Poison Frog Mystery (7 page)

“And the thief wouldn’t dare tell the truth,” Jessie continued. “Painful or not, the thief would have to keep quiet.”

“I had a skin rash once,” Benny added. “It sure hurt!”

“How’d that happen?” Lindsey asked.

“Poison ivy,” Benny told her. “It was all over me, and it itched like crazy. I think I got it from playing with Watch in the woods.” Benny looked over at his beloved dog. “He didn’t get it? though.”

Everyone laughed. “Dogs don’t get rashes from poison ivy,” Jessie said. “Right, Lindsey?”

“Nope. They’re very lucky that way. So did you have to go to the hospital, Benny?”

Henry said, “No, we just took him to Dr. Hughes’s office.”

“And he gave Benny a shot?” Lindsey asked.

“No. He wrote a prescription for this really strong cream. We had to go to the drug store to g—”

Henry stopped in midsentence. He and Lindsey looked at each each other.

“Hey!” he said.

“Hey!” she said back.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he asked.

“I think so,” Lindsey said.

Grandfather smiled. “I think I am, too.”

“Me, too!” Jessie said.

“And me,” Violet added.

Benny, who suddenly felt left out, cried, “I don’t know what anyone’s talking about!”

“Sorry, Benny!” Henry said. “The drugstore! That might be the answer! If the thief had a rash and didn’t want anyone to know about it, he or she could go to a drugstore to get medicine.” Henry looked around at the others. “That’s what you were all thinking, right?” Everyone nodded.

“Oh,” Benny said. “I get it.”

Lindsey got up, full of energy again. “So where do we start?” she asked. “There must be half a dozen drugstores in this area.”

“I guess we might as well start with the closest one,” said Grandfather. “That would be Donovan’s on the village square.”

The Aldens and Lindsey drove to Donovan’s Drugstore in the center of Greenfield and spoke with Mrs. Donovan, the pharmacist there. They did not want to ask personal questions about her customers, so they asked in a general way about how a serious rash might be treated without a doctor’s prescription.

“Well,” she said, “there are a lot of strong creams on the market nowadays. Used to be you’d need a prescription for them.” She went on to name a few of the most popular brands. “As a matter of fact,” she offered, “I recall a young man came in today and bought three different creams. He had a nasty rash. Said it was poison ivy, but it didn’t look like poison ivy to me.”

Lindsey and the Aldens stood very still for a moment, not believing their good luck.

“You said he was a young man?” Grandfather asked.

“Yes, a polite young man,” Mrs. Donovan continued. “On the thin side. I remember him because he wore a Boston Red Sox cap and they’re my favorite team. That, and he had the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen.”

At this last remark, Lindsey looked sharply at James Alden.

“Are you children working on some kind of research project?” Mrs. Donovan asked.

“Sort of,” Henry answered, “and I promise when we are done with it, we will tell you all about it. But right now we’re kind of in a hurry.”

The Aldens and Lindsey thanked Mrs. Donovan for her help and left the store. As soon as they were out on the sidewalk, the Aldens turned to Lindsey.

“Well, I guess that rules out Beth,” said Henry.

“And our suspect with the bright shirts,” said Benny. “He definitely was not skinny.”

“Does the young man Mrs. Donovan described sound familiar?” Grandfather asked Lindsey.

“Yeah, I think he does,” Lindsey said. “I don’t remember his name, but I remember his blue eyes and the baseball cap. I think we still have his file at the office. We keep records of all our employees, both past and present. I’ll check into it first thing in the morning. I assume you guys will be with me?”

“We wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Henry assured her.

The Aldens sat in Lindsey’s office the next morning, watching her at her desk as she flipped through a set of files. Bright beams of sunlight slanted through the window, and sparrows chirped in the trees outside.

“Here it is,” she said, pulling out one folder and setting the rest aside. “Brian Grady. I am sure of it now.”

She opened the folder and laid it flat on her desk. The Aldens gathered around.

As soon as Benny saw the picture of Grady attached to the first page, he gasped.

“I wasn’t sure by what Mrs. Donovan said, but now I’m positive,” Benny said. “I’ve seen him before!”

“You have?” Jessie asked.

“Yeah, in the Reptile Range. He was there a few days ago! I’m sure it was him! He was wearing a Red Sox hat!”

“That’s his favorite team,” Lindsey said. “I remember he talked about them a lot. The Red Sox and animals, his two great loves.”

“What do you think he was doing in the Reptile Range?” Violet asked.

“Probably getting some ideas as to which animals he would take next,” Lindsey guessed.

“And he used to work here?” Jessie asked.

Lindsey nodded. “Yes, but only for a few months. He cared a great deal about the animals, but he wasn’t a very good keeper. That’s why we had to let him go. He kept forgetting to feed certain animals or clean their cages. Some of the other keepers had to do a lot of his work for him. He was very absentminded.”

Henry said, “Wow, just like with the rings on the cages. He forgot about those, too.”

“Exactly,” Lindsey agreed. “We gave him the normal ninety-day trial period, but after that we had to replace him. He was very sad, I remember, but not mad or anything like that.”

She looked back down at the file, read a few lines, then smiled. “Says here he lives on Pittman Avenue.”

Violet’s eyes widened. “That’s near Donovan’s Drugstore!”

Lindsey nodded. “You got it. Kids, I think we’ve caught our thief!”

“Yes!” Benny said triumphantly.

