Baby-Sitters Beware

by Ann M. Martin

  I nodded.

  “Oh, Kristy.” Watson held me at arm’s length. “I’m not doing too much. I had a check-up before we came here. Everything is going perfectly. In fact, I’m supposed to start exercising seriously on a regular basis. I’m even thinking of taking up jogging.”

  “The doctor said you could?” I asked.

  “The doctor said I should. And there’s a doctor on staff at the lodge. She lives here in Shadow Lake. So even if something did go wrong, which I very much doubt, a doctor would be on hand.”

  I sighed. I felt a little silly. Watson was taking care of himself. I just hadn’t trusted him.

  You know what? I didn’t want Watson disappearing the way my father had. I wanted Watson around for a long, long time. Like forever.

  I gave Watson a quick hug. “Okay,” I said. “I’m freezing.”

  “Go in the house,” said Watson, giving me a quick hug back.

  I dashed up the stairs. When I reached the top Watson said, “Kristy?”

  I turned. Watson smiled at me. A family, fatherly smile. “Thanks,” he said.

  Archie had watched his Aladdin video (which I think he’s seen a hundred times — he knows all of the genie’s lines, even though I don’t think he understands more than half of them) and had gone to bed quietly. He was sound asleep now.

  I sent Shea and Jackie to take their baths, told them I’d be upstairs to check on them (I didn’t want Jackie to flood the bathroom accidentally) and promised them popcorn and hot chocolate when they were clean and in their pajamas.

  Then I stood at the kitchen window and stared out at the Segers’ house, thinking about Logan, who was at the football banquet. I thought about the new sweater I’d bought for our special date tomorrow night. I wondered if Logan had sent me those strange notes. And why.

  If he had sent them, maybe he wasn’t the Logan I thought I knew.

  The idea made me feel very lonely and confused.

  I was thinking so hard about Logan (and listening to the sounds of Jackie and Shea running bathwater) that the battered Ford Escort had pulled into the driveway and stopped before I noticed it. For a moment, I thought Mr. Seger had come home. Then I remembered that right after I’d arrived at the Rodowskys’, I’d seen a woman go to the front door of his house and ring the bell, and that he’d left with her, in her car. His car was still in the driveway.

  Some instinct made me turn away from the window. A moment later, I’d turned out the light and rushed back to the window.

  It was the same kind of car that Kristy and Abby had described the burglars as driving.

  I knew that with the light out, no one could see me standing at the window. But I still peered out cautiously. The streetlights gave off enough light for me to see pretty clearly.

  Noah Seger got out of the passenger side of the car. From the other side, a very short person emerged.

  Short. Just like the burglar Kristy and Abby had seen.

  Noah and his friend looked around carefully. They even looked over at the Rodowskys’, which made me shrink back.

  But they didn’t see me. Noah nodded and said something.

  Then they went into the house. Except they didn’t use the door. They pried open the window!

  I didn’t think. I just leaped for the phone and called the police.

  “Sergeant Johnson, please,” I said breathlessly. “It’s urgent.”

  I told Sergeant Johnson what I’d seen.

  “I’ll be right over,” he said. “Don’t do anything. Stay where you are.”

  I wasn’t about to argue. Besides, I was baby-sitting. That was my first responsibility.

  I hung up the phone and checked on Jackie and Shea, who were now in their PJs and playing a computer game. I promised them popcorn and hot chocolate later. Then I went back to the kitchen and stared at the dark house across the way.

  It was unnerving. Where were the police?

  Almost without noticing what I did, I picked up the phone and called Logan. He answered. He’d just come home from the football banquet. He didn’t sound all that happy to hear from me, I thought, but I couldn’t worry about that now. I told him what I’d seen and he said he’d come right over, too.

  Things became a little crazy after that. Oh, the police car didn’t arrive with its light flashing and its siren blaring or anything like that. In fact, it glided up to the curb silently, like a shark. Sergeant Johnson, and his partner, Sergeant Tang, had just gotten out of their car when another car pulled up.

  Oh, my lord. It was Mr. Seger. Mr. Seger got out of the car, saw the police car, and sprinted for it. The car he’d been in drove away.

