Cam Jansen and the Summer Camp Mysteries (6 page)

Cam and the others worked the entire period on their baskets. Ruth helped them. After about an hour, Fran returned.

“What’s the surprise?” Betsy asked her.

“The bunk is all cleaned up,” Fran answered. “All the beds are back where they belong.”

“That’s the surprise?” Betsy asked. She was disappointed.

“Did you catch the group that raided our bunk?” Gina asked.

“It wasn’t a group,” Fran said. “It was just one person. And I didn’t catch her. Cam and Terri did.”

“And Eric helped,” Cam said.

Fran nodded. “It was me,” she said. “They caught me. I thought a raid would be fun. I thought it would be exciting. I even thought it might help our team spirit when we played baseball and basketball against the other groups. But do you know what? It was just a
lot of mess and a lot of work to clean up. I’m sorry I did it.”

“That’s okay,” Terri said. “The raid wasn’t much fun, but watching Cam solve another mystery was.”

“
Click
!” Gina said. “Now
I’m
solving a mystery.”

“
Click! Click! Click! Click! Click!
” Gina said.

Gina took a deep breath and said, “That’s all. I’m out of film.”

“And it’s time to get ready for dinner,” Fran said.

Cam and the other girls in G8 followed Fran to their tidy bunk. They washed their hands and got ready for dinner.

“Just wait till after dinner,” Fran said. “Our night activity will be so exciting.”

“Are we going on a raid?” Betsy asked.

“No,” Fran answered. “One raid is enough. We’re going on a scavenger hunt.”

After dinner, Sadie Rosen came to G8’s bunk. She gave the girls in G8 this list of things to find:

“I have a balloon,” Terri said. “That’s an air bag.”

Gina took a pen and pad from her night stand. She drew a circle on the paper and said, “This pen writes green.”

“But that’s blue ink,” Fran said.

“Wait,” Gina told her. “Watch it write green.”

With her blue pen, Gina wrote the word
green
.

Cam, Terri, and the other girls in G8 laughed.

“And I’m an old camera,” Cam said. “I’m ten years old and I have a photographic memory. That’s just like a camera.”

“Aren’t scavenger hunts fun?” Fran asked.

“Camp is fun,” Cam said. “It’s lots of fun!”

“Hey! Quiet down!” Danny shouted. He was standing on a chair in the dining room. “I can’t hear myself think!”

“That’s good,” Betsy shouted to him from her seat at the next table. “It’s better if you don’t think. I’ve heard enough of your riddles.”

“Hey, you didn’t hear this one. What did one baby ear of corn say to the other?”

Betsy didn’t answer.

“It said, ‘Where’s pop corn?”’

“Sit down,” Jacob told him.

Cam, the other girls in G8, and all the
other children at Camp Eagle Lake were in the dining room. They were waiting for their dinners. It was near the end of Cam’s third week in camp. Soon she would be going home.

“What’s for dinner?” Betsy asked.

“I know what’s for dinner tomorrow night,” Terri said. “The last night in camp is banquet night. We get hot dogs or steak or chicken or hamburger or turkey. We get whatever we want. It’s like a restaurant.”

Fran and Gina came out of the kitchen. They each held a large round tray.

“What’s for dinner?” Betsy asked again.

“Food,” Fran answered. “Good food.”

Fran and Gina rested their trays on the edge of the table.

Fran said, “We have tuna fish or chicken, spinach or carrots, and baked potatoes.”

“I’ll take the chicken,” Betsy said. “No one likes tuna fish.”

“I do,” Cam said. “Kitty does.”

Fran took off the platters of chicken and tuna fish and bowls of spinach, carrots, and baked potatoes. One by one, she gave them to the girls in her group.

Cam and her friends talked while they ate. When dinner was done, Cam put a little leftover tuna fish in a napkin. She put the napkin in her pocket.

When she got back to her bunk, Cam looked for Kitty. But Kitty wasn’t in her usual place on the porch.

Cam put the tuna-fish-filled napkin on her night stand. Then she sat on her bed and thought about all the fun she had had in camp. She was sorry the three weeks were almost over.

“The basketball courts have lights,” Terri said to Cam. “Let’s shoot some hoops. This may be our last chance. Tomorrow night is the banquet.”

“Sure,” Cam said. “But first, I want to feed Kitty.”

