The Great Circus Train Robbery (12 page)

Most of the filed documents were dull and boring: insurance claims where somebody had run into Boomer’s car, old passports and visas, an award for some engineering project. A packet of letters held together with an elastic band from Boomer’s mother, Willow. Now
that
was interesting.

The earliest letters were dated 1961 when Boomer would have been—how old? (Math wasn’t her forte.) Somewhere around eight or nine or ten, she decided.
Dear Juniper,
the letter read,

I
hope you ‘re enjoying scout camp. Daddy and I have been well and hope you are too. When you come home at the end of summer, you’ll see we’ve a surprise for you. Photo enclosed.
The black-and-white photo showed a scrawny boy with a mop of dark curly hair, a sparkle in the eye (or was it the sun?) and huge eyes with long lashes. He was stooping over an electric train. The back of the photo read
Hackberry, age 12.

He couldn’t be her birth son, Zoe figured—not sprung full-grown like that. Mrs. Hackberry called him a brother, but Zoe bet he was a foster kid the mother had decided to take in. She skimmed the rest of the letters from that summer and the next. They were full of Hackberry: how cute and smart the boy was, how full of tricks—
a regular gymnast and always hiding things in his rail cars
—
you wouldn’t believe what things—so sweet! Like plastic rings, marbles, once a thimble of mine I used to sew with. Naughty thing!

“It was clear she doted on this kid,” Zoe told Spence when he scrambled up with a banana for the monkey that she grabbed for herself.

“Hey!” Spence said.

“Well, that creature ate my apple. Do you want me to starve?
He
looks well fed!” Which was true, for Mrs. Riley had developed a soft spot for Sweet Gum and was feeding him peanuts, carrots and bananas. She’d even made a cozy bed for him in the garage. But wouldn’t let him in her clean house, of course.

“And he liked trains and hid things inside them,” she said, looking at Spence.

“Yeah?” Spence sucked in his cheeks. He was sitting, cross-legged, in cut-off-jeans and a fuchsia-dyed T-shirt with a sketch of a train that said
ALL Aboard for Circus Land.
He’d found the shirt on his front porch, as “compensation” the note said, for the bicycle the dwarf had “borrowed.”

“I wonder what Juniper thought about the new kid,” Zoe said. “I mean, here he was stuck in some camp and his mother was mouthing on about this cute newcomer to the family.”

“Jealous,” Spence said. “I guess I was when—you know.”

“I know.” Spence had a baby sister two years after he was born; she died, eight months old in her crib. Zoe didn’t remember it well, being only four herself, but her mother said the Rileys were in mourning for years and it was hard on Spence. So now Spence was an only child.

They sat in silence a few minutes while Spence scratched the monkey’s head.

“So what did you find in the
Train
file?”  Zoe asked. “Anything you can use for that contest?” The contest had only just popped into her head.  With the excitement of the circus and the Boomer adventure, she’d almost forgotten about it.

“Not much from either,” Spence said. “Mostly just receipts for trains Boomer bought. Or photos of trains. There was a copy, though, of the framed one we saw in his house.” He pulled it out of the file. “On the back it says,
Dad in the window, second car to the end. Goodbye to Dad.
It was dated 1960.”

“Ho! He
was
leaving the family. Hmmm. The year before Hackberry arrived.”

“But I did find a color photo of a red engine with the roof off, and a kid—I guess I was Hackberry—pulling out a toy soldier. Somebody wrote on the back: “Hackberry stole this. It was my soldier.”

“Boomer wrote that, I bet. Whoa! There’s a clue!”

“Could be, but the toy soldier didn’t look like it was worth much.” The monkey had wrapped itself around Spence’s shoulders like a brown scarf; he was stroking it.

“Don’t you see?” Zoe sprang to her knees. “They were really jealous of each other, those two brothers.” Sort of like Kelby and herself, she thought—though not quite. “And now Hackberry has something Boomer wants. Maybe something
extremely
valuable. Something he’d hid—”

“In a train?”

“Exactly! So that’s why Boomer stole your circus cars.”

“But we don’t know that Hackberry owned those cars,” Spence said.

“Ask your grandfather who he bought them from.”

“On eBay I told you. He may not know who sold them.”

“He’d have to—to know where to ship them. I’ll bet Mrs. Hackberry sold them to get rid of them. I mean, why else would she give you that old engine?”

“It’s in bad shape—not worth much.”

