The Law of Finders Keepers Read online

  KATHY DAWSON BOOKS

  PENGUIN YOUNG READERS GROUP

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, NY 10014

  Text copyright © 2018 by Sheila Turnage

  Maps copyright © 2018 by Eileen LaGreca

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  Ebook ISBN 9781101599747

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Turnage, Sheila, author.

  The law of finders keepers / Sheila Turnage.

  Companion to: Three times lucky, The ghosts of Tupelo Landing, and The odds of getting even.

  Summary: “A rumor that Blackbeard’s buried treasure is somewhere near Tupelo Landing causes pirate fever to sweep through town just as clues about Mo’s Upstream Mother surface and the Desperado Detectives—aka Mo LoBeau and her best friends Dale and Harm—take on the most important case of Mo’s life”—Provided by publisher.

  ISBN 9780803739628 (hardback)

  [1. Mystery and detective stories. 2. Buried treasure—Fiction. 3. Pirates—Fiction. 4. Community life—North Carolina—Fiction. 5. Identity—Fiction. 6. Foundlings—Fiction. 7. North Carolina—Fiction. ]

  BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Mysteries & Detective Stories. | JUVENILE FICTION / Family / Orphans & Foster Homes. | JUVENILE FICTION / Humorous Stories.

  LCC PZ7.T8488 Law 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC

  Jacket art © 2018 by Gilbert Ford

  Version_1

  For Rodney L. Beasley

  and Patsy Baker O’Leary,

  who’ve had Mo’s back from the beginning

  Table of Contents

  MAP

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER ONE: The Odds-and-Ends Drawer

  CHAPTER TWO: A Second Thing Found

  CHAPTER THREE: We Open the Mystery Box

  CHAPTER FOUR: Revenge Plus a Slimeball

  CHAPTER FIVE: A Narrow Escape

  CHAPTER SIX: Beyond Our Wildest Dreams

  CHAPTER SEVEN: Hideous, In Fact

  CHAPTER EIGHT: What We Ain’t Got

  CHAPTER NINE: Beyond the Known World

  CHAPTER TEN: Sweater Day

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: She’s Coming Here?

  CHAPTER TWELVE: We’ve Been Robbed!

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: A 911 Darkroom Situation

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: The Cocoa Fingerprint

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Cover for Me

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Dale’s Secret

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: The Fix-It Yarn, Dinner & a Spy

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: A Tip, a Lead, a Mistake

  CHAPTER NINETEEN: Bombshell

  CHAPTER TWENTY: Help! Somebody Help!

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Dale Has Another Plan

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: Another Robbery!

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: Sunday Shockers

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: A Long Shot Pays Off

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: Murder

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: Only One Way to Find Out

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: The Worst Mistake of My Life So Far

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: Valentine’s Day

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: Good-byes with a Hello

  CHAPTER THIRTY: A Heart Full of Maybes

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: The Unthinkable Happens

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: Thursday: The Comfort of Friends and Enemies

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: Our Treasure Grand Opening

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: Treasures

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: In the Loop

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Chapter One

  The Odds-and-Ends Drawer

  The Desperado Detective Agency’s biggest case ever crept up on tiny Tupelo Landing in the dead of winter, and kicked off on the rarest of days. Unlike most of our borderline famous cases, it started with two things found.

  One thing found by me, Miss Moses LoBeau—ace detective, yellow belt karate student, and a sixth grader in her prime.

  One thing found by a stranger.

  Before all was said and done, it plunged me and my fellow Desperados—my best friends, Dale Earnhardt Johnson III and Harm Crenshaw, the agency’s newest detective—into a blood-thirsty chapter of our town’s history, and an unspoken chapter of Harm’s past. It put our lives in peril, tested our courage, and sent us racing for treasures of the world and treasures of the heart.

  As for me, Mo LoBeau, it bent my rivers and scattered my stars.

  As usual, I didn’t see it coming.

  In fact, I was dead asleep in the wee hours of January 11, when my vintage phone jangled. I clicked on my Elvis in Vegas lamp. “Desperado Detective Agency, Mo LoBeau speaking. Your disaster is our delight. How may we be of service?”

