Baby-Sitters Beware Read online

  “Yeah,” said Kristy. She leaned back in her chair and pushed her visor up. “Shadow Lake. I can hardly wait.”

  She looked at her watch. “This meeting …”

  But before she could adjourn, the phone rang one last time.

  I picked it up. “Baby-sitters Club. May I help you?” I asked.

  No one answered.

  “Hello?” I said.

  Again no one answered.

  “Hello!” I almost shouted.

  “You’re next,” a voice whispered.

  And then the line went dead.

  Mary Anne’s voice said, “He just called again.”

  “He, who?” I asked. “Logan?”

  Of course, by then, I knew it wasn’t Logan. Because the BSC was getting swamped with crank calls. Not heavy breathing calls. Just frightening, horrible silences. The silences of someone listening on the other end of the phone, and enjoying the panic in your voice as you say, “Hello. Hello? Hello! WHO’S THERE?” before slamming the phone down, good and hard.

  We’d dealt with phantom phone calls before, Claudia in particular. They hadn’t been as creepy as these.

  “Listen,” I said, “From now on, we should all ring once and then call right back. That way we’ll know it’s not the anonymous phone caller.”

  Mary Anne said, “My father got a phone call from someone asking for a Mr. Smith. Doesn’t that sound fake to you? Do you think it was the guy who’s been calling us?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Most of my phone calls have been when I’m the only one here, or the oldest one here,” I said.

  “As if he knows,” Mary Anne said, almost tearfully. “As if he’s watching.”

  “Let him watch. There’s nothing he can do.” But I knew that wasn’t true. He — or she — whoever it was, had done plenty already.

  Stacey and Claudia reported the same pattern: hang-up phone calls when they answered the phone. Usually the calls came when they were home alone, or hanging out together, or at least when no adults were around who were more likely to answer the phone. I’d taken to turning on the answering machine when I was home and screening all the incoming calls. So had Stacey. But although Claudia has an answering machine for her phone, the Kishis don’t have one for the family phone, and the Spiers use an answering service that’s only in effect during the workdays, when they aren’t home and Mary Anne is at school.

  The phone calls had been going on all weekend. But so far, Mal, Jessi, and Abby hadn’t gotten any. But then, Jessi’s dad and Mal’s parents had been home all weekend, while Abby and Anna and their mom practically hadn’t been home at all.

  Then, abruptly, the calls stopped. Not a single random ring after the phone call to Mary Anne on Sunday afternoon.

  I still gave the phone a dark, suspicious look every time it rang, though. And I still turned the answering machine on when I was home alone.

  Whoever it was might have just taken the night off.

  I also kept a close eye on the newspaper, to see if there had been any news about the burglary. So did Abby.

  Neither of us had seen a word about a house being burglarized.

  On Monday before school, I decided that no news was not good news. I called Sergeant Johnson to ask him if the burglars had been caught.

  “No,” he said slowly. “No, no suspects have been apprehended.” He paused, then said, “We don’t have a complainant.”

  “What do you mean? I’m complaining! Someone broke into someone’s house!”

  “Ms. Thomas …”

  “Call me Kristy.”

  “Kristy. When we contacted the owner of the house, Mr….” Sergeant Johnson paused, and I could hear the rustling of paper. “Mr. H. Joseph Seger, he said that the window was broken the previous night when he was pruning a tree and miscalculated the fall of a large branch.”

  “Prune? Did he say ‘prune’?” I asked.

  The paper rustled again. “Yes. That was his word.”

  “Ha!” I said. “No one prunes trees this time of year!” (Not for nothing am I the stepdaughter of Watson Brewer, and the granddaughter of Nannie, both master gardeners, and between them the owners of the largest collection of gardening books in the universe.)

  Sergeant Johnson said, “Hmmm.”

  Of course, Mr. H. Joseph Seger could have just been a bad gardener. It was possible.

  But it didn’t make sense.

  “We did hear glass breaking. We did see someone run by, wearing a stocking mask and carrying a gym bag. Abby and I both did. Why would we make something like that up?”

