Stacey and the Mystery at the Mall

  “I guess their mom came for them?” I asked casually.

  Sarah wrinkled her brow. “I don’t think so. An older girl stopped by — maybe their sister? — and herded them out of the store. I heard her say something about naptime.”

  Five-ten: “Naptime,” said Kristy, when I met the others (who hadn’t found any sign of the kids in the bathrooms or Cinema World) and told them what I had heard. “Where would they go to take naps?” She thought for a moment. “It would have to be someplace quiet, someplace hidden away. I know! There are some empty offices back by security. Let’s check them out.”

  Five-twenty: After an extensive check of the offices and rooms near security, we had found absolutely nothing. Kristy led us through a maze of hallways that I had never known about, but every room was empty.

  “What are we going to do?” wailed Jessi, looking at her watch. “Our time is almost up.”

  “Naptime,” I muttered to myself. “Naptime.” Suddenly, I snapped my fingers. “I’ve got it!” I said. “Those mats the Exercise Shoppe donated for the day-care center! They’re piled up in the back room of our storefront.”

  Five-twenty-eight: We were off and running almost before I had finished my sentence. But as we approached the day-care center, its door and windows soaped up until the center was ready to open, Kristy held up her hand. “Hold on,” she said. “We better do this carefully, so we don’t scare them away. If they take off now, we’ll never find them in time.”

  She seemed so sure that they were in there. I wasn’t as positive, but I didn’t have any better guesses. “Do you still have the key, Kristy?” I asked.

  She nodded. “I’ve had it ever since the painting party,” she admitted. “I forgot to turn it in to Ms. Garcia.”

  “Good thing,” Charlie said. “Now, are there any nearby exits from the store?”

  “One,” said Mary Anne. “Down that hall.” She pointed.

  “I’ll head down there and guard the door,” said Charlie.

  “Maybe a couple of us should guard this one, too, while the others go in,” said Mary Anne. She and Jessi decided to stay by the door.

  Five-thirty-one: “It’s okay, we’re on your side,” Kristy was saying. She and Claud and I had opened the door as quietly as possible, tiptoed through the storefront, and entered the back room.

  There, sound asleep on the mats, were the two younger children. The older girl sat nearby, reading a copy of A Wrinkle in Time. She was the one Kristy was talking to. When we entered the dimly lit room, she looked up in alarm. There was no time for her to run, though, so she just stayed seated, staring up at us with frightened eyes.

  “Are you all right?” asked Kristy. “We were worried about you. We haven’t seen you in days.”

  “We’re — we’re fine,” said the girl. “How did you know about us?”

  “We’ve been working at the mall,” I explained. “And we’ve seen you around. I’m Stacey, by the way. This is Kristy and this is Claudia.”

  “I’m Mara,” said the girl. “And that’s Kyle,” she pointed at the boy, who was sitting up and rubbing his eyes, “and Brenda.” Brenda sat up too, and yawned. “I’m twelve, Kyle’s eight, and Brenda is six.”

  “And you live at the mall, right? Why?” asked Kristy bluntly.

  “It’s kind of a long story,” said Mara.

  “In that case, let’s go get the others,” I said. “They’ll want to hear it, too.”

  A few minutes later, we were all gathered in the back room, seated on mats. And Mara began to tell her amazing story.

  “We haven’t lived here for very long,” said Mara. “We used to live in those apartments over on Sycamore Street, with our mom. We never had much money, but we got along.” She swallowed. “But then Mom had to go to the hospital. And my aunt was supposed to come take care of us, but she never showed up. I didn’t want to worry my mom, so I just decided we could take care of ourselves. We did okay for a while, but then the money she left ran out, and the electricity got turned off, and the rent was due. I knew the landlord would be coming around, so we had to get out of there fast. This was the only place I could think of.” She blurted out her tale so fast my head was spinning.

  “We didn’t steal anything,” said Kyle, suddenly. “I mean, nothing we didn’t need, anyway. And we were going to pay the stores back as soon as we could.”

  “We didn’t steal big stuff, like Mr. Morton,” added Brenda. Mara shot her a warning glance.

