The Mystery of the Memorial Day Fire Page 9

  Honey plopped herself down on the bed and gave an excited bounce. “Now, tell me this very minute, Trixie Belden. What happened back in that alley?”

  “You aren’t going to believe it, Honey,” Trixie said, flopping down on her stomach beside her friend. She closed her eyes and pictured the scene again. “I came around the corner, and I froze because I saw two people standing there. One of them was this enormous man — six feet four, at least, and big. The other person was smaller. And female. And someone I’d seen before. Someone you’ve seen, too.” Trixie opened one eye and peered at her friend. Now that the danger was past, she was enjoying the telling of it.

  “Who?” Honey squealed impatiently.

  “Sleepyside’s star reporter, that’s who,” Trixie said smugly.

  “Jane Dix-Strauss?” Honey asked.

  “None other,” Trixie said.

  “What were they doing back there?” Honey asked.

  “Well, when I first saw them, I think they were talking, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. But then” — Trixie sat up on the bed, the better to add gestures to the story — “Jane Dix-Strauss said, ‘That’s it, then. If I need anything else, I’ll call.’ And she reached into her blazer pocket, and she took out an envelope, and she handed it to the man, and he put it into his pocket!”

  As Trixie finished speaking, silence fell over the room.

  “And then?” Honey asked finally.

  Trixie sat back in amazement. “Oh, Honey, don’t you see? It was a payoff!”

  “A payoff.” Honey repeated the words without conviction.

  “It has to be,” Trixie continued. “Jane Dix-Strauss is in the alley behind the burned-out building with this mysterious man. She hands him an envelope. It can’t be something regular, like a letter, because she could just mail it. It has to be something she’d want kept secret — like a payoff for something. And what would she be paying somebody off for behind Roberts’s store?”

  “Some photographs he took for her?” Honey asked helpfully.

  “Photographs!” Trixie said. “In the dark? Besides, Jane Dix-Strauss takes her own pictures. Don’t you remember how she sneaked up on us with her camera at the Memorial Day parade?”

  “Well, what then?” Honey’s usually limitless patience was wearing thin.

  “I think she was paying off the arsonist,” Trixie said, dropping her voice to a whisper.

  “What!” All Honey could do was to squeak the word.

  “Well, think about it,” Trixie said reasonably. “Jane Dix-Strauss is already an expert on arson. As soon as she moves here, Sleepyside has a case of arson. The result is that this new reporter gets some articles with her by-line on the front page. Overnight she’s a star.”

  “So you think she paid an arsonist to set the fire?” Honey asked, not sounding at all convinced.

  “We know she knows arsonists,” Trixie said. “She quoted lots of them in that article.”

  “She quoted lots of fire marshals and police detectives, too,” Honey reminded her. “Maybe that’s who she was talking to.”

  “Why meet a fire marshal at night?” Trixie countered. “Why stand and talk to him in the alley? Besides, fire marshals and detectives are public employees. They can’t take payoffs from a reporter.”

  “But you don’t know that this was a payoff, Trixie — not really,” Honey said defensively. Always loyal, Honey was pained by her inability to side with Trixie’s version of what had happened.

  “Well, if it wasn’t a payoff, what was it?” Trixie asked.

  “I don’t know,” Honey said. She thought for a moment. “Maybe it was a list of questions about the fire that she wanted the fire marshal to answer.”

  “Then why would she say, ‘I’ll call you if I need you’ when she gave him the envelope? That made it sound like they were finished with their business, not like they were right in the middle of it.”

  “But if the man was the arsonist,” Honey said, “their business together was over weeks ago — as soon as the fire started, in fact. Why wait this long to pay him off?”

  It was Trixie’s turn to sit in silence thinking about the question. “Maybe she wasn’t going to pay him at all,” she said finally. “The arsonist did bungle the job, you know. Maybe”—Trixie pulled herself up to her knees on the bed as she warmed to her own theory—“maybe the fire was supposed to look accidental, and then Jane Dix-Strauss could prove it was arson, so she could look like a hero. So when the arsonist bungled it, she told him she wasn’t going to pay. But he threatened her, and said he’d beat her up or even kill her if she didn’t pay up.”

