Hauntings and Heists (4 page)

(A ?? MYSTERY)

“Everyone already knows I help my parents out at the diner sometimes, even more now that my mom is home a lot with my baby sister, Gwen. We have our regular customers, but we also get a whole bunch of people passing through. Sometimes, the
passers
are really weird.”

“Weirder than you?” Woodrow teased.

Sylvester rolled his eyes and continued. “Today, breakfast was freakishly busy. I was bussing tables, filling water glasses, stuff like that, when I saw a group of regulars crowded around a booth near the front window. My dad was in the back, talking with one of the cooks, so I went over to see what was going on.

“Sitting in the booth were an old woman and a little boy. She looked my grandmother’s age, and he was maybe six or seven, I guess. She wore this long multicolored tunic thing that
draped down to the floor. Around her neck were bunches of shimmery glass beads. She had on these huge bifocal glasses that made her appear bug-eyed. The kid was pretty normal, I guess, except that he sort of looked embarrassed to be there sitting across the table from her. If they were from Moon Hollow, and I don’t think they were, they’d never come into the diner before.

“She was shuffling a deck of cards, and the crowd was getting bigger and bigger. She’d told everyone that her grandson, Louie, could read her mind. The regulars laughed at first but realized she was serious. Even though they didn’t really believe her, everyone was curious to see what she was talking about.”

“Me too,” said Rosie, leaning forward.

“I love card tricks,” Sylvester went on. “Woodrow can tell you that I’m always on the lookout for a new one, so I was probably the most curious of all. But the woman made her eyes even wider and promised that this was no trick. She insisted that Louie was a genuine
psychic.

“She handed the cards to Mr. Lawrence, this big truck driver dude who stops for breakfast every morning. She told him to shuffle. Mr. Lawrence mixed up the cards really well, straightened them out, then handed them back
to her. She put the deck facedown on the table in front of her. I watched her the entire time just to make sure she didn’t try anything funny. Louie looked scared, but she smiled at him and grabbed his hand and didn’t let go, then she took a card from the top of the deck. She kept the card hidden from him, held it in front of her face, then squeezed her eyes shut in concentration.

“Then, really quietly, Louie guessed. ‘Is it the jack of spades, Gramma?’

“The old woman opened her eyes and smiled, showing us the card. Everyone gasped. It
was
the jack of spades.

“Mr. Lawrence grabbed the card from her, examining it closely, and asked her how the heck she’d done it. She only smiled wider, looking like she’d just gotten away with something. ‘We’re psychic,’ she said. ‘I already told you that.’ Then she added, ‘We can do it again. Maybe you’d like to make a wager that we can’t.’

“Mr. Lawrence turned red and said, ‘You got a bet, lady.’ And he pulled out a twenty. ‘But this time, I get to pick the card.’

“'Suit yourself,’ she said. ‘But I still need to hold it, so I can concentrate on sending my psychic waves to Louie here.’

“Mr. Lawrence glanced at Louie. ‘How about you let go of the kid’s hand?’ he said to the old
woman. ‘You might be giving him some sort of message with a squeeze or a tap or something.’

“With a flabbergasted sigh, the woman released Louie’s hand. ‘Is everybody ready now?’ she asked.”

“Weren’t you scared that there would be trouble?” asked Viola.

“Yeah, I was pretty nervous,” said Sylvester. “At that point, I started looking around for my dad, but it was all happening so quickly, I couldn’t find him in time. Mr. Lawrence shuffled the cards, then pulled one from the middle of the deck and handed it to the woman. Again she held it up in front of her face, so that Louie was looking at the back of the card. This time he guessed it was the ace of hearts. Right again.”

“So
weird,”
said Woodrow.

“The crowd went wild. People were insisting that it was just another lucky guess. This made the old woman smile even more. She asked them all to place their bets that he couldn’t do it a third time. But by then, I knew her game.

“Everyone who comes to the diner regularly knows who I am. That’s why it wasn’t hard for me to speak up and tell them all that they’d better not place any more bets. They were destined to lose.”

