“Let’s sit and rest a minute,” Honey suggested, pointing to one of the benches that were placed around the edge of the common.
The girls plopped down on the bench and looked around. The common was deserted, and the late afternoon light cast eerie shadows through the bare tree branches.
Honey shivered and turned the collar of her jacket up. “It looks kind of spooky,” she said.
Trixie pointed to a fat squirrel crossing the common. “He doesn’t look too scared,” she said with a grin.
As the girls watched, the squirrel stopped to sit up and nibble on something it found on the dry grass. When it was through eating, it looked around, sniffing the air, and then scampered off toward Town Hall.
“He must live in one of those trees,” Honey said, pointing to the stately old elms that stood along the back of the building.
Trixie’s eyes widened, and her mouth dropped wide open.
“What’s the matter, Trixie?” Honey asked in a concerned tone.
Trixie pointed, and Honey watched as the squirrel started up the side of one of the trees. The animal climbed quickly, then hurried along a big horizontal branch. At the end of the branch, the squirrel paused for a moment, then jumped—and landed on the roof of Town Hall!
“That’s it!” Trixie exclaimed. “That’s how Sammy got up on the roof!” She stood up and ran toward the tree.
“Wait, Trixie,” Honey called, running to catch up.
Trixie stopped at the base of the tree and looked up. The first branch was several feet off the ground, but there were lots of branches spaced close together above it.
“Perfect for climbing,” Trixie said.
“If you’re a squirrel,” Honey said breathlessly.
Trixie put her sack down. “Give me a boost,” she said.
Honey gasped. “Trixie! You’re not going to—”
“I’ll just climb up a little way and see how it looks,” Trixie said.
“But you might fall,” Honey wailed.
Trixie shook her head. “I’ll be careful. I used to be the best tree-climber in Sleepyside, back in my old tomboy days. Come on, give me a boost.”
Reluctantly, Honey struggled to boost Trixie up to the first branch.
“A little more...” Trixie urged. “Just a little— there!”
Trixie pulled and scrambled and got herself up onto the branch. The next branches were easy. “Just like climbing a ladder,” she called down to Honey.
“That’s high enough, Trixie,” Honey called back. “Please come down!”
“Just a little farther,” Trixie said. “I’m almost there.” She reached the big branch that hung out over the roof of Town Hall, straddled it like a horse, and paused to catch her breath. For the first time, she looked down.
“Yipes! I guess it is a little higher than it looks,” she said.
“What?” Honey yelled. “I can’t hear you.”
“No problem,” Trixie called, trying to sound more confident than she felt. Very carefully, an inch at a time, she began to slide herself along the branch toward the roof.
“Trixie! Come down!” Honey pleaded.
As Trixie inched forward, the branch began to bend under her weight, and in a minute, the end of the branch was touching the roof of Town Hall.
Trixie kept her eyes straight ahead and forced herself to keep going.
Suddenly she was there. Trixie eased herself off the branch and straddled the steeply pitched roof.
As soon as her weight was off the branch, it snapped back to its original position—just out of reach above Trixie’s head.
Uh-oh! Trixie thought. Now what do I do? She couldn’t see Honey anymore, and it was rapidly growing dark. The belfry, with the cupola on top, was about twenty feet ahead.
“Honey, can you hear me?” she called.
“Yes,” came Honey’s voice from below. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Trixie said a little shakily. “But I can’t reach the tree branch to get back down.”
“Oh, Trixie! I’ll go and get Sergeant Molinson.”
“No, wait,” Trixie called. “I can get in the belfry and climb down the ladder into the building. I think I can unlock the front door from inside.”
“Trixie! Let me go get help!”
“Just wait a minute,” Trixie shouted. “I’m sure I can make it.” She began to slide herself along the peak of the roof toward the belfry. She was almost there when something shiny caught her eye. It was a small disk of metal caught in one of the shingles below her, reflecting the last red rays of the setting sun.
