The Case of the Ruby Slippers (10 page)

I squinched my eyes shut and shook my head. My poor brain was aching! Maybe food would help. Mixed with enough mayonnaise, shrimp is okay. I took a big bite for strength but had barely swallowed when a noise in the hall made Granny arch her eyebrows.

“Uh-oh,” Tessa said.

Sure enough, it was the unmistakable sound of galloping doggy toenails, and a second later, Ozzabelle whooshed into the room and skittered under the table then—
bing! bing! bing!
—ricocheted among our feet. Something was in her mouth, as usual. This something was white and purple, but that's all I saw because right behind Ozzabelle came Hooligan, and right behind Hooligan came Mr. Ng, who is in charge of Hooligan on weekends.

“Hooligan! Bad dog!” cried Mr. Ng, which is not true at all. Hooligan just has too much energy and sometimes he gets mixed up. Like now he wasn't understanding
that he's a size XXL while Ozzy's more of a size small-petite. I mean all Hooligan wanted was to romp under the table with his friend. Is that so bad?

But—
crash!
—he slammed into the table edge, and—
crash!
—Mr. Ng slammed into him, and—
crash! splash!
—a plate of shrimp salad and a pitcher of milk dropped to the floor.

Naturally, it was my shrimp salad.

By now everybody except Granny was on their feet trying to avoid spillage and breakage. Ozzabelle, meanwhile, had squirted out and escaped through the doorway to the kitchen. Without breaking stride, Hooligan snarfed up the salad then followed her, with Mr. Ng right behind.

So seconds after it started, the excitement was over, and the room was silent, and—except for flipped-over chairs and scattered food and my lunch being gone—you'd never have known anything bad happened.

Like I said, word travels fast in the White House, so right away a housekeeper appeared to tidy up the mess. Meanwhile, we all bent down to pick up our napkins.

Only what I picked up wasn't a napkin. At first I didn't know what it was, and I held it up to see, and. . .

. . . 
oh my gosh
. . .

It was a pair of boxer shorts!

White boxer shorts with purple palm trees.

Icky-y-y!

I balled them up and tossed them, hoping no one else had seen, but good luck with
that
, Cammie. Everyone had totally seen! And of course they were busting up laughing, even Granny.

The ball o' boxers dropped into the lap of Mr. Will, who looked as surprised and horrified as me. “I don't want 'em!” he cried, and lobbed them back.

“But they're
yours!
” I threw them again—a little harder this time—but Mr. Will blocked my shot, and the balled-up boxers caromed onto Courtney's plate.

“
Ewww!”
She tried to shoot them back to our side of the table, but her aim was bad, and Nate ended up with them, then Tessa, then Paul Song, and pretty soon we were playing hot potato at the lunch table with a pair of Hawaiian-print boxer shorts.

I only hoped they were clean.

“Oh, for goodness sake,” said Granny at last and, in one graceful motion, she plucked them out of the air and handed them off to a housekeeper—who, holding them at arm's length, took them away.

Mr. Will sniffed. “I never saw that underwear in my life.”

I started to argue: “But when Mrs. Hedges and I were in your room—” Then Granny gave me one of her looks, and I stopped.

Paul Song was grinning. “Wow—is lunch in the White House always this much fun? I was afraid I'd have to be polite and talk about current events.”

Courtney, suddenly the expert on lunch at the White House, turned to answer him. I think she might even have batted her eyelashes. Meanwhile, Nate said, “Tessa? There's something we need to discuss. Come on.”

Tessa didn't move. “Huh?”

Oh yeah! Before everything got hectic, Tessa had
been about to tell Paul Song we thought he was the one planning to buy a pair of stolen ruby slippers.

I stood up, too. “May we be excused, Granny?”

Tessa waved her arms the way she does. “I don't get it! I haven't finished my milk. What's—”

Granny pushed her chair back from the table. She didn't know what Nate and I were up to exactly, but she could see it was important. “Run along, Tessa,” she said. “I'm sure Paul has his rehearsal to return to as well.”

“Not till one thirty,” Paul said.

“I'm not busy,” Courtney said.

“I thought you had to call your dad's friend,” I said.

“That can wait,” Courtney said.

“Splendid,” Granny said. “Courtney knows her way around the White House, don't you, dear? Perhaps you could show Paul the solarium.”

Oh,
fine
. Assuming Paul Song wasn't a bad guy, he was a heartthrob, and now he was going to spend his quality time with
Courtney
, who, by the way, looked perfect while I had a big fat lavender lip.

Also I was really hungry.

But there was no time to worry about it. Together, Nate and I practically yanked Tessa away from the table and into the hallway. “Where are we going?” she asked. “Is it Paul Song who's buying the slippers? Is he buying them from Mr. Will? Would somebody please explain—?”

Nate ignored her. “Let's go out on the balcony. Nobody will bother us there.”

The Truman Balcony looks out over the South Lawn, and beyond that the Washington monument and the Lincoln Memorial. We sat down on the porch swing, and I told Tessa and Nate about the lady on the museum's security video, how Mr. Will was working for the museum and that there were transmitter chips in the slippers.

“What kind of signal?” Nate wanted to know.

“RF,” I said all casual, like I'd been saying RF all my life.

Nate nodded. “It's easy to block an RF signal, you know. Even sunscreen'll do it.”

