Mystery on Magnolia Circle

by Kate Klise

  “And?” Teddy said.

  “Solving a crime will accomplish both of those goals.”

  “I am never going to stop feeling sad about Lotty,” Teddy said. “But you’re right. It would be good to stop feeling sad every second of every day. Where do we start?”

  “By deciding to start,” I said with confidence.

  I didn’t even care that I sounded annoyingly like my mom.

  What I learned from that:

  It’s important to feel empowered so you don’t feel like a victim.

  SEVEN

  Crime Wave

  Teddy and I spent the next week turning my living room into a crime investigation unit.

  We used poster board and playing cards to make a model of Magnolia Manor, all twenty-four units. We marked every entrance, every door and window, every way a burglar might get into the building while two sofa delivery guys distracted Joel. We also interviewed Ms. Hiremath.

  “Do you have any theories on how the crooks got away with it?” I asked.

  “No,” Ms. Hiremath said. “But my insurance agent, Ben Kubicek, says he’s heard of cases where thieves work in groups of three. One of the deliverymen could’ve distracted Joel while the other slipped into my bathroom, opened a window, and threw a rope ladder down for the real thief to enter.”

  Teddy’s eyes brightened. “Even I could climb a rope ladder to your apartment.”

  Ms. Hiremath looked at Teddy sharply.

  “But of course I didn’t do it,” said Teddy. “I’m not a thief.”

  “Of course you’re not, Teddy,” said Ms. Hiremath, softening.

  “I go by Ted now. So in the future if you could remember to call me Ted, I’d be grateful. Ted sounds more grown-up than Teddy, don’t you think?”

  I needed to get the investigation back on track.

  “Ms. Hiremath,” I said, looking at my notes, “Joel said he stayed with the two men the whole time they were in your apartment.”

  “That’s what he says,” said Ms. Hiremath. “But when Ben, my insurance agent, asked Joel if either of the men used my restroom while they were here, Joel couldn’t remember.”

  An hour later, we were back at my house, eating grilled peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches.

  “I think what we need to do,” Teddy said, “is take a DNA sample of Ms. Hiremath’s toilet.” He paused to take an enormous bite of his sandwich. “Where can we get a DNA kit?”

  “It’s been almost a week since the burglary,” I said. “I’m guessing Ms. Hiremath has cleaned her bathroom at least once.”

  I then suggested something I’d put off saying because it seemed unkind.

  “You don’t think Joel was involved, do you? Maybe he gets fifteen or twenty percent of the value of everything stolen, just for letting the burglars in and pretending to be oblivious to the crime?”

  “No way, not Joel,” said Teddy. “I mean, sure, it’s possible. But he’s been working in our building since before I was born. If he was going to steal stuff, wouldn’t he have done it before now? Think of all the packages he could steal every December.”

  “You’re right. I’ll take Joel off the suspect list.”

  Unfortunately, he was the only name I’d had on my suspect list.

  Teddy and I were drawing another poster of Magnolia Manor, this time with all the fire escapes, when my dad came home from work.

  “Better sharpen your pencils,” Dad said as he walked in the front door. “Summer crime wave in St. Louis.”

  “What?” Teddy and I said at the same instant.

  “Just heard it on the radio,” Dad said. “Google it.”

  I hopped over to the kitchen laptop and typed in the search words: Crime wave. Summer. St. Louis, Missouri. An article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch popped up immediately.

  THIEVES POSING AS DELIVERYMEN DUPE DOORMAN, CUSTODIAN

  After two home burglaries in less than a week, authorities are warning St. Louis residents to exercise caution when letting delivery people into apartment buildings.

  “We don’t want to frighten anyone, but this could be the beginning of a summer crime wave,” said St. Louis Police Chief Sam MacPherson.

  MacPherson explained how the scam works. “A team of deliverymen arrives at an apartment building with a sofa. They probably know in advance the victim won’t be home.”

  In both cases, a building employee let the “deliverymen” into the victim’s apartment with the sofa. The problem is, said MacPherson, the sofa is a ruse. The apartment dweller did not order a sofa. By the time the sofa is removed, less than an hour later, the thieves have also taken money and valuables from the apartment.

