Claudia took that opportunity to check on Haley, who had recovered from her crisis and now stood in front of the mirror in her mother’s room, practicing elephant poses. Then Claud told Matt that lunch would soon be ready. She raced back into the kitchen to hurriedly put macaroni and cheese, apple sauce, and carrot sticks on two plates.
By the time the calls had been made, and lunch was served, and the children with the wet banner had decided to proceed to another house, Claudia was exhausted. She felt as if she’d run a marathon. Jessi’s news didn’t make her feel any better.
“Stacey said yes,” Jessi said glumly. “On one condition — that she come with it. She even volunteered to pull the wagon at the front of the walkathon.”
“Stacey leading the walkathon?” Claudia gasped. “Oh, Kristy will love that idea. No way! There’s just no way!”
Jessi winced. “Too late. I told Becca to tell Charlotte to tell Stacey okay.”
“You what? Oh, I wish it were Monday and we were going to school and the Elephant Walk were over.”
Mrs. Braddock returned home a few minutes late, which gave Claudia no time to go home. She had to head straight for the playground, because the walkathon was set to start in fifteen minutes.
Claudia jogged through the groups of kids who were making their way to the starting line. She spotted Kristy’s faded ball cap in the middle of a group of children to whom she was giving last-minute instructions.
“Hey, Claud,” Kristy called cheerily. She proudly displayed one of the T-shirts that Claud had designed and silk-screened. “What do you think?”
“It’s you,” Claudia said with a grin.
Kristy looped her stopwatch and whistle over her head. She was in full coach gear. “The kids showed me the banner. I think they did a good job.”
“Just don’t get within five feet of it,” Claudia warned her. “The paint’s still wet. Where’s Dawn?”
“At the drugstore,” Kristy replied. “She was supposed to help me pass out supplies, but she realized at the last minute that she had forgotten to buy film for her camera.” Kristy gestured to the card table she’d set up on the playground. It was stacked high with baskets full of Free Babar buttons.
Claudia smiled approvingly. “It looks like the Pikes and their Badge-o-matic factory have been working overtime.”
Kristy checked her clipboard. “I have the buttons. Haley and Becca will be in front in their elephant costumes —”
“Vanessa has the pledge sheets,” Claudia interrupted.
“Good.” Kristy nodded her head. “Watson and I drove the walkathon route this morning. The town really came through. They have bright orange sawhorses in place and are ready to cordon off the route.”
“Mallory did a great job with the publicity,” Claudia said. “Mom has been cutting the articles out of the paper. There were two tiny ones on Thursday and Friday and a really large spread in this morning’s Sunday paper. The headline said KIDS CARE.”
Kristy grinned. “I saw that. The photo was great, too. Eight Pike kids, showing off their buttons and T-shirts, with those ear-to-ear grins. You can almost hear them all shouting, Cheese!”
“And speaking of too cute for words …” Claudia pointed down the street. “Check out the little elephants coming our way.”
Haley and Becca were in elephant costumes of gray tights, leotards, and hoods with big ears. They’d even found rubber elephant noses at Toy City.
Kristy checked her watch. “They’re right on time. We’re at T-minus four minutes and counting.”
It was amazing how many children were participating in the Elephant Walk. I had offered to do a kid round-up, walking some of our clients’ kids to the starting line. Jenny Prezzioso and the Arnold twins came with me to pick up Jamie Newton and Nina Marshall. The walkathon was supposed to be four miles long, but I’m sure we added another mile collecting all those children.
My group and I hit the playground seconds before Charlotte Johanssen — and her friend — arrived. Charlotte was pulling a wagon behind her.
Kristy squinted into the afternoon sun. “Why is Charlotte pulling a wagon? For the flyers?”
Claudia gulped. She realized she hadn’t broken the news to Kristy about the tape player. “Uh, no, we had some difficulty with the music. Jessi needed to borrow a tape player with really big speakers, so the Elephant Walk music could be heard.”