She took the tuna fish. Then Cam and Terri told Fran where they were going.

“Here, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty,” Cam called once they were outside the bunk. Cam
opened up the napkin and held it out.

“I wonder where she is,” Cam said.

“Maybe she’s not hungry. Or maybe someone else is feeding her,” Terri said. “Let’s just play basketball.”

Cam closed the napkin and went with Terri to the basketball courts. There, under the lights, was Kitty. Eric and Jim, the sports counselor, were there, too. It was Eric’s turn to help Jim. Both Jim and Eric had brooms. They were about to sweep the courts. Jim and a helper swept the courts every evening after dinner.

Eric was petting Kitty.

Jim said, “Sometimes Kitty comes here at night. I think it’s the light that attracts her.”

Cam gave Kitty the tuna fish.

“I’m going home soon,” Cam told Kitty. “I’ll miss you.”

Meow
!

Kitty quickly ate the tuna fish. Then Cam told Jim that she and Terri wanted to play basketball.

“I want to play, too,” Eric said.

“Here,” Jim said, and gave Eric a key. “Get a basketball from the sports shed.”

The others watched Eric walk slowly across the road to the shed. He stopped there for a moment and ran back.

“Everything is gone!” Eric told Jim. “When I got there, the door was open and all the sports equipment was gone.”

“That can’t be true,” Jim said. “I locked the shed just before dinner, and everything was there.”

They all hurried to the shed. The door was open. The padlock had been cut. It was on the floor. Inside, Jim’s papers and empty boxes were everywhere. There was broken glass from the framed picture that had been on Jim’s desk. And all the sports equipment was gone.

“Sadie Rosen will be upset,” Jim said. “The equipment was new. There were prizes, too, for the banquet, and my computer.”

“Don’t worry,” Terri said, “Cam will find
out who stole all your stuff. She’s good at solving mysteries.”

Eric corrected her. “Cam and
I
will find out,” he said. “We solve mysteries together.”

Jim collected his papers. Cam, Eric, and Terri looked for clues.

“Maybe the thief dropped something,” Eric told Terri. “Maybe he stepped in mud and left footprints.”

Jim picked up a sheet of paper and said, “Look at this. It’s a list of all the equipment. There were twelve new basketballs, four dozen softballs, one dozen new bats, and lots more. My computer was new, too, and all the prizes for the banquet were taken.”

“The thief must have loaded it all in his car and taken it out of camp,” Terri said. “If he did, he drove right past Barry. We just have to ask Barry who left camp during dinner.”

“Great!” Cam said. “Let’s go.”

“Please,” Jim said. “Wait just a moment for me.”

Jim put the papers he collected into an
empty box. Then he said, “Come on, Kitty. Come with us. There’s broken glass on the floor. You can’t stay here.”

Kitty was by the door. She was licking the padlock.

“Come on, Kitty,” Jim said again. Then he picked her up and carried her.

Barry was sitting in the booth by the camp entrance. He was reading a book. Jim knocked on the window.

“Hey, Jim,” Barry said. He showed Jim his book. “You should read this. It’s great. It’s all about Babe Ruth. He was a baseball player.”

Jim said, “I know who Babe Ruth was. What I want to know is who left camp during dinner.”

“Dinner,” Barry said and looked at his clipboard. “One car left during dinner and one truck came in. Sadie Rosen left at five fifty. She went to get the movie she’s showing tonight.” Barry leaned forward and whispered, “And the plumber came. There’s a problem with the toilets in bunk B6.”

“Did the plumber drive a truck?” Terri asked.

“Of course she drove a truck,” Barry answered. “She has lots of tools and pipes and plungers. She needs all those things for her work. She’s still here.”

“Let’s go to B6,” Jim said. “Maybe the plumber has lots of basketballs and baseball bats, too.”

“Basketballs? Baseball bats?” Barry said. “Why would a plumber need those?”

Jim and the others didn’t answer. They were already on their way to B6.

“Look!” Terri said, and pointed. “There’s the plumber’s truck. It’s big enough to hold lots of sports stuff.”

A small truck was parked in front of bunk B6. Cam, Eric, Terri, and Jim hurried across the baseball field. Jim put Kitty down. Then he tried to open the back door of the truck. It was locked.

“Are you looking for me?” someone asked.