Sammy Keyes and the Runaway Elf Read online

  He eyed me. “So be her best friend.”

  “She’s only like seven or eight years old!”

  He looks at me like, So? and all of a sudden I realize that the difference between thirteen and seven is a lot less than the difference between thirteen and seventy-two. And thinking about that made me feel uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable.

  I stood up and said, “I’ve … I’ve got to get home. Grams is probably starting to get worried.”

  He just smiled at me and said, “Tell her I say hi.”

  The whole way home it bothered me. I mean, was my hanging around Hudson like the Elf wanting to hang around me? And if it was, why in the world did he let me do it?

  I was on autopilot, going up the fire-escape stairs, sneaking down the hall, thinking about Hudson and Elyssa, when all of a sudden there’s my grandmother, in the hallway with a fireman. Then I notice that Mrs. Graybill’s door isn’t cracked open a few inches like it usually is so she can spy on me—it’s wide open. I run up to Grams and whisper, “What happened? Did she start a fire?”

  Grams says, “No. Apparently she fell.”

  Just then two paramedics roll out a stretcher, and on it is Mrs. Graybill. I take one look at her and whisper, “Is she dead?” because even though Mrs. Graybill usually looks kind of pale behind her matted hair and crooked lipstick, her eyes were closed and she looked as white as the sheets.

  Well, she must’ve heard my voice, because one of her eyes opens up a crack and her lips move a bit, like she’s trying to get out her last words—There she is! Catch her!

  One of the paramedics whispers, “She’s got a broken arm and she’s pretty bruised up, but she’s going to be fine.”

  Grams steps forward and says, “Don’t you worry, Daisy. You’re going to be all right.”

  Mrs. Graybill just closes her eye and shakes her head.

  So off they go to the elevator, and when they’re out of sight, Grams says, “This has been some night.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “You didn’t find the dog?”

  “Nope.”

  Grams opens our door and says, “Marissa called. She wants you to call her back, no matter what time it is.”

  So I went into the kitchen and punched in Marissa’s number, and before it had even rung once, Marissa snatched it up with, “Sammy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “God, this is so weird. This is so weird.”

  “What?”

  “I got this call from our neighbor, Mrs. Landvogt …”

  “Wait a minute! Mrs. Landvogt is your neighbor?”

  “Yeah, she lives kitty-corner, across the street.”

  Now on East Jasmine, kitty-corner across the street is about the same as two blocks down. And since Marissa’s never talked about any of her neighbors, I figured they didn’t really have block parties out there on East Jasmine, if you know what I mean.

  “Do you know her?”

  “No. My mom’s met her, but I don’t really know anything about her.”

  “But she called you? Not your mom, you?”

  Now I could just see Marissa, pacing back and forth in her room, doing the McKenze dance. “That’s what’s so weird. She calls, and get this—she says, ‘Have Samantha report to my house tomorrow at nine A.M. I want no excuses—have her here.’ ”

  “Wait a minute … I thought she was in the hospital!”

  Marissa laughed. “Well, she’s home now.”

  “How did she know we were friends?”

  “I don’t know! And I asked her, ‘Samantha Keyes?’ but all she said was, ‘Have her here at nine!’ and then she hung up.”

  I let what she’d said soak in. “Maybe Vera told her.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. All I know is that we’d better be over there at nine tomorrow morning.”

  “We?”

  “Sure, I’ll go with you.”

  I laughed and said, “Okay. I’ll be at your house at quarter of.”

  I got off the phone telling myself that none of this was my fault—that really, all I owed her was maybe an apology. But inside I had the awful feeling that an apology was not going to cut it.

  Not with Mrs. Landvogt.

  FOUR

  I was expecting big. I mean, Marissa could have a slumber party for the whole seventh grade at her house and her mom might not even notice. That’s East Jasmine for you. But when we rang the doorbell at Mrs. Landvogt’s house, even Marissa’s eyes were bugged out.

