“It’s such a shame,” said the curator, shaking her head. “Underneath the mess, those gardens are a real historical treasure. There are plants in there that you can’t find anywhere else these days, even though they originated in this area. The gardens were started over a hundred years ago.” She sighed. “And now the arboretum is on the brink of closing.”
“What?” asked Jessi. “Why?”
“Well,” said Mrs. Goldsmith, “the house and the greenhouse belong to Stoneybrook, but that land out there probably doesn’t. We aren’t sure who it belongs to, since the original lease for it is missing and the town records were destroyed in a fire years and years ago. Now the land has caught the eye of a developer who wants to build subdivisions here. He brought the question of the lease to the state’s attention, and now the state is planning to auction the land off.” She paused. “If the land is sold, the arboretum will have to close. We can barely afford to keep it open as it is, and without the fees we charge for summer garden tours we’d be lost. Anyway, if he buys the land, the developer will have the right to kick us out and knock down the house.”
“That’s awful!” said Jessi. She was horrified.
“Isn’t there anything you can do about it?” asked Charlotte.
“Well, we do have one hope,” said Mrs. Goldsmith, though she didn’t sound too hopeful. “There’s a wealthy donor, Mrs. VanderBellen, who’s expressed some interest in buying the land and maintaining the arboretum. She’s supposed to be coming by one day soon to look the place over.” The curator glanced out the window, and Jessi followed her gaze. Then Mrs. Goldsmith shook her head. “But I’m afraid I’ll never be able to whip this place into decent shape in time,” she said. “Not without my summer help. They’re all college students, so I won’t have them until June.”
That was when Jessi had her great idea. She started talking without having thought it out, but Mrs. Goldsmith just listened and nodded. And before long, they’d worked out all the details:
Jessi, and whatever kids and BSC members she could round up, would volunteer after-school time to help clean up the arboretum grounds. In return, Mrs. Goldsmith would help Jessi figure out what to do with Mrs. Dodson’s ailing plants. (Actually, Mrs. Goldsmith told Jessi she would have been glad to do that in any case. But Jessi insisted that this arrangement was a fair exchange.)
Soon after, Jessi called her dad and asked him to pick her and the girls up. And all the way home, the three of them chattered happily about how much fun it would be to fix up the arboretum, and maybe — just maybe — save it from the developers. Jessi was sure she’d finally come up with the perfect cure for cabin fever.
“It sounds like fun. But what if we pull up some hundred-year-old specimen by mistake? All those plant things look the same to me.” Stacey looked perplexed.
“Plant things?” asked Claud, cracking up. “Oh, Stacey, you’re such a city girl.” Then she lost her grin. “Come to think of it, I don’t know that much about plants myself,” she added. She dug into the bowl of popcorn she held on her lap and pulled out a handful. Then she passed the bowl to Stacey.
It was Monday, and we were in the midst of our BSC meeting. We had already taken care of all the club business, and now we were discussing Jessi’s idea for helping to save the arboretum. I was interested in the project, but once again I was waiting to bring up my own subject: the mystery of Christina. So, I listened to the conversation going on around me, but at the same time I was thinking about my mystery, and about the best way to present the facts to my friends. I chewed nervously on my pencil while I waited.
“Mrs. Goldsmith said it wouldn’t matter whether we knew anything about gardening or not,” said Jessi, in answer to Stacey and Claud. “She’ll tell us exactly what to do. Anyway, it’s really too cold for weeding and taking care of plants. We’re just trying to make the place look decent. There’s a lot of litter to be picked up and hauled away, and stone walls to be repaired, and raking to do — stuff like that. Mrs. Goldsmith also needs help cataloging the indoor plants and tidying up the greenhouse.”
“I usually hate gardening,” said Mal. “But I’m so sick of winter it actually sounds like fun.”
“I know,” I said, putting down my gnawed-up pencil and forgetting about Christina for a minute. “Maybe I’ll take Karen and David Michael there on Thursday. They’d have a great time.”
