A Spy Among the Girls

  Coach Malloy's ragged eyebrows shot up high on his forehead as he turned to his daughters. “Who wrote this nonsense? Who's been using my computer?” he asked.

  “I did, Dad. I wrote that for a science experiment that Jake and Josh and I were doing for school.”

  “And you gave it to Mrs. Weymouth's daughter?” he asked incredulously.

  “We made copies and put one in the coat pocket of everyone from second to sixth grades,” said Beth.

  “I helped,” added Caroline, eager to share the spotlight with her sisters.

  “What are you talking about?” asked Mrs. Malloy, standing up and going over to read the note herself. “What abaguchie? Do you mean to tell me that while your father and I were in Morgantown today, you girls were entertaining practically the whole school here at our house?”

  “Not exactly,” said Beth. “We kept them outside.”

  “Except when we took them one at a time into the garage to see the abaguchie—which,” Caroline added grandly, “was played by Caroline Lenore Malloy.”

  “And only thirty-two students showed up,” said Eddie. “I wanted to prove that boys are more gullible than girls. It was a people study, just as you suggested, Mom. Josh and Jake and I recorded the data.”

  Mrs. Malloy sank back down on a chair and closed her eyes.

  “What we need to know, girls, is whether Lorie came over here, whether she was with anyone, and about what time she left,” said the officer.

  “I'll get my data sheet,” Eddie said quickly, and went up to her room. She was back in a moment with her notebook.

  “Yes, I wrote down that she was the twenty-ninth person to come. So I'd guess she was here about…oh, four o'clock,” Eddie told them.

  “Was she alone?” asked the officer.

  “I'm not sure because I don't remember her exactly,” said Eddie. “Beth, do you?”

  Mrs. Weymouth looked as though she was on the verge of tears. She pulled a photograph of her daughter from her purse and showed it to Beth and Caroline.

  “She was short and sort of giggly, with long, straight brown hair,” Beth said, nodding.

  The policeman looked concerned. “What we want to know is what happened to her after she left here. We've got an eight-year-old girl who hasn't come home on a cold winter afternoon.”

  Lorie's mother started to cry again.

  Mrs. Malloy looked desperately around at her daughters. “Think!” she said. “Did the girl come alone? Did she leave alone?” She turned to Eddie and Beth. “I can't believe you did this without our permission. Without even mentioning it to us!”

  “I'm sorry,” Eddie said in a voice so soft that it didn't sound like Eddie at all.

  “I wouldn't have known where Lorie went at all if I hadn't found this slip of paper beside her books,” Mrs. Weymouth said, wiping her eyes. “Her brother, Dave, is out collecting for the Scouts’ canned food drive, but he didn't leave any note about Lorie.”

  “Tom Hatford's a part-time sheriff's deputy, and I've got him out looking for Dave,” the policeman said. “But I need to know more about Lorie's coming here. Was she alone?”

  “No, I remember now,” said Beth. “She was with another girl, I think. Well, they were talking together in line, anyway. I'm not sure if they came together or left at the same time.”

  Eddie checked the list again. “Only eleven girls showed up, and I got all their names. The name before Lorie's is Jackie Maynard, and the name after is Sara Hill.”

  “I think Jackie's in her class. I haven't heard her mention Sara,” said Mrs. Weymouth.

  “I'd like to use your phone, Coach,” the officer said.

  “Please,” said Coach Malloy, motioning toward the wall phone in the kitchen.

  While the officer looked up the Maynards’ number, Caroline, Beth, and Eddie sat under the stern scowl of their father. Caroline dreaded the moment the officer and Lorie's mother left, because she knew her dad was ready to explode at her and her sisters.

  The pieces of KFC lay uneaten on the table. The biscuits were growing cold.

  The officer closed the phone book and dialed a number. “Busy,” he said, and put the phone down.

  While everyone waited for the officer to try again, Coach Malloy erupted. “You girls knew you shouldn't be trying a stunt like this or you would have told us about it. You deliberately set this up on a day we'd be out of town.”

