But then Emilene said, “You didn’t see anyone rob a bank, did you?”
“No, but what if I did?”
“Then you should tell the police and they’d want you to come to court and you’d have to describe the robber and what kind of car he was driving and the color of his shirt and everything.”
“What if you didn’t know any of that?” asked Zack. “What if it was so dark you couldn’t tell?”
“Then you might as well stay home,” said Emilene, and she got up to put more strawberries on her ice cream.
When Matthew came over with his catcher’s mitt and ball and wanted Zack to toss him a few, Zack said no.
“I don’t think I’ll ever want to play catch again if that robber stole something important from Grandma and Gramps,” he said.
“Well, not playing catch with me won’t help,” said Matthew.
That was true. But Matthew wanted to solve the case themselves as much as Zack did, and even though they threw the ball back and forth for a while, they didn’t have their hearts in it.
That Friday after Dad came home from work, he got into the pickup truck with Zack and Matthew and their backpacks, and off they went again.
This time Zack remembered to put Cheerios in his pocket, but when he and Matthew climbed out and didn’t see the turkey, they started on toward the house. Tailpipe saw them, however. He came around from behind, and by the time Zack heard the flap of his wings, it was too late, and he felt the familiar peck, peck, peck on his legs. Tailpipe got Matthew, too.
“We’re going to finish that machine this weekend for sure,” said Matthew. “That old turkey’s pecked me for the last time.”
The boys checked the barn, and as far as they could tell, all their stuff was right where they had left it, scattered about the barn floor. The wheelbarrow, the lawn mower, and the stepladder were just where they’d always been too, so the burglar hadn’t taken those.
The barn was dark, though, and rain began to fall. So after dinner, the boys decided to stay indoors and play video games, then work on their trouble-shooter the next day.
They had just helped Grandma clear the table when Josie’s brother tapped on the back door and stepped inside.
“Mom sent these paper plates and napkins over for your celebration tomorrow,” he called to Gram from the doorway. “She thought you might want to have them before the other folks get here.”
Zack realized too late that tomorrow was his grandmother’s birthday and he had not gotten her a present. Could anything else go wrong?
“Why, I’ll be glad to have them,” Grandma said. “But you have to come in here and eat a piece of my blueberry pie.”
“Talked me into it, but I’ve got to take off these wet shoes,” said Adam. He slipped off his sneakers and padded in his stocking feet over to the table, where Grandpa and Dad were finishing their coffee and pie.
“How you doin’, Zack?” Adam said. And then to Dad, “How are things with you?”
Zack pulled Matthew out on the back porch to tell him that tomorrow was Grandma’s birthday, and they’d have to think of something to give her. But then his eyes suddenly fell on the wet footprints Adam’s shoes had made on the porch. Four big footprints, with tread marks in the shape of a V.
Zack froze. He looked through the kitchen doorway at Adam eating pie at the table. Then he looked at Adam’s pickup truck in the clearing.
Was it possible . . . ?
“C’mon,” he said to Matthew. “Pull a raincoat over your head.”
Matthew gave him a quizzical look as Zack lifted two old raincoats off the hooks along the wall and noiselessly opened the back screen door.
“What?” Matthew kept saying, as they made their way across the wet grass.
Zack walked around the back of the truck, holding the raincoat over his head, and pointed to the license plate. And there, plain as day, it read, XPA 5820.
* * *
Seventeen
* * *
TESTING, TESTING . . .
Upstairs, where the grown-ups couldn’t hear them, Zack and Matthew sat across from each other on the twin beds, faces turned toward the window. Outside the rain pattered down on the roof, and pretty soon they heard Adam saying good-bye to Grandma and Grandpa, and from the window, they watched him jump into the pickup truck.
“How are we going to tell Josie that her own brother is the thief?” Zack said. “Everything figures. All the burglaries started happening after Adam got home from the navy.”
“Maybe he just got mixed up with the wrong crowd,” Matthew suggested. “But I still don’t get it. If Josie told you that the thief had V-shaped treads on his shoes, and those were his sneaker prints outside the window of his own house, why did he have to climb in a window to steal his mom’s bracelet? He could have walked right in through the door.”
“Because he wanted it to look as though a burglar had been there and climbed through the window, once she discovered her bracelet missing,” said Zack.
“Then he should have thrown away his sneakers,” said Matthew. “That’s evidence, plain as day.”
They sat silently a few minutes more, trying to figure it all out.
“Who do you suppose he’s selling all this stuff to in town?” asked Zack. “Maybe he’s not going to start college at all. Maybe he just rented an apartment so he could store all the stuff he’s stealing. Though he’s probably eaten the angel food cake he stole by now.”
“So he’s got a pig and a snowblower in the apartment too?” asked Matthew, pulling his feet up on the bed and sitting cross-legged.
“I just don’t know,” said Zack. He took a deep breath, held it a moment, and let it out. But whoever left the V-shaped tread marks outside the window, Josie had said, was a heavy man with big feet, which fit her brother exactly. As for bothering to steal an angel food cake, hadn’t Grandma said a few weeks ago that when Adam was sixteen, he’d eaten half a dozen of her biscuits, one right after the other?