  Another pause. Then Sergeant Johnson said, “I don’t doubt what you say. But there is nothing we can do if Mr. Seger says there was no crime.”

  “Oh,” I said. “So that’s it, then?”

  “Unless something changes,” said Sergeant Johnson. “If it does, we’ll be in touch.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and hung up. I tried to remember whether I’d seen any tree branches lying around in the broken glass that afternoon. But I couldn’t. Besides, Mr. Seger would just say that he’d already cleared the branch away.

  But why clear away a branch and not the broken glass? Why lie about the incident in the first place?

  “Kristy!” Watson called. “Your bus is here.”

  I grabbed my pack and headed for school.

  * * *

  Abby said sarcastically, “Well, if he wasn’t a burglar, who was the guy in the mask who ran past us? The housekeeper, taking out the garbage?”

  I expected steam to start pouring out of Abby’s ears at any moment.

  Fortunately, Mary Anne sat down at that moment. “Garbage?” she said, giving me a reproving frown. “Are you making gross jokes about the food, too, Abby? Because if you and Kristy are both going to —”

  Abby looked startled. I couldn’t help but grin. “We’re not making food jokes,” I assured her. “We’re talking about the burglar.”

  We were eating lunch in the cafeteria at SMS together, as we usually did: Stacey, Claudia, Mary Anne, Abby, and me. Sometimes Logan joins us, but I didn’t see him around today. Jessi and Mal don’t sit with us, because the sixth-graders have a different lunch period.

  As Mary Anne gave her own lunch a less than approving look I filled her in on my conversation with Sergeant Johnson that morning.

  “Why would Mr. Seger lie about someone breaking into his house?” asked Mary Anne.

  “Because he’s hiding something, of course,” said Abby impatiently.

  Everybody was quiet for a moment. I gave my green Jell-O a poke and watched it wiggle.

  “Maybe he has something inside the house he doesn’t want the police to see,” Claudia suggested. “Like … like stolen art.”

  “Or counterfeit money,” said Stacey.

  Since she and Claud had both been seriously involved in mysteries involving, respectively, counterfeit money and stolen art, these suggestions were not as farfetched as they might seem. As we all knew, it could happen in Stoneybrook. It already had.

  “Maybe,” I said slowly.

  “He’s hiding something,” said Abby. “What it is isn’t important right now. What’s more important is, are the burglars connected to all this — I mean, to the bizzaro, sicko things that have been happening to us?”

  I said, “You and I were wearing nametags, Abby. He could have seen those, remembered our names, and tracked us down that way. But how does he know we’re connected to the rest of the BSC?”

  Mary Anne said, “Maybe he picked up one of our fliers and saw your name?”

  “It’s possible,” I said. “But pretty remote. We haven’t given those out in awhile.”

  “He followed us that night?” suggested Abby and then immediately answered her own question. “No. If you’re running from the scene of a crime, you don’t stop to follow someone home.”

  “No, it doesn’t make sense, does it?” Stacey sighed. She finished the last of her apple and stood up. “I’ve got to book,” she said. “See you later.�
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  “I guess we have a mystery on our hands,” said Claudia. She didn’t sound all that unhappy at the prospect.

  “It’s possible,” I said. I gave the green Jell-O on my plate another poke. It quivered in what I can only describe as a suspicious manner. Was it alive? Was it a slimy oyster in a green disguise? “But the only mystery right now is how this Jell-O could …”

  I looked up and caught Mary Anne’s eye. She gave me what was, for her, a warning glare.

  “Never mind,” I said quickly.

  I ate my Jell-O.

  * * *

  Business was brisk that afternoon at the BSC meeting. Five minutes after I’d called the meeting to order, we’d taken three phone calls.

  None of them anonymous. None of them hang-ups. All of them from clients we knew.

  “I’m not sure I’d want to take a job with a new client right now,” Claudia observed thoughtfully, when I pointed out this important fact. “I mean, the phone calls seem to have stopped. But maybe whoever it is, is just planing something worse.”

  Jessi’s eyes widened. “Worse?” she repeated. “Worse how?”

