The Mystery of the Millionaire Page 4

  Laura Ramsey stood up and held out her hand to the storekeeper. “Thank you for everything. I’ll just have to solve this in my own way.” She smiled at the girls and turned to leave. Then she turned back to face them.

  “You know, if nothing else, this experience has already taught me about the value of money. I’d always taken it for granted, until now. Why, just a month ago, on my twentieth birthday, my father took me to a car dealer and let me pick out any car I wanted, then paid for it in cash— twelve thousand dollars! And now, today, when I need a couple thousand to find him, I can’t raise it.” She shook her head sadly and turned again to leave.

  “Wait!” Trixie shouted. “The car.”

  “I can’t sell it—” Laura began.

  “You don’t have to!” Trixie exclaimed. “Mr. Lytell, remember how you held Brian’s jalopy when I gave you my diamond ring as collateral?” Without waiting for an answer, Trixie rushed on. “You can do the same thing now. I mean, you can use the car for collateral and lend Laura the money!”

  “Oh, Mr. Lytell, it’s a perfectly perfect solution!” Honey said. “The car is worth six times the amount of the loan. You’d be perfectly safe, and Laura could call a detective today!”

  “I don’t know,” Mr. Lytell said suspiciously.

  “I don’t know, either,” Laura said. “Of course, the sooner I can get the money for a detective, the better my chances will be of finding my father. And I shouldn’t worry about borrowing, because my father is such a generous man. He’ll pay Mr. Lytell back immediately, and add a large reward, I’m sure. It’s just that.... Well, that car means a lot to me. It’s valuable, of course, but it m-may be a last gift from my father.” Her voice trembled a little. “To turn the keys over to a stranger....”

  “Are you saying I’m not to be trusted, young lady?” Mr. Lytell asked indignantly. “Why, my word is as good as gold. I’ll write the agreement up, all legal-like. Then you can take one copy, and I’ll keep the other. The car will be safe right here until I get my money back.”

  Laura sighed and sank back down in the chair. “All right,” she said. “I really have no other choice, do I?”

  The girls watched as Mr. Lytell rolled two pieces of paper, with carbon paper between, into his ancient typewriter. Muttering to himself, he typed out an agreement: He would lend Laura two thousand dollars and keep the car until his money was returned.

  He rolled the paper out of the typewriter and signed on the blank he’d left above his typed name. Laura did the same, and then Trixie and Honey, feeling very important, signed as witnesses.

  Mr. Lytell reread the contract carefully, then handed the carbon copy to Laura Ramsey. He painstakingly placed his copy in the top drawer of his desk, rose, and walked through a door into what Trixie had assumed was a closet, but which she now realized was another small room.

  Faint metallic sounds came from the room. Then Mr. Lytell came back. He handed a sheaf of bills to Laura Ramsey. “Two thousand dollars,” he said. “Count it, please.”

  Trixie’s jaw dropped open. She turned and looked at Honey, whose hazel eyes were perfect circles.

  Only Laura Ramsey seemed unsurprised by the huge amount of cash. Of course, Trixie thought, after she had seen her father pay twelve thousand dollars in cash for her car, two thousand probably didn’t seem like very much.

  Laura dutifully counted the money, then opened her handbag and put the bills inside. She took out the keys to her car and handed them to Mr. Lytell. “Here you are,” she said. “I can mail you the title to it from the city.”

  “Thank you,” he said politely. “I’ll just drive the car around to the back and leave it there.” Then he peered at Honey and Trixie over his glasses. “And I’ll thank you girls—and you, too, Miss Ramsey—not to tell anyone what just went on here. Otherwise, I’ll be an easy target for anyone around who wants to beg, borrow, or steal money. Not that there’s anything left to beg, borrow, or steal since I took that two thousand out of the safe.”

  Trixie thought she detected a note of cunning in the way Mr. Lytell added the last sentence. It made Trixie wonder if he was telling the truth, but she nodded her agreement to the promise, as did Honey and Laura.

  Again Laura stood up. “I’m afraid I’ll have to trouble someone for a ride to town, so that I can catch a bus for New York City. I hate to have to face everyone, but I certainly can’t afford a hotel.”

