Sabotage

by Karen King

  ‘Let’s look for a bit longer,’ he said. ‘We’ve nearly covered it all now.’

  A few minutes later the metal detector bleeped again. ‘I really hope this is your coin,’ I said, leaning forward to look at what I’d found.

  It wasn’t. It was a broken old bracelet, coated in dirt. I rubbed at it with the bottom of my tee shirt but couldn’t get any of the dirt off.

  ‘Found something interesting?’ Old Joe asked.

  ‘Just a broken bracelet and some bits of rubbish,’ I told him.

  ‘We haven’t found my lucky coin yet,’ Max said, sadly. ‘I think I’ve lost it for good.’

  ‘No, you haven’t.’ Old Joe held up a coin. ‘I found it in the hen hut when I was cleaning it out.’

  Max beamed. ‘Oh thank you!’ He took the coin from Joe and slipped it into his pocket.

  ‘Maybe you should find a safer place to keep that,’ I told him. ‘Perhaps your stepdad could drill a hole in it for you to make it into a key ring.’

  ‘Hey, that’s a good idea,’ Max agreed.

  No one was in when I got back home, so I decided to try and clean up the bracelet a bit. I washed it and wiped off most of the dirt then polished it dry. I could see now that there was a strange pattern on it. I was so busy studying it that I didn’t notice Mr Smythe come in.

  ‘What have you got there?’ he asked.

  ‘A broken bracelet I found at Old Joe’s.’ I showed him the bracelet. ‘Max lost his lucky coin, so we used a metal detector to try and find it, but we found this instead. It looks really old.’

  Mr Smythe snatched the bracelet from me and studied it. He seemed very distracted, and I thought I saw a spark of interest in his eyes, but then he shook his head. ‘Looks like a bit of old junk that someone won at the fair,’ he said. ‘Where did you say you found it?’

  ‘In Old Joe’s yard. It’s next to that field where you were metal detecting this morning.’

  He looked shocked. ‘Were you following me?’ he accused, glaring right at me.

  I quickly dropped my gaze. When he stared like that without blinking, I found him a little unnerving and, quite frankly, his rudeness was beginning to make me angry. ‘Of course not. We were visiting Old Joe. He’s a friend. That’s when we saw you,’ I said curtly.

  He seemed to calm down a little. ‘I see. Well, metal detecting is a hobby of mine, but, like you, I mostly find junk.’ He handed the bracelet back to me. ‘You might as well bin it.’

  I guessed he was right. What did I want with a broken bracelet? Jewellery had never been my thing anyway. I threw it in the bin and went up to my room to check my email and to see if any of my buddies were on messenger. Gran didn’t have a computer or internet, but Max’s folks had kindly given me the password to their wireless router so I could go through that using my laptop. Two of my buddies were online, so we had a chat for a while. I told them about the bracelet. Rory, my best friend back home, asked to see it. ‘You should have kept it,’ he said. ‘It might be an antique. You should at least check before you throw it away.’

  ‘It’s in the trash. I’ll go and get it out, take a picture of it and send it to you,’ I wrote back.

  I went down to the kitchen and started rummaging in the bin. I’d only thrown the bracelet away an hour ago so it should be just on the top, but I couldn’t find it. Frustrated, I emptied the entire contents of the trash can onto the floor. Fluffy saw what I was doing and scampered over to join in the fun. She sniffed through the leftovers and started gobbling up the bacon rind.

  ‘Amy!’ Gran screeched, rushing over to grab Fluffy. ‘What on earth are you doing?’

  ‘Sorry, Gran, but I threw away a bracelet I found today and I need it.’

  I got down on my knees and continued to search through all the rubbish – not pleasant I can tell you. Think potato peelings, used tea bags and cold bacon rind and you’ll get some idea of the gunge I had to wade through. But the bracelet wasn’t there.

  ‘It’s gone!’ I couldn’t believe it. Someone had actually taken it out of the bin.

  ‘Amy! Clear that mess up at once!’ Gran looked as if she was about to have a fit.

  ‘Sorry, Gran,’ I gathered up all the gunk and put it back in the bin.

  Gran handed me a packet of antibacterial floor wipes. ‘Why did you throw the bracelet away in the first place?’ she asked.