  “You knew about him?” I asked.

  Mara nodded hesitantly. “But then he found out about us, too. He found us sleeping in the movie theatre one night. From then on, we sort of had an agreement. We wouldn’t tell about him if he wouldn’t tell about us. It really seemed like he wanted to help us, too. Anyway, it worked fine until last Tuesday.”

  “What happened then?” I asked, leaning forward. My heart was beating fast. Finally, the pieces of the puzzle were beginning to come together.

  “I guess he started to worry that we would tell on him. He kind of threatened us,” said Mara, looking scared again.

  “Yeah, but I showed him,” Kyle spoke up proudly. “I pulled the fire alarm and shut down the whole mall. That way we had time to find a bunch of new hiding places, so he could never find us.”

  “But what —” I began. I had about a million questions to ask them. Just then, I felt somebody tugging on my arm. It was Kristy. She pulled me away from the group and started talking in a low voice.

  “We have to call the police,” she said. “I know we might get the kids in trouble, but this is not something we can handle on our own. Anyway, Mr. Morton has to be stopped.”

  I glanced over at the three scruffy kids who were talking with my friends. I was kind of in awe of them for surviving on their own. But they needed help — more help than I could give them. I knew Kristy was right.

  “I, um, need to call my mother,” I said, when Kristy and I had rejoined the group. And it wasn’t a lie. I really did need to call my mom. She was planning to take me out to dinner, and she’d be wondering where I was.

  “I should call home, too,” said Mary Anne. “Kristy was supposed to come over for supper tonight. I better tell them we’ll be late.” She stood up to join me.

  “I’m hungry!” Brenda wailed all of a sudden. “I want dinner.”

  “Shhh!” whispered Mara. “We’ll eat later, when everybody’s gone.”

  “In the kitchen at Casa Grande?” asked Kristy. “I had a feeling you guys were the burrito banditos.” She was trying to keep the tone of the conversation light, but Mara still blushed a deep red.

  “We used their kitchen because it was the easiest to get into, out of all the places on the food court. We were going to pay them back as soon as we could,” she said earnestly. “And we always cleaned up after ourselves.” She looked down at her hands.

  Mary Anne touched her shoulder. “It’s okay, Mara,” she said. “Everything’s going to be okay.” Mara gave her a timid smile.

  “Let’s get these kids something to eat,” said Charlie, springing to his feet. “Do you like cheeseburgers, Kyle?”

  “Oh, wow,” said Kyle, grinning. “I love them.”

  “Great,” said Charlie. “And I bet you like fries, don’t you?” he asked Brenda.

  She nodded shyly. “With ketchup!” she said.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Mara said to Charlie. “We’ll get by. Really.”

  “No way am I missing out on a cheeseburger,” said Kyle, frowning at her. “I’m sick of burritos. Come on, Mara, please?”

  “Okay,” said Mara, nodding to Kyle. Then she turned to Charlie. “But we’ll pay you back as soon as we can. That’s a promise.”

  Charlie stuck out his hand, and they shook. Then he looked at me, and I knew he knew I was planning to call the police. “Why don’t you and Mary Anne go make your calls,” he said, “and we’ll meet you at Friendly’s. In, say,” he checked his watch, “fifteen minutes?” He gave me another Look, and I n
odded. He wanted to be sure I would let the police know where to come and when to get there.

  “See you!” I said, waving to everybody. “Better order me a grilled cheese. I’m starving. Oh, and Jessi, I’ll call your aunt Cecelia for you,” I added.

  “And I’ll have a cheddar burger,” said Mary Anne. “Well done.”

  Kristy pretended to write our orders on an imaginary pad. “Coming right up!” she said. “See you!”

  Mary Anne and I took off toward the phones near the main entrance. On the way, I explained what was up. She wasn’t surprised. “That’s what I thought,” she said. “I hate to do that to the kids, after they’ve put so much energy into surviving on their own. But the fact is, they need help.”

