The Hudson River Mystery Page 2

  Killifish Road ended a few hundred yards from the river. Dan stopped the car there and left the engine running.

  ”I know the spot where Brian and Loyola have been going lately,” Trixie said quickly. ”Why don’t I just run down and see if they’re there? If they’re not, I’ll come back to the car and we can start searching.”

  Trixie darted out into the wind, half wishing that Dan or Honey had volunteered to go down to the river in her place. The air was colder here by the water. Trixie scolded herself for not throwing on a second sweatshirt. Clutching her arms around herself, she stepped lightly over rocks and brambles, thankful that at least she had worn her sneakers.

  She reached the edge of the cliff without mishap and stood there a minute, fascinated with the sight of the mighty Hudson about to take its role in a hurricane. Then she headed down a path that looked more worn than the others. Looking more at the murky water than at the path, she nearly tripped over a patch of weeds and a protruding rock. Finally, she aimed around a bend in the path and all but toppled into Brian and Loyola.

  ”Trixie, what are you doing here?” asked Brian.

  ”Moms was worried—hi, Loyola—and Honey was over, and Dan said he would drive”— Trixie’s words came out in a rush—”and what are you doing here?”

  ”Oh, it’s all my fault,” said Loyola with an apologetic look toward Brian. ”Interesting chemicals and pollutants can show up when the river’s in an upheaval, like it is now, and—”

  ”I wanted to get those extra samples just as much as you did,” Brian interrupted, shifting the weight of the knapsack on his back. ”With the Sleepyside Conservation Committee already expressing an interest in the results of our project, I think we ought to do the best job we can.”

  ”Even if it means getting caught in a hurricane?” Trixie demanded. ”Come on, let’s get you two scholars up to the car.”

  Trixie motioned them to start up the path ahead of her. When they reached the top of the cliff, Brian and Loyola kept on walking toward the station wagon. Trixie, on a sudden impulse, lingered behind for one last look at the river.

  The normally placid Hudson had turned a sickly gray. Ripples sliced through areas of deceptive calm. Trixie stared at it for a long moment, awed by the thought of nature transforming a joy into a threat in such a short time. In a way, though, even a threatening Hudson was beautiful. The gusts of wind hitting her in the face and the rhythm of the waters pounding against the shore were oddly hypnotic.

  Something in the scene before her struck Trixie as being out of place. Nearly everything was in various shades of gray—the sky, the cliffs, the water. Even the trees lining the river were showing their gray sides instead of their autumn-colored sides. The grayness was what made a black triangle, cutting slowly through the murky water, stand out. What was it?... No, it couldn’t be that... it must be... what?

  Trixie squinted and used both hands to hold back her wildly blowing curls from her eyes. Standing as still as she could, she took a good long look and decided that her first impression had indeed been correct.

  ”Yipes!” she whispered. ”It is a fin! What in the world is a shark doing in the Hudson River?”

  Disturbed Dreams ● 2

  TRIXIE WAS TOO STARTLED to do more than stare disbelievingly at first. Menaces such as sharks were absolutely unheard of along the Hudson River, as far as she knew. Wait till I tell the Bob-Whites! she thought, retracing her steps toward the river to get a closer look.

  From behind her came the sound of a horn impatiently honking. Trixie recalled her mother’s warning to come right home, and reluctantly she turned toward the car.

  ”What took you so long?” Honey asked as Trixie slid in beside her. ”Don’t you remember what your mother said—”

  Trixie bobbed her head up and down. Sometimes, when she was excited, her words came out garbled. At the moment, she was so agitated that no words were coming out at all. Speechlessly she pointed toward the river. Instead of looking in that direction, the others stared at Trixie.

  ”A shark!” she exclaimed finally. ”I saw a shark in the Hudson! Well, a fin, actually, but fins don’t come without sharks attached—I mean, where there’s a fin there’s a shark. That is—oh, gosh, isn’t this awful?”

  The others continued to gaze at Trixie, Loyola politely, but the rest with a flicker of amusement. Dan turned his eyes back to the road and, it seemed to Trixie, pressed the accelerator a little harder.

  ”Don’t you believe me?” Trixie demanded. ”Should we?” countered Brian. ”Sounds pretty incredible to me. We’ve lived near the Hudson all our lives and never run into any sharks.”

