THE NOSE AND HIS PERFUME

Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine: The Shipping Tunnel

The next morning, the twins woke up later than everyone else. As they straggled to the kitchen, poured themselves juice, and sat down at the table, they saw Penny was already poking at a bowl of oatmeal, while Mrs. V frantically rummaged through drawers and combed through the clutter on the kitchen counters.

“I lost my keys,” Mrs. V said to the twins, looking in the freezer. “I looked everywhere.”

Bunny was about to confess they took them, when Beau kicked her under the table, and she inhaled her juice and coughed too hard to say anything.

“Where did you last have them?” Beau casually asked Mrs. V.

“I thought I left them on the table by the front door. The Nose called. Someone broke into the basement last night. Now my keys are gone. After all the fuss Mr. Hartford made about security.”

Mrs. V did have a bad habit of misplacing her keys when she was busy and now reasoned that anyone might have picked them up, hidden in the store until after it closed, and broken in.

“No one is allowed in the basement anymore without Mr. Hartford’s security. That means you too. This is serious,” Mrs. V sharply told the twins. “Whoever broke in might come back. They might be dangerous.”

Mrs. V worriedly glanced at her watch.

“We’ll look for your keys,” Beau offered.

Mrs. V thanked him and hurried off to work. Penny abandoned her oatmeal and began looking for Mrs. V’s keys. Bunny got up to help. Knowing Beau was about to ask her why she was looking for the keys when they knew perfectly well where they were, Bunny pointedly nodded at Penny, who of course had no idea they were the ones who had taken them.

“Where did you go last night?” Penny asked.

Unsure how to answer, Bunny glanced at Beau.

“Did you forget about me? People usually do.”

“Did you put stuff in our beds to make it look like we were still here?” Beau asked. 

“Yeah. The Varshavskys got up in the middle of the night. I didn’t want them to find out you snuck out.”

Bunny pulled Beau aside.

“Do you think we should tell her?” Bunny whispered.

“Tell me what?” Penny asked.

“We weren’t talking about you,” Bunny said. “We were talking about you, but it wasn’t anything bad. I swear.”

Bunny looked to Beau, and he shrugged, indicating they might as well tell Penny now.

“Look, if we tell you something, can you promise not to tell anyone?”

“Yeah.”

Bunny divulged how they stole Mrs. V’s keys, snuck into the Nose’s workshop, and escaped getting caught when they discovered the old, abandoned subway station under the store.

“J-F told us before that there’s supposed to be secret passages and tunnels and stuff in the basement. Who knew there was a whole abandoned subway station under the store?”

Beau told Penny how Bunny lost the keys when she fell into the subway tracks.

“Don’t worry, I don’t think there’s any trains anymore,” Bunny said, in response to Penny’s horrified look. “The subway station is abandoned. I don’t think anyone’s been in it for like a hundred years.”