“Well,” said Matthew finally. “Are we going to finish making that machine tomorrow or not?”
“I suppose,” said Zack. “But it’s Grandma’s birthday and I didn’t even get anything for her.”
“Sometimes my mom says the best present I can give her is to keep out of her way,” Matthew told him.
“We’ll see,” said Zack, just as a streak of lightning lit up the sky.
Matthew covered his head with his arms and dived under the covers as a clap of thunder shook the room.
As though to make up for the storm of the night before, Saturday morning was beautiful. Every drop of rain clinging to the leaves sparkled in the bright sunlight, and when Zack and Matthew came down to breakfast, Josie was there at the table.
“All ready to go to work?” she asked eagerly, her mouth half-full of sausage.
Zack knew right away that this wouldn’t be the time to tell her about her brother.
“Sure,” he said.
“Well, today’s Grandma’s birthday, Zack,” his dad said from his side of the table. “Your mother and Emilene are coming this afternoon for the party, and I want you kids to be as helpful as possible.”
“My family’s coming too!” said Josie. “Mom said it’ll be a nice celebration, because when a person reaches seventy, she—”
“Whoa! Whoa!” said Grandpa. “Never tell a woman’s age.”
“Oh, I don’t mind a bit,” said Grandma, laughing. “I never felt better. But if you kids would sweep the front porch, and keep out of my kitchen till lunchtime, that would be a blessing.”
“Sure,” said Zack. “And if there’s anything else you want us to do, just tell us. Happy birthday, Gram!”
If Adam came again in the middle of the night—on a Friday night, that is, when Zack and Matthew were here, Zack was thinking—they’d be ready. If they were awake, that is. If they were watching from the window. If, when they saw a pickup truck pull in the lane with its lights off, they could get to the barn before it reached the clearing. T
here were a lot of ifs.
Josie, with a polka-dot ribbon around her ponytail, was so excited about finishing the machine that she fairly jumped about the barn, and the three of them worked hard all morning. They taped the sections of the rain gutter together so they couldn’t easily come apart, and filled a few more balloons with water.
Zack placed the toy gum-ball machine, filled with marbles, on top of the old sewing machine table. A string was fastened to the little knob that opened the trapdoor at the bottom to let gum balls fall out. The other end of the string was tied to the metal handle of one of the file cabinet drawers.
If everything worked as planned, the croquet ball would shoot down the long stretch of rain gutter, pop out the other end, and slam into the pie tin with the nail in it, which would fall back and pop the balloon.
As water exploded all over the place, the ball would roll off the sloping dresser and fall onto the rectangular cake pan resting half on, half off, the file cabinet below.
The cake pan with the ball in it would fall onto the string stretched tight between the file cabinet and gum-ball machine, and all the marbles would fall out with an awful racket into a tin bucket there on the floor.
If everything worked as planned.
“Do you think we’re ready to test it?” asked Matthew, checking to see that the pie tin was in place, stuck to the dresser top with a fresh wad of gum.
“I am!” said Josie, climbing up the stepladder with a croquet ball in one hand.
“Okay, then. Go!” said Zack.
Josie dropped the ball into the open end of the rain gutter. Rattle, rattle, rattle it went as it rolled.
Bang! it went, as it shot out the other end and hit the pie tin with the nail in it.
SPLOPP! went the water balloon as the pie tin fell over.
The ball rolled off the sloping top of the dresser, just as it had done before, but not where it was supposed to go. It missed the large rectangular cake pan and rolled a few inches on the ground before it stopped.
“Oh, man!” Matthew said, in disappointment.
Zack leaned against the post and thought. Just like a ship needing a channel, the ball needed to be guided to the place it was supposed to roll off.
“Wait here,” he said. When he came back, he was carrying scissors and tape and the empty Rice Chex box he’d seen in the kitchen that morning. He cut off both ends as well as the front panel, then taped it flat onto the dresser top, the cardboard sides guiding the ball just where it needed to go. Josie put another water balloon in place.
“Let me drop the ball this time,” Matthew said. He climbed the stepladder, reached as high as he could, and dropped the ball down the long sections of rain gutter. Down came the ball, bang went the pie tin, pop went the balloon, and this time the ball rolled right through the cardboard channel, went over the edge, hit the cake pan, and the pan hit the string below as it fell.
But the string hadn’t been pulled tight enough, and it didn’t yank open the little trapdoor of the gum-ball machine. So once again a water balloon had to be stuck behind the pie tin, the cake pan had to be placed just so, the string pulled really tight between the file cabinet and the gum-ball machine. And this time, everything worked.
Rattle, rattle, rattle! Bam! Pop! Bang! And finally, finally, the marbles tumbled with a great racket into the metal bucket below the bench. Rat-a-tat-a-tat . . .
“It works!” Zack yelled.
“We did it!” screamed Josie.
“Bring on the turkey!” said Matthew.
Or a robber, Zack thought.
At last, with a new water balloon in place, they were ready for the real thing. All Zack had to do was find the turkey. Get Tailpipe to chase him. It was the strangest feeling to actually want to hear him flapping his wings, to see him coming at Zack, feathers flying, on his whirling feet, and follow him . . . ha! Right into a trap!
