Free Moxie and the Art of Rule Breaking by Erin Dionne

didn’t have 600 other life-or-death-or-art things on my mind.
    “I know this guy! Well, not in real life,” he amended. “He’s GI Goh—one of the best cachers in the city. And he only leaves one army guy in each cache. It means I got here first.”
    “Nice!” I high-fived him again. “You are so good at this.”
    “I like hunting for stuff. Why’re you over here?” he said. He patted the army guy, then tucked him into the cargo pocket with the GPS and buttoned the flap.
    I shrugged. “Just thinking and walking.”
    “Back to our real-life treasure hunt, huh?” he said. “I wish he’d left coordinates somewhere, like in a geocache.”
    “That’d be so easy!” I laughed at the thought of Grumps plotting his hiding places on graph paper, like one of Ollie’s drawings.
    “Well,” he said, “it’s not a crazy idea. I mean, he had to keep track of things somehow, right?”
    “Probably.” I sighed and plopped down on a nearby bench. “I just don’t know what to do next to figure it out,” I said.
    Okay, I whined.
    Tick-tick-tick…
    “Bust out that math problem,” Ollie suggested. “Can’t hurt.”
    Good point. I tugged the proof out of my back pocket.
Think logically, Moxie.
    “We’ve established that a lot of the art was big, probably heavy, and they’d have to take it out of the museum in two trips,” I said.
    “The thieves would have had to meet Grumps to give him the stuff,” Ollie added helpfully. “Unless you think they brought it to your house or whatever?”
    “No way. Grumps wouldn’t bring anything like that to our house. Too dangerous.” At least, that’s what the Grumps I
thought
I knew would do. But seriously, did I have any idea? I filed that away. We
did
have an awful lot of closets in our house…
    “So he would’ve met them somewhere,” said Ollie. “And once he saw the art…”
    My brain was finally in gear. “He’d see what he was dealing with and have to figure out where to hide all of it.” I scribbled
Size of pieces determine hiding places
in the statements column, and under reasons, added
Many sizes, shapes, and materials to consider.
    “By the next morning, everyone in the city was looking for it,” I mused. “Depending on when the thieves called Grumps—right after the robbery, or the next day—he wouldn’t have much time to plan.”
    “Unless he was in on it from the beginning, and already worked out the hiding places.”
    “If that’s the case, we’ll
never
find them,” I said. “They could be anywhere in New England.” I groaned.
    “Wait, though. That can’t be right,” said Ollie.
    “Why not?”
    “Think about it: If Grumps had time to plan where he was going to put the pieces, chances are he’d have to run the hiding places by Sully Cupcakes—or whoever was in charge—first.And we wouldn’t be here. My guess is that they freaked out at the reaction that the theft caused, and panicked…”
    “And then they went to Grumps!” We slapped hands. “I’m pickin’ up what you’re laying down, Ols.”
    Under statements:
Thieves panicked, went to Grumps to hide art.
Reasons:
Surprised by intense reaction; don’t know where paintings are.
    “So Grumps probably wouldn’t have had a lot of time to figure out good hiding places,” I said. My hands were sweating, heart racing. We were so totally onto something!
    “And he would’ve picked places he was already familiar with!” Both of us said it at the same time, and—I’ll admit it—I squealed like Jolie Pearson when she sees a
darling
accessory.
    I couldn’t sit down anymore. I paced in front of the bench. “So now it’s just a matter of narrowing down the right places,” I said. A gaggle of moms pushed squeaky strollers past us.
    “Which is kind of what we’ve had to do from the beginning,” Ollie pointed out. “We need a list of the places in town where he worked.”
    I was about to scowl at him, but then it hit me:
    “We might have everything we need right in our