My dad glanced down at my phone, then threw Toby a sympathetic look in the rearview mirror. “Well, I think that’s very clever,” he said to her, and Toby smiled as she took my phone back from me. “Maybe you should have tried harder,” he said to me in an undertone.
I fought back a smile as I looked down at the list. “Well, if we win this, she’s in the clear again,” I said. I glanced into the backseat. “Tobes, how are we on time?”
“Hour and a half. We’re going to need to move.”
“On it,” my dad said, grinning as he sped up. We screeched to a stop in front of the diner five minutes later, and I turned to Toby.
“Ready?” I asked, and Toby yelled, “Break!” and bolted from the car, not waiting for me to follow.
“Be right back,” I said to my dad as I unbuckled my seat belt.
“I’ll keep the car running.”
I ran full-out toward the diner, taking the steps two at a time. Most of the other items on the list could be acquired at a variety of places—or at least more than one—but for Diner Menu, I was pretty sure Palmer meant one of the actual, fake-leather-bound menus, not the paper ones for to-go orders. We’d also discussed that this might be our best chance to pick up a Blue Gum Ball from the candy machines in the waiting area. As I pulled the door open, I saw Toby was already feeding coins into the candy machine and cranking the knob. “Just check the dates,” I reminded her as I continued in to the restaurant. “Anything before 1980, don’t waste on the gum ball!” Toby gave me a withering I know look, but I noticed that she started checking her coins.
I approached the hostess stand, which was deserted as usual, even though the restaurant was pretty full, mostly of families crammed into the booths. I glanced under the hostess stand, where I’d seen extra stacks of menus in the past. But was I actually going to be able to just steal one? This immediately became a mute point, though, since the podium was empty. I looked around the restaurant, and spotted Carly sitting at the nearly-empty counter, with a stack of menus and a bottle of Windex in front of her.
I headed straight over, grateful that she was working and not one of the waitresses who hated us. I knew we would have had no luck at all with them.
“Hi there!” I said in my friendliest voice, as Carly looked up from where she was cleaning the menus—Windexing and then wiping off with a towel.
“It’s self-seating right now,” she said, giving the appetizer page a wipe-down. “Anything that’s open.”
“No, it’s not that,” I said, taking a breath. I needed to be charming and ingratiating, or we didn’t have a chance. I realized that I hadn’t had to do this in a while, since I hadn’t had to go to any fund-raisers or meet with potential donors. It was like trying to flex a muscle I hadn’t used in a long time. “I was just wondering if possibly we could just borrow one of these menus for an hour or two? We’ll bring it right back. And you can even give me one of the ones you haven’t gotten to yet, and I can clean it for you!” I smiled brightly at Carly, who just looked at me and gave the menu another spray.
“This about the scavenger hunt?” she asked, nodding before I’d had a chance to answer. “They already beat you in here. Clark and . . .” Carly frowned, and there was a long pause—a much longer pause than was normally needed to come up with someone’s name. “Phil?” she finally asked, sounding very unsure of her answer.
I tried to keep my face steady, and resolved not to tell Tom that Carly thought his name was Phil. It would probably just add insult to injury that she knew Clark’s name, even though he’d been going there for six weeks, but not Tom’s, who’d been going there for three years. “Right,” I said, nodding. “Guess they beat us here. But . . . do you think we could have one too?”
“Sorry,” Carly said, snapping a menu shut and adding it to the stack. “I made a promise.”
“But . . .” It wasn’t like the diner, as far as I knew, had a one-menu-per–scavenger hunt policy. If she could give Clark and Tom one, why not one to us?
“Also, they gave me forty bucks not to give you one,” Carly said, raising an eyebrow at me. “So no can do.”
I silently cursed Tom, since I was pretty sure this had been his idea—learned, no doubt, from Palmer’s sister Ivy, who had won numerous Alden family scavenger hunts with only one item, having spent the whole scavenging time shutting down other people’s chances. I took a breath to try and persuade Carly, but she’d just spun her stool so that her back was to me. Clearly, I wasn’t going to get anywhere with her—not unless I could somehow find eighty dollars to bribe her with.
I walked out to the candy machines, where Toby was fuming. “No luck?” She just pointed down, where I could see her purse was half-filled with gum balls—none of them blue.
“I’ve gotten like eight yellows and four reds,” Toby said as she checked the date on her quarter and dropped it in the slot. “Usually all you can get are these stupid blue gum balls!”
“Well, maybe Tom and Clark got to all of them first too,” I said, shaking my head. Toby opened up the little metal flap and pulled out a green gum ball, then frowned at me.
“What do you mean?” she asked, throwing the green one into her purse. “Where’s the menu?”
“The guys gave Carly forty dollars not to give us one.”
“What!” Toby straightened up to face me. “That’s just unfair. Your stupid boyfriend with his stupid dragon money!”
The outside door swung open and my dad stepped in, looking between me and Toby. “You ladies doing okay?” he asked, glancing down at his watch. “Because we should probably get going.”
“Clark’s bribing people not to give us menus,” Toby said, looking at me like this was somehow my fault.
“We don’t know that,” I said. “Let’s not cast aspersions. It could have been Tom. Or, as Carly calls him, Phil.”
“And none of these are blue,” Toby said, picking up her purse, which made a clicking sound. She sighed. “Let’s just move on. They won this round.”
My dad glanced into the diner and frowned. I saw a look in his eye, one I recognized. I knew my dad really did care about helping people and making a difference. But he was also great at campaigning. And this was the look he had when he was behind in a debate, when pundits were calling the election, and not in his favor, when all seemed lost. It was how he looked just before he started to fight back. “Not so fast,” he said as he started to walk into the restaurant.
Toby blinked at my dad, then looked at me. “What does that mean?”
I didn’t answer her, just watched my dad stride up to Carly, his important-person walk still making people in the restaurant look up and take notice. “Hello,” I could hear him saying, his voice carrying across to me easily. He held out his hand for a handshake, and I noticed Carly take it, suddenly sitting up a little straighter. “I’m Representative Alexander Walker. I was hoping to talk to you about a time-sensitive matter.”
I looked back at Toby. “It means we’re getting a menu.”
Five minutes later, we were all running out to the car together, my dad clutching two leather-bound menus with a smile on his face. “How did you do that?” I asked as we ran, the contents of Toby’s bag clinking as she walked.
My dad beeped open the car and we all got in, nobody wasting any time. “I just told her,” he said as he started the car and screeched out of his parking spot, “that I was thinking about hosting a campaign fund-raiser there and wanted to see what kind of options they had available.”
“And she believed you?” I asked.
My dad nodded to the menus he’d dropped on the dashboard. “Enough to give me those,” he said. “I just need to return them tomorrow. Along with a signed picture for their wall.”