Stacey and the Missing Ring

  It was my mother. I struggled to wake up. My bed was so cozy, and I was snuggled down into it so comfortably. I opened one eye and looked at the clock next to my bed. Eight o’clock. Oh, no! I was going to be late for school.

  Then I remembered it was Saturday. I relaxed. There was no rush. I let my eyes close again. “Stacey! Didn’t you hear me call?” My mother was now standing at my bedroom door, looking a little impatient.

  “What is it?” I asked. I love to sleep late on weekends, and my mom knows that. Because she’s always worrying about my health (ever since I got diabetes, that is), she lets me sleep pretty much as late as I want. In fact, she always says that she hates to wake me when I can sleep in. So why was she waking me?

  “There’s a phone call for you,” she said.

  “Please tell whomever it is that I’ll call back,” I answered. “I’m not ready to get up.” I figured it was Claud, wanting to know what my plans were for the day.

  “Stacey,” said my mother, “it’s Mrs. Gardella. And she wants to speak to you right away.”

  I sat up in bed. All of a sudden I was completely awake. “Mrs. Gardella?” I asked.

  “Yes,” answered my mom. “And she sounds upset.”

  I got up and scrambled into my robe and slippers. I was still tying the belt to my robe as I headed for the phone. Mrs. Gardella! Ordinarily I’d be mad if somebody called me so early on a Saturday and interrupted my delicious extra sleep. But this call made me worried, not angry. Had I done something wrong with Tara last night? Was she sick? Or was Mouse or Bird? Or had one of them done something terrible that I should have noticed?

  My heart was pounding as I grabbed the phone. “Hello?” I said.

  “Stacey, this is Mrs. Gardella.”

  “Hi,” I said. “Is Tara okay?”

  “She’s fine —”

  “What about Mouse? And Bird?” I asked, interrupting her.

  “They’re fine, too,” she said. Then she paused. “But — but my jewelry isn’t.”

  Her jewelry? I didn’t know what she was talking about. Did she mean all those diamonds she was wearing the night before? I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t know what to say.

  “Well,” she continued, “I don’t mean all my jewelry. Just the one ring. My diamond. It’s missing, and I’m very upset about it.”

  “Diamond ring?” I repeated, sounding (I realized later) pretty dumb.

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s a gold band, studded with little diamonds. I set it out on my dresser last night because I was going to wear it.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  “And I guess I forgot to put it on, because you rang the bell just as I had finished dressing,” she went on. “Then this morning I discovered that it was gone.”

  “It’s gone?” I still wasn’t sounding too smart. “Maybe it rolled off the dresser.”

  “We’ve looked everywhere. Peter — I mean, Mr. Gardella — has practically turned the house upside down. We just can’t find it anywhere.”

  Suddenly, a light switched on in my head. Was she going to accuse me —

  “I hate even to suggest this, Stacey,” she said, sounding embarrassed. “But could you possibly have ‘borrowed’ my ring? Maybe you — maybe you just wanted to show it to your friends….” She obviously felt almost as awkward as I did about the phone call.

  “Of course I didn’t borrow it!” I said loudly, without thinking. “I mean,” I continued, trying to control my voice, “I didn’t take your ring, Mrs. Gardella. I didn’t even set foot in your bedroom. The only upstairs room I was in was Tara’s. I’m sorry your ring is missing, but I promise you that I did not take it.”

  Mrs. Gardella cleared her throat. “Stacey,” she said, “can I please speak to your mother?”

  I held the phone away from my ear and looked at it. Wow. She didn’t believe me. This was too much. “Mom!” I called.

  “What is it?” she said, from right behind me. She must have been standing there listening the whole time. She looked worried.

  I didn’t feel like explaining any of it. “Mrs. Gardella wants to talk to you,” I said, handing her the phone.

  She frowned. “Yes?” she said into the receiver.

  Then she didn’t say anything for a while. Mrs. Gardella must have been explaining the situation to her. Mom just kept nodding. Then, finally, she started talking.

  “Mrs. Gardella,” she began, “you don’t know my daughter very well, or you would know that she’s not the kind of girl who would steal anything from one of her clients’ houses. Or from anyone’s house!”

