Page 74 of The Best Trick

“He say anything else?” Zeus asked.

“Yeah, he said you four would come around asking about the dog, and that you're bad news.”

I grinned. “What made you decide to tell us?” I asked.

“My dad's an asshole and I don’t want him to get the rest of the money.”

Odin grinned. “Works for me.” He gave the kid another hundred. “We never had this conversation.”

“Works for me,” the kid said.

We headed out.

“I believe the kid,” Thor said.

We all believed the kid.

FOURTEEN

The sun was just setting over the Pacific as I pushed the edge of a fork into a juicy grilled scallop. I took a bite, savoring its salty, buttery goodness. We were all falling over ourselves complimenting Thor on his cooking of scallops when Odin got the call back from his intelligence connections.

He took it out on the lawn, pacing up and down in front of the blazing sunset. Some ten minutes later, he came back and sat down, crossing his legs, looking like the cat who swallowed the canary.

I loved when he looked like that. “What?” I said. “What did you find out?”

“Our dear Agent Alfred has been passed over for several promotions,” Odin said, gazing at me in that glittery way of his. “But here’s the interesting part—the reason is Denko. Denko refuses to recommend him. Denko has been saying that Alfred’s not ready to move up, that he needs to work on his skills.”

“Denko’s hurting Alfred’s career,” I said.

“So it seems,” Odin said.

“Are you thinking that Alfred found out Denko is nixing his promotions and decided to make him look bad? A little payback? Is that what is going on here?”

Zeus was nodding vigorously. “Makes sense. So Agent Alfred steals Doris, knowing Denko will do anything to get her back. He wants to force Denko to trade the ledger for Doris, and he’ll make sure the authorities are on hand to arrest Denko when the trade happens.”

“No wonder Alfred was so interested in our progress!” Thor said.

“Right?” I said. “So what about Ferdinand? Why try to frame Ferdinand?”

“I think he’s pointing us at Ferdinand as a way of running out the clock,” Zeus said. “He doesn’t want Doris to be found, and he knows that we ruled out Don Pedro, so it’s best if he gives us another suspect.”

“I say we play along and take the bait,” Zeus said.

We all liked that.

Zeus texted Alfred with a request for more information on Ferdinand—where Ferdinand liked to vacation, the names of Ferdinand's extended family, places Ferdinand had lived. Basically, we all but told Alfred outright that Ferdinand was now our main suspect.

“Okay,” he said, putting down his phone.

“Thank you, Facebook,” Odin said, putting down his own phone. “Alfred runs every morning at five. Tomorrow is his six-mile run. He’s hoping to shave his time down to thirty-nine minutes. How very convenient.”

“So we get in there and see what we can see. Doris may not be there, but there’s got to be some clue as to where he stashed her. If not…” Zeus looked over at Odin.

“If not, then we’ll find out the hard way,” Odin said.

Odin could make Alfred talk. We’d bring Doris to Denko. The tackle bag was as good as ours!

“We are gonna find this dog,” I said, hugging Zeus.

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