  “Wow, Claudia, you’re right!” Abby exclaimed. “He calls us up, he pretends he wants a baby-sitter. He gives us a false address, we go there. It’s a dark and stormy night. The door opens. We go inside and … eeeeek!”

  We all jumped about a hundred feet into the air. Claudia threw up her hands and popcorn sprayed all over her room.

  Abby, who’d been sitting on the floor, fell back against the side of Claudia’s bed laughing. “Gotcha!” she cried.

  The phone rang. I picked it up, fixing Abby (who alone was still laughing) with a Look. It was Mrs. Arnold, requesting a sitter for her twins, Carolyn and Marilyn. I took the call without saying any names then hung up the phone. I caught Mary Anne’s eye, stared hard at her, then winked very, very slightly.

  “It’s a new client,” I announced.

  Claudia froze in the act of picking up the popcorn. A hush fell over the room. Abby even stopped laughing.

  “Are you serious?” Abby asked.

  I nodded. “Friday night. At a house on Elm Street.” I kept staring at Mary Anne. “What does the appointment book look like for Friday night?”

  Mary Anne flipped open her book. She ran her finger down the page. “Jessi — no, it’s at night. I can’t, I have a date.” She lifted her eyes from the page. “Abby, you’re the only one who is free. Can you do it?”

  “Ah, well, ah …” Abby looked wildly around the room. “But, uh — Elm Street?”

  I couldn’t keep it together any longer. I cracked up. “Gotcha back!” I said.

  Another moment of silence and then everyone began to hoot.

  “Good one!” said Claudia.

  “Excellent acting, Mary Anne,” put in Mal.

  Abby, her face red, said, “Okay, okay. I owe you one, Kristy Thomas and Mary Anne Spier.”

  When we’d settled down (and laughed off some of the tension that had been building up), we set up the baby-sitting job for Mrs. Arnold (for Tuesday afternoon, which Mal took). Then Jessi said, “I have some new business, sort of.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “It’s Becca. She told me she’s seen a man with a blue tattoo around Stoneybrook.”

  “A blue tattoo!” Stacey exclaimed. “What kind of tattoo? What did he look like? Remember, that counterfeiter we helped catch? I think he had a blue tattoo. I can’t remember where.”

  Jessi shrugged. “I thought that guy went to prison for counterfeiting.”

  “It’s in the notebook somewhere,” murmured Mary Anne.

  Claudia picked up the club notebook from her desk and handed it to Stacey. Stacey made a face. “Great,” she said. “I have to go through all this to look up the blue tattoo? I spend enough time with this notebook writing up my sitting jobs. Bummer.”

  She gave a big, theatrical sigh and plopped the notebook open on her lap (she was sitting cross-legged on Claudia’s bed) and began to riffle through the pages.

  I looked at the notebook. It was pretty thick. In fact, it looked like the notes from a thousand classes at school. It was easy enough to look up past sitting jobs; all we had to do was check out the date in Mary Anne’s appointment book and then look up that date in the notebook, since all the entries have dates at the top. But there was no way of looking up specific things, no index, no table of contents. Too bad we hadn’t kept a separate mystery notebook, I thought.

  This shows how rattled I was by the mystery. I had this stupendous, brilliant idea and I didn’t even realize it right away. I just sat there in my chair, frowning, watching Stacey go through the notebook.

  It actually took me a whole minute before I shouted, “That’s it!”

  Everyone jumped again. Clearly this mystery was getting on our nerves.

  “Will you stop that?” Claudia complained.

  “Sorry,” I said. “But listen. Why don’t we keep a mystery notebook? I mean, we have enough material for a separate book. And then we could look things up in it, and use it to help solve cases as we go along.”

  “Cases? You think we’re going to be solving lots more mysteries?” teased Mary Anne.

  “The way things are going, it could happen,” I said.

  “True.” Mal looked thoughtful. “I think it’s a great idea.”

  “Just one problem,” Claudia pointed out. “Who’s going to go through the notebook and put all the old mysteries together? I don’t volunteer.”

  “Me either,” said Abby.

  Mal said, “I will. Volunteer, I mean. It sounds like fun.”

  “Sounds like a book report,” said Claudia. Then another thought struck her. “Oh, no! We’ll have to write in another notebook!”