  “Why don’t you stay with us?” Honey asked. “We have plenty of room, and I think you ought to stay here, near where we found the last trace of your father.”

  “That would be asking too much,” Laura said.

  “No, it wouldn’t,” Honey assured her. “I’ll call Miss Trask right now and ask if you can stay with us. We’ll just tell her that your car is stuck here, and you have no place to go till you can get it back. She’s really nice about not asking a lot of questions.”

  Forgetting to ask for permission, Honey reached right across Mr. Lytell for the phone. When she hung up, she turned triumphantly to Laura. “It’s all set, and Jim will be here to pick us up in a couple of minutes.”

  “You really are too kind. After not feeling that I could trust anyone for the past few months, it’s wonderful to happen upon strangers who are so helpful.” Laura’s smile took in Trixie, Honey, and Mr. Lytell. Then, turning back to Honey, she said, “I’m afraid I’ll have to make a couple of long-distance calls when we get to your house. I’ll make up some story for my father’s secretary, and then I’ll call the private detective my friend told me about.”

  “Of course,” Honey said.

  Laura and the girls walked out of the store to wait for Jim. Laura paused beside her car and ran her hand along one gleaming fender.

  “You’ll get your car back,” Trixie told her.

  “I’m sure I will,” Laura replied. “I just hate to part with it, even for a day.” She paused, then added, “Also, I don’t know how to get the title for Mr. Lytell, now that I’m not going home.”

  “He has the keys,” Honey said. “I’m sure that’s enough. After all, it’s only temporary. You’ll pay him back and get your car when your father has returned—and that will be very soon!”

  Just then Jim pulled up in the Bob-White station wagon. He got out of the car and walked over to the girls, his gaze fastened on Laura Ramsey.

  Honey introduced her brother to Laura, and he ran around to hold the front passenger door open for Laura, while Trixie and Honey climbed into the backseat. Then he loaded the bicycles in the back of the car.

  Jim drove first to Crabapple Farm, where he unloaded Trixie’s bike and said a quick good-bye to her.

  “We’ll call you tomorrow as soon as we know when the detective will be here,” Honey promised Trixie.

  Trixie nodded silently and stood, holding her bike, as the station wagon pulled away. A feeling of jealousy was churning in her stomach. It was bad enough that Laura was staying at Manor House, where she and Honey would share conversations that Trixie would only find out about secondhand.

  But the worst part, Trixie knew, was the immediate interested attention Laura had received from Jim Frayne.

  Mysterious Mart ● 4

  TRIXIE HAD BEEN CONCENTRATING so hard on the departing station wagon that, when it finally disappeared from view, she had to blink, then shake her head to break the spell. She turned and started wheeling her bike up the driveway to the garage, the thoughts in her mind twirling faster than the spokes of the bicycle wheels.

  As usual, the hectic atmosphere of the Belden household at mealtime forced all other thoughts from her mind as soon as she walked through the back door.

  The normal aroma of food on the stove was missing, since Mrs. Belden had declared that morning that it was too hot to use the oven or do any more than a minimum of cooking on the stove. But there were tomatoes to slice and celery and carrots to scrub and cut into sticks. Mrs. Belden had put a mixture of sliced cucumbers and onions in a salt-water solution to soak that morning, and now Trixie po
ured off the salt water and replaced it with a mixture of vinegar and water and just a smidgeon of sugar. She set the table, put on the vegetables, bread and butter, and the cold tuna salad from the refrigerator, then hurried off to help Bobby wash his hands and face.

  As she returned to the kitchen, she called, “Come and get it,” and her two older brothers and her father emerged from the den to take their places at the table.

  “Whew!” Trixie whistled as she sank into her chair. “It’s a good thing you didn’t start the oven this afternoon, Moms. With all the racing around I just did, I think I generated enough heat to roast a—well, a roast!”

  “There’s nothing like a little exercise for putting an attractive, rosy glow in your cheeks,” Peter Belden observed, pouring himself a glass of iced tea before passing the pitcher to his daughter.

