The One Hundredth Thing About Caroline by Lois Lowry Page A

he acknowledged. "You stand at my door and yell, 'If you're taking the toaster apart again I'm buying you a tourist-class ticket to Des Moines!'"
    "Tell you what, Caroline," suggested her mother. "If it turns out that Fred Fiske is taking toasters apart
up there in his apartment, I'll never have dinner with him again. Fair enough?"
    "You never take me seriously," Caroline muttered.
    Her mother came over and kissed the top of her head. She smelled of cologne. "Of course I do. But not when you're being silly. And the thirty-fourth thing I love about you, Caroline, is that you're so silly so often."
    Since it was apparent that her mother was not going to change her mind and stay home, Caroline decided to change the subject. "Mom," she said, "I had a fight with Stacy. I hung up on her when we were talking on the phone yesterday. We didn't speak to each other all day, except for once in gym class, and then all she said was, ' KID SNUBS BEST PAL .' Can I invite her to come for dinner on Sunday?"
    "Sure," said her mother, glancing at her watch. "I have a leg of lamb in the freezer. It'd be fun to have company. We haven't had company for ages."
    "Hey," said Caroline suddenly. "Can I invite somebody else, too? I told my friend Mr. Keretsky that I'd invite him for dinner sometime."
    "I guess so. But you're not trying to cook up a romance, are you?"
    The thought made Caroline giggle in spite of her bad mood. "No," she said. "He's at least seventy years old, I think. Too old even for you."
    "Well, sure. Go ahead and invite him. We'll have
a real dinner party. Shhhh—did you hear a knock?" There was a second knock on the door. "Be polite. Even if it kills you," she whispered as she went to answer it.
    Caroline and J.P. said "How do you do" very politely to Frederick Fiske. Then their mother was gone in a flurry of smiles and the lingering scent of her cologne. She went down the stairs on the arm of the killer.

    Caroline watched through the apartment window until the pair had walked as far as the corner and disappeared from view. J.P. had put his magazine down and was on his feet, pacing.
    "How long do you think they'll be gone?" Caroline asked him.
    He put on his stern, scientific look and calculated in his head. "Twenty minutes to get to the restaurant. Twenty minutes to eat spaghetti. Twenty minutes to come home. They'll be gone an hour. Five minutes longer if they have dessert."
    Caroline sighed. Sometimes, for all his high IQ, her brother was a moron. "J.P.," she pointed out, "this is a
date.
It isn't a speed-eating contest. They won't be home till ten, I bet. Maybe even eleven."
    "Well, I don't know what they can do all that time in an Italian restaurant. I could eat
two
orders of spaghetti in twenty minutes. But I hope you're right. That gives me plenty of time." J.P. started looking through the pockets of his corduroy pants.
    "What
exactly
are you going to do? No hot wires; remember, you promised while Mom was getting dressed."
    Her brother was holding his Swiss Army knife, his bus pass, tweezers, some paper clips, and the tiny screwdriver he used every time he took the toaster apart. "I'm just going to collect evidence. I can get his door open using the knife and the bus pass. I always open our door that way when I lose my keys."
    "You'll need gloves so you won't leave fingerprints."
    "Right." J.P. went to the closet in the hall, poked around, and came back wearing thick knitted mittens. "These won't work," he said in disgust. "They're like
paws.
"
    "Here, try these." Caroline brought her mother's rubber gloves from under the kitchen sink. J.P. put them on. They were huge and bright turquoise. "Gross," he muttered.
    "One more thing," he said. "Get me some envelopes. I'll need them to put the evidence in."
    Caroline went to her mother's desk and took out three envelopes. J.P. took them awkwardly in his rubber gloves, folded them, and stuffed them into his back pocket.
    "What if you find
big
evidence?" asked Caroline