  I squinted at my alarm clock. Five thirty a.m.

  The voice came through scratchy and worried. “Mo? It’s Thes.” Crud. Fellow sixth grader Thessalonian Thompson, a weather freak desperate to take me to a movie.

  I yawned. “No movie.”

  “It’s not that, Mo. I’m over you,” Thes said. “It’s going to SNOW. I’m giving a few special friends a heads-up.”

  SNOW? We haven’t had real snow in Tupelo Landing since third grade!

  “Really?” I said, kicking off my covers. “Is school out? Is this a snow day?”

  “That’s the problem. School’s not out. Miss Retzyl makes that call, and she doesn’t know my forecast because she’s not answering her phone.”

  Our teacher, Priscilla Retzyl—tall, willowy, able to do math in her head—is the most normal person in my shy-of-normal life. I adore her. Secretly she likes me too, but ever since she got Caller ID she’s been slow to pick up sixth graders’ calls.

  “Mo, will you go to her house with me?” Thes asked. “I’m an introvert and you’re not.”

  True.

  The gardenia outside my window shimmied in the moonlight. What in the blue blazes? Dale’s face popped into view, his mama’s flowered scarf pulled tight over his blond hair and knotted beneath his chin. Not a good look. “Mo,” Dale whispered. “Wake up. Thes says it’s going to snow.”

  “I know,” I said, tapping on the glass. “Come to the door.”

  “Which door?” Thes asked.

  “Not you,” I replied into the phone as Dale crashed to the ground. I made an Executive Decision. “Thes, call Harm. Ask him to meet us at Miss Retzyl’s house in twenty minutes for an Ensemble Beg. But you better be right about the snow.”

  I smoothed my T-shirt and karate pants as I strolled the length of my narrow, window-lined flat. I swung the door open and Dale bolted inside with his mongrel dog, Queen Elizabeth II, at his heels. “Hey,” I said. “We got a snow mission. I’ll be ready in three shakes.”

  “Sorry about the gardenia,” he said. “I didn’t want to knock, and wake up . . . anybody.”

  Anybody would be Miss Lana, who wakes up slow. Also the Colonel, who’s moody thanks to an eleven-year brush with amnes
ia. The Colonel and Miss Lana are my family of choice and I am theirs. The Colonel saved me from a hurricane flood the day I was born. Together, we operate the café at the edge of town.

  Dale unzipped his oversized jacket—a castoff from his daddy, who won’t need it for seven to ten years unless he gets time off for good behavior, which he won’t. “Hurry, Mo. I’m sweltering to death,” Dale said. “Mama made me layover.”

  “You mean layer,” I said, sliding my jeans over my karate pants.

  Dale, a co-founder of the Desperado Detective Agency, ain’t a dead-ahead thinker, but he thinks sideways better than anybody I know.

  I pulled on my red sweater and combed my unruly hair. I opened my filing cabinet, shoved aside unanswered Desperado Detective Agency letters, and snagged my orange socks.

  “Get gloves too,” Dale instructed as someone swished across the living room.

  “Morning, Miss Lana,” I called. “Dale and Queen Elizabeth are here. Can I borrow some gloves? It’s going to snow.”

  “Snow? Really?” she said, peeking in. Miss Lana, a former child star of the Charleston community theater and a fan of Old Hollywood, gave me a wide, sleepy smile—the real one, not the one she keeps in her pocket for pain-in-the-neck customers at the café. “I love snow!”

  She leaned against my doorframe, her Gone with the Wind bed jacket over her pink nightgown, her short coppery hair glistening in the lamplight.

  “Hey, Miss Lana,” Dale said, whipping his mama’s flowered scarf off his head. “I hope you slept good. The scarf wasn’t my idea. Mama said wear it or my ears would freeze off.”

  Dale’s a Mama’s Boy from the soles of his red snow boots to his scandalous good hair—a family trait. Because I’m a possible orphan, my family traits remain a mystery.

