Claudia and the Clue in the Photograph

  “Oh,” I said. “Now I get it.” I blushed. We had definitely gotten more than a little carried away. At least I hadn’t called Sergeant Johnson yet. That would have been pretty embarrassing.

  “Cheer up,” said Janine. “Your reasoning may have been flawed, but your persistence is admirable. Keep it up! You may still figure it out.”

  “Thanks,” said Kristy, looking depressed.

  “Yeah, thanks,” echoed Mal.

  “Claudia,” said Janine, “aren’t you supposed to be studying for that test?”

  I nodded and glanced at my math book. I had been stuck in the middle of a hard problem before Mary Anne called me, and I wasn’t too eager to go back to it.

  “I’d be glad to help you,” said Janine. “Let me know when you’re ready.” She left the doorway, heading for her room.

  For a second, nobody spoke. I think we were too embarrassed.

  “We should go,” said Mary Anne finally. “We don’t want you to flunk that test.”

  “Sorry for the false alarm,” I said.

  “That’s okay,” said Kristy. “Hey, don’t you want to see the finished album before we go?” I could tell she was trying to cheer me up.

  “Sure,” I said. We sat down on my bed and looked at what they’d put together that day. You know what? It was terrific. And seeing it did cheer me up. The cover had this great drawing: a map of Stoneybrook, with all the familiar places — downtown restaurants, the schools, our houses — drawn in. The title was written in a banner across the top, in what I recognized as Vanessa’s best handwriting: A Day in the Life of Stoneybrook — An Album for Dawn.

  And the pictures inside were perfect. There was something special about each one. “This is bound to make Dawn miss Stoneybrook so much that she’ll hop on the next plane home,” I said, closing the album. “You guys did a wonderful job.”

  My friends left after that, taking the album with them. And then Janine and I hit the books. She is great at helping me with my studying. By the time we had read through three chapters, doing all the problems along the way, I felt prepared for my test. The only weird thing was that Janine seemed kind of distracted. She was fidgety, and she wouldn’t look me in the eye. I thought maybe she felt bad about having to break the news to us that our “proof” wasn’t proof at all. Then again, maybe she was having boyfriend troubles. You never can tell with Janine. And anyway, I didn’t have the energy to wonder about it. One mystery at a time is enough for me.

  On Sunday morning, I woke up early. And as I lay there in my bed, watching a branch wave in the breeze outside my window, I thought about a dream I’d been having just before I woke up. In the dream, I was in my darkroom. Only it wasn’t my regular patched-together, tiny bathroom-darkroom. It was a super-cool professional darkroom with every possible piece of equipment, and plenty of room for everything. In the dream, I was working at this huge enlarger, printing a picture that was as big as one of my walls.

  I don’t know what the picture was of. I only know it was huge.

  I smiled as I thought of it, wishing I really could print pictures that big. You’d really be able to see every detail if you blew up a photo like that.

  Then, suddenly, I sat bolt upright in bed. Every detail. That was it! If we really wanted to use our pictures to solve the bank mystery, we’d have to be able to see every single detail of those photos. And blowing them up was exactly what I had to do. Of course, I couldn’t blow them up as big as the picture in my dream, because I didn’t have the equipment for that. But I could blow up parts of every picture — the parts that mattered.

  I jumped out of bed and threw on my bathrobe. Then I headed downstairs and had a quick breakfast. The house was quiet, since nobody else in my family was up yet. After I’d stuck my cereal bowl into the sink, I ran back upstairs and changed into an old pair of jeans and my Sea City T-shirt. Then I sat down at my desk and grabbed a piece of cardboard. With my fattest, reddest magic marker, I printed DARKROM IN USE across it, and then held it up to admire my handiwork. Finally, I’d remembered to make that sign. It was important to put it up before Janine woke up and barged into the bathroom.

  Then I did one last thing before heading into the darkroom. I called Kristy. “I think I’m onto something,” I said. “A whole new way to look at the pictures. And I may need help — or at least a few more pairs of eyes. Can you call everybody else and ask them to come to our meeting early tomorrow? Like, at two o’clock? If we figure anything out, we’ll want to have time to go to the police station.”

