The four children turned all at once. Paulie had just appeared behind them, red-faced and panting, carrying a wooden spoon the size of a shovel. In between short gasps of breath, he continued bellowing.
“CRIMINALS—TERRORIZING MY STAFF—FALSE INFORMATION—OUGHT TO BE—THROWN IN THE CLINKER—”
“Let us explain,” Sam said, but Paulie paid him no attention. He rounded on the waiter, who was still cowering on the street and making himself as small as possible.
“And YOU!” Paulie roared, pointing his spoon at the waiter’s head as though he meant to begin beating him with it. “IDIOT! COURAGE OF A COCKROACH! BRAINS OF A BEETLE!”
“I’m sorry!” the waiter cried out. “I got scared. It was the poison that did it, Mr. Paulie, sir. When I heard their uncle got bumped off on the day I put out the p-poison for the rats . . .”
Paulie had at last regained his breath. Now he turned back to the four children. Pippa had to draw back as the spoon came dangerously close to her nose.
“Oh, no you don’t,” he said, leaning in close with his foul breath. “I see what you hooligans are playing at. Trying to pin this one on me and my restaurant. You’ll have me ruined. Ruined!”
“We ain’t trying to pin nothing on nobody,” Max said.
“Or anything on anybody,” Pippa corrected her.
“The fact is,” Sam said, “the police have the wrong guy. They need to know—”
“They don’t need to know a noodle! And they won’t, either.” Now Paulie spun back around to face the waiter, who had finally managed to stand up but shrank back as soon as Paulie’s gaze fell on him. “If I hear you so much as made a peep in the direction of the cops, I’ll have your head mounted on my wall for a hat rack. I’ll have you chopped up and served as stew! You understand me?”
The waiter’s eyes moved nervously back and forth. He pointed a finger at the children. “But—but—but they said—”
“I don’t give a rat’s tail what they said!” Paulie screamed so loudly, it looked as if all the veins in his neck would burst. On the corner, a woman and her poodle both gave an alarmed yelp. “I’ll ask you again: DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?”
The waiter hung his head, so a curtain of hair swung down over his face. “Yes, Mr. Paulie, sir. I do, Mr. Paulie, sir.”
Paulie turned to the kids. “Now get out of here before I paddle you back into next Tuesday.”
Max smiled, showing all her teeth. “I’d like to see you try.”
“Come on, Max.” Sam put a hand on her arm. “We’re going,” he said to Paulie.
Paulie’s eyes followed them all the way down the street. Pippa could feel his stare like a beam of light boring into the skin on the back of her neck.
And suddenly, in one flash, she had him. She was traveling his gaze like a path, tunneling back through his eyes, parting the dark curtain of his mind. She was there, in, sifting through images . . .
She stopped short, crying out.
“What is it?” Thomas turned to her, alarmed.
Just as quickly, the images faded. She was shoved rudely out of Paulie’s mind and found herself blinking, stunned, on Forty-Fourth Street. It was the very first time she’d read a mind and not just the contents of someone’s purse or pocket. Her heart was beating very fast, and though the effort had exhausted her, she felt like bursting into song.
“I—I did it,” she said in a whisper. “I read his mind. It was quick and I didn’t get much, but I was in.”
“Did you get anything?” Sam asked gently.
Pippa shut her eyes, thinking. “I saw Potts at the table,” she said. “He was nervous.”
“We already knew that,” Max said. Pippa opened her eyes and frowned.
“What about the man he was with?” Thomas asked. “Think, Pip. Did you get anything on him?”
Pippa licked her lips and closed her eyes again. “I . . .” The image she’d seen in Paulie’s mind was there, clear as anything, but it made no sense at all. All of the energy drained out of her at once. “I . . . I saw a fish.”
“A fish?” Max practically screeched.
Pippa nodded miserably. Thomas sighed.
“That’s all right, Pip,” Sam said. “You did your best.”
“It was a green fish,” she offered.
“Probably because the whole thing stinks!” Max said. “I don’t believe for a second Potts died because of some rat poison.”
“I don’t know,” Thomas said quietly. “It’s always possible . . .” But he sounded unconvinced.
“And what about Hugo and Phoebe?” Max was getting worked up. “I bet they’re in this mess from their elbows to their eyebrows.”
Pippa shook her head. She thought of the exhausting morning they’d had. “All they did was shop,” she said. “Until we lost them, at least. They stopped at the dressmaker’s, the milliner’s, and Woolworth’s on Fifth Avenue. . . .”
“And where’d they get the cash for all that?” Max demanded, crossing her arms. It was a good question.