  The Rodowskys pulled into their driveway.

  A bicycle came careening after them.

  I threw open the front door. “Logan,” I said. “Mr. and Mrs. Rodowsky.”

  The Rodowskys hurried out of the car and followed Logan up the walk. Sergeant Tang, Sergeant Johnson, and Mr. Seger were right behind them.

  “Is something wrong?” asked Mrs. Rodowsky. “Are the boys all right?”

  “They’re fine,” I said. “But I saw someone breaking into the house next door.”

  Before I could say anything else, Sergeant Johnson said, “I want everybody to stay here.”

  “Please,” Mr. Seger began.

  “It’ll be all right, Mr. Seger,” said Sergeant Tang.

  “Shea and Jackie are playing computer games,” I told the Rodowskys. “They’re all ready for bed. Archie is asleep. I called Logan when I saw the burglars — after I called the police — because, because …”

  Mr. Rodowsky patted my shoulder. “I understand.” He said to Mrs. Rodowsky, “I’ll just go take a look at the boys.”

  The police officers had gone outside again. “The kitchen,” I said, suddenly remembering. “We can see from the window over the sink.”

  We reached the kitchen window just as Sergeant Tang and Sergeant Johnson reached the side door of the house.

  The door opened.

  The two officers crouched down.

  Someone leaned out, looked around, stepped back inside. Then he began to back out of the house.

  It was Noah and his friend. And they were carrying a television set.

  “Noah,” gasped Mr. Seger, and in spite of what Sergeant Johnson and Sergeant Tang had told us, we found ourselves outside with Noah and the police in Mr. Seger’s driveway.

  Noah was saying, “Oh, no. I can’t believe this…. I’m sorry. It’s just a joke … a …”

  “Burglary is no joke,” said Sergeant Tang.

  “It’s my own house! How could I …”

  Mr. Seger made some small, distressed sound and Noah’s voice trailed off. Then Noah said, “You’re right. I was taking the television to sell. We took some stuff once before, too, James and me, when some kids saw us.”

  James didn’t say anything. He just folded his arms and looked unhappy.

  “I thought it was you, but I didn’t know why,” said Mr. Seger.

  “I owe money,” said Noah. “Lots of money. I don’t know how I am going to pay it back.”

  “You could have asked me,” said Mr. Seger. “I would have given it to you. We could have worked something out.”

  Noah hung his head. “I’m sorry,” he said softly.

  Sergeant Tang said, “I think if we go down to the station and have a little talk, we might be able to work something out.”

  “Am I going to go to jail?” asked Noah, looking very frightened and very young.

  “We’ll talk,” said Sergeant Johnson.

  As Mr. Seger and Noah and James walked to the patrol car with Sergeant Tang, I said, “Uh, Noah? Could I ask you a question?”

  Noah turned to look over his shoulder. He seemed surprised to see me, as if he hadn’t noticed me before. “What?”

  “Have you and, uh, James, been bothering me and my friends? I mean, two of my friends saw you, and we’re all members of a club together, the Baby-sitters Club, and some strange things have
been happening to us, and I wondered …”

  Noah said, “I wouldn’t pick on a bunch of kids.”

  Kids. Well. Who did he think had helped catch him?

  But I didn’t say anything.

  James asked, “Were you one of the kids I saw?”

  “No,” I asked. “It was two of my friends.”

  “Oh,” said James, losing interest in me altogether.

  “You’ve done a good job here,” said Sergeant Johnson. “Once again, the Baby-sitters Club has helped solve a crime.” He grinned. “Maybe you should change your name to the Crime Busters Club.”

  Logan and I smiled. Sergeant Johnson left. Mrs. Rodowsky went back in the house.

  So the burglars hadn’t been the ones who were haunting the BSC, I thought, as I watched the police car drive away. I slid my hand into Logan’s, forgetting for a moment about the anonymous notes.

  If Noah and James weren’t the BSC stalkers, then who was?

  We met in the den at Shannon’s house, which has a sliding glass door that looks out over the backyard. The view was of snow, lots of it, and a leaden gray sky. I could tell the sky held more snow. I just wondered where all that snow was going to go.