  Kristy agreed to let everybody else know, but she sounded doubtful about my new idea. “We’ve been over those pictures every which way, Claud,” she said, yawning. I’d woken her up. “But if you think we might find something new, I guess it’s worth a try.”

  After I hung up, I grabbed my negative files and headed into the darkroom, taping up the sign on my way in. I set up my equipment and started right in to work. I worked for hours, printing picture after picture. I made blown-up copies of every photo I could. (I could only do the black-and-white ones, of course.) Then, when the prints were nearly dry, I brought them out into my room and stuck them up in long rows along the walls. I paced back and forth, looking at each one. There was Mr. Zibreski, walking in front of the bank. There was the lady with the baby carriage. I examined each one closely.

  My mother tapped on my door at one point to ask if I wanted some lunch, but I told her I was busy. I didn’t feel hungry at all: I was too involved in my work.

  But there was a problem. No matter how carefully I started at the pictures, I still couldn’t find any new clues. I needed more detail. At one point, as I was pacing around the room, I nearly stumbled over my camera bag. And that’s when I had my next big brainstorm.

  I pulled out my camera, checked to make sure I had film, and started clicking away. What was I taking pictures of? Well, this might seem crazy, but I was taking pictures of the pictures. It was the only way to focus in on parts of the photos I thought might give us some clues. I put my camera very close to some of the photos and shot pictures of smaller areas within them. When I developed the film, I would be able to blow up those areas even bigger. It may sound complicated, but it was really very simple.

  As soon as I’d finished the roll, I rushed back into the darkroom to develop it. And by the time the film was finished, the day had flown by and my dad was calling me downstairs for supper. I tore myself away from the darkroom and tried to act normal while I ate with my family. Then, after supper, I forced myself to stay out of the darkroom and spend one last hour with my math book. I hadn’t forgotten about my test.

  * * *

  By one o’clock on Monday, I was back in the darkroom, the math test behind me. (I was pretty sure I had passed, thanks to Janine’s help.) Quickly, I made prints from the new negatives, again blowing them up as much as I could. Then I hung those pictures underneath the pictures I’d hung up the day before. Now one whole wall in my room was totally covered with photographs.

  I started to look them over, but I had only checked out two or three of them when my friends started to show up. “Wow,” said Kristy, when she walked into my room and saw the display of photos. “You’ve been working hard.”

  “I guess I have,” I admitted. I had been totally obsessed with printing those pictures, so obsessed that it hadn’t even seemed like work.

  “Look at how much more you can see,” said Stacey, gazing at a picture of the lady with the baby carriage. “I can even see the baby’s foot in this one. It’s poking out from under the blankets.”

  “How cute,” said Mary Anne, sighing.

  “I never noticed before how Mr. Zibreski has a little bald spot,” said Mal, giggling a bit.

  “This is great,” said Shannon, after she had walked up and down the room and looked at each photo. “All the pictures are here, and they’re all in order. Plus, you’ve blown up each one to show the most important details. If we don’t find any new clues this time, there aren’t any to be foun
d.”

  “Well, that was my idea,” I admitted. “I was hoping we could take one last look, just to be sure we didn’t miss anything the other times.”

  And that’s exactly what we did. For the next fifteen minutes, there was total silence in my room as my friends and I pored over the pictures, hunting for a clue, any clue that might help us solve the mystery once and for all.

  “What about the ring this woman is wearing?” Jessi asked finally. She was looking at a blown-up picture of the lady with the baby carriage. “Is that some kind of secret symbol?”

  Mal peered at it. “Oh, that’s one of those Irish wedding rings,” she said. “You know, two hands holding a heart? I think they’re really pretty.”

  “But it’s not a clue,” said Jessi, shaking her head.

  “Neither is the baby’s blanket,” said Mary Anne, “but I have to say that it’s really neat how somebody embroidered all those animals on it.” She had her nose pressed up to one of the pictures.