  Then she was quiet again for a moment.

  “Well,” she said, after the pause, “I can’t imagine where the ring is, either, but Stacey isn’t a thief — or a liar. I’m sorry you feel that way.”

  I watched my mother’s face closely while she talked. Of course, she must be remembering what I was remembering: the fight we’d had the other day about a diamond ring. She was defending my honor to Mrs. Gardella, but I couldn’t help wondering. Was she a little bit suspicious? Did she think that, just maybe, I could have stolen that ring?

  I felt awful.

  Then my mom handed the phone back to me. Her lips were tight. “She wants to speak to you again,” she said.

  I took the phone. “Hello?”

  “Stacey,” said Mrs. Gardella, “I don’t know how to tell you this. I know you’ve denied taking the ring, and I understand why your mother feels that she has to defend you.”

  Of course I denied it. I didn’t do it.

  “But,” she went on. “The fact remains that the ring is missing. I can’t ignore that.”

  “Well, I’ll understand if you don’t want me to sit for you anymore,” I said quietly. “But I didn’t —”

  She cut me off. “It’s not just you,” she said. “I don’t believe I’ll be hiring any of the girls from your club anymore.”

  Oh no!

  “And,” she continued, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to call your other clients and let them know about this situation. It’s only fair that they be warned.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. “Oh, please don’t do that!” I said. “Our club has such a good reputation. Nothing like this has ever happened before.”

  “But it has happened now,” said Mrs. Gardella, “and, as I said, I can’t ignore it.”

  I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “I’m sure you’re a very nice girl, Stacey,” she said. “But that was an expensive ring, and I have to take its loss seriously.”

  The phone call was over. I hung up, feeling like I’d been punched in the stomach. Then I burst into tears.

  My mother gave me a big hug. “I don’t know what to say,” she said. “That woman has her mind made up, hasn’t she?”

  “Thanks for trying to defend me,” I said through my tears.

  Mom put her finger under my chin and tilted my face toward hers. “I defended you because I know you would never do such a thing,” she said seriously. “I know my daughter. It’s just too bad Mrs. Gardella doesn’t.”

  I told my mom what Mrs. Gardella had said. “Do you really think she’ll call our other clients?” I asked.

  “I hope she waits for a few days,” answered Mom. “Maybe if she gives herself a chance to cool down, she’ll realize she’s made a mistake.”

  I nodded, sniffing. “I better call Kristy,” I said, picking up the phone. I dialed slowly, trying to control myself. Kristy wasn’t going to like this one bit.

  Sure enough, when I told her about my conversation with Mrs. Gardella, Kristy was furious.

  “How dare she?” she asked. “I can’t believe this.”

  “I didn’t take the ring, Kristy,” I said in a small voice.

  “Stacey,” she answered. “I know and you know that you didn’t take the ring. Don’t worry about that. But what we do have to worry about is keeping the clients that we already have.”

  “How are we going to do that?” I ask
ed.

  “I don’t know yet. But I do know that this calls for an emergency meeting of the BSC. Can you make it to Claud’s house by noon?”

  I told her I could.

  “Good,” she said. “I’ll call everybody else. There must be something we can do.”

  After we hung up, I went to the bathroom to wash my face. I looked at myself in the mirror. This was serious business, and I knew it. “Stacey McGill,” I said to myself, “just remember this: You are not a thief.” I nodded firmly. But I felt very, very scared.

  I was late arriving at Claud’s. My morning had not gone well after the phone call from Mrs. Gardella. First, when I stepped into the shower, I discovered that I was out of my favorite shampoo. Then I couldn’t find any clean clothes to wear. And when I was fixing breakfast, I dropped an egg on the floor.

  Then, just to cap everything off, when I tested my blood sugar (something I have to do several times a day), it was high. I adjusted the amount of insulin for my injection, but I would have to keep an eye on myself for awhile. Sometimes a high reading doesn’t mean much at all, but sometimes it can be a warning sign.

  So you can understand why I was feeling a little scattered by the time I got to the meeting.

