The Mystery of the Traveling Tomatoes

by Gertrude Chandler Warner

  “Who was that?” asked Henry.

  “A stranger stopped in a couple of months ago. He was a big man, as tall as my hubby Harry. But he had long blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. He asked if he could rent the garage to work on his car. I called Mr. Duffy and he said it was OK. We were hoping the man might like the place enough to buy it,” Sally said.

  “Why didn’t he?” asked Jessie.

  “I guess he just left town. One morning I came to work and found the keys to Duffy’s slipped under my door. When I went to check on the garage, it was all boarded up, just the way Duffy left it,” Sally replied.

  Violet looked at the photos. “What happened to all these old cars in the back of the garage?”

  “Well, I couldn’t sell the garage with that mess out back, so last month, I called Sam’s Scrap Yard. Sam hauled everything but the tires,” said Sally.

  The Aldens thanked Sally for talking to them.

  “You’re welcome,” said Sally. “And could you do me a favor?” She handed Jessie some photos. “Please give these to the Sheas for me.” There were couple of old photos of The Applewood Café, before the Sheas bought it. There was also a batch of For Sale photos of Duffy’s Garage. “Mrs. Shea said she’d put these up in the café,” Sally said.

  “That’s a good idea,” said Jessie. “Maybe a customer will see them and want to buy the garage.”

  Sally handed Jessie a key to Duffy’s Garage as well. “Give this to Mrs. Shea, too. The key opens the side door. I told her to just go in and show the garage to anyone who wants a look.”

  “Benny Alden!” cried Mrs. McGregor. The Alden’s housekeeper stared at the bright red splotches on Benny’s arms. “It’s poison ivy indeed. You go upstairs this minute and soak in a cool bath.” She checked the other children but only Benny had splotches. “And it’s a bath for you, too,” she told Watch, leading the dog to the laundry sink.

  Poor Watch did not like baths. But Mrs. McGregor said he needed one.

  “I’ll wash Watch, because he might have rubbed against the poison ivy,” she explained to Jessie. “His fur would protect him from a rash, but the poison could rub off on anyone who petted him.”

  At bedtime, the children gathered in Benny’s room. Violet dipped the tips of cotton swabs into a bottle of pink Calamine lotion. Then she painted funny pink animals on Benny’s rash to soothe the itching.

  “This sure has been a busy day,” said Jessie, yawning. “This morning we found our ‘black gold’ tipped over and had to round up our worms. Then we followed the boot prints of the person who did it out into the alley.”

  “And I found a toy car in the poison ivy,” said Benny. “And someone moved my green pepper plants.”

  Violet finished drawing a pink giraffe on Benny’s arm. “And, at the armored car office, Edie Hope showed us the route the armored car usually takes.”

  “And we went to the bank,” said Benny, who really wished he’d brought money to buy a candy bar.

  “Then we biked along the armored car route,” said Henry, “from the bank all the way down to Main Street without seeing one place the crook could hide an armored car. And we talked to Sally at the real estate office.”

  Jessie brushed her hair. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but between running the 5K yesterday, and riding my bike today, my legs ache.”

  “My whole self aches,” said Benny, flopping back on his pillows. The children said goodnight and went to their rooms.

  Benny couldn’t sleep. Part of the problem was the itchy poison ivy. But there was something else. Something Benny saw during the day wasn’t quite right. What was it? He closed his eyes. He thought of the picture puzzles he loved to solve. This time he pictured the two old photos of The Applewood Café—the one he saw in Sally’s real estate office and the one hanging in The Applewood Café. The photos were almost exactly the same. Almost.

  Benny squeezed his eyes tight, trying to picture the differences. There was something else. Benny was sure of it. He just couldn’t see it. Tomorrow he’d put the two photos side by side and figure out what it was.

  Watch jumped on the bed and curled up next to him. “You smell like shampoo,” said Benny. He slid an arm around his furry friend, and soon they fell fast asleep.

  CHAPTER 7

  Picture, Picture, on the Wall

  After breakfast the next morning, Henry lifted one photo off The Applewood Café wall. He set it on the table next to the photo Sally gave them. Benny was right about two differences between the pictures. Only one photo had a SOLD sticker on the For Sale sign. And then Laura and David were only in one photo.