Trixie leaned forward until her stomach touched the peak of the roof and very slowly and carefully reached downward. She stretched her arm to its limit, trying not to shift her weight and slip off the peak. Her fingertips touched the metal disk, and she slid it free from the shingle and retrieved it with a sigh. Sitting up once more, Trixie held her discovery up to the fading sunlight. It was Sammy’s buffalo nickel!
“There’s the proof,” Trixie gasped. “This must have fallen out of Sammy’s pocket when he climbed up here to steal Hoppy!”
She was only a few feet away from the belfry now. Every muscle in her body ached from the strain as she slid herself closer... closer. Finally, she was able to reach up and hook her hands over the edge of one of the tall, narrow openings that were spaced along the sides of the belfry. She pulled herself up, trying to gain a foothold on the slippery shingles. Struggling to hang on, she banged her knees against the belfry and scraped her ankles on the roof. When her stomach was even with the edge of the opening, Trixie pitched forward and toppled into the belfry. For a moment, she lay limp with exhaustion on the dirty floor, gasping and panting.
There was a large metal ring set in one end of the trapdoor in the floor of the belfry. Trixie stood and brushed herself off, then squatted in front of the ring and pulled with all her might. The heavy door creaked open, exposing the ladder that went down inside Town Hall.
Trixie took a deep breath and started down the ladder.
Danger! • 19
IN THE ROOM below the belfry, Trixie waited for her eyes to become accustomed to the darkness. She could make out the door off to one side, and, hands outstretched like a sleepwalker’s, she headed for it. At the door, she groped along the wall beside the doorframe until she found the light switch. Her eyes burned from the sudden glare of the single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling.
In the opposite comer of the room, the canvas-wrapped bundle was still leaning against the wall. Trixie walked to it and lifted a comer of the canvas, exposing the large copper head of the grasshopper weather vane. Gently, Trixie patted the head. “Hello, Hoppy,” she said quietly.
She lifted more of the canvas and discovered a small leather bag close to the weather vane. Dropping to her knees, Trixie picked up the bag. It jingled with the sound of coins! With trembling fingers, Trixie pulled the bag open and looked inside. She recognized the coins immediately.
“Mr. Quinn’s coin collection—it’s all right here!” she exclaimed. At the same moment, she heard footsteps in the hallway outside!
“Somebody’s coming this way,” she gasped.
Dropping the bag of coins beside the weather vane, Trixie dashed across the room and turned off the light. Finding her way back to the steel ladder, she climbed quickly, but couldn’t make it all the way up before the door opened.
Miss Lawler and Sammy came into the room.
Sammy carried a flashlight in one hand and a gun gripped tightly in the other. The gun was pointed at Miss Lawler!
“Aw, stop your bawling,” Sammy said roughly. “By the time anybody notices that broken window downstairs, we’ll be long gone.”
“Sammy,” Miss Lawler said in a pleading tone, “you’ve been doing so well since you left the halfway house. Everyone was proud of you. You’ve got a job now, and you can go to college next year... you’ve got a good life ahead of you.”
Sammy’s laugh was harsh and scornful. “Who nee
ds college?” he said. ’Td rather make my money the easy way. And this time I wont get caught, either.”
“Sammy,” Miss Lawler said, “you’ve got your thousand dollars now. Just let it go at that—quit while you’re ahead.”
“Oh, yeah,” Sammy snapped. “After I finally talk old man Perkins into giving me the reward money, I should just forget about the coin collection? Sure thing. Listen: This dumb town can keep their old weather vane—my partner and I would have had a hard time unloading it anyway. But those coins are something else! There are plenty of collectors who’ll be willing to take those coins off my hands with no questions asked.” As Sammy spoke, he kept his gun pointed unwaveringly at Miss Lawler.
“But, Sammy, those coins were my responsibility. I-”
“That’s the whole point, Cis,” Sammy said with a sneer. “When you disappear, everybody’s going to assume that you ran off with the coin collection. And the cops will waste all their time looking for you, while me and my sidekick take it easy. I may even stick around Sleepyside for a while and enjoy being a hero.”
“Sammy,” Miss Lawler said weakly, “you don’t mean—”
“What I mean,” Sammy interrupted, “is that we re going to take the coins and go for a nice long ride in your big station wagon. And I’m going to come back alone.”
