Mystery of the Secret Message (7 page)

“Our statue’s been kidnapped,” Benny exclaimed, hopping with excitement. “I mean, statue-napped! Do you think the phantom of Greenfield Square did it?”

“There is no phantom,” Henry told him. “But someone very clever pulled this off. We have to tell Grandfather.”

James Alden was already on the scene. He stared at the stepladder in disbelief. “How in the world did someone steal a six-foot-high statue in broad daylight?”

Word of the theft buzzed around the square. Shop owners came out to stare at the ladder perched on the statue’s base.

Rick Bass came running over. “This is incredible! Did anybody see anything?”

The Aldens shook their heads.

“People have been working in the square since this morning,” said Grandfather. “That statue didn’t vanish into thin air.”

“The statue was covered all day,” said Rick. “It could have been taken early this morning and we wouldn’t have known the difference.”

Violet thought of something. “Does this mean the festival won’t go on?”

Could they have a Winter Festival without the Minuteman statue? One of the main reasons for the event was to raise funds to fix the statue’s base. Now the guest of honor was missing.

“The festival will go on as scheduled,” Grandfather said firmly.

“The statue might turn up before tomorrow. It could be a prank,” Rick said.

“Some prank!” Henry said. Was Rick Bass truly concerned or putting on an act?

“I’m going to talk to the shop owners,” James Alden declared. “An operation like this couldn’t be pulled off without somebody seeing
something
.”

“I’ll call the police,” Rick offered. “They should be notified of the theft.”

“Good idea,” Grandfather said. He and Rick hurried off.

“The thief must have left clues,” said Benny. “Let’s look around.”

The children searched the area thoroughly. But they found only bent nails and trash the construction workers had left behind.

Discouraged, Violet sat down on the statue’s base. Her camera swung around her neck on its strap.

Jessie stared at the camera. “Violet!” she cried. “Your camera!”

“What about it?”

“You’ve been taking pictures all day. I bet you have a clue on your film!” Jessie said. How could they miss something so obvious?

Now Benny was excited. “If we develop the pictures, we might find out who stole the statue!”

“But the drugstore has to send film away to the lab,” Henry said. “That takes almost a week.”

“Dawn will develop my film,” said Violet. “She could do it fast in her studio.”

“Dawn is one of our suspects,” Jessie reminded her. “Suppose she’s the person we’re after?”

“That’s a chance we have to take,” said Henry.

Benny was already running across the square. “Hurry up!” he called back.

Inside Dawn’s studio, the red light glowed above the darkroom door.

“That means she’s inside developing pictures,” Violet said. She knocked on the door.

“Just a second,” came the reply. A moment later, Dawn opened the door. She smiled when she saw the Aldens.

“Hi, what’s up?”

The children told her the statue was missing and a valuable clue to the theft might be in Violet’s pictures.

Dawn couldn’t believe the statue of Josiah Wade was gone. She went to the window.

“It really is gone!” she said. “Let’s develop Violet’s film right away. You kids can help me.”

They followed Dawn into her darkroom.

She put the roll of film into a canister of developing solution. Violet agitated the canister, then Dawn added other chemicals. Next, Dawn hung the roll of film up to dry. Jessie and Benny cut the negatives into strips.

“Now we print the pictures,” Dawn said. “But first we have to make the image bigger. I use this machine, called an enlarger.”

She gave them prints as she enlarged the negatives.

The Aldens dipped the prints in trays of developing solution. Like magic, images appeared on the paper.

“Look at this!” Henry cried. With tweezers, he held up a photograph of the short, scruffy-haired worker talking to a woman.

The woman was Sylvia Pepper.

“Sylvia hired the construction crew,” Violet said. “She must know the workers.”

“Wait till you see this!” Jessie held up another picture.

The photograph showed the construction truck pulling away from the square. A tarpaulin covered the truck bed. Sticking out from the canvas was the end of a musket.

“Josiah’s musket!” Benny exclaimed. “The workers stole the statue. We have to tell Grandfather!”

Violet was examining Jessie’s photograph with a magnifying glass. “Look,” she said. “Behind that pole. See anybody familiar?”

“Sylvia!” answered Benny, who had the sharpest eyes. “She’s watching the truck leave.”

