Claudia and the Clue in the Photograph

  “Hold on, Kristy,” she said. “This could be important.”

  I turned up the volume, and we all listened.

  “A recent surprise audit has uncovered a major deficit in the bank’s holdings,” the reporter said, sounding very serious. I wasn’t exactly sure what she meant by that, but as she kept talking, it became pretty clear. There was a ton of money missing from the bank, and no way to explain why.

  “Hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Mallory whispered, echoing the reporter’s words. “I can’t even imagine what that much money looks like.”

  The reporter went on to say that the police had already ruled out the possibility of “transaction error” (Stacey said that meant, like, if a clerk had put ten too many zeros after a number or something), and that the bank’s video cameras showed no signs of a robbery or forcible entry. Then she said that the bank was asking for anybody with information or tips to call a special number. Then the bulletin ended, and Billy Blue came back on, in the middle of singing “I’m Lost Without You.”

  This time, I was the one to reach over and turn the radio off. Kristy looked at me in amazement. “That was big news,” I said. “I mean, that could be our money that’s missing.”

  “Do you have an account at that bank?” asked Shannon.

  “Well, no,” I admitted. “But I might have opened one, if I ever decided to save my money. Anyway, I was just thinking — wouldn’t it be wild if there was a clue to the crime in one of those pictures I took on Sunday? I mean, I must have shot a zillion pictures of that bank.”

  “Oh, Claud, you’ve been watching too many late-night movies,” said Stacey.

  “There is a movie about something like that happening,” Mary Anne said thoughtfully. “I can’t think of the title, but it’s about this photographer who takes a picture of a murder — by mistake, I mean. He only finds out about it later, when he develops the pictures.”

  “See?” I said. “It could happen.”

  “Sure it could,” said Kristy. “But it doesn’t seem too likely. I mean, we don’t even know when the crime took place. It’d be a major coincidence if it happened last Sunday.”

  “Kristy’s right,” said Stacey. “I mean, this isn’t Nancy Drew and the Mystery of the Bank.” She poked me in the side and giggled. The rest of my friends joined in the teasing, but I tried not to pay attention.

  “I don’t care what you all say. I’m going to develop that film — tonight,” I said.

  And that’s exactly what I did, right after dinner that evening. Janine was out with Jerry, and she wasn’t due home until pretty late that evening, so even though I hadn’t gotten around to making that DARKROOM IN USE sign for the bathroom, I knew it would be safe to develop film in there. I set everything up, stuck the towel under the door, and turned out the lights. I was only developing one roll of film. The other roll, which only had a few bank pictures, was still in my camera. It didn’t take long to load the film in the tank, and once that was done I turned the lights back on and got to work with the chemicals.

  When the film was finished, I hung it up to dry. I could tell that the pictures were all clear and that the developing had gone well, but I wouldn’t be able to get a good look at them until the film was dry and I could make a contact print. I left the darkroom and got to work on my math homework. Then I had a snack (some Fritos, with a Three Musketeers bar for dessert) and read a few chapters of The Clue of the Tapping Heels, one of my all-time favorite Nancy Drew books. I think I must have read that one about four times, but I still love it.

  Finally, at around ten-thirty, I figured the film must be dry. I knew my parents wouldn’t be crazy about my working in the darkroom that late, but I couldn’t resist going in to make a quick contact print.

  A contact print is a great way to look at negatives. Here’s how you make it: You just lay the negatives down on a piece of photographic paper, shine some light on them, and then develop the paper. In order to see what you’re doing during this kind of work you use a “safelight” — a red light that doesn’t ruin pictures. I just replace the bulb in the bathroom light with a special red one. When you’re finished, what you have is a print of the negatives that you can look at with a loupe, so you can tell which shots might be worth enlarging.

  My heart was beating fast as I made the contact print and developed it. Then I hung it up to dry — but I was too impatient to wait. Even though it was still damp, I brought it out to my desk and started to peer at each picture through the loupe. I examined them one by one, and by the time I finished, my heart wasn’t beating so fast anymore.

  The pictures didn’t show a thing.