“I won’t be able to get there for a few days,” said Mary Anne. “But I’m sitting for the Arnold twins on Friday so I’ll definitely bring them over. They love projects like this.” Then Mary Anne turned to me with an odd look on her face. “Kristy, why are you jiggling your leg like that? Are you nervous about something?”
“Me, jiggling?” I asked, surprised. Trust Mary Anne to notice.
“Yes,” she said. “And just look at your pencil.”
Mary Anne sounded so much like my third-grade teacher that I had to giggle. I held up the pencil and looked at it. “Delicious,” I said.
“So, what’s up?” asked Mary Anne.
“Oh, nothing much,” I said, trying to act casual. “Just that I might be a millionaire if I can solve this mystery.” I raised my eyebrows and pretended to yawn.
“A millionaire?” asked Mary Anne. Her mouth had fallen open.
“What are you talking about?” asked Dawn.
“Spill the beans!” said Jessi.
“Well, you remember Christina Thomas, right?” I asked. “The girl who disappeared? The one we thought might possibly be related to me?”
Everybody nodded. “Go on,” said Stacey.
“Well, I found out yesterday that at the time she disappeared, Christina was very rich,” I said, drawing it out. Why not add a little suspense?
“And?” asked Claudia, giving me a threatening look.
“And her fortune disappeared with her,” I said. “As far as I could tell, it’s never been found.”
“Whoa!” breathed Claudia.
“A missing fortune,” mused Mal. “What a great story!”
It sounded as if Mal were already plotting a children’s book about this mystery. The only problem was that we hadn’t solved it yet.
“You could be rich,” said Stacey dreamily. “I mean, I know Watson’s rich, but this would be your own money. Just think, you could be wearing original Gaultier clothes and jewelry from Tiffany’s.”
“Uh, right,” I said. I had no idea who Goatee-ay was, but I had the feeling I wouldn’t wear his clothes if I had three million dollars to spend. And as for jewels from Tiffany’s, I’d rather have a new first-baseman’s mitt by Rawlings. “There’s only one problem,” I added. “Or rather, make that two.” I held up two fingers and counted off the reasons. “One: I don’t know where Christina disappeared to. And two: I don’t know how or where to find her fortune.” I held up one more finger. “Not to mention a third problem: I don’t have any way of knowing if she really is related to me, anyway.”
“Hmmm,” said Claudia. She dug into the popcorn bowl again, absently. She was staring off into space, her brow wrinkled.
I could almost see Claud’s brain working. She has read every single Nancy Drew book in existence (some of them twice), and she remembers every single mystery and how it was solved. (Don’t ask me why she can’t remember enough to pass a weekly math quiz.)
“Sounds like you need to do a little more digging,” Claudia finally said.
“But where?” I asked.
“Back at the library,” said Claud, holding up a finger. “I’ll help. We’ll have to look through some of the old town records they keep there.”
“I’ll help, too,” said Mary Anne. “Let’s go tomorrow, after school. We can go through all the old newspapers on file, too.”
I groaned.
“It won’t be so bad, with three of us working,” Claudia reassured me. “Besides, isn’t it worth it? You might be earning yourself a fortune!”
“Right,” I said. “And I suppose you’ll want a share of it, too.”
“You know it,” she said, laughing. “Shall we say, oh, fifty-fifty?”
“What about me?” asked Mary Anne. “I’m helping, too.”
“Oh, right,” said Claud. “So we’ll each make — let’s see, how much is three into a million dollars?” She pretended to punch some numbers into a calculator. We all cracked up.
* * *
As soon as school was over the next day, I headed for the library with Mary Anne and Claudia. We were each carrying notebooks and pens, and I had a file I’d made which contained the information I had found so far.
Mrs. Kishi greeted us when we trooped in. “Nice to see you, girls,” she said. “I have you set up in the reference room. If you can use any help on your school project, just let me know.”
