They were at the door now. Detective Frizell finished reciting Ms. Kempner’s rights, but she ignored him. She glared past Mr. Knowles in our direction. “Ask the brat pack over there,” she snapped. “Ask the little monster who broke my leg.”
“I didn’t break your leg,” Abby shot back, firing up. “And you started it.”
For one ludicrous moment, I thought both Abby and Martha Kempner were going to stick their tongues out at each other. Then the door opened and Martha Kempner, surrounded by police officers, disappeared from sight.
Sean Knowles walked slowly over to us.
“Well?” he said.
Abby held out her hand and began her story all over again.
And at that moment, Kristy burst through the door. Her accusing gaze swept the scene. Then she charged toward us.
“Kristy! Where have you been?” I cried. “We’ve been worried sick about you!”
“And how did you find us?” asked Stacey.
“Never mind that,” said Kristy impatiently. She saw the diamond still resting on Abby’s hand and she folded her arms and narrowed her eyes. “I knew it! I knew this was going to be a bad weekend! Tell me you didn’t do this to me. Tell me you didn’t go and solve the mystery without me!”
The storm was over, the lights were on, and it wasn’t so late after all. In fact, it was still dinnertime.
After telling Sean Knowles our story, handing the diamond over to a police officer who’d remained behind, and assuring him that we’d be around to make statements, we headed for the dining room to chow down. In the lobby, we passed Detective Frizell talking to Mrs. Moorehouse and Ms. Furusawa. Mrs. Moorehouse gave us a surprised look as we went by.
I smiled.
Everything tasted great, although I couldn’t tell you what we ate. We were busy talking.
We spent the rest of Halloween quietly. Mary Anne and Ms. Garcia took Nidia on a trick-or-treat excursion around the block and returned to report that the streets were even more full of weird and wonderful costumes than on the night of the parade. We helped hand out candy to the trick-or-treaters who came to the inn. And one by one, we followed Detective Frizell into Mr. Hewson’s office to tell our side of what had happened.
And then suddenly, Halloween was almost over. The chaperons were lingering over coffee in the dining room. Most of our class had drifted off to bed, including Cary Retlin, who wouldn’t quite look in my direction, and Alan Gray, who kept winking at me. Cokie and Grace were nowhere to be seen, but I saw Eileen head up the stairs chatting happily with another sixth-grader.
I flopped back on the sofa in the lobby. “This has been an awesome day,” I said.
“You can say that again,” said Abby. “But don’t.”
I grinned. “Did I tell you how loudly Cary screamed?”
“You did,” replied Stacey. “And that part you can tell us again.”
I was willing to oblige, but at that moment, the front door opened and Ms. Furusawa pushed Mrs. Moorehouse through. Mrs. Moorehouse had a large white box on her lap.
“There you are,” said Mrs. Moorehouse. “Good. Come with us.”
Puzzled, we followed them into the dining room. Mrs. Moorehouse led the way to a large round table and indicated we should sit down. A waitress appeared, as if by prearranged signal. Smiling, she began to set out plates and forks and napkins, as Mrs. Moorehouse set the box on the table, opened it, and lifted out an enormous, beautiful cake — shaped like a pumpkin!
“A local specialty,” she informed us. “Fortunately, the bakery is open late on Halloween.”
“Wow,” said Abby. “That’s one of the best-looking pumpkins I’ve ever seen.”
Both Mrs. Moorehouse and Ms. Furusawa smiled. Then they began to put the slices on the plates. I saw that the cake had been presliced, and a moment later I saw why.
Inside each slice was a tiny gold pumpkin charm.
“A new pet pumpkin,” exclaimed Abby.
“Cool,” said Stacey.
Mary Anne held hers up wonderingly. “For us?”
I saw Mallory grin.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Moorehouse. “To help you remember your adventure and your heroic deeds.”
Mallory started turning bright red. Even I felt a little embarrassed.
Not Abby. “No problem,” she said. “Happens all the time.”
“Abby!” I said.
“Well, it does. We have a mystery notebook to prove it, don’t we, Mallory?”
Mallory blushed more.
“Will you keep the Witch’s Eye?” asked Mary Anne, tactfully changing the subject somewhat. “And will you tell us the real story of it?”
“Well, it does have a bit of a curse on it, but nothing like what Ms. Kempner told you. She’s the one who planted those rumors. She had become obsessed with it.”
“For real?” I said. “I mean, things like that happen in real life?”
Mrs. Moorehouse nodded. “In this instance, yes. She originally offered to buy it from me, and I declined. She pretended she was joking, and I thought no more of it. Then I started getting all kinds of offers for it. Harvey Hapgood was only the most recent.”
“And the most persistent,” added Ms. Furusawa.
