Dedication
To Laura Bernstein
Contents
Dedication
Chapter One: The Hills Are Alive with the Sound of Musical Mops
Chapter Two: The Girl Who Cried Fart
Chapter Three: Big Chef, Little Chef
Chapter Four: I Hate Adam Pacific
Chapter Five: L4E
Chapter Six: One of Our Fun Mother/Daughter Talks
Chapter Seven: NJ
Chapter Eight: Say Hello to the Face of Say Hello
Chapter Nine: OK Cupid
Chapter Ten: Open Wide
Chapter Eleven: Spider Man
Chapter Twelve: The Sting
Chapter Thirteen: VIP
Chapter Fourteen: Consequences
Chapter Fifteen: Career Opportunities
Chapter Sixteen: She’s Leaving Home
Chapter Seventeen: Great First Impression
Chapter Eighteen: POTUS
Chapter Nineteen: Shake It Off
Chapter Twenty: Officially Obsessed
Chapter Twenty-One: First Daughter
Chapter Twenty-Two: Home
Chapter Twenty-Three: Gone Girl
Chapter Twenty-Four: White House Party
Chapter Twenty-Five: Me Two
Chapter Twenty-Six: Face 2 Face
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Desperate Measures
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Asylum
Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Big F
Chapter Thirty: Dumped
Chapter Thirty-One: Bad Samaritan
Chapter Thirty-Two: Scream
Chapter Thirty-Three: Brute Force
Chapter Thirty-Four: Lethal Weapon
Chapter Thirty-Five: Best Foot Forward
Chapter Thirty-Six: True Colors
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Hail to the Thief
Chapter Thirty-Nine: Boys Don’t Cry
Chapter Forty: Mind Games
Chapter Forty-One: Get on the Bus
Chapter Forty-Two: Cut to the Chase
Chapter Forty-Three: Simmer Down, Furious Moppets
Chapter Forty-Four: School Visit
Chapter Forty-Five: Of All the Times the Stupid Chickens Had to Pick to Come Home to Roost, Why Now?
Chapter Forty-Six: The Fall
Chapter Forty-Seven: Aftermath
Chapter Forty-Eight: Mommy and Me
Chapter Forty-Nine: The Final Chapter
Acknowledgments
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About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
CHAPTER ONE
The Hills Are Alive with the Sound of Musical Mops
“The universe whispered one little word in my ear: moptunes.”
What am I doing here? Why am I sitting at a table in Reindeer Crescent’s Three Trees Hotel listening to a woman talk about inventing a mop that plays music?
I thought I was here to see my mother, Nancy Wilder, receive the supposedly prestigious Reindeer Crescent Businesswoman of the Year award for managing her courier company, Wheel Getit2u. I thought my younger sister, Natalie, and I were here to provide support since my dad had a work thing that couldn’t be shifted, and my brother, Ryan, responded to the invitation with a heartfelt “I’d love to be there, but I just died of boredom.”
But as the award ceremony drags into its second hour, I realize that every businesswoman who showed up is automatically guaranteed her own award.
“And that’s how I achieved mopularity!” the woman gushes.
I look to my left. Natalie is watching Mrs. Mop and mouthing “So inspirational.” I look to my right. My mother, who should be fuming, is smiling, nodding, and making notes in the margins of her acceptance speech—which I pray she gets to deliver sometime before my forty-fourth birthday. The woman gestures to an assistant, who hands her two mops, both with red, white, and blue handles. “To commemorate the upcoming election, I am happy to present supporters of President Brennan with their own mop.” Pink Suit holds up a mop that plays a tinny version of “It’s a Grand Old Flag.”
“And if you’re thinking of voting for independent candidate Morgan Font, I have a mop just for you.” “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy” tinkles out of the second mop. The businesswomen clap along.
Although I’m only here as a barely awake audience member, I technically qualify for an award. I am in the spy business, and I am a resident of Reindeer Crescent.
I look around at the women sitting at the other seventeen tables in the hotel conference room, clapping like seals along to the sound of mops, and I find myself wishing they could hear my acceptance speech.
