“The garbage. Can you believe it? Our neighbor, Mrs. Asako, works at The Store, and I guess she took this home when the last book came out. She must’ve got tired of it, because it was in her garbage this morning, and I snagged it before anyone else could.”
“Awesome,” James said, grinning.
“What I was thinking was that we could check out other people’s garbage cans. We might find some good stuff.”
“Especially in alleys, like the one behind our house. People dump a lot of things there!”
“Yeah. And even if we don’t find anything today, we might next week. Or the week after that.”
“I bet we can fill up our whole headquarters within a month!”
Actually, James had to admit, they’d gotten a lot done over the past few days. Robbie and his brother didn’t have to go to camp this week, since their mother had taken vacation days off from work, and James and Robbie had been able to work on their headquarters. The first day had basically been spent cleaning up, and yesterday they’d started to plan out what they were going to do and where things were going to go. With his dad’s help, they’d moved the bookcase to the right of the window and the two folding chairs against the opposite wall (in case they ever found a desk to go with it). He and Robbie had tried to rig up a secret entrance, connecting twine to the trapdoor at the top of the ladder and threading it back through a hole so they could pull the twine and the door would open, but it didn’t work.
The most interesting thing that had happened was that they’d found the skeleton of a puppy in a small box in the corner of the loft. Robbie said that it was most likely a family pet, that someone had probably intended to bury it and forgotten to do so. But the box didn’t look like a coffin, and James thought that someone had bought the skeleton and intended to display it. Either way, it was cool, and they did display it, setting it up on the top of the bookcase.
“We should have cards made up,” Robbie said. “Business cards.”
James nodded. He’d read the Brains Benton book Robbie let him borrow, and he liked the idea of the two of them starting their own detective agency. It seemed possible. It seemed like something they could do. “My dad’ll let us use his computer.”
“I still like the R.J. Detective Agency.”
“We’ll see.”
They’d been trying to come up with a name for themselves, but so far had not been able to reach an agreement. Robbie wanted to call their organization the R.J. Detective Agency, the R standing for Robbie, the J for James. James preferred the FBI, the letters standing for Freelance Boy Investigators, although that was something they would never reveal to outsiders. “Besides,” he’d argued, “we’d get real cases that way, because people would think they were calling the actual FBI.”
It was going to be difficult to find a name they both agreed on.
James’s dad would be picking them up in less than an hour, so they used the time to comb the street, looking for castoff furniture or decorations that they could use in their headquarters. The only thing they found was a metal wine rack, and while they didn’t really have a use for it, the object was too good to pass up, and they took it anyway. They’d figure out something to do with it later.
They were a lot luckier in the alley behind James’s house. After taking the traffic cone, the Wimpy Kid cutout and the wine rack up to their headquarters, they cut through the backyard and went out to the alley, where, halfway down the block, they discovered an old exercise bike. It was standing in front of a fence, beside a trash can, with a piece of paper taped to its handlebars on which someone had written the word Free.
“Awesome!” James said, grabbing the handlebars and pulling the bike out farther into the alley so they could get a better look at it.
“There’s no chain,” Robbie pointed out.
“Big whoop.” James sat on the seat, held the handlebars and pedaled. “It still works without it.”
“And we could always get one.”
James swung off the bike. “This would be perfect for when we’re brainstorming. We could take turns riding the bike and thinking when we’re working on a case. It’ll help us relax and clear our minds.”
“But how’ll we get it up there?”
“My dad’ll help us.”
“Yeah, we need to talk about that,” Robbie said.
“Talk about what?”
“I think we need some sort of security.”
“Against my dad?”
“Not him specifically. Everyone. Don’t you think we should get some sort of lock or something so that no one else but us can get in the headquarters?”
James nodded slowly. “Like my sister.”
“Exactly.”
“It’s a good idea. But we’ll do it after we get the place set up. We still need my dad to help us carry stuff, and we don’t want him to know how to get in. We’ll do it after we’re all done.”
“Okay,” Robbie agreed.
They carried the bike back to James’s house, hauling it through the gate and into the backyard, leaving it near the side of the garage while they went back out to search some more. There was nothing else in the alley, but at the end of the block, they turned and walked down the next street, glancing into open trash containers, looking for pieces of furniture set next to the curb. They were rewarded with a torn footstool that they found in front of a tan duplex. “I found it,” James announced. “You carry it.”
Robbie agreed with the logic and, holding the stool by one of its stubby legs, lugged it up the street while they continued to look.
Moments later, a garbage truck rounded the next corner with a loud rumble and started toward them. They were both getting tired anyway, so they decided to head back, but when James turned around, he saw a group of older kids skateboarding up the street. His heart lurched in his chest, and his first instinct was to run, but it became apparent almost immediately that these weren’t the kids from his old neighborhood. Still, he stepped onto the grass of a nearby house and waited until they passed by.
Back home, he convinced his dad to take a break, and he and Robbie went upstairs in the garage and guided the exercise bike through the trapdoor while his dad pushed from below. After kicking his dad out, they began rearranging things, even finding a spot for the wine rack, which Robbie said they could fill with Coke bottles or cans. The place was gradually starting to come together, and James thought it was looking pretty good.
They still needed to figure out a way to make their entrance secret, and he let Robbie stay in the headquarters and think about it while he went into the house to snag some Pringles for them to snack on. He grabbed a couple of Capri Suns as well, and returned to find his friend bent down in front of an opening in the far wall. He had apparently pulled off a board to reveal the space behind it, and James put the drinks and snacks down on top of the bookcase, walking over. “What are you doing?”
Robbie looked up, startled. “I didn’t hear you come up.”
“What are you doing?” James repeated.
“There’s a secret compartment back here.” He motioned behind him. “I tripped over that nail sticking out of the floor, and I almost fell and my foot hit the wall, and this board came loose.”
James crouched down next to his friend. “What’s in it?”
“Nothing. I was hoping for treasure or a map or something, but …” He moved aside to let James look. “See for yourself.”
James peered into the space and at first saw nothing but a small rectangular area approximately the size of a shoe box. Then he noticed that, in the center of the space, there was a low pile of dirt. It was roughly the size and shape of an anthill, but something about the smoothness of its sides made it seem deliberately constructed. It reminded James of a sculpture he’d seen an artist working on at an arts-and-crafts fair last year. The artist had used a knife to pare down and smooth out the sides of a mound of clay, and it had looked quite a bit like this.