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  “Uh, she’s a bobcat,” Vishal said. “She’ll eat anything. I’m pretty sure she’d eat me if she had the chance.”

  “Whatever,” Sophia scoffed. “You think every animal would eat you.”

  “No, I don’t,” Vishal said defensively.

  Zach laughed. “Dude. Last night you were scared of a flower!” Evie and Sophia cracked up, and the tips of Vishal’s ears turned pink.

  “Look, B-17 wouldn’t eat Marvin, okay?” declared Sophia. “If you don’t believe me, we can go to MEOWS right now and ask them.” She closed her laptop and bent down to pull on a pair of expensive suede slip-on sneakers. “In the whole time they’ve been studying her, she’s basically eaten nothing but wild rabbits like ninety-nine percent of the time.”

  “What about the other one percent?” Zach asked, standing up.

  “Mostly rats, mice, stuff like that.”

  “Yeah, but how do they know?” Evie challenged.

  “By studying her scat,” Sophia said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

  “Yeah, sure. Of course.” Vishal slipped on his scuffed shell toe sneakers. “What’s scat?”

  Sophia looked uncomfortable. “It’s, well . . . you know”—she lowered her voice—“poop.”

  Zach and Vishal burst out laughing, and Evie grinned. “Wait, what?!” Vishal cried. “There are seriously scientists who look at poop?”

  “Oh, get over it, Vishal. It’s obviously not all they do,” Sophia huffed.

  “But still,” Zach said. “That’s like their job? They get paid for it?”

  “Scat shows them important stuff, like what the animals eat and when, and whether they’re healthy. I don’t see why you have to act like it’s such a big deal.” Sophia snatched up her cell phone. “Come on. Edgar can drive us.”

  Zach struggled to keep a straight face. “Oh, no, you’re right. Definitely not a big deal. By all means, let’s have Edgar drive us to meet with the poop scientists.” Vishal’s high-pitched giggle built to a frenzy, and he curled into himself like a question mark.

  “Oh, grow up.” Sophia sashayed past them, chin held high, and sucked her teeth in disgust. “Boys are so immature, aren’t they, Evie? Let’s go. MEOWS is expecting us.”

  “Yeah, guys, totally immature,” Evie said. “Now, hurry up. You don’t want to keep the poop scientists waiting, do you?”

  Sophia walked stiffly down the hallway, with Evie’s and the boys’ ringing laughter following behind.

  ***

  MEOWS was located in the basement of a small office building near the university. Two people bent over a large computer monitor looked up and greeted Sophia warmly. “Guys, this is Maggie,” Sophia gestured to a young woman with light brown skin and glossy raven hair framing a heart-shaped face. “And this is Eric.” Eric was slight, with pale skin and gray eyes that blinked behind wire-rimmed glasses. Both were dressed casually in T-shirts and jeans.

  Evie leaned over and whispered in Sophia’s ear. “Where are the scientists?” Her words sounded loud in the tiny room.

  “Actually, that would be us,” Eric said.

  Evie looked embarrassed. “Oh, sorry. For some reason I thought you’d be wearing white coats and goggles or something, but I guess that’s just on TV.”

  Maggie laughed. “If we’re working on something in the lab we might, but most of the time we just wear our regular clothes.”

  “Where’s the lab?” Zach looked around the cramped little room, with its messy desks and walls covered with charts, maps, and nature photographs.

  “It’s over at the U,” Maggie explained. “Eric and I are graduate students. We work here part-time, and the rest of the time we’re at school.”

  “B-17 is actually part of our PhD project,” Eric explained. “Maggie and I darted her last summer, and while she was knocked out we were able to fit her with a radio tracking collar. It’s been a great way to learn more about her movements.” He turned the monitor to face the kids. “See? The GPS on her collar sends a signal every three hours to tell us where she is. These connected dots on the electronic map show where B-17 has been, and if you hover the mouse over a dot, it gives you the three-hour window of when she was there.”

  Zach bent over for a closer look. “Huh. It looks like she spends a lot of time near the river.”

  Vishal grimaced. “Remind me to stay away from the river.”

