Nanny X (12 page)

Nanny X opened up the diaper bag.

“Boris, children: Choose your weapons,” she said.

Boris grabbed the copy of
Moo, Sweet Cow
. “For old times' sake,” he said.

Nanny X grabbed a jar of beef-and-gravy baby food.

“What do these do?” asked Jake, grabbing a bunch of yellow pacifiers, the ones that were labeled Stinky Binky.

“Stink bombs,” Nanny X explained. Jake handed some to me.

Stinky, of course, was still doing the tango with Francis, so he didn't grab anything, even though the pacifiers sort of had his name on them.

“Now,” said Nanny X, “squeeze and heave.”

I squeezed the bulb of the pacifier, and right away smoke started pouring out. I threw it toward Big Adam. Soon the room smelled like hard-boiled eggs. Really old hard-boiled
eggs. Which was disgusting but made me kind of hungry at the same time.

Jake threw his pacifier, aiming for Stinky and Francis. I hoped Stinky could get at least one hand free so he could hold his nose. But then, he was used to bad smells.

Big Adam's other assistant came charging toward us, and Nanny X turned to face him. “Untie Mr. Strathmore and his friend,” she told us. “I've got this.” She opened the jar of baby food. It looked like ground-up erasers. Then she crouched, the way a tiger crouches—or a special agent—and pulled a small metal spoon from her gardening hat.

“Back off,” she said. “Or else.” The man slowed his advance, but he didn't stop.

Meanwhile, I studied the knot that was holding Mr. Strathmore's wrists. It was actually a series of knots—a square knot on top of a granny knot and then another square knot. But the rope was pulled tight and my fingernails were too short to get in there, from biting them. I pulled a barrette out of my hair and started prying apart the bits of rope.

“Thank you,” he said. “Miss . . .”

“Alison,” I said.

“Thank you, Alison,” said Mr. Strathmore. “I didn't fancy getting sent to an island in the Pacific. I love it in Lovett!”

I closed my eyes so I could focus all of my powers of persuasion right on Mr. Strathmore. Then I opened my eyes, and I opened my mouth up, too. “You won't love it in Lovett for very long if you let people clog up the park with a bunch of factories,” I said.

“You don't understand the complexities,” Mr. Strathmore said. I had worked through the first two knots and was starting on the third. “Not that I support this particular business anymore, but there might be others—”

“Our park doesn't make anybody cough.” I interrupted him, even though I'm not supposed to interrupt. I talked fast. “Don't you think the park's pretty?”

“Of course,” he said.

“Don't you think the kids need a place to play?”

“Well of course I do.”

“Do you know what I think?” I asked as I undid the last knot.

Mr. Strathmore looked me square in the eye, the way grown-ups look at other grown-ups. “What?”

“I think you should give the factories a park of their own and leave Blue Slide Park alone.” I didn't mean for it to rhyme, but it did. I pulled out the bib and the Blazing Binky and showed him, in the purple light, a spot in Lovett where there was an empty lot beside a factory that made potato chips.

“That,” he said, rubbing his chin now that his hands were completely untied, “is a thought.”

“I agree,” said the man beside Mr. Strathmore, who was waking up now, too. He held out his hands so I could untie them next. “You,” he said to me, “should run for a seat on the planning commission.”

Mr. Strathmore was still rubbing his chin when Nanny X scooped up a spoonful of baby food and flicked it at Big Adam's assistant. Somewhere during its flight, the baby food turned into something resembling concrete. Or maybe beef-and-gravy baby food is always that way. It hit Big Adam's assistant in the neck, and he went down.

Which left Francis and Big Adam.

And that's when Boris opened
Moo, Sweet Cow
.

MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
.

That cow was even louder in the airplane hangar.
The chimps covered their ears. Yeti tried to cover his, but couldn't. His yelps filled the air along with the moo.

Eliza covered her ears, and so did Francis. Stinky, apparently, had heard the moo enough times in his life that it didn't bother him anymore. He just held his nose and ran toward us.

I was so busy holding my ears that I didn't notice Eliza crawling away from me. When I looked up she was headed straight for the airplane, which was the most dangerous place to be.

“
Eliza, no!
” I yelled. She stopped.

“Come back here, Eliza.
Eliza!
What are you doing?”

But I knew what she was doing, because it was the same thing she did every time my mother had someone important over: She was taking off her diaper. That's why we try to dress her in as many clothes as possible. But apparently Nanny X hadn't used her investigating skills to figure that out. She had put Eliza in a cute little dress. Now here she was, half-naked in a room full of dangerous criminals.

“Gah!” said Eliza. She held the diaper in front of her like a rubber chicken. Then she threw it. She looked very pleased with herself. Yeti whimpered again.

I ran to my sister and snatched her up, hoping she wouldn't pee on me. Then I ran back across the room, away from the plane, and just in time.