“Oh.” Kristy leaned forward, adjusting the bill of her cap. “But who’s that with her?”
Jessi joined Claudia just then, and they answered together, “Stacey.”
We were lucky that it was now T-minus one minute until the walkathon was supposed to begin, because from the look on Kristy’s face, we could have had a major blow-out.
“We don’t have enough time to change anything,” she grumbled after checking her watch again. “I just hope she stays away from me.”
Stacey did exactly that. She and Charlotte stood on the edge of the crowd until Kristy blew her whistle. Then Haley and Becca stepped forward in their elephant costumes and posed.
“They’ve been practicing that pose for two days,” Jessi whispered to Claudia.
“I know.” Claudia grinned. “When Haley wasn’t panicking about her costume, she was practicing her pose and her bow. I guess she plans to do that when we hit the finish line.”
Next, the banner kids took their places behind the elephants. Then Kristy gestured for Charlotte to bring the wagon forward, and Charlotte and Stacey moved into position. It was weird. Stacey and Kristy never even looked at each other. Jessi put her tape in the player and nodded to Kristy.
Kristy blew her whistle and shouted, “Let the Elephant Walk begin!”
The music blasted from the speakers and the kids in front began to march. I know it was supposed to be a walkathon, but it felt more like a parade, with the kids in costume and the music.
Kristy made sure that Charlotte and Stacey were far ahead and then she blew her whistle once more. The rest of us stepped out.
After all the stress Claudia had gone through in the morning, she ended up having fun. It was a sunny day, and the walkathon route was lined with friendly people anxious to help us Free Babar. They cheered and waved as the kids streamed by.
Here’s the remarkable part of the day — every kid walked the entire four miles. A few, such as Claire Pike, covered the final few blocks on some other kid’s shoulders, but they all made it!
“I think we should talk to Mrs. Wofsey,” Dawn said at our Wednesday BSC meeting. “She should know about those spies in the matching jogging suits.”
“I’m with Dawn,” Claudia agreed. “We’ve all watched them making lists with dollar amounts next to weird Latin words. And Logan and Mary Anne even heard them talking about how much a gibbon would cost.”
I said, “And the next thing we knew, the cage was standing wide open.”
“I’ll talk to Mrs. Wofsey,” Claudia volunteered. “I think she’d appreciate any clues we can give her.”
“Speaking of clues,” I said, “I can’t stop thinking about those red berry stains. When the emu was freed the stains were both inside and outside the cage. With the gibbons, the berry stains stopped at the door. And with the giraffe, there were no stains at all. What do you think that means?”
Kristy, who hadn’t really been part of our zoo investigation, offered a solution. “Maybe it just means that there are berry bushes near the emu and monkey cages, but not the giraffe.”
I looked at Kristy. “Yeah. Maybe I’m trying to invent clues where there aren’t any.”
I went home that night more discouraged than ever. Nothing seemed to fit together.
But the next day, the pieces started to fall into place. It all began when I tried to use my zoo key in the bears’ information kiosk. (I realized I’d listened to the emus’ and the seals’, but not the bears’.)
“It doesn’t fit,” I muttered. Several visitors who were standing near me at the bear exhibit overheard.
A man hold
ing the hands of two little girls said, “I’d ask for my money back. They charge you for everything here.”
I studied the key. “It’s solid brass,” I said to myself. “Not just painted gold.” Then it hit me. “The missing zoo key!”
But how could I have gotten Mrs. Wofsey’s key? I didn’t remember dropping a key. Mrs. Wofsey lost hers a week and a half before on Friday. I must have had my own then, because I used it to gather information about emus from the kiosk.
Shortly after, the emu was freed, so someone else must have had the key at that moment. The only other time my key was out of my backpack was when I dumped my pack onto the table to look for change for a soda. Alan and Howie both emptied their packs, too. That’s when the key exchange must have happened.
Suddenly, everything made sense. “Alan has the key!” I announced to the next group of strangers who had come to look at the bears. Normally, I would have been embarrassed to have been caught talking to myself, but today it didn’t matter. I had solved the mystery.
