The Mystery of the Castaway Children

by Campbell, Julie

  “I’m sorry,” Trixie said hastily. “I—I guess I was thinking.”

  “Eating ice cream and thinking at the same time has been a difficult act for my sister to add to her repertoire,” Mart explained. “Such coordination can’t be picked up overnight, you know.” Trixie resisted the urge to punch Mart and turned to the officer. “Yes, sir?”

  “I was wondering if you could give me a hand on this baby case tonight.”

  “Wh-What?” Trixie stammered. Was it possible that he was actually asking for her help at the exact moment when she was prepared to volunteer it?

  “I’m including Miss Wheeler, of course,” the sergeant went on.

  “W-We’d be...” Trixie began.

  “…glad to!” Honey finished eagerly.

  “I thought so,” said the sergeant. “Now, where’s the baby?”

  “He’s asleep,” Mrs. Belden said. “I’m afraid he-”

  “I won’t bother him any more than I have to,” promised the sergeant. “First, let’s take a look at this picture of two missing boys.” He took a picture from his hip pocket. “See if you recognize the baby.” He passed the photo to Trixie first.

  Brian got up and turned on the porch light. Blinking rapidly to adjust her eyes to the light change, Trixie stared at the picture of the two boys, one somewhat older than Bobby, the other an infant younger than Moses. The baby was bald. His eyes were fixed on a rattle the older boy held before his face.

  “I can’t tell,” Trixie admitted at last.

  “Here, let me look at that!” scoffed Mart. After a long moment, he, too, said sheepishly that he wasn’t sure.

  Even Brian, who looked at bone construction, could not swear that the baby was Moses.

  “Babies change from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour,” Mrs. Belden said as she handed the picture back to the sergeant. “One day we say he’s just the picture of his father, and the next day we see only the slightest resemblance.”

  “I guess I’d better take a look at the baby in person,” the sergeant decided.

  Trixie escorted him to the guest room. At the door, she flicked on a lamp and waited to see if Moses mewed before she crossed the room. She beckoned the sergeant to follow her. In that brief instant, it seemed to her that the hooked rug was out of place again.

  With photograph in hand, the sergeant stood beside the clothes basket and stared down at Moses. Trixie, too, looked from Moses to the picture and back again many times. After only twenty-four hours of careful attention, Moses was losing the neglected, battered look that had caused so much concern. Pinkly clean, he smelled of talcum and baby oil. One tiny fist was raised above his ear, his thumb folded across his cupped palm.

  Trixie felt like putting her finger in that hand, to feel the warmth and total dependence of his small body. Instead, she followed the sergeant as he awkwardly tiptoed from the room. Once the two were back out on the porch, the sergeant took command.

  “I still don’t know if that’s the same kid,” he told the group, “but among all of the Missing Persons reports and photos, only the baby in this picture seems to fill the bill. The problem is, there are two kids missing, Davy and Robert. You may have found Robert.” He paused and scratched his head. “It’ll be a shock to the parents if I call them to identify Robert and can’t produce Davy.”

  “Won’t it be a worse shock if you call them to come here and Moses isn’t Robert after all?” Honey spoke up quietly.

  The sergeant agreed, and Trixie quickly followed her friend’s lead. “Why don’t we just take the baby right to the parents?” she suggested. “If we suddenly appear at their door with a baby, they won’t have had time to build false hopes, in case Moses is someone else’s son.”

  “I was hoping you’d think of that,” the sergeant said. “It’s already occurred to me that you two girls might go along with me to the Dodges’ house. You could watch the baby while I’m driving and also give a firsthand report to the parents on how he was found.”

  Something clicked in Trixie’s brain. “The Dodges—you mean the family over on Saw Mill River?”

  The sergeant nodded.

  “Oh, Peter,” Mrs. Belden put in worriedly. “Isn’t that the man you were talking about—the one whose belongings were auctioned because he couldn’t get a loan?”

  “Apparently it is,” said Peter Belden, frowning. “That’s too much trouble to have all at the same time!” Trixie cried. She scrambled to her feet. “I’ll go get Moses. I certainly hope he turns out to be Robert Dodge.”