  “I was sure there was something else,” Benny said. But, as hard as he looked, he couldn’t find any more differences.

  While the others went out to work in the garden, Violet walked around the café taping up photos of Duffy’s Garage. An elderly man walked in with a young woman. Violet knew who the man was. It was Cesar Canton, the old farmer who played chess with Chief Morgan.

  He introduced the woman. “This is my daughter,” he told Violet. “She’s the one who likes living in the sky.”

  The woman smiled. “I’m pleased to meet a friend of Chief Morgan’s. My dad was lonely and bored here in Greenfield until he and the chief began playing chess every day.”

  Cesar rested a hand on his daughter’s shoulder as they walked to a table. Violet noticed that small blisters covered his hand. The she glanced at his cane. Could the tip of Cesar’s cane have made the holes they’d found all around the garden? A shiver ran through her. She hurried out to the others and told them about Cesar’s rash and his cane.

  “But Cesar loves growing things,” said Jessie. “Why would he dump out our worms or dig up our plants?”

  “Someone dug up my onions!” wailed Benny from the back of the garden. This time, the person didn’t bother putting the plants back in place. They’d dug deep holes all around the onion patch and left the onions strewn on the ground. The heat of the morning sun had shriveled the leaves. “They’re ruined,” cried Benny.

  “It’s just the leaves that dried out,” said Violet, “the onions are still good.” She gathered the onions, gently setting them in a basket. “I’ll bring these to Mr. Shea and he’ll cook them into a delicious soup.”

  Benny didn’t hear her. He was staring hard at Duffy’s Garage next door. His eyes grew wide. “That’s it!” he yelled, forgetting all about the onions. “That’s what’s different!” He ran inside and returned waving the For Sale photo of Duffy’s Garage. “See? The metal sheets used to cover the outside of the windows.” He pointed to the garage. “But now they are inside the windows.”

  The children raced over, pressing their noses against the garage windows. The sheets of metal blocked them from seeing inside. “Green paint,” said Henry, pointing to drips on the metal. “That’s the color of the writing on the AAA Armored Cars.”

  “We need to get inside,” said Jessie. She ran to the café and got the key Sally had given them. It barely fit into the rusty lock. Henry jiggled it this way and that. Suddenly, the key turned and the door creaked open. The children walked inside.

  The dark garage smelled like motor oil and damp cement. Violet clicked the light switch up and down. Nothing happened. The only light came from the open door.

  “Stand here,” said Henry. He waited for his eyes to adjust to the dark. Then he found a hammer on the tool bench and went to a window. Carefully, he slid the end of the hammer under the nails, prying off the metal panel. As he pried off the last nail, the panel clattered to the ground. Sunlight streamed in. The others rushed in, staring at the panel on the floor. It said, “AAA Armored Car Company.”

  “This was the thief’s hideout,” said Benny.

  Jessie nodded. “I think the thief was the man in the ponytail. The man who rented the garage from Sally. He pulled the metal sheets off the windows and nailed them around his truck to make it look like an armored car.”

  Violet frowned at the green lettering,
which was full of drips and smudges. “He did a messy job,” she said. “Why didn’t anybody notice?”

  “Everyone in town was watching the circus parade,” Henry reminded her.

  “And our mail truck drives down our block every day,” said Jessie. “When was the last time you took a good hard look at it?”

  Violet tried to remember, but she couldn’t. “Exactly,” Jessie said. “All the crook needed to do was make his fake truck look sort of like the real one.”

  “He was pretty smart,” said Henry. “After the robbery, he came back here, pulled the panels off, and nailed them back up on the windows. He hid the evidence in plain sight. I wonder what he did with the van.”

  Benny looked out the window at the back lot. “That used to be full of junk cars,” he said. “What if the crook just parked his van with all the others?”

  Jessie clapped her hands. “Benny, that’s brilliant! No one would notice one more old car.”

