Archie picked up the pot and handed it to me.
"Thank you, Archie," I said.
"Welcome," he replied.
A movement caught my eye. I dashed to the kitchen window and squinted out. Then I realized I wasn't wearing my glasses and put them on.
A short kid (at least, he looked short to me) with brown hair and a baseball cap, and a gray pack slung over one shoulder, was standing at the side door of the Segers' house. He was wearing black sneakers, faded jeans, and an old leather bomber jacket.
I caught my breath. A burglar?
Then, when the kid took a key out of his pocket and opened the door, I realized that he must live there. Did Mr. Seger have a son? I wondered.
"Excuse me," I said to the Rodowsky boys. I dashed to my backpack, whipped out my mystery notebook, and wrote a description of the kid on the blank page under "Stakeout: Seger Burglary." I also wrote in the time he'd arrived home, and what I had noticed about the house (no glass, no tree within glass-breaking distance).
As far as I could tell, the kid stayed in for the rest of the afternoon. Mr. Seger hadn't come home when I left the Rodowskys.
And the only other disaster was when Jackie slammed the door on his finger and it fell in crumbs to the floor. As you might have guessed, "it" wasn't his finger, it was the cookie he was holding.
So it didn't scare me too much.
Jackie just laughed. "Cool," he said. "Slammers."
As I walked my bicycle to the sidewalk on the other side of the street, someone came jogging toward me. It was Abby.
"Hi," I said, surprised.
"Hi. I'm here to relieve you," she said.
"Relieve me?"
"On the stakeout," she explained.
"Oh." I looked around. "Don't you have to get home for dinner?"
Abby shrugged. "I'm on my way home from Claudia's." Abby filled me in on what had happened. "Anna knows where I am," she concluded. "So It's okay. Besides, I'm not going to stay out here freezing for that long. I'm just going to jog around the block for awhile, so I don't look suspicious."
Before Abby could put her plan into effect, however, a car pulled into Mr. Seger's driveway.
Abby whipped out a tiny notebook and wrote something down.
"What're you doing?" I whispered (although there was no chance whoever it was could hear me all the way across the street).
"License plate," she whispered back, "and car description. And description of the guy."
"Is he Mr. Seger?"
"Maybe," she said.
We both watched as a short man got out of the car. He was wearing a brown suit and his brown hair was combed to one side the way men sometimes comb their hair to hide bald spots. He seemed pretty ordinary.
"Look," I said. "He has two stickers on the back of his car."
"Can you see what they say?"
I shook my head. It was getting dark.
Mr. Seger let himself in the side door of the house, confirming his identity. The light in the kitchen of his house (at least, I assumed it was the kitchen) went on.
Abby jogged forward. * "Where are you going?" I asked in alarm.
She didn't answer. A moment later I saw her crouch by the back bumper of the car and write furiously in her notebook.
Then she jogged back to me. "Stoneybrook Business Bureau stickers," she reported. "The blue hexagon is last year's and the orange one is for this year. . . . Well, I better keep moving. Don't want to look suspicious. See ya later, Mal."
Abby jogged away.
I climbed on my bicycle in a daze and pedaled home.
When I got home, my parents were talking about insulation. I felt that this was becoming an unhealthy obsession with them. But I didn't mention it, although my mother did say, as I walked by the door of the den, "Mallory? Was that jacket warm enough for the weather today?"
See what I mean?
"The Stoneybrook Business Bureau," said Kristy. "All roads seem to point to it."
It was the next afternoon. We'd convened a special meeting of the BSC on the steps of the school to "review the case" as Kristy put it. Among us, we'd managed to keep Mr. Seger's house pretty well staked out, except during the night. Kristy and Abby had gone out for an early morning jog that just happened to take them by Mr. Seger's house. ("We split up at the corner and took turns circling the block," Abby explained.) When they'd had to go home to get ready for school, Stacey had taken over the watch, standing at the bus stop at the end of the road and sauntering casually along the street.
There had been additional sightings of Noah and of Mr. Seger: Noah climbing into the car with Mr. Seger that morning before school, Noah looking glum and Mr. Seger looking tense. Noah had returned shortly after that and gone in the house. He hadn't emerged by the time Stacey had to leave for school.
Nobody had seen the Ford Escort.
Stacey, meanwhile, told us she'd give us a "full report" at the BSC meeting, then headed out to baby-sit the Rodowskys again. Claudia, who was heading home to start work on a report, walked with her. Abby had soccer practice, so that left Mary Anne, Jessi, Kristy, and me.
We headed for the Stoneybrook Business Bureau. It turned out to be an old house in the middle of Stoneybrook that had been turned into an office building, along with most of the other houses on the street. We passed a dentist, a lawyer, a secondhand clothing store, and a used bookstore, before we reached the house we were looking for, a white building with red trim.
We opened the door and went in. Just to the right of the front hall was a room where a secretary sat behind a desk. He nodded at us.