  When I walked in, everybody else was already there. I had heard them talking while I walked up the stairs, but as soon as I opened the door, they became quiet. Had they been talking about me?

  “Hi, Stacey,” chorused Jessi and Mal. They were sitting on the floor, looking a little nervous.

  “Hi, Stacey,” said Dawn. She was perched on the bed between Claudia and Mary Anne. The three of them seemed awfully serious.

  I said hi, sat down in Claud’s desk chair, and turned to look at Kristy, who hadn’t said a word yet. She was in the director’s chair, as usual. But she wasn’t wearing her usual “meeting smile.” In fact, she looked very, very grim.

  I felt pretty grim myself.

  I knew that since I hadn’t taken the ring, none of this was really my fault. But I felt responsible for everything: for the fact that we’d had to give up our Saturday afternoon for this meeting, and for the trouble that the club was headed for.

  “I’m sorry, guys,” I said quietly.

  Dawn gave me a puzzled look.

  “Oh, Stacey,” said Kristy. “You have nothing to be sorry for. It’s not your fault Mrs. Gardella is a wacko.”

  “She’s not a wacko,” I replied. “And I know it’s not my fault. But still, I feel responsible.”

  “Why don’t you tell us what’s going on?” Claud said impatiently to Kristy. She probably had some art project planned for the day, and now she was stuck at this meeting.

  “You mean you didn’t tell them yet?” I asked Kristy.

  “Nope, I thought you should explain, from the beginning.”

  Oh, my lord.

  I took a deep breath and started to talk. I told my friends the whole story. I told them about the way the Gardellas treated their pets, and about how dressed up they’d been, and about Tara’s fancy room. I told them that the job had gone well, and that Mr. Gardella had paid me even more than I expected.

  So far, so good. Everybody was interested, and I could see that nobody could guess what was coming next.

  “So then,” I went on, plunging ahead, “I get this phone call at the crack of dawn this morning. It was Mrs. Gardella!”

  “What did she want?” asked Claud.

  “She wanted to know why I’d stolen her diamond ring!” I blurted it out. I felt the tears starting again, but I held them back.

  “WHAT?” asked everybody at once.

  “But I didn’t steal it,” I said quickly. I felt myself getting red. I was thinking again about that birthstone ring, and I figured everybody else was, too. “I don’t know what happened to it, but I had nothing to do with the fact that it disappeared.”

  Suddenly everybody was talking at once, asking me questions, making comments about Mrs. Gardella, and speculating on what had happened to the ring. I heard Mallory say something about what a coincidence it was that it was the same kind of ring as the one I’d seen at the mall. But it was just a casual comment. I knew she didn’t mean anything by it.

  “Hold on, hold on,” yelled Kristy over the noise. “Let’s let Stacey finish her story.”

  So I told them about the phone call. I told them exactly what Mrs. Gardella had said about the missing ring, and exactly what I’d said. And what my mother had said. It didn’t take long.

  Finally I got to the worst part, the part that was hardest to tell.

  “And then, she said that not only did she not want me to sit for her again, but that she wouldn’t hire anybody from the club.”

  “So what?” said Claud. “Who wants to sit for them, anyway?” Claudia’s a great best friend. She’s always so loyal. I gave her a grateful look.

  But then I had to tell them the rest. “And she said she was going to call our other clients and tell them what had happened.”

  There was silence in the room. Everybody looked completely stunned.

  “How awful,” whispered Dawn. “Nothing like this has ever happened before. What about the club’s reputation?”

  Mary Anne elbowed her in the side. “Dawn!” she said. “Can’t you see that Stacey feels bad enough already?” Good old Mary Anne. You can count on her to be sensitive about other people’s feelings. But Dawn was right.

  “Dawn’s right,” I said out loud. “It is awful. But I don’t know what we can do about it.”

  “What if we call all our clients first, and explain what really happened?” asked Jessi, thoughtfully.

  “That might just stir up more trouble,” answered Kristy. “I mean, what if Mrs. Gardella doesn’t end up calling everybody? Then we would have brought up the problem for nothing and confused our clients.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Claud. “If you go out of your way to insist that you’re innocent, people are going to wonder if you’re actually guilty.” Claud knows about that sort of stuff because of all those Nancy Drew books she reads.

