Clocks and Robbers

by Dan Poblocki

  Rosie sat up straight and said in a mock-sweet voice, “Well, Sylvester? Is there?”

  They all laughed and grabbed more fries.

  “Only the rest of the story, my dear,” he said with a wink.

  “So what did your uncle do?” asked Woodrow. “Lie or confess?”

  “He confessed. She already knew the truth, of course. But she wasn’t too upset. She said she was actually impressed with his … What did she call it? Resourcefulness.”

  “But how did she know he’d broken the window?” asked Woodrow.

  Sylvester nodded. “And? What do you think?”

  “Your grandmother must have found some broken glass or something,” said Viola. “Ooh! Maybe she cut herself on it.”

  Rosie shook her head. “Sylvester said they cleaned it up.”

  “Sure,” said Viola. “But they could have missed some. Or she might have found shards of glass in the garbage.”

  Sylvester shook his head. “Even if that were true, it wouldn’t be enough to lead my grandmother to the truth of what had happened. Can you guess why that wouldn’t prove anything?”

  “If Hal-muh-ni had found broken glass, she couldn’t know that it had come from the window,” guessed Rosie. “It could have been a drinking glass. Or a jar.”

  “Right,” said Sylvester. “Broken glass wouldn’t necessarily mean a broken window, so it had to be a different clue. What was it?”

  “Oh!” said Viola. “I know. It was the window itself.”

  “What do you mean?” Woodrow asked.

  “Sylvester said that the fit was perfect. And the glass was brand-new. But the house was old, over sixty years old at that point, and the other panes of glass in the window would not be perfect.”

  “Huh,” Rosie murmured, realizing where Viola was going.

  “Sylvester mentioned that the window was streaky. Probably filled with imperfections. Sylvester’s grandmother must have noticed the difference between the old panes and the new one, and realized that the pane had been replaced.”

  “And why do you replace a windowpane?” Rosie said, already knowing the answer.

  “Because the old one was broken,” said Woodrow.

  “You guys got it,” said Sylvester, scooping a huge dollop of ketchup onto the longest fry. “You can tell that one to Bill next time he asks about us.” Woodrow pursed his lips, and Sylvester quickly decided to move on. “So … who’s next?”

  15

  THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING

  MOUTH GEAR (A ? MYSTERY)

  “I’ve got more sibling drama,” said Rosie, “if you can believe it.”

  “I believe it,” said Viola. “Your brothers and sisters are always getting into trouble.”

  Woodrow licked his lips, catching some salt with his tongue. “Rosie’s stories make me cherish my only-child-ness.”

  “No way,” said Sylvester. “I’ve heard you say you wish you had a brother or sister plenty of times.”

  Woodrow rolled his eyes. “Why would I need a brother to annoy me when I have you?”

  “For your information,” Rosie said, “brothers and sisters do not exist simply to bother each other.” She flicked some salt off the table at the boys. “Sometimes they help each other too.”

  “That’s news to me,” said Sylvester. “Gwen does nothing but scream lately. If I have to listen to her anymore, I’m gonna scream myself!”

  “Listen to this instead,” Rosie said, holding up a hand. “My sister Keira has worn a retainer at night ever since she had her braces removed last year. The retainer is this small, gross, clear plastic thing that’s supposed to keep her teeth from moving around.”

  “Yuck,” said Viola. “I hope I never have to wear braces.”

  “Keira says they hurt really bad. Her retainer can hurt too. Every once in a while, she’ll wake up in the morning and realize that she’s not wearing it. Sometimes she spits the retainer out in the middle of the night. Other times she somehow manages to take the retainer out in her sleep and place it on the nightstand between our beds.”

  “How lovely for you,” Woodrow said.

  “Not so much,” said Rosie. “I’ve asked her not to put it there, but there’s no reasoning with someone who’s basically sleepwalking. And sharing a bedroom, I guess we’re bound to argue. We’ve had some ridiculous ones lately.”

  “Like what?” asked Viola.

  “One had to do with daylight saving time.”

  “Why would you get in a fight about that?” said Sylvester. “Keira doesn’t want to change the clocks?”