  Trixie took the pitcher gratefully and splashed the tea into her glass. “What Honey gets is an attractive, rosy glow. What I get is red and sweaty,” she said ruefully.

  “If you’d stayed indoors and listened to records the way we did this afternoon, instead of biking all over the countryside, you might not find the heat such a problem,” Brian told her.

  “I got a ride home from Jim,” Trixie said defensively, feeling her face growing even redder as she remembered the circumstances of that ride. “And besides, if you knew what happened this afternoon, you’d probably wish you’d ridden along with me.”

  “Why? What happened?” Brian asked curiously.

  “I don’t think I’ll tell,” Trixie said smugly as she helped herself to tuna salad. Abruptly, her depression vanished, being replaced with the satisfied feeling that came on those few occasions when she knew something that her older brothers didn’t.

  “Come on, Trixie, please tell us what happened this afternoon,” Brian coaxed. “You know you’re dying to tell us.”

  “Our secretive sibling is encouraging emulation of her own passion for sleuthing,” Mart said.

  Trixie looked at him in shock. She wasn’t surprised by the string of long words he’d just used. Those tongue twisters were Mart’s favorite form of communication. But now that he had spoken, she realized that he hadn’t spoken before, and that was rare indeed! Hiding her surprise, Trixie told her almost-twin, “You don’t need to pretend that I have to encourage you to get interested in mysteries. Everybody knows that you and Brian like solving mysteries every bit as much as Honey and I do. You just aren’t as good at finding them, that’s all.”

  Brian took a deep breath, mustering his last ounce of patience. He was the calmest and most methodical of the Belden youngsters, but those traits were strained by his sister and brother’s tendency to get sidetracked by bickering. “I, for one, will be glad to admit that I’m interested in mysteries. I’m especially interested in the mystery of where my younger sister spent the afternoon. Will you solve the mystery for me, or do I have to guess?”

  “Where I was isn’t a mystery—but there was a mystery where I was,” Trixie said enigmatically. Then, seeing the muscles in her oldest brother’s jaw begin to tense as they did on those few occasions when he was about to lose his temper, she added hurriedly, “Mr. Lytell called us to his store to meet Laura Ramsey. She’s the daughter of the owner of the wallet that Honey and I found this morning.”

  “He must have been very eager to have that wallet back, if he sent his daughter all the way to Sleepyside to fetch it,” Helen Belden said.

  Trixie shook her head vigorously, swallowing a slice of cucumber almost whole so she could hurry to explain. “That’s not it at all, Moms,” she said. “Laura Ramsey’s father doesn’t know he lost his wallet—I mean, she doesn’t know if he knows whether he lost it or not. I mean, he’s disappeared.”

  Mrs. Belden and her two sons stared at Trixie in confusion. Trixie opened her mouth to try again to explain, in a clearer way, about Anthony Ramsey, when Bobby’s piping voice interrupted her.

  “Did you see a man disappear today, Trixie?” he asked. “I saw a man disappear on television. He waved his arms, and then there was some smoke and a noise like ‘poof,’ and then he disappeared. Did you see that?”

  “No, Bobby,” Trixie said. “I mean, yes, I saw the man who disappeared on television, but I didn’t see this man disappear.”

  “Then how do you know he disappeared?” Bobby asked.

  Trixie rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “I’m going to explain the whole thing, right now. Will you just stay quiet and listen?”

  “Sure,” Bobby said agreeably, as if he hadn’t interrupted in the first place.

  Trixie turned back to her parents and her two brothers. “Laura Ramsey’s father is a wealthy grocery-store owner. He built up a whole chain from just one little store. He’s been having problems with his partner, and last night he didn’t come home. Laura says that’s very unusual. She doesn’t know if her father’s been kidnapped, or if he had a nervous breakdown or something because he’s been so worried, or if his partner did away with him, or what.

  “She’s absolutely frantic with worry. That’s why she came to Sleepyside right away when Mr. Lytell called her. The wallet is the first trace of her father to turn up, and she wanted to find out as much as she could about it.”

  “I assume you announced your ability to assuage the situation in its totality,” Mart said sarcastically.

  Trixie shook her head. “I don’t know if I did or not. Translate that sentence for me and I’ll tell you.”

