Clocks and Robbers

by Dan Poblocki

  “The one in front of the library is the same!” said Viola. “Yesterday, I noticed a small acorn peeking out from the window.”

  “What could that mean?” said Sylvester.

  “It could just be part of the design,” Rosie answered. “Not everything has to mean something.” She quickly glanced at Viola, hoping she hadn’t hurt her friend’s feelings.

  Viola pursed her lips, but nodded. “You’re right. But maybe we should all take a walk down to the train station and check out the other clock too. You know … just in case?”

  With nothing else planned for Saturday morning, the group let their parents know where they were going before setting off down the hill.

  The train station on Oakwood Avenue was a quaint stone building that stood next to the tracks. The station’s doors were painted deep green. Its pitched roof was made of old slate, varnished wood, and tarnished copper. A large portion of it hung over the platform, providing shade to whoever stood on the cobblestone patio below.

  The clock was exactly as Woodrow had described it—a twin of the one in front of Moon Hollow Public Library. Near the bottom of each face, a name had been printed in an elaborate and frilly type. P. W. Clintock. Today, the image showing through the half-moon windows was a bright green leaf.

  “That’s from a maple tree,” said Rosie. “Like on the Canadian flag.”

  “So you think these clocks were made by Canadians?” asked Sylvester.

  “Does it matter?” said Woodrow.

  “I don’t know! Viola’s always saying ‘mysteries are everywhere if you look for them.’”

  “This is a mystery, then?” Rosie asked. “Two clocks that look exactly the same in two different parts of town?”

  “Well …,” said Viola. “What makes a mystery? How do we know we’ve found one?” The group thought for a second.

  “Something is out of place?” Rosie suggested. “Or lost or stolen … or just plain odd.”

  “Mm-hm,” said Viola. “The question is: How odd are these clocks?”

  “Whoa!” Sylvester shouted, pointing at the clock. “Did you see that?” Everyone in the group turned. “The minute hand jumped forward!”

  Viola quickly pulled her notebook out of her coat pocket. “What number was it stuck at before it jumped?”

  “I don’t know,” said Sylvester, thinking. The time now read 11:25. “Maybe eleven twenty?”

  “So it jumped five minutes. Just like yesterday at the library.” Viola wrote all of this down.

  Woodrow chuckled. “Does that answer your question?

  “Which question?” said Viola.

  “About how odd these clocks are …”

  Rosie smiled. “You guys, I think we might have found the beginning of another mystery.”

  They sat on one of the benches and watched the clock for another twenty minutes, but the large hand did not jump forward again. Eventually, Rosie suggested they hike over to the library and examine the other clock together.

  By the time they reached the library’s plaza, almost an hour had passed since they’d arrived at the train station.

  “Check it out,” said Sylvester. “The maple leaf is showing on this clock too.”

  They surrounded the clock so that each of them could see one of its four faces. Each face showed the leaf. “Interesting,” said Viola. “They must be on the same schedule.”

  “I wonder …” Woodrow looked at his watch, comparing his time to the clock’s. “I think the clock’s stuck at twelve twenty. The large hands haven’t moved since we got here, and my watch says it’s almost—”

  “There it goes!” Viola shouted. All four of them finally saw the minute hand leap forward. It landed on the number five, just like the one at the train station had done an hour ago. They stared at each other in shock for several seconds. “You can’t say that doesn’t mean something,” said Viola.

  “Yesterday,” Rosie began, “the clock paused on the eleven before jumping forward to the twelve. Maybe the minute hand gets stuck on the same number every hour, a different number every day?”

  “We’ll have to test out that theory,” said Viola, continuing to take notes. “We’ve got some time.”

  “An hour,” said Sylvester, “to be exact.”

  “You said that yesterday the picture on the clock was an acorn,” Woodrow mentioned to Viola. “Today it’s a maple leaf. Could it be a metaphor for something?”