  “They’ll still have trouble,” Bobby declared suddenly. “ ’Cause where’s Davy?”

  All eyes peered into the dark that had thickened to the texture of rich velvet. Yes, where was Davy?

  Kidnapped? ● 6

  INSIDE THE POLICE CAR, Trixie held Moses on her lap while Honey looked after the supplies they would need for his ten-o’clock feeding. To relieve the tension they all were feeling, Trixie spoke in a droning, soft voice of the clues she and Honey had uncovered in the woods. “There’s even a horse’s-fly sheet in Ella Kline’s laundry basket,” she finished.

  “What’s that got to do with anything?” the sergeant grunted.

  “I’m just telling you what we found,” Trixie replied. She became aware that they had entered the “spider web,” the tangle of roads that included Taconic State Parkway, Saw Mill River Parkway, Saw Mill River Road, and all the other roads and highways. The Dodge property was somewhere in this confusing jumble.

  The sergeant soon turned onto a private road. The police car’s headlights illuminated boulders, a brook, and trees. Except for the road and the electric wires that threaded through trees and flashed slivers of silver when touched by light, the strip of land seemed untouched by civilization. The car came to a halt in a driveway.

  Trixie carefully hoisted Moses against her shoulder and allowed the sergeant to help her from the car. Honey followed with the supplies.

  At the end of the driveway, a yard light blackened the shadows around an old, yellow brick farmhouse with a steeply pitched gable roof. Lonely silence seemed to flow like a current around the closely clustered buildings that made up the farmstead. No horse bumped a stall with his hoof. No cow muttered in her sleep. No hen scolded. There wasn’t even a dog to bark.

  Recalling that the Dodges had held an auction, Trixie asked anxiously, “Are you sure the people still live here?”

  “This is where I picked up the photograph this morning,” the sergeant said. He led the way and hammered at the blue wooden door. When there was no answer, he lifted the antique knocker, a gargoyle’s head, to hammer again.

  At last, the door opened a crack, and a man asked, “Who’s there?” It was a young voice, strained and tense.

  The sergeant held out his identification.

  “Oh, yes, Sergeant Molinson,” the man said.

  Trixie followed directly behind the policeman as they entered the Dodge house. She saw a young man in his mid-thirties, with electric blue eyes and stylishly cut brown hair.

  “Come in,” he said. “Here, let me move that box so you can sit down. As you can see, we’re pretty much in a mess around here. We re packing and—” Suddenly he stopped his restless speech and said, “Do you have news about our boys?” His eyes blazed with intense emotion.

  The sergeant stepped aside to bring Trixie and her bundle to the young man’s attention. “We’ve brought a child,” he began.

  In two long strides, David Dodge crossed the cluttered room. He moved the thin blanket to uncover Moses’ face. Work-hardened farmer’s fingers, well scrubbed but stained, shook so much that the blanket fluttered when he touched it.

  Trixie became uncomfortably aware of the thump of her own heart as seconds seemed to stretch into an eternity. Warmth from Moses’ body seemed to spread to her arms and creep through her veins and arteries all the way to her toes, while she watched those electric blue eyes, shaded by a tangle of curly lashes, widen and close, widen and close.

  “Are y
ou all right, Mr. Dodge?” Honey asked nervously. She put out a hand and touched his elbow. “Are you going to faint?”

  “No!” Without touching the baby, he swung around and bellowed, “Eileen! Come here! Dodgy is home! Dodgy is home!”

  Trixie heard a thin cry from someone on the second floor, then a rush of feet. The last five steps of the narrow stairway were not boxed in. Trixie started to yell as she saw a bare foot reach for that first exposed riser and miss the step. With incredible speed, David Dodge leaped over a packing box and prevented his wife’s fall. The two came forward, clinging to and supporting each other. Both were crying and making no effort to stop the tears.

  “It’s Dodgy, honey—he’s home!” the man said.

  Mrs. Dodge was almost as tall as her husband but slightly built and blond. Her eyes were large and blue, the lids puffed by tears. She wore tailored cotton pajamas and no slippers.

  For an instant, Trixie was chilled with fear. What if David Dodge’s apparent state of shock had persuaded him that this was his child... when it was not?