  Karma Mathews was the victim of yesterday’s burglary on Washington Avenue, which occurred in midafternoon, an unusual time for a home burglary.

  “The thieves took all my fine jewelry, including my grandmother’s pearls,” said Mathews. “My grandmother gave me that pearl necklace for my twenty-first birthday. How can I possibly replace it?”

  Mathews says she is considering filing a lawsuit against the homeowners’ association of her building, as well as the building’s doorman, Daryl Steen.

  “He let the fake delivery guys in without my permission,” said Mathews. “And he didn’t even stay with them the whole time. He called me from the lobby, while the thieves were upstairs, robbing me blind.”

  Daryl Steen refutes Mathews’s account. “It’s true I let the deliverymen in without Ms. Mathews’s permission, but only because she didn’t answer when I called her at work. So I let the men in with the sofa. I thought I was doing her a favor. But I never left their side. I was in the apartment with them the whole time. By the time Ms. Mathews finally called me back twenty minutes later, I was downstairs in the lobby with the guys. When Ms. Mathews told me she hadn’t ordered a sofa, I returned to the apartment with the men and we got the sofa out of there.”

  Joel Shoemaker, custodian at Magnolia Manor on Magnolia Circle, said he never left the deliverymen alone in the apartment. That burglary also took place during the daytime while the occupant was at work.

  Police Chief MacPherson asks anyone with information about two men, one Caucasian, one African American, reported to be in their late 20s or early 30s, seen delivering a green sofa from an unmarked white van with paneled sides to contact the St. Louis Police Department.

  Teddy was shaking his head. “Joel is not going to be happy they called him a custodian. I mean, sure, that’s officially what he is, but he’s so much more than that. Everyone in the building relies on him to be there every morning and every night, just to say hey or help them—”

  He stopped talking when he saw the expression on my face. “What’s wrong?”

  I spoke in a whisper. “Melvin Moss.”

  “What?” Teddy said.

  I cleared my throat. “Remember how I saw Melvin getting in a white van in front of your house?”

  Teddy scoffed. “The chances of this being the same white van are—”

  “Good,” I interrupted.

  “You think Melvin Moss is a thief?”

  “No,” I said. “I mean, yes. I mean, I don’t know. But something’s up.”

  What I learned from that:

  Sometimes the only thing you learn is that you need to learn more.

  EIGHT

  The Mastermind

  On Friday morning, Teddy and I were planning to walk Winthrop to Forest Park, but we stopped on the way when we heard Mr. Hobart yelling at us from his living room window.

  “Two times,” Mr. Hobart hollered. He was shaking the newspaper article at Teddy and me. “They mention the burglary on Magnolia Circle two times!”

  I let Winthrop off the leash in Mr. Hobart’s front yard while Teddy helped me hop up the three steps to the house.

  “Let yourself in,” Mr. Hobart hollered from a living room chair. “I can’t get up without my cane.”

  I’d always liked Mr. Hobart’s house. It was a mix of gray stone and red brick with a pointy roo
f. The front door was rounded at the top and painted bright blue. It reminded me of a hobbit’s house.

  Mr. Hobart was still complaining when we joined him in his living room.

  “It’s worse than a dead-end sign,” he said. “When people know we’ve had a burglary on Magnolia Circle, no one will want to live here.”

  “I still want to live here,” said Teddy.

  Mr. Hobart glared at Teddy. “Where’s your dog? I haven’t seen it lately.”

  Teddy closed his eyes. “She had canine leukemia. We had to put her down.”

  “Pfft!” Mr. Hobart said. “That old story. Well, let me tell you. There are worse things than dying.”

  As I looked at Mr. Hobart, I noticed he hadn’t brushed his hair or shaved. That, combined with his grumpiness and storybook house, made him look like a forest troll. His living room was decorated with a beat-up old couch, two chairs, a coffee table, and a big, clunky television. My eyes drifted toward the dining room. A hospital bed, unmade, was parked awkwardly against one wall.