  “Yeah, like … for … growth?” said Sylvester. “Don’t acorns grow up into maple trees?”

  “No.” Rosie shook her head. “Acorns grow up into oak trees.”

  Sylvester looked embarrassed. “Well, maybe the images are connected in a way. What do a cherry, a maple leaf, and an acorn have in common?”

  “They’re all plants?” Woodrow suggested.

  Viola raised her hand. “I think the pictures might be a great aspect to explore later. But right now, we’ve overlooked an obvious, solid clue that can lead us down a very specific path. As long as we’re right here at the library … Who wants to find out who this P. W. Clintock is?”

  The library was a stone building, built in the early 1920s. Inside, reaching up to the high ceiling, various golden sculptures decorated the polished marble walls. At the far left of one wall, a farmer held a small scythe. He pointed at a calf who stood beside him. The calf craned its neck up to look above them at a grand eagle with wide wings. The eagle appeared to be eyeing a kneeling robed woman who held a salmon she’d caught from a nearby stream. The sculptures looked like something out of an old history textbook.

  There was a marker on one wall describing the artwork and the artist, a local woman Viola had never heard of before. The sculptures had struck her the first time she’d visited the library a couple months ago, and every time since, she’d seen something new. Today, she noticed the small image of a sundial, which was located on the far right side of the wall.

  Why did time suddenly seem so important here in Moon Hollow?

  The group signed up for a computer. Searching the Internet, they learned that Paul Winston Clintock had been a local clockmaker. His factory sat on the river just north of Moon Hollow, but the company had shut their doors in the early 1990s. Rather than continue the business when Mr. Clintock had passed away, his heirs decided to sell the machinery and the building itself. On another website, the group discovered that the old factory had been converted into an apartment building. On a third site, they learned that Mr. Clintock had been a philanthropist—a generous person who used his wealth to aid others. He had helped to pay for the construction of the Moon Hollow Theatre. He had started a scholarship fund for needy students. He had donated three clocks to the town—the one in front of the library, the one next to the train station, and one more, across the street from the entrance of Moon Hollow College, on Cherry Tree Lane. He had also given several donations to the town library. The library had even named a room after him—the Clintock Gallery.

  “I know where that room is,” said Rosie.

  “Show us,” said Viola, getting excited.

  The group followed Rosie back into the lobby, then through a doorway into a long room, like a wide hallway with dark wood walls. A brass plaque bolted next to the door told them they were in the right place. “The Clintock Gallery. Moon Hollow thanks our friends for their generosity,” Viola read from the plaque’s small text. Along one side of the room, several photographs hung, portraits of serious-looking men and women, dressed in clothes from decades past.

  “Who are these people?” asked Sylvester, as his eyes roamed from picture to picture.

  “‘Our friends’?” Rosie suggested.

  “Look,” said Woodrow, “their names are printed on tiny markers on each frame.” He pointed at the top right photograph. “There’s Mr. Clintock himself.” The man in the picture had a skinny face with a long gray goatee. He wore a dark suit, wide circular spectacles, and a wry smile, like the Mona Lisa’s. “And these are some other people who must have made donations to
the town.”

  “Check that out.” Viola pointed at more words, engraved on a large brass plate above the wall of photographs. “The First Principles,” she read. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I think it’s referring to these,” said Woodrow. Above each photo was a smaller metal marker, each containing a single word. In order, they read:

  “Maybe each of these ‘principles’ is a trait of the person,” he said.

  “But what a strange thing for the library to do,” said Rosie. “I feel like there’s more to it.”

  “Maybe your mom knows something else about this gallery,” Viola said. “Why don’t you ask her tonight?”

  Whether they wanted to or not, each of the four had obligations outside of detective work throughout the week that followed.

  The next Saturday afternoon, Viola invited everyone to tag along with her father to go see the third clock, on Cherry Tree Lane, across the street from the great stone wall and gatehouse that marked the entrance to Moon Hollow College. While Mr. Hart attended a meeting on campus, the four stayed behind to examine the clock, which stood several feet from the curb upon a small brick patio.