“Well,
duh
,” I said.

Nate gave me a look.

“Okay, not duh. What are you talking about?”

“Zinc oxide sunscreen—the kind lifeguards use. The flecks of zinc reflect the radio waves back on themselves.
So if the thief wanted to interfere with the signal, he could just dab a little sunscreen on the RF chips.”

“But that would mean the thief had to know about the chips,” I said, “and only the Smithsonian people do.”

Tessa had another question. “Who was the lady in the video?”

For a second, I stared at my sister. Was it possible I forgot to ask Dr. Zapato that basic question? “Uh. . . .” I stalled. “She had an
A
on her necklace.”

Tessa waved her arms. “I knew I never should have gone to ballet!”

Nate said, “Settle down, Tessa. The museum staff might not even have known who she was. And the necklace could be a clue. Do we have any suspects whose names start with
A
?”

“What about Antonia Alfredo-Chin?” I said.

“Since when is she a suspect?” Tessa asked.

“She was one of the late additions to the guest list,” I said.

Just then, the door opened behind us. It was Malik. “Sorry to disturb you guys, but is Miss Lozana out here? One of the, uh . . . White House photographers sent me to find her.”

“You mean the
pretty
one?” Tessa asked. “The one you like?”

Nate said, “I think Courtney's in the solarium.”

Malik said thank you and, before Tessa could say anything else embarrassing, closed the door.

“That's interesting,” Nate said. “It looks like Malik's
friend is also the friend of Mr. Lozana who's sending him a package today.”

Tessa's eyes got big. “Hey, that reminds me. She was one of the people who saw Mrs. Silver put the slippers in her office safe. Remember, Cammie?”

I did, and that triggered another memory—the photograph of the empty white shoe box that Evgenia and I had seen on Mr. Lozana's blog. The pretty photographer must have taken that picture . . . and sent it to Mr. Lozana. Mr. Lozana's always saying mean things about my mom in his blog. Could it be he and the photographer are out to embarrass the president? Like by stealing the ruby slippers from the White House?

I said that thought out loud, and Nate nodded. “Maybe the photographer stole the slippers out of the safe for Mr. Lozana,” he said. “I mean, remember at school how he knew so much about them?”

“But that can't be right,” I said. “Since when do photographers know about breaking into safes?”

“Just because you can't do something, Cammie, doesn't mean other people can't do it, too,” said Tessa.

I shook my head. Huh?

But Nate backed her up. “If she is the thief, then we've been totally wrong. The slippers weren't stolen for money at all. They were stolen for politics—to make Aunt Marilee look bad.”

I didn't like this idea one bit. Courtney might be annoying sometimes (like now), but I didn't want her dad to be a thief. And I didn't want Malik's new friend to be one either.

So, thinking and talking at the same time, I came up with a new theory. “That leaves out the lady in the security video,” I said. “What if she's the buyer? Uh . . . , and let's say the
A
on her necklace
is
for Antonia, like Antonia Alfredo-Chin. Her family's practically in charge of a certain nearby nation. They must have lots of money.”

“Okay, great,” said Tessa. “We've solved the mystery! Antonia Alfredo-Chin is coming to the party to buy the slippers from the pretty photographer.”

“No, no, no,” I said. “From somebody else.”

“But who?” Tessa asked.

“I don't know yet,” I said.

“Alternatively,” said Nate, “it's just possible there's a red pair of slippers in the package Courtney's taking to her dad.”

Recipe for an afternoon headache: 1) You fall on your face; 2) Your dog eats your lunch; 3) Your best friend/worst enemy gets left alone with your rock-star crush; and 4) Your brain is presented with multiple different and contradictory solutions to a mystery.

Oh, and did I mention we were running out of time? The transmitter chips' batteries weren't going to last much longer. Unless the tech guys at the museum figured out how to amplify the RF signal soon, we might never find those ruby slippers.

“First things first,” said Nate. “We have to get a look at that package.”

Tessa consulted her Barbie watch. “I can't exactly get ready for a party in five minutes, you know.”

“So
I'll
go get a look at the package, and you guys can get dressed and fix your hair and junk,” said Nate.

Tessa crossed her arms over her chest. “No way. I mean, look what happened when we let Cammie
interview Dr. Zapato by herself. From now on, we stick together.”

I already said how one weird thing about being the daughter of the president of the United States is that you can't walk places in public. Well, here's another one. Anytime you are going to something special you have to wear clothes picked out for you by a grown-up. Usually it's Aunt Jen, but today it was Mrs. Silver, and she doesn't know what we like. I had a pink dress with white flowers, and Tessa's outfit was blue leggings and a skirt and top with blue and yellow stripes.

I pulled my dress over my head, then picked up my capris so I could put them in the hamper. What was that lump in the pocket? Oh, right, Ozzabelle's latest present, the blue glove. I pulled it out.

Tessa was next to me, folding her T-shirt to put it away. “Where did that come from?” she asked.

I told her.

“Well,
that's
weird. Is Mr. Will supposed to be some kind of dentist besides a security expert?”

“How do we even know it's Mr. Will's?” I asked.

“That's where Ozzabelle gets all the stuff she brings us—
duh
, Cammie. I hope Aunt Jen knows he's a total slob.”

I thought back to how messy his room had been and agreed. “But what I don't get is why Mr. Will lied about his own underwear,” I said.