Baby-Sitters Beware Read online

  Right?

  Everyone piled into the station wagon and the van again, and then we were off. As we neared Shadow Lake, I was relieved to see snow on the ground. At least there was some snow for skiing, even if it was old.

  Then Karen shrieked, “Shadow Lake! Sixteen miles!” We turned off the main road. We drove through a little town and then headed more or less uphill on a winding two-lane road.

  And then we turned off that road and bumped down an even smaller road. A few minutes later, a big house with a porch that wrapped all the way around it came into view.

  “That’s a cabin?” I asked. I should have known that a “cabin” that could hold all the Brewer-Thomases and friends (including every member of the BSC) had to be huge. We walked into a big room with a fireplace, which was the kitchen, dining area, and living room all in one. Doors to the right and left of the living room led to two dormitory-style bedrooms, each with six bunkbeds in it. One room was for the girls and one was for the boys. Bathrooms were at the front end of each of the dorm rooms. Two small bedrooms and a bathroom were also at the far end of the living room.

  The cabin was big, but pretty basic. There were braided rag rugs on the worn wood floors throughout the cabin. In both dorm rooms were tables made of dark wood, and white bureaus. Patchwork quilts were folded neatly at the foot of every bed. Windows lined the outer walls of the dorms, looking out from beneath the eaves of the porch and into the woods.

  It wasn’t late, but suddenly, I found myself yawning as widely as Andrew had been. I realized I wasn’t the only one. Karen’s eyes were drooping behind her glasses, and David Michael was rubbing his eyes with his fists.

  We might have stayed up, anyway. But Watson, entering the cabin with a suitcase (which he put down before Kristy could swoop in and grab it), said, “Whew! That’s it.”

  “I’m tired!” Kristy said, suddenly and firmly. “I think we should turn in, catch some Zs, try for an early start.”

  “But …” Charlie began.

  Kristy gave him a fierce look. I realized that Kristy was worried about Watson’s overdoing it.

  Fine by me. “I’m tired, too,” I announced. I stretched and yawned.

  Stacey and Claudia caught on, too. “Early to bed, early to rise and ski,” said Stacey cheerfully.

  Claudia said to Karen, “Lovely Ladies need their beauty sleep.”

  Karen nodded.

  Charlie shrugged. “Okay.”

  We sorted out our luggage and claimed our bunks (Karen went for a top bunk, but the rest of us stayed low).

  I was shocked at how dark it was when the lights went out. No houses nearby to give off light. No street lamps. No traffic signals.

  No noise, either. Silence. Silence and darkness.

  Good thing we left that mystery back in Stoneybrook, I thought sleepily. Or I might be pretty scared.

  I yawned one more time and fell asleep.

  * * *

  First thing after breakfast the next morning, we decided to go exploring. Karen and David Michael wanted to go skating on Beaver Pond, a small pond near Shadow Lake that freezes over in the winter. Shadow Lake is so big and so deep in some places that it hardly ever freezes enough to be safe for ice-skating. Mrs. Brewer had decided to go with them. Mr. Brewer was taking Andrew to the bunny slope for some skiing, even though, as Kristy put it, the snow was so old it would probably wrinkle under your feet.

  I could tell Kristy was disgusted with the lack of new snowfall, and I shared her feelings. (It wasn’t cold enough to make snow yet.) I could live with old snow, if I had to, but I was willing to hold out a little while longer for some of the new stuff.

  Charlie had found an old pair of snowshoes he wanted to try out. He and Sam spent most of breakfast arguing over them, until Watson pointed out that they could rent another pair at the lodge.

  We all walked to the lodge together. I noticed that Sam had fallen into step with Stacey. “Ravishing here, isn’t it?” Sam said to Stacey. Then for some reason, they both started laughing.

  “Oh, brother,” I heard Kristy mutter.

  We split up when we reached the lodge. Kristy stood for a moment, watching Watson walk toward the ski rentals, hand in hand with Andrew. Watson was carrying his own skis, but Andrew didn’t own any yet. He’d only been skiing once before.

  Even though it was early on a Saturday morning, the lodge was jumping. We went to the information desk to see if they had any maps for hiking trails around Shadow Lake.