There was a thunderous boom as the other diaper—Nanny X's diaper—exploded.

The plane's window was coated with a white, jelly-like substance, like a weird mixture of ant eggs and Vaseline.

“He won't be going anywhere for a while,” Nanny X said.

But Big Adam didn't seem to know that. He headed for the front of the plane, making his way through the
hard-boiled-egg smoke, covering his ears against the moo, which was getting quieter now.

Then—
shweeeeee
—there was a whizzing sound. Big Adam skidded across the floor, flapping his arms for balance. For a second, it looked like he was trying to fly. But he didn't. Almost as if he was in slow motion, Big Adam started to fall, lower and lower, until he crashed onto the concrete floor of the airplane hangar.

The stink bombs hadn't stopped Big Adam.

Moo, Sweet Cow
hadn't stopped him.

But Eliza's diaper—her real diaper—had.

“Eliza!” I said, squeezing her. “You're a hero!”

The chimps stood up on their coconut pile and clapped some more.

My brother walked over to the one wearing the red bandana and shook his hand. “Thanks, Howard,” he said.

By the time the police arrived, we had tied up Big Adam and his friends. Ali used some of her complicated knots, including one that circled around their legs, so they looked like those people in movies who are tied up on train tracks. I helped with the regular kind. She said she'd teach me some of the fancy ones later, when we got home.

Chief Grummel came in. Stinky stood there giving him looks that were a little mean and a little worried, while Nanny X and Boris showed him the blueprints for a factory that would have made Lovett the Smuggling Capital of the Mid-Atlantic. I don't think the mayor or Mr. Strathmore would have liked that slogan very much. They also showed the chief the diamonds. I'd wanted to open some of the other coconuts to see if we could find even more diamonds, like the ones that had been stolen from Mrs. Bell, but Nanny X didn't want us touching anything, in case of fingerprints. She was sure they'd find more, though.

There was a lot of reading of rights and some blah blah blah about what would happen to the diamonds and whether the mayor should be forced to leave office, but I didn't care about any of that stuff. “What's going to happen to them?” I said. I meant the chimps, who weren't clapping anymore. They were wearing their sad faces, like they'd just found out there really was a banana shortage.

“We'll have to call animal control,” said Chief Grummel. “Looks like they'll need backup.”

Stinky had a different answer. He looked at me and Ali. “We saved the park,” he said. “And you saved me. So now I guess that means it's time to . . .”

“
Save the chimps!
” we all said together.

“Save the chimps,” Stinky agreed. “I'll make a sign: Chimps Are Cool.”

“
Tundra
cool,” I said.

“I'll have a talk with the mayor,” Ali volunteered.

“Why not?” said Nanny X. “I think he owes us one—as long as he's still in office.”

Several phone conversations later, the authorities (that's a TV word, not a reading connection word) promised to send the chimps to the David T. Jones Sanctuary for Wayward Primates. We went with them as far as the police station, where they waited in a cell with a lot of bananas for the sanctuary people to show up.

I was hoping we could keep Howard, especially since Yeti wasn't barking at him anymore and Yeti didn't do that for just anyone. But Nanny X said no.

“They were meant to be wild,” she said. “He'll be happy at the sanctuary. You'll see.”

But our nanny looked sad, too. Howard reached up and grabbed her crazy gardening hat and put it on his own head.

“Eee ee!” he said.

He was still wearing the hat when the sanctuary people came to take him away.

“He can keep it,” Nanny X said. “It looks better on him, anyway.”

Howard looked back at us and waved, and every single one of us waved back, including Chief Grummel but especially me.

“Have fun,” I said. “Don't drink too many coconut smoothies.”

One of the sanctuary people reached for Howard's hand, and he took it. I wiped my eyes, in case of crying. I thought about Howard swinging from the trees. I thought about Howard in a place where nobody was going to call him a hair ball anymore. And all of a sudden I stopped being sad, and it wasn't just because I thought he'd have a good time at the David T. Jones Sanctuary for Wayward Primates; it was because somehow I knew I would see that chimp again someday.

After my brother cried like crazy over those chimps, and after the sanctuary people drove off in their van, Nanny X said we had to be going, too.

Mr. Strathmore stopped us on the way out.

“I want you to know,” he said in his very businesslike voice, “I've taken your ideas into account, and I'm going to talk to the mayor about canceling tonight's zoning hearing. There's no need to hurry, now that Big Adam's business plan is off the table, and I think we have a lot more to think about. I also think we need to leave Blue Slide Park as it is.”

We cheered, and Mr. Strathmore cleared his throat and went on.

“Also, I think creating a park for industry is a wonderful idea. It will allow us to keep moving forward, while keeping the things we love about our town the same. After all—we love it in Lovett!”