  Eddie, on the verge of tears, stammered, “I just thought y-you and Mom wouldn't like it because…

  well, it was sort of a trick. We were making kids think we had a live abaguchie here when we didn't. I didn't think anything could happen to someone just walking over to our house.”

  “Well, right now we don't know that any harm has come to Lorie. But it is winter; it gets dark early, and we're concerned,” the officer said.

  The minutes ticked on. The officer tried the number again, and again it was busy. Mrs. Weymouth pulled out another tissue and dabbed at her eyes. Caroline thought about the short, straight-haired girl named Lorie walking back down to the swinging bridge after she'd left the Malloys’. She imagined an abaguchie, or whatever the real animal was, lurking in the brush on the other side. Imagined its sharp teeth tugging at her leg as Lorie stepped off the bridge. Caroline felt sick to her stomach. She would never eat Kentucky Fried Chicken again.

  And then her mother's voice intruded. “I don't know what to say, girls. All I know is that when we lived in Ohio, you didn't seem to get in half as much trouble as you do here. Jake and Josh, you said, were in on this project too. Now, I'm not saying who is most at fault, but I think it's time you let the Hat-ford boys go about their business and you go about yours. I want you to be friendly to them at school, but they shouldn't be coming over here anymore, and I don't want you going over there. I just think things will be better all around that way.” She stud ied her daughters in disappointment and slowly shook her head. “The first order of business, however, is to find Lorie Weymouth. And we will find her, if our family has to walk the streets all night looking for her.”

  Ten

  New Rule

  Tom Hatford put down the phone and reached for his coat. As he thrust his arms into the sleeves, he looked at his sons, who were playing a video game in the living room, and called, “You know anything about the Malloy girls trapping the abaguchie over at their place?”

  Jake went on moving the joystick, trying to push Josh's car off the screen. “Ha! They couldn't trap an ant if they sat on it. All they had in their garage was Caroline acting crazy and a picture of an abaguchie that Josh drew.”

  “What for?” his father asked.

  “It was just for an experiment Josh and Eddie and I are doing for our science project. To see who's gullible enough to fall for it,” Jake said.

  “Did you have anything to do with a secret message sent to a third-grader named Lorie Weymouth, about seeing the abaguchie at the Malloys’?”

  “Heck, no. Caroline stuffed those messages in everyone's coat pocket at school before we ever heard of the project,” Josh said.

  “Well, it turns out that Lorie's missing, and the sheriff wants me to find her brother. He's out collecting canned food for the Boy Scout food drive. Mrs. Weymouth came home and found her daughter missing, and she's pretty worried. We want to talk with the brother.”

  “Oh, Tom, you're going to miss dinner again. Can I send a sandwich along?” called Mrs. Hatford from the kitchen.

  “No, I'll eat when I get back,” Mr. Hatford said.

  He went outside, and Wally listened to the Jeep driving off.

  “What do you think happened to her?” Wally asked his brothers.

  “I don't even know Lorie Weymouth,” said Jake.

  “If she was there, her name should be on our data sheet,” said Josh.

  Peter was watching Jake's and Josh's cars collide on the screen. “Maybe the abaguchie got her,” he suggested.

  “Shut up, Peter,” said Jake.

  Josh, however, put down his
joystick and went into the dining room to get his notebook. He went down the list of names he had recorded along with Jake and Eddie. There it was, near the end of the list: Lorie Wey mouth. He showed it to his brother.

  Wally walked over to the living room window and stared out at the river in the dark. There was nothing but blackness at the bottom of the bank, except where the streetlight shone on the water, and that glistened gold and silver. Anybody who had come looking for the abaguchie that afternoon should have been home long before this. Unless, of course, she had slipped off the swinging bridge and disappeared under the water. Or a kidnapper had picked her up. Or the real abaguchie had got her, as Peter had said.

  Mrs. Hatford came into the living room, a fork in one hand, a potholder in the other.

  “Lorie's mother must be frantic,” she said. “What exactly were the Malloy girls doing?”

