“Oh, I’m fine,” said Jackie. “It’s just that I had this tooth that was a little loose. Now it’s even looser. I bet anything it comes out today!” He put his finger on the tooth and wiggled it.
“Great,” said Mal. “Make sure you save it when it does, so you can put it under your pillow for the Tooth Fairy.”
“I know that,” said Jackie. “I’ve already lost lots of teeth.”
(As Mal was telling me this part of the story, I began to feel a little queasy. There’s something about teeth falling out that really bugs me. Mal’s used to it, with all those younger brothers and sisters. But I can’t stand seeing wiggly loose teeth. Ew. It’s a good thing I was busy having tea with Mildred Abbott that day.)
By the time Mal and Jackie arrived at the arboretum, Jessi and Mary Anne were already there, along with their charges. Mary Anne was sitting for Marilyn and Carolyn Arnold, who are eight-year-old identical twins. None of us in the BSC has any trouble telling them apart, especially since Carolyn had her hair cut in a trendy style, but they do look an awful lot alike. They have very different interests, though. For example, that day Carolyn, who’s interested in science, had decided she wanted to work with Mrs. Goldsmith in the greenhouse. Marilyn, the more outgoing twin, would be helping the “outdoor crew” with clearing brush and picking up litter, the two tasks Jessi had planned for the day.
Buddy and Suzi Barrett, Jessi’s charges, were eager to start work. Suzi’s five, and she wanted to work in the greenhouse “with all the pretty flowers.” Buddy, who’s eight, was set to work outside. “I’ve been helping Franklin work in our new yard,” he explained proudly. “I know how to do lots of stuff now.”
Franklin is Buddy’s stepfather, Franklin DeWitt. He and Mrs. Barrett got married recently. In fact, they were married in Stoneybrook on the same weekend Dawn’s dad was married in California. The DeWitt-Barrett marriage is one the BSC looked forward to for a long time. We always thought that when Mr. DeWitt, who has four children, married Mrs. Barrett, who has three (Buddy and Suzi have a little sister named Marnie), it would be like Stoneybrook’s version of the Brady Bunch. And it is, sort of. Let’s just say that the two families are still adjusting to each other.
That day, the DeWitt kids had gone to visit their grandmother, and Mrs. Barrett had taken Marnie shopping with her, so Jessi was sitting just for Buddy and Suzi. Which, she told Mal, was fine with her. Sitting for the entire Barrett-DeWitt clan is a major job these days.
As soon as Jackie saw the other kids that day, he ran to show them his loose tooth. Mal joined Mary Anne and Jessi, and the three of them talked about the plan for the afternoon.
“I spoke to Mrs. Goldsmith already,” Jessi told them, “and I have a plan figured out. The kids are all set to work, too. The only thing I didn’t tell them —” (she glanced at the group of kids to make sure they weren’t listening) “— is that I’m going to be keeping my eyes peeled for signs of sabotage. I don’t want to get the kids all worried about it, but Kristy and I are pretty sure there’s something going on here. So let me know if you see anything strange.”
Mary Anne and Mal nodded. Then Jessi called the kids over. “Okay, Suzi and Carolyn, Mrs. Goldsmith is waiting for you in the greenhouse,” she said. “You others, grab a rake and a garbage bag and follow me!”
Mal offered to show Suzi and Carolyn to the greenhouse. And by the time she came back to find him, Jackie had already had his first minor accident.
“It wasn’t my fault!” he was saying, when she found him sprawled on the ground, next to an empty concrete pedestal. Nearby was the large, round, dish-shaped birdbath that had, a second ago, been sitting on top of the pedestal. “All I did was run by it,” said Jackie. “It must not have been on there right, because I didn’t even touch it. Really!” He put his finger to his mouth, to see if his loose tooth was still there.
“It’s okay,” said Mal. She checked the birdbath for cracks, but it was still in one piece. “Help me lift it back on, okay?” She bent down and grabbed the dish. “One, two, three, heave!” They picked up the birdbath and set it on top of its stand. Mal stood back to look at it, and then moved forward again to adjust it slightly. “It feels solid now,” she said. Later, she told me she wondered about that birdbath. Had somebody purposely set it slightly askew, so it would fall — and maybe break?
