Squishy Taylor and the Mess-Makers (4 page)

Somehow, by the end of school, Jessie and Vee have decided they’re coming too. Jessie is still
saying
it’s a terrible idea, but she secretly
can’t resist
an adventure.

We decide school uniforms would be a dead giveaway, so we go home to get changed first. Baby is howling and arching out of Dad’s arms. Dad’s trying to get him into the sling, but Baby kicks his legs out of the holes faster than Dad can get them in.

‘Can we go to the park?’ I ask, pulling on Baby’s toes. The park is half a block away and there are no roads, so mostly they let us if we ask.

Baby stops howling and reaches his fat little arms out to me. He snuggles his face into my neck. It’s
soft
and
tickly
and it makes me laugh. Baby giggles too. He’s super cute.

‘We’ll take Baby,’ Jessie says and I meet her eyes.

Brilliant. Grown-ups are
way
more likely to treat you with respect if you’re carrying a Baby.

Dad helps me strap Baby into the sling on my front. He tightens all the clips. Baby is pretty heavy, but he’s still
gurgle-laughing
and I like cuddling him.

With Baby strapped on my front, we walk straight through the front doors of the hotel. The Fancy Men don’t even blink at us. I pause in the foyer, feeling a bit nervous. It’s so much nicer than the foyer of our building. The lights are soft and there are mirrors sparkling everywhere.

Jessie strides to the lift and smiles at the woman waiting beside it. Vee and I follow and the woman makes a
cooing
noise at Baby. We let her swipe her card and press the buttons. She gets out on the second floor, so we do too. It’s quiet and carpeted with no windows. Next to me, there’s a trolley with lots of folded towels and soap and plastic-wrapped biscuits.

‘Now what?’ Vee whispers.

We stand there as the woman disappears through a door partway down the corridor. We stare at each other. How are we going to find Carmeline Clancy in this building? It’s enormous.

‘Should we start knocking on all the doors?’ I ask.

‘I
told
you it was impossible,’ Jessie says.

Vee starts to giggle. ‘Maybe we should shout her name really loud,’ she suggests.

‘Or go back down and mug the Fancy Men for their security cards,’ I say.

All three of us crack up with laughter. We stand there in the corridor, clutching each other’s arms. Baby gurgles and squeals like he understands the joke.

The lift
dings
behind us. We all spin to see Carmeline Clancy’s scary Nanny step out of the lift.

She stares at us.

I glance sideways at Jessie and Vee. They both look really guilty.

‘What’s going on here?’ the Nanny asks. She folds her arms and frowns at us.

Carmeline Clancy steps out of the lift behind her.

‘We came to meet Carmeline,’ I say, trying to sound
brave
, but my voice sounds wavery.

‘Oh, no you did not,’ says the Nanny.

‘Hey there,’ Carmeline says. ‘How’s it going?’ She reaches out to Jessie, who’s the closest, and shakes her hand.

She sounds so nice, and so much like she does on YouTube, that I want to just tell her how much I like her. But the Nanny doesn’t even let me breathe in.

‘Don’t you kids even
talk
to her. I’m sending this lift down and I’m calling security to meet you at the ground floor.’

I’m so nervous that I squeeze Baby so hard he starts crying. I try to bounce him quiet, but he just gets louder.

‘But –’ Carmeline Clancy begins.

The Nanny shuts her down. ‘But nothing, miss. We are not having strangers breaking into the hotel on top of everything else.’

Carmeline looks
sparklingly angry
, which is exactly how I feel. But Baby is howling right next to my head and I can’t think. In the middle of everything, I hear a dog barking down the corridor – but the Nanny is basically
bulldozing
us into the lift.

We tumble into the foyer and two Fancy Men take our elbows and lead us out.

‘You kids aren’t allowed to play in here, you understand,’ one of them says. He doesn’t sound mean, but he’s talking like I’m in kinder. I wonder how long it will be before grown-ups stop baby-talking me.

As we walk back to our own building, Baby finally calms down.

‘Well,’ Jessie says. ‘You just met Carmeline Clancy.’

We reach our building and press for the lift. Vee looks at Baby, strapped to my chest. ‘Hey, what’s Baby got?’

I look down. He’s waving a plastic-wrapped biscuit. He must have grabbed it off the trolley.

‘
Our Baby’s a thief
,’ Jessie says.

We all burst out laughing.

‘Look out, Baby, that scary Nanny is gonna get you,’ Vee says between
snorts
.

‘Did anyone else hear a dog barking?’ I say.

‘No,’ Vee says, laughing harder.

‘You know, Carmeline actually seemed really nice,’ Jessie says, getting serious again.

‘Well,
yeah
,’ I say.
We
already knew she was nice.

‘We probably need to get to the bottom of this mess thing,’ Jessie says as the lift opens into our corridor.

Vee lets out a great whooping cheer. ‘What was that for?’ I ask.

‘Jessie just signed up.’

‘Signed up to what?’ Jessie asks.

‘To the
Carmeline-Clancy-is-Innocent Mission
,’ Vee says.

The house smells like frying garlic and Dad is standing by the stove. I unstrap Baby and sit him on the tiles by Dad’s trouser cuffs. We all collapse on the couch and talk quietly together so Dad can’t hear.

‘If it’s not Carmeline Clancy, someone’s
framing
her,’ Jessie whispers. ‘Otherwise why would they let her take the blame?’

‘Exactly,’ I say and Vee nods.

‘There’s lots of people who could be framing her,’ says Jessie. ‘Let’s make a list.’ She loves making lists. She gets out a neat little notebook and writes:

• Hotel cleaners

• A jealous rock-climber who wants to be the movie star

• The Fancy Men

• Other hotel guests

‘The Nanny,’ I say.

‘Squishy, she’s looking after Carmeline. It can’t be her,’ Vee says.

‘But she’s got the best opportunity,’ I argue.

Jessie writes:
The Nanny

‘OK, what about motive?’ Jessie asks. ‘What would the suspects get out of framing her?’

‘Um, the hotel gets its picture on the news?’ Vee suggests.

‘The Nanny’s job gets more interesting,’ I say.

Trying to figure this out on a piece of paper feels too hard. I just want to
do
something. I start doing
swoopkicks
over the top of the couch and landing on the floor behind it. Vee laughs and does a torpedo roll over to land on top of me.

‘Oof!’ I say and we both laugh.

‘Guys,’ Jessie says. ‘We need to take this seriously!’

Vee’s squashing my lungs so I can’t talk properly, but I say, ‘You know how … we take this … seriously?’

‘How?’ they chorus.

I heave Vee off my back. ‘We signal Boring Lady and tell her.’

The others stare at me, a bit disappointed.

‘I know,’ I say, feeling noble. ‘It would be more fun to solve it ourselves. But this isn’t just fun. What about Carmeline Clancy? Somebody is ruining her life.’

They agree, a bit reluctantly.

Jessie digs out the signalling scarf Boring Lady gave us. It’s tucked into a square under Jessie’s rows of folded socks. She shakes it out. It’s
enormous
and
red
. Vee clambers up onto the desk. She can’t reach the curtain rail, so I stand

next to the desk and she puts one foot on my shoulder and holds onto the wall.

‘Oh, careful of the telescope.
Careful!
’ Jessie says. The telescope is exactly where Vee would land if she fell.

Vee dangles the scarf over the curtain rail. It slips off. She tries again. It slips again.

Jessie goes to get bulldog clips.

‘They’re for my sheet music,’ she says, passing them up to Vee. ‘I’ll need them back.’

Vee clips the scarf to our curtains so it hangs almost over our whole window. The light in our bedroom turns a dark red, like sunset.