“You mean you’re quitting?” Honey asked in disbelief.
“I don’t think I’m quitting,” Trixie said, “because I don’t think I was ever really involved. McGraw just let me think I was. I’m just facing the truth, that’s all.”
Honey looked almost tearful. “We’ve never walked away from a mystery before, Trixie,” she said, “not even when everyone told us it was useless for us to try to solve it.”
Trixie shrugged. “You can work on the case if you want to,” she said, “but I’m not going to give it another thought.”
“What if Mr. McGraw does ask for our assignments—without being reminded, I mean?” Honey asked.
Trixie’s resolution wavered momentarily. “I suppose I might change my mind if that happened,” she said. “I don’t think it will, though.”
As she walked along the path toward home, Trixie weighed her own feelings about the decision she’d just made. On the whole, she finally decided, she didn’t feel as bad as she’d thought she would. On the one hand, she was certainly disappointed that her dreams of working with a real detective had fallen through. On the other hand, she was proud of herself for recognizing that Mark McGraw hadn’t really been taking her seriously.
Then, too, there was a freedom in knowing that she no longer had to take part in helping Laura Ramsey. She now realized that there was something about the woman that she just plain didn’t like—something that ran deeper than her feelings of jealousy over Jim’s attention.
Once she had her thoughts sorted out, she pushed the whole subject out of her mind. “No more mysteries for now,” she told herself. “I’ll stick to my canning and gardening and babysitting. It’s not as exciting, but it’s not as frustrating, either.”
She kept her resolution all the next day and most of the following morning. In fact, in her determination to forget about mysteries, she’d completely forgotten the one she’d discovered under her own roof.
When Mart knocked softly on the door of her room, where she was quietly reading a book, and said, “Come here a minute,” Trixie could not, for a moment, figure out why he wanted to see her. Then, remembering her brother’s new enterprise, she jumped off the bed and followed him to his room.
“Look,” he said simply, motioning her to his desk. The five plaques were spread out across it. Trixie stooped and examined them closely. They looked very nice, she thought, although the lacquer had bubbled up here and there on some of them.
“I’ll mail them back to Carlson Crafts today,” Mart said in an almost-whisper. “My check should be here in a couple of days.”
“That’s super, Mart,” Trixie said. Her voice sounded loud in the stillness of the room.
Mart nodded. “They didn’t even take me as long as I thought they would. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if I could turn out two batches a week, instead of one. That means I can double my initial projected earnings. I might be able to pay my own way through school entirely. In fact, I might even be able to help you and Bobby out. I was thinking I might be able to keep at this after I’m teaching at the boys’ school, too. Then I wouldn’t even have to have a salary from Jim. I could support myself.”
“Jim would never expect you to do that,” Trixie protested.
“I know he wouldn’t expect it,” Mart told her. “But with the savings on my salary, we could give scholarships to a couple more unfortunate boys.”
Trixie looked again at the five plaques. They seemed like such a small foundation for the big dreams Mart had built on them, she thought. “I hope it all works out just as you’ve planned it.” That was as much as she could say truthfully to her brother.
“I hope so, too,” he said earnestly.
Trixie patted her brother on the shoulder and left the room. Thinking again that human behavior was the most mysterious mystery of all, she started down the stairs to get a glass of iced tea. She was on the bottom step when the doorbell rang. “I’ll get it,” she called out to whoever might have heard it.
Opening the door, she saw a casually dressed, slender young man standing on the porch. He had a pencil stuck behind one ear and a clipboard tucked in the crook of his arm. “Good morning,” he said politely. “My name is Burt Anderson. I represent the Census Bureau. Could I ask you a few questions about your family?”
“Of course,” Trixie said. “If you’d rather talk to my mother—”
“Oh, no,” he said quickly. “The woman of the house usually has more than enough to do, without stopping to answer a lot of questions. I’m sure you can give me all the information I need.” He took the top sheet of paper, which was already filled with writing, out of the clipboard and put it on the bottom of the pile. Then, pulling the pencil from behind his ear and holding it poised over a clean printed form, he said, “First, family surname.”
