The Baby-Sitter Burglaries Read online

  “Sure,” Nancy answered. Breathless, she looked for Ian MacDonald again, but he was gone. David was now talking to Juanita. George and Bess still had all the children in tow, including Sara. Then Nancy saw Max stop beside David and tell him something. David nodded, then Max waved and left the rink.

  Skating around the rink with Max had left her hot and thirsty. Nancy decided to get a drink at the snack bar before she joined George and Bess to take her turn at baby-sitting. Sipping a lemonade slowly, she stretched her break to ten minutes. Bess came skating toward her. Nancy tossed her cup into the trash. “I’m coming!” she cried, and skated to meet Bess.

  “George lost Carlos!” Bess clutched Nancy’s shoulders. “You’ve got to help us look for him.”

  “Carlos could get into trouble with ten babysitters watching him,” Nancy said. “I’m sure he’s around here somewhere.” Looking for Carlos among the skaters, she skated around the rink twice. She went back to the snack bar and looked under the tables. Then she saw the rear exit.

  Nancy opened the door into an alley and heard a muffled cry. She listened, trying not to breathe.

  She heard banging. It was coming from a Dumpster next to the building. Then she heard a child sobbing. Nancy half-skated, half-ran to the Dumpster and threw open the lid. Carlos was inside. He looked up at her, tears streaking his face.

  “Oh, Carlos,” Nancy said. “How did you—never mind. Can you grab my hand?” She leaned down, reaching for him, but wasn’t close enough. She leaned in farther until she was on tiptoe, balancing on the edge of the Dumpster, stretching as far as she could. “Carlos—take my hand!”

  Carlos’s fingers touched Nancy’s hand. Then she froze in horror. Someone had grabbed her legs and flipped her body up and over the edge of the Dumpster.

  Nancy fell hard into the bottom of the Dumpster. The lid slammed down, leaving her in the dark, facedown in garbage.

  11

  The Baby-sitter Is Missing

  Nancy landed on a bag of garbage that smelled like onions and cigarette ashes. She coughed and tried to sit up.

  “Ow! You’re squashing me!” Carlos yelled.

  “Oh—sorry,” Nancy said. She moved forward on her knees in the darkness, her hands out to feel for the Dumpster wall. “Sit still, Carlos. I’ll try to find something to get us out.” She groped among the garbage bags, holding her breath as sickening smells surrounded her.

  Finally, Nancy found what felt like a broken broom handle. She reached up and pushed the handle against the Dumpster lid. In the welcome burst of light, Nancy could see Carlos huddling at the bottom of the Dumpster, holding his nose.

  Nancy propped up the Dumpster lid with the broom handle and lifted Carlos up and out of the Dumpster. Then she climbed out herself, brushing her hands through her hair and hoping she didn’t have any garbage stuck in it.

  Carlos wrinkled his nose as Nancy knelt down next to him. “Boy, do you stink!” he said.

  “I think we both do, Carlos,” she said, frowning. “Now, how did you get in the Dumpster?”

  Carlos’s brown eyes were solemn. “It was a masked man! He grabbed me and took my gold!”

  “Gold?” Nancy asked. “What gold?”

  “My magic gold coin!” Carlos cried.

  Magic coins again? Nancy thought. The Kiley children had said they were missing their magic coins, too.

  Nancy looked down at Carlos. “Do you mean the coin Juanita let you keep from your grandfather’s bag?” she asked.

  Carlos nodded, then shuddered. “That bad guy grabbed me and put me in the trash! Call the police!”

  Nancy put her arm around him. “We’ll do that. Let’s go, Carlos.” She opened the door to the rink and guided Carlos back inside.

  The music was rocking with a faster, harder beat, and the rink was full of dancing teenagers. Adults searched for shoes and helped children out of their skates. Nancy saw Bess and George trying to find out which shoes belonged to which of the five of the play group children, who were gleefully sliding on the floor in their socks.

  Nancy and Carlos went up to Bess and George and told them what had happened in the alley. “How awful,” Bess said. “Are you all right?” she asked Carlos. He nodded and looked at the skaters as if he were searching for someone.

  “I’m going to call the police,” George said, and headed for a phone booth.

  Bess brushed a carrot peel from Nancy’s shoulder, then ran off, crying, “Carlos, come back here!”