  “That’s possible, I suppose,” Honey conceded. “But then what about that button you found in the alley? If she hired someone else to set the fire, then when did she lose that button? Or doesn’t the button mean anything any more?”

  “I don’t know,” Trixie said. She sagged back against the headboard of her bed. Her efforts to convince Honey had left her feeling tired.

  “We could tell the story to someone else,” Honey volunteered. “Just because I’m not convinced doesn’t mean no one else will be.”

  “Oh, come on, Honey. You’re always the first person in the world to believe me. Sometimes you’re the only one. If you don’t agree with my version of things, do you think Brian would? Or Jim? Or Mart?” As she said his name, she wrinkled her nose.

  In spite of the seriousness of the situation, Honey started to giggle. “If you came up with a theory that the sky was blue, Mart would demand more proof,” she admitted.

  Trixie laughed, too, shaking her head at the same time. “Brian and Jim aren’t much better, though. Adults are lots worse. All they ever think about is whether what I’m telling them is dangerous — not whether it’s true.”

  “Well, sometimes we do give them reason for worrying,” Honey admitted. After another pause, she asked, “What do we do now, Trixie?”

  Trixie shrugged. “Nothing, I guess. There’s nobody to tell about what I saw, and nothing to do about it. I guess we’ll just keep it in mind, and wait.”

  “Wait for what?” Honey asked.

  Again, Trixie shrugged. Then, suddenly, she jumped to her feet. “Oh, Honey, I do know!”

  “What?” Honey demanded.

  “Let’s just suppose I’m right — that Jane Dix-Strauss hired an arsonist to set that fire so she’d have big news to write about. The fire won’t be big news forever. What happens when everyone forgets about it?”

  “You don’t think she’d have another fire set, do you?” Honey asked in dismay.

  “Another fire — or something,” Trixie said.

  “Oh, Trixie, you can’t really think that.”

  “I probably couldn’t,” Trixie told her, “if I hadn’t heard what she said to that man: ‘I’ll call you if I need anything else.’”

  When Honey left for home a few minutes later, the two girls were no closer to deciding on a plan of action. Unless you count deciding to do nothing as a plan of action, Trixie thought. She stayed in her room with the door closed. She didn’t trust herself not to tell her brothers about the scene behind Mr. Roberts’s store, but she didn’t feel like facing their disbelief, which would be so much stronger than Honey’s.

  For once, she was glad when bedtime came. She was sure she’d sleep well after her frantic bike ride. Instead, sleep came fitfully. She kept half waking from dreams she couldn’t remember. Toward morning, her dream took her back to the night of the Memorial Day fire. Once again she was in the throng of people on Main Street. Once again she could hear the sirens and see the fire truck, so close to the orange glow rising in the sky, but not close enough, and not able to get any closer. In her dream, she turned her back on the fire truck and put her hands over her ears. It didn’t help — the sirens were still just as loud.

  Trixie woke with a start and felt a flood of relief when she saw her own room, with sunlight coming in through the windows. It was just a dream, she reassured herself.

  Then,
suddenly, she knew it hadn’t been — not altogether. Now she was wide awake, but she could still hear the sirens!

  11* "We’re Going to the Police!”

  TRIXIE THREW BACK THE SHEET, jumped out of bed, and got into jeans and a T-shirt. She splashed some water on her face and ran a comb through her hair, then ran down the stairs.

  All the while, the sirens kept going. She wasn’t surprised, therefore, to see her parents and her two older brothers listening to the radio when she got downstairs.

  “What is it?” she demanded. “What’s — ”

  “Sh!” Brian said, making a “keep it quiet” gesture with one hand.

  “...is the second large fire in Sleepyside in less than a month,” the radio announcer was saying.

  “Oh, no!” Trixie said, sinking into a chair and covering her eyes with her hands. Through her self-imposed darkness, the radio announcer’s voice sounded even more ominous.

