Who Stole New Year's Eve?

by Martha Freeman

  I ladled two more bowls of soup. When I brought them back, Bub was still on the phone but not talking, and I realized that after “Hello,” he hadn’t said a word. Every once in a while, he opened his mouth, but it was no good. Finally, he got exasperated. “Excuse me? Who is this? Do I know you?”

  This made whoever was on the other end laugh so hard I heard it through the receiver.

  “Ohhh, sorry,” Bub said. “Yes, of course, I—” Bub shut his mouth. The person on the other end was worse than Sophie! Finally, Bub interrupted again. “Excuse me? But I think I’ve got the gist, and at this rate they’ll be late before they even know they’re wanted downtown. Thanks for calling.”

  He hung up the receiver and shook his head.

  “Don’t tell me,” said Officer Krichels. “Angie Price.”

  Bub pointed at Officer Krichels. “Bingo.”

  That explained everything. Ms. Price is a dispatcher for the police department, and she also handles the phones sometimes. Talking to her can be, uh . . . an experience.

  “Your mom asked her to call.” Bub was looking at me. “She wants to know if you kids can be at the station at ten-forty-five—that’s fifteen minutes. You would’ve had half an hour if that woman hadn’t kept me on the phone.”

  “I can take you if you don’t mind the back of a police car,” Officer Krichels said. Then—courtesy of another encounter with Luau’s tail—he had a sneezing fit.

  “Don’t you want some soup, Fred?” Bub asked.

  Shaking his head, Officer Krichels stood up, then answered between sneezes. “I don’t know why, but my allergies seem to be acting up.”

  Luau hopped down onto the seat of the recliner, tail still swishing. I know why.

  Sophie swept the bits and pieces of calculator onto an old magazine and set it in the middle of the table. “I’ll see to this later, if that’s okay, Bub.”

  “No rush,” Bub said. “It’s been broken since along about 1985.”

  Meanwhile, Eve slurped the last of her soup, popped up out of her chair, and grinned. “This is so exciting! So far, I love fighting crime!”

  Sophie looked at me and rolled her eyes. “Rookie.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Officer Krichels dropped Eve, Sophie, and me off at the College Springs Police Department. In the lobby, we could see Ms. Price at her desk on the other side of a sliding window, like in a doctor’s office. She was on the phone. Ms. Price is round and has frizzy blond hair that she tries to keep in place with a headband. She likes clothes in pale colors like blue and pink and yellow, so she looks like she’s wearing pajamas even though she’s not.

  “College Springs Police Department. We spring into action for you. Thank you for holding. May I help you?” she said into the receiver. Then she caught sight of us, grinned, and mouthed, “I’ll be right with you.”

  The volume on the phone must have been turned up loud, because we could hear the caller’s voice without being able to understand the words. It was a man, and Ms. Price looked annoyed. I guess a lot of people who call the police department have bad attitudes.

  Ms. Price listened for a few moments, frowning. Then she did something surprising—looked up at us and winked. After that she repeated exactly the same words she had said before: “College Springs Police Department. We spring into action for you. Thank you for holding. May I help you?”

  The caller went ballistic. Ms. Price interrupted him. “No, as a matter of fact, I didn’t hear a word you said. You were on hold, which is why I thanked you for holding. Perhaps you’re not familiar with the concept of hold? It means you’re there and I’m not. I might be on break. I might be dead. Oh—there’s my other line. So sorry. Please hold for the next available operator, who, come to think of it, will be me.”

  Ms. Price pressed a button, put the receiver down, rubbed her ear, and smiled at us. “Let ’em learn a little patience. How are you doing, Alex? Long time no see! Hello, Sophie. Where’s Yasmeen?”

  Oh, great.

  This time it was Sophie who said: “Practicing for choir auditions.”

  “Seriously?” said Ms. Price. “Well, Yasmeen was never short of nerve, that’s for sure. And you are?” She looked at Eve, and I introduced the two of them.

  “Very nice to meet you,” Ms. Price said. “Any friend of Alex’s and all that. Detective Parakeet is in her office. Besides me, she’s the only one here today, even though we’ve got crazy nutballs”—she looked at the phone—“calling us nonstop. Take this guy—he hasn’t left us alone since before Christmas, claims there’s poison bombs on the highway and we’re not doing enough to—”

  “Angie?” Mom appeared on the other side of the window behind Ms. Price’s desk.

