Ding-a-ling-a-ling! Ding-a-ling-a-ling!
Nancy tried to ignore the
phone as she practiced the piano. That
run of sixteenth-note thirds in the Chopin piece she was playing wasn’t going
to learn itself—she was determined to have it worked out by the end of the
day. Right now, she was working on them
slowly, cutting the bottom note short as she tried to play connect the top notes
in the right hand. The last thing she
wanted was to be interrupted, and so she played on, hoping someone else would
answer the phone.
Ding-a-ling-a-ling! Ding-a-ling-a-ling!
Angrily, she glanced up
the stairs. Where was everybody?
Ding-a-ling-a-ling! Ding-a-ling-a-ling!
Nancy stopped
playing. “Could someone answer the
phone?” she yelled.
Ding-a-ling-a-ling! Ding-a-ling-a-ling!
“I’ll get it!” Susan yelled.
“That’s better.” Nancy started playing again, but she only
played three notes before stopping, a look of horror on her face. Wait a second…Susan…answering the phone? That wasn’t allowed in the Anderson
household, for reasons which—well, which would take too long to go into here.
Quickly, Nancy bolted
from the bench and raced to the phone, on an end table next to the sofa. “Hello?” she said, picking it up. She relaxed as a voice other than her
sister’s came through on the other end.
“Nancy?” It was Ashley Dale. “You’ll never guess what just happened!”
“Stephanie came back?”
Nancy asked. Had the notes of the piano
not still been ringing in her head, she might have known better. Ashley was excited, but not for a good
reason—as Nancy soon discovered.
“Mom just brought us back
from Homeland,”[1]
Ashley said. “When we got home, the
front door was ajar, and the lock was smashed up. Someone broke in!”
Nancy gasped. “Are they still there?”
“No, no—there were seven
of us (counting Mom), so we went through and checked. Whoever it was left. We haven’t had a chance to see whether
anything was stolen or not—”
“We’ll be right over,”
Nancy promised, hanging up the phone.
“Frank? Frank!”
A door opened
upstairs. “Be ready in a minute,” Frank
yelled.
“Alright,” Nancy called
back. Running to the door, she grabbed
her shoes to put them on. As she did so,
another thought struck her.
How
did Frank know I wanted him to get ready for something? He must have been listening in on his
phone—goodness, can we ever have a private conversation around here?
Soon, her brother came
charging down the stairs. Nancy grinned
at him, not mentioning his eavesdropping, except for the comment, “I guess I
don’t need to fill you in on what happened.”
“Ashley can do that soon
enough,” Frank said. “Let’s go.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It took the Andersons a
few minutes to get to the Dale household.
By the time they arrived, the family had other visitors—the police. Officers Kurtz and Muller were there, busy
getting statements. They had a lot of
statements to get. Six kids plus one
adult takes a while (though Lorraine wasn’t old enough to talk yet, so they
didn’t need to interview her). Ashley,
seeing that her friends had shown up, broke away from the group to talk to
them.
“Not much seems to be
missing,” she said. “Except for
something from our room! You’ll never
guess what it was!”
“The letters,” Nancy said.
“No!” Ashley exclaimed.
“Her clothes?” Frank
asked.
“Uh-uh. Whoever broke in went through the dresser,
but nothing’s missing from there.”
“Her music collection?”
Nancy asked.
“No.”
“Her mattress?” Frank
asked. Drawing a startled look from
Ashley, he said, “Well, you said I’d never guess. I figured it must be something nobody usually
steals.”
“It was just as crazy as
that,” said Ashley, “but it wasn’t the mattress. Try the library books. That part of her shelf is empty, and there’s
no sign of them.”
“Her library books?!”
Frank and Nancy exclaimed.
“Who in the world would
steal library books?” Nancy asked.
Ashley shrugged. “Beats me, but someone did it.”
“That has to be the
dumbest crook on record,” Nancy said.
“Breaking into a house, only to get books he could easily acquire by
placing a hold.”
“I don’t think anyone
would be that dumb,” said Frank. “In a
way, this helps us out. There must have
been something in one of those library books—something that’s a clue.” He glanced at Ashley. “Do you know what she checked out?”
Ashley shook her
head. “I went with her to the library
last time she was there, but I can’t remember any of the titles. I was hoping you guys might.”
Frank shook his
head. “I remember you pointing out the
shelf, but I didn’t pay much attention to the books.”
“Me neither,” said
Nancy. “Maybe Louis will know. He searched that side of the room.”
“Or, maybe you can figure
out what they were by checking your sister’s account,” Frank said.
Ashley shook her
head. “I don’t know her password, and
she didn’t write it down. Stephanie’s
got an incredible memory.”
“Oh. Well, good for her, but that’s tough for us,”
Frank said. “Nothing else was touched?”
“Not a thing,” said
Ashley. She sighed. “I just hope those crooks don’t come back.”
“I doubt they will,” said
Frank. “You and I had better watch our
step though, Nancy. We don’t want them
to pay us a visit—next!”
Next they steal the overhead lightbulbs from her bedroom.
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