  Mary Anne looked up quickly when I walked in, as if she were startled to see me, then looked away. I hurried past her and sat down by Mal, who was holding a big, black looseleaf notebook open on her lap.

  “I’ve been telling everyone what happened last night,” said Mary Anne, not quite meeting my eyes.

  Jessi said, “Wow, I can hardly wait to baby-sit at night. That’s when all the good stuff happens.”

  We laughed at that. Then Shannon said, “It sounds as if we’ve solved one mystery and found another that’s even worse.”

  “Yeah. If those guys weren’t stalking the BSC, who is doing it? And why?” I asked.

  Mal held up the notebook. “We can go over the clues and see if that helps,” she said.

  She flipped through the book and I saw that she’d put page dividers in it and everything. Mallory had done an awesome organizing job.

  We went over our notes and clues, but it didn’t add up to much. The only real clue was the red Mercedes with the Connecticut plates and the blue sticker that had tried to run Stacey down — if you didn’t count the nasty note that had been delivered to Mary Anne via Tigger. And we couldn’t make much of that, since it was letters cut from a newspaper and pasted on plain paper.

  Someone who didn’t want his handwriting to be recognized, I thought, and remembered, with a little jolt, the strange, whacked-out notes I’d been getting from Mary Anne in her distinctive, loopy handwriting.

  “DON’T YOU DARE,” one had said. Don’t I dare what? “LIES AREN’T THE TRUTH,” the next one had said. What had I ever lied to Mary Anne about?

  Why didn’t she trust me anymore?

  Why wouldn’t she talk to me about it?

  And now I was pretty sure she was avoiding me.

  Shannon said, “Well, if the blue sticker was the one for last year’s Business Bureau, why isn’t there one for this year? Why isn’t there an orange one, like the orange one Mr. Seger has on his car?”

  “Whoever it is, isn’t a member anymore,” said Mal.

  “Right,” said Shannon. “That’s a definite possibility.”

  Jessi sat bolt upright. “So if we compare the two lists the Business Bureau secretary gave us, we can find out who was on the list last year who isn’t on it this year.”

  The words were barely out of her mouth before Mal had flipped the mystery notebook open again and pulled out the lists.

  We came up with three names.

  One of the names was Karl Tate, the formerly rich real estate man who’d been caught by Dawn and the BSC in a dognapping scheme. He’d gone to jail.

  That was why he wasn’t a member of the bureau anymore.

  “Did Karl Tate have a Mercedes?” I asked. “A red Mercedes?”

  “Let me see,” said Mal, flipping toward the front of the mystery notebook. “Wow. Look at this. It says that Mrs. Tate was driving a red Mercedes. Maybe it’s her car. Or maybe it’s his.”

  “Yeah, well, he can’t drive it in jail,” I pointed out.

  “What if he isn’t still in jail?” suggested Mary Anne softly.

  “There’s one way to find out,” said Shannon, reaching for the phone and the phone book. A few minutes later she was talking to Sergeant Johnson.

  When she hung up, she looked solemn. “He’s been released,” she said. “For good behavior.”

  “But even if he was out, how would he know that anyone in the BSC was involved in catching him …” Jessi’s voice trailed off. Then she said, “The picture in the Stoneybrook News. The one Abby found by the photocopier at the library.”

  Shannon picked up the phone again.

  “Who’re you calling now?” I asked.

  She held up a finger, then said, “Hello? Mrs. Tate? Is Mr. Tate there? … Do you know when he’ll be back? … A few days? Do you know where I could reach him? … Oh, just a, ah, friend…. No, no message. Thank you.”

  She looked grimly around at us. “Mr. Tate is out of jail. He’s also out of town, and has been for a few days, according to Mrs. Tate.”

  “He’s the one!” said Mary Anne, putting her hands to her cheeks. “That’s why nothing has happened! He’s out of town. And that really is why it’s only Claudia and Kristy and Stacey and I that all this stuff has been happening to.”