“I think Miss Pepper has some explaining to do,” Henry said decisively. “Let’s go visit her.”

Dawn shut off the equipment in her darkroom. “I’ll come with you.”

They went outside. All the shop owners were talking about the theft. Even the substitute pharmacist, Mr. Kirby, seemed concerned. Only Sylvia Pepper was absent.

She was in her shop, calmly putting a bouquet of yellow roses in water.

When she saw the Aldens, Sylvia said, “If it’s about dressing up as a clown tomorrow for the festival, I’ve already told your grandfather I won’t do it.”

“But did you tell him about who stole the statue?” Jessie asked.

Sylvia dropped a rose. “What are you talking about?”

“Surely you must know the Minuteman statue is gone,” Dawn said, gesturing toward the square. “It was stolen sometime today.”

“Why would I know anything about it?” Sylvia said defensively. “I’ve been in my shop all day.”

“Not the whole day.” Henry put the two photographs on the counter.

Sylvia turned pale. Her bright lipstick seemed redder.

“Would you like to explain?” Dawn demanded.

The florist sat down on a stool behind the counter. “I thought I could get away with it,” she said dully. “It was risky taking the statue in the middle of the day. But I believed we could pull it off.”

“We, who?” Henry asked. “This man in the photo?”

“Yes,” replied Sylvia. “His name is Don. We went to college together.”

“Why did Don take the statue?” Benny asked. “It belongs to Greenfield.”

Sylvia told them that years ago when she was in college, she saw a copy of Franklin Bond’s sketch for the statue. She read the note about Josiah’s gift to the sculptor.

“I never forgot about the secret compartment in the drawing,” she explained. “I figured the gift — whatever it was — was hidden inside the statue.”

Sylvia moved to Greenfield and opened her florist shop. But business was not as good as she’d hoped it would be and Sylvia was in danger of losing her lease on the store.

“Every day I’d look out on the square and see that statue,” she said. “I knew it contained a secret.”

“And you decided to take it,” Henry concluded.

Sylvia nodded. “Josiah Wade lived during the Revolutionary War. Whatever he gave Franklin Bond would be very old and valuable. Collectors pay good money for any kind of Revolutionary relic.”

“Like the things Rick Bass has in the museum,” Violet said.

Sylvia went on. “I asked my old friend Don to help me look for the statue’s secret. But I didn’t want anybody to suspect me, so we arranged a private signal.”

Benny slapped the counter. “The message photograph!”

“That’s right,” Sylvia said. “I learned that trick in a photography class. But then the photographs got all mixed up in the drugstore and I lost my message photo.”

“I had it,” Violet said. “And you figured it out. You took my camera that day.”

Sylvia frowned. “It wasn’t easy getting it back. I had to search all your belongings before I found it.”

“What did the message mean?” Jessie said. “ ‘Move it the day before’?”

“The day before the festival,” Sylvia said. “Since a lot of activity would be going on in the square, I thought that would be a good time to steal the statue.”

“Why go to all that trouble?” Henry wanted to know. “Why not just call your friend and tell him about your plan?”

Sylvia shrugged. “I was afraid the call might be traced back to me.”

“Then you didn’t really mean it when you said the statue should be moved in front of your store,” Benny accused.

Sylvia smiled. “I just said that.”

“You’re the phantom vandal,” Violet said. “You painted the statue and switched the building numbers. You even wrecked the decorations, didn’t you?”

“I had to stall for time while I looked for the message photograph,” Sylvia said. “Of course, I fired the original construction crew your grandfather hired. Don got a job as a construction worker and I hired his crew.”

Jessie thought of something. “You made that call to Grandfather about moving the statue, didn’t you?”

“Sure, to throw suspicion on Rick Bass. He never liked me, anyway,” Sylvia said sourly. “Nobody likes me.”

“We tried to,” Dawn told her. “Everyone in the square would have pitched in to help save your shop.”

“What do you care?” Sylvia said, tossing her head.

“The other night, after we worked on the wreaths,” Dawn said. “You thought I had gone home, but I saw you poking around the statue.”

“We saw you!” Henry cried. “We were coming back for Jessie’s notebook. You ran.”

“I thought it was Sylvia coming back,” Dawn said. “I didn’t want her to think I was spying on her.”