  Nancy scanned the crowd. Where was Juanita? That’s odd, Nancy thought, as she looked around the rink for the third time. Juanita didn’t seem to be in the rink at all. And David was gone, too. It was hard to believe Juanita would leave the children for any reason.

  Nancy pulled her skates off and put on her shoes. Then she looked through the locker area and the snack bar for Juanita. She had disappeared, Nancy walked back to stand beside George against the lockers. Bess was telling a story to five fascinated children as they sat on the carpet. Carlos was putting on his shoes.

  “I hate to say this,” Nancy whispered to George, “but Juanita did ask us for help tonight—she made sure we’d be available to take over for her. If she and David were planning to skip town, this would be the perfect opportunity.”

  George nodded. “If David is missing, too, then Officer Brody will think they left town with the stolen goods,” she said.

  Carlos jumped up. “Nita’s not a burglar! Someone kidnapped her!” He swung his leg back and kicked Nancy’s shin—hard.

  “Ow!” Nancy bent over and grabbed her leg.

  “Carlos! You know it’s not nice to kick people,” George told him.

  Nancy rubbed her leg and looked at Carlos. His forehead was creased with worry lines. She sighed. Naughty or not, Carlos must be frightened for his sister.

  “We’ll find Juanita, Carlos—I promise,” Nancy said. “I was just thinking out loud. Juanita isn’t a burglar.” Carlos’s face brightened. Nancy hoped she was telling the truth.

  When the police arrived, Nancy whispered to George and Bess, “Don’t tell the police Juanita’s missing. They won’t consider her a missing person until she’s been gone forty-eight hours, so they won’t investigate, anyway,” Nancy explained. But if Juanita is the thief, Nancy thought, then keeping silent could mean she was getting away.

  Nancy stayed next to Carlos while Officer Volpi, a petite, blond police officer, questioned him. But the story had grown in Carlos’s mind. “It was a masked man,” he said, “and he had giant hands and a big nose.” Officer Volpi looked doubtful but said she’d look into the matter.

  When the parents of the play group children arrived, Bess and George covered for Juanita. “She’s not available right now. Can I give her a message from you?” Bess asked cheerfully. George smiled and said they were Juanita’s new assistants. When all the play group children had gone, Nancy, George, and Bess left the rink and took Carlos home.

  At the Puentes house, Juanita’s grandfather stroked his chin as Nancy told him Juanita was missing. “I’m sure she’s all right if she’s with David,” he said uncertainly. “You don’t think that anything . . . happened to her, do you?”

  Nancy gave him a sympathetic look. “I hope she’ll show up soon,” she said. It was hard to reassure Diego when she herself had so many questions about Juanita’s disappearance. She waved goodbye to Carlos and left to join Bess and George in the Mustang.

  George leaned over the front seat as Nancy pulled out of Diego’s driveway. “Where to, Nancy? Can you think of any place we should look for Juanita and David?” she asked.

  “Let’s go to the Magic Shop—maybe David and Juanita went to his apartment.”

  Nancy drove slowly down Front Street past the Magic Shop. It was closed and dark. There was no light on in the apartment above the store, and David’s truck wasn’t there.

  “I think I’ll drive to Hancock tomorrow and visit Ian MacDonald,” Nancy said. “He was talking to David at the skating rink. Maybe David told him s
omething about his plans.” Nancy turned around in the driveway.

  “Why don’t you telephone him?” George asked.

  “I want to see his place,” Nancy said. “Can you guys check back here tomorrow morning to see if David comes back?”

  “No problem,” George said.

  • • •

  The next morning Nancy called Diego and learned that Juanita still had not come home. This made her even more determined to go to Hancock, which was about twenty miles from River Heights. It was a small town—only five shops were open on Main Street when Nancy got there. She followed a winding road and parked in front of a brick building with an old canopy over the door. The sign on it read MacDonald’s Magic Supplies.

  She walked through the front door into the display room. Magic props were displayed on shelves and boxes were stacked against the walls.

  Mr. MacDonald came out of the back. His red-brown eyebrows formed into peaks. “Hello, Ms. Drew. What a surprise. Don’t tell me you’re in the market for magic.”