  When we reached the phones, we both called home first and explained that our dinner plans were off. Then I called the Ramseys, and then the police, which was one of the hardest things I ever had to do. “We’ll send somebody right out,” said the person who answered the phone. After that, Mary Anne and I ran over to Friendly’s.

  We found our friends and the three kids at a big round table. Kyle was taking huge, hungry bites out of a cheeseburger, Brenda was loading fries with ketchup and wolfing them down, and Mara was taking tiny, polite bites of a tuna fish sandwich, the cheapest thing on the menu. She looked up at Mary Anne and me and smiled — and then she looked past us and her body stiffened. I turned around and saw a policewoman approaching the table.

  Mara looked as if she wanted to take off running, but she held her ground. She shot fierce looks at Brenda and Kyle, as if warning them to let her do the talking. The policewoman pulled up a chair. “Are you Mara?” she asked. I had given the police her name.

  Mara nodded, looking frightened.

  “Don’t worry,” said the policewoman. “I’m Lieutenant Shay — you can call me Irene — and I’m here to help you.”

  Mara didn’t look convinced.

  “Why don’t you tell me your story?” Irene asked gently. “And then we can figure out what to do next.” She took off her hat and stuck it on Kyle’s head, which made him grin.

  Mara started talking, slowly at first. Then she built up steam and the words spilled out. My friends and I leaned toward her, listening as eagerly as we had the first time. I had never heard anything like the story Mara told. She added some details we hadn’t heard the first time: about how she and Brenda and Kyle had only moved to the area a few months ago, and hadn’t enrolled at school yet. That was one reason nobody had missed them. And how they hadn’t had a phone put in yet — because they couldn’t afford it — which was why their mother couldn’t call and had no idea that they weren’t in the apartment where she’d left them. They’d visited her a few times, using coins fished from the fountain for bus fare, but they never told her where they were living. “She was just so, so sick,” said Mara. “I couldn’t stand to add to her worries.”

  It turned out that the strongest force driving Mara to do what she did was her fear that if the child welfare people got involved, she and Kyle and Brenda would be separated. “But I guess now that’s going to happen anyway,” said Mara. She looked at me, and I knew she felt betrayed. She had probably figured out I was the one who had called the cops.

  Once she had finished telling Irene how she and Kyle and Brenda had survived in the mall, Mara stopped talking. Brenda filled in the silence with a little made-up song about her french fries.

  “Isn’t there something else you want to tell me?” asked Irene after a minute or so. She had been taking notes while Mara talked, and now she looked Mara in the eyes. “Something about the expensive merchandise that’s been disappearing at night? We know you didn’t take it — none of you looks strong enough to carry away a microwave, much less a treadmill. So what about it?”

  Mara looked trapped.

  “Don’t worry. Nobody will ever find out who told us,” said Irene.

  Mara mumbled something about Mr. Morton, and then began to speak more freely. Irene listened closely and took some more notes. Then she took her hat back from Kyle and stood up. “Time to go find Ted Morton, I think,” she said. A woman who had entered the restaurant a few minutes earlier and sat at a nearby table, stood up also, and came over to our table.

  “I’m Mrs. Peabody,” she said to Mara. “I’m a social worker with Stoneybrook Social Services. We want to help you. We have a car waiting outside. Will you come with me, please?”

  And that was the last we saw of Mara, Brenda, and Kyle. As the social worker led them away, Brenda waved a french fry at us, Kyle gave us a ketchup-smeared grin, and Mara looked at us with accusatory eyes.

  * * *

  “I guess my favorite day would have to be the day Benny — he’s the cook at Casa Grande — taught me how to make enchiladas,” said Logan. “I was surprised at how much fun it was. I’ve even been thinking lately that I might want to go to cooking school someday, and learn how to be a great chef.”

  It was a week and a day later, and we were gathered in Claud’s room for a BSC meeting. Claud had passed around a bag of Cheetos Paws, plus some cookies sweetened with fruit juice that are okay for me to eat. We were celebrating our last day of Project Work, and between calls from clients we were talking over what we had liked best about working at the mall.