“Businesswomen of Reindeer Crescent, Sacramento, thank you for this beautiful award,” I would begin, holding my gold-plated figurine representing Hermes, the Greek god of merchants and commerce, high in the air. “It’s an honor and a privilege, but I didn’t get here on my own. I know you look at me and think, wow, she makes the world safe for the rest of us mere mortals. But it took a lot of people to make Bridget Wilder the spy she is today.
“I’d like to thank the evil agency Section 23, who attempted to use me to capture my biological father, Carter Strike. In doing so, they made me into the awesome spy who brought about their downfall. I’d like to thank another evil organization, the secret criminal operation known as the Forties, who kidnapped Carter Strike and introduced me to my birth mother, the international assassin Irina Ouspenskaya. And then I brought about their downfall. I’m good with the downfalls.
“I’d like to thank the CIA, who put Strike and Irina in charge of a rebooted version of the Forties that occasionally sends me on missions involving young people. I just vetted a bunch of contestants for that TV cooking competition for kids, and, of course, I did an impeccable job. I didn’t find a single evil villain among the Little Chefs. I’d particularly like to thank someone who’s very special to me. Someone I keep close at all times . . .”
At that point, I’d hold up the second finger of my left hand and let the audience gaze at what they’d see as an ordinary ring with a big crimson stone. “I would like to thank Red, the plucky, loyal, unbreakable nanomarble, who has become my closest friend in times of crisis.” The Research and Development team at the Forties came up with a clever way for me to hide Red in plain sight. They attached him to a magnetized bezel, which, they informed me, was the part of the ring that holds the gem. “To unleash him,” they told me, “just squeeze.”
“We made it, buddy,” I’d tell Red, fighting back tears. “Oh, and thanks to my mom, my dad, my sister, my bother—just kidding, Ryan—my friend Joanna, and Dale Took . . . actually, forget it, I’ll stop there.
“Keep dreaming big dreams, Reindeer Crescent businesswomen, you can be anything you want to be . . . ouch!”
A sharp elbow from my left digs into my ribs. “Shut up,” hisses Natalie. “You’re mumbling to yourself like a crazy person.”
To my right, my mother leans in and mutters in my ear. “I’m sorry you find this so boring, Bridget. Please try to pay attention. These are people who have done great things with their lives. You could learn something.”
“About mops,” I start to say. Then I focus on the conference room stage. I was so deeply immersed in my acceptance speech fantasy, I failed to register the new occupant.
“I’m Vidina Geiger,” says the small, brown-haired woman on the stage. “Standing on this stage is the last place I thought I’d ever be.”
I incline my head toward my mother. “Long boring speech alert,” I mutter hilariously.
“Can you be quiet and listen to her?” Mom sighs.
“I never imagined myself starting my own business, let alone making a
success of it,” the woman continues. “I was happy and satisfied being the wife of Martin Geiger, and the mother of Sheryl and Nelson.”
Pictures of Vidina Geiger’s happy family appear on the video monitor behind her. Handsome husband. Pretty daughter. The son has kind of an egg-shaped head. The businesswomen all make awww noises. No awwws from Bridget Wilder. I’m not exactly sure what, but something about the picture of the Geiger clan has my spy senses tingling.
“They were my success story,” Mrs. Geiger continues. “But sometimes you need to find your own identity outside of your family. My husband built Tastes Like Steak from a single restaurant to a nationwide chain. Could I build something? I asked myself. If I really put my mind to it, what could I do?”
“Fart!” I say out loud.
The woman’s speech comes to an abrupt halt.
Oops.
Natalie throws her hands over her face. “I’m not with you,” she hisses. “I don’t know you.”
Mom slumps down low in her seat as everyone swivels around to stare in my direction.
I jump up and gesture to my mortified mother and sister that I’m heading to the restroom.
“Sorry,” I call out to the award-winner onstage. “Keep going. You’re doing great.”
“Bridget, go!” Natalie and Mom chorus in pained harmony.
So I go. But not to the restroom.