  “The fire is thought to have started at around seven-thirty A.M., when the store was unoccupied, so there were no injuries. A passing patrol officer spotted the smoke and called the fire department. The fire fighters arrived quickly at the scene, but the fire had spread quickly, causing massive damage to the store.”

  “What store?” Trixie asked, raising her head and looking around for an answer.

  Another “pipe down” signal from Brian was the only response in the room, but the radio announcer soon filled in the missing information. “... a complete loss, according to Mr. James D. Slettom, owner of the appliance store,” the voice said calmly.

  Trixie shuddered. “Mr. Slettom?” she echoed. “Is that the Mr. Slettom? The one who owned Mr. Roberts’s store, too?”

  Again the radio announcer provided the answer: “... marking the second time in a month that property owned by Mr. Slettom has been the scene of a major fire. Stay tuned to WSTH for further developments.”

  As a commercial began, Mart got up and turned off the radio. Mrs. Belden went into the kitchen to make breakfast. Mr. Belden went upstairs to shave and finish getting ready for work — a task he’d interrupted at the sound of the sirens. Brian went to the front door and brought in the morning paper.

  “At least this fire happened too late for Jane Dix-Strauss to get a scoop on it for the Sun,” he said. “That should make you happy, Trix.”

  For the first time that morning, Trixie remembered the scene she’d witnessed the night before: Jane Dix-Strauss and the mysterious man behind Mr. Roberts’s store. She remembered, too, one of the questions Honey had asked: “If the man was the arsonist, why would Jane Dix-Strauss wait so long before she paid him?”

  It had been a question Trixie didn’t have an answer for at the time. But this morning, a simple explanation came to her mind. What if it wasn’t that fire she was paying him for?

  The idea of it made Trixie gasp. As her brothers turned to look at her, she covered it with a hasty yawn. “Those sirens woke me out of a sound sleep,” she said.

  “I wish I were privileged to indulge in such prolonged slumbers,” Mart said pompously. “I, of course, have more pressing pursuits to attend to. I expect to equalize the situation by relaxing when the efforts at the clubhouse commence.”

  “Oh, fiddledeedee.” Trixie knew it wasn’t a very impressive counterargument, but it was too early, and she had too much on her mind, to do better. “Anyway, you guys knocked off early yesterday, while Honey and I did some of the most effective legwork we could have done.” She told her brothers about delivering the T-shirts to the Sleepyside Bankers. “They loved their shirts, so by today we should have customers running after us,” she said smugly.

  “Hmm,” Brian said as he walked to the table which Mrs. Belden had set for breakfast. “Not bad technique, at that. I’ll have to remember it. I was wondering where you and Honey were last night. I’m glad you were working on the project at hand and not looking for a mystery to jump into headfirst.”

  For a moment, Trixie concentrated very hard on pouring milk on her cereal. If only Brian knew that that’s exactly what they had been doing! She wondered if she should tell him — or someone — as she’d said she would if another arson took place. But something made her hesitate. I said it had to be another arson before I’d speak up, she reasoned silently. I don’t know yet that this was arson, which is exactly what Brian and Mart would tell me if I tried to tell them about it. So I won’t — until I know something more.

  By noon, Trixie knew more than she wanted to know. The fire had quickly been labeled arson by the investigators. As they had reconstructed the crime, someone had broken into the store by the back door, scattered the store’s records around the office, and set them on fire.

  But the news on the radio was even worse. “Mr. Nicholas Roberts, who was questioned about the earlier fire and released, was seen in the vicinity of the Slettom Appliance Store early this morning,” the radio announcer said. “Police are questioning Roberts again. Sources say that Roberts does not deny being in the area, although he does deny having started the fire. He was called by Slettom’s secretary and asked to come to the appliance store before business hours, he says. He claims she told him that, in spite of the fire that made the store he was renting uninhabitable, he still had to sign a paper canceling his lease. Mr. Slettom and his secretary deny having called Roberts or having requested a meeting.”

  “They can’t possibly think Mr. Roberts just made that story up, can they?” Trixie asked her brothers.

  Mart was speechless for a change, and Brian shook his head as if refusing to hazard a guess on what the police might or might not do. Before he could add a comment, Helen Belden called him to the phone.