  “Snowshoeing?” the woman behind the information desk asked. She was wearing a royal blue shirt with the words Shadow Lake Lodge Staff embroidered on the pocket in white.

  “No, walking,” Kristy replied.

  “Ah. Well, you’ll need to stay on pretty packed trails, then,” the woman said. She rummaged around in a drawer and pulled out a map. She marked several trails with a pen. “These are good and packed. They’re nice, not-too-long hikes.”

  “That one takes you to a waterfall,” said a voice behind us.

  We turned and saw a college-age guy with dark brown eyes and short, neatly cut, dark brown hair. He was holding a pair of snowshoes under one arm.

  “Thanks,” said Kristy.

  “I’m Woodie Keenan,” he said. “Have you been here long?”

  “Just since last night,” Claudia said.

  “Most people come up here to ski,” he commented.

  “We’ll be skiing,” I said. “Probably this afternoon.”

  “Could I have some help here?” a voice asked crossly. We looked around to see a tall, thin man with a thin mouth and thinning brown hair standing near the entrance of the lodge. He wore a patch over one eye, which, with his mean expression, made him look sinister.

  “Of course, Mr. Federman.” A young blond man with a Shadow Lake Lodge Staff shirt hurried over to him. “What can I do for you?”

  Mr. Federman scowled harder and pointed to a large package on the floor. “When I asked for this to be delivered to my cabin, I meant my cabin — not the front porch of the lodge,” he said.

  “Nice guy,” I remarked.

  Woodie Keenan was frowning. But all he said was, “Yup. Well, see you later.”

  “The waterfall?” suggested Stacey.

  “Yes,” said Claudia. “Let’s do it.”

  We were almost out the door when a short, red-haired woman burst inside. She collided with me, and we both fell backward. She dropped the bag she had slung over one shoulder.

  I bent to pick it up, but she grabbed it before I could hand it to her.

  “I’ve got it!” she said sharply.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to bump into you,” I said.

  “It’s all right.” The woman looked over her shoulder, then around at all of us. She hurried to the information desk without another word.

  “My key. Is it here?” she said breathlessly.

  “I don’t know. What’s your name, please?” asked the clerk.

  “Kris Renn. Ms. Kris Renn. Kris with a K, R-E-N-N.” Kris Renn looked over her shoulder again.

  “And you are from?” the clerk prompted, her pen poised above the registration forms.

  “Uh, New England. Uh, Maine,” said Kris Renn. “You know. Portland.”

  The clerk didn’t seem to notice Ms. Renn’s agitation. She filled in the form calmly, then pushed it across the desk for Ms. Renn to sign.

  “You like to ski?” the clerk asked pleasantly.

  Ms. Renn said, “It’s very popular in the winter here, isn’t it?”

  “It certainly is,” said the clerk. She gave Ms. Renn the key.

  Ms. Renn snatched it up and looked wildly around. I saw her look past where we were standing. I thought she appeared startled. Or maybe — afraid?

  I turned quickly, but all I saw was the back of a man, climbing into one of the lodge cars.

  When I turned back around, Ms. Renn was hurrying out one of the side doors of the lodge.

  “You know,” I remarked, “for people who are on vacation,
some of these guys are way too tense and weird, if you ask me.”

  “Hey, it’s not our problem,” said Claudia. “We’re here to have fun, remember?” Her voice had an edge to it.

  “True,” I said. I lowered my dark glasses. “Let’s hit the trails.”

  Insulation equals isolation. At least, that seemed to be Mal’s new philosophy of life, as I discovered when I reached the Pikes’ house on Saturday morning. I could hear hammering and other construction (and presumably insulation) related sounds coming from the attic when I arrived. I was greeted in triplicate: the triplets, Adam, Byron, and Jordan, met me at the door.

  “Hi, guys,” I said. “Anybody home?”

  It was a weak joke, but they thought it was funny. After much eye rolling and snorting and elbowing of one another, they let me in.