  “Let’s be serious,” said Kristy. “I mean, I think we really need to examine these pictures of Mr. Zibreski. After all, Sergeant Johnson did say that he was under investigation.”

  We clustered around the pictures of Mr. Zibreski and concentrated on them. We looked closely at his pockets — both the ones in his pants and the ones in his jacket — to see if money could be hidden in them. We checked to see if he could be hiding money under his shirt, but he was too slim for that. We even peered at his eyes, to see if he had “that guilty look,” as Stacey said.

  Nothing.

  Then, all of a sudden, I noticed something interesting. “Look,” I said. “In this picture he’s looking at his wristwatch. And in the next one, he’s checking the bank clock, as if he wants to be sure he has the right time.”

  “So?” asked Kristy. “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Why is he wearing a wristwatch, when he carries that big pocket watch?” I asked.

  “Whoa!” said Stacey. “Good point.” She bent to look at the picture more closely. “I always thought there was something interesting about that banker’s watch he carries,” she added.

  “Interesting?” asked Jessi in a strange voice. “You could say that. Check it out, guys,” she went on. “The time on the pocket watch never changes, even when the time on the bank clock does. What could that mean?”

  “That the pocket watch is a fake!” yelled Kristy.

  “I’ll bet he’s hiding something inside it. Something that has to do with the robbery,” said Shannon. “A — a microchip or something.”

  Suddenly, out of the blue, I remembered a conversation I’d had in the bank one day with Charlotte. “Or,” I said, realizing that the case was about to fall together, “a key.”

  “A key?” asked Mary Anne.

  “That’s right,” I said. “I’d bet anything that he has a key in there. A key to a safe deposit box, where he’s hidden the money he took. He must have known the police would search his desk and his apartment, but he figured they’d never look inside his watch. That’s probably why he was so cooperative — he thought he’d outsmarted the police!”

  “Claudia!” Kristy said, looking at me admiringly. “You’re a genius. That’s it! What else could it be?”

  “Let’s take these pictures down to the police station right this minute,” said Stacey, starting to pull them down off the walls. The rest of us helped, and within a half hour we were all sitting across from Sergeant Johnson, in that same room with the same orange plastic chairs. Only this time, there was one big difference.

  Mr. Zibreski was in the room with us.

  The police had been in the middle of questioning the banker one more time when we arrived. When we showed Sergeant Johnson the pictures, he nodded. “Very interesting,” he said. “This might just be the final piece of evidence. I’ll take them in and show them to our suspect. I think this might lead to a confession!”

  “If it does, we want to be there!” said Kristy, putting her hand over the pictures and looking stubborn.

  Sergeant Johnson didn’t look pleased, but he thought about it for a minute. Finally, he brought us into the room with Mr. Zibreski and asked us to explain what we thought the pictures meant.

  I was so nervous I thought I’d pass out. But I took a deep breath and started to explain how the pictures proved that the watch wasn’t working. “See?” I said, pointing to the pictures I’d laid out on the table. “The second hand on the clock is moving in this shot, and in these — five, six, seven …” Then I pointed to the part of the super-enlarged pictures showing Mr. Zibreski’s watch. “But the second hand on the watch just stays absolutely still.” I looked up at Sergeant Johnson, and he gave me a little nod and a smile. “That’s how we figured out that the watch doesn’t work at all, and that there must be some other reason why he —” I looked at Mr. Zibreski. “Why you were still carrying it.”

  Sergeant Johnson looked over at Mr. Zibreski, too. “May I see the watch?” he asked.

  Mr. Zibreski unhooked it from the chain and handed it over without a word. He looked terrified.

  Sergeant Johnson pried open the back of the watch, and something fell out, making a jingling noise on the table. My friends and I leaned in for a closer look.

  It was a key.

  “All right, all right,” said Mr. Zibreski suddenly. His voice was gravelly, and sounded strained. “Is it a confession you want? Well, here it is. Check box five twenty-eight. The money’s all there.”