  Nancy smiled. “Not unless you know how to make people disappear. Juanita didn’t come home last night, and we don’t know where David is. I saw you talking to him at the skating rink last night. Max said you were probably telling him about a new magic prop,” she said.

  Ian MacDonald nodded. “Diego wasn’t home when I called,” he said, “so Juanita told me I could talk to David at the rink.”

  “Did David say anything to you about leaving town or mention any plans he had with Juanita?” Nancy said.

  Mr. MacDonald looked thoughtful. “Let’s see. I asked him to tell Diego about the prop. . . .” His eyes lit up. “You know, he did mention something about needing a vacation. And he said he was leaving very soon.”

  “It’s odd that he didn’t mention it to Diego,” Nancy said.

  The bell rang over the door. A tall, bald man walked in and looked around. Mr. MacDonald hurried over to talk to him. “Your order came in, Mr. Denisen. It’s in the back room.” The two men went into the back.

  Nancy wandered around the shop. On a shelf near the back room was a set of linked metal rings. Nancy picked it up and idly tried to separate the rings. They came apart, fell with a loud clatter, and rolled all over the room.

  Nancy scrambled to gather up the rings. One had landed near the door to the back room. As Nancy bent to pick up the ring, she heard Mr. Denisen ask, “Do you have them yet?”

  “I’m working on it,” Mr. MacDonald replied.

  “How did you ever find them? Was there an inside guy at the Mint?”

  “I can’t talk right now. I’ll let you know,” Mr. MacDonald said.

  Nancy picked up the ring, wondering about what she had overheard, and wandered to the front of the store. “An inside guy at the Mint”: What did Mr. Denisen mean? The door to the back room opened, and Mr. MacDonald ushered Mr. Denisen out the front entrance.

  He came over to Nancy and said, “Oh—I see you found the new prop. The rings have a special ratchet to make them extremely easy to separate.” His blue eyes twinkled.

  Nancy grinned. “You’re right about that. I just chased five rings around the room,” she said.

  Mr. MacDonald laughed. “Well, come back sometime, and I’ll see if we can find another toy for you to play with. Oh, by the way, have you seen Max since last night?”

  “No,” Nancy said. “Did you need him for something?”

  Mr. MacDonald looked tense for a moment, then said, “Not really. But he borrowed something from me and hasn’t returned it yet.”

  “Well, if I see him, I’ll let him know you’re looking for him,” Nancy said.

  She drove back to River Heights, thinking about what she’d seen and heard in Hancock. When she reached River Heights, she decided to head for the Puentes house first to see whether Juanita had returned.

  When Nancy rang the doorbell, Diego opened the door instantly, a hopeful expression on his face. But when he saw Nancy, his face fell. “Come in,” he said sadly.

  “Hasn’t she even called?” Nancy asked.

  Diego ran his hands through his hair, making it stand up in tufts. “I haven’t heard a word. It’s not like her—making her old grandfather worry so much.”

  Nancy felt a lump forming in her throat as she thought of how Diego would feel if his granddaughter turned out to be a thief.

  “Could I look in Juanita’s room?” she asked. “Maybe there’s a clue up there.”

  Diego nodded and pointed upstairs. “Be my guest. Maybe you can say a cheerful word to Carlos. He’s very worried about his sister.”

  Nancy climbed the stairs and found Carlos in his room. He was sitting on the bed, playing absently with some coins. He stacked them up, then knocked them down, then sighed and started to stack them again. Diego must have given up hiding the coins from him, Nancy thought.

  “Hi, Carlos,” she said. “Can I see your treasure?” She bent down to look at the coins.

  Most of the coins were the same ones she had seen before, with the words Magic Coin. But some of them pictured a woman dressed in a flowing gown. Nancy picked one up and studied it. Someone had mentioned coins with a lady on them. But who?

  “Give that back,” Carlos said. He snatched the coin out of her hand. Then he scooped up the others, put them into the bag, and tucked the bag in a drawer.

  “How would you like to help me find Juanita?” Nancy asked. “I’m going to her room to investigate. Can you tell me where it is?”

  “I’ll show you,” he said cheerfully, and led Nancy to Juanita’s room. It didn’t look as if Juanita had planned to go anywhere. Her drawers and closet were full of clothes, and her psychology textbook was open on the desk.

