Mary Anne and the Silent Witness

  “Is your friend Steig coming over today?” she asked him at one point.

  Luke shrugged. “I don’t know if he’s allowed to play with me for a while,” he said. “After yesterday, I think his mom’s pretty mad.”

  That was the closest Luke came to a conversation. Meanwhile, Amalia was climbing all over Jessi, asking about her earrings, about her sweatshirt with a picture of a ballet dancer on it, and about the beads in Jessi’s braids.

  Eventually, Jessi suggested that they all go out in the backyard for a while. And it was during a game of catch back there that she found the empty tobacco package. “Luke,” she said, picking it up. “Do you know who this could belong to?” She tried not to sound accusatory, but she couldn’t help wondering if he and the Retlin boys had been lighting up more than rockets.

  Luke shrugged, but Jessi thought he looked nervous. “How am I supposed to know?” he asked defensively.

  “I thought maybe one of your parents smoked,” said Jessi.

  “No way,” said Luke. And that was the end of it. He wouldn’t say another word on the topic, and finally Jessi gave up and stuck the package into her back pocket.

  Later that afternoon, Jessi was out in the front yard with Luke and Amalia when Steig came over to talk to Luke. “I’m not really supposed to be over here for three days,” said Steig. “That’s my punishment. But I just came to tell you that.”

  Luke nodded. “At least it’s only three days,” he said, punching Steig lightly on the shoulder.

  “Hey, look,” said Steig. “It’s Fowler’s car!” He pointed to a black Cadillac that was cruising down the street, away from them.

  Jessi thought she saw Luke stiffen. And she wondered how Steig knew what kind of car Fowler drove.

  All in all, the notes from those two days ended up filling a lot of pages in the mystery notebook. But, as Kristy pointed out, even though the phone call, the matches, the tobacco package, and the car were all very interesting and made us suspicious, they weren’t what you could call evidence or clues. We were no closer to solving the mystery at the Martinez house, and we weren’t any closer to winning our fight with Fowler, either.

  “They what? Are you trying to tell me you were arrested?”

  I held the phone receiver away from my ear and grinned. It’s not often I get such a rise out of Dawn. Normally she’s so laid-back. “No, I wasn’t arrested,” I assured her after a second. “They just took me in for questioning, that’s all.”

  “For vandalism?” asked Dawn. “But that’s ridiculous. You wouldn’t vandalize anything!”

  “I know,” I said. “But even I have to admit that it looked pretty bad. There I was, standing in the woods, holding a brick in my hand.” I started to giggle. “I mean, what was that cop supposed to think?”

  “If he knew you, he’d think you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, which you were,” said Dawn.

  “I guess,” I replied. It was great to talk to my stepsister. She’d called that Friday night just to chat, and I’d ended up trying to fill her in on what was going on with Fowler, with Miller’s Park, and with our new clients, the Martinezes. I say trying, because it wasn’t easy. Everything was complicated and messy, full of loose ends and clues that didn’t add up.

  “So, let me make sure I understand,” said Dawn. “This Fowler guy is trying to ruin Miller’s Park. Which is, by the way, very bad news. I always loved that place.”

  She paused for a second, as if she were remembering how the park looked. I felt a twinge of gladness at the idea that she was a little homesick for Connecticut. Maybe if she misses it enough she’ll come back someday.

  “So the BSC has been trying to fight Fowler with letters to the editor,” Dawn continued. “That’s great! Do you think it’s working?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I guess we won’t know for sure until the town council meeting. That’s when everything will be decided, once and for all. And the meeting is, like, less than a week away!”

  “Whoa,” said Dawn. “That’s soon. Okay, we’ll go back to that in a second. Now, tell me again about this boy Luke and the fire at his house and all.”

  I repeated everything that had happened at the Martinezes’. The fire, the bottle rocket episode, Luke’s odd behavior — including his fear of Fowler’s car; everything.

  “So,” said Dawn, when I’d finished. “It sounds to me like what’s going on with the Martinezes might be related to Fowler. I don’t know how, but I bet it is. After all, he has a real motive for forcing them to move away. And I think Luke may know something, but it sounds like you can’t press him for information. Somebody else may be intimidating him, and you don’t want to add to that.”