  “Ever since the time change,” Rosie answered, “the light comes through our bedroom window earlier, shining in my face every morning. But Keira’s bed is closer to the windowsill, and she likes the sun coming in. She says it helps her wake up. So Keira pulls the curtain open at bedtime, and I’ve taken to creeping out of bed in the night and shutting it.”

  “This is a nice story and everything,” said Sylvester, “but is there a mystery to solve here?”

  “Oh yeah,” said Rosie. “I almost forgot that part! Yesterday morning, Keira woke me up, angry at me for shutting the curtain again. She went to open it, but I asked her to keep it shut so I could sleep a little later. She threw back her covers and stormed out of the room. Somehow, I managed to fall back asleep.

  “Later, when I was eating breakfast, I heard Keira fussing around upstairs. My mom called me up to our room. Keira had complained to my mom that I had stolen her retainer.

  “I saw that Keira had pulled all the sheets and blankets off our beds, but I didn’t see my sister’s mouth gear anywhere. It wasn’t on the floor. It wasn’t on her mattress. The light on our nightstand exposed a pile of clean books with no saliva stains on them.”

  “Yummy,” said Sylvester.

  “You didn’t steal it,” Woodrow asked Rosie. “Did you?” He looked like he half expected her to say yes.

  “Of course not,” said Rosie. “And my mom knew it. Keira got a good scolding, and Mom told her if she wanted to keep her teeth nice and straight, she could buy herself another retainer with her own money.”

  “That stinks,” said Woodrow.

  “So, Keira hasn’t found it yet?” Viola asked.

  “I didn’t say that,” said Rosie, smiling. “In fact, before bed last night, Keira just happened to come across it in a very obvious place.”

  “It fell behind the headboard of her bed,” said Woodrow.

  “No!” said Sylvester. “I bet a mouse stole it. Your sister found it sticking out of a hole in the floor, where it got stuck after the mouse tried to drag it away.”

  “That’s just silly,” said Viola. “Rosie said it wasn’t on the floor, so the retainer obviously hadn’t fallen behind the headboard. And it most definitely wasn’t stolen by a mouse.”

  “Viola’s right,” said Rosie. “If it wasn’t on the floor, and it wasn’t on the mattress, can you guess where Keira’s retainer was?”

  The group thought about it for a few minutes. Then Viola smiled. “The curtains.”

  “Yeah!” said Woodrow.

  “Keira’s retainer was in the curtains?” said Sylvester.

  “No … Rosie and Keira have a routine with their curtains,” said Viola. “Keira likes them open. Rosie gets out of bed and closes them late at night. Well, yesterday morning, when Keira woke up, Rosie asked her to keep the curtains shut so she could sleep. Later, Keira thought she’d lost her retainer. You guys searched the bedroom, but you never said you opened the curtains again before bedtime.”

  “Ah,” said Sylvester.

  “Right,” said Rosie. “When Keira got into bed that night, she opened the curtains and found her retainer sitting on the windowsill!”

  “She must have put it there the night before while she was half-asleep,” said Viola. “Then, when Rosie got up in the middle of the night, she accidentally hid the retainer behind the curtain.”

  “So then no one stole it,” said Woodrow.

  “Not even a
mouse,” Sylvester added with a grin. They all chuckled.

  “And the best part,” Rosie added, “is that Keira doesn’t have to buy herself a new one. I would have felt really guilty about that.”

  “But it wasn’t your fault,” said Sylvester.

  “I know that,” Rosie answered quietly. “But even though Keira and I argue, she’s still my sister. And that counts for something. You’ll see someday. Gwen won’t be a baby forever.”

  16

  THE CASE OF THE CREEPING FINGER

  (A ?? MYSTERY)

  As Rosie concluded her story, Mr. Cho brought over glasses of water. The group was parched after so much salt and talk. They all gulped noisily.

  “I hung out with Kyle Krupnik earlier today,” said Woodrow. “We were tossing a ball in his backyard when he told me a crazy story about his next-door neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Pilson.”

  “I know them,” said Rosie. “They’re retired professors. They spend lots of time at the library. Since they’re always raising their voices at each other, my mom is constantly asking them to be quiet. She says they have no consideration. I think they’re just deaf.”