  “Mal’s in her room,” said Adam. “She told us to keep an eye on things until you showed up.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. It’s not that I think the triplets, who are ten, aren’t capable of keeping an eye on the younger Pikes, namely, Vanessa (nine), Nicky (eight), Margo (seven), and Claire (five) in their own home with their parents on hand.

  But “keeping an eye on” isn’t the same as baby-sitting. Mal was not doing her job.

  “So where is everybody? Besides Mal, I mean?” I asked casually.

  “Watching TV,” said Adam. He added, “We were, too, but they wouldn’t let us watch wrestling.”

  “Wrestling is on at this hour of the morning?” The thought didn’t thrill me.

  “Yeah! The Man of Molten Iron is taking on the Brickhouse Brothers,” said Jordan enthusiastically.

  Byron didn’t say anything. He’s the quietest of the triplets, and I suspected he wasn’t as interested in wrestling as the other two.

  “Well, why don’t you go watch whatever it is the others are watching. I’ll join you in a minute, and we’ll think of something else to do.” A good baby-sitter does not just park her charges in front of the television. I had no intention of doing that to the Pikes. But I wanted to have a word with Mal first.

  Mal was sitting on her bed, the BSC notebook open in front of her and stacks of paper around her. She had stuck a pencil over one ear and a highlighter pen over the other.

  That stopped me for a moment. “Wow,” I said. “That looks like a bigger job than I thought.”

  “It is,” said Mal. “Huge.”

  “The triplets tell me they’ve been keeping an eye on things. ‘Things’ is everybody watching television.”

  “That’s nice,” said Mal. She took her pencil, wrote something on a piece of paper, put the pencil back, took the highlighter and highlighted it, then put the paper on a stack.

  “You want to help?” asked Mal in a not-very-encouraging voice.

  “No, thanks,” I said. “I have to baby-sit.”

  Mal knew what I was hinting at. But she didn’t respond. She just made another note on another piece of paper.

  I returned to the den full of Pikes. I was just in time. The triplets were playing catch with the remote control. The channels were flipping by at dizzying speed and the volume was set at full blast. Vanessa had set her hands on her hips and was stomping her foot. Margo and Nicky were leaping around the room trying to catch the remote in mid-pass. Claire’s face was very, very red and I knew it was a matter of moments before she began to shriek. Or cry.

  I made a grand jeté-save, grabbed the remote, and clicked off the television.

  The silence was deafening. Everybody looked at me.

  “Aw, what’d you do that for?” Jordan complained.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  Jordan made a face.

  There was a lot of pent-up energy in that room. Suddenly I had an inspiration. “How would you guys like to do some detective work?” I asked.

  “You mean play detective?” Nicky asked.

  “No, real detective work — if we can invite Becca over.”

  “I’ll call her,” said Vanessa instantly. She and my little sister, Becca, are good friends.

  While we waited for Becca to arrive, I filled everybody in on her sighting of the man with the blue tattoo. “Becca’s a little freaked out by the tattoo,” I said. “And my friends and I think he might be a man we helped catch and send to jail for being a counterfeiter.”

  “Neatsy,” said Claire. She wrinkled her brow. “What’s a count and fitter?”

  “Counterfeiter,” I corrected her. “That’s a person who makes fake money and then tries to use it like real money.”

  “Like Monopoly?” asked Claire.

  “Sort of,” I said. “But you can tell that Monopoly money isn’t real. The only thing it will buy you is Monopoly property. The man with the blue tattoo made fake money that looked real and then spent it. Only it wasn’t real, so the people who took it were cheated.”

  “Oh,” said Claire. I wasn’t sure she understood, but she seemed caught up in the idea of being a detective just the same.

  Soon Becca arrived. We told her about our plan to solve the Mystery of the Man With the Blue Tattoo. She didn’t exactly look thrilled, but, like Claire, she went along with the enthusiastic crowd.

  “Okay, triplets, you’re in charge of seeing that everyone is bundled up warmly enough. It’s pretty chilly outside. I’m going to get Mal and we’ll let your parents know where we are going.”

  Mal hadn’t moved from her spot on the bed.

  “Mallory Pike,” I said. “You are supposed to be helping me baby-sit. I know you’re mad because you didn’t get to go to Shadow Lake. But it’s not fair to sulk in your room and leave me to do all the work.”