  I couldn’t argue with her. For one thing, Dawn’s a good detective. For another, she was giving me an objective viewpoint, which is always helpful. Also, Kristy had said some of the same things. And finally, the fact was that I agreed with her. I believed that, somehow, Fowler was mixed up in the strange happenings at the Martinez house. He might even be responsible for the fire. As Dawn said, he had the motive. I just didn’t know how to prove it, and that made me angry. I hated to think of poor Luke feeling so threatened.

  “Okay,” said Dawn, “back to that meeting. It seems to me that what you have to do is find some real dirt on Fowler, something that will prove to the town council that he shouldn’t be allowed to develop Miller’s Park.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “And we have to act fast, too. There isn’t much time left.” If we were going to stop Fowler, my friends and I had to work fast. I said a hurried “Thanks-so-much! Miss-you! Bye!” to Dawn, hung up, and immediately called Kristy.

  “How about meeting me at the library first thing tomorrow?” I asked, before she’d even finished saying “hello.” “I think we have some work to do. Oh, and can you call some of the others?” I explained what I wanted to do.

  Kristy seemed a bit surprised at the way I’d taken charge, but she didn’t hesitate. “I’ll call Abby, Shannon, Jessi, and Mal,” she said. “You call Claudia and Stacey — and see if Logan wants to come, too. The more the merrier.”

  Good thing the Stoneybrook Public Library is open — and not too crowded — on Saturday mornings. We met on the front steps at about nine-thirty. Kristy made it, and Claudia (who was yawning and eating a jelly doughnut) and Stacey were both there. Mal and Jessi were sitting for Mal’s brothers and sisters, and Shannon was helping with a French club car wash, but Logan had come, and so had Abby.

  “So what’s the deal?” asked Logan, stretching. He looked sleepy and kind of cute, like a little boy who just woke up. His hair was sticking up in the back, as if he’d forgotten to comb it. “What are we here for?”

  “To find out whatever we can about Reginald Fowler,” I announced. “Hopefully that’ll include some dirt we can report to the press, to the Historical Society, and to the members of the town council.”

  “Anyone for a doughnut?” asked Claudia, passing around a bag. “They’ll help us think better.”

  “In that case, I’ll have two,” said Abby, reaching into the bag. “I’m not used to thinking at all this early on a Saturday morning.”

  The rest of us helped ourselves, too, except for Stacey, who had brought a banana.

  A few minutes later, we headed into the library’s reference room. We’ve worked there many times before, and not always on school projects. The library is a really good place to start when you’re investigating a mystery, and we’ve found important clues there more than once. At first, we weren’t sure where to begin, but Claudia’s mother, who is the head librarian, helped us out. Now we’re pros with the microfilm, the periodical indexes, and the card catalog.

  We started right in on the Stoneybrook News, using two microfilm machines to cruise through as many past issues as we could. We scanned the indexes, looking for Reginald Fowler’s name. Logan and I, working together, were the first ones to hit paydirt. “Check it out!” said Logan, flipping to an article from a
couple of years back. We read it, and then another related article from a week later, and then another.

  All of them were about a development project Fowler had tried to push through in the nearby town of Lawrenceville. Apparently, he had wanted to build a “townhouse community” that would include a mall, a huge superstore, and a gym, as well as a bunch of condos. The hitch? The tract of land he had picked out was what some people in the community thought of as an “unspoiled area” that ought to stay that way.

  The war was on. As we read through the articles one by one, the story unfolded. First, Fowler tried to convince Lawrenceville that the development was in the town’s best interests. Then the people who were opposing him brought in environmental specialists. Fowler brought in other specialists, who debated them. The townspeople held a huge rally. Fowler rounded up some “friends” who staged a counter-rally for the TV news. Finally, the townspeople proved that the land could be classified as a wetland and therefore as a protected area. At the same time, Fowler was accused of bribing town officials. Soon after, the charges were dropped and he disappeared, never to be heard from again.

