Hauntings and Heists (6 page)

(A ? MYSTERY)

“That is amazing, Woodrow!” said Viola. “You solved the mystery
and
helped out your friend. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?” Woodrow’s smile grew extra-wide. “Hey, speaking of weird accusations, I’ve got another story.

“A couple nights ago, after dinner, my parents turned on the police scanner, and we listened to the strange reports people were calling in. I know it’s an odd family activity, but my mom used to have to do that sort of thing for her job in Philly, and we all got into it. And you all know how much I like a good mystery.” She laughed.

“One of the calls was a complaint from an elderly man about a suspicious car he’d noticed crawling really slowly through this neighborhood every morning, just before dawn. What the old man was doing up that early, he didn’t say. But
he did mention that whoever was driving this car was vandalizing his neighbors’ houses.”

“In this neighborhood?” said Sylvester.

Viola nodded. “He claimed that the driver was throwing heavy objects, possibly water balloons, which would smack into the front porches. The man was worried his house would be next. The police planned a stakeout the next morning.

“I decided to have a stakeout of my own. I set my alarm clock for super-early. I crawled out of bed before dawn, dug around in my detective kit, and pulled out the binoculars that my grandparents got me for my ninth birthday — back when I thought I might want to be a spy, just like Harriet in those old books.

“I crawled downstairs, happy not to hear any eerie tapping noises. Then I crouched behind the loveseat near the front window, hiding just under the windowsill so I had a great view up and down the road.

“For a long time, nothing happened, and I struggled to keep my eyes open. I think I dozed off for a minute or two, but I jolted awake when I heard an engine puttering up the street. I peered up the hill just as that black car let out a big bang and disappeared over the horizon. Its noisy exhaust pipe was backfiring again. I still don’t
know who that car belongs to, but I’m dying to find out just so I can tell him to fix it!”

“I think I heard it again this morning too,” said Rosie. “It woke me up and everything.”

“So annoying!” Viola said. “Anyway, a few minutes later, the sun was just starting to peek over the horizon, and I was about to give up. But then I heard another car coming up the road. This one was a small blue hatchback. To my surprise, I saw the driver throw something hard out the window. The object flew across Rosie’s yard and hit her front porch.”

“It did?” Rosie said, sounding scared.

Viola nodded. “But the driver did the same thing again in front of my house. Suddenly, all thoughts of vandalism flew out of my head. The guy was only doing his job.
Do you have a clue who he was?”

“It was the newspaper delivery guy. Some high-school kid with a route. In fact, he was delivering the
Moon Hollow Herald,
the paper my mom works for! The old man who had complained to the police was just being paranoid.”

“What a weirdo!” said Woodrow.

“Don’t be mean,” said Rosie. “My grandparents get confused sometimes too. We all do, in fact.”

“Sorry.” Woodrow blushed. “But, hey, I’ve seen that black car driving around. It looks like that one Mr. Reynolds drove.” He glanced at Viola. “He lived in that weird old house across the street from you.”

“The car might have come from across the street,” said Viola. “I could have missed it when I closed my eyes.”

“Yeah,” said Rosie. “But I thought that house was empty. My dad told me Mr. Reynolds died in there last year.”

“Weird,” said Viola. “Maybe someone else bought his car. Maybe they bought the house too.”

“But there was never any For Sale sign out front,” Rosie said, rubbing her arms, as if chilled.

“Speaking of strange cars,” Sylvester added, “listen to this.”

(A ?? MYSTERY)

“A few days ago, I was doing my homework at the diner counter when two teenagers, Derek and James, came in and sat down a few chairs away. Marjorie, our waitress, knows them pretty well and asked for their order, but they could barely stop their conversation to glance at her. Marjorie doesn’t take nonsense from any of the customers, but she also can’t pass up a bit of gossip, so she interrupted them and demanded to know what was so important that they couldn’t even order their usual root beer floats. I, of course, listened in stealthily … if that’s even a word.”

“Technically,” said Viola, “I think it is.”

“Derek and James are next-door neighbors and best friends. They live up in the hills past Loon Lake. Whenever they come into the diner, they always seem to have something to argue about, like whose favorite team is going to win
the playoffs, or who’s going to ask out Tamara Gillespie first, or which of them has a higher grade point average. They’re always in competition.”

“I know what that’s like,” said Rosie, thinking of her own siblings.

“Derek had just bought his first car—a used Buick. Big as a boat and bright green. He was really excited about it. Anyway, the morning before, Derek was woken by a massive boom from outside. It sounded like a gunshot or a cannon, he said.”

“Hey, maybe that black car was driving around up there?” Woodrow suggested.