  ”That’s why I’m so upset!” Trixie said. ”Gosh, think of all the swimming and boating.... Well, anyway, if you guys don’t believe me, just turn the car around, Dan, and I’ll prove it to all of you!”

  ”No way,” Dan said tensely. ”Sorry, Trix, but I think getting back safely is more important than the, uh, figments of your imagination.”

  ”The what?” sputtered Trixie.

  Before the fires of Trixie’s temper could be fanned any further, Honey said, ”Maybe what you saw was a wave. The wind was really whipping up the water—we could even see it from the car.”

  ”Then you must have seen the shark, too,” said Trixie.

  ”Stop jumping to conclusions,” Brian scolded. ”Obviously you’re the only one who saw whatever it was you saw.”

  Trixie started to slump down in the seat, then jerked herself upright. ”Loyola—Dan said you were especially interested in the Hudson. You must know more about it than we do. Couldn’t it have been a real shark that I saw?”

  ”For once you’ve reached a right conclusion,” Brian put in. ”Even Mrs. Cowles, our chemistry teacher, can’t believe how much Loyola knows about the river.”

  ”Oh, I’m just beginning to learn about the river,” said Loyola. ”If only the school could get more money from the Sleepyside Conservation Committee to establish a floating laboratory, that would allow me to do some real research.”

  ”Well, what do you think?” Trixie asked. ”About the shark, I mean?”

  Loyola shifted uncomfortably. ”All I can say is that sharks are marine animals—they’re generally found in salt water. And the Hudson along here is fresh water.”

  Trixie slouched down again, deep in thought.

  Dan breathed an exaggerated sigh of relief as he turned the corner into the Belden driveway. ”What timing! If we can get into the house before the storm unleashes itself on us, we’ll be lucky.”

  ”Good thing we weren’t in my jalopy,” said Brian. ”With the way that’s been running, we’d still be stalled back on Killifish Road. And I’m feeling too tired to deal with engine problems tonight.”

  Dan pulled the station wagon as close to the Belden porch as possible and shut off the motor. At that exact moment, thousands of enormous raindrops began pelting the windshield.

  ”Make a run for it, everyone!” Trixie yelled. She reached for the door handle on her side and found that she could barely push the door open against the force of the wind. She leaned all of her weight against the door, toppled from the car into the wind, and was the first of the teen-agers to burst through the door into the white frame house.

  A warm and cozy scene awaited them inside the Belden kitchen. Mrs. Belden was busy frying chicken at the stove, while Mr. Belden was cleaning up from the canning activities. Mart and Bobby sat at the maple kitchen table, laughing noisily.

  ”Let’s try this again,” Mart was saying. ”It’s chiedfricken. Chied fricken. Now, you say it.”

  ”That doesn’t make any sense,” insisted Bobby, who was more literal-minded about language than his brother. ”I like cry chicken better. That’s what the chicken is doing in the pan-crying!”

  ”But, Bobby,” Mart began, pounding his hands on the table in mock exasperation. ”Oh, never mind. I’m sure a good fry will get this out of my system.”

  ”Sounds promising,” said Trixie sauci
ly. ”Can we help?”

  ”Oh, Trixie, I’m glad you’re back,” Mrs. Belden greeted her. ”Did you find—oh, there you are, Brian.”

  ” ’Hail, hail, the gang’s all here,’ ” Mr. Belden said cheerfully. ”Take your wet jackets off and have a seat, everyone. Loyola and Dan, you’re welcome to stay for Sunday dinner, if you like. I wouldn’t send a dog out on a night like this. Honey, I assume that dinner was part of the bargain Trixie made with you today.”

  Honey nodded as she stroked behind the ear of Reddy, the Beldens’ undisciplined Irish setter. ”I’d hate to think what Reddy would do if you ordered him outside! He’s so fond of doing exactly the opposite of what people tell him.”

  ”May I call my grandfather?” asked Loyola. Trixie recalled Brian telling her that Loyola’s parents were dead and that she lived with her grandfather in a small apartment in Sleepyside.

  After Loyola had received permission to stay for dinner, Dan called Mr. Maypenny to let him know where he was. Then the young people set about helping with the last-minute preparations for dinner. Between the aromas of the evening’s meal and the lingering scents of the afternoon’s vegetable canning, everyone’s appetite was running high.

