“What are you doing here?” Grim asked.
Sadie sighed. “Zora wanted to get back some footage these guys stole from her and Artemis at the mine. These jokers pretended they didn’t have it when Rivera asked.”
“But she said she’d look into it,” I added. The fact that Norm was here and not the chief didn’t reassure me, but I still had to try.
Artemis showed up a few minutes later. She came speed walking down the street from the direction of Hillcroft House, wearing a thick cable-knit scarf and cute little ankle boots. She huffed like she’d just finished the Indy Mini. A quick glance at the fans and a wary look at theDMWvan was enoughreassurance for her to hop across the street and join us.
“Hey,” she said. “Are you ready?”
“I figured you’d drive down here,” I said.
“Mom grounded me for, like, three months. No car.”
I doubted that extended to hunting firestarters, unless Aunt Greta was trying to take Artemis’s help away from me to keep her safe. “How’d you get out of the house?”
“I told her I was going to a friend’s to study for the physics midterm.”
“That worked?”
“Why wouldn’t it?”
I glanced at Sadie and Grim, then back at Artemis. “Your mombelievesthe excuses you give her?”
“Of course she does. I don’t lie to her. I’m only doing it now because she’s afraid I’m going to get arrested again.” She paused for a deep breath. “I feel kind of bad about it, actually.”
Sadie elbowed me in the ribs. “Learn something.”
I swatted her away and motioned to theDMWvan. “Let’s go disturb these moles digging around inside Grimmie’s house.”
Artemis trailed after me, but so did Sadie and Grim. I wasn’t super pumped about marching up to this house with the whole Scooby gang in tow, but their presence might mellow Norm a bit. It was only me he had a problem with; a firestarter had once scorched his mailbox and half his front yard, and he still thought I’d done it.
He had his eyes on us as we came up the sidewalk. When we entered the yard, he stormed down the front porch steps.
“You kids need to get on,” he said. “Nothing here for you to see.”
“We don’t want to see anything,” I said. “Did Chief Rivera tell you about our footage?”
“She told me not to let you two near these people while they were in town.” He jabbed a finger at me and Artemis. “I don’t know what made you girls think it was okay to go running around a mine at night, but you’re not getting in this house.”
“No.” I held my hands up. “We’re here for justice. They stole some footage from us last night and lied about it. Chief Rivera said she’d look into getting it back.”
Norm looked from me to Artemis, and Artemis nodded her head quickly. Norm glanced at Sadie and Grim. Then back at me, hard, like he was trying to read my mind.
“You’re telling the truth?”
“Yes, sir.”
Norm leaned back and puffed up his chest. In my dealings with the Addamsville Police Department, I had learned many things about Norman Newall, but perhaps the three most important were these:
1. He was a cop of Addamsville, not Harrisburg or Indianapolis or anywhere else, and his loyalty was to the people who lived here,
2. He had a righteous and endearingly pure need to bring justice to those who have been wronged,
And
3. He likes you a lot better when you call him “sir.”
“Wait here,” he said, heading toward theDMWvan. Then he stopped and looked at us again. “And when I say ‘here,’ I meanright here.Do not move, you understand me?”