  He was gone for just a few moments, but when he came back, his face was pale and sick-looking. “That was one of my T-shirt customers,” he said, his voice strained. “He called to cancel an order for twenty-five shirts.”

  “Oh, Brian, that’s too bad,” Trixie said automatically. Then she realized that her brother was overreacting to the loss of one small sale. “Why did he cancel?” she asked.

  “Why do you think?” Brian snapped. “He said it looks to him as though Nicholas Roberts is guilty, after all, and he doesn’t want to do business with an arsonist.”

  “What!” Trixie shrieked. “But that’s ridiculous!”

  “I agree,” Brian said. “I even told him so, as politely as I could. But he doesn’t know Mr. Roberts,

  or Nick, so he doesn’t understand how ridiculous... » it is.

  The conversation was interrupted again. This time Mart was called to the phone. Trixie felt her stomach beginning to churn. Please, please let it be something else, she thought. A new order, or even just an invitation to a dumb party — anything but another cancellation.

  It was another cancellation, though. Trixie and Brian knew that before Mart spoke. They could tell it by the way his shoulders slumped as he walked across the room, and by the way he sat down heavily in his chair.

  “Who and how many?” Brian asked quietly.

  “Shorty’s Shoe Shop. Twenty shirts and twenty caps,” Mart said simply.

  “What did they say?” Trixie asked.

  “There’s no need for me to repeat the conversation,” Mart told her. “Basically, it was identical to Brian’s.”

  Trixie sighed, then jumped as the telephone began to ring again. She knew it was her turn before she heard her mother call, “Trixie!” She got up from the table and went to the phone.

  “This is Jan Carlson,” the voice said. “I ordered some caps for our horseshoe tournament.”

  “I remember,” Trixie said. She tried to keep the coldness out of her voice, but she wasn’t going to make it easier for the man to cancel his order.

  “I’ve been thinking it over, and it seems like a lot of money to spend. It’s just a little family picnic, after all. Could I — I’d like to cancel my order.” The last sentence came out all in a rush.

  “All right,” Trixie said. “Consider it canceled.”

  “I-I
’m sorry,” the man said.

  Trixie had to admit that he sounded as if he meant it. But she couldn’t tell the man that it was all right. “Good-bye,” she said simply.

  She went back to the table determined to tell her brothers what she’d seen the night before in the alley behind Roberts’s store. But before she could speak, Brian was again called to the phone.

  When he stood up, Trixie stood up at the same time. “All right,” she said. “That does it.” Without another word of explanation, she slammed out of the house, dragged her bike out of the garage, and rode as fast as she could to the Manor House. When Celia let her in, she ran up the stairs to Honey’s room two at a time. “Come on, Honey,” she said. “We’re going to the police!”

  Honey sat up on the bed, at the same time making hasty brushing motions under her eyes.

  She’s been crying, Trixie thought. Aloud she asked, “Have you had customers canceling orders?”

  Honey nodded. “T-They say they think Mr. Roberts is guilty. T-They say they d-don’t want to do business with s-someone like that.” Honey’s voice was trembling.

  “The same thing happened to us,” Trixie said. “That’s why I want to go downtown and tell the police about seeing Jane Dix-Strauss in the alley last night.”

  Trixie half-expected her friend to protest as she had the night before. Today, though, Honey seemed more than willing to go along with the plan. “Let’s go,” Honey said firmly, and she led Trixie out the door.

  The two girls rode in silence into Sleepyside. Both wanted to ride as quickly as they could, and Trixie wanted to rehearse her speech, as well.

  They parked their bikes outside the police station and walked in. Trixie took in the waiting room with a sweeping glance, and saw Mr. Slettom sitting there. He was wearing another loud and lively sports coat, but he was looking sad and uncomfortable. Leaning casually against a wall not far away was Jane Dix-Strauss. Oh, woe, Trixie thought. I was hoping there would be no one here, especially not her. Wanting to turn and run, she forced herself to march up to the reception desk instead. “I’d like to speak to Sergeant Molinson,” she said.