  “This clock is exactly the same as the other two,” said Woodrow. “As … you … can clearly see.” He blushed.

  Sylvester snorted, trying to contain his laughter.

  Viola said, “But look: The picture in the little window is a cherry.”

  “Yesterday,” said Rosie, “at the library, I noticed the image was the same as last Saturday — it was still a maple leaf. Then, this morning, I was helping my mom run some errands. We drove up Maple Avenue, and I noticed the picture on that clock had changed to the cherry.”

  “The images on each clock must turn at the same time,” said Viola. “I think it’s also safe to assume that they rotate on a weekly basis — every Saturday morning. That seems to be when we’ve noticed the difference.”

  “Yeah,” said Woodrow. “And the numbers where the minute hands get stuck change too. On Friday of last week, they were on the eleven. Since last Saturday morning they’ve been sticking at the four. I wonder what the number will be today?”

  “We can wait here to find out,” said Rosie. “It should take less than an hour.”

  In the meantime, Sylvester shared that he’d officially moved into his family’s basement, since his grandmother’s belongings had arrived in the middle of the week. She hadn’t brought too many things with her from her old house. The ugliest item was an old ratty couch, which his mother hated. It was bright yellow and the cushions were puffy crushed velvet. Sylvester agreed with his mom—it was bizarre! — but Hal-muh-ni insisted they make room for it.

  “She must really like that couch,” said Woodrow.

  “I guess.” Sylvester shrugged. “Old people are so weird.” Rosie threw him a dirty look. “Sorry,” he said quickly, “I mean they are so … particular.”

  “Bam!” Viola shouted, pointing at the clock. “The minute hand was stuck at seven minutes past the hour—between the one and the two. It just jumped ahead five minutes.”

  “Okay,” said Rosie. “This is definitely not a coincidence.”

  “There’s a definite pattern,” Viola agreed, wandering around the clock, looking at it from all angles. Then, she flinched, as if she’d been struck by a bolt of lightning. “Wait a second!” She opened her notebook and flipped through the last few pages. “I didn’t think of it until I actually saw the image of the cherry here today. The three images aren’t just random nature pictures. The cherry, the acorn, and the leaf. They do mean something. And it has to do with where we’re standing.”

  “We’re surrounded by plants,” suggested Sylvester, nodding at the forest past the small stone wall. “Maybe they’re the same kind of plants that we noticed on the clocks.”

  “I don’t think so.” Viola shook her head. “It’s something else. Does anyone else want to guess?”

  The group stared at Viola in confusion. “Oh, come on!” she said, waving her arms wide. “What street are we standing on?”

  “Oh my gosh!” said Rosie. “Cherry Tree Lane!”

  Sylvester still looked confused. “So? What does this street have to do with the clocks?”

  Woodrow nudged Sylvester in the shoulder. “The symbols … They represent where each clock stands.”

  “A cherry, a maple leaf, and an acorn?” Sylvester tried to work through it. Finally, it all clicked, and he gasped. “Oh yeah, Cherry Tree Lane. Here we are. And the clock in front of the library is on Maple Avenue. Weird! But what about the acorn? I don’t know any street in this town called Acorn.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Rosie. “But an acorn doesn’t stay an acorn. Which street around here might be represented by an acorn?”

  “Well, thanks to you, I now recognize that an acorn grows into oak tree,” Sylvester said with a smirk. “Oakwood Avenue! That’s where the train station is.”

  “Nice job,” said Woodrow. Sylvester nodded a modest thank-you.

  “So we know what the symbols represent,” Rosie said. “But there’s another part of this puzzle we haven’t considered yet.”

  “The numbers?” said Viola.

  “Exactly. This whole thing is starting to seem like a code, don’t you think? It’s as if Mr. Clintock was sending out a message to someone in the town using his clocks. I’m pretty sure the numbers are just as significant as the symbols.”

