Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief Read Online Free Page A

you’re just making all this up, then go home to your mommy and let us do our work.”
    The lady steps in. “Honey, how old do you think he was?”
    Now I’m okay at guessing some things, but age is not one of them. “I don’t know, maybe...forty?”
    Officer Borsch mumbles, “Kind of medium, huh?” and then laughs like he’s the funniest guy in the building. He clears his throat. “Look, we’ll get your name and number and if we have any further questions we’ll just call you.”
    There goes my heart again, knocking away in my chest. “I’ve told you everything I can think of.” Except, I’m thinking, the fact that it feels like I’ve seen the guy somewhere before.
    Tall ’n’ Skinny flips open his notebook. “Well, just in case, let’s get your name and address.”
    Great. And I’m thinking, How do I get myself into these things? when out of my mouth pops, “Samantha Keyes, six three seven five East Jasmine.”
    Now if they were thinking at all, they would’ve taken one look at me and known—there’s no way I live on East Jasmine. East Jasmine is where they have two houses to a block. East Jasmine is where they have gates in front of their driveways and riding mowers for their lawns. East Jasmine is where people from out of town go just to gawk.
    And 6375 East Jasmine is where Marissa lives.
    Tall ’n’ Skinny doesn’t even blink. He just scribbles it down and says, “Very good. We’ll contact you if we need you.”
    So I say to the lady, “I hope you get your money back,” and then head out the door.
    One of the kids outside calls, “Hey, what’s going on in there?”
    I shrug, “Just a burglary.” And I’m about to jaywalk across the street when I glance back at the Heavenly and see Officer Borsch watching me through the doorway.
    I stop and head down to the intersection, because I can tell—Officer Borsch is not going to sleep well until he remembers just exactly where he’s run into me before.

FOUR
    Grams was mad all right. She made me eat cold fish and rice, and wouldn’t let me get up from the table until I’d eaten every single cold pea rolling around on my plate. Normally I would’ve just slipped Dorito some of the fish and shoved the peas in my napkin, but Grams sat right across from me and I knew from the way she wasn’t saying anything that it was a bad time to get caught using Dorito as a garbage disposal. On top of that, while I was choking down cold food she ate every last crumb of a big piece of pound cake. When I finished my dinner and asked for some, all she said was, “It’s time for you to go to bed.”
    So I headed for the couch. The couch is actually pretty comfortable, and it beats sleeping on the floor or with Grams. I tried sleeping with Grams when I first moved in because I was having so many bad dreams. Trouble is, she snores so loud that I wasn’t getting any sleep, so I finally started using the couch. I still get bad dreams once in a while, so sometimes I go in and listen to Grams snore, but most of the time the couch and I get along just fine.
    And you might think that I’d have bad dreams after waving at the guy in the Heavenly Hotel and running into Officer Borsch, but I didn’t. I slept like a log. I might even have snored.
    In the morning when I woke up I thought about everything that had happened, and decided there was no way the guy at the Heavenly Hotel could know who I was. With those binoculars in front of my face and my hair pulled back in a ponytail like it was, I could’ve been anyone. He might even have thought I was an old person. I mean, if he knew anything about my Grams’ building, that’s what he’d think.
    So there I was, lying on the couch, feeling pretty good, when the phone rings. Grams comes scooting out of her room in her robe and slippers