School project? Automatically, I thanked Mrs. Kishi. But as soon as her back was turned, I raised my eyebrows at Claudia.
She shrugged. “I didn’t think she’d be crazy about me wasting my time pretending to be Nancy Drew,” she explained. “So I fibbed just a little.”
“Claudia!” said Mary Anne.
“Claudia!” I echoed.
“What?” Claudia asked innocently. “Let’s start working. What are we waiting for?” She led us to the reference room, where Mrs. Kishi had left out stacks of microfilm and piles of old books. “Yikes,” said Claudia, when she saw how much material we had to go through. “You know, now that I think about it, there’s this new book on Matisse my mom told me about. Maybe I’ll go look for it.”
“And I wanted to find a craft book. I need some ideas for making cat toys,” said Mary Anne. They both started to edge away.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” I said. “I have other stuff I could do here, too. I promised David Michael I’d look up some stats in the Baseball Encyclopedia. But we have a job to do. Let’s just get it over with!”
After that, we settled down to work, and I have to say we made a pretty terrific team. Claudia flipped through the microfilm index to the Stoneybrook News, and called out the numbers for pages that might give us information we needed. I took down the numbers in my notebook and lined up the rolls of microfilm we’d need to look at. Mary Anne, meanwhile, began to pore over the town records, running a finger down each page and taking notes on any Thomas connections that looked as if they might be important.
Most of the work was boring and repetitive and frustrating. Tracing a family history may seem simple, but it isn’t. For one thing, people move away, and then sometimes turn up again. Also, daughters get married and change their names. Not every Thomas descendent was a Thomas. Far from it. We ended up having to trace the Johnson and Abbott families, too.
We did find out a few interesting things. For example, we read the details of the carriage accident in which Christina’s parents died (it was as gruesome as a modern-day car wreck). Plus, we found out a little bit more about Christina’s disappearance. Apparently, she had left Squirelot, her parents’ estate, on or about January 8th of 1863. A scullery maid insisted that Christina had been headed for Pennsylvania, but no trace of her was ever found in that state or in any town between it and Stoneybrook.
As for tracing the Thomas descendents, we ran into a lot of dead ends. John and Rachel had had three children: Christina, Devon, and Edward. Christina, of course, had disappeared. Devon had a son, Devon II and he had a son, Devon III. Devon III had also had a son (guess what his name is!), but from what we could tell he wasn’t a Stoneybrook resident.
Edward, meanwhile, had three children: Scott, Mary, and Ellen. Mary never had children, and Ellen’s children wouldn’t have been Thomases, so I figured Scott was the ony one who could be my ancestor. I even had a vague memory of my dad telling me about his great-great-aunt Mary, who’d never married. For a few minutes I was pretty excited about finding a link that would tie me to Christina’s fortune. So were Mary Anne and Claudia. The only problem was that we couldn’t find a single descendent of Scott’s listed in the Stoneybrook records or mentioned in the newspaper. See what I mean about dead ends?
After about three hours in the library, we came up with a family tree that looked something like this:
We traced Ellen Thomas’s descendents (who seemed to be the only members of the family to stay in Stoneybrook) down to a woman named Mildred Abbott. Mrs. Abbott would be Christina’s great-great-niece, if our calculations were right. And according to the phone book, she still lived in Stoneybrook. Other than Mildred, though, the trail was cold.
“So what do we do now?” asked Mary Anne, who was staring down at the Thomas family tree. She looked a little discouraged.
“I know what I’m going to do,” I told her. “As soon as I get home, I’m going to call this Mrs. Abbott. It looks like she’s our only hope. If she doesn’t know something about Christina, nobody does. Or at least, nobody we can find.”
* * *
And that’s how I, Kristy Thomas, ended up being invited to Friday afternoon tea at the home of — guess who? — Mrs. Mildred Abbott.
I don’t usually waste time being nervous about things; I just do them. That’s why I hadn’t been tense when I called Mrs. Abbott. I just picked up the phone and called her. When she answered, I told her who I was and why I was interested in talking with her. And she invited me to tea on the spot.