Meanwhile, Mary Anne and Jessi were finding something else suspicious. When Mal and Jackie caught up with them, they were standing near an area of the grounds that looked as if it needed some serious raking.
“What are we waiting for?” asked Jackie, picking up a rake. “Let’s start.” He and Buddy and Marilyn began to rake, pushing dead grass and leaves into a big pile.
Jessi just stood there, staring at the ground.
“What’s the matter?” Mary Anne asked her.
Jessi shook her head. “I must be going nuts,” she said. “I could have sworn we raked this exact place yesterday. I mean, it was raked clean. And now look at it.”
Mal looked around. “I see a tarp over there, draped on those bushes,” she said. “Were you using that?”
Jessi nodded. “We left it over the last pile of stuff we raked,” she answered. “We were going to drag it to the compost area today.”
“Well, there’s your answer,” said Mary Anne. “The tarp must have blown off the pile, and then the wind blew the leaves and trash around. What a shame!”
“It’s a shame all right,” said Mal quietly. “But I’m not so sure the wind is responsible, if you know what I mean.” She shook her head. “I really think somebody is out to make this place look bad,” she finished.
And during the rest of the afternoon, Mal kept finding what she was sure was evidence that someone was sabotaging the arboretum. She also stayed busy chasing after Jackie, who was involved in one mess after another.
First, he danced around in an empty fountain, pretending he was one of the cherub statues, until he almost knocked one of them over. That was when he found the empty potato chip bags that Mal was sure must have been thrown there on purpose. Next, Jackie pulled out about twenty plant markers, “because they’re all rusty.” Mal and Jessi had to put each one back, relying on Jessi’s memory (Mrs. Goldsmith had given her a very complete tour of the gardens before she started working) and on a plant-identification book Mrs. Goldsmith had lent them. While they were doing that, they found more evidence that pointed to sabotage: footprints, knocked-over flowerpots, and a newly broken trellis.
Finally, at the end of the day, Jackie ran to Mal, who was trying to fix the trellis.
“My tooth!” Jackie cried.
“Did it finally come out?” Mal asked. “Great!”
“Not great,” said Jackie. “I can’t find it anywhere. And I have to have it. Otherwise the Tooth Fairy won’t leave me anything.”
That was the end of work for that day. The whole crew ended up searching every area they’d worked in, looking for Jackie’s tooth. The kids made a game of it and had a great time, but Mal, Jessi, and Mary Anne couldn’t get their minds off the evidence they’d found. They were convinced that somebody was trying to undo all the work they were doing. Things didn’t look good for the arboretum.
Oh — the tooth? As Mal told me later, Jackie was the one who finally found it. It had fallen into his shirt pocket.
“I had to laugh,” she said. “After a day like that, there’s nothing else you can do. Unless you want to cry!”
Guess who broke the “club business first” rule at Friday’s BSC meeting?
We all did.
I did it first, though. There was no way I could wait to spill the big news about my tea with Mildred Abbott — and show my friends the letter I’d copied. After that, Jessi, Mal, and Mary Anne brought up their news, about the evidence they’d found at the arboretum.
I may be wrong, but I don’t ever remember a club meeting where less club business was discussed. Oh, we answered a few phone calls, and arranged some jobs, but other than that we didn’t discuss
a thing but the two big mysteries we had found ourselves involved in.
And we spent most of our time talking about the letter from Christina.
Mary Anne (naturally) thought it was the most romantic letter she’d ever seen. She read it over and over again, sighing and wiping away an occasional tear.
Claudia just loved the mystery of the story. She had that Nancy Drew gleam in her eyes as she speculated about what had happened to Christina and her fortune. “The question is,” she said, “how do we trace things from here?”
Stacey and Dawn were both interested in the fact that the letter said Henry should look in “our special place.”
“Look for what?” asked Stacey. “Do you think the fortune is hidden there?”
“If we could only find the special place, I bet we could solve the mystery,” said Dawn. “That’s the key. The special place.”
