The Mystery off Old Telegraph Road Page 4

  “We were wondering if you—or someone from the art department—would be willing to make the posters and pledge cards. The posters will be placed around town to get people interested in signing up both as riders and as sponsors. Then, when riders do sign up, they’ll be given pledge cards. They’ll get different people to sign them, offering to pay so many cents for each mile of the route. After the bikeathon, we contact the people who have signed all the pledge cards, and that’s how we collect the money. So you see, the posters and pledge cards are pretty important. Usually we make posters and things ourselves, but in this case, since the money is going to the art department, we felt it was important to have them look sort of—well, artistic—and that’s why I’m calling,” Trixie finished lamely. She wondered why she felt apologetic about asking Nick to help.

  There was another long pause before Nick answered. “I don’t have as much spare time on my hands as you and your friends seem to, but if this bikeathon business is supposed to help the art department, I guess I should help out. Talk to me about it in school tomorrow.”

  “Thanks, Nick. Where should I meet—” Trixie heard a clicking noise and realized that Nick had already hung up. “Well,” she muttered, hanging up the phone, “I guess I succeeded in my assignment— if I can track Nick down at school tomorrow to talk to him.”

  Trixie started to walk away from the phone, then snapped her fingers as another thought struck her. She picked up the phone again and dialed Honey’s number.

  When Honey answered, Trixie told her about Nick’s reluctantly agreeing to do the posters and pledge cards, then added, “But guess what we forgot. There are going to be simply loads of kids biking around that route—and we know where it goes, but they don’t. We’ll have to have arrows up along the roads, pointing the direction. I don’t want to ask Nick to do the arrows, too—not after the way he reacted to doing the other stuff. Besides, how artistic does an arrow have to be? I think we should handle those ourselves.”

  “You’re right, Trixie,” Honey agreed. “I think we have some poster board and paint down at the clubhouse. I’ll be glad to help.”

  “That’s great,” Trixie said. “How about meeting me at the clubhouse in an hour?”

  “Oh, Trixie, I can’t do it today,” Honey said apologetically. “My parents are taking Jim, Ben, and me to a baseball game in the city this afternoon, and then to dinner afterward. I’m sorry.” Trixie once again felt resentment of Ben Riker welling up inside her. Without stopping to think, she said sarcastically, “In all the time I’ve known you, I didn’t realize that you were such a baseball fan, Honey. At least, I’ve never known you to let a baseball game interfere with doing something worthwhile. I guess I’ll just have to take care of everything alone.”

  As soon as the words were spoken, Trixie regretted them. For the third time that day, she found herself waiting uncomfortably for the person on the other end of the telephone to speak.

  When Honey did respond, it was in an icy tone that Trixie had never heard her use before—would not, in fact, have believed possible from her gentle, tactful friend.

  “Might I point out to you, Trixie Belden, that all of the other Bob-Whites had their assignments completed yesterday—before the picnic that you ruined with your flash of temper. I hardly think that means you’re ’taking care of everything alone.’ Besides, there’s an old saying about charity beginning at home that you should pay attention to. You could devote some time to the worthwhile project of understanding Ben, instead of plunging into helping Nick Roberts, whom you hardly know.

  “I think you’re more worried about getting a lot of attention from organizing the bikeathon than you are about helping anybody. That’s what I think.” Honey’s voice sounded choked as she finished speaking.

  For the second time that day, Trixie heard the abrupt clicking sound through the receiver. She blinked back tears as she put the telephone down.

  Trixie’s hot temper was well-known by all the Bob-Whites. They knew that their friend spoke without thinking—and often without feeling as strongly about things as her words would seem to indicate. For that reason, they tended to respond by teasing Trixie out of her bad mood, rather than taking it seriously. An angry response like Honey’s was something that Trixie had rarely had to deal with, and it was all the harder for her to cope with it since it had come from Honey, who seldom became upset with anyone.

  Trixie knew that it wouldn’t take long for some member of her close-knit family to notice her tearful face and ask her what was wrong. She knew, too, that she didn’t want to explain it to her family, especially since her hint and confusion at Honey’s response was mixed with guilt for what she had said.