  I tossed Dale my bomber cap and laced my plaid sneakers.

  “Help yourself to my gloves, sugar,” Miss Lana said. “They’re in my odds-and-ends drawer.” As she stumbled toward the smell of coffee, we raced to her room. I zipped to the curvy white chest of drawers. Her top drawer erupted in elastic and lace.

  “All her drawers are odds-and-ends drawers,” I muttered, opening them one by one and plucking a pair of blue driving gloves from the bottom drawer.

  “Mo!” Miss Lana shrieked from the kitchen. “Don’t open my bottom drawer!”

  “Too late,” I shouted as a note drifted to the floor. For Mo When She’s Ready.

  “Ready for what?” I murmured, uncovering a large white box. I touched a sticky spot where the note used to be as Miss Lana skidded through the door. The Colonel eased in behind her, his bottle-brush gray hair dented on one side, the plaid robe I gave him in first grade cinched at his thin waist.

  “What’s in here?” I asked, hoisting the box. “Can I open it? I feel ready.”

  “No,” Miss Lana said, grabbing it. She looked at the Colonel and gave him a soft nod. He nodded back. “Tonight, sugar. When we have time to talk,” she said, her voice going tinny.

  Weird. Miss Lana’s a theater professional. Her voice never goes tinny.

  “But it has my name on it now.”

  “It’s waited almost twelve years,” the Colonel said. “It can wait until the end of something as rare as a snow day.”

  Our snow day!

  “Come on,” Dale said, pounding for the door.

  We grabbed our bikes and blasted down the blacktop, into tiny Tupelo Landing. But with every pump of my pedals, my curiosity tapped at the lid of that mysterious box.

  What’s in it, in it, in it?

  Chapter Two

  A Second Thing Found

  Dale and me zipped across Miss Retzyl’s yard and thundered up the steps to Harm, who sat on the porch rail, one black loafer flat on the floor, the other on the bottom rail. Lately Harm practices looking good sitting on different things, in case the big-haired twins are watching. At nineteen, the twins ain’t looking his way.

  Harm flipped his scarf over his shoulder and nudged his dark hair from his eyes. “Hey LoBeau,” he said, very cool. “What’s cooking?”

  Dale snickered. “Café humor. Smooth.”

  “Café humor, lame,” I said as Thes’s dad, a preacher, pulled to the curb in his faded old sedan. Reverend Thompson says if Jesus rode a donkey, he’s not driving a new car.

  Thes hurried toward us. “What’s our plan?” he asked as the porch light clicked on.

  “Ad-lib,” I whispered.

  Miss Retzyl opened the door. “Why are you on my porch?” she asked.

  “Because you don’t answer your phone,” I replied, very polite. “Thank you for taking our meeting. I’m glad to see you in warm pajamas on a snow day but just between us, I always thought you’d wear a gown. I yield the floor to Thes.”

  Thes stepped forward. “My forecast today: five inches of snow in Tupelo Landing.”

  Harm leaned close. He smelled like Old Spice. Lately, he pretends to shave, in case girls like that. “Won’t the town’s snowplows handle that?” he whispered.

  Like I said, Harm’s new. The Tupelo Landing learning curve starts at the edge of town. “We don’t have a snowplow because it never snows,” I said. “Sometimes Tinks Williams cleans a lane with his tractor, but only if he wants to go somewhere.”

  I smiled at Miss Retzyl. “After declaring an Official Snow Day, please drop by the café for complimentary snow cream. Detective Starr too, if he ain’t busy with traffic accidents, which he will be. Nobody in Tupelo Landing can drive in snow, but we still try.”

  Miss Retzyl’s boyfriend, Detective Joe Starr, is the Desperados’ main competition. She looked into our first flurry and smiled. “Thanks, Thes. I’ll call the mayor and cancel.”

  “Really?” Harm said. “But it just started. In Greensboro it snowed all the time. We used to . . . Never mind,” he added, shoving his hands in his pockets and grinning—a good look.

  Not that I care.

