Kristy and the Cat Burglar Read online

  She shut off the recorder and motioned to Claudia. “Let’s go before they see us,” she said. She scurried away from the tree, and Claudia followed her.

  “That was a riot!” she crowed as she led Claudia back to the Ramseys’ to see if anyone had come home yet. “Watching those guys spy was even more fun than just regular spying.”

  “Shh!” said Claudia.

  “What?” asked Charlotte.

  “I think there are even more spies around,” said Claudia, nodding toward Jessi’s house. There, behind the same large bush Charlotte had used for a hiding place, were Matt and Haley Braddock. They were staring intently into the Ramseys’ backyard, where Aunt Cecelia was talking to a man Claudia had never seen before.

  “Do you think that’s her new boyfriend?” asked Charlotte in a whisper.

  “I don’t know,” said Claudia, who, as she told me later, was pretty curious herself. “Let’s move in closer.”

  “But then Matt and Haley will see us!” said Charlotte.

  “So let’s join them,” suggested Claudia. “Maybe they’ve already figured out who the guy is.”

  Charlotte was reluctant, but as they tiptoed closer, Matt turned around and saw them anyway. He gestured eagerly, waving them over.

  “Hi,” whispered Charlotte, when the four spies were squished in behind the bush. “What’s going on?”

  Haley answered, speaking softly. “First we thought it was a romance. But Matt read their lips and it turned out that he’s just a landscaper. He’s here to help her plan a new garden.”

  Charlotte grinned at Matt. He’s profoundly deaf and communicates mostly through American Sign Language, which Haley can translate. But he’s also an excellent lip-reader. “Cool,” said Charlotte. Claudia could tell that Charlotte was already planning to learn how to lip-read. What a great skill for a spy!

  After they’d watched for a while longer, Charlotte poked Claudia and whispered, “Becca and Vanessa still aren’t here. Let’s go. I want to head home and listen to my notes.” Claudia nodded, and they said good-bye to Matt and Haley and headed back to the Johanssens’.

  Charlotte settled in on the front porch with her tape recorder and started listening to the notes she’d whispered into it that day. Claudia listened too. “What are you going to do with those tapes?” she asked.

  “Just save them, I guess,” said Charlotte. “Someday, when I grow up and become a famous writer, I’ll be able to listen to them and remember all the stuff that happened in my old neighborhood.”

  Just then, Claudia heard a soft sound, like a stifled giggle. “What was that?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Charlotte. She looked around. “Hey!” she said, suddenly jumping to her feet, hands on hips. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Claudia stood up too and leaned over the porch railing to see what Charlotte was looking at. There were Vanessa and Becca, who were crouched behind a bush next to the house.

  Vanessa stood up. “What does it look like we’re doing? We’re spying.” At that, she and Becca broke into full-scale giggles.

  “On me?” Charlotte looked outraged.

  “Why not?” asked Becca. “You spy on me all the time!”

  “It’s not the same,” cried Charlotte.

  “Is too,” said Vanessa.

  “Anyway, I had to do something. You weren’t playing with me anymore,” said Becca.

  “But —” Charlotte began.

  Claudia saw that the girls were heading for a fight. “Hold on, hold on,” she said. “Charlotte, Becca’s right. You’ve been spying on everyone else, so I’m not sure you have a right to be mad. And I think Becca’s been feeling a little neglected. But I can understand that you might feel surprised to find your two best friends under your porch. Why don’t the three of you just sit down and talk for a few minutes? I’m sure you can work this out without fighting.”

  Grudgingly, the girls sat down on the porch steps together. After a few silent minutes had passed, they began to talk. “How long have you been spying on me?” asked Charlotte.

  “All afternoon,” answered Becca. “We followed you to my house and to the Rodowskys’ and everything.”

  “Really?” asked Charlotte. Claudia winced, thinking Charlotte might be about to get angry again. But instead, after considering the information for a moment, Charlotte smiled. “You guys must be pretty good spies,” she said. “I never even saw you.”

