Mystery in Arizona (2 page)

“That’s right,” Honey agreed. “The boys feel the same way about her, so even if we do get invited nobody will want to accept.”

Trixie couldn’t help laughing. “You two are a riot,” she said, “talking over my head just as though I were somewhere else. And don’t be silly. Of course you’ll go without me and have a grand time. I won’t mind being left behind,” she finished bravely, “because it’s my own fault.”

They brought their laden trays to a large table which had just been vacated by a group of lofty seniors. Jim and Brian had jobs in the cafeteria kitchen and usually ate their lunch there. But Mart joined the girls in a few minutes. He quickly scanned their faces.

“Any news?” he asked Di hopefully.

She shook her head.

“Well,” he said cheerfully, “no news is good news. I always say that optimism and anticipation are the spice of life.”

Mart, who wore his blond hair in a crew cut, was forever using big words, often to Trixie’s annoyance. She secretly envied his vocabulary which made it easy for him to write compositions. She could never think of a word to put on paper, let alone spell and punctuate properly.

He nudged Trixie with his elbow. “Why so glum, dopey?”

Trixie glared at him. “You know why. Don’t pretend you weren’t eavesdropping yesterday when Miss Jones was talking to Moms and Dad.”

Mart quirked his sandy eyebrows. “Eavesdropping is hardly the correct word to use when describing the unavoidable overhearing of your loud moans and groans when you saw Miss Jones’s car turn into our driveway. Since she is your guidance counselor, it did not take me long to put two and two together and arrive at the conclusion that you are flunking your two weakest subjects, mathematics and the English language.”

“Oh, stop it,” Trixie stormed. “I’m not really flunking anything. Miss Jones said that if I worked hard for the next few weeks I could get high marks in the midyears. So I’ll just have to study hard.”

Mart raised one finger impressively. “Ah, there’s the rub. Study hard. I fear the sad truth is that you do not know how to study at all, let alone industriously. I have frequently observed you when you are about to attack a problem which will involve reducing several fractions to the lowest common denominator. Instead of concentrating on the task before you, you chew the eraser on your pencil and gaze out of the window or off into space.” He spread his hands. “Now I ask you, is that studying?”

“Oh, be quiet,” Trixie shouted. “That is
not
studying and it is
not
the way I study, either. And in case you’re interested, the problem that almost drove me crazy last night had nothing to do with fractions. It was a nightmare, I tell you. All about trains leaving at the same time from two different places on a single track.” She pulled her blue cardigan up and around her face, shuddering.

Mart snorted. “Well, did you get the right answer?”

“Of course not,” Honey put in loyally. “And I don’t blame her for not trying. It was a scary sort of problem. Just thinking about that awful collision gave me a nightmare, too.”

“I didn’t even try to understand it,” Di admitted. The
girls were all wearing twin sweater sets with matching skirts. Di’s was lavender and, imitating Trixie, she pulled her cardigan up to cover her face. Buttoning the next-to-the-top button over the bridge of her pretty nose, she blinked her violet eyes rapidly. “Groan, groan. As soon as I saw that word single track I knew what kind of a problem to expect so I simply ignored it and went on to the next one.” Still blinking, she continued in her muffled voice, “The next one was worse. Groan, groan,
groan
!”

Mart threw up his hands in disgust. “How dumb can you women get? What was this nightmarish problem anyway?”

Honey giggled. Imitating the others, she masked her face with her yellow cardigan and intoned, “One train was traveling at the rate of forty miles per hour; the other at the rate of fifty miles per hour. And their starting places were one hundred and forty miles apart. Question: What will happen and when?”

Di unmasked her face and narrowed her eyes. “Simple, huh? The next one was even more simple. So simple in fact that I ignored it completely. Any time I see the word single track—”

“For Pete’s sake,” Mart exploded, “single track isn’t a word, dopey. It’s a phrase.”

Di groaned more loudly than ever. “Must we bring
grammar into this horrible conversation? If there is one thing Trixie and I hate worse than math, it’s grammar. Right, Trix?”

