The Case of the Old Man in the Mailbox

by Brian C. Jacobs

  Chapter 2

  Calling All Locksmiths

  Once the three of us were in his room, Scooter quickly shut the door behind us and glared at AJ. “What were you doing?!”

  Even though he is much bigger, AJ cowered away from the wiry Scooter. “I was just trying to make conversation. What’s the big deal?”

  “The big deal?” Scooter snapped back. “Were you also going to tell her about chasing the guy back into the woods? What do you think she would have done if she didn’t think that we were joking just then? She would have told my dad, and he would never let us get within a mile of those woods until the police department had gone over them with a fine-toothed comb!” He finished his tirade by pointing out the window to the woods beyond the backyard.

  “Don’t you think that would be overreacting?” AJ rebutted.

  “C’mon, AJ. You know my mom. Don’t you remember the ‘Urpy’ incident?”

  “Urpy” is Scooter’s three-year-old brother. His real name is Wyatt. Scooter nicknamed him “Earp” after the famous cowboy Wyatt Earp because the kid was making gun noises from the moment he could talk. Earp eventually became Urpy, and the name has stuck ever since.

  Well, one day Mrs. Parks had her hands full with trying to get laundry done, getting dinner started, and keeping Wyatt from breaking anything, so she asked the three of us boys to keep an eye on him while we were playing catch in the backyard. After a while, we got bored with just playing catch, so we decided to head over to AJ’s house to play video games. Since we were assigned babysitting duty, we took Urpy with us.

  Well, apparently Mrs. Parks had gotten so preoccupied with all the stuff she was doing around the house that she forgot she had left him in our care. When she realized how quiet it was in the house, she panicked and went outside looking and yelling for Wyatt. Of course, none of us could hear her because we were a couple blocks away playing video games. Mrs. Parks became hysterical and called the police, thinking either her son had been kidnapped or had wandered deep into the woods behind the house.

  About that time, we came back to the house, and a relieved and embarrassed Mrs. Parks had to call the police back and have them cancel the search-and-rescue mission.

  As we all giggled to ourselves at the memory, Scooter brought us back to the present. “Besides, don’t you think it would be a fun mystery to figure out who that guy is?”

  “Yeah,” AJ piped up, sarcasm in his voice, “that would be loads of fun. What are we gonna do, stake out a nursing home?”

  “Maybe we can set up surveillance of the mailbox and catch him in the act,” Scooter suggested. “I have some ideas for some camera mounts I’ve been wanting to try.”

  “Or maybe we can call some of the companies that he owes money to and find out how long he’s had this address,” I said.

  “Good idea,” Scooter said. “Plus, I really want to know why he’s receiving phone bills here, especially since I don’t know anyone in this neighborhood who still uses Yellow Express. We switched to Interbay years ago. I actually thought Yellow Express went out of business.”

  “Apparently not,” I remarked.

  “Do you really think that man is Stanley Mathisen?” AJ asked.

  “There is only one way to find out!” Scooter said with a smile.

  We spent that afternoon looking for clues about Stanley P. Mathisen. We didn’t really feel right about opening up his mail, so we did what we could with the information we had from the outside of the envelopes.

  Scooter gave us each a task. He got on the internet, looking for any records of a Stanley P. Mathisen who lived in Silverdale, Washington. I was in charge of looking up numbers in the phone book to call all of the businesses who were sending mail to the mystery man. And AJ got the boring but easy job of watching the woods with binoculars for any movement or clue as to where the old man had disappeared.

  After an hour I had had enough. I turned to talk to AJ. He was still at the window sill, but the binoculars were in his lap and he lay there fast asleep. I turned back to Scooter. “Poor guy. I think we bored him to sleep.”

  “Well, he is probably having a more productive afternoon than I am,” Scooter said. “I’ve searched all over the Web and found lots of Stanley Mathisens, but none of them live around here or have any sort of tie to Silverdale or our address.” His computer screen flickered, and a message box popped up. “And now my internet connection is going all wonky. Great. How about you, Tyler, any luck?”

  I was just as empty-handed as he was. “Nope, not really. I called the phone company and they aren’t allowed to give out any personal information. All of the catalogs he’s receiving are companies that got his address off a mailing list that was sold to them, which means he probably signed up for one magazine or something and his address was sold to all the other places by that company.

  “He also has what looks like some bills from a jeweler in California, a locksmith in Chicago, and the Jungle Furniture Company—I don’t know which city they’re in. I only have this local phone book, so I won’t be able to find a phone number for any of these three.”

