Mystery of the Traveling Tomatoes (6 page)

Chief Morgan sat at the front desk typing up a police report. Next to him was a plate of cookies, with a sign that said:
Fresh baked zucchini cookies
—
help yourself.

“We found it!” cried Benny. “We found the fake armored car!”

In a rush, the Aldens told the chief about everything they’d found—the van and the metal panels nailed on to make it look like an armored car, the stranger with the blond ponytail who’d rented Duffy’s Garage …

As they talked, the chief waved over two detectives who wrote down the children’s information. One of them hurried off to Sam’s Scrap Yard while the other went to Duffy’s Garage.

“Should we wait here,” asked Jessie, “in case the detectives have questions for us?”

“They won’t be back for a while,” said the chief. “I’ll call your house when I learn anything. Meanwhile, take a few cookies with you.” He pushed the plate toward them. “My wife’s been baking zucchini cookies, zucchini cakes, zucchini sweet rolls—you name it, she bakes it. Zucchini is growing wild all over town. Watermelons, too, and cantaloupes, cucumbers, tomatoes.”

Violet nibbled a cookie thick with raisins. “We saw your friend Cesar Canton and his daughter at The Applewood Café,” she said. “His daughter says he misses his farm. She is very happy you and Cesar play chess every day.”

“Not every day,” said the Chief. “We just play Saturday and Sunday.” He emptied the rest of the cookies into a bag. “Here, take them all. If I eat one more cookie, I’ll turn into a zucchini.”

As the children unlocked their bikes, Jessie said, “The chief said he plays chess with Cesar twice a week. But Cesar’s daughter
thinks
Cesar is playing chess every day.” She smiled. “What do you think Cesar is doing the
other
five days of the week?”

All around them, vegetables grew around lampposts and parking meters and trees and fences. “I think Cesar does what he loves to do most,” said Violet. “Planting, planting, planting.”

“Did he plant the hill around Sam’s Scrap Yard?” asked Benny. “And the tomatoes outside the wig shop?”

Violet nodded. “He’s planted this whole town.”

“I’ll bet Cesar staked our sunflowers,” Jessie said. “And he got poison ivy on his hands when he cleaned up those weeds behind The Applewood Café.”

Violet looked troubled. “His daughter said farming is too hard for him. Do you think we should tell her what he’s been doing?”

The children didn’t want Cesar to hurt himself by working too hard. But they also did not want to give away the old farmer’s secret. “Let’s ask Grandfather tonight,” said Jessie. “He’ll know the right thing to do. And he will keep Cesar’s secret.”

They biked through the park, where the Heart Healthy Run had been the day before. The yellow-shirted Events Committee members were working to take down the tents. Empty water bottles littered the finish line.

The man with the metal detector was there, too, searching the ground nearby.

“Hi,” Benny called. The man looked up, startled. “I tried one of those,” Benny told him. “I heard the clicking sounds that metal makes and—”

But the man did not want to talk. He hurried away, kicking aside water bottles, stomping over cardboard signs.

Violet stared at the man’s boot prints. They left a
V
shaped pattern. One of the Vs had no point on the bottom. “That’s the same bootprint we saw in our garden,” she said. “That’s the man who dumped our worms.”

The man was running now. “Hey,” yelled Henry. The man ran faster. “We want to talk to you!”

They started to ride after him.

But suddenly, a scream stopped them cold. “Look out!” cried a voice across the park.

The children turned to look. The top of a big tent rocked back and forth. The sides started falling in. The volunteers were inside! The children raced over and jumped off their bikes.

Henry grabbed one of the tent poles. “Jessie, grab another pole,” he called. Benny and Violet helped, too. Together they held the tent steady enough for the trapped workers to escape.

“Thank you,” said a man. “We … we thought we could take the tents down by ourselves. But we really needed one more worker.”

“It’s just like Fenster to disappear when there’s hard work to be done,” said an angry woman. “Why did he volunteer for the Events Committee? He knew we needed his help with the tents.”