  “They stuffed secret messages in coat pockets to lure kids over there, and then Jake and Josh and Eddie wrote down their names and what grades they were in to see who showed up,” Wally explained, because his mother was looking directly at him.

  “You mean you boys were there while all this was going on?”

  “Well, sure. We were part of the project, weren't we?” said Jake. “But all the kids I know of went home afterward. I didn't see any girl hanging around.”

  Mrs. Hatford leaned against the doorway. “Why is it that whenever you boys and the Malloy girls get together something happens? I'm sure plenty of things happened when the Bensons were here that I never heard about, but I must say, the things those girls dream up take the cake! I think it would be a good idea if you'd just leave them alone and do your own projects. Stay on this side of the river from now on. Okay?”

  “Fine with me!” said Jake, but Josh didn't answer. Peter looked desperately over at Wally after Mrs. Hat-ford had gone back in the kitchen.

  “No more cookies?” he asked.

  “No more cookies,” Wally answered. What he felt was that he didn't know how he felt. There were plenty of times in the past six months when he could not have been happier if he had been told he'd never have to deal with Caroline again. But now that Mrs. Hatford had actually told them not to cross the swinging bridge—to hear it suggested that they couldn't treat the girls like sisters, with snowball fights and jokes—well, that wasn't exactly what he wanted to hear either.

  It was Josh, however, who was upset.

  “Next Monday is Valentine's Day,” he said. “I've got a box of Whitman's chocolates for Beth, and I'm not about to give them to her at school in front of everybody.”

  “Tough,” said Jake. “We'll help you eat them.”

  Mrs. Hatford put dinner on the table and called the boys to the kitchen. It was meat loaf and potatoes and green beans, but Wally didn't feel very hungry. He didn't really know Lorie Weymouth, but he knew who she was, what she looked like. It was a strange feeling to think he might be one of the last persons to have seen her alive. At that very moment, in fact, a stranger might be choking her.

  “Ulp,” went Wally as a bite of meat loaf slid down his throat unchewed.

  “Maybe we should go help look for Lorie,” Josh said as he pushed a slice of meat loaf from one side of his plate to the other.

  “You will stay right here in this house unless your father needs your help,” Mrs. Hatford told him. “The sheriff is out looking too, as well as the Buckman police, and as soon as they locate Lorie's brother, perhaps we'll learn something more. Eat your green beans, Peter.”

  But Peter put his hands behind him and stared down at his plate. “I'll be sad if I can't go to the Malloys’ house anymore,” he said. Then he added, “Beth makes good cookies.”

  “Well, I make cookies too sometimes,” said his mother, a little peeved. “You boys survived before the Malloys came here and you can get along without them now. The Malloys aren't the only kids in Buckman.”

  Dinner was over, dessert eaten, and Josh and Jake were doing the dishes when they heard their father's Jeep coming home again. The boys were waiting by the back door when he walked inside, and Mrs. Hatford came out to the kitchen to warm his plate in the microwave.

  “Did they find her, Tom?” she asked.

  “Safe and sound at a friend's house. Seems Lorie talked a friend into going to the Malloys’ with her, and afterward the friend invited her to stay for dinner. She called home and told her brother, and he was supposed to leave a note for their mother but forgot. Everyone's home now and accounted for.”

  “Thank goodness!” said Mrs. Hatford.

  Mr. Hatford took off his coat and sat down as the microwave dinged. “That was some fool idea, though, to invite half the kids in Buckman over to the Malloys’ and then tell them to keep it secret. All kinds of things can happen to kids when their folks don't know where they are. I wish you boys hadn't got mixed up in that so-called experiment.”

  “Well, don't worry,” Mrs. Hatford said, “because I've told them not to go over there anymore. Every time our kids and the Malloy kids get together, it seems there's trouble. Let the boys stay on this side of the river and the girls on the other, and maybe we'll have some peace and quiet around here.”

  But on the way upstairs, Josh whispered to Wally, “I'm getting that Valentine's candy over to Beth no matter what.”