  “Deaf or not, they’re not very nice people,” Woodrow continued. “Last year, we were playing in Kyle’s backyard. We accidentally stepped onto their property. Next thing we knew, Mr. Pilson leaned out a window and shouted at us that we were trespassing. He threatened to call the police. Kyle said that a month later, the Pilsons built a tall wooden fence between their property and the Krupniks’. The Pilsons also had a professional gardener plant a whole bunch of bamboo plants for privacy. Since then, the plants have grown really tall, really quickly.

  “Even with a privacy fence, Kyle can usually hear them fighting with each other at all hours,” said Woodrow. “But when I went over there this morning, it was really quiet. Kyle told me that he hadn’t heard them arguing in a while. In fact, he mentioned that for the past few days he’s seen Mr. Pilson driving around by himself, which he never does.”

  “Maybe that’s a good thing,” said Rosie. “It sounds like they might need some time apart.”

  “Kyle figured that they might have gotten just that,” said Woodrow. “But not in the way you’re thinking.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Viola.

  “He thought it was weird that Mrs. Pilson wasn’t around. And he wondered if maybe she was … gone for good.”

  The rest of the group turned pale. They finally understood what Woodrow meant.

  “Lots of people argue,” said Viola. “That doesn’t mean they go around ‘getting rid’ of one another.”

  “According to Kyle, Mr. Pilson was working in his garden near the fence late yesterday evening. Supposedly, from the street, Kyle noticed that the old man had dug a deep hole.”

  “To bury his wife in?” said Sylvester, practically shouting. “No way. Not in Moon Hollow.”

  “I thought the same thing,” Woodrow said. “But then Kyle and I crept toward the fence to see if we could get a better idea of what was happening on the other side.” He paused, taking another sip of water. “That’s when we saw it.”

  “Saw what?” said Rosie, panic edging in.

  “The finger,” said Woodrow.

  The group was silent for a few seconds. Then Viola whispered, “You found a human finger today and you waited until just now to tell us?”

  “Where was it?” Sylvester interrupted. “What did it look like?”

  “It looked old and brown and withered, all knobby and filthy.” Woodrow licked his lips. The other three kids dropped their jaws in shock. “It was on the Krupniks’ side of the fence, opposite Mr. Pilson’s hole. It was coming up from the ground, as if trying to claw out of a grave.”

  “So you called the police?” said Viola.

  “We didn’t even think to at first,” said Woodrow. “Right then, Mr. Pilson came out of his house mumbling and grumbling. He headed right over to the bamboo plants near the fence. We held our breath. He must have sensed that we were there because he started yelling about how ‘difficult it was to have privacy anymore.’ Kyle and I took off for his house. Once inside, we peeked out the window near the back door to see if Mr. Pilson was coming after us with his shovel.

  “In the kitchen, Kyle’s mom snuck up behind us and asked what we were doing. We jumped, terrorized. When we had calmed down, Kyle explained that we were certain Mr. Pilson had buried his wife in the bamboo bed, and that Mrs. Pilson had tried to climb under the fence to escape, but didn’t make it.

  “To our surprise, Mrs. Krupnik started laughing. Hard. She assured us that we’d let our imaginations get the best of us. She was certain that Mr. Pilson had done nothing to his wife. We begged her to call the police, but she refused. Do you guys have an idea why Mrs. Krupnik was so sure of herself?”

  “The only thing I can think of,” said Rosie, “is that maybe Mrs. Krupnik recently saw Mrs. Pilson.”

  “Exactly,” Woodrow answered. “Mrs. Pilson had been away for the past few days. She’d arrived home this morning and greeted Mrs. Krupnik in the driveway, sometime before Kyle had even gotten out of bed.”

  “Ha,” said Sylvester. “Kyle needs to check his sources a little better before accusing anyone of murder again anytime soon.”

  “You think?” said Woodrow, laughing.

  “But what about the finger?” said Viola. “There’s still the question of the corpse in the bamboo patch, isn’t there?”

  “Well,” Rosie began, “now that we’ve ruled out the possibility that the finger was attached to Mrs. Pilson, I think I have another idea about what Kyle and Woodrow found near the fence. It wasn’t a dead finger. In fact, I think the object they saw was very much alive.”

