“Not even our own,” said Jaime.
Tess said nothing. Jaime took off his glasses, rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Mima takes an hour nap every day around one. As long as we get the keys back before she wakes up, we should be okay.”
“That’s good,” said Tess. “People usually work during the day. No one should be home.”
“Except Mr. Perlmutter.”
Mr. Perlmutter was approximately a thousand years old, rarely left his apartment, and sprinkled conversations liberally with one of three sentences: If you think I’m paying for this garbage, you’re nuttier than a squirrel in September. Stop that caterwauling/ screeching/yammering/hammering, we’re not living in a zoo! You think I can do that with my sciatica/cataracts/ rheumatism/hemorrhoids/corns?
“We should save Mr. Perlmutter’s place for last,” Tess said.
“Ya think?” said Jaime.
They called Theo and told him to bring Ava’s book. To kill time before Mima got home, the three of them watched a movie about some people who used giant robots to battle giant monsters, which Tess said needed more girls to be realistic.
“Maybe the monsters are girls?” said Theo. When Tess glared at him, he said, “What? What did I say?”
Mima came home around a quarter to one, tired and dusty. She set her toolbox on the counter. “Hello, children. I see that you are having a good time staying inside on a beautiful day instead of going outside and getting fresh air.”
“We’re going out when this movie’s over,” said Jaime.
Mima set her keys next to the toolbox, muttered something about movies warping the brains of young people, and went to her bedroom. As soon as he heard the door shut, Jaime stuffed his sketchbook in his pocket, grabbed the keys and the toolbox off the counter. Then they slipped out the door. First, they checked the window in the hallway. Sure enough, Mima had already replaced the seal on the molding, but in the middle, on the right-hand side.
He hesitated before prying it off. But they were desperate, so . . .
With a screwdriver, he levered the seal out of the molding and handed it to Tess. He spackled the hole as neatly as he could. Then he marked the location of the seal in his sketchbook.
In the elevator, Theo said, “Let’s start with the Schwartzes on the fourth floor They both work in an office somewhere. Nobody should be home.”
Jaime said, “Knock first, just in case.”
Tess knocked. “Hey, Ms. Schwartz? Wondering if you have, uh, an egg I could borrow?”
Theo mouthed the words, An egg? Tess put her fingers to her lips, but there was no reason to be quiet. No one was home.
Jaime flipped through the key ring until he found the right one. He opened the door and the three of them slipped into the apartment. The Schwartzes hadn’t started packing yet, but it wasn’t going to take them long. They had no books and barely any furniture, and what furniture they had was odd: a low, skinny orange couch and two purple chairs shaped like giant hands. They also had a machine—not a Morningstarr invention—that cleaned the floors, a plain flat disc that resembled nothing so much as a flying saucer whirring about, banking off walls and feet.
“What would you call this style? Modern?” said Jaime.
“Strange,” said Tess.
In the bedroom, the Schwartzes had a bed, a dresser, and a couple of side tables. “No books in here, either,” said Theo. “How can you not have any books?”
“Lots of people don’t read,” said Jaime.
“Why not?” said Theo.
“Let’s discuss literacy rates later,” said Jaime. He went to the window and found two seals close together in the bottom left-hand corner of the molding. He pried them out. This time, Tess spackled while Jaime noted the location of the seals in his book.
Once they were out in the hallway, they checked the window in the hall. Here they found no seals, and no evidence that the molding had been patched.
“Okay, whose apartment is across the hall?” Tess said.
“The Hornshaws,” said Theo. “But they have a dog.”
The Hornshaws’ dog was a basset hound that spent twenty-three hours a day in a coma. Tess said, “Nine is more of a dog than that dog.”
Again, Tess knocked, waited to make sure no one was home. Jaime let them in. Woody the basset hound didn’t even lift his head off his doggy bed long enough to yawn. They all ran to the Hornshaws’ bedroom, where they found another two seals on the right side of the window molding, right in the middle.
Tess checked her watch. “We still have fifty minutes till your grandmother wakes up.”
They took the elevator to the fourth floor and were in and out of the third apartment—the Moran family’s—in a few minutes. Jaime tried not to focus on the alphabet blocks and teddy bears and trucks strewn about, tried not to think about where Cricket and Otto would play, who would watch over them, if they couldn’t solve the Cipher in time. This time, the seals were on the upper left-hand corner of the molding, two of them. The hallway window yielded three seals on the lower right side.
“I’m surprised that Stoop and Pinscher didn’t take these,” said Jaime.
“Oh, I’m sure they’re coming back for them.” Tess checked her watch again. “We have forty-three minutes.”
“I’m not sure that’s going to be long enough to get Mr. Perlmutter to let us in,” said Jaime.
“Only one way to find out,” Tess said. She took a deep breath and knocked.
“I’m coming, I’m coming! Stop all that hammering! What is this, a zoo?”
Jaime was wondering how many zoos Mr. Perlmutter had actually been to, because he didn’t remember any particular animals making hammering sounds, when Mr. Perlmutter cracked the door. His rheumy eye swam in the opening.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Tess Biedermann, Mr. Perlmutter,” Tess said. “And this is Theo and Jaime. We live upstairs?”
“Well, do you or don’t you?”
“Pardon?”
“Live upstairs?”
“Yes. I live upstairs. Theo and I live with my parents. The Biedermanns. My mom’s a cop?”
The rheumy eye blinked. “Well, is she or isn’t she?”
“What?”
“A cop.”
“Yes. Yes, she’s a detective.”
“Then stop asking if she is. What do you want?”
“I was wondering if I could borrow an egg because I’m baking—”
“An egg? Do you think I can digest eggs with my stomach? What do I look like, a snake?”
This was going about as well as Jaime had expected, which was not well at all. “Sugar?” he suggested.
The rheumy eye rolled up to Jaime. “What are you, a comedian? I’m ninety-two years old. I can’t eat sugar. You want me to get the diabetes?”
Tess gritted her teeth. “No, of course not. We’d love for you to stay around for another ninety-two years.”
“Ha! Listen to you! Attitude all over! You kids! You think I’ve never heard a smart mouth before? I was born with a smart mouth!”
“No kidding,” Theo said.
“Is that a question?”
“No.”
“Are you going to tell me what you really want or are you going to keep on with the smart mouth?’