Alan Gray stole the zoo key. But why? Alan must have freed the emu so he could observe the emu on the run and win the contest. I stuck the key in my pocket and marched down the zoo sidewalk toward the emu enclosure, muttering, “No wonder he knew so much about emus. Nobody could get that kind of information watching from a park bench outside the fence. He was inside the emu’s cage. And that also explains the berry stains. He was standing in the bushes.”
Alan was sitting by the emu enclosure with his notepad open when I arrived. “We have to talk,” I said bluntly.
“You look worried,” Alan said, shutting the notebook. “You shouldn’t be. With all the information I have here, we’re sure to win the prize.”
I looked directly into his eyes. “I know how you got your information.”
He blinked nervously. “How?”
“You gave yourself away.”
This time he swallowed before he spoke. “How did I do that?”
I put my hands on my hips and announced, “Alan, I have the key. The one you used to open the emu cage. We accidentally switched keys when we were pooling our money to buy a soda at the snack bar. But before that, you opened the cage and went inside. How do I know this?”
Alan shook his head, too confused to answer.
“Because there were berry stains inside the cage. You stepped on the berries outside the cage before you went inside to take a closer look.”
“Berry stains … zoo key?” Alan finally muttered. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about all of that information you picked up about the emu. Nobody could find it out just sitting on one of these benches. You had to have been up close and personal.”
“That’s not true,” Alan snapped.
I threw my hands in the air. “Well, how else could you know so much about emus?”
Alan shot a nervous glance at his backpack, which was sitting open on the park bench. I followed his gaze and saw what he was looking at a large picture book titled Australia’s Flightless Bird, the Emu.
“You — you found your information in a book?” I stammered.
“Shhhh!” Alan gestured for me to lower my voice. “I really need the extra credit. I wasn’t observing anything from this bench. I mean, Edith just eats and sleeps. She never even comes near the fence.”
“I know,” I muttered. “It’s kind of frustrating. But Mrs. Gonzalez told us we were strictly forbidden to use any information from a book. It has to be based on observation.”
“Great.” Alan’s shoulders slumped. “This way we’ll never beat Logan’s group.”
“Look, Alan,” I said, “I think we have a lot of good information without that book. And you certainly didn’t need to go into the emu’s cage —”
“Hold on a minute!” Alan nearly shouted. “Don’t you understand? I never went in the emu’s cage. I never had the zoo key.”
“Well, I didn’t have it when the emu was freed,” I shot back.
Alan squinted at me. “If you didn’t have it, and I didn’t have it, then —”
“Howie must have had it!” we both said at once.
“Come on.” Alan tucked his notebook into his pack and looped it over one shoulder. “Let’s find Howie.”
“He must be at the seal pool,” I said, “because I was watching the bears, and I didn’t see any sign of him.”
That’s where he was, too. Howie was in the little grassy area across from the seal pool, lazily eating an ice-cream bar.
You should have seen his face when Alan confronted him. He turned so red the tips of his ears were blazing.
“Okay, okay. I found the key on the ground by the berry bushes,” he confessed. “But I thought it was mine. I only realized it wasn’t when I couldn’t make it work in the information kiosk.”
“So you tried the key on the emu’s gate?” I asked.
He nodded. “But I only stepped into the pen. I mean, I wasn’t there three seconds when I turned and ran.” He looked at Alan and me and winced. “I guess I must have left the gate open. I felt terrible when I heard the emu had escaped.”
Suddenly, I remembered something. “I should have known you weren’t observing the bears that day. You told me they were all napping in the trees. Bears don’t sleep in trees!”
Alan frowned at Howie. “Way to cover, dimwit!”
Howie narrowed his eyes. “You believed me.”
Then Howie turned to me. “Hey, I may have accidentally freed the emu. But what about the giraffe and the gibbons? You had Mrs. Wofsey’s key when all that happened.”