  “Sam’s Scrap Yard hauled the junk off Duffy’s lot,” said Henry racing to his bike. “If Benny’s right, maybe the van is still at Sam’s.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Black Gold Thief

  The sign for Sam’s Scrap Yard stuck out of a tall dirt hill. Wild leafy vines crawled along the dirt and snaked around the sign. A tangle of watermelons, cantaloupes, pumpkins, cucumbers, and zucchinis covered the hill.

  The children rode their bikes past the hill into the scrap yard. There were old cars everywhere. Most were missing windows and tires. Some had no doors, others no bumpers. Many seemed more rust than paint.

  “Woof! Woof!” A large dog came from around an old school bus.

  “Cat!” called a deep voice. “Stay!” The dog stopped. A man hurried around the bus and stood next to the dog. He looked a bit like Spooky the Scarecrow with his baggy pants and rumpled shirt.

  “Your dog’s name is Cat?” Jessie asked the man.

  “Yup. Already got a dog named Dog. Cat likes to bark, which makes him a good watchdog. But he wouldn’t hurt a flea. Anyway, I’m Sam. Can I help you?”

  Jessie handed Sam one of Duffy’s For Sale photos. “Do you remember this place?” she asked.

  “Yup, I cleared every bit of that junk.” Sam squinted at the photo. “This doesn’t show that old van I had to haul.”

  “A van?” Jessie said. Her heart beat faster. Had they found the fake armored car? “Is it still here?” she asked.

  Sam scratched his stubbly beard. “Should be around someplace. Let’s take a look.” He led them around cars and trucks, through mountains of rusty fences and metal beams.

  As they walked, Violet asked him about the vegetables growing out front.

  “That’s the darndest thing,” said Sam. “Those hills were always an eyesore—full of weeds and all sorts of litter. But this spring, little plants came sprouting up. Every morning I came to work and found more and more plants. I figured the wind blew in a bunch of old seeds.” He laughed. “I sure do like the look of all that greenery.” Suddenly, Sam stopped. “There,” he said, “there she is.”

  The van was a sorry sight. The metal trim was ripped off the sides. Gone were the tires and doors, bumpers and hood.

  “What happened to it?” Henry asked.

  “People come here looking for parts to fix their cars,” explained Sam. “They’ll take a mirror from one car and a door handle from another.”

  Henry examined small holes poked everywhere on the outside of the van. “Nail holes,” he said. “The thief hammered the metal panels right into the sides of this van.”

  Violet peered inside. “There’s green paint on the steering wheel,” she said. “The thief touched it while he was painting.” She looked closely at the paint. “I think I see fingerprints!”

  Jessie examined the back of the driver’s seat. The plastic headrest was torn. Pieces of yellow foam crumbled out. A few long blond hairs were caught in the jagged plastic. She remembered what Sally had said, that the man who rented Duffy’s Garage had a long blond ponytail. Jessie touched the strands.

  “These aren’t real hair. That ponytail was a wig. And these,” she touched a couple of black hairs caught in the torn leather, “might be hairs from the black wig he wore when he robbed the bank.” She started to pull the hairs out.

  “Stop!” warned Henry. “We mustn’t touch any of this. It’s all evidence.” He read detective books and he knew that it was best not to touch anything that the police might need to solve a case. He saw that the floor of the van was littered with old newspapers, paint rags, fast food, and candy wrappers. Henry wanted to climb in and look through everything. But he knew he couldn’t. “Let’s go,” he said. “We have to tell the police what we’ve found.”

  Chief Morgan sat at the front desk typing up a police report. Next to him was a plate of cookies, with a sign that said: Fresh baked zucchini cookies—help yourself.

  “We found it!” cried Benny. “We found the fake armored car!”

  In a rush, the Aldens told the chief about everything they’d found—the van and the metal panels nailed on to make it look like an armored car, the stranger with the blond ponytail who’d rented Duffy’s Garage …

  As they talked, the chief waved over two detectives who wrote down the children’s information. One of them hurried off to Sam’s Scrap Yard while the other went to Duffy’s Garage.

  “Should we wait here,” asked Jessie, “in case the detectives have questions for us?”