  “What if we try to convince Mrs. Gardella not to make the calls?” asked Dawn. She looked at me hopefully.

  “I don’t think we can talk her out of it if her mind’s made up,” I answered. I felt miserable. “I mean, she thinks it’s the right thing to do, and in a way, she’s right. If I had stolen something, people should know about it.”

  “But you didn’t,” said Kristy. “Don’t even talk that way. It’s not the right thing for her to do — it’s like she’s assuming that you’re guilty. You’re supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, right?”

  “Right,” I answered. “Let’s hope our other clients go along with that kind of thinking.”

  “You know,” said Mary Anne. “I bet they will. After all, most of our clients have been hiring us for a long time. They know we’re honest. They know we would never steal.”

  “I hope you’re right, Mary Anne,” said Kristy. “Because our good reputation is the only thing we’ve got going for us right now. There’s not much we can do about Mrs. Gardella.”

  I spent the rest of Saturday and all day Sunday hoping the whole thing would blow over without affecting the club. On Monday, school dragged. I was eager to get to our meeting that afternoon.

  Finally, it was 5:30. Kristy called the meeting to order, and then I collected the dues. We talked for a while about what we had done over the weekend. We talked about what had happened at school that day (nothing much, in case you’re wondering). We even talked about the weather (clear and crisp — we agreed that it had been a very nice day). We talked about everything except Mrs. Gardella and the missing diamond ring. And the whole time we were talking, what we were really doing was waiting for the phone to ring.

  But it didn’t.

  I stared at the silent phone, wondering if there could be any other explanation. But I couldn’t come up with anything. I checked the clock. Five-forty. Usually by that time we would have gotten at least one or two calls.

>   Our conversation lagged. Nobody had anything left to say, it seemed. Then, suddenly, the phone rang. We all dived for it, but I got it. “Hello?” I said eagerly. “Baby-sitters Club.”

  “Oh, sorry,” said a voice on the other end. “I was trying to reach the sewage treatment plant. Wrong number, I guess.”

  Any other time, I would have told everyone else what the woman had said, and we would have giggled over it for the rest of the meeting. But that day I didn’t feel very funny, so I just said, “Wrong number,” and put the phone down.

  “Hmmm,” said Kristy.

  “What do you mean by that?” I asked. I felt she was trying to tell me something. “Maybe you think I should quit the club. Is that what you think?”

  “Stacey, are you nuts?” she exclaimed. “I don’t want you to quit the club. And I don’t blame you for anything. All I said was, ‘Hmmm.’ ”

  I guess I was feeling a little jumpy.

  We sat quietly for a few more minutes. I could hear Claud’s digital clock clicking the minutes away. Soon the meeting would be over. Finally, at 5:48 (I know the exact time, since I was watching the clock so closely), the phone rang again. This time I let somebody else answer it.

  “Hello?” said Kristy. “Oh, hi, Mrs. Braddock.” She listened for a moment. “I’m sure we can fit you in,” she said, giving the rest of us a little smile. “I’ll call you back in a couple of minutes.” When she’d hung up, she told us that Mrs. Braddock needed a sitter for Haley and Matt.

  “Did she sound — weird at all?” I asked. “Like she might have heard any rumors or anything?” We’ve been sitting for the Braddocks for a long time. I wondered what Mrs. Braddock would think if Mrs. Gardella called her.

  “She didn’t, really,” said Kristy. “And I didn’t want to ask. I wonder if she’s heard anything. Maybe she has, but she doesn’t believe it.”

  “Well, anyway,” said Mary Anne, looking at the record book. “We can certainly fit her in. We do have a few jobs that we lined up last week, but basically we’re wide open. You’re available, Kristy, and so are Stacey, Jessi, and Dawn.”

  “I don’t want the job,” I said quickly. Somehow I didn’t feel that I should take any jobs when there were so few of them. The others worked it out among themselves, and Kristy called Mrs. Braddock back.