  ‘Because it was dirty and broken and I thought it was junk, but now I wish I’d kept it. Someone must have taken it out.’

  ‘Really, Amy, that’s quite absurd. Why would anyone want to go through the bin for a broken bracelet?’ Gran said. ‘Now go and wash your hands. Goodness knows how many germs you have crawling over them.’

  It was Mr Smythe! It had to be. He was the only one I’d shown the bracelet to. Maybe it really was an antique and Mr Smythe had just pretended it was rubbish so that he could steal it for himself.

  Chapter 3

  Flooded Out!

  ‘I can’t believe you threw that bracelet in the bin!’ Max grumbled when I told him what had happened the next morning. ‘You could have asked me if I wanted it.’

  ‘I thought it was rubbish,’ I said defensively. ‘Mr Smythe tricked me into throwing it away so that he could steal it.’

  ‘It might not have been him, you know. Someone else could have seen it in the bin and taken it out.’

  I thought about it. Gran only had two guests at the moment, Mr Smythe and Miss Flimpton. There was Mr Winkleberry too, of course, but he’d been out all day visiting a friend in Land’s End. Miss Flimpton was an artist and spent her days painting or visiting art galleries. She’d popped back just after lunch, but somehow I couldn’t see her rummaging through the bin for a broken old bracelet.

  ‘No chance,’ I told him. ‘It has to be Mr Smythe, and I’m going to get it back. Trust me.’

  ‘I hope you do,’ Max replied. ‘Anyway, I’m going to see Old Joe again. Mum’s baked a pie for him to thank him for the vegetables. Do you want to come?’

  ‘Okay.’ I wanted to speak to Joe about the bracelet. If it was valuable, then by rights it was his, so I felt bad about throwing it away.

  There was no sign of Old Joe in the garden, so Max knocked on the door. No answer. I tried the handle. It opened, so we stepped inside.

  ‘Joe!’ Max shouted. ‘Are you in, Joe? It’s Max and Amy.’

  ‘I’m here!’ Joe’s face appeared over the banister. He looked really agitated. ‘My roof’s leaking and it has flooded my bedroom,’ he said. ‘One of the tiles must be loose.’

  ‘Do you need any help clearing up?’ I asked.

  ‘Thanks, Amy, but I’ve done what I can for now.’ He came down the stairs. ‘Thank goodness it didn’t rain heavily last night or it might have brought my ceiling down. I’ll have to get the roof fixed before it rains again, though. You youngsters hang on a minute while I phone Jack Mason. He’ll take a look at it for me. Then you can tell me what brings you here.’ He went into the lounge, picked up the phone and dialled a number. From what I could hear of the conversation, Jack was coming to look at the roof later that day.

  ‘Well, that’s sorted. Let’s hope it doesn’t cost me too much,’ Joe said, coming back into the kitchen. ‘Now what can I do for you two?’

  I told him about Mr Smythe taking the bracelet. ‘It must be valuable for him to take it, so I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have thrown it away. It might have belonged to one of your ancestors or something.’

  ‘It’s okay, lass,’ Joe told me, ‘but it’s interesting that it disappeared from the bin. You’ll need to keep a close eye on that Mr Smythe.’

  That’s exactly what I thought.

  Mr Smythe had still been at the B&B when I left, which was unusual. I’d expected him to show up in the field next to Old Joe’s to look for more treasure. However, there was no sign of him yet.

  ‘Maybe he’s metal detecting somewhere else today,’ Max said.

  ‘No, I’m sure that bracelet had something to do with what he was sear
ching for,’ I sighed. ‘I wish I’d taken a photo of it so I could do some research.’

  ‘There might be books in the library, or information on the internet about antique jewellery,’ Max suggested. ‘Do you think you would recognise the bracelet if you saw a picture of it?’

  ‘I reckon so,’ I told him. ‘Let’s go to the library and see what we can find out.’

  We were padlocking our bikes to the cycle rail at the side of the library when Mr Smythe walked out and hurried off down the steps. He was looking straight ahead, so hadn’t noticed us. As he reached the bottom step, his cellphone rang. I put a finger over my lips to warn Max to be quiet. Then I crept over to the wall and bent down to listen in on the phone conversation.