  “I loved the BookCenter,” said Mal. “Maybe I’ll have a little bookstore someday. I could work there in the mornings, and write in the afternoons.” She looked dreamy.

  “I’ll run the bookstore in the afternoon,” said Jessi. “It sounds like a lot more fun than working in a movie theatre. Although I do have to say I enjoyed learning how to operate the projector.”

  Mary Anne showed us the present her boss had given her on the last day — a red collar for Tigger — and Claud brought out the paint set she had saved for and bought from the Artist’s Exchange.

  “My last day with security was pretty quiet,” said Kristy. “It seems as though the serious shoplifting has finally stopped. We met with the new mall manager today, and he’s excited about some plans he has for deterring shoplifters before they even start stealing. He’s a great guy — Mr. Buford, his name is — and he has some excellent ideas for the mall. Plus, he’s had lots of experience.”

  “What about Mr. Morton?” asked Shannon. “What’s going to happen to him?”

  Kristy frowned. “I guess he’ll have to go to court. It’s a shame, really. He did mean well.”

  “But I’ll never be able to forget how he threatened those kids,” said Mary Anne. “How could such a nice guy do such a rotten thing?”

  We sat there shaking our heads, puzzled.

  “And what about the day-care center?” Shannon asked. “Is there still going to be one?”

  “Oh, definitely,” I said. “April told me they hope to open within a few weeks. And guess who’s quitting his job to be the center’s full-time director? Mr. Williams, the guy from the Cheese Outlet.”

  “That’s great,” said Kristy. “He’ll be wonderful with the kids.”

  “Speaking of kids,” I said, “I haven’t told you all the best news. I called Mrs. Peabody today, over at Social Services? And it sounds like everything is working out just fine for Mara and Kyle and Brenda. The night they took them away, they contacted Mara’s mom in the hospital. She was almost ready to be released. Mrs. Peabody brought the kids over to the hospital and they had a really great reunion.”

  “So they’ll be living together again, back in their apartment?” Kristy asked.

  I nodded. “They’re going to get some assistance from Social Services, and the family will be getting some counseling, too. I felt so much better after talking to Mrs. Peabody. I mean, turning Mara in was incredibly hard — but now at least I know that was the right thing to do.”

  “Wait till I call Dawn and tell her about all of this,” said Mary Anne. Her eyes were brimming with tears. “It’s such a great story, with a ‘happily ever after’ for everyone.”

  “Everyone except Mr. Morton,” said Kristy. Sh
e looked at the clock. “By the way, it’s after six,” she said. “I think this meeting is adjourned.”

  “Then let’s call Dawn right now,” said Claud, diving for the phone. “I want to talk to her, too. Once she hears about our next Short Takes class, maybe she’ll come back home even sooner.”

  “What’s the next class?” asked Shannon.

  “Oh, it’s a great one,” I said.

  “It should be totally fun — and relaxing, compared to Project Work,” said Kristy.

  “What is it?” Shannon asked again.

  “Something everybody really needs, after six weeks of Project Work,” said Mary Anne. We all started to giggle, except for Shannon, who sat there looking bewildered. Soon we were laughing so hard it was impossible to talk, but I finally managed to squeak the words out. “Stress Reduction for Teens,” I said. Then I fell back onto the bed, gasping for breath as my friends and I laughed some more.

  The author gratefully acknowledges

  Ellen Miles

  for her help in

  preparing this manuscript.

  About the Author

  ANN MATTHEWS MARTIN was born on August 12, 1955. She grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, with her parents and her younger sister, Jane.

  There are currently over 176 million copies of The Baby-sitters Club in print. (If you stacked all of these books up, the pile would be 21,245 miles high.) In addition to The Baby-sitters Club, Ann is the author of two other series, Main Street and Family Tree. Her novels include Belle Teal, A Corner of the Universe (a Newbery Honor book), Here Today, A Dog’s Life, On Christmas Eve, Everything for a Dog, Ten Rules for Living with My Sister, and Ten Good and Bad Things About My Life (So Far). She is also the coauthor, with Laura Godwin, of the Doll People series.

  Ann lives in upstate New York with her dog and her cats.