Moxie and the Art of Rule Breaking (2 page)

That pushing and arm-crossing totally ticked me off.

I cocked my head at her. “Sorry,” I said, anger smothering the fear-streak from seconds ago, “they’re out too. And I probably shouldn’t be talking to a
stray
-nger.” I made it sound
as sickly sweet as I could and stepped back into the house, about to close the door.

She stuck a black leather high-heeled boot out to block it.

“You have lousy manners,” she snapped.

I just raised an eyebrow and didn’t say anything—something that drives my mom absolutely berserk—and hoped I seemed cooler than I felt. Who wears black leather boots in the summer, anyway?

I could almost see the steam coming out her ears. And for a moment, I wondered if I was in over my head. But I pushed that thought down the turnpike, as Nini would say. I knew plenty of guys from the “crews” that Grumps had worked with over the years—one of them, Little Joey Colagionne, who’d gotten me hooked on classic Boston punk and rock bands, was like an uncle to me—and this redhead and Sully Cupcakes weren’t part of them. There was absolutely no reason to tell her the truth about Grumps.

“Fine,” she snarled, and turned on her heel. Her hair whiffed by my nose, trailing the smell of cigarettes and cut grass. In spite of myself, I flinched. And was immediately mad that I did.

“Can I take a message?” I added, going for the last word.

She stomped down the stairs like she hadn’t heard me. At the bottom she paused, then turned and gave me a shark-smile.

“Yeah. Sully Cupcakes wants his items back. By the fourth. Or he’ll take something of equal…” She paused and looked
me up and down, real slow. “…or
lesser
value.” I waited until she closed the front gate, then I shut the house door and double locked it.

Sketchy? Nah.

Total psycho.

I’d just finished twisting the lock when Nini came out of her apartment, wearing one of her classic Red Sox jerseys, asking who’d been ringing the doorbell. The sounds of today’s game—the afternoon part of a double header—trailed from her open door.

“Wilderness Scouts,” I lied, because I didn’t want to get in trouble for opening the door to a psychotic redheaded stranger. “They were selling candy.”

“They do that in November. Who was it?” Her sharp green eyes don’t miss much. She pointedly glanced at my empty, slightly shaking hands. I stuffed them in my skirt’s pockets and tried again.

“Just some kids selling stuff. No big deal.”

She crossed her arms and frowned at me, eyebrows drawn down and head cocked. I call her No-Nonsense Nini when she makes that face.

“Seriously!” I said, hoping that sounding annoyed would convince her.

It worked. Nini eyed me up and down one more time and disappeared back into her apartment, probably to shout at the Sox.

My breath was coming fast and the back of my neck tingled. I hate lying. I sat on the stairs to chill.

Grumps hadn’t been involved in “the lifestyle,” as he called it, for years. Well, obviously because of the Alzheimer’s, but he’d retired right after I was born. Said I was more precious than the work he did with the crews. Mom rolled her eyes when she heard that. Whatever. She’s just jealous of how tight we are.

Grumps and I are so tight, he gave me my nickname—Moxie—and I gave him his. Mine is from this soda he liked as a kid that had a bright orange label that Ted Williams, from the Red Sox, used to promote. If it weren’t for him, everyone would be calling me Margaret Mildred, or something awful like “Peg” or “Midge.” And I named him Grumps because as a baby I couldn’t say “Grampy,” which is what he wanted to be called. So “grampy” became “grumpy,” became “grumps.” I know it’s totally goofy, but what can you do? I was, like, three.

Anyway, even when he was involved in the lifestyle, he wasn’t a major player. At least, that’s what he told me. He was a carpenter, and carpenters come in handy when you need places to hide stuff—like money. Or jewelry. Or whatever. So he made “modifications” to a few guys’ houses…and occasionally held cash for them when things got heavy. It was all small-time, he said. He never hurt anyone and never actually stole anything himself. So Grumps had hidden something for this Sully guy, but what? And when? ’Cause it had to have been tucked away since I was a baby.

I’m sure it’d freak most people out if they knew that my criminal grandfather told his granddaughter about his shady
past. But Grumps was big on being honest with me, and made it clear that I was never, ever to get involved with any kind of street life—he said it’d limit my potential. Instead, he pushed me to do well in school and helped me with my math homework every night. Because of him, I wanted to be on the other side of the law, like a code breaker. Or a forensic psychologist—one of those people who testify in court about how long a criminal should be sentenced and why they do what they do.

So although I don’t agree with what Grumps did all those years ago, he’s still my grandpa, I love him like crazy, and I wouldn’t want him to go to jail. Besides, once the Alzheimer’s kicked in, what he used to be didn’t matter much anymore.

I double-checked the locks on the front door and headed upstairs. My geometry homework had lost its appeal—as had The Standells. Instead, I turned on some Aerosmith and booted up our computer. Time for a little Google-fu to find out about Sully and what he’d want with Grumps.

I typed in “Sully Cupcakes.”

About 2,142,367 results. And, based on the first dozen or so, Sully Cupcakes was not a small-time guy:

Why hadn’t I heard about him? Before the Alzheimer’s, Grumps told me occasional stories about the characters on the scene.

I clicked back to the first page of results and launched the encyclopedia entry.