“Because Louie
was
psychic?” asked Woodrow.

“Absolutely not,” said Sylvester. “It was a trick after all.
How did it work?”

“Her big bifocal glasses were acting like mirrors. Every time she held a card in front of her face, Louie caught a glimpse of it reflected in the glass. That’s how he knew what each card was. He wasn’t psychic at all. And neither was she.

“Well, I knew that if I called her out on it, the regulars would totally freak out. Mr. Lawrence can be pretty scary sometimes. He’d already given the woman twenty bucks. I had to get her and Louie out of the diner quickly—and the best way to do that was to show her that I knew what she was up to. But I had to do it without telling the crowd that they had been fooled.
Do you know how I got the old woman out of the diner without making a scene?”

“I stepped forward and told her to try the trick again without wearing her glasses. She threw me the dirtiest look ever, but I stared her down. She knew she’d been caught. She mumbled something about being late for a meeting. I told her I’d get her bill so she could pay, and this made her even angrier. Scrambling to get up, she left the twenty Mr. Lawrence had bet her on the table. ‘Keep the change,’ she told me. She and Louie were out the door before any of the regulars even knew what had just happened.”

“Ha!” Viola laughed.

“I took the money off the table and tried to hand it back to Mr. Lawrence. He didn’t want to take it, saying she had won it from him fair and square and that my father needed it to pay for the food she ate. I knew there was nothing fair about what she’d done, but instead of arguing, I said okay. Then I slipped the twenty into his pocket when he turned away from me. Just like magic.”

(A ?? MYSTERY)

Thrilled by Sylvester’s excellent powers of observation and persuasion, the group said good night, more determined than ever to pay attention to mysterious events around them.

The first day of school came and went with little fanfare. Rosie was thrilled to learn that her science class would be dissecting earthworms before the end of the year. Sylvester was disappointed that, yet again, he was forced to sit at the front of each of his classes. Woodrow was curious and slightly frightened that some of the girls seemed to be staring at him in the hallways. And Viola tried to be as outgoing as possible without seeming like a weirdo — or a zombie. The night before, she’d briefly thought she’d heard the tapping sounds again. Even though they did not return before morning, she had not slept well.

The four of them all shared a few of the same classes, during which they passed along the message to meet once more in their yards after finishing any homework or chores.

As the sun was setting, they found one another in the usual spot.

“North, South, East, and West,” said Sylvester. “All present and accounted for.”

This time, it was Woodrow’s turn to tell a story.

“This one is more of a puzzle than a mystery, but I still think it fits our game.

“In my gym class this morning, Coach Winslow divided us all up into teams of six and gave each team a Ping-Pong ball. He told us that whichever team could pass the ball to every member of the group fastest would win the contest. We were allowed to toss the ball to each other any way we chose—rolling, bouncing, flicking…. The only rules were that everyone had to touch the ball at least once, and the ball had to move — we couldn’t just hold it in place.

“It seemed simple enough to me. I convinced my team that if we stood in a tight circle with our hands really close, our time would be the fastest.

“When Coach Winslow came over to us with his stopwatch, our time was ten seconds, the fastest in the class. We’d won, I figured, which was
awesome, because you all know I love to win. But then Coach Winslow shook his head. He told us that last year, a team accomplished the exercise in less than a second.

“We all went back to the drawing board, trying to figure out how that speed was possible. No matter how many times we passed the ball around our circle, we couldn’t get it through each of our hands in less than a second. Then, I had an idea that I knew couldn’t fail.
What was it?”

“Since we were all standing so close together, I suggested that we stack our right hands on top of each other, curling our fingers to form a wide tube, as if we were gripping an invisible baseball bat.” The group looked at him with interest.
“So what did we do next?”

“All I had to do to get the ball to pass through all our hands was drop it into the top of the tube. The ball fell to the floor in less than a second.

“And the best part was: We won!”

(A ??? MYSTERY)

“That was great, Woodrow,” said Viola. “I’ve got one too. This happened last night after dinner, and I’ve been saving it up all day just to tell you guys.

