds was going to be an unabashed amusement park. Blueprints and scale models were scattered about a table in the center. There was a river-rafting adventure that would send guests through manmade rapids; a terrifying-looking ride called Condor Strike that would simply lift guests twenty stories into the air and then drop them; and the Black Mamba, a big, elaborate roller coaster that looked like it was being eaten by a giant snake. (The first hill sent guests into the creature’s mouth and then they’d careen through the darkness in its belly.)
Construction of the Wilds was already underway; J.J. wanted to have the rides open as soon as possible. Through the window, I could see all the way across the park to its location: a large brown scar on the earth where all the trees had been scraped off. (My family’s trailer—as well as those of everyone else in FunJungle employee housing—had been removed from this area as well.) Bulldozers, cement trucks, and other construction vehicles trundled across it while two cranes maneuvered loads of stone and iron around. The steel frame of the Black Mamba jutted into the air, and there was a wide, snaking, cement-lined gouge for the Raging Raft Ride.
Summer signaled me to be quiet with a finger to her lips, then leaned against the office wall. I followed her lead, and her plan instantly became clear: We could hear Molly grilling Greg, the truck driver, in the conference room next door.
“So you drove the first shift from San Diego,” Molly was saying, “then made a pit stop in Las Cruces around midnight, after which Juan took the second shift.”
“That’s correct,” Greg replied. “He slept while I drove and I slept while he drove.”
“And the only time you stopped on that entire drive was in Las Cruces?”
“Just like I’ve said a dozen times.” Greg sounded extremely annoyed. “We were hungry and we all had to pee. So we pulled in at a truck stop to get some food and do our business. . . .”
“Doc Deakin included?”
“Yeah, he got out there too.”
“So you all left the panda alone?”
“No. I kept an eye on the truck while everyone else went inside, and then when Juan came back from the john, I went in.”
“So, if anyone had approached the truck during that time . . . ,” Molly began.
“We would have seen them,” Greg finished. “Nothing happened to the panda while we were there, I swear. She was still in the truck when we left.”
“You know that for sure?”
“Absolutely. I locked her and Doc back inside myself.”
“And after that, you all drove straight here?” Molly sounded skeptical.
“Why is that so hard to believe?” Greg asked.
“Because the idea of someone swiping a giant panda and a human being from a moving truck without anyone on that truck noticing sounds impossible.”
“Well, it obviously isn’t impossible, because it happened.”
“How?” Molly demanded.
“They’d need to rig up another vehicle to make the attack, but it could be done,” Greg explained. “One person would drive it while a team of other people would attack our truck from it.”
“You mean, like some sort of Mad Max kind of thing?”
“Something like that. They’d need a platform built out onto the hood of the attack vehicle so that the kidnappers could stand on it. The driver of that vehicle would pull up close behind our truck. Then, someone on the platform would blow the lock on the rear doors. Once those were open, the attack team could enter the truck by leaping into it from the platform. They grab the vet and the panda and unload them back onto the attack vehicle, which then veers off and takes them away.”
“And this is all done while both vehicles are traveling at seventy-five miles an hour?” Molly didn’t sound convinced.
“I said it was possible,” Greg replied. “I didn’t say it would be easy.”
There was a long pause. It seemed Molly was mulling all this over.
I stepped to the window and looked outside. The panda truck was parked almost directly below us. It had been moved from the veterinary hospital loading dock to the exterior fence of the park. From my angle, I couldn’t see much of it except for the gray roof.
An FBI mobile crime unit was now parked next to it. I could tell this because it had “FBI Mobile Crime Unit” painted on the roof. Obviously, it wasn’t designed to be a covert vehicle.
Summer waved me back to the wall. Molly had resumed her questioning.
“So, let’s say this amazingly acrobatic high-speed assault actually happened,” she said, not bothering to hide the disdain in her voice. “You really think it could all be done without alerting the people in the cab of the panda truck?”