“Truer words were never spoken,” said Trixie. “I’m thinking seriously of quitting school until Jim starts the one he plans to have for orphans.”

Di made her eyes even wider. “What kind of a school is he going to have?”

“Lessons,” said Trixie, “will be sandwiched in between outdoor sports. That’s for me. But definitely.”

“Me, too,” agreed Di enthusiastically. “I knew Jim planned to have a school of his own some day but I thought it was just going to be for orphan boys. At least that’s what he told me the last time we talked about it.” She leaned across the table to attract Trixie’s attention. “Has he changed his mind, or something?”

But Trixie wasn’t listening. Redheaded Jim was hurrying toward them, his freckled face flushed with excitement.

“Phone for you, Di,” he called out. “It’s your mother, on the kitchen extension.”

Di fled, and Honey gasped, “Oh, that must mean she’s heard from Mr. Wilson.”

“Let’s keep our fingers crossed,” Jim said and hurried back to the kitchen.

“Fingers and toes,” Mart added. “Wow! Two weeks in the Sunshine City of Tucson. Cowboys, Indians, horses, deserts.” He patted Trixie’s hand paternally. “I pity you, poor little stay-at-home!”

Trixie said nothing; she was too close to tears to speak a word.

And then Di came hurrying back, her lovely face glowing with pleasure. “It’s all settled,” she fairly shouted. “Uncle Monty just telephoned. We leave early Monday morning on a nonstop plane!”

Mart howled. “Monday morning? That means none of us can go. The holidays don’t start until next Friday, a whole week from today!”

“Do we have to leave on Monday?” Honey asked. “Why so early?”

“I don’t understand it myself,” Di said. “But it has something to do with an ancient Mexican Christmas rite called
La Posada
which takes place on Tuesday evening. Uncle Monty wants us to be there a day ahead of time, so that means leaving early Monday morning.” She stared down at her plate. “Mother said I could go and she was so sure your parents would let you all go on Monday, too, that she’s telephoning Dad right now to make the plane reservations.”

Mr. Lynch, like Mr. Wheeler, commuted daily to his office in New York City, but Mr. Belden worked in the Sleepyside bank. “We’d better call your father up right away,” Trixie said to Di, “and tell him not to buy a ticket for me. If you were going to leave on Friday I might do enough homework between now and then to
convince Moms and Dad that I will pass the midyears. But next Monday! I haven’t a prayer.”

“Oh, dear,” Di moaned. “Why did you have to neglect your studies at a time like this, Trix?”

“That’s Trixie for you,” said Mart, shaking his head gravely. “She always does the right things at the wrong times and the wrong things at the right time for making them wronger, if you follow me.”

“We don’t,” Trixie retorted sourly. “And what, may I ask, makes you so sure that
you
will be allowed to leave on Monday? Your own math marks can’t be so good that Moms and Dad will be thrilled at the idea of your skipping five days of school.”

Mart waved his hands airily. “If you had kept awake evenings during the past few weeks you would have learned that Brian, our brainy brother, has been tutoring me in algebra, with the result that I now have attained the heights of an eighty average.”

Trixie flushed. Why hadn’t she stayed awake and studied nights? Why hadn’t she thought of asking Brian for help?

Brian, whose ambition was to become a doctor, really was a brain, and he was so good-natured that no matter how busy he might be he would never refuse to help his younger brother and sister with their homework.

Jim was very good in all subjects and Trixie knew that he would have helped her, too. He liked to teach so much that when he had inherited half a million dollars after his miserly uncle died, he immediately decided to invest it in a boys’ school which he would both own and operate after he finished his own education.

Trixie sighed, thinking,
There is just no excuse for my low marks. I deserve to be left behind on Monday
.

As though she had been reading her mind, Honey said, “I’m not sure Mother and Daddy will want Jim and me to skip five days of school either, Di. I’m afraid we’ll just have to miss that ceremony and go on Friday.”