“Belden,” Trixie said quickly. “B-e-l-d-e-n,” she spelled out for him helpfully.
“How many in the family?” he asked.
“Four. I mean, six, counting my parents,” Trixie said.
The man nodded. “Four children, two adults,” he muttered to himself as he filled in the forms. “Names and ages?”
“My father is Peter Belden. He’s thirty-nine,” Trixie began.
“What is his occupation, please?” the census taker asked, carefully filling in the blanks.
“He’s a banker,” Trixie said.
“Hmm.” The man appeared vaguely impressed. “Go on,” he added.
Trixie hesitated for a moment, not sure what information came next. “My mother’s name is Helen,” she said. “She’s thirty-seven.”
“Does she work outside the home?” the man asked.
“Well, she has a big garden,” Trixie said uncertainly.
The man laughed. “No, no. I meant, does she have another job, besides housewife and mother?”
“Oh! No.” Trixie felt herself beginning to blush.
“It’s a confusingly worded question,” the man told her. “We used to ask simply if the woman of the house worked. Then people pointed out that a housewife and mother works harder than most corporate executives. Hence the rewording. But it still isn’t very clear, I’m afraid. Now, the children’s names and ages.”
“Brian is the oldest. He’s seventeen. Mart— Martin—is fifteen. I’m fourteen. Bobby—Robert—is the youngest. He’s six,” Trixie said.
“And what is your name?” the man asked.
Trixie’s blush started all over again. “Do you need my real name?” she asked.
The man looked startled. “Do you usually use an alias?” he asked.
Another wave of embarrassment surged over the first one. She was only making it worse, she knew. She should have just told him her hated real name immediately—at least it would be over with by now. “My real name is Beatrix,” she finally told him reluctantly. “But everyone calls me Trixie.”
The man nodded. “Understandably.”
Trixie grinned through her embarrassment. At least this census taker had a sense of humor.
“Do you have any guests staying with you at present?” he asked.
Trixie shook her head. “Why do you need to know that? I mean, won’t you wind up counting people twice?”
“We just want to make sure that we count everyone once,” the man said. “After all, if someone is visiting somewhere, they obviously aren’t at home, are they? So they might miss the census taker in their own area. If I can talk to them, I can get the information about their home residence and forward it to their area office. That will make the census as complete as we can make it.”
Trixie nodded slowly, thinking about what the man had just said. “That seems very efficient,” she agreed, “but we don’t have any guests right now. Sorry.”
“Oh, it makes no difference to me,” the man assured her. “I get paid by the hour, not by the name. Well, thank you,” he added, returning his pencil to its place above his ear.
“You’re welcome,” Trixie said, then asked, “What’s a census for, any
way?”
“For?” Again the man looked startled. “Oh, you mean what’s the information used for?” Seeing Trixie’s nod, he said, “Oh, all sorts of things. Planning for schools, for one thing. By knowing how many youngsters there are in an area, and their ages, school districts can tell whether they need to build more schools and hire more teachers, or start letting teachers go and closing schools down. A growing population means a need for more roads, more libraries, more swimming pools, all that sort of thing.”
Again Trixie nodded slowly, thinking of what the man had told her. “That’s a good idea,” she said. “Thanks for explaining it.”
Burt Anderson smiled. “No problem. As I said, I get paid by the hour. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” Trixie said. She closed the door and started back upstairs to her room. Halfway up the stairs, she remembered the iced tea she’d been on her way to get when the doorbell had distracted her. She turned around and went back down the stairs and across the dining room toward the kitchen.
As she passed the dining room window, she glanced out. She froze in her tracks as she saw the car in which the census taker was driving away—it was the same small, green car she’d seen twice before!
McGraw Asks for Help ● 10
TRIXIE RAN toward the front door, then froze again as she realized that there was no chance of catching the green car. She looked around frantically, as if something in the house would give her a clue about what to do next.