Kristy said, "Hello," and walked in.
"Hello," said the secretary, smiling. "What can I do for you?"
"Well, we're doing a report for school," said Kristy. "Or at least, I am. About small businesses in Stoneybrook. And I, ah, wanted to interview some of the members of the bureau."
"Sounds like a good idea," said the secretary. "Let me get you our membership list."
"You have a list?" I asked, surprised. "I mean, one that we can look at?"
"Better than that, I'll make you a copy," said the secretary. He took a file out of one of his lower desk drawers. "If you'll excuse me for a moment, I'll be right back with this."
"Wow," Jessi said softly after he'd left. "That was easy."
The secretary returned and handed Kristy four sheets of paper stapled together. "Here's the list of our member businesses."
"Thanks," said Kristy, folding it carefully and putting it in her pack.
"Let us know if we can be of any further help," said the secretary. "And good luck with that report."
"Thanks," Kristy replied. We turned and walked casually toward the door. We had almost reached it when the secretary cried, "Stop!"
I froze.
Kristy turned.
The secretary hurried toward her with another set of sheets. "I'm sorry," he said. "I gave you last year's list. Here's one that is more up-to-date. I have extra copies of this one on hand."
"Oh," said Kristy. "Do you mind if I keep both lists?"
"Be my guest," said the secretary. The phone began to ring and he hurried back to his desk.
Later, at the BSC meeting, Stacey reported that Mr. Seger had come home early that afternoon, while she was sitting for the Rodowskys, then left. Noah, who obviously had left the house after Stacey had gone to school, had come home and gone inside, slamming the door. Mr. Seger had then returned and gone inside. The two had emerged a short time later. They'd left, in Mr. Seger's car, and hadn't returned by the time the Rodowskys had come home.
"You know, for only two people, they come and go almost as much as my whole family," I commented.
Kristy studied the list, then handed it around. "Mr. Seger's there on both lists, a member in good standing," she said. "But it doesn't say what he does. It just says, 'Seger Associates.' "
"Whatever he does, he keeps his own hours. And if the business is named after him, he must be the boss," said Stacey.
"Maybe he's an embezzler!" Claudia exclaimed. "Maybe he has stacks and stacks of embezzled money around his house and that's why he didn't want the police to come in. And maybe that's why he can't report it stolen - because he stole it first!"
We all liked that idea. It seemed to make sense.
But would Mr. Seger embezzle money from his own business? And why?
I sighed. I settled back on the floor by the corner of Claudia's bed and ate some chips. We had a lot more dues.
And the mystery was more mysterious than ever.
Chapter 10.
Stacey.
Hello?" I said.
"You're next," a voice whispered.
I slammed down the phone.
My hands started to shake. With trembling fingers I picked up the phone and called Claudia's house.
Call me absentminded. Call me a space cadet. I'd actually forgotten about the hangup phone calls. With two days to go before we left for Shadow Lake, I'd had a lot on my mind.
Such as what to wear. And how to act with Sam. And whether it would snow. I've only been skiing a couple of times, but I couldn't wait to get out there on the bunny slopes again. I was psyched for the trip. In fact, I was staring at my clothes - which were spread out on my bed and on the chair in my room - making very important clothing decisions when he (or she) called.
I forgot about my clothes as I listened to the phone ring. Then I thought suddenly, what if Claudia is there by herself? What if he's got her? What if she's tied up at this very moment, sitting there helplessly, listening to the phone . . .
"Hello?" Claud answered in a very un-Claudlike, cautious way.
"He's back," I gasped. "He called me. And he spoke again."
"He said, 'You're next.' Right?"
"How did you know?" I said. I heard my voice go up and thought, Get a grip, McGill. Then I said, "He's called you, too!"
"Yup. We're part of his little phone terrorist circle."
I said, "Maybe it is Cokie. Or Cary. I mean, maybe they heard about the graffiti on Kristy's door and they're calling us to freak us out."
"Maybe. But I don't think so." Claudia sighed. "What do we do?"
"Answer the phone very, very carefully," I said. Then I added, "I'm going to call Kristy and let her know."
"I'll call Mary Anne," said Claudia.
"Good," I said. "And call me back if anything else happens."
"Don't worry, I will," said Claudia fervently.
Kristy took the news calmly. She said, "I'll check and see if anyone else has gotten phone calls. But I think it is just limited to the four of us, because whoever it is found our names in that newspaper article."
"Are you home alone?" I asked.
"Nah," said Kristy. "Nannie's here. And Emily Michelle. It looks as if Emily Michelle is coming down with a cold."
"I'm glad you're not alone," I said. "If someone called me while I was home alone, I'd totally freak."
"I might, too," Kristy admitted.
What we didn't know then was that Mary Anne was home alone.
And she was about to have a very unpleasant visit.
Claudia called Mary Anne the moment she hung up after talking with me.