  “They won’t be back for a while,” said the chief. “I’ll call your house when I learn anything. Meanwhile, take a few cookies with you.” He pushed the plate toward them. “My wife’s been baking zucchini cookies, zucchini cakes, zucchini sweet rolls—you name it, she bakes it. Zucchini is growing wild all over town. Watermelons, too, and cantaloupes, cucumbers, tomatoes.”

  Violet nibbled a cookie thick with raisins. “We saw your friend Cesar Canton and his daughter at The Applewood Café,” she said. “His daughter says he misses his farm. She is very happy you and Cesar play chess every day.”

  “Not every day,” said the Chief. “We just play Saturday and Sunday.” He emptied the rest of the cookies into a bag. “Here, take them all. If I eat one more cookie, I’ll turn into a zucchini.”

  As the children unlocked their bikes, Jessie said, “The chief said he plays chess with Cesar twice a week. But Cesar’s daughter thinks Cesar is playing chess every day.” She smiled. “What do you think Cesar is doing the other five days of the week?”

  All around them, vegetables grew around lampposts and parking meters and trees and fences. “I think Cesar does what he loves to do most,” said Violet. “Planting, planting, planting.”

  “Did he plant the hill around Sam’s Scrap Yard?” asked Benny. “And the tomatoes outside the wig shop?”

  Violet nodded. “He’s planted this whole town.”

  “I’ll bet Cesar staked our sunflowers,” Jessie said. “And he got poison ivy on his hands when he cleaned up those weeds behind The Applewood Café.”

  Violet looked troubled. “His daughter said farming is too hard for him. Do you think we should tell her what he’s been doing?”

  The children didn’t want Cesar to hurt himself by working too hard. But they also did not want to give away the old farmer’s secret. “Let’s ask Grandfather tonight,” said Jessie. “He’ll know the right thing to do. And he will keep Cesar’s secret.”

  They biked through the park, where the Heart Healthy Run had been the day before. The yellow-shirted Events Committee members were working to take down the tents. Empty water bottles littered the finish line.

  The man with the metal detector was there, too, searching the ground nearby.

  “Hi,” Benny called. The man looked up, startled. “I tried one of those,” Benny told him. “I heard the clicking sounds that metal makes and—”

  But the man did not want to talk. He hurried away, kicking aside water bottles, stomping over cardboard signs.

  Violet stared at the man’s boo
t prints. They left a V shaped pattern. One of the Vs had no point on the bottom. “That’s the same bootprint we saw in our garden,” she said. “That’s the man who dumped our worms.”

  The man was running now. “Hey,” yelled Henry. The man ran faster. “We want to talk to you!”

  They started to ride after him.

  But suddenly, a scream stopped them cold. “Look out!” cried a voice across the park.

  The children turned to look. The top of a big tent rocked back and forth. The sides started falling in. The volunteers were inside! The children raced over and jumped off their bikes.

  Henry grabbed one of the tent poles. “Jessie, grab another pole,” he called. Benny and Violet helped, too. Together they held the tent steady enough for the trapped workers to escape.

  “Thank you,” said a man. “We … we thought we could take the tents down by ourselves. But we really needed one more worker.”

  “It’s just like Fenster to disappear when there’s hard work to be done,” said an angry woman. “Why did he volunteer for the Events Committee? He knew we needed his help with the tents.”

  “We’ll help,” said the children. And, with everyone working together, they took down all the tents and packed them away. By the time they finished, the man with the metal detector was gone.

  “That’s all right,” said Henry, “I have an idea how we can track him down. Let’s go to Mr. Hamu’s hardware store.”

  At the hardware store, Mr. Hamu switched on his computer. “I hope I can help you find the person who has been trespassing in your garden,” he told the Aldens. “Only a few people have bought this expensive kind of metal detector.” He typed the words Metal Detector Model X332 in the computer. Three names appeared on the screen.

  He pointed to the first name. “This man moved to Chicago last year,” he said. He pointed to another name. “And this man fell off his son’s skateboard and broke his leg, so he’s not using his detector just now. That leaves this last one. His name is Chaney Dunkard. He lives just down the street.” Mr. Hamu wrote down the address.