CHAPTER TWO
The Girl Who Cried Fart
That Fart! didn’t come out of the blue. There was a reason for that Fart! Remember the part in my imaginary acceptance speech where I mentioned my last job for the CIA-sanctioned version of the Forties? The one where I vetted the contestants participating in the Reindeer Crescent heat of the Little Chefs cooking contest?
I thought I did a thorough job. I thought I’d checked the backgrounds of all the budding kitchen prodigies. I didn’t find any evidence of cheats, ringers, dwarves, or geniuses with histories of winning similar contests. But then Vidina Geiger made a room full of businesswomen say awww.
I know the boy in her happy family photograph. The kid with the egg-shaped head. When I looked into his background and pronounced him suitable for inclusion on Little Chefs, his name was not Nelson Geiger, and he did not mention being the male heir to the Tastes Like Steak franchise.
One thing I do know: Tastes Like Steak has a deadly rival in the world of fast-food restaurants. That rival is a chain called Parmesan Marmoset that specializes in huge heapings of non-healthy but really yummy food. There is a Parmesan Marmoset in Reindeer Crescent mall. An episode of Little Chefs is shooting there right this minute.
Why would the son of the Tastes Like Steak chain be working in the kitchen of his father’s biggest rival? I do not know, but I intend to find out.
I hurry out of the Three Trees Hotel after my Fart! while texting Strike and Irina to alert the Little Chefs producers that foul play may be afoot. As I charge out of the building, I see a bellhop pushing a luggage cart with a skateboard stuffed between the cases and bags. I pretend to text furiously and walk straight into the bellhop. At the exact same time, I squeeze my ring.
Before the bellhop has time to reply, I hold up the Red-less ring and wail, “My grandmother’s diamond! It’s been in the family for generations, and now I’ve lost it.”
The bellhop cringes at my rising—and completely fake—panic.
“I’m going to get in so much trouble,” I snivel.
“Don’t panic,” he says. “I’ll help you look for it.”
“I think I had it when I got off the elevator,” I lie.
When the bellhop scurries off to look for the nonexistent diamond, I grab the skateboard from his cart and leave him a few dollars as compensation. Score! Then I squeeze my ring and Red flies back to his rightful home. I jump on the stolen board, almost pull off one of those cool kickflips that seem so effortless in skateboard videos, and fly the six blocks to the Reindeer Crescent mall.
I navigate the board through the food court. As I weave in and out of mall diners, the bright-red logo of the family restaurant chain Parmesan Marmoset comes into view. And so do the paramedics, rolling a gurney out the front door. I’m too late! A cameraman and producer follow the gurney out into the mall.
I see the producer shove a microphone into the face of the groaning man being carried away.
“How do you feel?”
“Sick,” whimpers the man. “They poisoned me.”
Alarm bells start clanging inside my head.
I propel the board past the paramedics and the TV people. The waiters are too busy calming the freaked-out diners to stop me from skating into the restaurant. I see a familiar face. Eleven-year-old Little Chef contestant Gigi Paredes (signature dish: Portuguese paella) is a red-faced, weeping mess.
“I’ve made it a million times,” the girl sobs. “I never made anyone sick before.”
Something smells rotten here. It might be the Hawaiian beef teriyaki nine-year-old Nate Wackman is about to serve to a table of four. I skate over to the table, where young Wackman stands proudly by, waiting to be complimented on his culinary expertise.
“Don’t eat that,” I tell the diners.
I turn to Wackman, who glares at me with open loathing.
“Who are you?” he snaps.
“Health inspector,” I shoot back.
“You’re too young to be a health inspector,” says the know-it-all kid.
“You’re too young to be a chef,” I reply.
He rolls his eyes. “I’m a little chef.”
“I’m a little health inspector,” I tell him.
“You’re a liar,” he shouts.
There’s no denying that. “Listen, Wackman,” I say. “Some guy just got rolled out of here moaning about being poisoned. What if your stinky beef causes the next victim?”
“You’re stinky beef” is Wackman’s childish response.
“Before you serve it up, I want you to think. When you were in the kitchen, did anything unusual happen? Did anyone act strangely or say anything that surprised you?”