See how easy these things are? There’s no reason to be nervous.
But guess what? The second I hung up, I started to feel nervous. Very, very nervous. Why? Well, because Mrs. Abbott sounded like a proper person. The kind of person who might correct your grammar, or tell you to sit up straight and stop slouching. The kind of person who would probably disapprove if I showed up for tea in my usual “uniform” of jeans, running shoes, and a turtleneck.
I wanted to make a good impression on Mrs. Abbott, because from what I could tell by the research we’d done so far, I was going to have to convince her to answer some questions if I wanted to find out more about the Thomas family history. That’s why I ended up staring into my closet that night, trying to figure out which of my skirts I could stand to wear. (I only have a couple of them, since I wear them so infrequently.) I chose a dark-green corduroy skirt, which I planned to wear with a white button-down shirt, and a blue sweater, panty hose (ugh!), and brown loafers. I knew I’d catch a lot of teasing when I wore that outfit to school on Friday (since nobody ever sees me dressed like that), but I had no choice. I wouldn’t have time to go home and change before tea with Mrs. Abbott.
I made sure the clothes I was planning to wear were clean and pressed, and that the loafers were polished. I checked to see that I had a fresh notebook and a working pen, so I’d be ready to take notes on what Mrs. Abbott told me. And I practiced sitting up straight and saying, “No, thank you, ma’am,” and “Yes, please, ma’am.”
After that, there was nothing I could do but wait.
Tea wasn’t until Friday, so I still had all day Thursday to wait through. School was enough of a distraction, but how would I fill the time after school?
I shouldn’t have worried.
After school on Thursday, I stood in front of my closet, doing one more check on my outfit for Friday. Suddenly, there was a knock on my door, and before I could even call out “come in,” Karen was bouncing on my bed. “When are we going?” she asked.
“Going?” I said, confused.
“To the plant place!” Karen said. “You promised!”
I had totally forgotten I’d promised to take her and David Michael to the arboretum that day. (That just goes to show you how nervous I was about tea with Mrs. Abbott. Normally, I would never forget a promise I’d made to a kid.)
Karen was all psyched up for working at the arboretum. She’d already changed into a pair of overalls and begged Watson to let her borrow his good English trowel. She had David Michael excited about our trip, too.
It’s not as if either of them loves gardening that much. Oh, they’ll putter around in the garden with Watson, as he trims his roses or mulches his shrubs, but only if there’s nothing else to do.
“Nothing else to do” were the key words that day. I knew Karen was only dying to go to the “plant place” because she was so tired of being cooped up in the house.
Well, I felt the same way. I had a little touch of cabin fever myself, not to mention a case of nerves. And a trip to the arboretum seemed the perfect solution.
Watson was happy to drive us there. “I’ve never even heard of this place before,” he said when he pulled up to the big brick building. “Isn’t this something! I wish I could stay and help, but I have a very important date with a certain young lady.” He turned to smile at Emily Michelle, who was strapped into her car seat.
“Barn — ee!” she squealed, waving her hands in the air.
“That’s right,” said Watson. “We’re going to watch Barney together, just as soon as we get home.”
I’m still not used to Watson being home so much, but it’s obvious that he and Emily Michelle are closer than ever since he’s been playing “Mr. Mom.” Karen and David Michael and I piled out of the van and waved as Watson and Emily Michelle drove off. Then we set out to find Jessi.
I heard the sound of raking coming from behind the house, so instead of heading inside, we decided to check there first.
“Hey!” I heard Jessi call as we rounded the corner. “Look who’s here.” She put down her rake and tapped Matt Braddock, who was raking next to her, on the shoulder. Matt hadn’t heard us coming because he’s deaf. He communicates by reading lips and by using American Sign Language. All of the members of the BSC have learned a little ASL — except for Jessi, who’s learned a lot. Plus, quite a few of the kids who know Matt have picked up some signs.