The Gold Mystery

by Martin Widmark

  “Do you still have that consignment note?” asked Maya, pointing to the police chief’s pocket.

  The police chief looked surprised but then felt in his pocket and nodded. He handed the piece of paper to her.

  Maya took the yellow copy of the consignment note and read out loud:

  “‘Type of goods: gold. Weight: five hundred and fifty pounds. Number of packages: one. Signature: Randolph Larson.’”

  Five hundred and fifty pounds of gold, thought Maya, worth more than sixteen million dollars—gone. And to think: The gold was only supposed to stay in Pleasant Valley one night.

  But then she realized something and looked at the consignment note again. “Listen to this! ‘Number of packages: one.’ That means one crate! There are too many crates in here!” she shouted.

  CHAPTER 4

  Wave to the Camera!

  The police chief looked at Maya and sighed.

  “I know!” he said.

  “What? You knew that?” said Maya with surprise.

  “Yes, of course. Neither of these crates should be here,” he replied crossly. “Both of them are supposed to be on the train by now. Two crates on a train, full of gold.”

  Maya passed the consignment note to the police chief and asked him to read it carefully. And when the police chief had read it himself, he finally understood what Maya was talking about.

  “So one of these crates shouldn’t be here!” said Maya, pointing to the crates they were sitting on.

  “But why go to so much trouble to wheel in two big crates, if only one of them contains gold?” asked the police chief.

  “Probably because the other crate contained something very important,” replied Maya.

  “And what could that be?” asked the police chief.

  “No idea,” said Maya, “but I think it has something to do with the disappearance of the gold.”

  She and the police chief took a closer look at the two crates. They opened them. The police chief looked in one, and Maya looked in the other.

  “This one’s completely empty,” said the police chief.

  “This one is, too,” said Maya, “but on closer inspection . . .”

  Maya leaned farther into the crate. She had spotted something in the corner. A hair. A short gray curly hair. Maya passed it to the police chief.

  “It could be from someone who packed the gold into the crate before it even got to Pleasant Valley,” said the police chief. “Neither the bank manager nor the security officer have hair like this.”

  “True,” said Maya, “and the head teller, Roger Birchfield, wasn’t even here. He went to the doctor yesterday.”

  Maya and the police chief closed the crates and left the vault.

  Jerry had now drawn the entire inside of the bank, and he could see on the screen when Maya and the police chief came out of the vault.

  “Wave at the camera, Maya,” joked Jerry.

  “Where is it?” asked Maya.

  “There, above the front door,” said Jerry, pointing.

  Maya stood in the doorway to the vault and waved to the camera. Jerry could see her on the computer screen. But . . . he could only see part of Maya. When she waved to him, her right arm disappeared from the screen. Jerry looked up at the camera on the wall. Was it set up wrong?

  “Stay there,” called Jerry. On his sketch, he drew in the part of the door that the camera covered.

  “What are you doing?” called Maya.

  The police chief walked over to Jerry and looked at what he had written on the paper.

  “Now walk forward in a zigzag toward the main door,” Jerry said to Maya as he stared at the screen intently.

  Maya wondered what Jerry was up to, but she followed his instructions. Jerry watched her on the screen, all the while sketching in where she could be seen and where she disappeared from the picture.

  “Good heavens,” muttered the police chief from behind Jerry. “It looks as if . . .”

  “I’m here!” called Maya from the outer door. “Would you like me to dance a bit for you, too? How about the flamenco?”

  Maya stamped on the floor.

  “Maya, come look at this!” said Jerry.

  On his sketch, Jerry had drawn in the exact parts of the bank the camera covered.

  “Look!” he said. “The spots where the camera misses form an invisible corridor, from one side of the vault door, along the wall here, right out to the main door. The thieves could have walked along there without the camera seeing them.”

  “Well done, Jerry!” said Maya.

  “That means someone could have adjusted the camera deliberately,” said the police chief as he scratched his head.

  There were three chairs by the front door for customers who were waiting in the bank. The police chief walked up to them, took a chair, and placed it under the camera.

  He was just about to stand on it to examine the camera a little more closely when he stopped. “Look at this, kids,” he said, pointing to the seat of the chair.

  Maya and Jerry walked over to the police chief and looked at the chair. There were two clear footprints on the green fabric of the seat.

  “I think we are on the right track,” said the police chief, nodding.

  CHAPTER 5

  Lukewarm Drinks

  The police chief, Jerry, and Maya walked out onto the street in front of the bank. The sun was shining in a clear blue sky, and it looked like it would be at least as hot as the day before.

  “Come on, kids,” said the police chief. “Let’s go and sit in the shade under the tree over there.”

  The police chief pointed to a tree on the other side of Commercial Road.

  “I’ll go get us each a drink,” said Jerry, and he headed toward the supermarket on the other side of the street.