Mal liked the roses Christina had drawn on the letter. “She was a good artist,” she said admiringly. “I like the way their stems twine around.”
Jessi agreed. “They look real,” she said.
We talked about the letter all through Friday’s BSC meeting. We talked about it — over the phone and during our work at the arboretum — over the weekend. And we were still talking about it at school on Monday morning, while I rummaged through my locker trying to find my math notebook.
Dawn, Claudia, and Mary Anne were clustered around my locker, and Dawn was telling us she’d had a dream about Christina the night before. “I saw her,” she said, her eyes round. (Dawn loves ghost stories, and I could tell Christina’s story reminded her of one.) “She was walking down the road, carrying a suitcase.”
“Leaving Stoneybrook,” Mary Anne said. “To find Henry.” She sighed, and her eyes got all misty.
“And to escape Simon,” Claudia reminded her. “She left Stoneybrook, and everything familiar, and probably her fortune behind, because she didn’t believe her brother should force her to marry somebody she didn’t love.”
“She was no pushover,” said Dawn. “It must have been hard to be a strong, determined woman in those days.”
“Hey, it’s not so easy even now,” I said. “But we Thomas women have always worked at it!” I grinned at my friends. Then I looked over Dawn’s shoulder and saw something that made me frown. “Check it out,” I said, nudging Mary Anne, who turned to see what — or should I say who — I was looking at.
“Ugh,” said Mary Anne. “Why is Cokie lurking around?”
Cokie Mason is one of the BSC’s favorite people. Not. She’s never been someone I would call a friend, even though I’ve known her for years. Cokie is just one of those people who are out for themselves. She has stooped to some pretty low tricks to get what she wants, whether that’s making the BSC look bad or stealing other girls’ boyfriends.
Believe it or not, Cokie even tried to steal Logan away from Mary Anne! (Anybody who would do something mean to a sweet person like Mary Anne has to be the lowest of the low, in my book.) If you asked her about it, she’d tell you she was only dating Logan to keep him company during a time when he and Mary Anne had temporarily broken up. But the truth is that Cokie’s always had a crush on Logan, and she moved in on him like a shark the minute she thought Mary Anne was out of the picture.
Mary Anne once referred to Cokie as her “mortal enemy.”
“Just ignore her,” I said.
“I bet she’s trying to figure out if she can get Logan in her clutches again,” said Mary Anne. She looked worried. “That must be why she’s hanging around as if she’s spying on us.”
I shot a Look at Cokie, trying to scare her off. Then I turned back to Mary Anne. “Don’t worry,” I said, in a voice I hoped would carry. “Logan couldn’t be less interested in her.” I gave up on finding my math notebook and slammed my locker door. “By the way, I won’t be at the arboretum this afternoon,” I announced to my friends. “I’m going to the library, to do some more research on Christina. I want to find out where the family’s home, Squirelot, was. If I can find that, maybe I can find the special place she talks about in her letter.”
“Good luck,” said Mary Anne. “If you figure anything out, you can tell us about it at the BSC meeting.”
* * *
After school that day, I headed over to the library. I could have taken a bus there, but I decided to walk, since it was actually a pretty nice day. I guess we were having the February version of a January thaw. The sun had been out all day and the last of the grimy snow had finally melted. I took deep breaths as I walked along, enjoying the way the soft, warm air smelled. It smelled like dirt, which might not sound so great. But after a long winter, I happen to think the smell of fresh earth is wonderful. It was making me remember how beautiful Watson’s flower gardens look in the middle of June. I thought of the arboretum, and wondered what it would look like in the middle of June — that is, if it wasn’t being bulldozed for a development.
I felt a little guilty about not working at the arboretum that day. There wasn’t much time left to prepare it to be seen by that wealthy donor who was thinking about buying it. (According to Mrs. Goldsmith, Mrs. VanderBellen would be coming by sometime that week.) But I also felt tied up in the Christina mystery. It was as if I were being pulled toward the library that day. I had to keep trying to solve the mystery of Christina’s missing fortune.
