Clocks and Robbers (4 page)

Sylvester nodded. “I’ve heard that most secret societies are people who help other people.”

“Like what the Kiwanis Club does here in town?” said Rosie. “My sister got a scholarship from them a couple years ago to attend a leadership camp at Moon Hollow College.”

“Or … like us,” said Sylvester. “The Question Marks help people too.” The group chuckled. “What?” he continued, offended. “We solve mysteries!”

“You’re right,” said Viola. “It’s funny to think of ourselves as a secret society … but we are, in a way.” After a moment, she continued.
“The First Principles
might be a series of the Timekeepers’ beliefs. Maybe those words are not
only
a code but also a type of … motto.”

“That’s a possibility,” said Woodrow. “The words do represent good qualities. We already know that the members of the group were generous. Mr. Clintock donated his fancy clocks to the town. The others gave Moon Hollow some of their money to help build this library.”

“Nice of them,” said Rosie.

“Who knows what else they did?” said Sylvester. “Hey, Viola, maybe we should tell your mom what we found. About the clocks and the codes. She could run an article in the
Moon
Hollow Herald
about the clocks and the Timekeepers. Wouldn’t that be cool?”

“Oh, definitely,” said Viola. “This is right up her alley.”

Outside, the November sky was overcast. The light was dimming. When the group left the library to walk back to their block, they passed by the large clock once more. Sylvester piped up. “So, now we know who Mr. Clintock’s secret messages were directed at. The Timekeepers of Moon Hollow. But there’s one thing I still don’t understand.” He pointed at the clock. “The numbers. The symbols. The addresses. Those were his codes. They change on a weekly basis. So what?
What exactly was he trying to tell the secret society?”

“A club needs a meeting place,” said Viola. “Right?”

“Yeah,” said Rosie, zipping her coat up to her neck, protecting herself against the cold wind. “Like the Four Corners in our backyards.”

“But maybe the Timekeepers had more than one meeting place,” said Viola.

“Totally!” said Woodrow. “Three addresses. Three different spots to get together. The library. The train station. And the gatehouse up at the college.”

“The locations rotated on a weekly basis,” Viola continued. “Mr. Clintock must have set up his clocks as a reminder to the group, in a variety of locations around Moon Hollow, so each member had easy access to find out where the meeting was going to be held that week.”

“They only had to glance at any of the clocks,” said Rosie, “and they’d have their answer. That’s so clever!”

Walking back to their block, they all secretly knew that the Question Marks had once again been pretty clever themselves.

Mrs. Hart ran the article on Monday morning. That afternoon, Viola received a phone call from a woman claiming to be from the Associated Press. She asked to speak with Viola’s mom to see if it would be okay to contact the rest of the group. The reporter, who introduced herself as Darlene Reese, wanted to run a story about the four kids who had uncovered the secrets of the little known philanthropic group in Moon Hollow, New York, known as the Timekeepers.

Rinsing lettuce in the sink for dinner, Viola could barely contain herself, she was so ecstatic. The four of them were about to become famous!

“I don’t know if it’s such a good idea,” said Mrs. Hart.

Viola felt as though her mom had just popped a balloon.

Thankfully, her father spoke up from his office. “They deserve the attention,” he called out down the hallway. “I’m really proud of you guys. Those clocks have been around town for how long … and no one else has thought to look closer?”

“I’m not saying they’re undeserving,” said Mrs. Hart. “I just don’t know if I want Viola’s name plastered across the Internet. The
Moon Hollow Herald
is one thing … but the Associated Press is huge. Who knows what kinds of people pick up on these things?”

Mr. Hart wandered into the kitchen. “Well … what does Viola want to do?”

“I suppose I should ask my friends,” Viola said. In her mind though, she shouted,
I want to talk to the reporter!

It turned out that the rest of the group felt the same way. Later, after asking permission from their parents, Viola, Rosie, Woodrow, and Sylvester video-chatted with Darlene from the Harts’ computer. The reporter asked them about their experience, and they told her a little bit about the mystery club. But after the conversation ended, Woodrow looked upset.

“What’s wrong?” asked Sylvester.

Woodrow sighed. “I thought the coolest part about the Timekeepers was that they kept themselves a secret for so long. Now everyone is going to know about us: the Question Marks.”

The others glanced at one another, trying to gauge if they all felt the same way. Finally, Viola spoke up. “We never said what we were doing was a secret. Maybe after this, people will come to us with even more mysteries to solve. I mean,
other than the clocks case, things have been slow lately.”

Woodrow still didn’t look convinced.

“Don’t worry about it, dude,” said Sylvester, turning toward Woodrow. “This isn’t going to keep all the cute girls from staring at you. In fact, they’ll probably start staring at
me
too.”