  “All of it?” Sergeant Johnson asked coolly. He never seemed to get excited. Personally, I was about to jump out of my chair, and I could tell my friends were, too, but I knew we had to let Sergeant Johnson handle the situation his own way.

  “All of it,” said Mr. Zibreski, sounding tired now. “I haven’t spent a penny.”

  And that was that. A few minutes later, two police officers came in and led Mr. Zibreski away. (I actually felt kind of sorry for him — he looked miserable.) Sergeant Johnson thanked us and told us he’d be in touch, and we left the police station.

  Out on the street, we let loose with all the excitement that we’d built up in that little room. We jumped around, screamed, and gave each other high fives. “He was clever, that Mr. Zibreski,” I crowed. “But he wasn’t clever enough.”

  Hours later, when I finally went to bed, I slept better than I had in weeks. For the first night in what seemed like a long time, I didn’t have to worry about Mr. Zibreski being after me. The case was closed, and he wasn’t going to be around for a long, long time.

  “ ‘Savvy Teens Find Key to Bank Mystery.’ How about that? My daughter’s famous,” said my dad, peering over the newspaper at me the next morning as I sat down to breakfast.

  “I love that headline,” said my mom, passing me the jelly. “And the article is terrific. The police gave you girls practically all the credit for solving the case.”

  “I know,” I said. “Isn’t it great?”

  “Well, it’s great that it worked out,” said my mother, frowning. “But I would have been worried if I’d known what you were up to. Playing detective can be dangerous.”

  “Oh, Mom,” I said. “We were careful. All we did was figure out clues from those pictures we took.”

  “Your deductive reasoning, though flawed at times, proved fruitful in the end,” said Janine. She helped herself to some toast. I noticed she still wasn’t looking me in the eye.

  “I guess that photography class is really paying off,” said my dad.

  “It sure is,” I said. “But you know what? We might have solved the case a lot sooner if some of my pictures hadn’t been ruined.”

  “Ruined?” asked my dad. “How?”

  Janine and my mom looked at me curiously.

  “Oh, just a mistake I made,” I said. There was no way I could tell the truth. My parents would never let me “play detective” again if they knew about what had really happened. I thought for a second about how scared I’d been that day when somebody opened the darkroom
door, but I shrugged off the feeling. The main thing was that Mr. Zibreski had been caught, and now I was safe.

  The article mentioned that Mr. Zibreski had been squirrelling money away for some time. Apparently, he couldn’t stop worrying about his “retirement years,” and stole money so he could be sure he’d have plenty when he was older. Reading the article, I realized he must be a very troubled person, and I was glad to know he’d be in prison for quite a while. I wouldn’t have to worry about him following me, and he would get the help he needed.

  After breakfast, I headed upstairs to get ready for summer school. Just as I was putting on my earrings — a pair I’d made out of green beach glass — I heard a tentative knock on my door. “Claudia?” Janine called softly. “May I come in?”

  “Sure!” I said, opening the door for her. “What’s up?”

  Janine came in and sat down on my bed. Instead of answering me, she stared at her hands.

  “What is it, Janine?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”

  “No,” she said, finally. “Well, I mean, yes — but …”

  “Janine!” I said. “Spit it out!”

  “It’s just that I — I have a confession to make,” she said after a long pause. She blushed and looked down at her hands again.

  “A confession?” I asked. “About what? Did you rob a bank, too?”

  “No,” she said, smiling a little. “But I did do something wrong, and then I compounded the error by refusing to admit it.”

  “Huh?” I asked.

  “I should have told you this a long time ago,” said Janine. She took a deep breath. “I was the one who opened your darkroom door that day.”

  “I knew that,” I said. “Remember? You apologized all over the place.”

  “No, not that day. The second time.”

  “Ohhh!” I said. Duh. I finally realized what she was trying to say. “That was you?” I asked. “I was sure it was Mr. Zibreski, trying to ruin my film on purpose.”