15
When I return to the room, Baggy and Ruthie are awake and beginning to move. I give them each a jar of the magic jelly with a brief explanation of the morning’s events. Baggy is slightly bummed to learn that Kai’s brown-bag dealings at the bar are not something seedier, but her eyes light up when she tells Ruthie and I about her latest scheme.
She confides to us that she and Howie are going on a top-secret sting operation to catch a jewelry thief at the Marriott a few hotels down the beach. “Howie?” Ruthie and I ask in unison, looking at each other to see if we had missed something important.
“Oh, Howard is Jim’s real name,” Baggy tells us, as if that explains everything. When we continue to look perplexed, she adds, “He only uses Jim—his code name—when he is undercover on super-secr