  What’s wrong with Mr. Hobart? I wondered. If he’s sleeping in a hospital bed, he must be sick.

  My thoughts were interrupted when Mr. Hobart grabbed his cane and began pointing out the window at Winthrop.

  “He’s making a tinkle in my yard!” Mr. Hobart yelled. “Look! Your stupid dog did it again! He made another tinkle in my yard. Two tinkles! He did it two times!”

  “Suh-sorry,” I stuttered. I grabbed my crutches with one hand and Teddy’s neck with the other. “C’mon,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  Teddy couldn’t shake off Mr. Hobart’s words as we continued our walk to the park.

  “Is there an award for the Meanest Man in America? Because I want to nominate Mr. Hobart. He’d win first place. He’d get a gold medal in the Mean Man Olympics.”

  “I don’t think he realizes how mean he sounds,” I said. “He’s too unhappy to be nice.”

  I told Teddy about the hospital bed I’d seen in the dining room. “He must sleep downstairs. He probably can’t get up the stairs to sleep in his bedroom.”

  “Then he should move to a one-story house,” said Teddy. “On the other side of the city.”

  “Mr. Hobart will never leave Magnolia Circle,” I said. “He’s lived on our street forever. Besides, it’d be too hard for him to move all his stuff at his age.”

  “Then he should buy another house on—” Teddy started to say. He stopped walking and dropped his voice. “It’s Mr. Hobart.”

  “What’s Mr. Hobart?”

  “Mr. Hobart is behind the burglaries,” Teddy said. “The burglaries and the dead-end sign. Think about it: He’s trying to lower the price of houses on our street so he can buy a second house on Magnolia Circle, a house that has only one story. That way, he can keep all his stuff in his current house and sleep in a bedroom on the first floor in another house.”

  “But there are no houses for sale on Magnolia Circle,” I reminded Teddy.

  “Pfft!” Teddy said, mimicking Mr. Hobart’s dismissive sound. “He’s trying to convince people on Magnolia Circle that it’s not a safe place to live anymore. He’s hoping to convince someone in a one-story house—and there are four of them on Magnolia Circle—to put their house up for sale. Then he’ll buy it at a discount!”

  “But he’s the one who’s against the dead-end sign,” I said.

  “It’s a red herring!” Teddy cried.

  “A what?’

  “Red herring,” Teddy repeated. “Didn’t Mrs. Seifert teach you about red herrings?”

  “No,” I said. “Mrs. Seifert was completely obsessed with the Trojan War. It’s all we studied last year.”

  “Mr. Frothingham was obsessed with mysteries,” Teddy said. “It’s his favorite genre. Every book he read us last year was a mystery. That’s how I know about red herrings.”

  “They’re a fish, right?”

  “Literally, yes,” said Teddy. “But a red herring is also a trick writers use to throw readers off the scent or to point them in the wrong direction.”

  “And?”

  “Don’t you get it? Mr. Hobart is trying to throw us off the trail!”

  “You’re not making sense, Teddy.”

  “My name is Ted.”

  “Okay, Ted, explain to me how Mr. Hobart could be behind a crime wave when he can’t even walk up the stairs in his house. You really think he could carry a sofa in and out of a building?”

  “I’m not saying Mr. Hobart is literally doing the heavy lifting. He’s way too old for that.”

  “Exactly,” I agreed. “So what are you saying?”

  Teddy stopped and spoke in a slow, soft whisper. “What I’m saying is that Mr. Hobart is the mastermind. He’s too sly to do the actual dirty work. He hires the two delivery guys.”

  “And he buys a sofa, too?” I asked.

  “Why not? You can buy a cheap sofa for a couple hundred bucks. If he can lower the house prices on our street by even one or two percent, it’s worth it! His house is probably worth five hundred thousand dollars.”

  I did the math in my head. One percent of five hundred thousand was five thousand dollars. Two percent was ten thousand dollars. Teddy was right. This was serious money.

  Could Teddy’s far-fetched theory possibly be true?

