Chapter Eight:
A Time of Rest
After looking through a few dozen photo albums and a gazillion pictures, we still had not found the clue. It didn’t help that we really weren’t sure what we were looking for. The clue had said that we were looking for our Great Aunt Sally’s favorite picture. It didn’t say who or what the picture was. We looked at all the pictures of Aunt Sally we could find, not to mention every other picture in the albums and frames. We even looked behind all of the pictures since the clue stated the answer is there behind Sally’s deerest portrait. But after three hours of searching, we had nothing!
“So, what do we do now?” Jamie asked. He was sitting on the attic floor surrounded by the many photo albums. He was drenched with sweat, his face smudged with dust and dirt. Dark circles surrounded his eyes causing him to look like a giant raccoon, and the dirt formed weird circles around his neck making it appear as if he were wearing dirt necklaces.
I dusted off my own clothes and wiped the moisture from my forehead. My skin felt gritty and slimy at the same time. “I’m not sure. We still need to search the basement, but when I was down there the other day, the light wasn’t working. It won’t do us any good to search in the dark, so we’ll have to wait until Pop-Pop can fix the light. Other than that, we’ve looked at every picture in this entire house. If the clue was here, I’m sure we would have found it by now. Maybe it’s somewhere else.”
Jamie stood and twisted. His back gave three loud pops. “But that doesn’t make sense. All of the other clues have been here, except for the first one. Why would the old lady hide the clue somewhere else? It has to be here. We just missed it.”
We stood there for several minutes, the only sound coming from the creaking of the floorboards. I could tell by the looks on their faces that the other three were just as disappointed as I was. We had been so close, but now, unless the picture was in the basement, it looked like we had reached a dead end. The silence was broken by Phyllis' screams as she ran around in circles, clawing at her hair. “Get it off! Get it off!”
Unsure what she was talking about, the three of us only stood there.
“Get it off!” she screamed again.
“Get what off?” Scott exclaimed.
“The spider! Big spider! In my hair!” She pulled at her pigtails with both hands, shaking her head enough to make me dizzy.
Scott walked closer to her. “Hold still. I can't see anything with you dancing all over the place.”
She did. Well, sort of. Her feet were still moving, and her eyes were still shifting from side to side.
“Hold still,” Scott repeated. “I see it. I've almost got it.”
A moment later, he held up one of the biggest and ugliest spiders I had ever seen. “What should I do with it?” he asked.
“Kill it!” Phyllis screamed.
“No, wait,” I said. “That wouldn't be right. After all, it is one of God's creatures. We can't just kill it. Let's take it outside and set it free.”
Phyllis looked at the spider once more and then focused her attention on me. “Fine, but I need a break. After we release that horrible little creature, let’s go do something fun.”
“Like what?” Jamie asked.
“I don’t know,” Phyllis answered. “It’s not raining for a change. Have you guys been to the park yet?”
“Yes,” I responded. “We went once when we first got here, but I admit I wouldn’t mind getting out of this house for a little while. . . especially this attic. It's burning up in here. As much as I want to find the treasure, I'm getting tired of this house. The park sounds like a good idea. We can search the basement later.”
We spent the next several minutes cleaning up the huge mess we had made in the attic. After we had dusted off our clothes and cleaned the spider webs from our hair (although Phyllis'
was already free of webs), we climbed back down to the lower floor. We were heading out the front door when I noticed something that I hadn’t seen before.
“Hey, guys. Look at this!” I walked over to the wall in the front hall and pointed up at a large empty space on the wall.
“Look at what?” Jamie asked. “Nothing is there.”
“Exactly,” I answered. “If you look at all the rest of the walls, they're all covered with pictures. There is not an empty space on any of them. Why would there be a big blank wall here?”
Phyllis walked over and stood next to me. “Maybe they ran out of pictures.”
“No way,” Scott answered. “Remember how many pictures we just looked through in the attic? They had plenty of pictures to put up in that space. It does seem a little odd that there isn’t a picture there, but what does it prove?”
