Secret Weapons Read online

  On the way home he did quite a lot of thinking about the terrorist thing. What he thought was that the chances that a bunch of terrorists were hanging around Castle Court, for whatever reason, probably weren’t too great. However—and this was a very large however—a terrorist rumor might come in pretty handy.

  First of all as something to talk to Susie about. Remembering her wide-eyed stare and her “Wowee!” it occurred to Ari that Susie had a special interest in terrorists. And having something that Susie would talk to him about was always a good thing.

  But, even more importantly, a good “terrorists who were interested in science-fair projects” rumor might also come in handy if Kate and Aurora started giving him the third degree about the ladder thing. Which they might very well do.

  At home that night Ari tried not to let Aurora catch him alone. One thing he’d learned a long time ago, when he was about two years old, in fact, was that his older sister was not a good person to be around when you had something to hide. That was because one of the things she sometimes knew, without having any good way of knowing it, was when a person wasn’t exactly telling the truth. So if she got a chance to come right out and ask him if he’d been the one who dropped the ladder on the roof, he knew he was going to be in deep trouble.

  But he also knew she wouldn’t ask him that kind of question if anyone else were around. He couldn’t go to his room and lock the door, because it didn’t have any lock, so what he had to do that night was spend a lot of time with the other members of the Pappas family.

  Right after dinner he went into the studio to watch his mother paint, until she said he was making her nervous, and didn’t he have any homework to do? And after that he read to his little sister, Athena.

  Athena, who could write really well for a four-year-old, had been busy in the kitchen writing her name in red crayon on all the paper napkins. But it wasn’t too hard to talk her into listening to a story. So the two of them sat on the living-room couch, and Ari read a lot of Athena’s favorite books. He went on reading and reading, until Athena finally yawned and asked him to hurry up and get to the good part because it was past her bedtime.

  Aurora had been reading, too, curled up on the window seat in the same room, so when Athena headed for her bedroom Ari was about to be alone and defenseless. Except right at that very moment the phone rang. It was for Aurora, so he was saved, for the time being. He was just sneaking out of the room to see if his father, Nick, needed any help with the enormous metal sculpture he was working on, when Aurora caught up with him.

  “Ari.” Aurora’s whispery voice had a worried sound to it, and her gray eyes looked even cloudier than usual. “Ari, I need to ask you something.”

  Uh-oh, he thought. This is it. “Well … I was just leaving,” he said quickly. “I have to … I have to go to the bathroom.”

  Aurora didn’t even seem to have heard what he said. Or else she probably knew he was lying. “It’s about the terrorists,” she whispered. “Susie says she’s seen them. Have you seen them too?”

  Chapter 6

  FOR A MOMENT AFTER Aurora whispered that Susie had seen the terrorists, Ari just stood there with his mouth hanging open. “S-S-Susie says she’s s-s-seen the t-t-terrorists?” he finally stammered. His mind was racing. All he had told Susie about the terrorists was that they were trying to steal Web’s science-fair project. He hadn’t mentioned what they looked like. In fact, he hadn’t even gotten around to figuring out what they looked like. And Susie hadn’t said anything to him about seeing them. In fact, all she’d said was “Wowee!” before she took off and ran home.

  Aurora was nodding. “She said she didn’t tell you that she’d seen them. She said it wasn’t until she got home that she realized that she probably had.”

  “Ohh.” It was beginning to make a little more sense to Ari. Trying to sound like your ordinary investigative reporter—interested and concerned but not at all nervous or guilty—he asked, “Where were they? I mean, where were they when she saw them?”

  “She said there were two of them and they were driving a big black van. And they drove around the cul-de-sac a couple of times and then they parked in front of the Andersons’ house and walked up their driveway.”

  Suddenly Ari remembered something. He remembered that when he was up in the cherry tree he’d seen a big black van doing exactly the same thing. “Yeah,” he said excitedly. “I saw a van like that. But I just thought it was somebody visiting the Andersons.”

  “But they’re not home,” Aurora said. “Remember? They went to Tahoe and they won’t be back for two more weeks.”