Rosie and Viola crossed their arms and rolled their eyes.

By the time Mrs. Hart’s news article appeared on the
Herald
‘s website on Wednesday, the group had a couple reasons to get together other than to talk about their impending fame. They had some more mysterious stories to share.

The sun had been going down earlier and earlier. The air was too cold for them to meet at the Four Corners for an extended time anymore. So, Sylvester invited them to join him in his new bedroom.

The basement was unfinished—cinderblock walls, wood-plank stairs, storage shelves in the far dark corners. It was damp and smelled a bit like stale laundry. Hal-muh-ni’s old yellow couch sat against the wall. She had also given Sylvester her big Oriental rug so that he wouldn’t have to walk barefoot on the concrete floors. To him, it was very little consolation for being pushed out of his bedroom.

The four sat down on the plush fibers amid the intricately swirling and colorful patterns next to Sylvester’s bed.

“Who’s up first?” said Viola.

Rosie raised her hand. “This one comes from my oldest sister, Grace,” she began. “Over the summer, she took a part-time job at a boutique at the shopping indent on Oakwood Avenue.

“One of her favorite parts of the job is watching for shoplifters. She thinks it’s fun to bust them. Once, she told me how she noticed two women with a huge shopping bag standing in a corner of the store near a pile of jeans. They kept glancing at her in a weird way. Grace noticed that it would have been really easy for them to simply slide the pile off the display table into their big bag and walk out of the store. So she immediately went over to the women and asked if she could help them. They said no, but Grace continued to stand there with her arms folded. The women got so mad they stormed out.”

“Ha!” said Sylvester. “Your sister is
so
tough.”

“She might be tough,” said Rosie, “but that didn’t help her last night.”

“Oh no,” said Viola. “What happened?”

“According to Grace, it had been a really busy evening. She was working at the cash register. One young woman came up, smiled, and plopped a bunch of merchandise on the counter. Before Grace could ring her up, the store manager, Tori, tapped her shoulder and pulled her aside. Out of earshot of anyone else, Tori mentioned that she’d heard that this woman was trouble. She’d recently
been caught in some other local stores trying to steal stuff. Tori told Grace to be careful. My sister was feeling pretty confident, so she agreed and returned to the register.

“The shopper was nothing but pleasant. As Grace chatted with her, she kept her eyes peeled, in case the woman tried to slip something into her pocket. By the time Grace had placed every item into a shopping bag, she was certain that whatever this woman had been accused of must have been a mistake. The woman seemed completely ordinary.

“Grace gave her the total. It was almost five hundred dollars. The woman handed over her credit card. Grace ran it through the machine without a problem. The woman signed the receipt, and Grace compared her signature to the one on the back of the credit card. They matched perfectly, and Grace was certain everything was fine. She wanted to keep the long line moving. So she returned the card to the woman, handed over the shopping bag, and waved good-bye.”

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” said Woodrow.

Rosie nodded. “About an hour later, Tori called Grace into the office at the back of the store. Tori was angry. ‘I told you to watch that customer closely,’ she said. ‘And you let her steal almost five hundred dollars worth of merchandise from us.’

“My sister couldn’t believe it. She insisted she’d done everything right. She saw the woman pay for everything with a credit card.
So how did the woman manage to steal the merchandise?”

“‘You saw the woman use
a
credit card,’ said Tori. ‘It just happened to be a
stolen
credit card.’

“Grace got really frustrated. ‘But I checked the signature,’ she answered. ‘It matched the name on the card.’

“Tori sighed. ‘If you checked the woman’s signature against the name on the card, you should have noticed a problem immediately,’ she said.”

“What was the problem?” asked Woodrow.

The group was quiet for a few minutes. “Maybe the signature was a really silly name,” said Sylvester. “Like Minnie Mouse or something like that.”

Rosie shook her head. “It was a real name belonging to a real person.
But what kind of name should have instantly clued my sister in that she was being scammed by this woman?”

Viola gasped. “Was it a man’s name on the card?”

“Yes,” said Rosie. “The card belonged to a man named John Whiting. The woman had stolen Mr. Whiting’s wallet that afternoon and had been on a shopping spree ever since, hoping people wouldn’t look too closely at the first name on the card. Mr. Whiting alerted the authorities as soon as he realized his card was missing. My sister just happened to be one of the unlucky ones who got taken in by the woman’s charm.”

“Ugh,” said Sylvester. “That makes me so angry!”

“I have a question,” said Woodrow. “Grace said the signature matched the one on the card. How is that possible?”

“Maybe she practiced copying his handwriting before using it,” Sylvester suggested.