“We’ll help,” said the children. And, with everyone working together, they took down all the tents and packed them away. By the time they finished, the man with the metal detector was gone.

“That’s all right,” said Henry, “I have an idea how we can track him down. Let’s go to Mr. Hamu’s hardware store.”

At the hardware store, Mr. Hamu switched on his computer. “I hope I can help you find the person who has been trespassing in your garden,” he told the Aldens. “Only a few people have bought this expensive kind of metal detector.” He typed the words
Metal Detector Model X332
in the computer. Three names appeared on the screen.

He pointed to the first name. “This man moved to Chicago last year,” he said. He pointed to another name. “And this man fell off his son’s skateboard and broke his leg, so he’s not using his detector just now. That leaves this last one. His name is Chaney Dunkard. He lives just down the street.” Mr. Hamu wrote down the address.

“Thank you, Mr. Hamu,” said Jessie. “We’ll talk to him.” She and the other Aldens hoped they could find out who had been making trouble in their garden.

The children biked up to the small house. They saw Mr. Dunkard working at a picnic table in his front yard. He sorted through a pile of metal objects. Jewelry went in one green cloth bag and coins in another. When he saw the children, his eyes bugged out. “What do you want?”

“Why did you dump out our black gold?” Benny demanded.

The man snorted. “You mean that heap of wormy dirt?”

Benny jutted out his chin. “Worm poop is black gold.”

“Worm poop!” Mr. Dunkard made a face. “Yuck!”

“Why did you dump it?” Benny asked again.

“I heard you talking in the Café about ‘black gold.’ I thought you meant real gold. You said it was in garbage cans,” the man answered.

“The cans were on The Applewood Café property,” said Jessie. “At least you could have cleaned up the mess you made.”

“I heard someone coming,” said the man, “so I left. Big deal.”

“Why did you dig up Benny’s tomato plants?” asked Violet. “And his peppers and his onions?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mr. Dunkard said “I didn’t dig up anything. I may have snooped around in some cans, but I don’t dig in other people’s yards.”

“Hey look!” Benny said. He picked up one of the green cloth bags on the table. “This is the same kind of bag we used to make Spooky’s head!”

Mr. Dunkard yanked the bags back. “These are mine. I found them in the alley behind The Applewood Café. They were in the
alley
garbage can,
not
on Applewood property. Finders keepers.”

“May I see them?” asked Henry.

“No. You can get out of my yard, is what you can do.” The man with went back to sorting through the treasures he had found. “Worm poop,” he muttered. “Who calls worms ‘black gold?’ Kids. Bah.”

As the Aldens got back on their bikes, they were all thinking the same thing. If Mr. Dunkard didn’t dig up the “traveling tomatoes,” then who did?

The children stopped back at the police station on their way home.

“The detective brought back the metal panels from Duffy’s Garage,” the chief said. “Those will make great evidence once we dust them for fingerprints. No word yet from the other detective about the van. I promise I’ll call as soon as I hear.”

None of the children liked waiting. It was always more fun to be doing something than doing nothing. But as they walked outside, they couldn’t think of what to do next.

“Well,” said Violet, “we did solve two mysteries. We know it was Cesar who propped up our sunflowers and cleared the poison ivy out of the alley. And we also know that Mr. Dunkard dumped our compost cans searching for ‘black gold.’”

Henry laughed. “I wish I could have seen his face when all he found was garbage and a million worms. But someone else dug around our garden, and we don’t know why. We need to think harder.”

“I want to keep trying to find the bank robber,” said Jessie. She sat on the police department steps. “But I’m out of ideas.”

“Me, too,” said Violet, joining her.

“Me, three,” said Benny, plopping down between them.

But Henry was not ready to give up. “Look, we’ve learned important things. We know the thief hid his van in Duffy’s Garage while he made it into an armored car. Then we found the van. We just don’t know who the thief is.”

Jessie twirled a lock of her hair. She thought about the van in the scrap yard. She twirled and twirled her … hair! “Wigs!” she cried, jumping up. “The thief wore wigs!”

“So?” said Benny.