  Trixie swallowed hard and cleared her throat so that her voice would sound relatively steady when she called out, “I’m going to the clubhouse, Moms. I’ll be back before dinner.” She left the house quickly and started for the clubhouse at a fast trot that made thinking—and crying—impossible to do.

  Unexpectedly, the sight of the Bob-Whites’ clubhouse made Trixie feel even worse. The tiny building, which had once been the gatehouse of the Wheeler estate, had been donated to the club by Honey’s father. Then all of the Bob-Whites had pitched in to turn the run-down building into their “dream house.” Jim, Brian, and Mart had put on a new roof and built furniture and shelves to furnish the inside. Honey had sewed the cheerful curtains that framed the windows. All of the Bob-Whites—including Trixie, whose five-dollar-a-week allowance was earned by looking after Bobby and helping her mother with the housework—had worked hard to earn the money for the materials they needed.

  The clubhouse served as a meeting hall, storage area, and party room for Trixie and her friends. Trixie associated it with good times and the warm feeling that all of the Bob-Whites had for one another.

  Iwonder if that’s all changed now, Trixie thought, pausing with her hand on the doorknob. I wonder if Honey will ever speak to me again.

  She felt almost like an intruder as she opened the door and walked in. She went to the small storage area that the boys had partitioned off and almost began to cry again when she saw the seven pairs of ice skates jumbled together on a shelf along with the skis, sleds, tents, and other sports equipment that the Bob-Whites shared. Or used to share, Trixie thought. She quickly found some poster board, red paint, and a brush and went back to the big table in the middle of the room.

  Laying out a piece of poster board and dipping the brush into the paint, Trixie drew the outline of the first arrow. She tried to keep her mind on her work, but as she made the long brush strokes to fill in the arrow, her mind again returned to what Honey had said.

  She tried to figure out why Honey had reacted so strongly. Was Honey feeling guilty about neglecting the bikeathon for the baseball game? Was she tired of trying to defend Ben’s actions to her friends?

  Or maybe, Trixie thought, drawing the outline of another arrow, she meant exactly what she said. And maybe she’s right. Trixie was the one who always seemed to get the Bob-Whites involved in mysteries and other projects. Was that just coincidence? Or did she get involved because she liked all the attention and the credit for helping people and solving mysteries? She began to wonder about her own motives. Even a few days ago, at the art fair, when Nick Roberts said I was a celebrity, I felt just as much flattered as embarrassed....

  Trixie’s mind kept revolving around the same troubled thoughts as she continued to work, outlining and then filling in red arrows on the poster board.

  “Oh, woe,” she said finally. “This isn’t doing a thing to get my mind off my problems—or to find a solution for them. Indoor work never was my style. I guess I’ll go home and get my bike. A little workout will do me good.”

  As soon as Trixie began pedaling down the Belden driveway, she felt better. The day was one of the best that spring had yet offered. The air was that perfect temperature that felt like no temperature at all, and the hint of breeze was enough to feel good on Trixie’s face as she rode, without bei
ng hard to pedal against.

  Trixie looked at the trees, which had tiny light green leaves beginning to show on the branches.

  Spring is finally here, Trixie thought. Soon it’ll be summer, and then we’ll— Trixie’s thoughts broke off as she remembered her quarrel with Honey.

  What would the summer bring? More adventures, like the ones they’d had sailing off Cobbett’s Island or finding the missing emeralds in Williamsburg? Or were those wonderful summers over for the Bob-Whites?

  Feeling the lump begin to rise in her throat once again at the thought of losing Honey’s friendship forever, Trixie leaned over the handlebars and began to pedal as fast and as hard as she could.

  When she was totally out of breath, she began to coast and raised her head to look around her. To her surprise, she found that she was approaching the deserted house on Old Telegraph Road.

  A Piece of Charred Paper • 6

  TRIXIE TURNED onto the gravel drive, got off the bike, and pushed the kickstand down with her foot.