“Sammy, please...” Miss Lawler pleaded.
“Nobody’ll be surprised,” Sammy went on. “They know you’re an expert on coins. And when they find out about how you flipped out after killing your brother—”
Trixie, hanging on to the top rung of the ladder, covered her mouth with a hand to smother her gasp.
“I didn’t! I didn’t!” Miss Lawler cried. “It was an accident. You know that.”
“Sure, Cis, I know,” Sammy crooned. “It was an accident. You lost control of your car and smashed into a tree. And your poor brother was killed. You flipped out and had to spend some time at a funny farm. Vereee unstable, huh? Just the type to rip off a coin collection and hit the road.”
Sammy gestured at the canvas-wrapped bundle. “Get the coins, Cis. I’m going to take you for a long ride.”
Trixie was terrified. She had to get help somehow, before Sammy hurt Miss Lawler. Her only hope was to climb back up into the belfry and scream her head off. Maybe someone would hear her and bring help before Sammy could get Miss Lawler out of the building. Trixie pushed on the trapdoor, gently at first, and then harder. It began to open... and creaked loudly.
“Who’s that?” Sammy demanded. He turned his flashlight upward and spotlighted Trixie, who was cringing against the top rungs of the ladder, pale with terror.
“Well, well,” Sammy growled. “It’s little Miss Nosy. You must have figured out how I got up on the roof. We were just leaving for a nice long ride... and you can come with us. Get down! And you’d better make it fast!”
Trembling with fear, Trixie started down the ladder.
“Come on!” Sammy ordered.
Trixie’s foot missed a rung, and she fell with a scream, landing squarely on Sammy. They both crashed to the floor, and Sammy’s head hit with a solid thud. The gun clattered out of his hand and slid across the room.
At that same moment, the door burst open, and Sergeant Molinson shouted, “Police! Freeze!”
“Boy,” Trixie gasped painfully, “am I ever glad to see you!”
Someone else, with a gun in his hand, stepped up behind Sergeant Molinson. It was the bell tower man!
“Look out!” Trixie screamed.
Molinson turned quickly, then relaxed and holstered his gun. “It’s okay,” he called. “You can all come in now.”
Honey and the boys crowded into the room.
“Oh, Trixie!” Honey threw her arms around her friend, unable to say any more.
“Are you all right, Trix?” Brian asked.
“Did he hurt you?” Mart asked.
Trixie’s laugh was shaky, and suddenly her knees felt wobbly. She leaned on Honey. “He told me to come down in a hurry,” she said. “So I fell on top of him.”
Jim wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “We just got into town, and Honey told us about your little climb,” he said. “We got Sergeant Molinson right away.”
“You should have come for me sooner, young lady,” Sergeant Molinson told Honey gruffly.
Miss Lawler’s voice was trembling. “If you hadn’t been here, Trixie, I don’t know what would have happened.”
Trixie smiled weakly and put her arm around the teacher’s aide. “Don’t think about it,” she said. “It’s all over now.”
Suddenly Trixie’s eyes filled with tears, and she hugged Miss Lawler tightly. “I should have known you’d never do anything wrong,” she said.
The bell tower man walked over and put a hand on Miss Lawler’s shoulder. “I never should have let you stay alone in your apartment,” he said. “I figured Sammy was about ready to run again, but I didn’t think—”
Miss Lawler smiled. “Trixie’s right—it’s all over now.” Turning to the others, she added, “This is Mr. Gibbons. He’s a parole officer from New York.”
“I followed Sammy here after he jumped his parole in New York,” Mr. Gibbons explained. “He and his partner were released from jail early in the year.” Trixie shook her head. “We—we thought you were Sammy’s partner,” she said.
Mr. Gibbons grinned. “So that’s it… This morning in the library, I was going to show you my identification... but you ran like scared rabbits.”
Sammy groaned and sat up. Sergeant Molinson snapped a pair of handcuffs on him and hauled him to his feet. “Let’s go, buster,” he said sternly.