  Oh, there were some great shots of the bank’s facade, with its columns and carvings. And there were a few people in the pictures, too: a mother pushing a baby carriage appeared in a lot of them, and so did a man in a suit. But that was it. What a let-down.

  * * *

  The funny thing was this: During our meeting, my friends had been teasing me about the slim possibility of clues turning up in my pictures. But guess who showed up at my house as soon as I got home from summer school the next day? Kristy, Mary Anne, and Stacey. They couldn’t wait to see what I’d found on the roll of film. “Not much,” I told them, showing them the contact print. One by one, they peered at the pictures through the loupe.

  “You’re right,” Kristy said, after her turn. “Not much at all.”

  “I wonder how old the baby is,” said Mary Anne, after she’d looked.

  “That guy must be a banker,” joked Stacey when she was done. “He has one of those banker’s pocket watches. You know, the kind that fastens to your belt with a chain?”

  “If he’s a banker, why isn’t he in the bank?” asked Kristy.

  “I was only kidding,” said Stacey.

  Kristy took one last look at the pictures, and shook her head. “Drat! I was really hoping we’d get some clues,” she said, smacking her fist into her palm.

  “Oh, well,” I said. I tried not to show how funny I thought it was that my friends had gotten all excited about the pictures, after teasing me for my interest. Instead, I decided to distract them. “Weren’t we going to buy some new stuff for our Kid-Kits?” I asked. “Why don’t we head downtown right now?” And that was that. We left about three minutes later, without a backward glance at that disappointing contact print lying on my desk.

  It was an absolutely gorgeous Friday afternoon. Blue sky, white puffy clouds, the whole bit. Hot, but not muggy. Just a perfect summer day.

  Stacey was sitting for Jamie Newton and his baby sister Lucy while Mrs. Newton visited with an aunt who had just gotten home from the hospital.

  “I have something for you,” Jamie said to Stacey. She was sitting on the front porch, keeping an eye on Lucy, who was bouncing in her baby seat. Jamie stood on the bottom step, his hands behind his back.

  “You do?” asked Stacey, smiling. Jamie is one of our favorite charges. He’s four, and he’s as cute as a puppy. In fact, at that moment Stacey couldn’t help but think of puppies when she looked at Jamie. He had this sweet, hopeful look in his eyes, just like a puppy who’s angling for a treat. “What is it?” Stacey asked.

  Jamie pulled a bunch of flowers from behind his back. “These!” he said. “I picked them myself!”

  Stacey stared at the flowers, horrified. This was not a handful of dandelions or clover blossoms. This was a big bunch of flowers — with roots still attached!

  “Jamie!” said Stacey. “Where did you get those?”

  “From the flower patch, over there,” Jamie said, pointing toward the huge, colorful flower bed that Mrs. Newton is so proud of.

  “Oh, Jamie,” said Stacey. “I love the flowers, I really do. But flowers need to stay in the ground.”

  Jamie looked crestfallen.

  “Come on,” said Stacey, giving him a hug. “I’ll help you tuck them in.” She lifted Lucy out of the baby seat, carried her over near the flower beds, and put her down to crawl in the grass. Then she
got to work replanting the flowers Jamie had pulled up. She stuck each one back into the ground, hoping that they would live. Then she watered them carefully and sat back to look. If Mrs. Newton didn’t check too closely, she might not notice the few wilted blooms amid her thriving plants.

  “I’m sorry, Stacey,” said Jamie. “I just wanted to give you a present.” He frowned and rubbed at the chicken pox scar on his cheek. Jamie and Lucy both had chicken pox not that long ago.

  “That’s okay, Jamie,” said Stacey. She glanced over at Lucy, who was busy pulling up grass. Lucy peered back with an innocent, Who, me? look in her eyes. Stacey sighed. The Newton children seemed to be determined to destroy their yard that day. “How about if we take Miss Lucy Jane for a walk in her stroller?” Stacey asked Jamie. “We’ll go visit Claudia. She’s baby-sitting for Charlotte Johanssen, around the corner.”

  “Yay!” said Jamie. “Claudee!” Jamie’s always called me that.

  Lucy smiled broadly, showing all four of her teeth. She knows what “walk” means, and she loves her stroller.