  For a few moments, she stood still, leaning on the bike seat with one hand while she caught her breath after her wild ride. When she was finally breathing easily again, she began to walk around the clearing.

  She paced off the distances and discovered that the clearing was almost one hundred feet wide and fifty feet deep, plenty of room for as many cyclists as would probably be there at one time.

  Then Trixie scouted around the clearing, looking at the ground for any pieces of broken glass or rusty nails that could puncture a bike tire—or a bare knee.

  There was so little debris on the ground that Trixie decided Mr. Wheeler must have hired someone to come over to the deserted house occasionally and check on it and clean up the grounds.

  “There are just too many vandals in the world these days who have nothing better to do than wreck abandoned houses, or at the very least clean out their cars on the front lawns,” Trixie muttered.

  After Trixie had finished cleaning up the yard and had put what little trash she found in piles to be picked up later, she decided to do a little exploring.

  The two-story frame house had once been white, but most of the paint had peeled away years before, leaving the boards underneath to weather. There was a small brick stoop on the front of the house, and on the stoop sat an old concrete urn that was filled with caked and lumpy dirt and a few dried stems of long-dead plants.

  As Trixie walked around to the back of the house, she saw that all of these windows had been covered with sheets of plywood and crisscrossed with two-by-fours, like those in the front.

  “When Mr. Wheeler wants to protect an abandoned house, he goes all the way,” Trixie said aloud. “It’d take more than a casual vandal to break into this place. A person would have to have a lot of determination even to try.”

  In the back, Trixie discovered that the house had an old-fashioned cellar, with the heavy wood doors to the outside built parallel to the ground. The wood was weathered and splintered from being covered with snow and rain, but the sturdy brass hinges still looked shiny. “I bet they’d turn without so much as a squeak if someone pulled open that door,” Trixie said to herself. “It’s too bad there’s no way to find out.” The doors were locked with a massive padlock.

  When she’d seen what little there was to see around the house, Trixie turned her attention to the backyard. The outlines of the dilapidated picket fence indicated that it had been a huge yard —although now it was difficult to distinguish the yard from the game preserve beyond it, since both were covered with rough grass and weeds.

  In one comer of the yard, an area surrounded by wire fence indicated what had once been the garden. Trixie wandered over to it to see if anything had come up “volunteer” this spring, but so far only a few small weeds and the first sprigs of spreading grass had invaded the garden.

  As Trixie turned to walk back to her bike, she was forced to admit that this was the most un-mysterious abandoned house she’d ever seen. Even if she hadn’t known the background, about the former owners’ moving to town and Mr. Wheeler’s buying it from them, she didn’t think she would have found a single thing to make her suspect a mystery.

  That’s just as well, Trixie thought as she pedaled back down the drive. My mysteries have gotten me into enough trouble lately. I almost wish I’d never dig up another one, in fact.

  Trixie had ridden only about a quarter of a mile when she saw a piece of paper that had been blown against a hedge along die road.

  There’s the kind of litter I was looking for, she thought. She stopped her bike and walked down the shallow ditch to the hedge. Picking up the piece of paper, she noticed that it was charred around the edges. Exposure to rain and sun had aged it, too, so that it was difficult to read.

  The piece of paper was about the size of one of the coupons that Trixie sometimes clipped from magazines for her mother, the kind that offered five or ten cents off the price of a brand of food or a household cleaner.

  “It’s a lot prettier than a coupon, though,” Trixie muttered, holding the piece of paper close to her face to inspect it. On one side, the paper showed a picture of a quaint-looking man wearing a furry hat, with a furry collar pulled up close around his face. On the other side was a huge castle that looked like something out of a fairy tale.

  “It looks like a picture out of a book, except for those red numerals running across the bottom and the numeral fifty printed in the comers. I wonder what it is and how it got out here in the middle of nowhere.” After staring at the piece of paper for a few more moments, Trixie sighed and put it in her pocket. “I’m not going to be able to figure it out just by thinking about it,” she decided. “I’ll take it home and see if Mart or Brian knows what it is. If not, it’ll make a good addition to Bobby’s ’collection.’ ”

  Trixie smiled as she walked back to her bike, thinking about her younger brothers “collection,” which was actually a random assortment of anything the six-year-old happened to find interesting, including buttons, marbles, bubble gum cards, and any number of other oddities.