  “Alive?” said Viola, looking squeamish.

  “Don’t tell me it was a weird snake-lizard thing,” said Sylvester.

  Rosie smiled but shook her head. “Good guess though. Anyone else think you know what it was?”

  “I wonder why Mr. Pilson was digging a hole on his side of the fence,” said Viola, reasoning through it. “Since he wasn’t burying his wife, like Woodrow and Kyle suspected, maybe he was doing something a little more ordinary … like gardening.”

  “Mm-hm,” said Rosie, nodding. “Sounds to me like all Mr. Pilson was guilty of was over-zealous landscaping…. Well, that and being in a generally foul mood. He didn’t realize what he’d gotten himself into by planting bamboo shoots along the fence. I’ve read that they grow really quickly. Unless you contain them, their roots will spread out far and wide.”

  Sylvester tapped his chin, “Then the finger you found—”

  “Wasn’t a finger at all,” said Woodrow. “It must have been a root from the bamboo plant invading the Krupniks’ yard.”

  “It’s amazing how creepy some plants can appear,” said Rosie. “I remember seeing some weird ones at the botanic garden in New York City last summer. They looked like they could have reached out and grabbed us.”

  “Like this!” Sylvester clutched at Woodrow’s arm. Woodrow jumped high enough to bump his knees on the bottom of the table. The water glasses nearly toppled. The four roared with laughter.

  17

  THE STRANGER IN THE DINER

  Mr. Cho called across the restaurant. “Everything okay over there?”

  The group immediately settled down. “Sorry, Dad,” Sylvester answered.

  Mr. Cho nodded then mouthed, “We’ve got a customer.” He slyly pointed at the booth adjacent to theirs before heading into the kitchen. Sylvester turned and noticed someone sitting with his back to them. The man wore a dark flannel dress coat. His broad shoulders accentuated the worn seams of his clothing. His pale scalp was visible underneath his stringy brown hair. He coughed, reached for his coffee mug, and took a sip. Sylvester figured the man had come into the diner during one of their stories.

  The man seemed to notice that he was being watched. He glanced over his shoulder at the group. Everyone immediately lowered his or her head, pretending to find the
paper placemats on the table the most interesting objects they’d ever seen.

  “Excuse me,” said the man, his voice a low rumble. He stood and went to their table, his body blocking their view of the kitchen door and of Mr. Cho beyond it. The man wiped his mouth and said, “You kids wouldn’t happen to be members of the Question Marks Mystery Club, would you?” Surprised, none of them were able to speak. “Sorry, I couldn’t help overhearing your stories. I read about you in the paper.”

  Viola sat up straight. “Yes, we are the Question Marks.” Woodrow pressed his lips and tilted his head at her, silently asking her to quit talking. “We didn’t mean to be so noisy. Sorry to bother you.”

  “Not a bother,” said the man, smiling. “It’s an honor to meet you all.” He stretched out his hand to Viola. As she reluctantly shook it, she noticed dirt underneath his fingernails and around his cuticles. “I’m Phineas Galby. Passing through Moon Hollow on my way to see some family upstate. You kids live in a great little town.” He had an accent of some sort. Southern maybe. He stepped back from the table and leaned toward the window, glancing up and down the quiet street. They could now see his entire outfit. An untucked, dark navy button-down shirt. A wrinkled red-and-blue striped tie. The cuffs of his dressy black pants and his leather shoes were muddy.

  The clock down the street began to chime.

  “Yup, it’s a sweet place to live,” said Woodrow, with an air of finality. “It was nice to meet you too. Have fun with your family.”

  The man, Phineas, turned back to face them. If he was offended by Woodrow’s tone, he did not show it. His smile was plastered from cheek to cheek. “Hey,” he continued, nodding in the direction of the library around the corner, “is that the clock you kids decoded? The one that helped you find out about those people, the Timekeepers?”

  Sylvester nodded. He wished the man would just leave them alone.

  “Have you learned anything else about them?” asked Phineas. “Secret societies might have more secrets than the ones you discover on the Internet.”