* * *
Eighteen
* * *
PICTURE TIME
Grandma rang the dinner bell for lunch before they could do anything more, however, and this time the three of them beat Zack’s dad and Grandpa to the table.
Dad and Gramps were still talking business.
“We’ve got to make sure we mend the fence in the cow pasture before summer’s over,” Dad said, as he made himself a sandwich from the plate of bologna and cheese. “Don’t want to be out there stretching that wire with snow coming down the back of my neck.”
“Good idea,” said Gramps. “Last winter the snow was so deep it covered the tops of the fence posts.”
“Did the Smiths ever get another snowblower?” Zack asked.
Grandma looked up. “Why would they get another? They only need one.”
Grandpa chuckled. “They forgot they had let their neighbors borrow it last year, though, and George Kemp found he still had it in his garage.”
Zack looked at Josie across the table. She had stopped chewing altogether.
“You mean nobody stole it?” she asked.
“Goodness, no! Who would steal a snowblower?” asked Gramps.
“What about the Hendersons’ pig?” Josie asked.
“What about it?” asked Gramps. “They’ve got a lot of pigs.”
“The one that was stolen! Did they ever find the person who took it?” Josie asked, her voice rising.
“Stole a pig?” said Grandpa, and both of Zack’s grandparents were looking at her now. “Where did you get that idea, Josie? That pig squeezed through a fence, got out in the pasture, and was two farms away before somebody found it. Which is another good reason to get our fence repaired pretty soon.”
Zack decided not to say anything about an angel food cake. When he looked across at Josie this time, he could tell by the slump of her shoulders that this was not what she wanted to hear. And he was sure of it when they walked back to the barn after lunch, because she said, in a small voice, “If there wasn’t a burglar, then it probably means that nobody stole my mom’s gold bracelet, either. And if nobody stole it, then it was probably me who lost it, because I was wearing it last. I think.”
Zack and Matthew exchanged looks.
“I don’t know, Josie. There could still be a burglar around,” Zack said. “Let’s think about it later. Right now I’d like to find the turkey and see if the machine scares him. I think we could use a bigger water balloon than we’ve got there now, though. I’ve got a few left.”
What Zack was thinking about, however, was Josie’s brother and XPA 5. Maybe Adam hadn’t stolen the snowblower or the pig, but he had certainly taken something from Grandma and Grandpa’s barn. If Zack didn’t tell Josie soon about her brother, people would start arriving for the birthday celebration. But this didn’t seem like a good time to tell her either. Already he could hear the slam of a car door in the clearing, and Emilene’s voice squealing out birthday greetings to Grandma. If Zack didn’t tell Josie before the party was over and she went home, Adam would go right on stealing stuff in his pickup truck and taking it to sell in town. Perhaps this very night!
“Zack!” came his mother’s voice. “Come and get in the picture. We’re taking a family photo while everyone still looks dressed up.”
“Go ahead,” said Matthew. “We’ll wait right here. But as soon as they take the picture, get the turkey to chase you over here so we can try out the machine for real. We’ll be waiting.”
Zack walked across the clearing to the lawn where the family had gathered. He was glad he didn’t see the turkey now, because that would be really embarrassing if it attacked him in front of the camera.
Grandma was smiling at him. She had one arm around Emilene and the other outstretched for him.
“Come stand by me, Zack,” she called. “I want my two wonderful grandchildren beside me in the picture. Oh, if I just had my silver earrings. I don’t feel completely dressed without them.”
Zack stood next to his grandmother and faced the camera. He absolutely hated having his picture taken. He always looked like a dork. Mr. W
ells was taking the picture, and he said what photographers always say before they snap it: “Okay, now, everybody smile and say cheese.” When everyone said ‘cheese,’ Zack thought, it looked like they were having their teeth cleaned at the dentist’s. Their smiles were as phony as a candy cigar.
Click, went the camera.
“Now another,” said Josie’s dad. “This is a special day, and we want a special picture of our lovely neighbor.”
At that very second, Zack saw Tailpipe strutting by. He was not looking for boys to peck, however. He was not even pecking at all. He was holding something shiny and silver in his beak and was moving quite rapidly toward the barn.
All Zack could think of was his grandma’s silver earring. He broke away from the family group and started to chase the turkey.
“Zack!” Grandma cried in surprise.
“Zack!” yelled his dad.
“We’re not done taking pictures!” called his mother.
But all Zack could say was “Gram’s earring! The turkey’s got it!” and then Grandma and everyone else began to follow.
Faster and faster the gobbler went, as though he knew he was being chased. The barn doors were wide open, and Josie and Matthew, who had been watching from the doorway, ducked back inside to take their places at the machine. This wasn’t quite the way they had planned it—Zack chasing the turkey instead of the turkey chasing him—but they were ready.
* * *
Nineteen
* * *
THE TURKEY-BLASTER TROUBLE-SHOOTER
Just as Tailpipe came through the doorway with Zack and the others close behind, the croquet ball went whizzing down the rain gutter and out the other end, faster than it had ever gone before.