“Bring a friend if you like,” she said, “and come anytime.”
After I hung up, I took a look out the window. She’d been right; it was an incredibly beautiful day. And it was already getting hot, too. I dashed upstairs and woke Mary Anne.
“Come on,” I said. “We’re going to a pool party.”
By the time we’d eaten breakfast and gathered our stuff together, it was almost eleven. And by the time we arrived at Livingston House, it was definitely hot. Mary Anne and I went to the big red front door, as usual, but when we knocked there was no answer. Then we heard shrieks and splashes from around back, so we followed the sounds to the pool.
We found our way to a fence, and then discovered a gate that opened into the pool area. And when we first opened the gate, I stopped still in my tracks. Wow! What a pool. It ranked right up there with the best pools in California, where pools are sort of an art form. (My friend Maggie has one that looks like a lagoon on a tropical island.)
It was huge, first of all. There were two diving boards, a regular one and a higher one. The water was sapphire blue, and it looked clear and cold and delicious. The pool was surrounded by a wide border of brick, which was decorated with dozens of clay pots spilling over with fragrant white flowers. Wooden lounge chairs with white cushions were scattered about, and there were two round tables shaded by big white umbrellas.
“Dawn’s here!” cried Hallie, the first to spot us. At that, all the kids ran over to greet us. I introduced Mary Anne to them, and then to Mrs. Keats, Mrs. Cornell, Amy, and Patrick, who were sitting around one of the tables sipping lemonade.
“Nice to meet you, Mary Anne,” said Mrs. Keats. “And welcome to both of you.”
“Did you bring your suits?” asked Mrs. Cornell.
I held up my backpack. “Sure did.” I was dying for a swim.
“I’ll show you where to change,” offered Amy, standing up.
“And I’ll find you some towels,” said Patrick, smiling. “I’ve done that before.” He bowed, pretending to be a butler again. I laughed.
Amy led us to the changing room. It was in the enormous pool house, which was a smaller replica of Livingston House, right down to the pillars and the red front door. “Pretty fancy, huh?” Amy remarked, opening the door. Inside were three bedrooms (for guests, Amy explained), plus a full kitchen, two bathrooms, a game room with a pool table, and the changing room, which was carpeted in red, furnished with overstuffed armchairs, and outfitted with closets and shelves for guests’ clothes.
“Whoa,” I said. “I could live here.”
“Actually, Patrick is going to,” Amy told us. “He and I are both staying in Stoneybrook for a while. I’ll live in the big house, but Patrick thinks this place is cozier, so he’ll move in here.”
“How long will you stay?” I asked.
“That’s up in the air,” said Amy. “I have an exciting job prospect in New York, doing restoration work for a museum, and I may end up moving there. And Patrick — well, apparently he has a pretty serious girlfriend in Maryland, which is where he was living before. He may go back, or I suppose she may come here.”
“So you’re not going to sell Livingston House?” I asked. I knew I was being nosy, but I couldn’t help it, and Amy didn’t seem to mind.
“No,” Amy answered. “We want it to stay in the family. We’ve all become so much closer now, and we’ve decided that this would be a nice place to come home to every now and then, for family reunions, whether any of us is living here or not.”
“So I’ll see all the kids again?” I asked.
“Oh, definitely,” Amy assured me. “We’ll all be here — including the kids’ fathers — for at least two weeks every summer. And we’ll probably meet here during the year, too. I couldn’t stand being away from those kids for too long, now that I’ve come to know them.”
“They seem like terrific kids,” Mary Anne commented.
“They are,” said Amy. “I’m only sorry I didn’t know them when they were younger. What a lot of wasted years …” She sighed, and a shadow seemed to pass over her face. Then she quickly changed the subject. “Hey, what are we waiting for?” she asked, smiling again. “Why don’t you go ahead and change, and I’ll meet you at the pool. I think the kids are organizing a cannonball contest!”
We had a blast that day. First we swam and dove and did cannonballs until we were completely exhausted and wrinkled up like prunes. Then we all sat down to a huge picnic lunch: crusty Italian bread and cheese and fruit and chocolate cookies for dessert. After lunch we sat around talking for a while, since we couldn’t go right back into the water after stuffing our faces like that.