Finally, forcing herself to be calm, she walked to the kitchen, poured herself a glass of iced tea, and sank down at the table. She propped her elbows on the tabletop and clutched two handfuls of sandy curls. The census taker was the man in the green car. The man in the green car was, in all probability, a detective hired by Anthony Ramsey’s partner to find Laura. Those two things she knew, but she could not grasp the connection between them.
Suddenly Trixie jumped up and slapped the tabletop with both hands. “Houseguests!” she shouted into the stillness. That was the link, she was sure. All of the other questions on the man’s list had been red herrings, meant to keep Trixie from getting suspicious when he asked the one he really wanted the answer to.
“But what did he really expect to find out by asking, and why did he ask here?” Trixie said to herself. Surely he hadn’t thought that Trixie would say, “Laura Ramsey is staying with my friends the Wheelers at Manor House because her father has disappeared and she’s trying to find him.”
Trixie thought for a few more moments, and then the answer came to her. “Of course!” she muttered to herself. “We started assuming, because of what Mark McGraw said, that the man in the green car had already matched Laura to her photograph. But that’s not necessarily true. At the lake, the man was far away. Laura looked different. Because her hair was wet, it was straight and seemed darker. Then, when he followed us to Sleepyside, he couldn’t have got a very good look at her, because she was on the passenger’s side of the car.
“By posing as a census taker, he’s hoping to get somebody to mention her by name. Then he wouldn’t even need the photograph. He might not know that Laura was staying at the Wheelers’, because I’ve been along both times we saw him spying on us.”
Trixie smiled to herself in satisfaction at having solved the problem—then gasped and clapped her hand to her forehead as she realized that she hadn’t solved the problem at all. She ran to the phone, picked up the receiver, and dialed Honey’s number with a trembling finger.
When Honey answered, Trixie blurted, “Have you seen the census taker?”
“Wha-a-t? What are you talking about, Trix?” Honey asked, obviously bewildered.
Trixie took a deep breath, forcing herself to slow down and explain the situation clearly. “The man in the green car was just here, pretending to be a census taker,” she said, dealing out the words as if from a deck of cards, one by one. “I didn’t see the car until after he left, so I answered all his questions. One of them was whether we had any houseguests staying with us. I’m sure he asked that question because he wants someone to identify Laura for him.”
Honey’s gasp came through the receiver. “Mr. McGraw told us detectives have sneaky ways of getting information. This is one of them, all right,” she said.
“Have you seen a census taker at your house?” Trixie repeated.
“I haven’t,” Honey said. “But I’ve been in my room most of the morning. This house sprawls so, I don’t even hear the doorbell most of the time.”
Trixie let out a frustrated groan, then snapped her fingers as a new hope occurred to her. “He can’t have been to your house yet, Honey. If he had been—I mean, if he’d been there and someone told him about Laura, he wouldn’t have bothered to come here. So I’m sure we’re safe. Just go, right now, and tell everyone in the house that he’s a fake. But tell them to answer his questions if he comes around. Otherwise, he’ll know we’re onto him. Just tell him you have no houseguests, and keep Laura out of sight!”
“I will,” Honey promised. She said good-bye and hung up.
Trixie headed back to the kitchen to get her iced tea. Her heart was still pounding with excitement, but she felt confident that Frank Riebe’s detective would not get the information he was after.
“It was a narrow escape, though,” she told herself. She took a soothing swallow of the tea.
“Getting away from this case isn’t as easy as I thought it would be,” she concluded as she turned to go back to her room.
On Friday morning, Trixie was summoned from the garden, where she was picking yet another basketful of tomatoes, to the telephone.
“Can you come over right away?” Honey’s voice demanded urgently.
“What for?” Trixie asked.
“Mark McGraw is here. We told him about the census taker. He wants to talk to you, to get a description of the man,” Honey told her.