As the sergeant led Sammy out of the room, Miss Lawler murmured, “Good-bye, Sammy.” There was a moment of uncomfortable silence.
“Somebody better call Moms,” Trixie said finally. “Wait’ll she hears about this,” Brian said with a sigh.
Mart scratched his head. “Is anybody else besides me hungry?”
“Listen,” Honey said cheerfully, “we were going to Wimpy’s for dinner. Miss Lawler and Mr. Gibbons, will you join us? We can talk about everything while we eat.”
“I have a better idea,” Trixie said. “Let’s get a takeout order and go back to Crabapple Farm. Then Moms and Dad can hear about everything, too.”
Miss Lawler smiled at the tall parole officer. “I told you the Bob-Whites were wonderful kids,” she said.
All talking at once, they headed out the door.
“... and it was late when we started home,” Miss Lawler s soft voice went on with her story. “The storm had been pretty bad, and the roads were icy. I remember my car spinning out of control, and then we hit the tree— When I regained consciousness in the hospital, they told me my brother had been killed.”
The Bob-Whites were sprawled on floor cushions, listening while Miss Lawler talked. The adults had moved their chairs close around the blazing fire. Bobby was asleep, his head resting on Reddy’s broad back.
“But it wasn’t your fault,” Trixie whispered.
“I was pretty ill after that,” Miss Lawler continued. “I spent some time in a hospital. When I was finally feeling better, I took a job as a counselor in a halfway house.”
“Is that where you met Sammy?” Honey inquired sympathetically.
Miss Lawler nodded. “He’s the same age my brother was,” she said. “I wanted desperately to help him....”
Mr. Gibbons coughed self-consciously. “Sammy had been in jail for theft. Living at the halfway house was one of the conditions of his parole. Sammy is an intelligent young man. He seemed to have a lot of potential, and we all expected him to do well. Then he ran off with his former partner. I tracked them here.”
“What about the partner?” Brian asked.
“He was arrested this afternoon,” Mr. Gibbons said. “He told me all about the weather vane caper. After that big storm was over, Sammy took advantage of the fact that the streetlights were out. He climbed a tree behind Town Hall, took th
e weather vane down through the inside of the building, and let himself out the front door. He had arranged for his partner to pick it up on Louis Road the next day, using the song on the radio as a signal. But when Sammy heard about the reward the next day, he changed his plans.”
“And he used another song—’St. Louis Blues’—to let his partner know,” Trixie concluded.
“Right, Trixie,” Mr. Gibbons said.
Miss Lawler shook her head. “Sammy came to me and told me that he knew who had stolen the weather vane and where it was hidden. He begged me to help him return it, and I thought—”
“That’s what you were doing when we saw you driving with Sammy in your station wagon!” Honey exclaimed.
“Yes,” Miss Lawler said. “I really believed that Sammy wanted to do something good, so I helped him return the weather vane, even though I hadn’t been able to make myself drive a car since the accident. I had hired someone to drive my car to Sleepyside when I came. I didn’t know that Sammy had stolen the coin collection.”
“Well,” Mr. Gibbons said, standing, “with all the evidence that you young people collected, Sammy and his partner will be going back to jail for a good long time. You’re quite an alert detective, Trixie.” Trixie blushed. “It wasn’t too alert of me to think that you were Sammy’s partner,” she apologized.
“Say, Trixie,” Mart began slyly, “perhaps you were in too much haste to baste, after all.”
Trixie lifted an eyebrow at him.
“Well,” Mart explained, “if you can manage to lose another button from your Bob-White jacket—and I can think of unlikelier occurrences—maybe it will be placed with the other artifacts inside our weather vane before it’s recoppered and restored to its perch.”
“Gleeps!” Trixie crowed. “I told you Hoppy would make us Bob-Whites famous someday!”
Downtown • 1
Surprises on Sunday • 2
Sam, Sam, the Medicine Man • 3
The Mysterious Car • 4
The Walk-a-thon Plan • 5
That Oar Again • 6
The Mystery of the Phantom Grashopper Page 11