  “Get really cold ones,” called the police chief.

  Maya and the police chief sat down on the grass under the tree.

  The police chief loosened his tie a little and said, “Let’s go over what we know.”

  “We know that gold worth more than sixteen million dollars was stolen from the bank last night,” Maya began.

  “And what else?” asked the police chief.

  “That someone had moved the security camera, and that there is one crate too many in the vault.”

  “And even if we knew who had taken the gold, we wouldn’t dare to follow them . . .”

  “. . . because the thieves have threatened to harm their hostages,” Maya completed the sentence. “But the strange thing is . . . ,” she went on.

  “What?” asked the police chief.

  “. . . that the door wasn’t opened all night. Even if the security camera was moved a bit, you can see on the film from the camera that the door was never opened.”

  “And yet the gold disappeared,” said the police chief as he waved at Jerry, who was coming out of the supermarket.

  Jerry started walking across the street. He had three bottles in his hands. But suddenly he stopped—right in the middle of Commercial Road! A driver honked angrily, and Jerry jumped out of the way.

  “What are you doing, Jerry?” asked Maya when he reached the tree. “Do you have sunstroke?”

  “I just thought of something . . . ,” said Jerry slowly.

  He gave Maya and the police chief each a drink. The police chief immediately opened his and put the bottle to his mouth.

  He took a few deep swigs and then said, “Delicious, but it’s not very cold!”

  “No, exactly,” said Jerry. “Lukewarm drinks . . . Maybe that’s a clue . . .”

  The police chief and Maya looked at Jerry.

  “What do you mean?” asked the police chief. “What connection could there be between lukewarm drinks and five hundred and fifty pounds of lost gold?”

  “I felt the bo
ttles in the fridge in the store,” explained Jerry. “They were all equally warm. So I asked one of the shop employees whether they had any cold ones. She told me that the refrigerator had broken down during the night.”

  “I still don’t understand what this has to do with the missing gold,” said Maya.

  “Me neither,” said the police chief, after he had drunk the last drops from his bottle.

  “Just listen, it does,” continued Jerry. “The employee apologized for not having any cold drinks, but said that the refrigerator had broken down during the night, and they don’t work at night.”

  “Of course they don’t,” said Maya, who still couldn’t understand what Jerry was getting at.

  “So then I thought that it’s actually quite unusual for people to work at night,” said Jerry.

  “In hospitals of course, or perhaps the fire station, but never at a . . .”

  Then Maya understood! She jumped up and shouted.

  “Aha! You’re a genius, Jerry! Now I bet I know who stole the gold.”

  “You do?” asked the police chief in astonishment. “Do you know who it was, too, Jerry?”

  Jerry nodded and said, “I think so.”

  CHAPTER 6

  The Man in the Crate

  The police chief looked at Jerry and Maya in amazement.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “How can you two know who stole the gold? All we’ve done is sit here under the tree and think a bit.”

  “Can I see the piece of paper the thieves left behind?” asked Jerry.

  The police chief took the paper out of his pocket. Jerry read aloud:

  “We have taken the gold. The staff are our hostages. Do not follow us—because if you do . . . !”

  “What?” asked the chief.

  “Not what,” said Jerry. “The question is when.”

  “What do you mean, when?” asked the police chief.

  “When did the thieves take the staff hostage?” continued Jerry.

  The police chief was silent for a long moment, then he finally understood.

  “What nerve! Of course Larry and the rest of the staff weren’t working in the bank at night! They haven’t been taken hostage at all!”

  Jerry and Maya looked at each other and smiled broadly.

  “We even saw the bank manager and the head of security leave the bank ourselves, just after six,” said Maya. “When could they have been taken hostage?”

  “But we didn’t see the head teller at all,” said the police chief. “He was at the doctor. But wait a minute! Maybe we should check that!”

  The police chief took his phone out of his pocket and keyed in a number.

  After exchanging a few words, he put the phone back in his pocket.

  “Roger Birchfield was not at the doctor yesterday,” said the police chief.

  “If I have guessed right, he was much closer to us than we thought,” said Maya.

  “Where then?” asked the police chief. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m beginning to think,” said Jerry, “that the gold was stolen by the three employees at the bank. The bank manager, Larry Mernard; the head of security, Maria Gonzales de la Cruz; and the head teller, Roger Birchfield. They planned the whole thing and carried it out together.”

  “The head teller was in the second crate!” said Maya. “That hair we found must be one of his. It was gray and came from an older person. Remember what Larry told us? Roger is due to retire soon.”

  “Exactly,” said Jerry. “He keeps complaining that all those numbers have made him go gray.”

  “So that was why the bank manager was so nervous when Maria Gonzales was wheeling the crates into the vault!” said the police chief. “Roger Birchfield was hidden inside one of the crates! And to think Larry had us believe he was worried about the bank protecting the gold. What a liar! Okay, snack break is over, kids! Time to get back to work!”