  “But we saw my brothers,” said Vanessa, “and Matt and Haley. Isn’t it funny how everybody’s spying?”

  Claudia decided that the girls were well on their way to making up. “I’ll go fix a snack,” she said. She headed into the kitchen, smiling to herself about the way things had worked out.

  A few minutes later, she wasn’t smiling anymore. Why? Guess!

  Claudia caught the girls watching her through the kitchen window — and they caught her sneaking a spoonful of peanut butter as she made their snack.

  Spy fever had gone too far.

  While Claudia was dealing with her young spies, Mary Anne and I were deep into detective work. I’d had a call from Reinhart Golem first thing on Sunday morning. He’d asked me to come meet him to “discuss the case” further. Actually, he invited me and a friend to brunch at his favorite restaurant, Chez Maurice. “I’m a regular there,” he explained. “Whenever I’m in town I eat most of my meals at Chez Maurice.”

  Whoa. Now I knew for sure that the guy was rich. I mean, I’d have to save up my baby-sitting earnings for months just to be able to buy myself one dinner at that place. And he ate there all the time? No wonder he could afford to offer us a juicy reward. Anyway, I knew there was no way my mom and Watson would agree to that plan (and they’d be sure to notice if I tried to leave the house all dressed up), so Mary Anne and I ended up going out to Golem’s house instead.

  “Welcome, welcome,” he said as he ushered us into his huge dining room. “I had my caterer bring over a little snack for us. Please help yourselves.”

  Mary Anne and I exchanged a glance. This was like going to Chez Maurice without having to dress up. The dining room was just as fancy. The dark, highly polished table was set with beautiful china and silver, and green velvet curtains hung at the leaded-glass windows. The food looked every bit as good. Laid out on a side table were giant platters heaped with pastries; huge silver chafing dishes filled with eggs, bacon, and sausage; and bowls of the most beautiful fruit. Mary Anne and I filled our plates and sat down.

  “This is delicious,” I said after a few bites. I was feeling a little nervous.

  “It is,” Mary Anne agreed. “Thank you very much.”

  Golem chuckled. “It’s the least I could do for my star detectives. I’m convinced you’ll solve this case before the police do. I have a good feeling about you young ladies.”

  I blushed. “Well, we’ve been working on it,” I said, “and a few clues have surfaced. For example, did you know that one of your own neighbors in New York was robbed by the Cat Burglar?”

  Golem looked surprised. “Now, aren’t you the clever ones to dig up that bit of information. Yes, I do seem to remember something about that, though I believe I was away in France at the time.” He paused. “However, I’d advise that you not spend too much time pursuing the Cat Burglar angle. From what Sergeant Winters tells me, it’s possible that the cat stencil found on my mailbox was a forgery.”

  I glanced at Mary Anne. Hmm. Our idea about a copycat burglar might just be on target.

  “What about the other evidence we found?” I asked. “Like the bullet casing and the marker?”

  “The bullet casing, as you may already know, came from the same model gun that our local police force carries.” He frowned, but didn’t say anything more about that. “And the marker? Sergeant Winters tells me that fingerprint tests on it are almost finished, but there’s nothing conclusive to report yet.”

  “Meanwhile, there are no leads on the diamonds,” I said. “You must be upset about that.”


  He waved a hand. “Certainly, they were special gems. But as far as the value goes, they were heavily insured. I won’t suffer any financial loss.”

  “That’s good,” said Mary Anne, sounding relieved.

  He smiled at her. “So nice to know that someone cares,” he said. “The police don’t seem to understand how traumatic this has been for me. Can you imagine? They actually called me in for questioning.”

  “Oh, they’ve asked everyone to come in,” said Mary Anne comfortingly. “Kristy had to go, and so did this other friend of ours.”

  We ate and talked and ate some more, and before long we were chatting like old friends. In fact, I felt comfortable enough to ask Golem more about Ben Birch, even though I knew the subject was a sore one with him. He didn’t reveal much about his old business associate, but I did find out where Birch was originally from (Cleveland), and where he was living now (possibly in Miami).