“Wouldn’t that have taken a lot of work?” said Viola. “Probably more than just a few minutes … and it sounds like she didn’t have a lot of time.”

“That’s a really good question, Woodrow,” said Rosie.
“How did the woman manage to forge Mr. Whiting’s handwriting on the credit slips so perfectly?”

“She must not have forged it at all,” said Sylvester, as the idea slowly came to him.

“What do you mean?” Woodrow asked.

“I’ve noticed my mom ring up customers at our diner. Sometimes people don’t sign the back of their credit card.”

“Yes!” said Viola. “This John Whiting guy must have left his card blank. After the woman stole it, she simply signed his name for him there. That way, the signatures on the card and the credit slip would match.”

“Poor Grace,” said Sylvester. “Did she get fired?”

Rosie shook her head. “Tori scolded her for not being more careful. But since the police caught the woman less than an hour later, the store recovered the merchandise and Mr. Whiting got his money back. Still, my sister was so embarrassed, she wanted to quit. But my parents told her these things happen all the time and talked her out of making a hasty decision.”

“Those things
do
happen all the time,” said Woodrow. “When I visited my dad in New York City last weekend, we had our own experience with a thief.”

“Last Saturday, my dad met me at Grand Central Station as usual,” said Woodrow. “But this time, he surprised me with tickets to go see a Broadway show.”

“Really?” said Viola. “I didn’t picture you being into stuff like that.”

“Well, it was a really cool show,” said Woodrow, blushing. “The cast was funny and the story was twisted. Plus, I liked the music.”

“So I guess you
are
into stuff like that,” said Sylvester.

“If you mean ‘really cool stuff,’ I guess I am.” He puffed out his chest. “And if you’re lucky, maybe I’ll invite you next time. A fine cultural experience might do you some good,” he said, nudging his friend’s shoulder. “Anyway, after the show and a late dinner, Times Square was a little bit quieter than I’m used to. My dad and I were walking up Broadway back to his apartment when this big, burly guy totally knocked into me. I nearly fell over. The plastic bag he’d been carrying slipped out of his hand and fell to the
sidewalk. A glass bottle inside the bag shattered. My dad and I paused as the man grunted in annoyance. He immediately scooped up the mess and tossed it in the nearest trash can. We started to walk away when the man called out at us, ‘Don’t tell me you’re not even going to apologize!’

“I could tell my father was biting his tongue, since the man was the one who’d crashed into me. But my dad managed to politely apologize, and we continued to walk away.

“‘That’s not good enough,’ the man called out. ‘You owe me another juice.’ Not wanting to cause any trouble, my dad said, ‘Fine. How much?’

“The guy didn’t hesitate. ‘Fifty bucks.’”

“Fifty dollars?” said Viola. “What kind of juice was it?”

“That’s what I wondered,” said Woodrow. “The man explained that he’d just come from his gym. And he looked like it. He had huge muscles. He told us that the juice had been a special shake with protein powder and all sorts of exotic vitamins in it. That’s why it cost so much money.

“Not wanting to hand over a wad of money on the street, my dad offered to walk to the man’s gym to buy him another one. The guy agreed and then told us that his gym was all the way over on Eleventh Avenue.”

“That’s practically the Hudson River,” said Sylvester.

Woodrow nodded. “My dad started to get nervous. I could tell he didn’t want to follow a stranger anywhere. But we were scared that if we just tried to walk away, he’d follow us home. And there were no cops around—believe me, I looked. Because as we stood there, something about the situation felt strange.”

“You think?” said Viola.

“It started to stink … like a scam. This guy just
happened
to bump into me on a nearly deserted street. He just
happened
to drop the drink he was carrying. It just
happened
to be a really expensive drink that was only available four avenue blocks away. I knew we needed to figure out a way to outwit this guy, to prove that he was lying. Suddenly, it came to me. All I needed was right there on the street with me.
Do you guys know how I called his bluff?”

“The broken juice bottle?” asked Rosie.

Woodrow nodded. “Nonchalantly, I wandered over to the trash can where the man had tossed his plastic bag. ‘What was the brand of your drink?’ I asked. ‘Maybe we can find it at a store around here instead.’ My dad threw me a look that said I should keep quiet, but it was too late. I’d already pulled a piece of the man’s bottle from the bag. The label revealed that the supposedly expensive protein drink was actually an ordinary bottle of apple juice.”

“Whoa,” said Rosie. “What did he do then?”

“The guy knew he’d been caught. He took a few steps away, mumbled ‘never mind,’ and took off around the corner.

“My dad made me promise to let him handle that sort of thing from now on. But he did buy me an apple juice on the way home to reward me for my detective work. It cost a lot less than fifty bucks!”