  “Because he saw your picture, with the article about how we helped to capture him, in the newspaper.” Mal’s face was suddenly pale, and the faint dusting of freckles on her face stood out. “We weren’t in the photo, but you were. He’s out of jail and he’s out for revenge — against you.”

  “We have to call Kristy and the others at Shadow Lake and warn them!” Mary Anne cried. “He could already be there!”

  For the third time, Shannon picked up the phone. She called information for Shadow Lake, and asked for the number for Watson Brewer. She gave that and the phone to Mary Anne.

  “Stacey!” cried Mary Anne a few seconds later. “Is that you? Are you all right?”

  She listened for a moment and said, “Oh, no. Stacey, can you hear me? … Okay. They caught the Seger burglar…. No, I’ll tell you about it later. This is much, much more important. It wasn’t him who was bothering you. It was Karl Tate…. Stacey? Can you hear me? … Karl Tate! He’s out of jail and … Stacey? Stacey! STACEY!”

  “Hello?” I shouted into the phone. But Mary Anne’s voice, coming over the wires from Shannon’s den that Sunday, had stopped abruptly.

  I gave the phone a thump. I still couldn’t hear Mary Anne.

  “Karl Tate,” I muttered. Was that what I had heard? Why had Mary Anne hung up so suddenly? Then I realized that the phones were down. The blizzard had officially arrived.

  I left the small bedroom where the phone was and entered the main room of the cabin, where everyone had just finished breakfast.

  “That was Mary Anne,” I announced. “But I couldn’t understand or hear everything she was saying, and then the phone went dead.”

  “The phone lines must be down,” said Watson, standing up.

  At that moment, the lights went out, and all the power in the cabin fizzed off.

  “And that, I’m afraid, was the power,” he added. Since it was daytime, it wasn’t dark. But the leaden gray light outside didn’t make things very bright. And the white falling snow was like a curtain closing in around us. The cabin suddenly seemed gray, and colder.

  Karen gave a little shriek. “Are we trapped? Is the monster in the snow going to come and take us away?”

  “Like in the movie?” David Michael’s voice rose.

  “We are not trapped,” said his mother firmly. “In fact, we’re about to go into town for some more food and supplies, and I think you younger kids should come with us.” In the dim light, I could see her eyes meet Watson’s, and see Watson nod.

  “We’ll take the st
ation wagon,” Watson said. “It has four-wheel drive.”

  “That means it can drive anywhere, even through the worst snow,” Kristy told her stepsister.

  Karen said, with relish, “If we get lost in the snow, we can just live in the station wagon until they find us. Or until spring.”

  “We’re not going to get lost, Karen,” said Watson. “And the roads are kept clear even in the worst weather. But bundle up warmly now.”

  Claudia said, “We’ll help you guys get ready.” She and I followed Karen to her bunk. Abby caught on and went with David Michael and Andrew, leaving Kristy with her family to go over any details, such as what to do if the blizzard really did bury the cabin.

  When we returned, Watson had left to pull the station wagon up to the door. We went out onto the porch with Kristy and Sam and Charlie, and the kids climbed into the station wagon.

  Kristy’s mom turned and said, “Remember, if it gets too bad, you can go to the lodge. But don’t try to go if you can’t see your way or find the trail. The phone lines will be back up soon. So will the power.”

  “Don’t worry, Mom,” said Sam. “I’m here.” He flexed his arm like one of those nerd body builders in the backs of magazines.

  I rolled my eyes.

  Just then a voice said, “Hey! You’re not leaving, are you?”

  We looked up. “It’s that guy we saw at the lodge yesterday, Woodie Keenan,” said Abby softly. “He has a cabin nearby.”

  Woodie Keenan was bundled up so you could barely see him. I suddenly shivered, realizing how cold I felt.

  “Just going into town for a few things,” said Mrs. Brewer. “Do you need anything?”

  “Firewood,” said Woodie. “I’m running low, and so is the lodge.”

  “We’re running low ourselves. We’ll be glad to pick some up for you, too,” Mrs. Brewer assured him. “And we’ll be back before very long.”

  “Thanks,” said Woodie. “See you later.”

  We watched as Woodie disappeared down the trail, then waved good-bye as the station wagon disappeared into the swirling snow.