  When Trixie returned to Crabapple Farm, she discovered that her bike ride had taken longer than she thought. The aroma of Mrs. Beldens New England boiled dinner, with cabbage and onions dominating the corned beef, carrots, and celery, filled the air.

  “Yipes, Moms, I’m sorry!” Trixie apologized. “I was supposed to help with dinner tonight, and you’ve had to do it all yourself.”

  “I’ve just done the easy part, Trixie,” Mrs. Belden replied. “I chopped up some vegetables and put them in the pot to simmer with the meat and took some rolls out of the freezer and put them in the oven to warm up. I managed to save the hard part for you—getting your younger brother cleaned up and ready for the table.”

  Trixie giggled. “ ’Hard part’ is right,” she said. “It would be easier to put together a gourmet feast than it is to hold Bobby still long enough to get a whole day’s worth of grime off his hands and face.”

  Sure enough, Bobby started to protest with the first swipe of the washcloth. “Ouch, Trixie!” he hollered. “That hurted me! You only have to take the dirt off—not my skin!”

  Trixie sighed. “Bobby, the problem is that you get the dirt so ground in that it’s hard to tell which is dirt and which is skin.” Remembering the piece of paper in her pocket, Trixie said, “I’ll tell you what, Bobby. If you let me finish cleaning you up without saying one more word, and if you eat one whole cooked carrot at dinner tonight, I’ll give you a surprise.”

  “Oh, boy!” Bobby exclaimed. “A s prise! What is it, Trixie?” In his excitement, Bobby had become wigglier than ever.

  “If I tell you, I’ll spoil the surprise. Is it a deal?” she asked, doing her best to sound businesslike, although her little brother’s wide-eyed excitement made her want to giggle, instead.

  “One whole cooked carrot is a lot, Trixie,” Bobby said seriously. “I don’t like to eat even one bite of cooked carrot.” He considered the bargain for a moment. Finally he sa
id, “Okay, Trixie, it’s a deal.” He took a deep breath and shut his eyes so tightly that his button nose wrinkled.

  It took Trixie a second to figure out the reason for the terrible face Bobby was making. She suppressed another giggle as she realized that he was preparing to carry out the first part of his bargain, to let Trixie finish washing his face without any more protests.

  Trixie was able to finish the clean-up operation quickly once Bobby’s cooperation was insured. “There you go, sport,” she said. “All finished.”

  Bobby let out his breath, opened his eyes, and blurted, “One small cooked carrot. Okay, Trixie?”

  Laughing, Trixie gave her brother a hug and hurried him downstairs.

  Bobby and Trixie got to the dining room to see Mart coming in from the kitchen with the huge platter of cooked vegetables and meat. Brian was right behind him with a basket of rolls.

  “Moms told us we could eat as soon as you helped her put the food on the table,” Brian said, his eyes twinkling. “Somehow, the idea of having to wait for dinner until you finished scrubbing the backyard from our youngest sibling’s face made Mart forget that carrying food is woman’s work.’ ”

  “I did not forget,” Mart said haughtily as he set down the platter of vegetables and took his place at the table. “I simply allowed the lure of the repast to overcome my abhorrence for menial tasks.”

  “Serving food is not a menial task,” Trixie said as she sat down. “As a matter of fact, it isn’t even necessarily women’s work. Honey says—” Trixie felt a pang as she remembered her fight with Honey, about which her family knew nothing. She felt herself redden as she continued. “Honey says that when she and Jim and their parents go to the fancy restaurants in New York, the food is almost always served by waiters. So there, Mart Belden.” Mrs. Belden chuckled. “I would suggest that we all serve ourselves, now that the food is on the table, before it gets cold. But first, Brian, since your father is out of town for a couple of days, why don’t you ask the blessing?”