  And you’d better believe if she felt a little out of place standing on a marble porch the size of Grams’ living room, I felt like a beggar at the palace gate. I kept looking over my shoulder, kind of wondering if someone was going to shoot me for trespassing.

  Marissa tugged on my arm and whispered, “Get a load of the mail slot!”

  At first I couldn’t believe it. “Is that gold?”

  She nodded, then pointed to the knocker. It was a gold bull’s head with a giant ring through the nose.

  I whispered, “That is so ugly!”

  “Shhh!” She pushed the doorbell again and we could hear it ringing inside. “Maybe she forgot.”

  I rolled my eyes and said, “Right.”

  Now, you’d expect at a place like the Landvogt mansion that a guy in a suit and bow tie would answer the door with his nose in the air, but instead it was Tina Landvogt. And even though you could see up her nose pretty good, she wasn’t wearing any bow tie. Just jeans and boots and an oversized T-shirt.

  She smiled at Marissa. “Sammy?”

  Marissa shook her head and pointed to me. “She’s Sammy.”

  Tina hitched her thumb behind her. “Mother’s upstairs.” We stepped inside, and as she closed the door I could hear a faint bo-beep sound like a chime hiccuping. Tina pulled back the entryway curtain and switched on the Christmas-tree lights. “And I’m afraid she’s in a pretty foul mood.”

  As we followed her through the foyer, Marissa grabbed my arm and whispered, “Check out that chandelier!”

  It looked more like a crystal carousel than a light fixture. We walked under it like we were watching a comet cross the sky, and when we turned the corner there were two more, sparkling away in the dining room.

  And we were so busy gawking that we didn’t even notice Tina stop and open the elevator door. “C’mon, girls, all aboard.”

  Marissa practically choked. “An elevator?”

  We stepped inside, and while we were inspecting the baby chandelier hanging from its ceiling, Tina pushed a button and said, “It’s come in pretty handy for getting Mother up and down.”

  Since she was smiling, I decided to ask, “How’d she break her leg, anyway?”

  “Tripping over that stupid dog.”

  “Marique?”

  She laughed. “The one and only.” The elevator clanked to a stop, and as Tina opened the gate, we heard the doorbell ring. She scowled and muttered, “This playing doormaid stuff is getting old in a hurry.” She pointed us to a room with its double doors wide open. “Mother knows you’re here. Just go in.” She headed back to the elevator and whispered, “Good luck.”

  Now, I have to admit that my heart was popping around pretty good, but I kept telling myself that there was really nothing she could do to me. She could rant and rave and call me names, but when that was over, what could she do? Make me clean her chandeliers?

  So we inched over to the doorway of this enormous bedroom, and what we saw was white. White curtains, white furniture, white carpet, even the TV was white. And there, propped up in the middle of a huge puffy white bed, was Mrs. Landvogt. Only she wasn’t white, she was green. Emerald green. She had on a shiny green nightgown and a matching robe. Her hair was all wrapped up in this green turban contraption, and her three-inch nails looked like she’d gone down to the body shop and dipped them in sports-car paint.

  Her leg was propped up on a pillow with the cast sticking out past the bottom of her robe, and she was punching buttons on a remote control. And while we’re
standing there, gawking from behind her, she says without looking over, “You’ll get in here if you know what’s good for you.”

  We shuffle in, and she points to the TV, saying, “Look at that—there she goes. Try to tell me you didn’t just let her get away.”

  That’s when it hit me that what she’s watching is a videotape of the parade, and she’s wearing out the thirty seconds where Marique jumps off the float.

  “See? You’re just standing there!” She pauses the video, then advances it frame by frame. Sure enough, there I am, standing in the background like a bug-eyed totem pole.

  She snaps, “Why didn’t you stop her?”

  “I’m … I’m sorry, Mrs. Landvogt. I got off the float as fast as I could!”

  She lets the tape go regular speed, and right after the dogs abandon the float, the TV goes fuzzy with static. She presses the rewind button. “You call this fast?”