“I was at the elephant painting exhibition when the giraffe got loose, and at the gorilla lecture when the gibbons’ cage was left open.” The boys stared at me, not quite convinced. “There were plenty of witnesses!” I cried.
“Time out!” Alan made a T with his hands. “I think we can safely say that none of us had anything to do with those two escapes. Which means there’s a criminal running around with his — or her — own key.”
My eyes widened. “You’re right. Because we’ve had Mrs. Wofsey’s lost key the entire time.” I realized it was time to fill Howie and Alan in on the BSC’s investigation. I told them everything we’d discovered and listed our key suspects. When I finished, Howie nudged Alan. “I think we should do some investigating of our own. You know, like scope out the zoo, and see who has a key, and who doesn’t. Maybe tail those two spies in the jogging suits some more.”
Howie liked the idea. I decided to let them do their research. I was anxious to find Logan, Claudia, and Dawn, so I could tell them what I’d found out.
I bumped into the three of them in front of the visitors’ center. But Claudia had news of her own, and could hardly wait to tell me about it.
“Mary Anne, I talked to Mrs. Wofsey this morning,” she blurted out. “And those people in sweatsuits are agents, all right. But not spies. They’re agents for an eccentric tycoon in New Hampshire. He wants to build a zoo on his estate. Mrs. Wofsey is helping them figure out how much it would cost to set one up.”
“Whoa!” I said. “Wait till the animal rights activists hear about that!”
“Not to mention his neighbors,” Logan joked. “Can you imagine? Instead of neighbors complaining about a dog barking, he’ll be getting calls about his lion roaring.”
“Or his gibbon shrieking,” I said, laughing.
“Speaking of gibbons,” Dawn said, “we still don’t know who tried to set them free.”
“Well, we do know who didn’t do it,” I said, “which is a start.” Then I told Claudia and Logan how Howie had found Mrs. Wofsey’s key and accidentally freed the emu. “Now I have the zoo key, so that means whoever did it has his or her own key.”
“That propably eliminates the protestors,” I said.
“And narrows it to zoo employees,” Claudia said. “Like that guard, Mike, or Tim the vet —”
“Or Mr. Chester,” I said. “Remember how unpleasant he’s been to Mrs. Wofsey? He really
seems to dislike her.”
Logan pointed at me. “Remember the time we were watching the seals, when they were being fed?”
I nodded. “We talked about the competition, and then we went to Dr. Wordsworth’s lecture.”
“That was just before the gibbons’ cage was found open,” Logan said. “Now, do you remember what Mr. Chester said when he was late to the lecture?”
I nodded. “He said he had to feed the seals …” A light bulb in my brain suddenly went on. “But he didn’t feed the seals, because you and I watched the blond guy with the moustache feed them fifteen minutes before.”
“Exactly!” Logan cried.
“And the berry stains,” I said, suddenly remembering the stains outside the gibbons’ cage door. “Mr. Chester must have made them —”
“Because he was standing in the bushes,” Dawn jumped in, “when he yelled at Howie and Alan about feeding the animals.”
I was so excited I could hardly breathe. “We’ve got to tell Mrs. Wofsey right away. Like now.”
Logan pointed to the office by the front gate. “Let’s try her office.”
We were in luck. She was in.
Logan, Claudia, Dawn, and I crowded into her tiny office and took turns telling our story. We told her about finding the zoo key, how the emu gate was accidentally left open, and especially about the berry stains and Mr. Chester’s lie.
When we were finished, Mrs. Wofsey looked grim. She pursed her lips and shook her head for a long time before she spoke.
“It comes as no surprise that our culprit is Mr. Chester. You may or may not have noticed that there has been some tension between us. When I was hired for this position, he was resentful. He thought the job should have gone to him. He’s done everything in his power to undermine my authority.”
“What are you going to do?” Claudia asked. “Call the police?”
Mrs. Wofsey sighed. “Not just yet. You see, we really don’t have anything concrete against him. All of the evidence is circumstantial.”