“Did you hear that?” Pete said, standing up and accidentally knocking over his chair. “I’m a good driver! A compliment from Jupiter Jones! You’re a witness, Bob.”
“Oh, I was just thinking of the expense of having new business cards printed,” said Jupe.
“But seriously, guys,” Bob said, “I wonder who Mr. Sweetness is and why he wants us off the case.”
“It may be more pertinent to ask, how did he know we were on it?” Jupe said.
“Good point,” Bob agreed. “I sure didn’t see him at the party.”
“And Juliet doesn’t know anyone who wears an army jacket,” Pete said. “’Cause we asked her.”
“Okay, so he’s not a friend of the family.” Jupe concluded. “Maybe he’s working for someone.”
“But who?” asked Pete.
It was a question they slept on that night.
The next morning, an unfamiliar car horn beeped outside Jupe’s workshop and the telephone inside rang at the same time. Jupe, who had been up for hours testing electronic equipment with his oscilloscope, answered the phone while he peeked out a window. One mystery solved: The car horn was Pete’s. It sounded strange because Pete wasn’t driving his Scirocco. He was in his mom’s car.
The telephone call was more of a surprise.
“Jupiter, it’s Juliet Coop. My briefcase!” she said excitedly.
Jupe was an expert at all kinds of codes, but this one had him totally confused.
“I woke up about an hour ago and started looking everywhere for my briefcase,” Juliet said after taking a deep breath. “Up until then, I’d forgotten I had a briefcase!”
Now Jupe was excited too. “Your memory is starting to come back,” he said.
“That’s one way to look at it,” Juliet said. “Or you could say I’m just starting to realize how much I’d forgotten. Anyway, the briefcase isn’t here at home. And I don’t even know why I want to find it so badly. But I think there’s something important in it. I feel like there is.”
“Pete and I are just on our way to your father’s office,” Jupe said. “We’ll keep our eyes open for it.”
“Maybe I left it in my office,” Juliet said. “Or in someone else’s office. I’d go looking for it but Dad doesn’t want me coming in for a few days. Do you think you could try to find out where I was last Friday before the accident?”
That’s exactly what I was already planning to do, Jupe thought to himself.
“We’ll ask around,” Jupe said to Juliet. “But do you have an appointment calendar? It might give us a head start if we knew what your schedule was.”
“Sure. It’s a beautiful blue morocco leather diary,” Juliet said wistfully. “And you’re welcome to look in it yourself — if you can find it. It’s always in my briefcase!”
Pete started playing his impatient symphony on the car horn again.
“I’ll check out every possibility and call you tonight,” Jupe said quickly.
“And I’ll call you if I remember anything else,” Juliet said before she hung up.
By the time Jupe got outside, Pete had the car hood raised and was peering inside the engine. He was like a compulsive dentist who couldn’t resist telling every patient he came across to open wide.
“Juliet just called. She can’t find her briefcase, which contains something important,” Jupe announced as a greeting.
“I’ll bet that’s what Mr. Sweetness was hunting for,” Pete said without looking up.
If Pete had looked up he would have seen Jupiter Jones with his jaw wide open. “Remarkable deduction!” Jupe exclaimed. “What did you have for breakfast?”
Then they climbed into the car and headed for Big Barney’s corporate office building in the San Fernando Valley. On the way they passed the lot where Pete’s car had gone off the road. It was still sitting there.
Pete pulled into a nearby gas station and hopped out to make a phone call. He was phoning Ty Cassey, Jupe’s older cousin, who usually hung around the junkyard and ran an informal car repair business whenever he was in town. Right now, however, Ty was sponging off a different distant relative — someone who had rented a beach house in Malibu for the summer.
“Ty?” Pete said into the pay phone. “It’s Pete. Remember how you said you needed some wheels for the next three weeks? Well, I’ll make you a deal. You can use my car if you’ll come haul it out of the field where it’s stuck.”
Once Pete had arranged with Ty to take care of his Scirocco, he revved the engine of his mom’s car again and they were off.
As they pulled into the parking lot at Big Barney’s Chicken Coop Corporation, Pete and Jupe had to laugh. In typical Big Barney style, the building was a cross between a modern six-story office complex and an amusement park. To drive through the locked visitors’ gate, Pete had to announce himself into an intercom system. But it was the same chicken-shaped intercom used at the Chicken Coop drive-thru restaurants. For a joke, Pete ordered two five-piece meals to go.
When the electronic gate swung open, Pete and Jupe drove toward the red and yellow building.
Big Barney had been at work for hours. He greeted them wearing a big smile and a red jogging suit. The first thing he said to Jupe was, “I’ve got one. What year did we put the carrots in the coleslaw?”
“1987,” Jupe said. “Smaller containers, too.”
“Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I tell you?” Big Barney bellowed to anyone who was listening inside a three-county radius. “You’re a nut, guy, but you’re my kind of nut. However, you two will have to wear identification tags at all times. We have tight security around here.” Big Barney slapped stickers on Pete’s and Jupe’s backs.
When they checked each other out, they discovered they were wearing kick me signs. Big Barney laughed so hard he almost turned as red as his jogging suit. Then he put Chicken Coop visors on both of them.
“What do you want to see first?” Big Barney asked. “My first dollar? I’ve got it framed and hanging over the fireplace in my office. How about my first wife? I have her hanging over the fireplace in my office too. Hahahahaha!”
“We’d like to see some of the offices, like Juliet’s new office,” Jupe said, trying to sound casual about it.
“I want to see where the food is made and what kind of stuff goes into it, too,” Pete said.
“So you want to meet my mad scientists, do you?” Barney asked, rolling his eyes wildly. “Okay, I’ll have them taken out of their cages just for you. And then I want you” — he pulled the visor down over Jupe’s eyes — “to taste something special.” Big Barney started guiding, although it was more like pushing, Jupe and Pete down the hallways. “You’re not going to believe this new product. As a matter of fact, I don’t believe it and it’s my invention.”
They took an elevator and toured the offices. Whenever Pete and Jupe could get away from Big Barney for a minute, they asked people if Juliet had been there on the Friday of the accident. One accountant said he had seen her that day. But he didn’t remember anything about a briefcase. A few other people mentioned that they’d seen Juliet’s Mustang in the parking lot when they left work — but there were no other strong leads.
Finally Big Barney took Pete and Jupe down to the basement, to a large scientific laboratory behind locked glass doors. There were warning signs saying keep out all around the electronic checkpoint entrance.
When Big Barney pushed a plastic card into an electronic box, the glass doors began to slide open. “Repeat after me,” Big Barney said, looking down at Pete and Jupe. “I will tell no one about Drippin’ Chicken.”
“I will tell no one about Drippin’ Chicken,” Pete and Jupe said.
“Okay, let’s get down to business. Pandro!” Big Barney’s voice boomed and shook the glass walls of the laboratory.
Instantly a squat, burly, bald man with gold wire-rimmed glasses came marching over. He wore a long white lab jacket that had a row of Chicken Coop pins fastened above the pocket like military medals. And he actually saluted.
“Meet Pandro Mishkin,” Big Barney said, pounding the man on the back. It was like pounding a mailbox. “You’ll never guess where Pandro came to me from!”