  “If you play it at regular speed—”

  “Quiet!”

  Marissa and I jump back like we’ve been snapped at by a crocodile and stand there watching Marique jump off the float again, frame by frame.

  Mrs. Landvogt turns to me and hisses, “And don’t try to blame it on the cats!”

  “I’m not, ma’am, but they did—”

  “Stop with the excuses!”

  “But—”

  “Stop!”

  We stare at each other a minute, and when she’s sure I’m not going to say another word, she buffs the nail of a thumb and says, “So …”

  But then there’s a knock on the door. We all turn around and look, and there, standing on the threshold with a piece of folded paper in her hand, is Tina.

  Mrs. Landvogt snaps, “Didn’t I make it clear that I didn’t want to be interrupted?”

  “Yes, but I thought you’d want to see this.”

  She gives Tina an annoyed look, then says, “What is it?”

  Tina steps into the room and hands her the paper. “It was dropped through the mail slot. I ran outside, but I didn’t see anybody. I’m sorry.”

  Mrs. Landvogt takes the paper and says, “This is a …” she flips it open, “a ransom note?”

  Tina stands there like a whipped puppy, nodding.

  Marissa and I scoot in a little closer. On the outside of the note there are magazine letters pasted together spelling LILIA LANDVOGT. And inside is: YOU WANT YOUR DOG? I WANT $50,000. CALL THE COPS AND I’LL CUT HER THROAT.

  All of a sudden Mrs. Landvogt turns the color of her decor. “No …!” After a minute she waves a green claw through the air and cries, “Fifty thousand dollars! Are they insane? No dog is worth fifty thousand dollars!” She slaps the note with the back of her hand. “What kind of monster would steal my baby?”

  Tina whispers, “You want me to call the police?”

  “No!”

  “You’re not going to pay it, are you?”

  “Not if I can help it.” She buffs her thumbnail a minute, thinking. Finally she says, “I need a few minutes with Samantha. Alone.”

  Tina whispers, “Let’s go” to Marissa, and they scurry out, closing the doors behind them.

  So there I am in this big white room, alone with this woman who’s looking more and more like a crocodile every second. She rearranges her pillows a bit and then smiles at me. “So.”

  Now I’m not sure if she’s planning to eat me whole or just nibble off a few appendages, but I take a deep breath and say, “So …?”

  She gives me that crocodile smile again. “My sources tell me you’re quite the sleuth.”

  I kind of look down and shrug.

  “So it should be no trouble at all for you, finding my dog.”

  I look up at her. “I wouldn’t know where to start. I have no idea who took your dog!”

  She buffs another claw and says, “Then you’re just going to have to start getting some ideas, aren’t you, Samantha?”

  I took a deep breath and let it out as I said, “Mrs. Landvogt, look. I spent the whole night chasing around for Marique. Nobody saw her … there was no sign of her anywhere. Now we find out that someone’s dognapped her. Don’t you think you should call the police?”

  The paper flew open in my face. “They’ll kill her!”

  “But—”

  “And I’m not going to pay fifty thousand dollars for something that already belongs to me!”

  “But—”

  “You …!” She clenched her claws and vacuumed air through her nostrils. “You are going to find her and you are going to bring her home.”

  “I could try …”

  She studied me a minute. “You shall do more than try, you shall succeed!” That smile crept across her face again as she said, “And if you don’t, I’ll have no choice but to tell the authorities about your living situation.”

  All of a sudden it felt like I had a mouth full of Styrofoam. “My living situation?”

  “Don’t play dumb with me, Samantha. I know all about you, and if you don’t want to find yourself on the street, you’ll find my dog and you’ll bring her home!”

  I stood there for a minute with my heart whacking away and my hands going clammy. Finally I tried, “There’s no law against me living with my best friend!”

  She threw her little turban-head back and laughed. “Don’t think for an instant I’m going to fall for that! I know you’re living at the Senior Highrise, so let’s stop playing games, shall we?”

