While Mrs. Moran soothed the kids with more milk, she told Jaime that Cricket had been out riding her tricycle with Karl as usual when she stopped to talk to the security guard. She parked the tricycle by the wall, with Karl still in the basket. When Cricket turned around, Karl was gone. He wasn’t anywhere in the building. The local police thought that maybe Karl had simply escaped out the front door or the back, but that wasn’t like him at all. He was too attached to Cricket. Plus there were always crowds of people passing through the lobby during the day, Mrs. Moran said, so anyone could have taken him.

“I heard him,” said Cricket.

“What, darling?” her mom said.

“I heard Karl. He said my name.”

“Honey, Karl can’t—”

“HE DID. HE SAID MY NAME.” Cricket swiped angry tears from her cheeks. “What if they don’t have Cheez Doodles where he is? What will he eat? Where will he sleep?”

“Detective Biedermann is working really hard, Cricket. And so am I,” said Jaime.

Cricket frowned. “What are you doing?”

Jaime thought about what the twins’ aunt Esther had said about him. “I’m doing everything I possibly can, Cricket. And so are Tess and Theo.”

“I want to help, too,” said Cricket.

“You are,” Jaime said. “You already have. By telling Detective Biedermann what happened yesterday, and by telling me again today.”

Cricket got a sulky look on her face. “That’s not helping. You should make me a sheriff.”

“A Small Sheriff,” said Otto, his mouth smeared with brownie.

“Anything else you remember about yesterday?” Jaime asked. “Were there any unusual people in the lobby?”

“Everyone’s unusual here. They wear weird shorts.”

“Okay, anyone you haven’t seen around before. Anyone who seemed to be paying a little too much attention to you or to Karl?”

Cricket thought about this. “There was one lady.”

“What lady?” said Mrs. Moran.

Cricket played with the brownie crumbs on her plate, arranging them in a circle. “She wore a red dress.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Karl

If you had asked Karl, and if Karl had been able to answer, he would have told you that he had been lounging in Cricket’s basket, enjoying another Cheez Doodle, when someone had unceremoniously thrown a bag over his head, scooped him up, and carried him off without so much as a “please” or “excuse me” or “my deepest apologies for this rude behavior.” As he bumped along in the dark, he chittered and chattered, doing his best to shape Cricket’s name with his rigid palate, but to no avail. He heard street noises—cars and Rollers and voices—and smelled the river. For one terrible moment he thought this desperado, whoever it was, was planning to toss him into the water. Instead, Karl was stuffed into a cage in the back of a van.