  “Well,” Scooter said, “my computer appears to be down for the count, so you’ll have to check this stuff out on your computer when you get home. The California jeweler thing will probably not give us much… maybe a date of purchase, but that could be helpful. Keep trying to get a phone number for that address. The furniture company is probably just trying to sell him an extended warranty or something, so I bet that’s a dead end. I think our best clue is this locksmith in Chicago. Why would an old man in Washington need the services of a locksmith in Chicago? Get a number for him, and we’ll give him a call tomorrow.”

  “Alright, I’ll do my best,” I said.

  Sometime during the conversation, AJ must have woken up. “So I guess we are officially detectives, huh, guys?”

  “Yeah, AJ,” I said with sarcasm, “three kids trying to find some old man who supposedly shares a mailbox with Scooter. C’mon, we don’t even have a case. You gotta admit, this is really just curiosity.”

  “If I were a betting man, Tyler,” Scooter said with a smirk, “I’d bet most detectives were once upon a time merely curious boys!”

  We all smiled as we filed out of the room and stormed downstairs to do a real investigation—discovering what Scooter would be eating for dinner and whether AJ and me should invite ourselves over.

  Well, that night I couldn’t sleep. After supper, I combed the internet and found the phone number for the locksmith in Chicago, whose name was Brett Hull, and the three of us agreed that I would call him before school the next day, knowing it would be two hours later in Chicago because of the difference in time zones. But what was I supposed to say to him? Ask him if he knew a Stanley P. Mathisen now living in Washington State? Tell him we have mail for the guy from his company? Tell him he’s sending mail to a mystery man we suspect lives in my friend’s backyard? I felt dumber the longer I pondered the craziness of it. I finally dozed off, playing the possible conversation over and over in my mind.

  Surprisingly, I woke up rather refreshed the next day. Somewhere in the night, I had decided to try the blunt approach and just ask the guy if he knew a Mr. Mathisen who lived out here on the West Coast. I decided to just ask him if he knew him personally or if he did business with him. My defense was that if (or when) he asked why I wanted to know, I would simply inform him that my friend had received this letter addressed to Mr. Mathisen and we were just really concerned whether it was sent to the right address or not.

  I skipped my routine bowl of cereal and settled on a granola bar for breakfast to give me more time to talk on the phone. The bus would be at my stop in about fifteen minutes.

  A man answered the phone as if he had just woken up: “Hullo?” I suddenly worried that maybe he didn’t work on Fridays. But I soon realized he sounded that way all the time.

  “Hello there. Is this Mr. Hull?” I was so nervous my voice was shaking. I don’t know why, though—there
were over a thousand miles between me and the voice on the other end. But I was feeling paranoid.

  “Yeah, that’s me. What can I do for ya?”

  I got my real voice back and tried to sound confident. “Mr. Hull, my name is Tyler Pate, and I live in Silverdale, Washington. Do you know a Stanley Mathisen who may be living out here?”

  “Did you say Stanley Mathisen, son?” he asked quickly.

  Well, I felt a little better now, at least my voice had stopped squeaking enough for him to realize I was a boy. “Yes, Sir. I think he lives down the street from me.”

  “Yes, I know him. He was an old college buddy of mine. We lost touch for a while until recently, when we started writing each other again. How’s the old coot doing these days?”

  “Well,” I replied, “I don’t really know, Mr. Hull. I was hoping you could tell me!”

  “Me tell you? You’re the one living next door to him. What kind of neighbor are you, anyway?” he huffed.

  Back to the straightforward approach. “Well, Sir, I have never really met Mr. Mathisen officially. You see, a letter from you showed up at my friend’s house and we’re trying to get the address correct so your friend, Mr. Mathisen, could get the mail you worked so hard to write.” I think I probably poured on the charm a little too thick there, but I had to go with whatever came to my head.

  “Oh, I see. Well, let me get my address book and check the address again.” I could hear him set the phone on something, and then it was silent for minute.

  Suddenly Brett Hull’s voice came on again. “All right, I got it here… 473 Mountain View Court, Silverdale, Washington, 98383. Is that what I put on the letter? I probably put down 743 or something. I get kinda backwards when it comes to numbers.”

  “The address here is just as you read it off to me,” I said.

  The man was perplexed. “Hmmm, that’s strange, ’cause I know he got my other letters. He replied to them already. Uh, did your friend just move into his house? Maybe Stanley’s letters aren’t being forwarded correctly, you think?”