The attached photo was of this dark-haired guy built like a refrigerator with eyes that would scare a snake. “Sully Cupcakes” earned his sweet nickname because he planned most of his jobs from the back of a bakery. According to the site, he’d committed nearly every crime from stealing to murder and whatever fell in between. He’d been in some big federal prison in Tennessee since I was a little kid, and had recently gotten out.

Oh.

Maybe that’s why I hadn’t heard of him?

Had Grumps seriously been involved with this guy?

I skimmed Sully Cupcakes’ biography and the bit about the life he’d set up so no one knew he was a crook—bakery owner, husband, dad, the usual. Then came a list of the crimes he’d committed. There were so many, I had to scroll down the page to see them all. At the bottom of that was a second list—this one of “alleged involvement.” The article said Sully Cupcakes may have participated in a bunch of other crimes, but no one could prove it—yet. I checked the list: more murders, racketeering, and extortion, which is basically bullying people for money

What had he sent the grouchy redhead to find? And why did he want it back by the fourth? I guessed she meant the Fourth of July, which was two weeks away.

I clicked through some other articles, hoping to find out more about him, but they all said essentially the same thing: Sully was a bad guy who did bad things and hung out with
bad people. As I thought about what he wanted, in my head I heard Grumps talking me through word problems when I struggled with them years ago.

“You need information to solve this. Do you have everything you need, Moxie?” he’d say gently. That was usually a clue that I was missing something. I’d go back through the problem and figure out the missing piece. Once I had all the data, I could do the work easily. But until then, it was like something I couldn’t grab dancing at the edges of my brain. This felt the same way. No matter what info I read about Sully Cupcakes, a part remained out of reach. I closed my eyes and rocked back, balancing my chair on its rear legs, thinking.

What if I told Nini or Mom about this?

There was only one answer to that: No. No way. Negatory. They might freak out and go into lockdown mode or something—and that would wreck my “best summer ever” plans with Ollie: No Sox games, beach time, or exploring Boston. Nope. If this was legit, I was going to deal with it solo.

On the other hand, should I even take her seriously? I mean, who threatens a thirteen-year-old and demands they find stolen “items”?

But was it worth it to take the chance that it was a joke? Sully Cupcakes
was
a real person, and Grumps knew some shady characters…

I was concentrating so hard on the problem, I nearly fell over backward when my phone rang.

“Yeah?” I barked into the phone, struggling to get my act together and not scoping my caller ID.

“Nice manners, Mox.”

Ollie. Thanks to a double-booked babysitter, we’d been best friends since second grade. Through the whole “girls and boys can’t be friends” thing in fifth and sixth grade when we didn’t hang out at all at school, Nini watched Ollie when we got home. We did our homework and watched bad sci-fi movies together, and that was it: He was like my fairly cool, allergy-ridden, younger-by-two-months brother. Our families did a lot of stuff together too—celebrating birthdays and a few holidays and whatnot. That whole “joined at the hip” saying? Yeah. Us.

Besides, I didn’t fit in with the girls in my class—I had no interest in the nail polish and shiny hair crowd, the readers and theater girls couldn’t get their brains around my love for math, and sports weren’t my thing. Whatever. No biggie—I had Ollie.

He didn’t fit in either. His asthma and chubbiness kept him from athletics, which were big at our school. Most of
his guy friends were in his Wilderness Scout troop, but they went to other junior highs. That’s part of the reason he was going to Chestnut College Prep—to hang with his friends and give his big brain more room to grow.

At least I’d have Ollie till the fall. And even though we lived close by and hung out whenever we could, I wasn’t stupid: Things were going to change. And that was
not
cool.

“Sorry,” I said, and let out a whoosh of air, annoyed at my jumpiness.

“Hey—oh.” He stopped. “‘Seasons of Wither’?! Seriously?”

“Huh—? Oh. Yeah,” I said, clueing in to the Aerosmith song filling my room.

“Isn’t that a little
out
of season?”

“Good music is
never
out of season,” I snapped, my tone harsher than I intended…even though he was right. The song was written about Massachusetts winters, and this early summer day was anything but snowy and depressing. “It’s an Aerosmith playlist,” I tried again. “Just what happened to come up.”

“Cool. Hey—did you talk to your mom yet? I want to head over to the Arboretum before it gets dark, and my parents won’t let me go alone.” Earlier that afternoon Ollie’d texted me about hitting the park, but my mom wanted me to have dinner with her and her boyfriend, Putrid Richard. Which was what I was going to ask her if I could skip when I raced downstairs and opened the door to Ms. Redhead.

I hate having dinner with them. Mom spends most of the
meal giggling at his lame jokes and work stories, while I spend most of it skeeving over the food flecks stuck in his mustache. He does something at the national parks office downtown and has to deal with tourists who say and do ridiculous things. Some of the stuff he tells us is pretty funny—like the family from Nebraska who wanted a refund after seeing the USS
Constitution
because they expected the real, paper, Constitution to be there (hint: Our
Constitution
is a boat)—but most of the stories aren’t. Mom doesn’t share many funny work stories. She works as a receptionist for a local funeral home. Seriously.

But lately, Putrid Richard has done a lot of talking about how much he loves New Hampshire, how quiet and beautiful it is, how awesome it is to observe nature up there; and I sensed more changes coming my way. Seriously unacceptable, one state over, changes. Changes that would make Ollie and me going to different schools seem like no big deal.