  But it was. Oh, it was.

  The minute Trixie placed the baby in Eileen Dodge’s arms, she felt the change of temperature of her own skin. Shivering, she folded her arms and backed against Honey. Together the girls watched the young parents examine and wonder and murmur. All the while, their tears of relief flowed unchecked down their shining faces.

  The child they called Dodgy stirred, wakened, looked with wide, unwinking dark eyes, and grabbed handfuls of air. Eileen Dodge laid her cheek against his, and his tiny hand latched onto her blond hair. He obviously recognized the security of her touch and began to mew like a kitten. Someplace in the house, a clock chimed.

  “Ten o’clock,” Honey said. “I have his supplies. Would you like me to heat his formula so you can feed him, Mrs. Dodge?” And she moved toward the kitchen visible through a doorway.

  “Feed him?” the young mother repeated. Then she sparkled, “Oh, yes!” Suddenly she took notice of the strangers in her home. She said, “Sit down, won’t you? Who...? I mean, I’m Eileen Dodge, and this is my husband, David, and this is my son, Robert, and...”

  She stopped her rushing words and cried, “Where’s Davy?” She held her baby so closely that Trixie could see the knotted muscles in her arms. Her voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “Where is Davy?”

  For the second time that night, Trixie saw a side of the hardheaded policeman she hadn’t known existed. He stepped forward to pat the woman’s shoulders, as if he were comforting a child. “Ssh, ssh, Mrs. Dodge. Ssh, ssh.” In a short while, the sergeant’s calm voice had soothed the mother, and he said, “Now, listen to me while I explain what’s happened.”

  Eileen Dodge drew in her breath and stopped crying, but she did not loosen her hold on the baby. Automatically, she took the warm bottle Honey brought from the kitchen and began his feeding.

  “These are my young, uh, friends, Trixie Belden and Honey Wheeler. They both live a couple of miles from Sleepyside, on Glen Road. Your baby was abandoned at Trixie’s house during Wednesday’s storm. As I understand it, your children disappeared Saturday. Is that right?”

  “About noon Saturday,” David Dodge said. The sergeant nodded. “We haven’t figured out yet where they were in that period between Saturday noon and Wednesday night. We still don’t know where Davy is... but, well, here’s Robert, all safe and sound. Now we can direct all our efforts toward finding Davy.”

  The Dodge couple’s reaction to this explanation was bewildering, to say the least.

  Eileen cried, “No!” and hugged the baby so tightly that he squeaked.

  David patted his wife’s back with one hand and rubbed his own head with the other, evidently trying to make up his mind about something. Didn’t they want Davy?

  The sergeant frowned at the odd behavior. “What’s going on here?” he demanded harshly. “Look—” David Dodge began.

  “No!” his wife interrupted. “David, the note says don’t call the police!”

  “I know, but...”

  “What note?” the sergeant barked.

  “No!” Eileen cried again.

  “I have to tell him, honey,” David pleaded. “It’s our only chance to get Davy back!” He left the room abruptly and returned with two sheets of paper. He gave one to the sergeant and explained, “As you can see, this one is from Davy.” Sergeant Molinson held the paper in such a way that Trixie and Honey could read along with him.

  “Dere Mom and Dad,” said the note, “I am running away and I am not never coming back. I won’t let you sell at this point, he had tried to spell Dodgy and had apparently given up— “D. and me. I luv you, Davy.”

  “What does he mean, sell?” Sergeant Molinson inquired.

  “I wish I knew,” David answered wearily. “That’s been giving me nightmares. We didn’t find the note till after the auction. We’ve been out of our minds with worry. We’ve searched, night and day, but things have been so up for grabs around here that—well, we wouldn’t recognize a clue if it jumped up and bit us.”

  The fact that the sergeant was treating her as an equal gave Trixie the courage to say, “I should think you’d have noticed the baby was gone. Who was taking care of him?”

  Eileen moaned. “Please don’t blame me. I can’t stand any more! I blame myself. I can’t sleep, I can’t eat....” She rocked with Dodgy and started crying again.