  “I think Mart means that the Belden-Wheeler detective agency has a new client,” Peter Belden said.

  “Oh.” Trixie paused for a moment, her forehead wrinkled in an attempt to fit Mart’s complex words to her father’s simple translation. Realizing that it was impossible, she shrugged and said, “We told her what we could about the wallet—when and where we found it, and how long we thought it might have been there. Now she’s going to call in a private detective to work on the case.”

  “You don’t seem heartbroken about it,” Brian said.

  “Heartbroken?” Trixie echoed. “Why would I be heartbroken?”

  “Why wouldn’t you be?” Brian retorted. “You and Honey were just getting the scent of a nice, juicy mystery, when this Laura Ramsey takes it all away, then goes back home and hires a professional detective to close the case.”

  “Oh, Laura isn’t going home,” Trixie informed him. “She’s going to stay with the Wheelers and call the detective from there. Honey decided that since this is where the last trace of her father was found, this is the best place for her to be. So, you see, there’s no reason for me to be upset. In fact, I’m delighted. For the first time, I’ll get to meet a real private detective and find out how he works.”

  Brian looked at her suspiciously. “You say you’re delighted, but you don’t seem delighted. Is anything wrong?”

  Trixie blushed to the roots of her sandy hair. “Of—of course not. It’s all going to be perfectly perfect, as Honey would say. It’s going to be a dream come true, meeting a real detective.”

  “The reverie for which I would like to attain existential veracity is achieving the acquaintance of Anthony Ramsey,” Mart said in a dreamy voice. “No professional investigator could be as fascinating as a captain of capitalism like Mr. Ramsey.”

  Eager to have everyone’s attention turned away from herself, Trixie asked Mart, “What’s so fascinating to you about Anthony Ramsey? Don’t tell me you’ve decided to give up the idea of being a farmer and become a grocer instead.”

  “What I have decided,” Mart replied loftily, “is to give up a life of poverty for one of untold wealth.”

  “What do you mean?” Trixie asked.

  “Just what I said,” Mart told her.

  “But how do you intend to get this untold wealth?” She tried to push him into answering.

  “I have plans,” Mart said, rising from the table and tossing his napkin down beside his empty plate. “May I be excused, please?” he asked his mother.

  He walked back toward the
den. Trixie watched him with the same rapt concentration with which she’d watched the station wagon disappear an hour earlier.

  She turned to her mother questioningly, but Mrs. Belden just smiled and shrugged. “There’s no point in asking me about Mart’s strange behavior. I don’t know any more about it than you do.”

  “Brian?” Trixie prompted.

  Her oldest brother shook his head. “I don’t know what’s going on with Mart, either, Trix. He’s been very—I hesitate to use the word in your presence—but he’s been very mysterious lately. Usually when he has something up his sleeve, he can’t wait to tell me about it, even if he has to swear me to secrecy afterward. But this time, there hasn’t been a peep out of him.”

  “Well, I’m sure we’ll find out eventually,” Trixie said, her dissatisfaction at having to wait for “eventually” sounding plainly in her voice. She stood up and started to clear the table. Her thoughts were a jumble of questions about Mart and Mr. Ramsey and Mr. Lytell’s money and —even though she tried to put it out of her mind—Jim Frayne’s attention to Laura.

  She deliberately pushed all those thoughts aside while she and her mother cleaned up the kitchen and did dishes. Instead, she chattered away about the garden, which was bearing more and more fresh vegetables every day, and about her hopes for the rest of the summer and for the rapidly approaching school year.

  If Mrs. Belden realized that her only daughter was attempting to hide her worries behind her chatter, she didn’t show it. She entered into Trixie’s conversation wholeheartedly, making plans for a trip into the city for school clothes and reciting a list of canning and freezing projects that made Trixie groan in mock despair at the amount of work to be done in the weeks ahead.

  When the last dish had been dried and put away, Trixie hung up the dish towel, then reached out and impulsively hugged her mother. “I’m glad I live here,” she said.

  “Well, I’m glad you do, too,” her mother said, surprised at her daughter’s affectionate outburst.