  ”I’m so hungry I could faint!” exclaimed Brian, plunking the last of the silverware on the table.

  ”Didn’t you pack a lunch for this afternoon?” his mother asked.

  ”We had a feast at around noon,” Loyola put in.

  ”You won’t catch me denying that,” Brian said with a grin. ”I don’t know why, but I feel like my jalopy must feel when its tank is just about empty.”

  ”Well, fill ’er up,” announced Mr. Belden, setting down the first heaping platter of crispy fried chicken.

  ”Hey, the chicken stopped crying,” Bobby said.

  Mart shot him a withering glance.

  ”Oh, speaking of moisture,” said Mrs. Belden as she took the rolls out of the oven, ”I almost forgot to tell you—they changed the forecast a little while ago. The hurricane doesn’t appear to be heading inland, after all. There are severe thunderstorm warnings out for the rest of the evening, though.”

  Trixie looked at the rain streaming down the kitchen windows and shivered. She was still chilled from her brief run in the rain, but she felt something more, too. Why am I so nervous? she wondered silently.

  Round and round the table for first, then second, helpings went the chicken, the mashed potatoes, the hot buttered rolls, the earliest crab apple jelly of the season, the green beans with almonds, and the salad of marinated tomatoes and cucumbers. For several minutes, the murmur of ”please pass...” and ”thank you” was the only conversation to be heard.

  Suddenly Trixie dropped her fork with a clatter. ”Gleeps, that’s why I’m jumpy,” she stated excitedly. ”I haven’t told the rest of you.”

  ”You have an announcement?” inquired Mart. ”Let me guess—you’re changing your career ambition! You want to be a meteorologist when you grow up—should that fortunate day ever arrive. Or perhaps an ornithologist? A laryngologist? An anesthesiologist?”

  Trixie stifled a rude retort. ”Yes, I have an announcement, but it’s nothing like that. I simply saw a shark in the Hudson River today.”

  A variety of facial expressions greeted this speech.

  As usual, Mart was the first to verbalize his reaction. ”You should have told me you were short of cash,” he said. ”I would have—”

  ”What are you talking about?” Trixie demanded.

  ”You said shark,” answered Mart. ”I assume you meant a loan shark of some sort. You know, someone who lends money to others at ridiculously high interest rates. Or, since you say you saw him in the Hudson, perhaps I should change that to someone who used to lend money at high interest rates.”

  ”A shark!” Trixie cried impatiently. ”A fish-type shark!”

  ”So, you’re going to be an ichthyologist!” Mart crowed gleefully.

  ”A what?” his father asked, one dark eyebrow raised.

  ”Ichthyology,” Mart said airily. ”A branch of zoology that deals with fish.”

  Peter Belden shook his head. ”I don’t know about that. I don’t know about sharks in the Hudson, either. Care to tell us about it, Trix?”

  Trixie described what she had seen.

  Her father shook his head again. ”Can’t say as I’ve ever heard of a shark in this area.”

  ”We don’t know there is one now,” Brian told him. ”None of the rest of us saw it.”

  ”Maybe it was just a wave,” Mr. Belden said.

  ”That’s what I thought,” said Honey.

  ”It wasn’t,” Trixie said tersely.

  ”Or a bit of debris,” said Mrs. Belden.

  ”Heaven knows the river could be a lot cleaner,” Dan agreed.

  ”It wasn’t that, either,” said Trixie. Suddenly she felt something cold on her ankle. It was Reddy, hopefully nosing about for scraps.

  Mart chortled. ”Instead of fantasizing about jaws, perhaps you should concentrate on paws,” he said, handing Reddy a bite of chicken.

  ”Or gnaws,” said Brian, biting toothily into a chicken wing.

  ”That’s so funny I forgot to laugh,” Trixie grumbled. Jokes were unsurprising coming from

  Mart, but somehow she had been expecting more serious consideration from the rest of her family and friends.

  Loyola had been watching Trixie intently. She waited until nearly everyone was through eating before she spoke, quietly and thoughtfully. ”That was a delicious meal, Mr. and Mrs. Belden. You know, Trixie, you might want to talk to a friend of mine, Thea Van Loon. She’s a children’s book writer who happens to know a great deal about the Hudson.”