But Jessie was already running down the block. “And he wore a uniform,” she called to the others. “He wore wigs and a uniform. But we didn’t see wigs or a uniform in Duffy’s Garage or in the van.”

Suddenly, her feet flew out from under her. Her right leg went east and her left leg went west. She landed with a thud. “I’m okay I’m okay,” she called, getting up. She’d slipped on some tomatoes!

“They’re Cesar’s tomatoes,” said Benny. It was true. Ripe tomatoes littered the ground. They fell from the plants growing all down the block.

“Come on!” yelled Jessie, waving to the others as she disappeared inside Cora’s Costumes.

This time, Cora was dressed like a rock star in a sparkly sequin dress and a spiky wig.

Jessie told her what they were looking for. “We need to look up someone who rented two wigs,” she said.

“Two wigs,” Cora repeated. She typed
wigs
into her computer. A list came up. She clicked on
Cheerleader.
“That’s what I call our ponytail wig,” she explained. She printed out all the names of people who had rented a cheerleader wig in the past two months. Then she typed
Elvis wig
into the computer. “That’s our black wig with sideburns,” she said. She printed out another list of names. The children compared the two lists. One name appeared on both.

“Mr. Malfrat rented both wigs the same day,” said Jessie. “Did he rent anything else?”

Cora typed
Malfrat
into the computer. “Yes, here, Mr. Malfrat, size large, rented two wigs and a blue policeman’s uniform for four days.” The date of his order was two days before the robbery. “We were so busy with the circus costumes that I honestly can’t remember a thing about him. Wait, what’s this?” She scrolled down the screen. “Ah, here. I made a note that after he returned the costume I had to repair the police patch on the sleeve. It looked like it came off and someone tried to sew it back on. Hold on, I’ll get it for you.”

Cora returned carrying the uniform. It was the same blue as the AAA Armored Car driver’s uniform. Violet ran her hand over the police patch on the sleeve. “The thief could have clipped this off, robbed the bank, then sewed it back before returning the costume.”

Henry borrowed Cora’s computer to search the Greenfield phone directory.

“There’s no Mr. Malfrat listed,” he said. “And the address is fake.”

“Another dead end,” said Jessie.

The Aldens left the costume store and walked down the block, careful to step around the squished tomatoes that littered the sidewalk. Looking at the tomatoes made Benny hungry. But he didn’t want a tomato. He wanted something sweet. He was about to ask if they could stop for ice cream when Violet spoke up.

“Why would a bank robber return the rented uniform and wigs?” Violet asked. “Why not just steal those, too? He could have thrown them into the river or buried them or burned them. But he returned them.”

“I think this proves that the thief lives right here in town!” Henry said.

“It does?” asked Jessie.

“Sure,” said Henry. “If he’d left town after the robbery he wouldn’t care what happened to the uniform and wigs. But if he was here in Greenfield, he couldn’t risk making Cora suspicious. She might connect the missing rented uniform with the uniform worn at the robbery.”

Benny was tired of talking about costumes. “Could we get ice cream?” he asked.

“We’ll stop at the ice cream parlor,” said Jessie.

Benny pulled a crumpled dollar bill out of his pocket. “Wait, I don’t have enough money,” he said sadly.

“Well,” said Jessie, “it might not be enough for an ice cream. But it’s more than enough for a vending machine. Let’s go to that one we saw at the bank”

At the bank, Benny studied the goodies in the vending machine window. So many wonderful choices! Should he buy cookies, something salty, or something chewy? As he tried to decide, the vending machine man came and began refilling the machine.

“That’s the one!” cried Benny as the man refilled the last row with red-wrapped candy bars. “That’s the one I want to try.”

“You sure?” asked the man, closing the door.

“Yup,” said Benny. He fed his dollar into the machine and pressed C-5. Out came a Chili-Billy Bar. Benny tore off the wrapper and took a big bite. He chewed and chewed, waiting for the sweet candy to fill his mouth. He stopped chewing. His eyes grew wide. Wider. “Oh,” he said. “Ohhhhhh.” The candy was spicy
hot!