I studied the empty space a moment longer and then turned to look at the other three. “Look close. See the area in the middle of that empty space where the wall paper is lighter than the area around it?”
“Abby,” Jamie whined, “What are you getting at?”
“Jamie, if you really want to be a secret agent, you’re going to have to learn to pay attention. What I’m trying to tell you is that I think there used to be a picture hanging right here.” I walked over and pointed out the spot on the wall. “The wall paper is lighter because the picture that hung here protected the wall paper from darkening with age. Do you get it now?”
“Pretty smart,” Scott said, smiling at me. “I would have never noticed that, but you’re right. The shape of the lighter wall paper does look like the shape of a picture frame. So, if there was a picture there, where is it now?”
“That’s a good question,” I answered. “Why don’t we go to the park like we planned and talk about it some more. Maybe the sunshine will do us some good.”
After releasing the spider, we began our much-needed break. The walk to the park was short and pleasant. It was a beautiful day. The sky was a bright blue, dotted with several clouds that resembled giant cotton balls. The temperature was fair—a little too warm in the direct sunlight, but perfect in the shade. A soft breeze blew my hair in all directions, but I didn't mind. It felt wonderful!
The playground was not large. It consisted of eight swings, a tall set of monkey bars, a merry-go-round that was slightly tilted, and two wooden seesaws. The seesaws were not like regular see-saws. They were the old-timey kind—long wide boards connected to a bar in the middle. There were no handles to hold on to, so we just held on to the board itself and prayed that we wouldn't smash our fingers when the board came crashing down on our side.
After playing on all the equipment, Scott and I sat down on the swings while Jamie and Phyllis had a contest to see who could hang upside down on the monkey bars the longest. Jamie won. We chased each other around the open field and raced with one another until we were exhausted and out of breath. After that, we lay down on the soft grass, watching the clouds float lazily along. Before long, though, we all agreed it was time to get back to solving the mystery of the missing portrait. We sat in the shade of an enormous oak tree and tried to come up with ideas.
Scott began, “Maybe the missing picture is one of the ones we saw up in the attic, and we just didn’t see the clue.”
“Or,” Jamie said, “maybe we missed one of the pictures in the attic. There isn’t a lot of light up there, and there could have been some other pictures that we didn’t see.”
“Hmm,” I said. “Those are both good points. There is also the possibility that someone took that picture from that spot.”
“But, Abby,” Jamie interrupted. “Who would take a picture off the wall?”
“Maybe it was Sally,” Phyllis whispered.
Scott looked at her and raised his eyebrows. “And why would Sally take a picture off the wall?”
Phyllis looked offended for a moment, but then she squared her shoulders back and looked her brother in the eye. “Because she liked it.”
Scott shook his head. “That’s just about the dumbest thing. . .”
“No, wait,” I said. “She may be on to so
mething there.”
“What?” Scott asked.
“The clue did say that the portrait was dear to Sally. It’s possible that Sally may have taken that picture off the wall because it was her favorite. Don’t you see? It all makes sense.”
“I think you’re loony,” Jamie grumbled.
I sat up straighter and stared at him. “Well, do you have a better idea?”
“No, but even if Sally did take it, how do we find it?”
At this point, Scott joined in. “We could go talk to her about it. We know where she lives. She’s a real nice lady—a little strange—but nice.”
I felt the excitement growing in me again. “Jamie, what time is it?”
Jamie glanced down at his watch. “It says here on my super-secret spy watch that it’s almost 4:00.”
“Good,” I replied. “It’s still a couple of hours until dinner. We can go talk to Great Aunt Sally right now.”
We gathered our stuff and headed down the road toward Sally’s house. On the way, Scott and Phyllis told us a lot of interesting facts about the neighborhood and the people living there. They failed, however, to mention a few important details about Sally herself.
The Delaware Detectives Page 8