“I know it could,” Greg said. “Because none of us were alerted. I didn’t wake up, and neither Juan nor your sister heard anything.”
“My sister isn’t exactly a top-notch law officer,” Molly said.
“That’s not what she told us,” Greg countered. “She said she was some kind of elite zoo law-enforcement commando.”
“Did she really?” Molly sounded amused.
“That’s right. She said she was only pretending to be a security guard, but that she actually worked for the Federal Animal Protection Service or something like that. She said she was like James Bond and Jason Bourne rolled into one.”
There was a noise I couldn’t quite recognize in the conference room. It might have been Molly O’Malley laughing.
“My sister was blowing smoke,” she said. “She is not an elite anything. She is a security guard, and not even a very good one. Meanwhile, your buddy Juan out there has been driving a truck for sixteen years. You’d think he’d have noticed if someone was making a full-scale assault on his truck while he was at the wheel.”
“Not if whoever attacked it did it right.”
“Or maybe Juan noticed and simply didn’t say anything.”
When Greg spoke again, he sounded even angrier than before. “Are you accusing Juan of being part of this?”
“It makes sense,” Molly replied. “If he was in cahoots with the perpetrators, he could let them know when you were asleep, maybe even slow the truck down to aid their attack. . . .”
“Juan would never do that. He’s not a criminal.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“Go get me a Bible and I’ll swear on it. I’ve known him for ten years, and the guy’s as honest as they come. He’s never even run a stop sign.”
“Everyone has their tipping point. A piece of ten million dollars is a big incentive.”
“Not for Juan.”
“You really expect me to believe a man with that much driving experience wouldn’t notice an attack like this?”
“I don’t know what you think driving a big rig is like,” Greg growled, “but it’s a whole different ballgame than driving a car. A truck is big and loud and it takes concentration. A lot of concentration. We’re not just sitting in that cab, playing travel bingo and singing show tunes like this is some holiday road trip. We have to be focused at all times. And it’s ten times worse at night, especially out on those highways where it’s pitch-black and there’s no light except for our headlamps. If some idiot cuts us off or a deer runs in front of us, we’ve got a split second to respond or else that truck ends up jackknifed across the freeway. Plus, there can be some nasty wind shear on that stretch of I-10. A big gust can come out of nowhere, and if you’re not ready for it, the truck goes over and your precious panda ends up splattered all over the fast lane. So Juan would have had plenty on his mind during that drive. Your sister was the one who was supposed to be on the alert for any trouble. So if you want to start pointing fingers at people, maybe you ought to start with her.”
There was another pause. When Molly spoke again, she didn’t sound nearly as antagonistic as she had before. “Just so you know, I run a tight ship here. Marjorie hasn’t escaped suspicion because she’s my sister.”
“I’ll bet,” Greg scoffed.
“I assure you, if I find that my sister is complicit in all this, I will treat her like any other criminal. I will arrest her and prosecute her to the full extent of the law.”
A phone rang, interrupting the conversation. We heard Molly answer it. “Agent O’Malley speaking. . . . Where? . . . Okay, I’ll be right there.” She hung up, then said, “Mr. Jefferson, I need to go. Agent Chen here will continue your questioning.”
“We’re not done?” Greg groaned. “How many more questions could you possibly have? How much longer is this going to go on?”
Molly didn’t answer him. Instead, we heard her gathering her things.
Summer bolted out the door of the small office. I followed her lead.
Summer quickly sat in the waiting area outside J.J.’s office, acting like she’d been there all along, and motioned for me to do the same.
I sat, and a second later, Molly exited the conference room. Behind her, I saw Agent Chen, one of the men who had been on the helicopter with her that morning, seated at the table across from Greg. I realized I had yet to hear Agent Chen say a single word.
Molly glanced at Summer and me suspiciously, then let it go and turned her attention to Lynda. “I need to see J.J. right now,” she announced.
“Mr. McCracken is on a very important phone call,” Lynda informed her.
“Interrupt it,” Molly told her. “We found his veterinarian.”