Di shook her head. “The whole point is that Dad is flying to the Coast on Monday which means he can be with us as far as Tucson. Mother won’t let me go without him.”

Honey frowned. “We could fly out in care of the stewardess, you know.”

“You could, but not me,” Di returned. “My mother is not as sophisticated as yours. She’s scared to death of planes and she won’t even talk about my flying unless Dad goes along.”

“Things are getting more complicated by the minute,” said Mart. “Maybe you’d better call your father,
Di, and tell him not to make any reservations until we’ve talked to our parents.”

“Oh, I can’t do that,” Di wailed. “If he doesn’t make the reservations today it will be too late. Tomorrow is Saturday and—”

The bell rang then and they hurried off to their home rooms. Several times during the afternoon Trixie tried to get a chance to tell Di that she must phone her father and tell him not to reserve a ticket for her, but the opportunity never arose.

After the last class Trixie and Honey went down to the locker room for their coats, but although Di’s locker was in the same row, there was no sign of her.

“Maybe she got out early,” Trixie said, “so she could talk to her mother about it and everything. I—oh, Honey, why didn’t I study hard last month? I just know you’re all going to leave on Monday—all of you except poor me.”

“Oh, Trixie.” Honey squeezed her arm sympathetically. “You mustn’t feel like that about it. And you know perfectly well that even if the others
do
go, I won’t.”

Arm in arm they strolled down to the bus stop where the other Bob-Whites were talking and gesticulating excitedly. Di was in the middle of the group, and
when she caught sight of Honey and Trixie she motioned to them to hurry.

“I skipped the last period because I had study hall,” she called, “but I couldn’t get Dad on the school phone. So I went home and told Mother how some of you felt you couldn’t go on Monday.” As the girls came closer she lowered her voice. “So Mother called Daddy and finally got him, but he’d already bought the tickets. So now we’ll all just have to leave on Monday. Mother and Daddy,” she finished breathlessly, “feel very strongly about it. They think that it would be much better to miss a few days of school than to miss the trip.”

“I feel that way myself,” said Mart cheerfully. “Yes, yes, my dear Miss Lynch, I see eye to eye with your parents.” He spread his hands expressively. “School—what is it? Here today and gone tomorrow. But Arizona—ah, that’s a horse of a different color. To fly out at this time of the year, when all of the East will be blanketed in snow, will be a broadening influence to say the least. And I for one—”

“We know, we know,” Trixie interrupted sourly. “I for one will not be allowed to leave on Monday, and you for two probably won’t be allowed to go then, either.”

Jim stared at her curiously. “What’s the matter with you, Trix?”

“Sounds sort of crazy, doesn’t she?” Brian added. “As though she almost didn’t want to go.”

“I almost don’t,” Trixie replied. “What’s the use of wanting something you know can’t possibly come true?”

“Why shouldn’t it come true?” Brian asked. “You know perfectly well that our parents are going to feel about it just the way Mr. and Mrs. Lynch do—that the trip is more important than the last few days of school when nobody does much work anyway.”

“Of course we’ll all be allowed to leave on Monday,” Jim said to Trixie emphatically. “It’ll be very educational so none of our parents can object.”

“That’s a thought,” Trixie said, brightening. “I have to write a theme before the midyears and I’ve picked as my subject the Navaho Indians. What better place could I write it in than Arizona?” In a low voice she hurriedly told Brian and Jim about the low marks she had been getting in math and English. “So,” she finished dolefully, “even if I promise to study like anything Moms and Dad may not let me go.”

Jim whistled. “Something will have to be done about that. It wouldn’t be any fun without you, Trix.”

“That’s the way we feel about it,” Di and Honey chorused.

“Not me,” Mart teased. “I’m looking forward to a vacation from Trixie. Think of it, men. No mysteries to solve. No crooks to trail to their lairs. No narrow escapes from sudden death. No hair-raising—”

“Oh, stop it.” Trixie pushed past him and boarded the bus. Mart could be very understanding at times, but most of the time he teased her unmercifully. How could he joke when she was so miserable?