Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief: Chapters 7–12

“This has gone on long enough! This building is government- subsidized for senior citizens—not entire families! If your grandmother thinks she can get away with
 having you live here at the government’s expense, she’s got another think coming!”

She opens the door, pries out my bubble gum, and shakes it in my face.

“Oh, baloney! Oh, baloney and hogwash!”

I rummage through a drawer until I find a roll of masking tape.

They don’t look like they’re in any kind of order to me, but if you ask Hudson a question he doesn’t know the answer to, he’ll mosey into his library and in no time he’ll have a book that’ll give him the answer.

And just as he’s starting to look at me like, Okay, Samantha. Out with it, his dachshund, Rommel, comes hobbling onto the porch dragging something with him.

“Elyssa mentioned something about them visiting her aunt this week, so I have a hunch they’re not home, but let’s go down to the Keltners’ and check anyway.”

Now the McKenzes’ living room is glass. Nothing but glass. Glass tables, glass shelves with little glass figurines, glass lamps, even glass chairs. And sitting there in one of those dainty glass chairs is Officer Borsch, looking like an elephant trying to squeeze into a fishbowl.

I start rubbing the hair on the other side of my head, trying to act casual, but the whole time I’m wondering why in the world Marissa’s pulling funny faces and jerking her arm back and forth like she is.

Marissa’s room is more like a fancy hotel suite than a bedroom. She’s got two beds, a window seat full of teddy bears, and her very own bathroom.

Finally he rings me up and says, “Get out of here, would you? I don’t need juvenile delinquents hanging around my store.”

“Um...I don’t know...I guess I was hoping that maybe they’d found out something more about...”
“The jerk who stole my money? No chance. Not with that buffoon in charge.”

That’s the way we divide up the space surrounding Earth. There are twelve houses, and each one represents a sphere of human life.

“For instance, the first one is the house of Aries and Mars. It reveals personality and psychological motivation, whereas, say, the sixth house—Virgo and Mercury—is related to health, diet, and exercise.”

This line is a cusp. It separates one astrological sign from another. The ascendant is the degree of the zodiac rising over the eastern horizon at the moment of birth.

You need a birth certificate. Gotta have it. You can’t just guess ’cause even if you’re only a few minutes off, by the time you’re done making all the conversions into sidereal time your whole chart’ll be off.

Same with the place of birth. If the latitude and longitude are off, well, forget it.

I’ve got to finish writing in the glyphs, draw in the midheaven, position the sun and the moon and the planets.

“Haven’t you ever gone behind one of those ‘Employees Only’ doors?”
“No...”
“They’ll take you straight to the roof.” Gina laughs. “And here I thought you were an anarchist.”

I cleaned the lenses, scrawled Grams a note, then headed for the mall.

I ran around a bit, peeking over the edge of the roof wall; then I cut through a bunch of fans that looked like the top of some Saudi sheik’s palace and went over to the other side.

She takes her glasses off and starts buffing them, holding them up to the light, then buffing them some more.

“I’ll agree he’s a very knowledgeable man, but frankly I find him to be an insufferable flirt.”

“An insufferable flirt? Hudson?”

He was saying, “Yes, ma’am, I’m aware of that, but your neighbor insists that she’s the one who left the note and it’s my duty to follow up. It is a threat, you know.”