I felt so energized by my walk that when I arrived at the library I took the steps two at a time. Inside, I headed straight for the reference room, waving and smiling at Mrs. Kishi as I passed by her office. The smile was still on my face when I turned the corner into the area where the microfilm machines sit. But then I saw Cokie Mason, and my smile disappeared.
“Hi, Kristy,” said Cokie.
“Hi,” I said. “What are you doing here?” As far as I know, Cokie never does extra schoolwork if she can help it. It was just my luck to run into her at the library.
“Waiting for a friend,” said Cokie. “Actually, I was on my way out.”
I watched her leave, but I didn’t see her meet any friend. I figured she must be seeing some boy her parents didn’t approve of.
I turned my attention away from Cokie and toward the microfilm machine. What was it I needed to look for? I tried to remember what Claudia had told me. Then I snapped my fingers. She’d mentioned some town records that might help me out, and she’d told me where to find them. I headed for the drawer.
When I pulled it out, it felt light. And as soon as I looked into it, I saw why. It was nearly empty. I checked the remaining reels, but they weren’t ones I needed. Every single one I wanted to look at was missing!
I looked around the reference room, hoping to figure out who had the reels. Both microfilm readers were free, so nobody was using the reels that minute. There were several people sitting at the work tables: two high school girls, a nurse dressed in her uniform, and a man wearing a fairly dirty pair of overalls. None of them seemed to have the microfilm, though.
“Can I help you?”
One of the library aides was behind me. He must have noticed how lost I looked. “Well, I — I was trying to find some microfilm,” I said. “But it’s not in its drawer.”
“Well, it can’t be checked out, since it’s reference material,” said the aide. “But it’s probably in that bin over there, waiting to be reshelved.” He sighed. “We’re way behind today, so I doubt I can get it processed for you right away. Can you come back tomorrow? Or is there something else I can help you find?”
“Well,” I said, “I was hoping to find out more about this old estate called Squirelot. It used to belong to a family named Thomas, and it was here in Stoneybrook. But I don’t know where it was. Is there any way to figure that out?”
“Let’s see,” said the aide. He frowned and stroked his chin. Then his eyes lit up. “I know!” he said. “We have a book about the history of Stoneybrook. I think it has some old maps in it.” He led me to the local history area and ran his finger along a shelf of books. “Here it
is,” he said, pulling one out. “If you’ll check the index, I think you might find what you’re looking for.”
“Thanks!” I said. “Thanks a lot.” As I walked back to the work table, I opened the book and started to leaf through it. I’ve looked at a lot of books about Stoneybrook history, but this was one I’d never seen before. It was full of old maps. I started to feel excited. If only I could find Squirelot. I was ready to bet that Christina’s fortune was hidden on its grounds.
I turned to the index and found several listings for maps of Stoneybrook in the mid-1800s. “Page one-sixty-eight,” I muttered, turning back to check the page that seemed most likely. And as soon as I found it, I saw something that made me blink. Sure enough, on the map on page 168 there was a large area marked off with “Squirelot” written across it.
And Squirelot had been circled — in red ink.
“That’s strange,” I said under my breath. Then I looked back at the map. I still couldn’t tell where Squirelot was in relation to modern Stoneybrook — although something about its placement seemed familiar. What I had to do next was figure out how the old map would compare to a new one. I carried the book to a Stoneybrook map that’s posted on the reference room wall.
It didn’t take long to find some common landmarks: an old church, a little park, a cemetery. I looked up at the present-day map and then glanced down at the book in my hands. Back and forth, back and forth. And then, suddenly, it was as if a lightbulb clicked on in my brain. “Of course!” I said, so loudly that everyone else in the room looked at me. I was so amazed by my discovery that I just smiled back at them. I didn’t care if they thought I was crazy. What I had just discovered had put me one big step forward on the path to solving Christina’s mystery.
“Sabotage? What does that mean?”
Dawn and Jessi whirled around. “Charlotte!” said Dawn.
“Becca!” said Jessi. “How long have you guys been standing there?”
“Long enough to hear what you were talking about,” said Becca. “And we want to know what’s going on.” She folded her arms across her chest and raised her eyebrows, waiting to hear what Dawn and Jessi had to say.