Randi Rhodes Ninja Detective – The Sweetest Heist in History

What would Glenn Street do? Randi asked herself as she pedaled down the gravel road that ran beside the river and led to her house. Glenn Street was the heroine of the world-famous detective novels that her dad, Herb Rhodes, one wrote. She was a karate-kicking, wisecracking private eye – and everything Randi dreamed of being. Glenn Street was the one who’s inspired Randi to become a detective. Randi had taken on her first case the same day she’d finished her first Glenn Street novel. A band of delinquents had been smashing car windows in her old neighborhood in Brooklyn. Randi had filmed them in action – and then anonymously e-mailed the video to the police.

What would Glenn Street do? As much as she hated to admit it, Randi knew that the answer was obvious. Glenn Street would never in a million years set foot in a place like Deer Creek, Tennessee.

Fortunately, there was a single ray of sunshine breaking through Randi’s dark mood. It was Saturday night, and Thanksgiving break would begin on Tuesday. That’s when she and her dad were heading to Brooklyn. Randi’s aunt Gigi had been working overseas for the past year. But now she was back in New York, and she had invited the Rhodes family to stay with her over the long weekend. Randi had been looking forward to the trip for months. Her mother’s younger sister, Gigi, was fun, energetic, and just a little it crazy – the perfect aunt, in other words. She’d already promised to take Randi to visit the dinosaurs at the Museum of Natural HIstory, the mummies at the Brooklyn Museum, and the criminals at the Museum of the American Gangster.
But the trip wasn’t just a holiday for Ranid. Brooklyn was where her mother was buried, and it had been almost six months since Randi had visited her grave. She had so much to tell her mom. About her new life and new friends. About the cases she’d solved and the Miss Catfish crown that she’d won. Randi wished more than anything that she could have one last afternoon with her mom. She daydreamed about walking past the old house on Bergen Street and finding her mother waiting on the stoop to greet her. Sometimes Randi missed her so badly that her whole body hurt.

Randi hit the brakes at the end of her driveway, sending a spray of gravel into the bushes. The lights in the house were blazing. Randi checked her watch. It was almost eight thirty. She was exactly two hours late for dinner. As she climbed the stairs to the front door, she prepared herself for the lecture she was bound to receive.