  “All right!” I cried, as I read the last article. Logan held up his hand, and I gave him a high five.

  “Shhh!” said Kristy, from the other side of the table, where she and Claudia were working at another microfilm machine.

  “Oops,” I said, blushing. I’d forgotten where I was. Reading those articles had been like watching a suspense movie. I was on the edge of my seat, and I was thrilled when the good guys won. “Sorry,” I told Kristy. “It’s just that —”

  “Hold on,” she said, waving a hand at me. “We’re trying to concentrate here. There’s something funny going on.”

  “What is it?” I asked. I leaned forward. “More bribery accusations?”

  “No, his record seems clear here in Stoneybrook. It’s just that Fowler’s birthplace seems to vary in every article we’ve read about him,” she said. “I mean, in one interview he says he was born in Boston —”

  “— and in another they quote him as saying he was born in Winnetka, wherever that is,” Claudia added.

  “So?” I asked. “Maybe somebody just made a mistake.”

  Kristy shook her head. “No, there’s something fishy about it,” she said. “His birthdate is always the same: January second. But the place keeps changing.”

  “Look, here’s another one!” said Claudia just then, pointing to the screen. “Here he says he was born in Seattle!”

  Abby and Stacey, who had been looking through some books of Stoneybrook history, joined us. “What’s going on?” asked Stacey.

  Kristy and Claudia explained.

  “What if you go back to the earliest mention you can find of him?” asked Abby.

  Kristy held up a finger as she flipped through the indexes. “Okay, here it is,” she said. “Whoa! This one says he was born in Stoneybrooke, England.”

  “How totally weird,” Stacey commented. “Maybe he’s not even a U.S. citizen.”

  “No, he definitely is,” said Kristy. “He makes a point of saying so in every article.”

  “So — so maybe he was actually born in Stoneybrook, Connecticut,” I said. “How do we find out?”

  Logan snapped his fingers. “Hospital records,” he replied. “We used them once for a research project in social studies. They list all the births, going way back.”

  We made it over to the hospital in no time. On the way, Abby and Stacey told us they’d found something interesting in an old book about Stoneybrook. “Miller’s Park used to be called Carter Park,” said Abby. “Remember how Fowler called it that? I wonder if that means anything.”

  “It must,” I said. “I bet anything it means he spent time around here in the past.”

  Guess what? I was right. At least, I’m pretty sure I was. Here’s what we found out at the hospital when we looked at the records for the year Reginald Fowler was born: There were five babies born in Stoneybrook on January second of that year. Three of them were girls. The other two were boys — twin boys. Identical twins named John and Samuel Wolfer.

  Wolfer.

  Fowler.

  Same letters, different arrangement.

  Coincidence? I didn’t think so.

  It was Abby’s first time at the Martinezes’. She’d wanted to wait until the smoke smell had cleared away a little more, because of her allergies. And although she could still detect a lingering smoky odor in the house, it wasn’t enough to make her sneezy. But Abby wasn’t happy.

  She’d heard all about Luke from the rest of us, and she knew that we’d each tried our best to reach out to him, and that we’d each felt like total failures. She was determined to be the one to break down his defenses and find out what was bothering him. And, if she could do that, she was sure she could also find out what it was he knew and wasn’t telling. But first, she had to win his confidence.

  Abby had come prepared. She and the kids were sitting out on the front steps soon after she’d arrived, when she pulled something out of her backpack. “How about some cookies, kids?” she asked, showing them a container she’d brought. “My sister and I made these last night, and I thought you’d like some.” (Of course, Abby had checked with Mrs. Martinez to make sure it was okay to give the kids cookies for their afternoon snack.)

  Amalia’s eyes grew round when she looked into the container. “M-Ms!” she said happily.

  Abby laughed. “That’s right, they have M&M’S on them,” she said. “Go ahead, take a couple.”

  Amalia reached in with both hands and came up with a cookie in each. She grinned at Abby. “I love cookies,” she said in a gruff voice. “Me Cookie Monster!”

  Abby cracked up and reached out to hug Amalia, who hugged her back. Then Abby offered the cookies to Luke. He eyed them suspiciously. “I’m not hungry,” he said.