Sylvester shook his head. “You’d think so, but no. It was something completely different. Derek scrambled out of bed and raced out to the driveway where he’d parked his new car. When he saw it, he screamed. There was a huge, smoking hole punched all the way through the Buick’s trunk. The back tires were flattened. He was certain that someone had vandalized the car.

“Furious, he ran across the yard and pounded on James’s front door. James had already been woken up by the sound of the explosion, and once he answered the door, Derek accused James of being jealous of him having a car first. James freaked out, angry that Derek would even think he was capable of doing something like this.

“After Derek calmed down and came to his senses, he apologized. Then, together, they decided that they would find whoever did this … and they would destroy him.”

“Yeah!” said Woodrow, rubbing his hands together.

“They examined every inch of the car, looking for clues, and figured that the only way the damage was even possible was by gunshot. But what kind of gun could punch a hole through a car?

“Finally, James looked at the driveway underneath the hole. To his surprise, he found a deep indentation in the asphalt itself, almost like a small crater. He instantly knew that this had not been caused by a gun. Inside the crater, James said he found the evidence to prove that, in fact, no one had vandalized the car.
Any clue what James found?”

“James reached under the car and pulled out a fist-size, pockmarked piece of metal. It was warm to the touch. It didn’t look like any sort of bullet or cannonball. In fact, they said it didn’t look like anything they’d ever seen. At first they were confused. Passing the piece of metal back and forth, they began to comprehend their awesome situation.”

“Where did the chunk of metal come from?” asked Rosie.

“Outer space! Based on the crater and the damage to the car, the boys believed that Derek was the victim of an extremely rare meteorite fall.”

“Hey!” said Woodrow. “I watched a meteor shower from my bedroom window a few nights ago. There were a few really bright ones. Maybe that was when it happened.”

“Wow, cool!” said Sylvester. “I wish I’d seen that. Anyway, the boys went back inside and did some research online. They found out that, in the past century, small meteorites had crashed through several other cars, and even some roofs!

“They called the police to report the accident. Since then, some scientists have already been up to their street to examine the damage. In fact, Derek says a museum offered to pay him for the meteorite … and for the car itself. He says he’s thinking of using the money to buy a brand-new one.”

“That’s an amazing story,” said Rosie. “Maybe we could all go up to the house and see if the crater is really there.”

“I’m sure Derek wouldn’t mind,” said Sylvester. “He is a regular at the diner, after all.”

That Saturday morning, the group rode their bikes up into the hills and found a crater nearly three feet in diameter in Derek’s driveway. In the
pavement, several giant cracks reached out from the center of the hole. It was as impressive as they’d hoped it would be. Derek came out of his house and, recognizing Sylvester, said hello with a look of pride that he had suddenly become a local celebrity.

The group didn’t stay long. Woodrow and Sylvester were taking the train down to New York City that afternoon to meet up with Woodrow’s father. They were staying the night. The next day, Mr. Knox was taking the boys to a comic book show.

While Woodrow and Sylvester were gone, the girls decided that they would hang out at Viola’s house.

As it turned out, their weekends were quite eventful.

On Monday afternoon, at the Four Corners, the group had plenty to talk about.

(A ??? MYSTERY)

“After you guys left for the city,” Viola began, “Rosie came over for lunch. It’s a good thing she did, because we ended up helping my mom solve another crime.”

“What?” said Woodrow. “Again?”

Rosie chuckled as Viola continued. “At the kitchen table, Mom was writing an article about a dispute between two local men. We asked her to explain the details, figuring that maybe we could help.

“Mr. Fredericks owns an antiques shop at the edge of town. My parents took me by there when we first moved here. You’ve probably seen the place. The building is an old barn, and there’s a whole bunch of junk outside leaning against one of the walls near the gravel parking lot. Inside, there’s real neat stuff—lots of old books and toys and furniture—piled right up to the rafters.

“So, last week, Mr. Klein, who runs a local dairy farm, happened to come into the shop. He noticed a moose-shaped, green-copper weather vane for sale. He approached Mr. Fredericks and told him that this very weather vane had once belonged to his grandfather, who had purchased it from an artisan way back in the nineteen thirties. The weather vane had sat atop the dairy barn on Klein’s farm until several years ago, when someone had stolen it. Mr. Klein was really upset and demanded that Mr. Fredericks give it back.

“Mr. Fredericks refused, insisting that he himself had crafted the moose many years ago, but had kept it in storage. Only recently had he decided to sell it—so he reasoned that Mr. Klein had made a mistake. This was a different moose than the one that had been stolen from the dairy. When Mr. Klein began to argue, Mr. Fredericks accused him of making up the story about the theft in order to get the weather vane for free. Furious, Mr. Klein stormed out of the shop and went directly to the police, hoping that they could settle the matter.