  Stacey grabbed her backpack, stuck an extra bottle and a diaper in it, and left a note for Mrs. Newton. Then they were off. At first they went slowly, since Jamie insisted on pushing the stroller. “Lucy only likes it when I push,” he said. After a half-block, though, he was distracted by a beetle crawling on the sidewalk, and Stacey took over.

  When the three of them arrived at the Johanssens’, they found Charlotte and me out in the driveway, along with Becca, who had come over to visit. We were taking turns bouncing a little red rubber ball and playing this game I had taught them.

  “A my name is Alice and my husband’s name is Al,” said Charlotte, bouncing the ball. “We come from Alabama, and we sell — uh — apples!”

  Then Becca took over. “B my name is Bertha and my husband’s name is Bart. We come from — from Bermuda, and we sell baseball bats.”

  “My turn!” I said. I was having a great time. “C my name is Claudia,” I said, grinning while I bounced the ball. “And my husband’s name is Carl. We come from California, and we sell cardigans!”

  “Good job, Claud,” said Stacey, applauding. She had snuck up on us, and now she and Jamie stood clapping while Lucy grinned from her stroller. “But couldn’t you have thought of something more creative to sell? Like canaries, maybe? Or cannonballs?”

  “Cats!” shouted Jamie.

  “Chipmunks!” yelled Becca, giggling.

  “Clarinets!” said Charlotte. “Clouds! Cocoa Puffs!” She and Becca shrieked with laughter.

  I laughed and bent to give Jamie, who was also doubled over with giggles, a hug. “Good to see you guys,” I said. “What are you up to?”

  “We’re taking a walk!” said Jamie.

  “Great idea,” I said.

  “We want to walk, too,” said Becca. “Let’s go somewhere.”

  Stacey and I exchanged looks and shrugs. Both of us were sitting for the whole day, so it didn’t matter much what we did. “I’ve been carrying around some penny rolls,” she said, “and I’m tired of my backpack being so heavy. We could drop them off at the bank, and then maybe walk around town a little.”

  “Let’s go! We can window-shop,” said Becca.

  “Shop for windows?” asked Jamie. “I don’t want to buy any windows.”

  Giggling again, Becca explained what she’d meant.

  “We could get ice cream, too,” said Charlotte, licking her lips.

  Stacey checked to make sure Lucy’s diaper was dry and that she was comfortable in her stroller. I went inside and left a note for Dr. Johanssen, Charlotte’s mother. (We always leave notes, even if we don’t expect the parents back for hours.)

  We set off for town, with each of the three kids taking turns pushing Lucy’s stroller. Lucy dozed off immediately, and Jamie kept himself busy counting everything — cracks in the sidewalk, cars in driveways — everything. As we walked, Stacey and the girls and I played the “A My Name is Alice” game some more. We were getting sillier and sillier.

  “G my name is Gertrude,” I said, “and my husband’s name is Gus. We come from Germany, and we sell giraffes.”

  “H my name is — is — is Heather,” said Becca, “and my husband’s name is Harry. We come from Honolulu, and we sell hangers.”

  By the time we reached downtown Stoneybrook, we’d been all the way through the alphabet and we were back at B again. Charlotte and Becca really lost it when Charlotte said her name was Bettina and that she and her husband Bob, who were from Baltimore, sold boogers.

  “Okay, okay,” said Stacey, trying to calm them down. “That’s enough now. It’s time to go into the bank, so let’s quiet down a little, okay?”

  Charlotte and Becca had one more explosion of giggles, but then they grew serious. “Is this the bank all the money is missing from?” Charlotte asked, looking up at the fancy facade. I nodded. Charlotte is a smart little girl, and she doesn’t miss much. I realized she must have overheard Stacey and me when we mentioned the bank mystery during the walk downtown. Charlotte turned to Becca. “Let’s be detectives,” she said. “Quick, put on your disguise.” She turned the baseball cap she was wearing backward and grinned at Becca. Becca pulled a pair of sunglasses out of her pocket and stuck them on.