  Eric smiled. “B-17 doesn’t pose any real danger to humans. Bobcats are actually pretty shy of people. In fact, most people never even know that they’re there.”

  “That’s not a very comforting thought,” Vishal said.

  “One of the things we’re studying is how wild predators and humans can live together safely,” Maggie said. “After all, as their habitats continue to shrink and disappear, animals like bobcats have to learn to adapt to us in order to survive, and we have to learn to adapt to them.”

  Eric pulled up a spreadsheet on another monitor. “From dissecting her scat”—at the word scat, Vishal and the twins exchanged knowing smirks, and Sophia studiously ignored them—“we’ve found that B-17’s diet primarily consists of rabbits, small rodents, and birds. While some bobcats have been known to kill and eat deer, B-17 hasn’t, or at least not since we’ve been studying her.”

  “So you don’t think she ate Marvin?” Zach asked.

  Maggie shrugged. “We can’t say for sure that she wouldn’t, but venturing into the zoo and attacking an animal isn’t something she’s ever done before.”

  “Did she go into the zoo last night?” Evie asked.

  Maggie pointed back to the dots on the screen. “This dot here is time-stamped at seven fifteen last night, and it shows her in the arboretum near the zoo.”

  “That’s not long after we saw her,” Sophia said.

  Evie opened up a zoo map. “But did she go into the zoo? Did she go near Marvin’s exhibit?”

  “We don’t know,” Eric said. “The collar’s GPS only sends a signal once every three hours, so the next blip wasn’t until about ten fifteen.”

  “Where was she at ten fifteen?” Zach asked.

  “She had moved to some neighboring parkland, in this region right here.” Eric pointed at another dot on the screen. “There’s a lot of thick forest over there, and several lakes. Good habitat for her.”

  “She could have gone anywhere in those three hours,” Vishal said. “We can’t prove she wasn’t in the zoo.” He reached down and fiddled with the zoo map as he thought, folding and unfolding it.

  “But we also can’t prove that she was,” Sophia said. “And you heard Maggie and Eric. She’s never done anything like this before. Why would she now? It’s not like she doesn’t have a steady supply of wild rabbits to eat.”

  “Yeah, but don’t forget there was that bobcat print inside Marvin’s exhibit,” Evie said. Sophia’s expression darkened, and she folded her arms.

  “Could it be a different bobcat?” Zach asked. “Maybe one that you aren’t tracking?”

  “If so, it wouldn’t be a female,” Maggie explained. “Female bobcats never have overlapping territories. The only wildcat willing to get this close to B-17 would be a male during mating season, but that’s in late winter. Since it’s already May, any interested males would be long gone by now.”

  “So I guess we’re back to B-17,” Evie said. “For whatever mysterious reason, she must have gone hunting in Marvin’s enclosure.”

  “If that’s true, then it would have to be a really good reason to bring her in there,” Vishal said, pointing at the zoo map.

  CHAPTER

  6

  “Marvin’s exhibit is right next to Thandie’s exhibit, isn’t it?” Vishal asked.

  Sophia’s eyes glowed. “And Thandie is the zoo’s female bobcat! There’s no way B-17 would get that close to another female!”

  “That still doesn’t explain the print near the pool, though,” Evie said.

  “But it does prove that it wasn’t B-17 who left it,” Sophia said t
riumphantly. “I knew she was innocent!”

  “Then what did happen to Marvin?” Zach asked.

  “I still think it was another bobcat: Mr. X,” Evie said. The others looked at her. “That’s what I’m calling the mystery cat who left the print.”

  “Well, I still think Marvin escaped,” Sophia said. “Let’s go to the zoo and talk to Nikki. Maybe she found some more clues since last night.”

  The group said goodbye to Maggie and Eric and headed outside to where Edgar was waiting in the black SUV.

  A short time later, the four teens knocked on a heavy green door behind Marvin’s exhibit. The door was opened by a short, muscular woman with blond pixie-cut hair and a baseball cap pulled down over swollen, red-rimmed blue eyes. She gave a watery smile when she saw Sophia. “Hey, girl. How’s our favorite volunteer?”