  PODCAST 1

  Go to www.amycartermysteries.com/sabotage-1

  Mr Smythe snapped his phone shut and walked off. I remained where I was for a moment, digesting what I’d overheard. Then I went back to Max, who was waiting impatiently by the bikes.

  ‘Well?’ he asked.

  I relayed the phone call to him. ‘I was right, my bracelet has got something to do with what Mr Smythe was looking for in that field. Whoever he was talking to seems to think that if Old Joe was persuaded to sell up, they’d make big money out of his land. Maybe that’s why Joe was offered so much money for his cottage.’

  Max frowned. ‘But Joe got that letter yesterday morning, so it must have been written before we found the bracelet,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Yes, but judging by that phone call, there’s at least one other person involved in this search — one of them could be Mr Dawson, the man who sent the letter offering to buy the cottage. Maybe he and Mr Smythe are in this together.

  ‘I think we should warn Old Joe that those people want to buy his cottage so that they can dig for treasure,’ I told Max, as we headed home.

  ‘So do I, but I can’t go over again today,’ he said. ‘I have to go out with Mum this afternoon. How about we both go and see him in the morning?’

  ‘That’s fine by me. I’ve got plenty of stuff to do as well,’ I told him.

  I spent the evening surfing the net, but didn’t find anything remotely like the broken bracelet. Maybe it wasn’t an antique after all; maybe it was just junk.

  However, if it was junk, then why did Mr Smythe take it out of the bin? And why did he tell the person on the phone that they were on to something big?

  It looked like I had another mystery to solve.

  Chapter 4

  Lies

  ‘I always feel like we’re being watched in here,’ I told Max as we cycled through the woods to Old Joe’s the next morning.

  ‘Me too,’ he replied, looking around nervously. ‘I can’t remember it being this spooky before,’ he said, just as an ice cold breeze whipped past, sending our bikes veering to the left.

  The shivers down my spine began to multiply when we heard hurried footsteps coming from deep within the woods. I couldn’t believe our bad luck. It was only Skinhead and his two friends again, looking very amused about something. I braced myself for trouble, but they seemed to be distracted by something else.

  ‘That’ll teach the old guy to grass us up,’ Skinhead chortled, and they all ran off, shrieking with laughter.

  ‘Sounds like they’ve been causing trouble for Old Joe,’ I said to Max. ‘Let’s go and see what they’ve been up to.’

  We didn’t have to wait long to find out. As Old Joe’s cottage came into sight we saw half a dozen chickens running around outside his garden.

  ‘Those creeps must have let them out,’ I said. ‘We’d better try to round them up before they get lost.’

  We jumped off our bikes and ran after the chickens, trying to shoo them back into the yard, but they just kept running around in circles, squawking like mad. Chickens are pretty dumb animals, I can tell you!

  ‘Hey, what are you kids doing with my birds!’ Old Joe was standing at the fence, watching us, and he looked real mad.

  ‘We’re trying to get your chickens back in,’ Max said. ‘I think those yobs you told off yesterday let them out – probably some kind of revenge because you told PC Lambard about them starting that fire.’

  ‘Hmm, I saw them hanging around earlier and wondered if they were up to mischief. Well, you’ll not catch the chickens that way. Wait there, and for goodness sake stop chasing them around.’ Joe hurried off, returning a few minutes later with a bucket of corn. He scooped out a handful and sprinkled it on the ground. The chickens immediately ran over and started eating it. Then Joe walked back into his yard, scattering a trail of corn on the ground behind him. The chickens eagerly scuttled after him, gobbling it up as he went. Max and I followed, wheeling our bikes alongside us.

  ‘Neat!’ I told Joe when the chickens were all rounded up. ‘I think you might have trouble with those three yobs, though. They seem to have got it in for you.’

  ‘That’s the trouble with the youth of today,’ said Old Joe. ‘No respect!’ ‘Well, they’ll get more than they bargained for if they keep bothering me. I won’t stand for it.’

  I wasn’t sure about that. Skinhead and his friends were trouble with a capital T. I just hoped they didn’t bother Old Joe too much. I liked him.

  ‘What brought you two back here today?’ he asked. ‘My home-made lemonade and crusty bread, perhaps?’

  ‘Mum sent you an apple pie to thank you for the vegetables,’ Max told him.

  I took the pie out of the basket on the back of my bike. ‘Here it is.’