Trixie’s heart leaped at the thought of Mark McGraw’s asking to see her. Then she remembered her pledge not to get involved in the case. “Tell Mr. McGraw that the man was young and thin and had a pencil behind his ear. That’s all I remember.”
“Trixie!” Honey’s tone was both impatient and pleading. “You must remember more than that. You’re the only one who’s seen and talked to him.”
“I’m off the case, remember?” Trixie asked stubbornly.
“Oh, no, you’re not,” Honey countered. “You said the only thing that could get you back on the case would be Mr. McGraw’s asking for your help. Well, now he’s asking.”
“That’s true,” Trixie said slowly. She felt a curious mixture of excitement and apprehension. It was good to know that McGraw now seemed to need her. On the other hand, there was still something she didn’t like about the case—and about Laura Ramsey!
Finally, Honey Wheeler took matters into her own hands. “Get here as fast as you can,” she said, and she hung up.
Trixie stared at the receiver in surprise. Then she put it back in its cradle and went to tell her mother that she was going to Manor House.
Laura, Honey, Jim, and Mark McGraw were once again gathered in the library when Trixie arrived. Coming, as she had, directly from the garden, she felt even more disheveled than usual next to Honey and Laura. The fact that the detective was wearing the same ill-fitting suit was small consolation.
Without any introductory small talk, the detective flipped open his notebook and held his pencil poised above a blank page. “Tell me what you know,” he demanded.
The gruffness of McGraw’s voice made Trixie’s mind go blank for a moment. “He—he was young,” she stammered.
“How young?” McGraw asked.
Trixie cleared her throat and gathered her wits. “I’d say he was about twenty-five. He was about your height, but very slender. Frail, almost. He had hair about the color of mine. Eyes, too. I mean, he had eyes about the color of mine, too. His nose was long and thin, but not too long. It was a nice nose. His lips were sort of thin. That’s why I was surprised when he turned out to
have a good sense of humor.”
“See?” Honey asked proudly. “I told you Trixie would remember everything. She always does.”
“What was he wearing?” Jim asked.
McGraw waved one hand in a gesture of dismissal. “That doesn’t matter. He’d be wearing what you’d expect a census taker to wear.”
“That’s right,” Trixie agreed. “He had a clipboard, and he had a whole bunch of printed forms on it. The one on the top was all filled out, as if he’d just come from another house.” McGraw nodded. “He sounds like a real pro, all right,” he said.
“What are you going to do next?” Trixie asked. “Track him down,” McGraw growled. “The license number was a dead end—a rental. But with this information, I ought to be able to find out who he is. Then there are ways of finding out who he’s working for.”
“How?” Trixie pursued.
McGraw looked at her scornfully. Now that he had the information he wanted from her, she was once again just a meddlesome teen-ager, the look seemed to say. “Contacts,” he said.
“Oh,” Trixie said humbly.
“Speaking of contacts,” McGraw said, turning from Trixie to Laura, “one of my sources in Buffalo turned up a lead that’s worth following.”
“About my father?” Laura asked eagerly. McGraw ignored the question. He leafed back through his notebook and read from his notes as he spoke. “My source reports having seen a man answering Anthony Ramsey’s description. It was in a cheap restaurant up there that’s known to be an underworld hangout. He looked bad—haggard, unshaven, that kind of thing. And there were two men with him who stuck right with him. Didn’t let him out of their sight.”
Laura gripped the back of a chair hard, as if it were her grasp on reality. “What does that mean?”
McGraw shrugged. “If the man was your father, it could mean he’s being held prisoner by the two men.”
“But why?” Laura’s voice was a wail. “There’s been no ransom demand. What do they want? Why are they holding my father?”
McGraw closed the notebook and slapped it rhythmically against the palm of his hand. “A string of neighborhood grocery stores like your father’s could come in very handy for the mob. The stores have been around for a while. Everyone knows about them. Everyone knows they’re clean and honest. They could be used for the syndicate’s purposes for a long time before the cops got wise.”
The Mystery of the Millionaire Page 9