  The phone rang twice more. We set up two more jobs — with regular clients. Then the meeting was over.

  Stacey handed the BSC notebook to Mal. After making a careful note, she also gave Mal some money. “For the mystery notebook,” she said.

  “Thanks,” said Mal. “I’ll let you know when I find the stuff about the man with the blue tattoo.”

  “We have to begin investigating right away,” I said. “Like tomorrow. Tuesday. Morning.”

  “We get the point, Kristy,” said Mal. “I’ll buy the notebook tomorrow.”

  “Because we’re leaving for Shadow Lake at the end of the week, don’t forget.” I stood up and put on my jacket and picked up my pack. “And guess what? A huge snowstorm is supposed to be coming. I just hope it hits Shadow Lake the same time we do. It’s about time we had some good luck.”

  Famous last words.

  “Shannon.”

  “Hi, Kristy. What’s up?” I asked.

  “Can you go to the library with some of us tomorrow?”

  “Sure,” I said. Then I remembered to ask, “What for?”

  Kristy told me about Mr. Seger and his mysterious burglary. She also told me about the mystery notebook.

  “It’s a fact-gathering mission,” she said. “We’re looking for information.”

  “Also known as clues?” I suggested.

  “Of course,” said Kristy. “We’re going to put everything we learn into our notebook and see what we come up with.”

  “See how things add up. See what x is in the equation,” I said.

  “Have you been talking to Stacey already?” asked Kristy.

  “No,” I answered, trying not to laugh. Kristy can be pretty intense sometimes. But then, scary things had been happening to the BSC — and they would be even scarier if they were tied together.

  Maybe that’s why I wanted to laugh — I was scared. Sometimes being scared affects people that way.

  We made plans to meet.

  * * *

  The next afternoon, Kristy, Claudia, and Abby were waiting for me on the front steps of the Stoneybrook Public Library.

  “Mal’s on a stakeout,” said Kristy. “We’re going to take separate notes and incorporate them into the mystery notebook as
soon as she’s brought it up to date.”

  “Stakeout?” I said.

  “Sitting at the Rodowskys’. Keeping an eye on the Seger residence,” Kristy explained in what sounded suspiciously like Police-ese.

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “Lead on, Sherlock.”

  “Agatha,” said Abby. “Agatha Kristy. Get it?”

  We all groaned and went inside.

  Where does Abby get her awful puns?

  As we passed the desk, Abby whispered, “Okay, spread out and try to act normal.” She waved to Mrs. Kishi and gave her a big grin. “Hi!” she said. “Read any good books lately?”

  Claudia said, “You are so weird. And my mom’s heard that line about a thousand times.” She waved to her mom, too, and shrugged her shoulders. Mrs. Kishi gave us a puzzled smile and we walked toward the computer catalogue.

  “How do you look someone up in the library?” Kristy asked. “Apart from the phone book, I mean.”

  Claudia said, “You can look in the Stoneybrook Who’s Who. Also the news index of the newspaper.”

  “Wow. Okay.” Kristy nodded approvingly. “Let’s start with the Who’s Who.”

  “How did you know that, anyway?” Abby asked Claudia.

  “My mother is a librarian and my sister is a genius,” Claudia replied. “I know these things.” She grinned. “Besides, I asked Janine last night.”

  “Did you tell her what was going on?” asked Kristy.

  “No.” Claudia grinned again. “You know Janine. She likes knowing the answers to questions. So I asked her a bunch of questions and this was just one of them.”

  “Sneaky. Devious. Excellent,” said Kristy. She turned and stopped again. “Where is the Stoneybrook Who’s Who?”

  “That I didn’t ask her,” Claudia admitted.

  “I’ll go ask at the desk,” I volunteered. “If your mom has any questions, I can just say I’m doing research and she’ll think it’s for my homework.”

  But Mrs. Kishi didn’t ask any questions. She just smiled and said hello and asked me how I was doing, and then told me where to find what we were looking for.

  A few minutes later we’d staked out a table in the corner of the library, with our backs to the wall (at Kristy’s insistence).