  All of a sudden I was on fire—pure, angry fire. It started in my cheeks and then spread through my body, and as I’m standing there burning up, I look the Crocodile square in the eye and say, “Fine! Go ahead and call! There’s no way that your dog running off was my fault, and if you think you can blackmail me into finding her, you’re wrong!”

  And I’m marching straight for the door when I hear, “Too bad about your grandmother.”

  I froze.

  “I don’t think she’d do well on the streets in the dead of winter.”

  I turned around. “You can’t do anything to her and you know it.”

  The Crocodile studied one of her nails. “Oh? I believe she’s been violating her lease for over a year now …” She looked straight at me. “With a few phone calls, that little apartment of yours could be occupied by any number of people on a very lengthy waiting list.”

  My mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out.

  She smiled and said, “Hadn’t you better run along? You have work to do.”

  I turned and walked out. And I slammed the door, all right, but as I stood there in the hallway, shaking, I knew there was no way around it.

  I had to find that dog.

  FIVE

  Marissa and I spent the next hour locked in her room, trying to decide how to get me out of the mess I was in. But since I didn’t really want to skip town or murder anybody, I finally decided to start digging for answers at the Pup Parlor.

  Vera was in the middle of hosing down a schnauzer when I came clanking through the Pup Parlor door. She took one look at me, turned off the spray, and said, “Did you find her?”

  I shook my head and said, “No.”

  “I should never have asked you to show her, Sammy, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault, Vera, I—”

  “But I know what a pain in the neck that woman is! Every time she brings Marique here, she’s got to boss me around. The water’s too cold, I’ve got the blower on too fast, I’m brushing her precious baby too hard. She makes me a nervous wreck.”

  “Holly told me about the business license. Can she do that?”

  Vera wagged the nozzle in my direction. “Lilia Landvogt seems to be able to do whatever she wants.”

  “But you didn’t even touch her dog!”

  The schnauzer shook out all over her, but she didn’t seem to care. She turned the water back on and started spraying him down some more. “That’s the whole point. She says if I had been in charge, Marique wouldn’t have run away. She’s gotta blame someone, so she’s blam
ing me.”

  Very quietly, I said, “She’s also blaming me.”

  Vera looked over her shoulder at me. “But there’s not much she can do to you.”

  I looked down.

  She turned off the water and watched me toe some dog hair around the floor. “No …!” Finally she shakes her head and blasts the schnauzer with water again, muttering, “How does that woman find these things out?”

  “Hudson says that money can start a pretty good fire, for paper that’s green.”

  Vera snaps the water off again. “She’s not bribing people, I can tell you that. Lilia Landvogt is as tight as a tailor. She’s come back after four days and said, ‘You didn’t get the smell out,’ and made me wash that prissy dog all over again.”

  “Did she pay you for it?”

  “Are you kidding? She’s always to the penny. I think I’d have heart failure if she ever tipped me.”

  I thought about this a minute. “So you don’t think she’d pay fifty thousand dollars to get her dog back?”

  “Fifty thousand … what?” The schnauzer drenched her again. She grabbed a towel. “What are you saying?”

  “Marique’s been dognapped. They want fifty thousand dollars for her.”

  A canary could’ve flown in Vera’s mouth. “Fifty thousand dollars!” She dried off an arm. “That’s unbelievable!”

  I laughed. “Yeah.”

  She got the schnauzer out of the tub and said, “So why doesn’t she call the police instead of threatening you?”

  I helped towel the dog down and put him in a drying cage while I told her about the ransom note and how I had to find Marique.

  She got the blower going and said, “This is ridiculous. She’s ridiculous. How can she expect you to find her stupid dog? I have a good mind to call the police myself.”

  “You can’t, Vera!”

  She looked at me and sighed. “No, of course I won’t.”

  “I was hoping that maybe you had some ideas.”

  “About who stole the dog?”

  I nodded.

  She shook her head. “Anyone that knows Lilia knows how nuts she is about Marique. And that she’s got money.”