  ”Really?” asked Trixie, leaning forward.

  In fact, Loyola went on, ”that’s why she’s in Sleepyside this month. She lives in New York City, but she’s here researching for a children’s book she’s working on called The Wild and Wonderful Hudson. ”

  ”She sounds fascinating,” commented Mrs. Belden.

  ”I don’t really know her that well,” Loyola said. ”The public library once sponsored a lecture on common fish in the Hudson, and that’s where I met her. Thea almost knew more than the lecturer, and she asked him several embarrassing questions. She spends quite a bit of time by the river. I’m pretty sure I saw her down there this afternoon. She may be able to tell you what it was you saw.”

  Trixie was getting that familiar tingling feeling that told her she was on the trail of a mystery. Don’t be silly, she scolded herself. A shark isn’t exactly a mystery. Either I saw it or I didn’t.

  Aloud she asked, ”Is Thea staying with you, Loyola?”

  ”No, she’s staying with friends who live a few blocks from school.”

  ”Trixie, I’m not doing anything after school tomorrow,” Honey said. ”Do you want to stop off and visit Thea?”

  Trixie threw Honey a grateful look. Even when Honey wasn’t solidly behind Trixie’s notions, she usually could find some way to demonstrate her loyalty.

  ”Moms, I promise I’ll single-handedly can a thousand tomatoes this week...” Trixie began.

  ”If you can just have tomorrow off,” her mother finished for her. ”All right for now, Trixie. But why don’t you call me during your lunch hour, in case I run into trouble.” She rose from her chair to start clearing the dishes. ”In the meantime—”

  ”Oh, let me get the dishes,” Mart interrupted. ”It’s my turn, although you’d think people who tell fish stories at the dinner table would help.”

  ”Seeing as how you ate more than anyone else,” his mother said wryly, ”it seems appropriate that it’s your turn. Anyway, as I was saying, Loyola, would you like to stay in our spare room tonight and take the bus into town with the kids tomorrow? I just hate to think of you traveling in this storm tonight.”

  Loyola hesitated, looking at Brian.

  ”I was going to give Loyola a ride home,” said Brian, ”but to be honest, I’m really bushed. I was thin
king of heading for bed right after dinner. We’ve got a big chemistry test tomorrow, and I’d like to get in a little studying first thing in the morning.”

  ”I’ve already studied,” Loyola said, a touch smugly. To Mrs. Belden she said, ”That’s very kind of you to offer. After I help with the dishes, may I use your phone again?”

  Mrs. Belden hurried off to prepare the spare room, while Loyola, Mart, and Mr. Belden cleaned up the kitchen. Dan and Honey decided to risk going home in the storm—Dan because Brian had reminded him about the chemistry test, and Honey because her parents were expecting her. Brian said good night and went up to his room, and Bobby pestered Mart with more of his jumbled spoonerisms.

  Trixie sat near the fireplace in the living room, trying to sort out her thoughts. She still felt edgy and unsettled, frustrated that everyone was unwilling to take her word about the shark. At the same time, she was excited about meeting a children’s book author. I’ve lived near the Hudson all my life, Trixie reasoned. Maybe I can actually help Thea Van Loon with her book....

  Trixie was deep into dreams about coauthoring books by the time her father came in to build up the fire. Mrs. Belden brought in a huge bowl of popcorn, and Mart broke into a rousing sea chantey that jolted Trixie out of her reveries. Taking a cue from Mart, the Beldens began trading Washington Irving tales and old ballads having to do with the river. Loyola retold the legend of the Storm Ship, the mysterious vision people reported seeing just after storms. It became easier to ignore the storm raging outside while concentrating on the song and laughter inside.

  ”I’ve got a good one for you,” said Mart. ”Bobby, I bet they don’t teach this one in school anymore:

  ”West Point and Middletown

  Konnosook and Doodletown

  Kakiak and Mamapaw

  Stony Point and Haverstraw.

  That was a rhyme people used to teach place names along the river.”

  Bobby yawned.

  ”Maybe this one will impress him,” said Loyola, laughing. ”This is an old lumberjack song my grandfather used to sing to me: