I almost forget to eat my lunch because Muriel is setting up a meeting with a guy who might be our dognapper.
He wants to meet her at eight tonight at a small park on Lansdowne Avenue in Westmount.
Stacey shakes her head. “At night in some deserted park? I don’t like the sound of it.”
“Is he bringing the Chihuahua?” Nathaniel asks.
Muriel rolls her eyes. “Of course he’s bringing the Chihuahua. The reason I’m meeting him is so I can decide about the Chihuahua.”
Muriel’s phone jiggles on the picnic table when it vibrates to indicate there is a new email. “Is it him?” we all ask at the same time.
Muriel reads us the new message. “If you decide you would like to take the dog, I will require payment in cash. It’s two hundred dollars, and the price is not negotiable. Hope that’s okay. Please confirm that you will be at the park at eight tonight.”
“Where am I supposed to get two hundred dollars from?” Muriel asks.
“You’re not going to need the money,” Nathaniel tells her. “We’ll catch the guy before he can ask for the cash.”
Stacey pushes her baby carrots away from her snow peas. “Catch the guy? Are you nuts?” she says to Nathaniel. “What if he’s armed?”
“Relax,” Nathaniel tells her. “This guy won’t be armed. He’s a dognapper, not a serial killer.”
“I agree with Nathaniel,” Muriel says. “A serial killer would not say, Hope that’s okay. This guy’s polite.”
Stacey rolls her eyes. “When was the last time you hung out with a serial killer, Muriel?”
“Okay, you two, calm down,” Nathaniel says, coming to stand between the two cousins. “Stacey, you seem to be forgetting that we have a secret weapon.”
“A secret weapon?” I ask.
“Yeah, your dog. Roxie, right? Well, Roxie’s coming.”
“I told you, I don’t know if that’s—”
Nathaniel does not let me finish my sentence. “I thought we were a team,” he says, looking me in the eye.
None of us can argue with that. Not me, and not even Stacey. We might all be very different, but Nathaniel’s right—we are a team.
Stacey lives around the corner from Lansdowne Avenue. She and the twins will tell Stacey’s parents they are going to meet up for ice cream with friends from forensics camp. “I’m going to leave a note on my pillow saying where we’ve gone,” Stacey says. “In case something goes wrong.”
Nathaniel waves his hand in the air. “Nothing’s going to go wrong.”
Mason will come to my house at seven twenty. He’s going to suggest we take Roxie for a walk, and then we’ll head for the park too. We should make it there by ten to eight.
“My parents might get suspicious if they see me hanging out with you of my own free will,” I say, but Mason is too busy peeling the lid off his applesauce to be insulted.
Muriel uses Google Street View to show us what the park looks like up close, and Mason makes a sketch of it in his notebook.
“All six of us can’t show up at the same time,” Mason points out, “because if this guy really is up to no good, he might take off. I’d say there should only be a couple of us at the park. The rest need to hide out in the vicinity. Let’s zoom in to scope out possible hiding spots.”
Nathaniel says no one at his house will even notice if he slips out. I wonder what that would be like. “It’d be different if my grandpa was around,” he mutters.
We only get half an hour in the forensics lab after lunch before we have to be at the pool for afternoon swim. The footwear impressions are beginning to dry. Some spots have turned a dull gray.
We all put on our rubber gloves. Muriel and I take another look at the coffee cup.
“Can I see it?” Stacey asks. I expect another lecture about the evils of plastic, but instead she turns the cup slowly in her hand. “It’s marked 3S,” she says, showing us a notation someone has made in blue pen on the side of the cup.
“Maybe it’s the coffee drinker’s bra size,” Nico calls out.
“Three S? That’s not even slightly funny,” Muriel tells him. “Plus it shows how little you know about girls.”
“It stands for three sugars,” Nathaniel says. “That’s how my grandpa took his coffee.”
Stacey sniffs at the cup.
“What are you smelling now?” I ask her.
Her nostrils twitch like a horse’s. “Mustard,” she says.
“Well, that’s not a surprise,” Mason says. “Muriel and Tabitha found the cup next to the mustard container.”
Stacey’s nostrils twitch again. “What’s surprising is that the mustard smell is coming from inside the cup.”
“Let me see it,” Mason says. He is the one who spots the tiny yellow fleck on the inside of the cup. “Mustard!”
“Not so fast,” Lloyd tells us. “You’ll need to confirm that substance is really mustard. You can try breaking down the cup to look at the yellow substance and compare it with a known mustard sample.”
“But wouldn’t breaking down the cup be tampering with the evidence?” Mason asks.
We all look at Lloyd. “You have several good photographs of the coffee cup,” he says. “You’ve dusted it for prints. In some cases, evidence needs to be broken down for further examination. I’d say this qualifies as one of those cases. You with me, Samantha?”
Samantha gives Lloyd a thumbs-up. “I’m with you,” she tells him.
We use scissors to cut the cup into pieces. I can feel my heart pumping as we examine the yellow fleck under the microscope. We are getting close to solving our case. “Definitely yellow,” Muriel says as she looks through the microscope.
Nico pushes her away so he can take a look. “It’s more like yellow-brown than yellow,” he says.
“Maybe it’s from that crusty bit at the end of the squeeze top,” Mason suggests. “Or maybe it’s just because it’s dried up.”
“Maybe it is.” I need to stop agreeing with Mason.
Lloyd sends Mason to the small kitchen at the back of the forensics department. “I’m pretty sure I saw a squeeze bottle of yellow mustard in the fridge,” Lloyd tells him.
When Mason comes back with the mustard, he squeezes a little out and puts it on a glass slide.
“What do you think?” Lloyd asks when Mason compares the two samples.
Mason does not answer right away. But when he finally says, “I think we’ve got a match!” the rest of us clap.
That means we now have a direct link between the mustard container and the coffee cup. Whoever wrote the mustard message must have also touched the coffee cup. But where did the coffee cup come from?
The cafeteria isn’t open, but there is a coffee shop on the ground level of the sports complex, and we all decide to go down there together. The coffee shop must be on summer hours too, because it wasn’t open the other day. When we get there, people are lining up for their coffee. I spot the orange running shoes first. Leo Tessier is buying coffee, and Amelia Lester is with him. She has a sour expression on her face, which makes me wonder whether they have been arguing again.
I point them out to the others.
“The cafeteria coffee must suck,” Nico says. “Why else would those two buy their coffee someplace else?”
“They really shouldn’t be using cups with plastic coating,” Stacey mutters. “I’m going to talk to the manager and suggest they offer a discount to people who bring reusable mugs. They’d end up saving money, and it would help the planet.”
Muriel and I must be thinking the same thing. “C’mon. Quick,” she says, grabbing my elbow. “Let’s go see how sweet they like their coffee.”
But just as Muriel and I are rushing over to the counter, the fire alarm sounds. It’s as if the whole sports complex is clanging—the windows, the walls, even the floors. Nico blocks his ears.
“We need to get out of here now!” Lloyd’s voice echoes through the lobby of the sports complex.
“I don’t smell smoke,” I hear Stacey saying. “I’m sure it’s just a fire drill.”
“Either way, we’re outta here now!” Samantha is gesturing for us to follow her.
Muriel and I look at each other. Is there time to get to the counter?
“Out of zee way!” It’s Leo, with Amelia close behind him. They are leaving the building without their coffee.