We rehashed how we’d solved the mystery, going over every step and every clue. Then Mrs. Cornell and Mrs. Keats talked about how glad they were to have the family together again, and Amy and Patrick discussed their plans for the next few months.
Finally, Eliza became bored with the grown-up talk. “Can we give Dawn her present now?” she asked.
“Present?” I asked. “You have a present for me?” I was beginning to feel as if it were Christmas in August, with all the presents I’d been given recently.
“Well, we thought you should have something to remember us by,” began Mrs. Keats.
“And something to remind you of the mystery,” added Mrs. Cornell.
“Because we couldn’t have solved it without you!” finished Amy.
Katharine ran to the pool house and returned carrying a package. “Here it is,” she said. “So you won’t forget us.”
I opened it up — and started to laugh. It was a T-shirt, with a replica of that awful portrait of Arthur Livingston. Underneath the picture was the caption “I helped solve the mystery.”
“This is great!” I said, holding it up.
“We know how much you loved that picture,” teased Eliza.
“Seriously, Dawn,” said Mrs. Keats. “We want you to know how much we appreciate everything you did for us. Including bringing our family back together.”
“I second that,” said Mrs. Cornell. “You helped us find our true inheritance: each other.” She smiled at Mrs. Keats.
I heard Mary Anne sniffle, and I felt my own eyes tear up. We were in that sogginess danger zone again. Fortunately, Ms. Iorio showed up, wearing an elegant red suit and carrying a briefcase.
“I figured you were back here,” she said, “since it’s such a gorgeous day.” She smiled at Mary Anne and me. “Hello, girls.” She looked very satisfied, and I remembered that the idea for us being undercover baby-sitters had been hers. I guess she was happy about the way things had turned out.
“I hate to interrupt your afternoon with business,” she said, “but I just have a couple of papers that need signing.” She sat down, opened her briefcase, and pulled out some documents. She passed them to Amy and handed her a pen.
Since I was sitting next to Amy, I couldn’t help noticing her signature: “A. Livingston” — just like the one Abby and I had seen that day in the library!
“So that’s your signature!” I said, without thinking.
“Sure,” replied Amy. “Who else’s could it be?”
I didn’t want to tell her that Abby had suspected her father was still alive. “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “I saw it on a check one day and just wondered.”
“Amy was left a monthly account to use for household costs, until the estate was settled,” explained Ms. Iorio. “The check you saw must have been one she wrote for utilities or repairs.”
It was as if she knew I needed to tie up all the loose ends of the mystery. And that detail did it. That was the last one, as far as I knew.
Soon afterward, Ms. Iorio left — and soon after that, Mary Anne and I said our good-byes, too. I really liked the Livingston family, and I was sorry to say good-bye to them, but we had a BSC meeting — my last one that summer — to attend.
* * *
The meeting was a sad one, since it was the last time I’d see my friends until
my next visit to Stoneybrook. It was a strange meeting, too, since Kristy wasn’t there. I think of her as the heart of the BSC, and things never seem quite right when she’s gone. We talked about the postcards we’d received from her, and about how much fun she seemed to be having in Hawaii. And I passed on the exciting news she’d written me: On their way home from Hawaii, Kristy and her family were going to stop in California and spend the night at my house! Watson had arranged things with my dad.
“So you’ll have a little bit of the BSC in California,” said Stacey.
“I wish I could have everyone in the BSC out there,” I declared. “And all of Stoneybrook. Why can’t we just move the whole town out there?”
It was a silly thought, but in a way it wasn’t so wild. You know why? Because I would be moving the whole town out there — in my heart.
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.
Copyright © 1996 by Ann M. Martin
Cover art by Hodges Soileau
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC, THE BABY-SITTERS CLUB, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
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.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
First edition, August 1996
e-ISBN 978-0-545-79289-9
Ann M. Martin, Dawn Schafer, Undercover Baby-Sitter
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