  The following day, Sunday, after church, the Malloy girls stayed on their side of the river and the Hat-fords stayed on theirs. It was one of the most boring afternoons Wally could remember, and he realized with a jolt that the reason was because there was no point in wondering what the Malloy girls were up to, because the answer would be “nothing.” He consented to play Monopoly with Peter because there was noth ing else to do. He even let Peter put a hotel on Park Place.

  They were sprawled on the floor of Wally's bedroom, all Wally's money on one side of the board and Peter's on the other, when Josh stopped by.

  “Hey, Peter,” said Josh. “Tomorrow's Valentine's Day, you know it?”

  “Uh-huh,” said Peter. “We're having pink-and-red cupcakes at school.”

  “Good for you,” said Josh. “I've got a problem, though. I bought a box of chocolates for Beth, and Mom doesn't want me to go over there. I'll give you a quarter to deliver it for me.”

  Peter shook his head. “Mom doesn't want me over there either.”

  “But your delivering the candy wouldn't be the same thing as my delivering it,” Josh said. “Mom wouldn't get mad if you just did what I asked you to do.”

  “She'd get mad no matter who did it,” said Peter.

  “Tell you what,” Josh went on. “All you have to do is take the box over to the Malloys’ and leave it on their porch, between the front door and the storm door. You don't even have to ring the bell or anything. Just leave it, okay? And I'll give you a quarter.”

  “Okay,” said Peter.

  He went downstairs and put on his coat and cap, pulled a mitten out of each pocket, then took the yellow box with the big red ribbon and looked it over. There was a handmade card in a handmade envelope taped to the box. It had pieces of red and pink and sil ver tissue paper pasted on it in unusual shapes, Beth's name in gold, and little red sparkles all over the envelope. Peter shook the box. He smelled it.

  “Go, Peter!” Josh commanded.

  Still studying the box in his hands, Peter slowly went down the front steps and across the road to the swinging bridge.

  Eleven

  Gift

  Beth had baked two chocolate hearts, one for Josh and one for her father. Coach Malloy had eaten his, but Beth was going to wait until after dark, when no one would see her, then leave Josh's heart on his front porch and ring the bell.

  “This is boring!” Caroline complained to her sisters as the girls sprawled on Eddie's bed, resting their chins on their hands. “If we can't have anything to do with the Hatfords again, we might as well go back to Ohio. I mean, what have we ever found to do in Buckman that's as exciting as hanging out with the boys?”

  “That's the prob
lem with us,” Eddie told them as they looked out the window toward the Hatfords’ house. “There's lots to do in Buckman—we just haven't gotten involved.”

  “I've been involved! I had a part in the community play!” Caroline said, failing to mention that she was sick the night of the performance. “But I still think doing stuff with the Hatfords—doing things to the Hatfords—has been the most fun of all.”

  “So do I,” said Beth in a soft voice, a dreamy voice— and, Caroline noticed, a decidedly sad voice. “But there's got to be more than just leaving a chocolate heart on Josh's porch. I'm going to find a way to be with him if I have to run away to do it.”

  Both Caroline and Eddie turned and stared at Beth.

  “You wouldn't!” said Eddie. “Run away from home over a boy? Over a Hatford ?”

  “Over Josh, I would,” Beth said determinedly.

  “But where would you go?” asked Caroline. Oh, this was wonderful! Beth was actually talking about forsaking her family and home for the boy she loved! How Caroline wished it were she who was thinking of running away—she who would do something really romantic! She just had to make Wally Hatford fall in love with her, if even for five minutes. “Where would you live?” she questioned.

  Now it was Beth's turn to stare. “Live? Why, right here, of course! I didn't mean I would run away to somewhere. I just meant run off for the day to be with Josh for a while.”

  “Hey!” said Eddie. “Do you see what I see?”

  Beth and Caroline looked toward the window again.

  “Somebody's coming across the swinging bridge,” said Beth. “It looks like…like…”

  “Peter!” said Caroline. “No one in Buckman takes as long to cross that bridge as Peter Hatford.”

  “Or finds so many excuses to stop.” Eddie laughed.

  They studied the young boy standing at the cable handrail, watching the water flow under the bridge.