chapter eight

My dad was on the telephone.

“It’s about Elmo,” I whispered.

“Just a second,” he said, mouthing the words.

I shook my head no. I couldn’t wait. Not even for a second. Why didn’t my dad understand how important this was?

“Sapna saw a cake deliveryman walking into the store last night. Only there wasn’t any cake,” I said without stopping for air. Sapna was next to me, nodding. “You’ve gotta let the police know.”

“I’ll call when I’m off the phone,” he said, covering the receiver and waving us out of his office.

I scanned the surface of my dad’s desk. His ledger book was open. I saw the edge of a business card with the logo for the Montreal Urban Community Police on it—a crest with a blue cross—peeping out from underneath it. I reached for the card and put it on top of the ledger book.

“Hey,” my dad muttered, “don’t mess with my papers.”

I pretended I hadn’t heard him. It was easier than getting into another fight. And right now, I didn’t have time to argue. “Don’t forget to call,” I said.

Mr. Singh spotted Sapna and me walking through the food court. He was sprinkling some spices into a pot. “Sapna!” he called out. “I won’t need your assistance until noon. Why don’t you help this young man find his bird?”

I sighed as we left the air-conditioned mall. I’d forgotten how hot and humid it was outside.

“Can you remember what the cake deliveryman looked like?” I asked Sapna when we reached the sidewalk at the edge of the parking lot.

“He was tall. Then again, next to me, everyone seems tall. I’m only five-foot-one.” I’d noticed how if you asked Sapna a question, she told you a lot of stuff besides the answer. “He was wearing a chef’s hat. Not especially becoming on such a tall person.”

We spotted the van at the same time. It was white with rusty spots over the tires and the words Bob’s Bakery written on the side in curly letters. Next to the lettering was a cartoon of a dog wearing a chef’s hat.

The first thing we did was check the doors. All locked. Rats! We tried peeking inside, but we couldn’t see through the tinted windows. There was more lettering next to the picture of the dog. “Dog-gone good,” I said, reading the words out loud. “I wonder what Bob knows about birds that are gone.”

The address was on the side of the car too. Bob’s Bakery was out on Lakeshore Drive. “You said you like chocolate, right? How ‘bout donuts?” I asked Sapna.

“We don’t get donuts in India,” Sapna said. “Other sweets, but not donuts. Have you ever tasted a gulab jamun? They’re made with condensed milk.”

I’d bicycled to the mall, and so had Sapna. We’d even parked our bikes in the same rack. Only hers—Mr. Singh had borrowed it from a friend of a friend— looked like it came from the Middle Ages. It was rustier than Bob’s van.

We rode single file. I didn’t have to turn around to check that Sapna was behind me. I could tell from the squeal of her brakes.

A bell on the bakery door jingled when we walked in. The next thing we heard was high-pitched chirping. Sapna raised her eyebrows.

“Cockatoos don’t chirp,” I told her. A brass cage hung behind the cash register. Inside a yellow canary watched us from his perch.

“So you like birds?” a man’s voice asked from the back of the store.

He wore a chef’s hat. But he wasn’t tall.

“Is that him?” I whispered to Sapna.

Sapna shook her head no.

I cleared my throat. “We, uh, saw your van at the Lasalle Mall and we wondered if—” I stopped myself. We wondered if you stole my cockatoo. Of course, I couldn’t say that.

“My van?” When he clapped his hands, a puff of flour drifted to the floor. “It’s been missing since yesterday. I filed a police report, but when I phoned this morning, they said it still hadn’t turned up. You sure it’s mine?”

“Dog-gone good,” Sapna said.

The man grinned. “That’s it, all right. Hey, did it look okay? Not too beaten up? The police figured some kids probably took it for a joyride.”

“It looked fine,” I said. “Except for all the rust.”

“So tell me something,” he asked, “how come you two came all the way out here?” He looked at Sapna and me, and I knew he was sizing us up. “By the way, I’m Bob. How about something to eat? On me. After all, you two detectives found my van before the cops did.”

“We’re looking for a cockatoo,” I told Bob in between bites of my second donut. “He was birdnapped last night from my dad’s pet store. Sapna saw a tall man wearing a baker’s hat in the food court outside the store. He was carrying a cake—”

“Only there wasn’t any cake at the party. There were only appetizers—and wine. Lots of wine,” Sapna added.

Bob nodded. Even his canary, who had stopped singing, seemed to be listening. “I didn’t have any cake deliveries last night,” Bob said. “But the van was full of supplies— platters, a chef’s hat, plastic...”

“White plastic?” Sapna asked.

“Yup,” Bob said. “Listen, how about the three of us head for the mall? You might want to have a look inside my van.”

“That’s just what we were thinking,” Sapna said.

“I’m no expert, but if you ask me, no kids’ve been in here.” Bob was sitting in the driver’s seat of the van, leaning forward to inspect the ashtray. “No cigarette butts, no beer bottles.”

“What about this plastic?” Sapna pointed to the backseat, where an industrial-size roll of white plastic wrap was lodged in one corner.

Bob reached for the roll. “Hard to say if anything’s missing. But the chef’s hat is gone. I always leave it right here,” he said, patting the passenger seat. “People like it when you wear a chef’s hat. Makes the cakes taste better.”

I crawled into the back of the van, scouring the worn gray carpeting. Nothing there but bits of dried icing and some loose change. Without meaning to, I sighed.

“You mustn’t give up, Tim. If you give up now, you might never find your bird,” Sapna said.

I didn’t tell her she was making me feel worse. Why’d she have to talk about never finding Elmo? Instead I dropped my eyes back to the ground.

That’s when I saw it. A piece of dark fluff on the floor behind the passenger seat. When I reached for it, I realized it was a feather, a long black feather with bright red speckles about an inch from its base. My heart thumped hard inside my chest.

Sapna crouched behind me. “Is it Elmo’s?”

I picked up the feather and slid it between my fingers. I brought it to my nose, and for a second, I smelled pineapple. “It’s got to be,” I said.