  Just then, Winthrop barked and my cast started itching like the worst case of poison ivy. It seemed like the universe was sending me a sign—and it wasn’t a dead-end sign. It was the opposite of a dead end, and it made me smile like the Cheshire Cat.

  “I cannot believe,” I said to Teddy, “that we have solved our very first crime.”

  What I learned from that:

  Crime solving is easy!

  NINE

  Hold the Ladder

  When we got back from our walk, Teddy and I wrote up our theory about Mr. Hobart on a poster board. After we finished, we stood and admired our work.

  “Now we have to catch him in the act,” Teddy said.

  “What?”

  “We need proof,” Teddy explained. “We need to see Mr. Hobart plotting his next crime. Then we’ll call the police and tell them we’ve solved the case. Can you climb a ladder?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. You can hold the ladder. I’ll climb it. There’s a ladder in my building. If we set the ladder against Mr. Hobart’s house, I’m sure we can see inside.”

  “Teddy, that’s against the law.”

  “We’re not going to hurt him. We just need proof that Mr. Hobart is the mastermind of the St. Louis summer crime wave.”

  “You might be right about him being the mastermind, but looking in his window is a terrible ide—”

  “Ives, we are dealing with a man who can laugh over the death of an innocent dog. Do you really think we have time to waste?”

  I tried to explain that Mr. Hobart didn’t exactly laugh about poor Lotty’s death, but Teddy was barreling ahead.

  “We’ll do it tomorrow morning,” he said. “After breakfast. I’ll carry the ladder over to his house and set it up in the bushes, next to his window. Then I’ll come back here and help you down the stairs.”

  “And what’ll I do?”

  “You just have to hold the ladder for me. I don’t want to break my leg, too. No offense.”

  “But—” I tried to say.

  “And leave Winthrop at home. We can’t have any barking. We don’t want Mr. Hobart to know we’re wise to his diabolical ways.”

  * * *

  The next morning, after forcing down a waffle, I waited for Teddy on my front porch. I was already nervous about this mission. Teddy was sweating when he arrived.

  “I should’ve brought a camera,” he said. Then he waved away the thought. “Oh, well. The police will just have to believe me when I tell them what I saw.”

  Teddy helped me down the front steps of my house.

  “What do you think you’re going to see?” I asked.

  “I’m guessing he probably has a map of the city with p
ushpins stuck in places he wants to rob next. Maybe a pile of stolen cash and jewelry, too.”

  “I didn’t see a map when we were there yesterday,” I said. “Or cash. Or jewelry.”

  “He’s not going to leave the loot in plain sight,” Teddy said. “That’s why we have to watch him when he doesn’t know we’re watching him. See the ladder?”

  A metal ladder was hidden in a tangle of scratchy bushes next to a side window of Mr. Hobart’s house.

  “If you can just hold the ladder steady for me,” Teddy whispered as he forced his way through the bushes.

  I could tell he was nervous, because his legs were shaking as he stepped on the first rung of the ladder.

  “Make sure you’re holding it tight,” he whispered over his shoulder.

  “I am,” I whispered back.

  “Really tight.”

  “I am.”

  I listened to the muffled sounds of Mr. Hobart’s TV while Teddy climbed five rungs of the ladder. His face was now level with the bottom of the window.

  “Is he there?” I said quietly. “Can you see him?”

  “Yeah, he’s there. Sitting in a chair.”

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Just sitting.”

  “Do you see anything that looks … stolen?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Can he see you?”

  “No. Not unless he turns his head.”

  The palms of my hands were sweating from the combination of heat and stress. I started to reposition my hands but momentarily lost my grip on the ladder, causing it to slip an inch.

  “Ivy!” Teddy hissed.

  “Sorry! My hands slipped!”

  Teddy readjusted his footing. He was breathing heavily.

  “What’s he doing now?” I whispered.

  “Just sitting. Looking out the window. Wait a sec.”

  “What?”

  “Someone’s at the front door.”

  “Oh no.”

  “Someone’s knocking, but Mr. Hobart’s not getting up to answer it.”