“Meanwhile, my insurance agent had called me and told me that they could no longer insure the diamond, because of the rumors. As it turns out, that was a phony call. It was Harvey Hapgood pretending to be my agent. The diamond has been insured all along. He and Martha Kempner were just trying to add to the pressure for me to sell it. And finally, when Martha realized I didn’t want to part with the diamond, she decided to resort to desperate measures.”
“She disguised herself as a maintenance worker, didn’t she? To get into the museum early in the morning?”
Ms. Furusawa nodded in answer to that. “She wanted to steal the diamond from the museum, because she was afraid that if she stole it directly from Mrs. Moorehouse, it would be too easy to trace back to her.
“The theft took longer than she thought and as a result was discovered more quickly. She was headed back to the inn when she was forced to duck into the bushes to avoid being seen. She took off the maintenance outfit and hid it there, intending to retrieve it later. Then she walked up the front steps. She had tucked the diamond into the small hollow ceramic pumpkin, which she had bought at another gift shop. Having already chipped a small piece out of the bottom, she put the diamond inside, and then glued it back together.”
“That’s why the sales clerk didn’t recognize it!” exclaimed Abby. She suddenly laughed. “And she sold it to me for two dollars, because I showed her the crack in the bottom.”
“Yes. Ms. Kempner was trying to act as if nothing had happened, so she went into the dining room for breakfast. When she came out again, the lobby was full of police, and she realized that she’d had her second stroke of bad luck. Mary Anne had found the disguise in the bushes, and now everybody in the inn was a potential suspect. She panicked and dropped the pumpkin off at the gift shop, intending to pick it up later.”
“And Abby bought it,” said Mallory. “Oh, it’s all beginning to make sense now. Abby’s waist pack was snatched at the parade because Ms. Kempner thought the pumpkin was in there. And when it wasn’t, she used Abby’s key card to get in the room and search for it.”
“And you had it all along as part of your outfit,” I said to Mal.
“And I was being followed,” said Abby. “I bet they even tried to separate me from you guys down at the Wharf.”
“Probably,” agreed Mrs. Moorehouse.
“But what about Mr. Knowles?” asked Stacey.
“He’s an insurance claims investigator. The company sent him down to keep an eye on the diamond. After all, I had it insured for quite a bit of money. And they suspected all those rumors they were hearing about the diamond’s curse were a cover for me to steal the diamond and claim the money.”
“If the diamond isn’t a bad-luck diamond, how did it glow like that?” asked Mary Anne.
r /> “It was just a trick of the light,” said Abby.
Mary Anne shook her head. “I’m not so sure,” she said.
“Whatever,” said Stacey. “It kept Hapgood at bay long enough for you to be rescued.”
“Or for Hapgood and Kempner to be rescued from Abby,” I said slyly.
We all laughed.
And then, suddenly, unable to stop myself, I yawned hugely. “Oh! Sorry,” I said.
We headed up to bed shortly after that.
As we left, Mrs. Moorehouse called out after us, “Thank you again. And happy Halloween!”
The photos of the Stoneybrook Halloween parade were adorable. So were the photos of the Salem parade. We decided to put them in a photo album together.
Will that lead to an official BSC photo album? Hmmm. No one has said anything about it yet. Maybe I’ll bring it up when we have a dull moment.
Not that it looks as though that will happen anytime soon.
“So you cured Jordan of magicianitis,” said Mallory to Claudia, Jessi, Shannon, and Logan. “Good work.”
“No problem,” said Logan. “All in a day’s work for a baby-sitter.”
“Yeah, right,” I said. “Like solving a major robbery. You know, little things like that.”
“What a totally awesome trip,” declared Claudia. “A much better learning experience than doing homework.” She scooped up a handful of pretzels and an Oreo cookie, and took alternating bites.
“Yeah, but we still have to write up our projects. And we didn’t get our pictures in the paper,” Kristy pointed out. “You guys did.”
This was true. The Stoneybrook newspaper had carried a photograph of the parade in which the Rodowskys, including Bo and the dog piñatas, were prominently featured.
“Yup. Good public relations for the club, too,” Shannon added.
“Maybe we should have business cards made up,” Stacey suggested. “With our club name, hours of operation, phone number.”
“Not a bad idea,” said Kristy.
“Yeah,” I said. “I can see it now: the Babysitters Club. Children and mysteries our specialty.”
Then the phone rang and we settled down to business.
Until the next mystery, I thought, looking fondly around the room at my fellow BSC members. And I didn’t have any doubts that there would be one. Not if I knew the Baby-sitters Club.
The author gratefully acknowledges
Nola Thacker
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.
Copyright © 1996 by Ann M. Martin.
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC, THE BABY-SITTERS CLUB, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
First edition, October 1996
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
e-ISBN 978-0-545-76875-7
Ann M. Martin, Baby-Sitters' Fright Night
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