  By the time Mary Anne and I left, full of eggs and bacon and information, we felt ready to get serious about catching the Cat Burglar — or the Copycat. Golem believed in us, and his confidence was contagious.

  Abby, like all of us, has a hard time taking Cary’s word for anything. There’s just something about him that makes you think he’s up to no good. For example, the fact that he’s often up to no good. So I couldn’t blame her for being suspicious about what Cary was doing in the woods near Reinhart Golem’s house. Abby was cruising around on her bike, just “checking out the scene,” later on the same day Mary Anne and I had visited Golem. But it wasn’t the Cary Retlin sighting that really raised her suspicions.

  Abby saw someone else that day too. A shadowy figure in the woods near Reinhart Golem’s house. She didn’t get a close look, but she saw enough to convince her.

  “It was Ben Birch,” she said at our meeting on Monday afternoon. She was holding up the copied photo Sergeant Johnson had given me, which we were keeping in the mystery notebook. “I’m almost positive. But he ran away before I could talk to him.”

  So Ben Birch was in the area. Another suspect.

  Stacey had decided that we really ought to know more about Cary Retlin, especially after Abby spotted him in the woods. So what did she do? She invited herself over to his house pretending she wanted to learn more about birds and bird-watching.

  Cary seemed surprised at her interest, but he was happy to show her his bird-watching journals and explain how he kept track of every bird he’d ever spotted. Stacey felt bad for doubting that he had really been bird-watching in the woods.

  Once inside the Retlin house, Stacey scoped out every scrap of information she could. She even asked Mrs. Retlin innocent questions about where the family had lived before they moved to Stoneybrook. And she checked out every family picture on the wall. That’s how she found out that Mr. Retlin, who now works as a locksmith, was once a police officer.

  “There was a picture of him in uniform,” she told us later. “And it turns out he was a policeman until Cary was almost eight. Then he decided he’d had enough of dangerous work and quit the force.”

  “So that’s why Cary knew about the bullet casings,” I mused. “I wonder if he knows about alarm systems and stuff too.”

  “Are you saying —?” Mal began.

  “That Cary is the Cat Burglar?” I asked. “No. But I don’t think we can rule him out as a suspect in the theft of the diamonds.”

  Stacey agreed. “Cary is hiding something,” she said. “The more I learn about him, the more I have this feeling that he knows more than he’s letting on.”

  Unfortunately, Jessi didn’t have much luck. She spent over an hour on her family’s computer, using the Internet to try to track down Ben Birch, based on what Golem had told me about where he had come from and where he lived now. But she couldn’t turn up a speck of information. Which only underlined my impression that Ben Birch was a shady character.

  Claudia spent an hour or so at the library on Tuesday night, checking through old issues of the Stoneybrook News. Why? Because she remembered something Officer Hopkins had said on the day we found the bullet casing at Reinhart Golem’s house. Officer Hopkins had mentioned Sergeant Johnson’s knowing the layout of Reinhart Golem’s place because he’d once worked on another case there. Claudia wondered if finding out more about that case would help us understand this one. Instead, the information she found made her even more confused.

  “It turns out that a couple of years ago Sergeant Johnson started to investigate Golem for being involved in smuggling or something like that,” Claudia told me when she called that night. “But the investigation was dropped because it turned out there was ‘no cause’ for it.”

  “Weird,” I said. “What kind of crime would Reinhart Golem have been involved in?”

  “That’s the point,” said Claudia. “I guess he wasn’t. But somehow Sergeant Johnson thought he was. Maybe he has something against Golem. Anyway, the incident must have made Sergeant Johnson look pretty bad. He might still be angry about it.”

  “Angry enough to stage a big burglary?” I asked, guessing at Claudia’s thoughts. “That doesn’t sound like the Sergeant Johnson we know.”

  “Maybe we don’t know Sergeant Johnson as well as we thought we did,” said Claudia.

  At the time, I thought she was being overly suspicious. But after what I saw — or rather what I didn’t see — the next day, I had to agree with her.