  Mallory looked startled. “Oh!” she exclaimed. Then her cheeks reddened. “Was that what I was doing? I guess it was. I’m sorry.”

  “Good,” I said. “We’re going on a Blue Tattoo Manhunt, so come on.”

  Mal grinned sheepishly. “Okay,” she said.

  And that was that.

  A few minutes later, we were headed out the door. Mr. and Mrs. Pike, both of whom were wearing masks like the ones Abby sometimes wears on bad allergy days, were wrestling big pink rolls of insulation around the attic. They seemed almost relieved when we said we were going out. Mr. Pike gave us money, in case we wanted to get a pizza for lunch.

  “The bright side of insulation, I guess,” Mal remarked, putting the money in her pocket.

  Traveling with a large group of kids, especially the Pike kids, with triplets among them, is a guarantee that you will not be anonymous. (I was glad we weren’t trying to stake out Mr. Seger’s house!) And traveling with a large group of kids who are trying to be detectives is pretty daunting, both for the baby-sitters and for the unwary passersby.

  “Where was this tattoo?” I asked Becca.

  “On his face,” she said in a small voice. She squinted her eyes tightly shut for a moment.

  “Did it cover his whole face?” asked Vanessa, looking worried.

  “Was it a monster? Something good?” asked Jordan.

  “Oh, ick, you’re sick,” said Vanessa.

  “It wasn’t a monster,” said Becca. “I don’t remember. It was just blue, that’s all.”

  “We’ll find him,” said Nicky.

  That meant that every male passerby was subject to the full force of eight pairs of eyes, staring penetratingly at his face. And of course, Mal and I looked, too. We just tried to be more discreet about it.

  One man smoothed his hair back nervously. Another man with bushy eyebrows frowned menacingly. Several men pretended not to notice at all.

  Nicky was staring so hard that he walked into a fence. Fortunately, he wasn’t hurt.

  “Too bad it wasn’t wet paint,” said Adam. “That would’ve been cool.”

  Mal and I exchanged a glance while the triplets and Nicky snickered.

  When we reached downtown Stoneybrook, we divided the group into partners. When we passed the post office, Vanessa dragged us over to it so we could look at the wanted pos
ters. But the post office was closed.

  “I don’t think his poster would have been up in the post office, Vanessa,” I said. “Wanted posters are for people who haven’t been caught yet. And we don’t even know if this is the same guy.”

  “But he could be in there,” she insisted. “What if he is the same guy, and he escaped from jail, and he’s come back to Stoneybrook to get revenge?”

  Becca, who was Vanessa’s partner, suddenly looked very worried.

  I felt a pang of fear. This was too close to what we thought the burglars were doing — stalking the BSC.

  Quickly I said, “Well, it’s not the same guy.”

  Vanessa opened her mouth to argue but then Jordan said, “I think we should look in the hardware store.”

  “The toy store,” said Margo.

  “Toys,” echoed Claire.

  “Hardware,” said Vanessa. “Hammers and nails and insulation and pails.”

  Mal whispered, “See? It’s catching. Now Vanessa is making rhymes about insulation.”

  We split up to continue our search. Not surprisingly, no one saw a man with a blue tattoo in either the hardware store or the toy store, although the kids saw many, many other interesting things.

  Then Margo suggested we look for the tattooed man at the ice-cream shop.

  “No,” I said firmly.

  I looked at Mal. She patted her pocket. “We could look for him at the pizza parlor,” she said. “That is, if anybody wants to eat pizza for lunch.”

  The vote was loudly and unanimously in favor of continuing our search there.

  We chose the good old Pizza Express. Of course, the Pikes and Becca were already deep into the argument about what kind of pizza we were going to order before we even reached the counter.

  We stopped.

  Becca tugged on my arm so hard it almost came out of its socket.

  “Ow. What is it, Becca? What’s wrong?”

  She pointed. “It’s him!” she whispered. “It’s the man with the blue tattoo!”

  For the second time that day, all the Pikes were silent.

  We stared at the man behind the counter — not the one waiting to take our order, but the one making salad.