  “Hey, that’s right. I forgot about that.” He’d known about the Andersons’ going to their cabin at Tahoe because he’d overheard Aurora talking to Mrs. A. on the phone about watering her houseplants while she was away. Ever since Halloween Aurora and Mrs. A. had been special friends, and whenever the A.’s went away Aurora got the watering job. That meant the guys in the van definitely weren’t visiting the Andersons. “So,” Ari said, “I wonder who those guys were then.”

  Aurora didn’t answer. In fact, she probably didn’t hear what Ari had said, and she probably wasn’t seeing him either. Instead her gray eyes had that woozy, faraway look that they sometimes got when she was having a mysterious feeling. Ari watched her a little bit nervously, hoping that her mysterious feeling wasn’t clueing her in about how the whole terrorist thing was just one of Carson’s crazy ideas. A crazy idea that he, Ari, had picked up on because he’d hoped it might interest Susie. And it had interested her, as it turned out. A lot more than he’d counted on.

  Ari took a deep breath and said again, “I wonder who they were then.” Aurora still didn’t say anything. Trying to get her attention, Ari added, “You didn’t see them, did you?” And then more loudly, “Did you see those guys in the black van, Aurora?”

  Suddenly Aurora began to nod. “Yes,” she said softly. “Two men in a black van. I saw them.”

  Ari stared at his sister. She could have seen them, of course. If she had been sitting at a window watching for Kate to come home that afternoon, she could have seen them drive by. But somehow Ari wasn’t sure that was what she meant. “You mean you saw them this afternoon? When they were driving around the cul-de-sac?”

  Aurora shook her head. “No. Just now. Just for a minute.”

  Ari stared at Aurora, his eyes wide and unblinking. Most of the time he didn’t mind having a slightly supernatural sister. At least not too much. But there were times when the things she did and said definitely made him a little bit uneasy, and this was one of them. “You did?” he said finally. “You saw them just now? Well—er—what did they look like?”

  Aurora took a deep, quivering breath. “Bad,” she said, shaking her head. “They looked—bad.”

  “Oh yeah?” Ari was puzzled. He wondered what kind of bad Aurora was talking about. Did she mean like, ugly, for instance? Or maybe ragged and dirty. Or sick. Maybe the guys in the black van looked kind of sick. “What kind of bad?” he asked cautiously, because he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know the answer. And then, because Aurora’s eyes had gone woozy again, he repeated the question. “What kind of bad, Aurora?”

  “Evil,” Aurora whispered. “They looked evil.”

  Ari gulped. He’d been afraid she was going to say something like that.

  Chapter 7

  ON TUESDAY KATE ARRIVED at the Pappases’ old studio on time. Exactly on time. If anybody had tried to make her late on that particular day it would have been karate time for sure. Hard karate. Kick and chop, and elbow-lock time. Or whatever it took to convince them she was in a hurry and they better not get in her way.

  For one thing, after being so humongously late the day before, she wasn’t about to let it happen again. But that wasn’t the main reason. The most important reason was that Aurora had been acting very strangely all day. At every recess she had been cloudy-eyed and distant, and even in class her mind seemed to be somewhere else. And when Kate asked her
what the matter was, she would say only, “I can’t talk about it yet. I’m still thinking. We’ll talk at the studio.” Something was wrong, and Kate was going to find out what it was. As soon as possible!

  So Kate was already waiting at the door to the old studio when Aurora came out of her house and started across the backyard. Watching her come, Kate would have known that something was wrong even if she hadn’t noticed anything before. Aurora’s eyes were blank and inward-looking, as if she were seeing something, but not in the way that ordinary people see. Kate quickly spun the dial on the combination lock and turned it to the first number. By the time Aurora had crossed the yard the door was open.

  As soon as they were inside and the door was locked behind them, Kate said, “Okay, what’s the—” She gasped then and clapped her hand over her mouth and nose. The smell tended to do that to you, until you got used to it. Still holding her nose, she turned to Aurora and said, “Okay. What’s up, Aurora? What’s the matter?”