  Late Wednesday afternoon, the phone rang. It was Reinhart Golem, calling with another tidbit of information for our investigation. He couldn’t tell me why, he said, but he’d heard from a “reliable source” that the police were now almost sure that the stenciled cat was a forgery. He also told me that the phone call to the security guard had been traced to a cellular phone, but that whose phone it was had not been established. While I was on the phone with Golem, I heard the call-waiting beep. I switched to the other line. It was Sergeant Johnson, asking if I could come down to the station to answer a few more questions. I told him I could, then switched back to finish up with Golem. I told him where I was going and promised to keep my ears and eyes wide open for clues. He reminded me about the reward he was offering — as if I needed a reminder!

  Sergeant Johnson met me in the lobby of the police station. He looked as if he hadn’t been sleeping well. “Hi, Kristy. Thanks for coming,” he said as he led me to his office. When we arrived at his door, he stood there for a second, scratching his head.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I could have sworn I left this shut,” he said, pointing to the open door. Then he shrugged and ushered me inside, closing the door behind us. I sat down and he perched on the edge of his desk. Folding his arms, he looked at me intently and started firing questions at me, even though I didn’t have a parent present. What had I told Sergeant Winters the day of the burglary? Where exactly was it that I had found that bullet casing? And the marker — where had we found that?

  He seemed to be preoccupied with those points, and I didn’t understand why. Then, suddenly, it became clear. I was looking at his desk as we talked, and I spotted something that gave me chills. Three somethings, to be exact. Markers, just like the one Mary Anne had found at Reinhart Golem’s. A green one. A yellow one. A black one.

  But no red one.

  And the set belonged to Sergeant Johnson. That’s when I knew Claudia was right. We didn’t know Sergeant Johnson as well as we thought we did.

  I cut the interview short then, telling Sergeant Johnson that I had to hurry to our BSC meeting. I was so confused that I didn’t want to spend another second in that office. He tried to ask me a few more questions about Sergeant Winters and Officer Hopkins and what they’d asked me about him, but I told him I didn’t have time to talk. Finally, he agreed to let me leave.

  As we walked down the hall, guess who we bumped into? Sergeant Winters and Reinhart Golem.

  Sergeant Johnson looked irritated. “Why is this man here without my knowledge?” he asked Sergeant Winters. “This is my inves
tigation. If you’re going to talk about it, you need to clear it with me first.”

  Sergeant Winters looked irritated too. “Excuse me, Sergeant. All I was doing was briefing Mr. Golem on the status of the investigation. He is, after all, the victim of a break-in and apparent burglary.”

  They shot angry glances at each other.

  I looked at Golem. “Hi there, Kristy,” he said. “We meet again.” He gave me a little smile as if to assure me that everything was okay.

  But everything wasn’t okay. Something very strange was happening, and I didn’t understand it — or like it — at all.

  “Are you sure?” asked Mary Anne. She looked upset. “They were really the exact same kind of markers?”

  I nodded. “None of us wants to believe it, Mary Anne. You know I like Sergeant Johnson as much as anyone. But there’s a lot of evidence pointing to the fact that he —”

  “Don’t even say it,” she said, covering her ears.

  I’d left the police station only half an hour earlier, and now I was in Claudia’s room, in the middle of a BSC meeting. I’d been filling my friends in on what had happened during my meeting with Sergeant Johnson.

  Stacey put an arm around Mary Anne. “We can’t ignore evidence just because we like somebody,” she said gently. “Good detectives have to be totally impartial. And if we want to solve this case and win that reward money, we’re going to have to be really good detectives.”

  Claudia passed Mary Anne a miniature Butterfinger bar. “Eat this,” she suggested. “It’ll make you feel better.”

  Absently, Mary Anne peeled back the wrapper and took a bite. “I wish I’d never found that marker,” she said softly.

  “It’s not just the marker,” I reminded her. “There’s the bullet casing too. I know the testing is inconclusive so far, but still. And then Claudia found out that Sergeant Johnson had investigated Golem. Plus, everyone else seems to suspect him.”