“The engine in the photo you saw with its roof off doesn’t look like much either. But he’d hid a toy soldier in it. So he might’ve hid something in the advertising car we found in the cellar. Go get it and take it apart, why not? There might be something inside?”

“Yeah, maybe.” Spence jumped to the ground. Sweet Gum leapt after him, frolicked in the grass for a time, then jumped back up with something shiny in its paw; the monkey held it to his ear.

It was a red earring. “Where’d you get that?” Zoe asked, taking it from him. Though of course there was no reply. “Is this your mom’s earring?” she asked Spence when he came running back—without the red advertising car.

“Mom doesn’t wear earrings. They hurt her earlobes.”

“So where’s the rail car?”

“I couldn’t get by without Mom seeing it.” They’d agreed not to mention finding the car in Boomer’s cellar. Not yet.

“You couldn’t have sneaked it out in a box or something?” He shook his head. He was looking stubborn. “Anyway, Boomer may’ve already found what he was looking for.”

“Maybe, maybe not. Maybe he just buried it to keep us or the cops from finding it. He planned to take it apart later, I bet. He—”

“Sh-shhh.” He was pointing below.

She squinted down through the gingko’s fan-shaped leaves and saw Juniper Boomer’s bald spot. The man appeared to be on his way to the gazebo where the train was still running. There was only one red car left. It was a passenger car—cute, Zoe thought, with a little rest room at the end with a frosted window so you couldn’t see inside. Boomer was heading right for it.

24

SPENCE HAS A PLAN

“Hello, Mr. Boomer.” Spence jumped down out of the tree and swaggered up to his neighbor. Whenever he felt nervous a little swagger gave him confidence.

Boomer swiveled about, surprised. He looked nervous, too, a muscle was twitching in his cheek. “I heard the train running,” he told Spence. “Your father said last week to come take a look.”

“Dad’s rehearsing. He has a concert coming up.”

Boomer stared down at the train; the hairy eyebrows bunched together. “I had some Lionel trains when I was a boy.”

Spence stood between Boomer and the train. He didn’t think the man would try to snatch it in front of him but he wasn’t taking any chances. He glanced up in the gingko tree and saw Zoe holding up a piece of paper that read
Make him talk.

“Did you and your brother play with them much?” Spence swallowed hard, realizing he shouldn’t know about Boomer’s brother. “I mean, if you had a brother? I always wished I did, but I don’t. I mean, didn’t. Well, anyway...” His voice trailed off—he was talking too much. He could see Zoe up in the tree, waving her arms.

“Foster boy,” Boomer said. “That’s all. Mind if I—” He shoved past Spence to kneel by the red car.

“Don’t touch it!” Spence cried. Then more softly: “I mean, it’s old. It comes off the track real easy. And I already lost two of my cars. Somebody took them.” He stared straight at Boomer; the man’s big ears and nose seemed to be going pink. Boomer, he decided, had stolen both cars—although Miss Gertie had seen someone small, like a child, running across the lawn. And Boomer was a tall man with a big belly—unless he went on his hands and knees. But a man couldn’t run on his hands and knees, could he? And Miss Gertie said “running.”

Boomer started to walk away, not limping at all now, and Spence followed, “Maybe your brother—I mean, the foster boy who lived with you—would like to see the trains. Does he live around here?”

Boomer swiveled about. “Don’t know where he is. I was just taking a walk and saw your train, that’s all. It made me think...” He paused.

“Of your childhood?” Spence said and put on what he thought was his friendliest smile.

“Nothing so sentimental as that. Now stop pestering me with questions. I’ve work to do, have to get back.” The man disappeared into the thicket between the houses.

“Go get that red passenger car,” Zoe called down.  “We’ll look inside that one instead. And hurry! We’ve other things to do today.”

Spence nodded, but he didn’t hurry—Zoe was being too bossy. He stopped the trains and slowly unhooked the red passenger car. He lifted it up to Zoe with a warning to “be careful.” Then he went after a screwdriver.

“Here’s what I think,” Zoe said when he climbed back up beside her. “Hackberry was a foster kid, the mother doted on him, and like we said, Juniper was jealous. Now the mother’s dead and left some money or jewels or something and Boomer doesn’t want to share. Make sense?”

“I guess,” Spence said, pulling the screwdriver out of his pocket. “Or maybe she left it all to the foster kid. She could’ve adopted him.”

“Maybe,” Zoe said. She pulled out a letter to Juniper that said,
You might write a letter once in a blue moon. Remember who clothes and feeds you and pays for summer camp.
So what does that tell you?”