  Carlos picked up a pencil from the desk and pulled out some papers from his pocket. “I’m going to take notes, too,” he said. A scrap of paper fell on the floor.

  Nancy bent down and picked it up. It was a piece of letterhead stationery. Under the heading Secure Monitoring Company was a River Estates address—Reese Gardner’s. And beneath the address were the words Master Code, followed by a series of numbers.

  What was Carlos doing with Reese Gardner’s security code?

  12

  Chasing the Codes

  “Where did you get this?” Nancy asked, holding out the paper.

  Carlos looked scared, then cried out, “It’s mine!” He snatched the paper from Nancy’s hand and ran into the hallway and down the stairs.

  “Carlos—wait!” Nancy yelled. The front door slammed. She raced down the stairs two at a time. Carlos was jumping onto his bicycle when Nancy opened the front door.

  He sped away down the sidewalk. Nancy ran after him, but Carlos took shortcuts through his neighbor’s backyards. Nancy shouted quick apologies to people as she dashed into and out of their yards.

  Nancy heard a hoarse barking. Buster jumped over the fence and caught up with Carlos, who stopped and gave him a pat. Nancy ran faster, hoping Buster would distract Carlos long enough for her to catch up. She hadn’t known Buster and Carlos were such good friends.

  Buster barked, then ran away from Carlos toward Nancy. She stopped, gasping for breath. The last thing she needed was another challenge from Buster. But wagging his tail, he ran up to her and licked her hand. “Good dog,” she said, patting his head.

  Carlos had taken off again and was riding on the sidewalk. Nancy and Buster chased him. Out of the corner of her eye, Nancy saw a car driving slowly down the street behind her.

  When she slowed down, the car slowed, too. Nancy turned her head. It was Reese Gardner, and he was definitely following her.

  Annoyed, Nancy ran up to the window of the car. Mr. Gardner jerked his head back, startled. Buster ran past Nancy and jumped in front of the car.

  Mr. Gardner slammed on the brakes. The car stopped short of hitting Buster. Before Nancy could open her mouth, Mr. Gardner shot out of the car and began to run. Buster ran after him and jumped on his back, knocking him into a hedge.

  “Help!” Mr. G
ardner yelled. He tried to scramble out of the hedge, but Buster’s powerful jaws were clamped on his leg.

  Nancy stood over Mr. Gardner. “I’ll help you,” she said, “but I want some answers first.”

  Mr. Gardner grunted and tried to open Buster’s jaws. Buster held on stubbornly, shaking his head from side to side as if he were playing a game. “What answers?” Mr. Gardner asked. He settled back into the hedge.

  Nancy tapped her foot on the sidewalk. “First—why were you following me?” she asked.

  Mr. Gardner sighed. “I was hoping you’d lead me to David,” he said. “I’m sure David is the burglar. That’s why I’ve been following him and searching his truck. The police have questioned me three times. If someone doesn’t find evidence against David soon, they’ll try to pin the burglaries on me and I’ll lose my visitation privileges with Jimmy. The police know that I knew the Larsen code and that I’m a convicted felon.”

  Nancy gave him a doubtful look. “All this sneaking around and spying was to try to solve the mystery yourself?” she asked.

  “Something like that,” Mr. Gardner admitted. “Look, if you call off this stupid Doberman, I won’t interfere again. But you’ve got to find the burglar.”

  “Nancy!” It was Bess. She and George pulled up to the curb in George’s car. “What happened?” she cried. “We were following Mr. Gardner’s car, but he lost us.”

  George grinned and said, “I’d say Buster has the case wrapped up.”

  “Not quite,” Nancy said. “I don’t think Mr. Gardner is the burglar. Here, Buster, here, boy—come here!”

  Buster let go of Mr. Gardner’s leg and jumped to Nancy’s side, playfully grabbing her arm. “Easy, boy,” she said, carefully withdrawing her arm from between his teeth. “Yuck,” she said, and wiped her arm on her jeans.

  Nancy held out her hand to Mr. Gardner, but he ignored it and awkwardly rolled onto the sidewalk and stood up. He dusted himself off and walked over to his car.

  Nancy told Bess and George what Mr. Gardner had said. “So I guess we can eliminate him as a suspect,” she said.