“My mom started work at the
Herald
a couple days ago, but she’s already off and running with assignments. One of the pieces she was editing had to do with a missing dog. She knows how much I love trying to figure this stuff out. I used to do it all the time when she wrote for the Crime Beat section of the Philadelphia paper. It’s how I fell in love with mysteries in the first place. Anyway, my mom let me read the new article. This is the gist of it.

“A husband and wife came home from the movies one night to find their Lhasa apso, Foofy, had been stolen. On their kitchen table, someone had left a note. The letters had been cut out of a magazine.”

“That’s so disturbing,” whispered Rosie.

Viola opened her notebook and pulled out a photocopied page. The mishmash of letters formed the note. She passed it to the group, and they read through it carefully.

“Obviously, the husband and wife were upset. They called the police. The cops came to their home, but found no evidence of forced entry. In fact, the dognappers were thoughtful enough to steal all the dog food, Foofy’s water bowl, her leash, and her doggie bed. The couple said that they hadn’t noticed anyone strange hanging around the house, but that Foofy did get plenty of attention at the groomer’s on Main Street and
whenever they brought her to the vet. The police said they would try to track Foofy down, but they really didn’t have much to go on.

“Devastated, the wife contacted the newspaper, asking if they would print her husband’s written response, pleading for help from the community and possibly even the dognappers themselves. This is the husband’s statement.” Viola pulled another folded photocopy from her notebook to show the group. This one was handwritten.

PLEASE RETURN FOOFY SAFELY TO HER TRUE HOME. SHE FRIGHTENS EASILY AND LOVES MY WIFE ESPECIALLY. OUR DOG IS QUITE EXTRORDINARY, AND WE MISS HER. WE WILL EVEN GIVE A SUBSTANTIAL REWARD IF SOMEONE HELPS FIND HER.

“I told my mom I’d have to give it some thought. When I woke up this morning, I read the finished article in the paper. I was instantly certain who had written the ransom note.
Who was it?”

“It was the husband! I told my mother that he was the dognapper and that she should contact the police immediately. Of course, she raised her eyebrows at me, insisting that I couldn’t just go around accusing victims of committing their own crimes. My mom asked me,
‘How can you be so sure?’”

“The ransom note and the husband’s statement both misspelled the same word.
Do you know which word?”

“In both letters, the word ‘extraordinary’ was spelled incorrectly. The first ‘a’ was missing. I only noticed the difference when I compared the handwritten photocopy of the statement to the corrected version of it in the newspaper. The handwritten misspelling leapt out at me. The same person had written both letters. I knew the husband wrote the second letter, so he must have written the first one too.

“When I got home from school today, my mom called me from her office and gave me the scoop. She said she’d contacted the police. They questioned the husband, confronting him with the proof I’d discovered in the ransom note. And he confessed! He said that Foofy had chewed up his slippers one time too many. He’d secretly arranged for the dog to live with another family several towns away. He couldn’t bring himself to tell his wife what he’d done, so he pretended the dog was dognapped.”

“Wow, Viola,” said Rosie, stunned. “That was a full-on, capital-D Detective move!”

“But what’s going to happen to Foofy?” asked Woodrow.

“I’m not sure,” said Viola. “But I think she’s probably going to stay with her new family, at least until the husband and wife can work out their differences.”

Rosie leaned forward, looking nervous. “Does the husband know who told on him? What if he’s mad at you, Viola?”

“He wouldn’t try anything,” Viola said. “Besides, the police wouldn’t have told him anything about me or my mom helping them out.”

At least, she hoped not….

The sun had set. Evening shadows had silently crept across the neighborhood. Frogs still chirped in the trees, but the air had a new chill.

Bang!

Something exploded nearby, and the entire group leapt from the ground. The sound of an old engine raced up the street. Viola remembered her first afternoon in the new house, when she’d heard the noise before. “Just a bad muffler,” she explained. “Whoever that old car belongs to really needs to get it fixed.”

“You can say that again,” answered Woodrow, as they inched away, north, south, east, and west, toward the comfort of their houses. “Good night!”