  Ms. Price swiveled around. “Yes, Detective?”

  “Could you buzz the kids in, please? Then set up that video call to Belleburg. Mr. Yoder is expecting it. Who”—she nodded at the blinking lights on the phone—“have you got on hold? We’re still waiting for Mr. Glassie, right?”

  “Mr. Glassie, the director of the Ice Carnival?” Ms. Price looked down at the phone on her desk and shrugged. “Could be he’s on hold. I haven’t had a chance to pick up all the lines. As for the one I did, I don’t think it would be wise to name names in front of the children, Detective, do you?”

  “You mean it’s our tipster?” Mom asked.

  Ms. Price nodded. “Right. It’s that crazy Professor—Oh, shoot, oops!” She looked at us again.

  Mom sighed. “He’s not crazy. He’s just afraid of losing his funding, like everyone else at the college. Try to be polite, okay? Then find out what’s become of Mr. Glassie, and go ahead and set up the conference call.”

  “All that?” Ms. Price said.

  “Yes, Angie. All that,” Mom said.

  Ms. Price sighed a long-suffering sigh, then buzzed us in. We followed Mom down the hall toward her office.

  On the way, I thought about the tipster guy. He must be the same one Mom talked about two weeks ago, the day of the Jensens’ party. But what was the rest of that stuff—poison bombs? And what did Mr. Glassie have to do with anything?

  In Mom’s office, I noticed she had a copy of the Middle Daily Times on her desk. On the front page was a big headline about something called fracking.

  “Where’s Yasmeen?” Mom asked.

  This time Sophie and I said it together: “Practicing for choir auditions.”

  Mom held up her hands. “Okay, okay. Just asking. I hope she makes it, then. Usually she loves—”

  “Detecting,” I said. “Yes, Mom. We know. Anyway, Eve is getting the hang of this really quickly.”

  “Excellent,” Mom said, “because this is a remarkable crime, one that must have been executed with military precision. Still, we are lucky in one respect. There have to be plenty of people who know what happened. The thief only had a short window of opportunity to take all those statues, or he would have been spotted. Our extra Ice Carnival patrols were going through town every half hour. The thief must have had help, and lots of it.”

  Sophie, Eve, and I looked at each other. What was she talking about? All those statues?

  Mom touched her hand to her cheek. “Oh my goodness,” she said. “It’s been such a crazy morning. I forgot I haven’t even had a chance to tell you.”

  “Tell us what?” Sophie said it before I could.

  “It’s not just Ice Eve that’s missing,” Mom said. “It’s all the Ice Carnival statues—eighteen of them.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  We had a million questions. But Mom said there was no time. There were only five minutes till the video conference with Mr. Yoder.

  “But who’s Mr. Yoder?” I asked. “And why are we even here?”

  Eve answered the first part. “Mr. Yoder’s my uncle.”

  Mom nodded. “And you’re here because you’re investigating the disappearance of Ice Eve. There’s got to be a connection between it and the thefts downtown. Since it’s a couple of hours round-trip to Belleburg,
we’re saving time with this video conference thing.”

  “But what does my uncle know?” Eve asked. “You don’t think he’s a thief, do you?”

  “No, not really,” Mom said. “And if I knew what he knows, I wouldn’t have to talk to him. Since all the sculptures came from his studio, it seems like a good place to start. And there’s something else, too.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Izzy Glassie is threatening to shut down Ice Carnival if we don’t get the sculptures back. Except for Mrs. Miggins, the downtown merchants are in an uproar, and that means the chief of police is, too.”

  Ms. Price shouted from the conference room. “I need some help in here!”

  Mom said, “Oh, dear,” and we all got up and went down the hall. Ms. Price doesn’t have any more skill with electronics than she does with old-fashioned telephones, and when we got to the conference room the whole place seemed to be possessed by demons. The TV screen that drops down from the ceiling kept rising and falling, the laptop on the long table flashed blue-to-black-to-blue, and an ominous hum pulsed from the wall speakers.