  Sophia gave her a hug and introduced her friends. “Guys, this is Nikki Savoian. She’s Marvin and Thandie’s keeper, and she also takes care of some other animals in this part of the zoo.” She turned to Nikki. “How are you doing?”

  Nikki let out a heavy sigh. “I’m having a pretty rough time, to tell you the truth. I’d be lying if I said I haven’t spent half the morning crying. Marvin was orphaned by poachers; he was only a baby when he came to the zoo, and I hand-raised him. He was still a wild animal, of course, but we were pretty bonded. He would come over to me whenever I entered his enclosure, and take food right out of my hand. Such a sweet, lovable, dopey little guy.” She shook her head. “It breaks my heart to lose him like this.”

  “So you think for sure he was killed by a bobcat?” Zach asked.

  “I don’t see what else could have happened,” Nikki answered. “We found that track in the mud, and there’s no way Marvin could have escaped on his own.”

  “Are you certain?” Sophia asked. “I read that red pandas are pretty amazing at getting out of their exhibits.”

  “Here,” Nikki said. “I’ll show you.” They followed her through the little kitchen and storage building behind the enclosure and waited as she unlocked a metal door that led to a small, concrete vestibule. There was another heavy door in front of them, and chain-link gates to their left and right, each securing a small indoor enclosure with a heat lamp, climbing structures, and cozy perching platforms piled with shavings and old blankets. “This was Marvin’s indoor space; he could come in here if it was too cold outside, the weather was crummy, or it got too hot. Red pandas don’t tolerate heat well, so these are air-conditioned in the summer.” She yanked a chain on a pulley, and up slid a small metal flap near one of the platforms.

  “Oh, cool, it’s like a little doggy door,” Zach said.

  “Unless we needed to keep Marvin contained for some reason, we generally leave these sliders open, and he could come and go as he pleased,” Nikki said, “When I last checked on him yesterday evening right before the event, he was curled up in his nest box outside.” Nikki used her set of keys to unlock the second door, and the kids followed her into the outdoor exhibit.

  Vishal prowled the exhibit, lightly touching the trees and climbing structures that filled it. “Wow. I’ve been in a zoo before, but I’ve never really been in a zoo, if you know what I mean.” He pointed up past the high concrete wall to the walkway above. “So that’s where we were standing last night, right?”

  Nikki nodded. “The enclosure is sunken like this so it can have high walls and the public can still see in. It’s similar to the big cat exhibits you see in a lot of zoos.”

  Sophia ran her hand along the smooth concrete walls. “And Marvin couldn’t scale these?”

  “His claws were pretty sharp, but not that sharp.” She pointed to a line of wire several feet below the wall’s lip. “And we also have electrified wire set up just in case.”

  “But wouldn’t the wire have kept a bobcat out, too?” Sophia asked.

  “It’s supposed to,” Nikki answered, “but cats are quite a bit more agile than red pandas, so it’s hard to know for sure.”

  “And he couldn’t have gotten out through the building?” Sophia asked carefully.

  “Believe me, it’s the first thing I thought of,” Nikki said. “But I always double-check my doors, and I always note it on a clipboard whenever I enter the exhibit.” She opened the inside door and grabbed a clipboard that hung from a nail on the vestibule wall. She pointed to the recent entries, dated and timed from the night before. “One of the other keepers had to help prep for the event last night, so I took care of the animals on her string before I finished up with mine. I didn’t get to Marvin’s enclosure until 7:32 p.m., when I gave him his dinner and his vitamin supplements.” She pointed to two timed and dated boxes at the end of the line, both checked off. “The first mark confirms that the door was locked before I entered the exhibit, and I ticked the second one off after I left the exhibit and locked the door behind me.” She pointed to the lower part of the page with handwritten notes. “I noted here that he was lethargic and didn’t seem very interested in his dinner yet, so that’s why I came back to look in on him again after the event. I was worried he might be ill. But instead he was gone.”

  Sophia tried to hide her disappointment. “So it seems pretty unlikely that he could get out?”