Lindsey looked at his picture again, then shook her head. “He wasn’t a great animal keeper, but he was a nice person. I never would’ve figured him for a criminal.” Then she added, “Well, at least we know now that it wasn’t Beth.”

“I’ll bet she was conducting a little investigation of her own when I saw her sneaking around the Bird Barn,” Henry said.

Lindsey nodded. “You’re probably right.”

“So what do we do now?” Jessie wondered.

“I think it’s time to call the police,” Lindsey said. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

“We’ve certainly got enough evidence to make him a prime suspect,” Henry said.

“Yes, we certainly do,” Lindsey replied. She reached over and picked up the phone. “Okay, here goes.”

She began tapping in the numbers, but before she finished, a new voice said, “There’s no need for you to do that, Ms. Taylor.”

Everyone turned, then froze in complete surprise.

Standing in the doorway, holding a big plastic bag containing the missing poison-arrow frogs in one hand and a bucket containing the Wyoming toad tadpoles in another, was Brian Grady. There were white gauze bandages wrapped around his hands, and he looked miserably unhappy.

His voice was shaky. “I can’t do this anymore,” he said. “I feel just awful about what I’ve done.” He crossed the room and handed the bag to Lindsey. The frogs and toad tadpoles appeared to be in good health and color. “Here, put these back where they belong, please.”

“How’s the rash?” Lindsey asked first.

“It’s getting better, slowly. But it doesn’t hurt half as much as thinking about what I’ve done.”

“Yeah, well, you’re lucky, Brian. These are the Aldens, and they’re just about the best young detectives in the world. Another few hours and they would’ve caught you anyway, with the help of the local police. Now, what do you know about the condors and the ferrets?”

“I ... I don’t ... they’re not with me anymore,” he replied, almost choking on the words.

“What do you mean?” Lindsey asked. She sounded angry. “It would be best if you told us what’s been going on. You’re not in a very good spot right now.”

Brian was nodding. “Yes, yes, I know. Of course I’ll tell you everything.” He sat down and buried his face in his bandaged hands.

“Okay” he began after a long breath, “here’s the whole thing from the start. A few weeks ago I received a call from some guy. He didn’t say his name, and his voice didn’t sound familiar. He asked me if I wanted to make some good money doing work with animals. Of course I was interested. He sort of laughed and said, ‘I figured you would be.’ The funny thing is, I hadn’t had a job in almost two months and I was getting low on cash, so he called at just the right time. I was falling behind on my bills. I think I would’ve done just about any work at that point, but when this guy mentioned animals, I thought it was a dream come true.”

“So ...”

“So then he started talking about the breeding program, said he’d been following it in the newspapers. He said he knew I used to work here, but that I’d been ... well, fired. I don’t know how he knew. I guess he must’ve visited a few times and seen me here, then visited again and realized I was gone.”

“So what else did he say?” Henry asked.

“He wanted to know if I could still get into the zoo. You know, with the keys. I said no, I had to give my set back when I left. He asked if I’d made any copies, and I told him I hadn’t. By this point I was getting a little nervous. His questions were kind of ... I don’t know, weird.”

“But you kept talking to him anyway,” Jessie pointed out.

Brian nodded and looked down shamefully. “Yeah. Like I said, I was in a tight spot for money.”

“What happened next?”

“Well, he didn’t seem to be too bothered by the fact that I didn’t have keys. He said, ‘Oh, I was just wondering.’ Then he finally got to the point—he wanted to know if I’d be willing to take some of the animals from the zoo. I said, ‘You mean steal them?’ I was shocked, really. I just couldn’t believe it. But he said, ‘Yes, steal them. Would you do that?’ I told him no, I wouldn’t. And I meant it, too. But then he said, ‘Not even for five hundred dollars per animal?’ ”

Brian looked back up helplessly. “I still didn’t want to do it, but ... five hundred bucks is a lot to me. It would help me out a great deal. So I agreed.”

“How was everything arranged?” Henry cut in.

“The guy said I should go out to that little park on the other side of town. You know the one? Over by Gallagher’s Pond?”

Benny said, “Sure, we bring Watch over there all the time. He’s our dog.”

Brian smiled a little. “The guy said I should look for a large rock underneath a fir tree about a hundred feet from the pond’s footbridge. Behind it there would be a plastic bag containing some keys and a note. It wasn’t hard to find. There’s only about ten fir trees in the whole park, and only one has a big boulder at the base.”

“What did the note say?” Lindsey asked.

“It told me which animals I was supposed to take, and which building they were in.”

Jessie said, “And what about the keys?”

“They were copies,” Brian told her. “I’m sure of it. Each one was brand-new; the teeth were real sharp.”

“Did the note say anything else?”

Brian nodded. “It said that once I opened one of the cage locks, I should—”

“Beat it up to make it look as though you’d broken it open?” Jessie asked.

“How did you know that?” Brian wondered.

“We figured it out on our own,” Henry replied.

“I told you, they’re great detectives,” Lindsey reminded him.

Brian nodded. “Wow, I guess so. Well, the note said to do that, and that I had to return the keys, along with the animals, each time. I was supposed to leave the animals behind the same rock, always at some time during the night. The note said I should then leave immediately, and that if I hung around to see who’d pick them up, I’d be very sorry.” He shivered. “I didn’t like the sound of that.”

“When you left the animals, was the money waiting for you?” Jessie asked.

“Yes. I just took it and ran. I really wasn’t interested in finding out who would come to take the animals. I know this sounds hard to believe, but I wanted nothing more to do with that person.”

“And that was it?”