“Dermot was really helpful,” he says, after some thought.
“Does Dermot have an egg-shaped head?” I ask.
Wackman narrows his eyes at me. “How do you know him?”
I grab the plates of teriyaki and skate past bewildered diners just as another waiter comes out of the kitchen carrying another tray of food prepared by another excitable young chef.
“Turn back around!” I yell. “That food is tainted!”
“It is not!” squeaks ten-year-old Heavenlii Bryant (favorite recipe: beef bourguignon).
The new waiter looks unsure. Heavenlii tries to push me off the board. I dump Wackman’s tray onto Heavenlii’s plates and then skate past her into Parmesan Marmoset’s kitchen.
The heat hits me like a shovel to the face. A boiling-hot shovel. Rivulets of perspiration dribble into my eyes. Six little kids in white uniforms slave over stoves as the head chef, a big man with a bushy red beard, barks orders at them: “Watch your heat! Turn it over! Plate it! Too crusty! Give it another two minutes!”
Two cameramen follow the contestants’ every move. I scan the scared, sweaty faces of the cooks. Only one looks calm and centered. A boy with an egg-shaped head works on his eggplant parmesan dish, while checking on the progress of his fellow contestants and murmuring encouragement. Nelson Geiger.
“A little more seasoning, maybe?” he suggests as he sprinkles a thimbleful of seasoning over another contestant’s spaghetti and meatballs. Whatever he’s putting on that plate, I’m guessing it’s going have the same effect as Gigi Paredes’s Portuguese paella.
“What’s on the menu, Nelson?” I shout, my voice cutting over the yelling of the head chef. “Is it mole?”
“Mole?” repeats the red-bearded head chef. “You think we serve mole here?”
“I don’t know,” I tell him. “I’ve never eaten here. But I know you have a mole working undercover in your kitchen.”
I skate past the
other Little Chefs toward Nelson Geiger. “Stand back, kid cooks, this is a setup. Your talents are being used to make customers puke.”
I snatch up a stainless steel whisk from the kitchen worktop and point it in the direction of my number one suspect.
“This Little Chef you know as Dermot—he’s not who he seems. Dermot is, in fact, Nelson Geiger, son of the guy who owns the Tastes Like Steak chain!”
Young Geiger glances up from his parmesan. I’ll give him this—he has a perfect poker face. No stress. No fear. No anger. Only the slight hint of a smile.
“Come on, guys,” he says, looking around the kitchen. “This is a classic TV stunt. I know you’re not naive enough to fall for such nonsense.”
I see from the expression on the head chef’s face that he buys Geiger’s lie. I need to think fast.
“Try this seasoning, Chef,” I quickly say. I grab the plate of spaghetti and meatballs the contestant was preparing and hold it out to the man. (There’s a loose Band-Aid half-buried in one of the meatballs. I don’t see this kid as a potential winner.) “See if you think it enhances the flavors of these dishes. Or if it’s poison.”
Geiger pipes up. “We’ve worked too hard to have her to keep us from cooking the meals of our lives.”
Red Beard looks from Geiger to me to the cameramen. Finally, he reaches out his hand. I roll toward him with the tainted pasta.
“Chef, this is a waste of our time,” declares Geiger. Now I’m starting to see a little sweat on his brow. Now I see a tiny twitch at the side of his eye. “We’ve got customers out there waiting.”
“They can wait another minute,” says the head chef. He wraps a few strands of spaghetti around his fork. His mouth opens. The fork travels between his teeth.
Nelson Geiger’s cool vanishes. I see panic seize him. He was not prepared for this.
“Stop!” he yells.
Geiger grabs the fork from the head chef and throws it at me.
I roll to the side. The fork shoots straight past me. I hear a voice from behind me yelp, “Ow! My hand!” I don’t think that Band-Aid kid is cut out for kitchen work.
“I don’t believe this,” mutters Red Beard.
“You’re no Little Chef,” shouts Heavenlii Bryant. “You’re a big cheat and a huge liar.”