  Without a word, Sophie held out her hand to Ms. Price, who gave her the remote control. Sophie studied it for a second, then pressed some buttons. Right away the TV was still, the hum was gone, and the laptop displayed its usual icons.

  Mom and I are used to this, but Eve said, “Wow.”

  Next Sophie sat down at the laptop and asked, “What’s your uncle’s name and screen ID?”

  “James Yoder,” Eve said, “but I don’t know anything about an ID.”

  “I’ll look it up.” Sophie tapped some keys, and a photo of a bearded man—Eve’s uncle—filled the computer screen.

  “How did you do that?” Eve asked.

  Sophie started to explain, but I tugged both earlobes, so she stuck out her tongue instead. “Fine.” Then she pressed another button, and this time Eve’s uncle, live and in person, appeared on the TV above us. He was blinking as if he wasn’t sure how he’d gotten there himself.

  “Hello?” Mr. Yoder said. “College Springs PD—are you there?”

  “We are here!” Angie Price said. “Where are you?”

  “Here,” said Mr. Yoder.

  Ms. Price looked around the room. “No, you’re not.”

  “I mean I’m in my studio in Belleburg,” Eve’s uncle Jim said.

  “Well, there’s your problem,” Ms. Price said. “Because Belleburg is actually there.”

  Mom rolled her eyes. “Angie? We can take it from here. Nice to see you, Mr. Yoder. As you’ve heard, there’s been some trouble. This is a case we need to solve quickly, and we hope you can help.”

  The view we had of Mr. Yoder’s studio showed him next to a counter with a sink in it. Behind him was a window that looked out on a driveway and a water tank.

  “I hope so, too,” Mr. Yoder said. “Bad enough the weather’s been so warm this year. Then to have the sculptures go missing . . . It boggles the mind! Who would want them?”

  “That’s just what the police want to know, Mr. Yoder,” Mom said. “Can you think of any reason anybody might to do this?”

  Mr. Yoder shrugged. “Because they’re setting up a competing carnival somewhere? Because they flat out don’t like ice carnivals? But who doesn’t like ice?”

  Eve whispered to me. “This case is easy! It must be that toy store lady!”

  “Maybe,” I said, but in reality I couldn’t believe Mrs. Miggins would go to the trouble of stealing eighteen sculptures—nineteen, if you counted Ice Eve.

  “Mr. Yoder, I have a question,” Sophie said. “How much does each of the ice sculptures weigh?”

  “Anywhere from two hundred to a thousand pounds,” he answered. “For the big ones, you need a hoist to lift them. The smaller ones, you can get away with a strong back and a hand truck.”

  “But you’d need a truck to get very far with one,” Mom said.

  “Absolutely!” Mr. Yoder said. “And you can only put about four in a pickup at a time.”

  “So I’m just trying to picture how this operation took place,” Mom said thoughtfully. “Someone who either had several trucks or one heavy-duty truck and a trailer stole into town in the middle of the night and, very efficiently, carted off all the sculptures. There had to be a swarm of people involved.”

  Mr. Yoder was nodding. “Young people, most likely, people with strong backs.”

  “Uncle Jim, I have a question,” Eve said. “Are ice sculptures worth a lot of money?”

  “Depends on what you mean by—” Mr. Yoder began, but his voice was drowned out by a dog’s long, low howl. “Marvin!” He turned his head. “Cut that out right now!” The howling stopped, and Mr. Yoder apologized. “I don’t know what’s with ol’ Marvin lately. He usually isn’t interested in the studio at all, but these last few days he’s been dying to get in here. Maybe there’s a dead possum in the ductwork? Now, where was I?”

  “Prices,” Mom said.

  “Ah, yes. Small ones are around two hundred fifty dollars, and the big ones are up to a thousand dollars. But when it comes to the College Springs Carnival, those prices are more in the realm of theoretical.”

  Mom frowned. “What do you mean, Mr. Yoder?”

  “Only that the Carnival hasn’t paid me for this year’s yet. Or last year’s, either, come to think of it. It’s not unusual for a client to be behind, but it’s becoming a problem. I hope they get their finances worked out soon. Artists have to eat, too.”

  “Interesting,” Mom said.