  The three kids went through the revolving door — pushing it around and around until a guard gave them a sharp look — while Stacey and I maneuvered Lucy’s stroller through the regular doors. Then I waited with the kids while Stacey stood on line to turn in her penny rolls. I looked around, wondering how it could be possible for such a well-guarded bank to be robbed.

  “Look at all the policemen!” Jamie said, his eyes round as he checked out the guards.

  “They must have extra because of that money disappearing,” said Charlotte.

  Of course! Charlotte was right. There probably were more guards than usual.

  “Look at that big cage over there,” said Charlotte. “What’s that for?”

  I turned to see what she was looking at, and saw the vault for the safe-deposit boxes. The iron bars on the gate in front of it did look like a cage. I explained to Charlotte how safe-deposit boxes work, something I’d learned from going to the bank with my father. “People can rent those boxes to keep valuable things safe,” I said. “You get your own key, and what you put in your box is your own private business. It’s like a miniature safe.” Charlotte thought that sounded pretty neat, and said she might get a safe-deposit box someday to keep her favorite Barbie in.

  Just then, Becca-the-detective poked Charlotte. “Don’t look now,” she said, “but there’s a very suspicious character over by the table there.”

  “Where?” asked Charlotte, looking around immediately.

  “I said, don’t look!” said Becca. “Never mind. He’s gone already. But keep an eye out. I bet he’ll be back. He had this big black mustache, and I’m sure it was fake.”

  While the girls stayed busy playing detective and I stayed busy watching Jamie and Lucy, Stacey waited in a long line. I saw her tapping her foot impatiently as she waited. The next time I looked, she was at the head of the line. And the next time I looked, she was hurrying toward us, her face bright red.

  “Come on,” she said, pulling me along. “Let’s get out of here. I’m so embarrassed.”

  “What happened?” I asked her, once we were back out on the street with our charges in tow.

  “You won’t believe it,” she said. “Remember that man in your pictures? The one in the suit, who I said was a banker?”

  I nodded.

  “I was only kidding, but it turns out that maybe I was right! He was standing behind the counter, talking to one of the tellers. I was so surprised to see him that I dropped two of my penny rolls on my foot. My toe is killing me!” She paused. “Anyway, once I finally put my rolls back together and gave them to the teller, the man was gone. And the teller must have thought I was nuts.”

  Just then, Lucy stretched in her stroller and began to whimper.
Charlotte and Becca, bored with playing detective, started to talk about going for ice cream, and Jamie joined in. So Stacey and I took them to the Rosebud Café and bought them each a cone. Then, just as we were about to head home, Stacey remembered that the kids’ pictures from Sunday might be ready, so we stopped at the camera shop. They were ready, and fortunately Stacey had the BSC treasury with her, so we paid for them with the money the kids’ parents had given us. (They’d all been happy to donate a few dollars to our project.)

  We spent the rest of the afternoon back at Charlotte’s house, looking over the pictures (there were some terrific ones) and talking about how to put together the book for Dawn. Suddenly the project was really starting to take shape, and we were all feeling pretty excited about it. That afternoon, I forgot about the mystery at the bank, and so did Stacey and the kids. The mystery was still just that — a total mystery. It was much more fun to think about our project.

  “Look at this one,” said Jessi, with a giggle. “Can you believe the face Jordan is making? You’d think he was having a tooth pulled at the dentist’s, instead of just having a trim at the barber’s.”

  “He hates haircuts,” Mal said. “Always has. That picture says it all.”

  My friends and I were gathered in my room on Monday afternoon, and our BSC meeting was just about to start. While we waited for Kristy to call the meeting to order, we listened to the radio and leafed through the pictures the kids had taken during our Day in the Life of Stoneybrook. There were so many good ones! It was going to be hard to decide which ones to include in our album.

  Oh, sure, there were a few mistakes. Vanessa had taken a whole series of pictures featuring a giant thumb, for example. Mal explained that Vanessa would spend ten minutes setting up a “perfect” shot, and then forget to keep her fingers out of the way at the last minute. And Buddy’s roll included several totally black frames — he’d forgotten to take off his lens cap for those. Charlotte had a habit of chopping people’s heads off when she photographed them, and Becca wasn’t too sure how to focus.