  I had as many questions as he did. “I don’t know what’s going on, Mr. Hull. My friend has lived at that address for years. We think maybe Mr. Mathisen is actually using my friend’s mailbox to get his mail, or something weird like that.”

  “That just couldn’t be possible,” the locksmith insisted. “Stanley told me all about the nice house he was living in over there. There’s gotta be another explanation for this.”

  “I know, Sir, this does seem strange. What else did he tell you about living in Washington?”

  Brett Hull then went on to talk for a good five minutes about all the stuff that Stanley had written in his letters: fishing in the beautiful Washington lakes, swimming in the Pacific, his job as a night auditor at a local motel, his favorite Italian restaurant on the corner, and lots more.

  Finally, I built up the courage to interrupt his rambling. “Mr. Hull, I hate to cut this short, but I really must get going. I have to catch the school bus.”

  It was an awkward conversation that just got more awkward as we tried to say goodbye. He told me his grandson was teaching him how to use e-mail, so I gave him my e-mail address and told him he could write me, and he said he would, but only if I promised to write him the moment I figured out where Stanley was.

  I hung up the phone, hurried to put my books in my backpack, and scurried out the door. As I waited for the bus to round the corner, I couldn’t help but shake my head. I did not know which was more sad: the fact that some lonely old man had made up all kinds of stuff and sent stories in letters to impress an old college buddy, or that his friend was so clueless that he couldn’t distinguish between reality and a good old fish story. All I knew was that now I was determined to find Mr. Mathisen and ask him some questions myself.

  Well, on the bus ride to school I filled in AJ and Scooter on the whole conversation and we all agreed on my assessment that Mr. Mathisen must be a lonely man, wanting his friends to think he was better off than he really was. We also agreed on one other thing—we had a lot to do when school was out!

  School seemed to go on for eternity that day, but, like we hoped AJ would do at the end of the year, it did eventually pass. So we once again found ourselves at four o’clock up in Scooter’s bedroom, munching on fresh-baked snacks and relaxing from a hard day at school. (Yeah, right—I’m just kidding, school was easy.)

  Scooter was checking his e-mail while AJ and me stretched out on the bed and tried to throw balled-up socks through the moving ceiling fan without touching it. If you didn’t throw it just right, the ceiling fan would catch the sock and bat it across the room. The socks would usually land near or on the dirty clothes hamper.

  When I actually made a basket in the hamper, the game quickly changed to trying to hit the fan to make a basket. The game lasted about ten minutes—that’s how long it took to empty Scooter’s sock drawer and totally trash his room.

  As we got up to pick up the socks strewn across the room (Scooter’s pretty uptight about keeping his room clean), Scooter wheeled back from his computer.

  “Well, I didn’t get any e-mail, but I found the furniture store online. Tyler, did you find anything interesting about them when you did your digging?”

  “Nah. Looks like they sell mostly do-it-yourself-type furniture. Maybe Mathisen is looking to upgrade his furniture in his treehouse? Just kidding. Anyway, speaking of e-mail,” I remembered, “can I check mine and see if Mr. Hull happened to write me?”

  Scooter jumped out of his seat and let me in front of the computer. I had two new messages. One was from a girl at school who I had asked to join me to watch the district track meet coming up. The subject of the e-mail said, “Sorry I can’t make it!” Well, I wasn’t very anxious to open up the e-mail and read her excuse why she couldn’t go, so I skipped it and went to the second. It was from Mr. Hull! Apparently he had figured out how to send an e-mail. It read:

  Dear Tyler,

  My grandson set up an e-mail account for me, so now I am “on-line” as the kids say. It was very pleasant talking to you, and I hope maybe we can be penpals—or rather, keyboard pals. (Ha Ha) Well, write back if you want to. I would love to hear what you think of your Seattle Mariners out there. They are pounding my Chicago White Sox this week. Do you like baseball, Tyler? What other sports do you watch?

  Well anyway, I will let you go. You told me you had not met my friend Stanley, so I am sending you a recent picture of him that he mailed to me a while back. My grandson somehow took the photo I have and stuck it in this e-mail. Can you believe what they can do with a computer these days?

  Take Care,

  Brett

  I quickly opened the attachment and told the guys to come look. I wanted all of us to see the unveiling of our mysterious mailbox-mate at the same time. Three seconds later, we were staring at a man who looked to be in his sixties holding up a fish the size of a baseball bat. We all looked at each other in agreement. Although we had not seen him from very close, we were pretty sure that the man grinning from ear to ear with a fish in his hand was the same man using Scooter’s mailbox.