“He didn’t like to write letters. He was a kid like me.”

“Like you, sure.” She punched his arm. “But Boomer and his mother weren’t close. I mean, I bet Hackberry spent a lot more time with her in her old age than Boomer. So she cut him out of her will. And he doesn’t like it. He wants the money all for himself.”

‘“Make music, not money,’ Dad says. “That’s why he won’t raise my allowance this year.”

“Neither will mine—all that heavy rain hurt the apples. Now don’t just sit there, Spence.  Take off the roof.”   She pointed at the red car.

“But you can see into this car,” Spence argued, “and there’s nothing but some little people. Nothing rattles.” He shook the car to prove it. He didn’t want to risk scratching the paint or damaging the roof.

“You can’t see into the rest room,” Zoe said. “You have to take off the roof to see.”

Jeezum, but the girl was demanding! Spence was glad he’d resisted being in the spy club.  ‘Make music not mayhem,’ he thought.  He should have
that
printed up on a T-shirt.  On the other hand, he needed Zoe’s help to research his essay. He took out the screws that held the roof together, then handed it to Zoe to hold in her lap—he didn’t want it to drop out of the tree.  Besides, Boomer could be watching through the bushes. If he saw the roof fall, he might come charging out, musket in hand. His hand shook to think of it and the screwdriver fell. “Now look what you made me do!”

“What? I didn’t make you do anything. Spence—look! In the rest room!” Zoe’s fingers dipped down into the car and up again with two identical packets, wrapped in red silk and tied with frayed satin ribbon.

Spence put out a hand to take the packets—then pulled back. “No, you open them.”

“No, you. It’s your rail car. Here, one at a time. Take it, silly. It may be what we’re looking for. What Boomer’s looking for!”

His fingers were too big and clumsy. He’d grown this summer. Shorter than the other boys in the spy club, but for the first time in his life, almost as tall as Zoe. The height gave him a sense of power—and so did this rail car. He held the tiny packet in the palm of his left hand, and with his right, pulled on the frayed ribbon. The ribbon gave at once and the red silk fell away from the tiny object inside.

“A ring!” Zoe whispered. So it was: a slim shiny gold ring with a ruby-red stone and two shiny stones (diamonds?) set on either side; the initials WJJ and CED were inscribed inside an etched heart. He stared at it, like it might tell him whose initials they were and why the ring was inside his red passenger car.

“WJJ. Willow Juniper Jones,” Zoe said. “Their mother’s name? But who was CED? It wasn’t Boomer’s father. His name began with an H—um, Harrison. Harrison Boomer, I think. So who was it?”

“The father of the foster boy?” Spence suggested.

“Maybe. Good thinking! And maybe he and Willow were together before she met Boomer’s father. And Hackberry’s their kid, married or not. But for some reason they split.”

“Or he died, like my mom’s uncle, who could never make up his mind to
commit,
Mom says.”

“Uh-huh. Anyway, she had this baby coming she never told the other guy about and then the guy maybe died, like you said, or left, and she took in her son as a foster kid but not telling Boomer’s father he was hers. So she had to make up bonding time, you know, with Hackberry.”

“And that’s why she sent Juniper to camp,” Spence said. “But he didn’t want to go and he got jealous.”

“Makes  sense.” Zoe handed over the second packet. “Maybe this’ll explain.”

Spence handed Zoe the ring for safekeeping on her pinkie finger, where it fit, and opened the second packet. Inside were two pieces of paper, tightly folded. He handed one to Zoe and unfolded the other.

“Hey! It’s a birth certificate!” he cried. “It’s what Boomer was looking for.”

“Wow! What does it say?” She stopped unfolding her own paper.

He smoothed it out with his shaky fingers. “Hackberry Boomer,” he began: “August 24—

“Why, that’s today! Today’s August 24.”

“Well, he wasn’t born today!”

“Don’t be snippy. I just meant what a coincidence. So what else?”

“1949,” he read. “8 pounds, 7 ounces. Mother: Willow Juniper.”

“Ha! I guessed right! Before she married Harrison. And the father?”

“Father unknown.”

“So that’s why,” she said.

“Why, what? Why Boomer wanted the birth certificate? To prove Hackberry wasn’t a real brother—I mean, legitimate? To cut Hackberry out of any money he’d inherit?” There it is again, he  thought. Money. ‘Make Music not Money’—something to live by, yeah. Maybe he would wear it on a T-shirt.