  Nikki’s eyes grew wet. “Believe me, I would give anything to find out that Marvin had gotten out, because it would mean that we could find him again and bring him home.” She shrugged helplessly. “But I know Marvin, and I just don’t think he would have been able to escape, even if he’d wanted to.” She blinked away tears and sighed as she bent down to pick up a few stray bits of debris that littered the sand floor of the exhibit. The kids could hear the forced lightness in her voice as she changed the subject. “This is one of the downsides of an exhibit like this. I’m always having to pick up trash that ends up in here. I don’t know whether it gets dropped by accident or on purpose, but every time I look, there’s always more.”

  “We can help you clean up,” Sophia said.

  “Thanks,” Nikki said. “We used to have more groundskeepers to help out, but ever since the most recent round of budget cuts, we’ve had to do more and more on our own.”

  Evie picked up a few wrappers and an empty water bottle. “Wow, is that all from today?”

  “Some of it could be from yesterday. I had to help the staff prep the education animals for the dinner last night, so I was planning to clean and rake Marvin’s exhibit when I came back. When I discovered that he was missing, cleaning the enclosure was the last thing on my mind.”

  “When did you realize he was gone?”

  “At about nine fifteen. I always check the animals on my string before I leave for the night, to make sure everyone’s healthy and where they should be.” She bent over and grabbed a crumpled brown paper napkin near the wall.

  Vishal picked up an empty Tupperware container. “This doesn’t look like trash. Do you keep Marvin’s food in here or something?”

  Nikki inspected it. “I do keep treats for him in plastic containers, but this isn’t the brand I use.” She sniffed the inside. “And this smells like raw meat. Marvin is technically a carnivore, but a red panda’s diet is almost exclusively bamboo. I’ve seen him catch an occasional bird or squirrel in his exhibit sometimes, but we don’t feed him meat as a part of his regular diet.” She handed it back to Vishal. “Someone must have dropped it in here by accident.”

  The kids followed her back into the building to throw the trash away. “Thanks for helping out today,” Nikki said.

  “If you ever need us to come again, we’d be happy to,” Evie said. “It’s kind of fun picking up the trash and knowing that we’re keeping the animals safe.

  Nikki walked the group back out to the front of the exhibit. “Well, believe me, it is always appreciated.” She pointed to the litter on the ground outside the exhibit’s wall. “There’s a reason I work with animals instead of people. I mean, the trash can is right over there. Why can’t people just use it?”

  “Hang on a
sec,” Sophia said. “Can you take me back inside again? There’s something I need to get.”

  CHAPTER

  7

  Sophia emerged from the red panda building a few moments later, carrying the plastic container that Vishal had found. She waved goodbye to Nikki and returned to her friends. “What’s with that?” Vishal asked, gesturing to the container.

  Sophia pointed at the litter on the ground outside the exhibit. “See that ‘FREE MARVIN’ pamphlet? I think I know who left it, and I think this Tupperware was part of their scheme! Come on!”

  Sophia’s mouth was set in a grim line, and she strode purposefully toward the zoo’s exit, the others trotting to keep up with her. “Where are we going?” Zach asked.

  “To catch a thief,” Sophia answered.

  Back at the zoo entrance, Sophia jabbed an accusing finger to where Jersey Sinclair stood pushing pamphlets at passersby. “I’ll bet you anything Jersey left those pamphlets by Marvin’s enclosure. And if she wants to free him that badly, what’s to stop her from kidnapping him herself?”

  The others looked thoughtfully at the activist. Her dirty blond hair was piled in a messy bun on top of her head, and she wore a bright-green tank top and a long, wrinkled peasant skirt. Her arms were tattooed and wiry, and her feet were shoved into scuffed rubber clogs. When a man refused to take a flyer from her, she picked up her electronic megaphone and shouted something into it, making him jump.

  “That does make a lot of sense,” Zach said. He turned to the others. “What do you guys think?”

  Vishal nodded slowly. “She could have used that container of meat to lure Marvin into a carrier or something, and then she could have taken him away somewhere.”

  “Definitely,” Evie agreed. “Nikki did say that he always came over to her in the enclosure. He was probably so used to being around people that I bet he would go up to anyone who went in there with food.”