Sylvia gave a sharp laugh. “Well, let me tell you what I was doing. I was looking for the secret compartment one last time.”

“The ribbon I found,” Benny said. “It was yours, not Dawn’s!” The scrap of cloth matched the bows on the door wreaths. Sylvia had contributed those ribbons.

Dawn looked at the Aldens in surprise. “Did you think I was the vandal?”

Violet blushed. “Well . . . we knew you were in the drugstore the day the pictures were mixed up.”

“I was only in there a second,” Dawn said. “The place was so crowded, I left.”

“We couldn’t rule out anyone,” Henry told her, “until we got to the bottom of this. But we found the true culprit.”

The corners of Sylvia’s mouth turned down. “I really didn’t want to steal that stupid statue.”

A voice said behind them, “That’s too bad, Miss Pepper. You could have saved us all a lot of trouble.”

Violet turned at the voice. “Grandfather! Sylvia Pepper and her friend stole the statue!”

“I heard,” James Alden said, striding into the shop. A policeman was at his heels. “You’ll be happy to know, children, that the statue has been recovered.”

B
enny was the first to glimpse the flatbed truck.

“It’s here!” he cried.

All the people who worked around the town square were on hand for the return of the stolen statue. Dawn Wellington and Mrs. Turner waited with the Aldens. Even Mr. Kirby came out for the event.

A cheer went up as the truck bumped over the curb and on into the square. Grandfather and Henry directed the truck to park next to the statue’s granite block base.

Rick Bass hopped out of the passenger side of the truck. “We’ll set the statue on the pavement,” he told Grandfather. “We’re going to fix Josiah’s base eventually. But at least he’s here for the festival.”

“And just in time,” Benny added. “The festival is tomorrow!”

Jessie hugged her notebook. So much had happened in the last few hours! Sylvia Pepper had confessed to stealing the Minuteman statue. Then the police took Miss Pepper away for questioning.

Rick Bass had spotted the statue when a policeman stopped Sylvia’s accomplice after he’d run a red light. Rick had called for a truck to bring the statue to the square.

Now Josiah Wade was back in his rightful place.

Jessie watched as Mr. Kirby and Henry helped Rick and the driver unload the statue off the truck bed. She wondered if the town would vote to move the statue or keep it in the center of the square. The Alden children would find out later, when they helped Grandfather count the votes.

When the men were about to hoist the statue upright, Benny scooted forward.

“Can you tip it up?” he asked. “I want to look for something.”

“Good thinking!” Rick said. “No better time to check for Franklin’s surprise.”

The driver braced his end of the statue. “We can hold it for a few seconds.”

Benny knelt down. The statue was hollow inside, like a giant chocolate bunny. Grandfather handed him a small flashlight. Benny shined the light inside the statue.

“See anything?” Violet asked.

“No,” Benny replied, disappointed.

“Oh, well,” Rick said consolingly. “We were never really certain Franklin Bond put his gift inside the statue. We were just guessing.”

“Franklin Bond liked to play jokes,” Henry said. “Maybe he just pretended to put a secret compartment in the statue.”

But Benny had been so sure. The statue was the perfect place to hide something.

The men lowered the statue and stood it upright beside the granite base. Grandfather gave the driver a generous tip before he drove the truck out of the town square.

“Now the square looks normal again.” Dawn sighed. “It just wasn’t the same without Josiah standing there.”

“Let’s hope Greenfield feels the same way you do,” said Grandfather. “I have the ballot box in my car. Why don’t you and Rick come home with us and help count votes?”

“Great idea!” Violet said. She was so glad Dawn hadn’t turned out to be the Greenfield phantom.

Rick glanced at Dawn. “I’d like to, but we hate to impose.”

“Mrs. McGregor loves company,” Jessie assured them.

The Aldens got into Grandfather’s car. Rick and Dawn followed in Rick’s battered station wagon.

The housekeeper was delighted to set two extra places at the dining room table. “It’s pot roast night,” said Mrs. McGregor to the guests. “There’s more than enough.”

While they ate pot roast, mashed potatoes, and carrots, they discussed Sylvia Pepper’s theft.

“I don’t see how she thought she could get away with it,” said Dawn. “What was she going to do with the statue after she stole it?”