  “Not hungry?” Abby asked. “What does that have to do with cookies? Cookies are just for fun, whether you’re hungry or not!” She smiled at Luke, but he didn’t smile back. He did, however, reach in and pull out one cookie. Then he moved away from where Abby was sitting and nibbled on it thoughtfully, examining it now and then as if he thought it might be poisoned.

  Abby watched him and rolled her eyes. This was going to be harder than she thought. She saw him finish his cookie and held out the container. “Another, Luke? Aren’t they great? My mom’s famous secret recipe.”

  Luke, who had reluctantly agreed to another cookie, seemed to jump a bit when Abby said the word “secret.” She pretended not to notice.

  In the end, Luke ate four cookies and Amalia had three. Abby was pleased, even though Luke still wasn’t exactly acting friendly. She figured it was a start.

  She bent to put the container away.

  “Well, hey there, kiddies!” she heard. She looked up to see a pipe-smoking man approaching.

  “Who’s that?” she whispered to Luke.

  “Mr. Fontecchio,” he whispered back.

  Abby nodded. She remembered reading about a pipe-smoking neighbor in the mystery notebook. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Abby, the baby-sitter.”

  “And I’m Mr. Fontecchio, the neighbor,” the man replied, with a fake-sounding chuckle. “Just checking up on things,” he added. “I, uh, promised Mr. Martinez I’d keep an eye out, you know.”

  “For what?” asked Luke.

  “Oh, you know,” said Mr. Fontecchio, looking a little nervous. He took his pipe out of his mouth, examined it, and stuck it back in. “My brothers and I care about our neighborhood, that’s all.”

  “Sure you do,” said Luke, not even trying to hide a sneer. “That’s why you’re selling to — to that guy Fowler.”

  “Luke!” said Abby, surprised at how rude he was being. “Sorry,” she said to Mr. Fontecchio.

  He waved a hand. “No problem,” he said. “No problem at all.” Then he wandered off.

  “Why doesn’t he just go back to his house?” hissed Luke.

  “Isn’t that what
he’s doing?” asked Abby.

  “No, he lives over there,” Luke said, pointing to the house to the right of the Martinezes’.

  “Hmmm,” said Abby. It was true that Mr. Fontecchio seemed to be walking away from his house. And, as he walked, he appeared to be examining and inspecting everything he saw: every flower, every brick in the path, every tree. Abby thought his behavior was suspicious. “Does he always act — strange?” she asked Luke.

  Luke shook his head. “No — I don’t know,” he said, reverting to his usual unapproachable attitude.

  Abby thought about the fact that Mr. Fontecchio was smoking a pipe, and she wondered if he was the one who had left the empty tobacco package in the Martinezes’ backyard. Then she thought about why it was that Luke had run across the street to the Retlins’, rather than next door to the Fontecchios’, when the fire had broken out. After all, the Fontecchios’ was closer. Was there something about Mr. Fontecchio that frightened Luke? Or was it just that Luke didn’t like the man? Next, Abby thought about the settlement Mr. Fontecchio and his brothers were due to receive from Fowler. She realized that if the Martinezes held out and refused to sell, the whole development could be jeopardized — and the Fontecchios would never see their money. Were they the ones behind the fire? They certainly had a motive.

  “Abby!”

  Abby jumped. “What is it?” she asked Amalia, her heart beating fast. Amalia had practically yelled into her ear.

  “I want a drink.”

  “Oh, okay,” said Abby. “Let’s go inside and see what there is.” She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. Maybe it would be better to save the detective work for later. “How about you, Luke? Ready for a drink?”

  “I guess,” said Luke.

  They all headed inside, and Abby poured three glasses of grape juice. They sat down around the table. “I know!” said Abby. “I heard about a new game today. Want to try it?”

  “What is it?” asked Amalia eagerly.

  “It’s called ‘Secrets,’ ” explained Abby. She was winging it, she told me later, making up the game on the spot. It was really just another ploy to draw out Luke. “What you do is, um, you have to tell the person next to you a secret, something you’ve never told anybody else before.”