  While Mr. Yoder had been explaining, a tanker truck had pulled into the driveway behind him. The truck was red, with a picture of a black Halloween cat and the words FRAIDY BROTHERS FRACTURING—WE SCARE UP THE GAS.

  Uncle Jim heard the truck, turned to look out the window, and called, “Rudy? Can you . . . ?”

  A voice from offscreen said, “I got it, boss.”

  Mr. Yoder turned back to face us. “If you don’t mind, I’ve got some cleaning up to do around here.”

  Mom looked at Eve, Sophie, and me. “Anything else, kids?”

  While I tried to think, Mr. Yoder turned on the tap in the sink beside him. The faucet was just visible at the right of the screen, and as I watched, something strange happened—but it was so quick I couldn’t sort it out.

  First Mr. Yoder looked surprised; then he said, “Dang it—uh-oh . . .” and the screen flashed white. After that there was a poof, the sound cut off, and the screen went black.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Sophie frantically tapped the keyboard, looked at the TV screen, and tapped some more.

  Ms. Price, who had been annoyed ever since she gave up the remote, said, “Hmmph. So much for the girl wonder of electronics.”

  “It wasn’t me!” Sophie insisted, and a new display appeared on the laptop—a bar graph with wavy lines. Sophie studied it for a second and announced, “The link is fine at this end. Something must’ve happened at Mr. Yoder’s end.”

  “Is my uncle all right?” Eve looked worried.

  “I don’t know,” said Mom. “Angie, get him on the landline. Please? I’ve got the number here.”

  There was an old-fashioned phone in the middle of the table. Ms. Price pulled it over and dialed. After a moment, she spoke into the receiver. “Mr. Yoder? Angie Price at College Springs PD, we spring into action for you, calling on behalf of Detective Parakeet.” (Pause.) “Okay, I guess, except for that problem with my knee.” (Pause.) “You didn’t? Well, it started last week—I sit at a desk all day, you see, and—”

  Mom slapped her forehead, leaned across the table, and took the receiver from Ms. Price. “Mr. Yoder, Noreen Parakeet. What happened? Are you all right?”

  Mom listened, nodded, and finally made the thumbs-up sign. Eve breathed, and Sophie said, “Must not’ve been fatal.”

  After Mom said goodbye, she explained that something had knocked a plug out of Mr. Yoder’s computer. “Nothing to worry about, he said. We were pretty much done with the i
nterview anyway.”

  “But what was that poof sound?” Sophie asked. “And did anybody else see a bright light?”

  “I thought I did,” I said, “but it all happened so fast.”

  “Some problem with the camera, I guess.” Mom stood up. “Let’s go back to my office, kids. We’ve got a few things to work out before we get on with the investigation. Angie, can you check on Izzy Glassie? He’s really awfully late.”

  As Sophie, Eve, and I went back to Mom’s office, I was thinking a crazy thought. Maybe Izzy Glassie wasn’t late. Maybe he had stolen the ice sculptures, and now he was making his getaway!

  I hadn’t worked out this whole idea yet. But with his job, Mr. Glassie did have the means to steal the sculptures—a truck, the equipment, people—and he had the opportunity. Nobody would think a thing about seeing him downtown in the middle of the night when Ice Carnival was going on. They would think he was just making sure everything was okay.

  The thing I didn’t get was the motive. Why would he want to sabotage an event he was in charge of?

  Maybe it had something to do with the money the Carnival owed to Mr. Yoder?

  By now, we were back in Mom’s office, and she was laying out her plan for more investigating.

  “Someone must have heard something last night,” she said. “Almost no one lives downtown, but what about someone on Chickadee Court?”

  “Bub heard a ‘vehicle,’ ” Sophie said. “But none of the rest of us heard anything.”

  “I guess he doesn’t know what kind of vehicle?” Mom said. “And he didn’t look out the window or notice the time?”

  “I don’t think so, Detective Parakeet,” Eve said. “I guess he didn’t realize he might be an important witness.”

  “What about Mr. Stone?” Mom asked. “I know he has trouble sleeping sometimes. Or the Blancos? That dog of theirs must’ve waked up. Could I deputize you kids to go door to door on Chickadee Court and see what you can find out?”

  Sophie and Eve said sure and stood up to go.