  “I’m not sure.” Aurora’s voice was soft and breathy and her mind seemed to be far away. (So far away she didn’t even seem to notice the smell.) “I’m not sure,” she murmured again, “but Susie called last night and told me that Ari said there were some terrorists here yesterday. And they were here to steal Web and Carson’s science-fair project.”

  Kate forgot all about holding her nose. “Terrorists?” she gasped. “Web and Carson’s science-fair project?” Then she laughed. “I don’t believe it. I mean, that is really funny.”

  Aurora didn’t say anything. Then Kate laughed again and said, “Oh ho! I get it. I bet I get it. Did he also tell Susie that the ‘terrorists’ or whoever, tried to climb up on this roof so they could spy on us yesterday? I’ll bet he did.” She laughed. “Wow! I’ve heard Ari come up with some pretty wild excuses before, but this one is definitely a winner. Terrorists! Holy cow!”

  Aurora smiled faintly and shook her head. “I thought of that. No, he didn’t tell Susie that. Or me either. But he did tell me that he had seen the same black van that Susie saw. And the same two men.”

  Kate stared at Aurora. For someone who could see through walls, almost, and could see through most liars without even trying, Aurora was certainly a sucker when it came to her own little brat of a brother. Kate did a karate-type grunt. “Don’t you get it?” she said. “Don’t you see it’s just another one of Ari’s stories? Just something he cooked up to make it look like he wasn’t the one who tried to climb up on the roof and spy on what we were doing.”

  Aurora nodded. “I thought so too—at first. But then when he was telling me about the van, the one that he and Susie both saw, I …” She stopped and her big eyes seemed to grow larger in her pale, pointed face. “I saw them, Kate. I saw those men too.”

  Kate knew then. She’d seen Aurora look like that before and it always meant she was having one of her mysterious feelings. And Kate had always believed in Aurora’s feelings. “Well, who … I mean, what …,” she stammered. And then something else occurred to her. Something very important. “What about Carson and Web then?” she demanded. “What are those guys, or terrorists, or whatever, going to do to Carson, Aurora?”

  Aurora shook her head. “I don’t know. I just … don’t … know.” She turned away and absentmindedly, like someone in a dream, began to scoop rotten fish out of the garbage pail and start down the row of plants on one side of the studio. Kate watched her for a minute before she opened the bag of fertilizer and started down the other side.

  Kate and Aurora’s science-fair project had been Kate’s idea, but Aurora had liked it right away. Aurora had said that since she wasn’t a very scientific type person, it was all right for Kate to choose what they should do. And right after that a couple of coincidences helped Kate come to a quick decision.

  First of all, Mrs. Davis began talking about the science fair on the same day that the social studies assignment was to read about Squanto. Kate wasn’t too crazy about social studies as a rule but she kind of enjoyed reading about how Squanto saved the Pilgrims by teaching them how to use rotten fish as fertilizer.

  The other coincidence was that when she got home that very same night she found out that the big freezer in the Nicelys’ garage had self-destructed. The one where her dad kept all the things he caught when he went deep-sea fishing.

  Actually, Kate’s mom had told Tiffany to clean out the freezer, but Tiffany, who had lots of baby-sitting money, bribed Kate to take her place. It had been a fairly disgusting job but right in the middle of it Kate had come up with a great idea.

  So Kate and Aurora had chosen as their hypothesis Squanto knew what he was doing, and their experiments were to find out if it was true. If rotten fish really did make plants grow as well as modern commercial fertilizers. So far Squanto was ahead, but not by much.

  For the next few minutes Kate and Aurora went through their regular routine automatically. They scooped and watered and measured, and even took a few notes, but their minds weren’t on what they were doing. At least Kate’s wasn’t and she was sure that Aurora’s wasn’t either. As soon as the last plant was watered they turned toward each other and, almost in the same breath, said, “Let’s go to Web’s.”

  No more than a minute later, as Kate and Aurora were on their way down the driveway, the back door of the Pappases’ house opened a little bit, and a pointy face under a mop of brown curls appeared in the crack. Then very cautiously, the rest of a skinny eight-year-old boy slid out into the open.

  Peeking around the corner of the house, Ari watched as his sister and Kate Nicely started up the sidewalk at a run before he began to run too. Out across the backyard toward the old studio.