“But the police told him that it was one man’s word against the other’s.

“My mom said it was an interesting story but told us that the case might never be settled because there really was no proof.

“Well, Rosie and I put our heads together, and after a while, we realized that there
was
proof. And we used it to figure out who was swindling who.”

“Which man was telling the truth?” Rosie asked the boys.

“Mr. Klein’s claim that the weather vane was stolen from the roof of his barn is the truth,” said Viola.
“How did we know?”

“The fact that the moose is made out of copper but was green proves that the moose spent a lot of time outside. Rosie explained to me that the copper had oxidized, which means a chemical reaction occurred that made the metal change to a greenish hue when it was exposed to water. Years of rain and snow while sitting on top of the dairy barn turned the moose the same color as the Statue of Liberty.”

“So what does that prove?” asked Woodrow.

“Mr. Fredericks claimed that he’d kept the moose in storage since he’d crafted it himself a few years ago. If that was true, the moose would have been shiny and penny-colored. Since Mr. Fredericks obviously made up his story, we reasoned that he might have actually been the thief. We certainly had no proof of that, but my mom contacted Mr. Klein and told him how he could get his moose back. When Mr. Klein approached Mr. Fredericks again — this time armed with our argument — Mr. Fredericks gave in.

“To thank us, Mr. Klein gave us each a month’s worth of farm-fresh dairy. Rosie and I are going to teach ourselves how to make ice cream. You guys can help too if you want.”

The boys glanced at each other, then quickly nodded.

“Mint—chocolate chip, please,” said Sylvester with his eyes wide.

(A ??? MYSTERY)

“How was your trip to New York?” Rosie asked Woodrow.

“It was fun,” he said. “But Sylvester ran into a little bit of trouble at the comic book show.”

Sylvester cleared his throat, as if preparing to perform. “I wouldn’t say I
ran
into trouble…. I would say I
thwarted
it. My favorite comic book is called McKenzie the Magnificent. It’s about a parlor magician who also happens to have secret superpowers. The story takes place during the Great Depression. McKenzie travels around the Dust Bowl with a medicine show, impressing and entertaining the poor people, and every now and again, vanquishing an evildoer or dastardly villain.

“Since the series started, two different people have written and drawn the books. Jerry Jones,
Senior, began the series in the forties, and recently his son, Jerry Jones, Junior, took over. I like both of them equally, but the older comics are much rarer. That makes them more popular at these kinds of shows, especially if they’re signed.

“My mom and dad gave me a little bit of extra money to pay for food while I was staying with Mr. Knox, but Woodrow’s dad insisted on treating us to everything. So I ended up with some cash to spend at the comic show on Sunday. I was excited to look for one of the older McKenzie books. I thought it would be a really cool souvenir.

“The convention hall was enormous. Every aisle was packed with people. It was hard to even see what everyone was waiting in line for. But we did end up seeing some amazing stuff. Like the Marvel preview table and the DC giveaways. We saw tons of costumed avengers. Someone had even dressed up like Jabba the Hut!

“Finally, I found a vendor who was selling McKenzie issues. One copy was prominently displayed. It was super old and a little bit worn out, but I looked closer and saw a signature scrawled across the cover. It read, ‘Jerry Jones, Senior. September 25, 1950.’ I checked the price and realized I could just afford it. I had to get it, even if it was beat up—the signature made
it worthwhile. I asked Woodrow and his dad, and they both agreed it was totally cool.

“But just in time, I realized that I was about to waste my money.
Do you know why buying the comic would be a waste?”

“I looked closer at the signature and realized it was a forgery. I’d never seen Jerry Jones’s autograph before, so I wasn’t sure what it was supposed to look like. But something else about it tipped me off.
What was it?”

“The fact that the autograph read ‘Jerry Jones, Senior,’ and was also dated nineteen fifty proved to me that the signature was a fake.
Why?”

“Jerry Jones, Senior, would not have signed his name as ‘Senior’ back then because he wouldn’t have had to distinguish himself from his son, who hadn’t even been born yet.

“All of a sudden, the situation just seemed really sketchy, so I put the comic book back and returned my parents’ money to my pocket.

“I left the comic book show empty-handed, but I still had a great time. I know that one day I’ll be able to find a real signed copy of McKenzie the Magnificent, and it will be totally awesome.”

“Wow,” said Viola. “You should have reported the vendor for trying to sell you fake merchandise.”

“Yeah, I thought about it,” Sylvester replied. “But I don’t know for sure if the guy who was trying to sell the book even knew it was junk. He might have been just as clueless as I’d been when I took out my money.”

“Hmm,” said Rosie. “You never know when people might be trying to trick you. Someone in my own family tried to put one over on me just last night!”