  “Enjoy your snow day,” she said as winter breathed a curtain of snow across the sunrise. “And Mo, tell Lana I’ll take her up on that snow cream.”

  Like I said, secretly Miss Retzyl likes me.

  * * *

  The sky went silver-blue with snow as we pedaled back to the café—me and Dale on our old bikes; Harm on his sleek silver ten-speed. Thes had gone home to monitor the snow.

  I pushed open the café door and the radiators’ steam wrapped me in a warm hug. So did Miss Lana. She’d dressed for Hollywood Snow—in her long, red velvet dress with white trim, and blond Marilyn Monroe wig. Bing Crosby crooned from the jukebox. Our Christmas lights still twinkled over the windows, and our antique aluminum tree dozed in the corner.

  “Miss Retzyl hopes you’ll make snow cream,” I said, ditching my coat.

  “Got it, sugar,” she said, pointing to the window. Outside, she’d arranged pans along the hood of the Colonel’s Underbird—which used to be a Thunderbird until the T and H fell off.

  “Grab your aprons,” the Colonel said, muscling in with a tray of coffee cups. “The town will be here soon as they find their snow gear.” Harm and Dale snagged aprons. They help out at the café. In return the Colonel keeps them in pocket change and eats.

  “We’ll use a snow theme today,” Miss Lana told me, unrolling a cotton sheet around the cash register. Miss Lana loves themes. Without a theme, she says, life feels pointless and hollow as an old tin can. “Mo, could you get the snowman salt and pepper shakers? Harm, put cinnamon in the steamer, if you don’t mind. Nothing awakens memories like aroma. And Dale, enlighten the Winter Tree, please sir.”

  Dale looked at me. “Plug it in,” I whispered, and he nodded.

  Dale trotted to our aluminum tree—a memento of Miss Lana’s childhood. In a few weeks, we’ll switch out snowflakes for glittery red hearts, for Valentine’s Day. Miss Lana can’t abide an unadorned winter.

  The phone rang
and I scooped it up. “Café. We ain’t open yet.”

  “What time does Miss Thornton come in?” a stranger asked. If his voice went any greasier, I could fry an egg in it.

  “Who is this?” I demanded, and he slammed down the phone.

  “Weird,” I muttered.

  The Colonel tossed a handful of mail on the counter, all of it addressed to the Desperados. We get mail from everywhere, thanks to newspaper stories on our cases and my borderline odd life.

  “I hope all those folks are looking for detectives,” Harm said, eyeing the envelopes. “We could use a paying case.”

  Lately, Harm worries about money. His granddad Mr. Red gave up moonshining when Harm moved in last summer, which means Mr. Red ain’t burying any new jars of money in his woods. Instead he’s digging up his life savings, jar by jar.

  Harm fanned out the letters as Tinks Williams parked his tractor and slouched in with a box of groceries from the Piggly Wiggly. Tinks is Tupelo Landing’s Do-It Man. He delivers things, fixes things, helps out at the café. Nobody notices him much; he’s part of the town.

  “Hey, Tinks,” Harm muttered. “We got leaky pipes and Gramps won’t even call a plumber. He’s using an old dogwood branch to find the leaks. He calls it dowsing, but I call it crazy.”

  “Crazy ain’t crazy if it works,” Tinks said, heading for the kitchen.

  “Choose a letter, LoBeau,” Harm said. I picked one as my archenemy for life, Anna Celeste Simpson, blasted in wearing a ski outfit the color of chlorine gas.

  “Morning, Harm,” she said, practicing her Boy Smile.

  “Harm’s busy,” I told her, and snapped the letter open to scan it. “Here’s a long-lost niece case in Georgia, two states away—outside our Bicycle Radius,” I reported.

  Attila unzipped her jacket. “A lost family member,” she said. “How fitting. Another piece of unclaimed luggage on the baggage carousel which is your life.”

  “Excuse me?” Miss Lana said, rocking to a stop and raising her eyebrows. The Colonel says Miss Lana’s eyebrows should be registered as weapons. They can stop you dead, back you up, or cut you down.