  Ari Pappas was feeling very hopeful. He’d just happened to have been looking out a window when Kate and Aurora dashed out of the old studio, and he’d noticed immediately that they were leaving in a big hurry. In too much of a hurry, maybe, to remember to put the lock back on the latch and spin the combination dial. It was just a guess, but before he’d gotten halfway across the yard he could tell that he’d guessed right.

  Chapter 8

  ON MONDAY EVENING CARLOS had been sure that the terrorist scare was pretty much over, but on Tuesday it started up again, bigger than ever. For one thing, at school that day, Eddy told Carlos, and Bucky, too, that he’d tried and tried to get something out of Web last night, but that Web wasn’t talking. He just kept saying that his science-fair project was his and Carson’s secret, and nobody else was going to find out about it until the fair.

  So how did Ari know whatever it was he knew when he talked to Susie? That was the question that Eddy wanted to find an answer to when he showed up at Carlos’s house that afternoon. When Carlos came to the door Eddy pulled him outside, closed the door behind him, and started in on the Ari thing again.

  “So how does Ari know anything?” Eddy asked. “When I asked Web if Ari knew about his project, he said that Ari had been snooping around but that he hadn’t found out anything.”

  Carlos shrugged and then shivered. It was a very cold day and he was outside without his jacket. He still hadn’t had a chance to get a jacket when Bucky came down the sidewalk. As soon as Eddy told Bucky what they’d been talking about, Bucky said, “Me too. That’s what I want to know too. You know, I’ve been thinking, and I kind of like the idea of making a secret weapon. I mean, that sounds a lot more interesting than all the boring old stuff we’ve been working on.”

  Carlos was thinking of reminding Bucky that all of the “boring old stuff” they’d been working on had been his ideas, but in the meantime Eddy said, “I get it. You’re thinking of hijacking Web’s project. Is that it, Brockhurst? Because if that’s what you’re thinking of, you can just count me out.”

  “Yeah,” Carlos said. “Me too.”

  Bucky’s face went from surprised to angry—to a phony good-natured grin. Bucky’s good-natured grins were usually phony. “Me?” he said. “Me steal Web’s project? Gimme a break. I just think we ought to find out what he’s doi
ng. You know, in case he needs some protection, or anything.”

  Eddy stared at Bucky suspiciously for a minute before he shrugged and said, “Well, okay then. If that’s all you want to do.”

  “Yeah, that’s all,” Bucky said. “And I just got an idea about how we can find out.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s that?”

  Bucky grinned. “Ari Pappas” he said. “If we can’t get Web or Susie to talk, let’s try Ari. I mean, he was the one who told Susie about the terrorists, wasn’t he? I’ll bet I can get that little Pappas nerd to squeal. He’s scared to death of me. How about it, dudes? Let’s go give old Pappas the third degree.”

  So the three PROs, with Carlos still jacketless, went off around the cul-de-sac, with Bucky bragging all the way about how he was going to make Ari squeal. But when they got to the Pappases’ and knocked at the door there was no answer. Carlos breathed a shivering sigh of relief. He was about to suggest that they go home and warm up, when the door suddenly opened. But it was just Ari’s little four-year-old sister.

  As usual, Athena looked like she’d dressed herself out of somebody’s ragbag. She was wearing a huge paint-smeared sweater that came clear down to her ankles, her shoes were on the wrong feet, and her curly ponytail was all frizzled out.

  “Hi, Athena,” Carlos said. “Where’s Ari?”

  “Hi, dudes,” Athena said. Then she put her head on one side and wrinkled up her forehead. After a moment she said, “Ari’s not here. He went outside.” She nodded thoughtfully. “Yep. Aurora and Kate are not here too. They ran up the sidewalk that way, and then Ari went outside.” She cocked her head again and thought for a minute. “Nick and Diane are in the studio. You want to see Nick and Diane?”

  Carlos knew that all the Pappas kids called their parents by their first names but it seemed especially funny to hear a four-year-old do it. He grinned at Athena and said, “No, we don’t want to see Nick and Diane. We just want to see Ari.”