  David rubbed the back of his wife’s tense neck while he answered Trixie’s question. “Eileen had given Dodgy his morning feeding. A neighbor girl was supposed to watch him while he took his nap in the shade of the house, out of the way of the auction traffic. She didn’t report a problem, so Eileen went right ahead showing furniture and stuff inside the house while the auctioneers worked in the barn. She didn’t notice how late it was getting. Besides, the girl often gave Dodgy his bottle. We trusted her.” David’s voice broke.

  “What was her story?” the sergeant asked, his face expressionless.

  “She had a boyfriend who was in the crowd. She wanted to let him know she was here. She said she was gone ‘just a minute,’ but when she came back, Dodgy was gone. She figured Eileen had taken him into the house, so she felt free to join the crowd. She thought somebody would call her if she was needed. Nobody did, so she went home.”

  “Didn’t anybody pay her?” Honey asked alertly.

  “Eileen had told her we’d pay her after the auction money was in.” David looked embarrassed, and Trixie recalled what her father had said about this man’s carelessness with money. “We—we owed her for several sittings and were going to pay her at the end of the month. She— she was a good baby-sitter; I’m sure she doesn’t have anything to do with the kidnapping.”

  “Are you sure the note is from Davy?” Sergeant Molinson asked.

  “Yes,” David said.

  “Then why do you suspect kidnapping?” the sergeant snapped.

  “We didn’t, until—” David opened the second note and stared at it, apparently unwilling to share it.

  Then he changed his mind and shoved the note into the sergeant’s hand. “We found this under the door Sunday morning. That’s why we were late in turning in a picture of the boys. We didn’t want to risk their lives. But there’s a limit to how much a person can stand. We’ve got to have help!”

  Again Trixie and Honey read the note along with Sergeant Molinson.

  “ ‘We have your boys,’ ” Trixie read aloud. “ ‘Don’t call the police if you ever expect to see them again. We’ll bargain with you later, when you’ve had time to think about this.’ ”

  “What they mean,” said David bitterly, “is when we’ve had time to drive ourselves crazy, so that we’ll meet any terms they suggest.”

  By this time, Eileen had finished feeding the baby and was raising him to her shoulder. Trixie could hear the soft patting of her hands. Eileen had pretty hands, gentle and capable. She couldn’t have inflicted those bruises on that baby’s helpless body.

  “Which
note did you find first?” Trixie asked. Sergeant Molinson quirked an approving eyebrow at her.

  “Davy’s,” answered Eileen. “It was pinned to the pillow in Dodgy’s bed. We found it Saturday afternoon. That’s when we found the broken piggy banks and discovered that some formula bottles were missing.”

  The sergeant waved Davy’s note. “You don’t think he was forced to write the note?”

  “No,” David said firmly. “I honestly think he took Dodgy and ran away for some mixed-up reason of his own. What happened to him after that is anybody’s guess.”

  “You haven’t found another note?”

  “No, so we’ve been hoping that the second one was some kind of cruel prank. But—” David shrugged helplessly— “none of our neighbors are the kind who would do a thing like that.”

  The sergeant paced about the room, evidently thinking deeply. The Dodges, Trixie, and Honey watched him silently. The baby slept on his mother’s lap. Trixie could hear the ticktock of that upstairs clock.

  Eileen smiled slightly, noticing that Trixie was listening to the clock. “We didn’t sell the clock,” she said. “It’s been in our family for generations, and Davy likes it. He says it puts him to sleep at night and keeps him company if he happens to wake up.”

  Trixie tried to return Eileen’s smile, but it died before it reached her lips. Where was Davy tonight? No place where an antique clock chimed, she could bet on that.

  David looked at Trixie. “Tell us about Dodgy.”

  Again Trixie repeated the story of the discovery of the baby in the doghouse, and of the care he had received since then. “He has bruises we can’t account for,” she said.

  “Bruises!” Hastily Eileen Dodge lifted the gown to examine the tiny body. The sounds she made showed both her outrage and her deep concern. “I don’t understand this. Dodgy has never even had a rash!”

  “Were there any clues to show how he got to the doghouse?” David asked.

  “I found a horseshoe nearby,” Trixie told him.

  “Could have ridden Wicky?” Eileen asked her husband.

  “ ?” Honey repeated.