  Jerry, Maya, and the police chief got up from the grass. The police chief took out his phone again.

  “I’ll call the central police station,” he said. “Now that we know who we’re actually looking for.”

  The police chief called and described the three suspects. Then he put his phone away and rubbed his hands.

  “They’ll soon be caught, you’ll see!” he said with satisfaction. “The long arm of the law can be very long, indeed.” He chuckled.

  But Jerry and Maya looked at each another doubtfully. There were still too many pieces of the puzzle missing.

  “There’s one thing I still don’t understand,” said Maya. “Why did they write that they’d been taken hostage?”

  “So that we wouldn’t pursue them, of course,” said the police chief. “They wanted to get as far away as possible with all that gold before the hunt began.”

  “Yes, but they must have realized that we would discover their scheme,” said Jerry. “We know they don’t work in the bank at night.”

  “They probably thought that the theft—and their fake note—would be discovered much later in the day,” said Maya. “If so, we would have thought they’d been taken hostage this morning. But thanks to the man from the pet store, we realized that the gold had disappeared during the night.”

  Jerry nodded. He, Maya, and the police chief started walking back toward the bank.

  CHAPTER 7

  Ready to Roll!

  When they reached the bank again, the police chief stopped inside the door.

  “But,” he said, “we still don’t know how the gold got out through the closed door of the vault!”

  Jerry had taken out his notepad and was looking at the sketch of the bank he had made earlier. Then he tore tiny little pieces of paper off the pad. He placed them on the floor so that they showed precisely which parts of the bank the security camera recorded during the night.

  “Let’s try to reconstruct the crime,” he said.

  “What?” asked Maya.

  “We’ll reenact the crime,” said Jerry, “to see how the thieves did it. Maya, you be the head teller hiding in the vault. Pull the door shut from the inside so that everything is like it was last night.”

  “What about me?” asked the police chief.

  “You check the screen to see if I manage to keep out of the picture,” said Jerry. “I am the bank manager,” he continued. “And I am going to try to creep along the wall and open the vault door without being seen on the screen.”

  The police chief walked around the counter and pressed the button which started the camera over the main door. Maya went into the vault and carefully pulled the heavy vault door partially closed.

  “Be careful, Maya,” Jerry called out to her. “Make sure you don’t let the door shut all the way. If it does, you’ll be stuck in there until we find the bank manager, arrest him, and get the keys to unlock the door.”

  “Okay,” said Maya from inside the vault. She left the door open just enough to see through.

  “Ready to roll!” said the police chief.

  Jerry stood under the camera by the outer door.

  “Can you see me now?” he asked.

  The police chief looked at the screen and said, “No.”

  Jerry moved toward the vault door, hugging the wall. He was careful to keep himself between the wall and the pieces of paper on the floor.

  “Still can’t see you!” called the police chief.

  Maya looked out through the crack in the door and saw Jerry creeping along the wall, getting closer and closer to the vault door. She saw him reach out his hand and pretend to unlock the door.

  “There! I can see you!” called the police chief suddenly.

  Jerry pulled his hand back and dropped to the floor. He crawled toward the keyhole.

  “I can see you again!” shouted the police chief behind the counter.

  Jerry st
ood up and shook his head. “It’s impossible to get to the keyhole without being seen.” He sighed. “I don’t understand it! How in the world did they get the gold out?”

  Inside the vault, Maya examined the two empty crates in the middle of the floor.

  How nerve-wracking, she thought, to sit in that crate, just waiting to steal the gold.

  Maya looked around the vault. Then she caught sight of the length of gray fabric she had seen earlier, lying rolled up on top of the tall cabinet.

  Maya pulled out one of the drawers in the cabinet and climbed up. She reached for the roll of fabric and just barely got hold of it. She held on to the end of the roll and pulled the fabric down.

  Her eyes widened when she realized what she was holding! They had already figured out when and who, and now she understood how the theft had been carried out!

  “Jerry! Chief Larson!” she cried. “I figured it out! I know how they stole the gold!”

  In her excitement about the discovery, Maya took a step backward on the drawer . . . and missed the edge of it. She lost her balance and toppled over! Maya stretched out her hands to stop herself and . . . pushed the vault door completely shut with a loud click!

  “Maya!” shouted Jerry as he saw the door to the vault shut.

  “Oh dear! Not the vault door!” cried the police chief.

  He rushed to the door and struggled to open it.

  “Now we have to find the manager! He is the only one who has the keys!” said Jerry.

  “What was that Maya said just before the door shut?” asked the police chief.

  “That she knew how they did it. Maya figured out how they stole the gold,” answered Jerry with a sigh.

  CHAPTER 8

  What a Clever Kid!

  “Maya,” called Jerry as loudly as he could, but he could only hear a muffled reply from inside the vault.