  ‘Thank you. Come and have a slice with me,’ he said. ‘It’s good to have a bit of company.’

  As we tucked into lemonade and apple pie, I told Joe about the phone call I’d overheard Mr Smythe make. ‘Maybe they’re the ones that made the offer for your cottage,’ I said. ‘Have you heard any more about it?’

  ‘No, and they’d be wasting their time. I was born here and I’m going to die here, just like the rest of my family did before me,’ Old Joe said adamantly. ‘I don’t care what treasure they think is buried here. It can stay buried as far as I’m concerned.’

  Max’s mum was at home when we got back. We told her about the bracelet and Old Joe’s letter.

  ‘Did Joe ever get married?’ I asked. ‘Has he got any children?’

  ‘He was married, but his wife died many years ago,’ she replied. ‘And no, they didn’t have any children. Why?’

  ‘It’s just that … well … he’s quite old, isn’t he? And I wondered who would get the cottage when he dies. It would be nice for it to stay in the family.’

  ‘I’ve no idea. I’m sure there’s a relative somewhere. A niece or nephew, perhaps, but don’t worry, Old Joe’s got years in him yet.’

  Mr Smythe was the only person around when I got home, so I decided to tackle him head-on about the bracelet.

  ‘You know that bracelet I showed you yesterday?’ I asked him. ‘Well I changed my mind about throwing it away, but when I went to get it out of the bin, it had gone.’

  He looked at me. ‘It was very small, easy to miss. It probably dropped inside a tin or something.’

  I folded my arms and met his eyes. ‘I emptied the whole bin. There weren’t any tins in there, and the bracelet wasn’t there either.’

  He put his hand in his pocket and took out a ten pound note. ‘Look, you seem a bit upset about it, so why don’t you go and buy yourself a nice new bracelet.’ He held out the note in his cold, sweaty hand. ‘Go on, take it.’

  I was tempted, I can tell you. It’s not every day someone offers me money, but I couldn’t do it. He’d taken the bracelet; I knew it and he knew I knew it. If I accepted his money it was like saying that he’d bought it off me, and I wasn’t having that. I shook my head. ‘No thanks. I want the bracelet back. I found it, so it’s mine.’

  Mr Smythe looked as if he was trying to hold in his anger as he put the banknote back in his pocket. He leaned forward so that his face was level with mine. I backed away a bit; I didn’t like my personal space being
invaded – and he was real creepy. ‘Then you shouldn’t have thrown it away, should you?’ he said menacingly. ‘And, just a friendly warning – if I were you, I wouldn’t mention this to anyone else. You might not like the consequences.’

  Chapter 5

  Trapped

  How dare he? I fumed once I’d recovered from the shock. How dare Mr Smythe steal my bracelet then threaten me not to talk about it. I toyed with the idea of telling Gran, but I didn’t want to make any trouble for her. I knew she needed the money from her guests. It hadn’t been easy for her to cope since Grandad had walked out. No, I decided to bide my time and get the bracelet back at the first opportunity I could. That would show him.

  My chance came the next day. Gran had just finished cleaning the guests’ rooms and asked me to take some clean towels into Mr Smythe’s room. He was out, of course. He’d gone out straight after breakfast as usual, but Gran had left his door open for me. I walked in with the clean towels and looked around. It was spick and span, as I’d guessed. Some guests were really messy and left all sorts of things lying around, but I’d figured Mr Smythe was the sort of man who would tidy everything away.

  Now where would he put the bracelet? It was wrong to look through his stuff, I knew that. Gran would go totally mad if she caught me, but I was only trying to find what was rightfully mine. I put the clean towels in the en suite then went over to the chest of drawers. I checked the drawers one by one – nothing but some neatly-folded clothes in each. I searched the bedside cabinet too, and under the pillow (my favourite hiding place) – but no bracelet. I guess he’s taken it with him, I thought, disappointed.

  As I turned to go, I saw a thick book peeping out from under the bed. Curious, I bent down and picked it up. It was about Roman history. A marker was sticking out of one page, so I opened it up and saw that it was a page of jewellery – necklaces, bracelets, rings – and that one bracelet had been highlighted in yellow. It looked just like the one I’d found; the one Mr Smythe had stolen. Excited, I started to read about it.