  “In what way?” asked Sylvester.

  Woodrow glanced up and down the street. Beyond the campus wall, college students were wandering in groups, chattering loudly, their voices echoing past the stone gatehouse. He snapped his fingers. “We’ve already figured out that the symbols represent different roads in Moon Hollow, so if the numbers mean something too, they could be related to those streets.”

  “Hey, I know!” said Sylvester. “The numbers are a locker combination!”

  “But which locker?” said Rosie. “How would we find it?”

  Woodrow smiled at the group, teasing them with another question. “You guys aren’t listening to me…. If what we’ve found is actually a code, how would the series of numbers correspond with Mr. Clintock’s symbols for the streets of Moon Hollow?”

  “They’re addresses,” said Viola.

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking!” said Woodrow.

  “Hold on,” said Rosie. “In the last week or so, we’ve seen the minute hands stuck at the eleven and the four. Those numbers make sense as addresses. But today it was stuck in between the one and the two.”

  “Can an address be one and a half?” asked Sylvester.

  “You’re thinking in terms of the numbers that are written on the clock faces,” said Viola. “Those numbers represent the hour. But you should be thinking smaller. What other numbers might the hand be pointing us to?”

  Rosie snapped her fingers. “It’s the minute hand that sticks. So we should be thinking in terms of the minutes, not the hours!”

  “Right,” Viola said. “So the minute hand pointing to the number eleven on a clock face translates to fifty-five.”

  “I get it now,” said Sylvester. “The four on a clock is at the twenty-minute mark.”

  “And we’re not looking for one-and-a-half Cherry Tree Lane,” said Viola. “The clock was stuck at seven minutes past.”

  Woodrow pointed across the street. “Look at the gatehouse. The entry’s address is posted in bright green copper right there on the side of the building: Number Seven Cherry Tree Lane.”

  “Whoa,” said Viola, Rosie, and Sylvester at the exact same time.

  “If it is a code,” said Woodrow, “right now, it’s pointing at this spot.” He glanced up and down the street. “What are we supposed to be looking for?”

  After their discovery, the Question Marks were eager to learn the locations of the other addresses hidden in Mr. Clintock’s code: fifty-five and twenty. When Mr. Hart finished with his meeting, he found the group where he’d left them outside the campus. They all piled
into his car, and he drove them home. The kids raced into Viola’s house, to the den where the family’s computer sat. They had their answer in no time. “Well, that was obvious!” said Viola. “The library is at fifty-five Maple Avenue. And the train station is at twenty Oakwood Avenue.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Rosie. “Why would P. W. Clintock mark the addresses of these three buildings within the clockworks he donated to the town?”

  “Good question,” said Viola, leaning back in the desk chair where she sat. “I also wonder why the addresses change every week.”

  “Yeah,” said Sylvester. “And if he was sending out a message, who was it for?”

  “Hmm,” Woodrow said. He was sitting on the floor next to Viola. He tapped his fingers on the metal desk’s legs. “We do have another path to search. Rosie, did your mom ever find out anything else about those people whose pictures are in the Clintock Gallery at the library?”

  “No. She said she hasn’t had time.”

  “Fine.” Woodrow stood up. “We can do it ourselves instead.”

  The group asked Mrs. Hart to drop them off in front of the library, and she was happy to oblige. She had work to do at home and wanted some quiet. The four wandered around the library clock for a short while, watching it as if it might reveal another clue to them. The cherry shone brightly from the opening below the clock’s hands.

  Inside, the group headed to the Clintock Gallery, where the eleven portraits hung on the wall. In her notebook, Viola recorded the names of the people in the pictures. “At least now we know what their names are,” she said. “We should probably figure out what they did. Let’s go look them up.”

  Rosie led everyone toward the computer room, but Sylvester hung back. “We already know what they did,” he answered. “It says it on the wall.” He pointed at the brass plate that read The First Principles. “They were school principals.”