Stuffed Bear Mystery (2 page)

When the Aldens arrived at the toy hospital, a small crowd had gathered around Miss Sayer’s van. Everyone wanted to see her talking bear.

“Step back!” Miss Sayer cried, beeping her horn. “Doctor Firman! Oh, Doctor Firman!”

When Doc came out to see what the fuss was about, the Aldens almost didn’t recognize him. Instead of his faded blue farm overalls, he was wearing a crisp white doctor’s coat and a stethoscope around his neck.

Miss Sayer waved him toward her van. “Doctor Firman. I need you to help Chatter Bear right away. Do you have a stretcher to carry him in?”

“I’m the stretcher.” Doc picked up the huge red bear with both arms. “What seems to be the problem?”

“His voice,” Miss Sayer told Doc. “It isn’t working.”

Doc led everyone inside. “Let’s put Chatter Bear up on the examining table in here. I’ll see what I can do. Please step back, everyone.”

“Here, let me remove Chatter Bear’s bow,” Miss Sayer said. “His voice recorder is in the back of his neck. And he needs new batteries for his eyes. They’ve been flickering instead of flashing.”

Doc noticed the Aldens standing to the side with Mister B., who wasn’t flickering or flashing. “You children can go visit my other workroom in back. That’s where I keep my special older patients,” Doc said with a smile. “There’s a book room back there, too, full of bear books.”

The Aldens didn’t need much coaxing. Old bears were just the kind of bears they liked. They headed straight for the door marked ANTIQUE BEAR DEN.

Inside, shelves and cabinets were filled with old stuffed toys. Scraps of woolly fabrics and woolly fur lay in piles around a large worktable. Off to the side stood several cabinets. Bears that looked even older than Mister B. stared back at the Aldens through the glass cabinet doors.

The children discovered they weren’t alone.

A gray-haired woman with a braid wound on top of her head knelt in front of an open cabinet. The Aldens saw her before she saw them.

Jessie coughed to get the woman’s attention. “Hello. We’re the Aldens.”

The woman stood up, surprised. Her rosy cheeks turned even rosier. “What are you doing in Doctor Firman’s workroom?” she asked. “He doesn’t allow children in here by themselves.”

“Sorry if we startled you,” Jessie said. “He said it was okay for us to come in here. He’s busy fixing a talking bear.”

“Hmmf!” the woman said. “Talking bears. What will be next?”

“Oh,” Violet said when she noticed the woman was looking at Mister. B. “Would you like to see our bear?”

The woman looked over at Mister B.

“Hmmm. Well, yes, your bear is an old one but not very valuable.”

Violet swallowed hard. “He’s valuable to us. We love him. He belonged to our grandfather.”

The woman nodded, and her voice changed a little. “Ah, I see,” she said. “If it belonged to someone in your family, I can see how it would be important to you.” She shut the door to the cabinet, turned the key, and walked to the far end of the room as if she couldn’t wait to get away from the children.

Jessie stooped down to read a sign on the cabinet the woman had been looking at. “‘Herr Bears.’ I wonder what they are. Very old ones, I guess. There’s only one of them in this cabinet right now. Let’s go look at Doc’s bear books, then come back,” she whispered to the other children. “That woman keeps staring at us as if she wants us to leave.”

In the book room, the Aldens found another surprise visitor. An older man, all by himself, sat in a comfy chair by the bookcases. He seemed so lost in the book on his lap, he didn’t look up when the children entered.

“Um, hello,” Violet said softly.

The man’s pen clattered to the floor along with a notebook.

Violet bent down to pick up the man’s things.

“Leave them!” the man said in a gruff voice.

Violet stepped back. “I’m sorry,” she said. “We didn’t mean to disturb you. I don’t like being interrupted, either, when I’m reading or doing my homework.”

The man gathered up his notebook, which was jammed with loose papers. “This isn’t homework, young lady. May I ask how you got in here? Doctor Firman’s library is for grown-ups.”

Violet looked around at the many children’s books about bears. “There are lots of bear books for children,” she said in her most polite voice.

“Nonsense!” the man said. “Well, I guess my peace and quiet has come to an end.”

With that, the man put on his brown wool hat and grabbed his walking stick, his notebooks, and an armful of books. He went into the Bear Den and began poking around. Every few minutes he glanced back at the book room as if he couldn’t wait for the Aldens to leave.

“I wonder if he’s a bear doctor, too,” Henry whispered. “Not a very friendly one like Doc, though.”

Benny was restless. He liked books, but he liked toys even more. “Can we go back and look at the old bears now?”

Jessie peeked through the door. “We better wait, Benny. Now Miss Sayer is in there with that man. The other woman must have left. I’d rather not have the two of them standing over us while we look at Doc’s antique bears. Let’s wait until they leave. Then we can go back.”

A few minutes later, Jessie checked the Bear Den again. “Okay, now we can look around as much as we like without anybody thinking we shouldn’t. Miss Sayer is out front bothering Doc again. I wonder if he figured out how to fix her bear.”

“I’mmm Chaaaattter Baaaaar,” the Aldens overheard the bear. “Annnnnd IIIII like toooooo talkkkkkk.”

Miss Sayer scolded Doc. “You still didn’t fix him. Now his voice is too low and too slow. Nobody will be able to understand what he’s saying. That’s not how he’s supposed to talk.”

Violet hugged Mister B. He wasn’t saying a word.

“Please, Miss Sayer,” the children heard Doc say. “I need plenty of light and space to work on Chatter Bear. Why don’t you go work on your booth at the Town Hall and come back here later?”

Miss Sayer hesitated before finally leaving Doc and Chatter Bear.

“Whew!” Doc said to the Aldens when they came out to see him. “It’s hard to work when someone stands over you.”

“Oh, would you like us to leave until you’re done?” Jessie asked.

Doc smiled. “Some interruptions I enjoy. How do you like all the antique bears in the Bear Den?”

“I like the one called Herr Bear,” Jessie said. “Whose bear is it?”

“The owner, Mrs. Withers, isn’t arriving for a few days. That’s when the prize is given for the rarest bear in the Teddy Bear Jamboree,” said Doc. “Herr bear is so rare that he has a good chance of winning.”

Henry thought about this. “Maybe that’s why the lady with the braid opened the cabinet to look at it.”

Now Doc looked worried. “With the jamboree about to start, so many visitors stopped by, I lost track of who was here. This is why I always keep the Herr Bear cabinet locked. That particular Herr Bear is extremely rare.”

“How come?” Benny wanted to know.

“Well,” Doc said. “He’s the boy twin of a female bear called Fraulein Bear. That means ‘Miss Bear’ in German; Herr Bear means ‘Mister Bear.’ The Swiss designer made only one twin pair for his own children. The only difference between them is the color of their eyes. The girl bear has golden eyes and the boy blue eyes. The designer made other Herr Bears, but they have black eyes, and they are smaller than the twins.”

“Does the owner own Fraulein Bear, too?” Violet asked Doc. “It’s sad when brothers and sisters get separated from each other—especially twins.”

“Even if they’re bear twins,” Benny added.

“I know,” Doc agreed. “Unfortunately, no one has been able to track down the girl twin. I’ve checked all my antique bear books, searched the Internet, and asked every teddy bear collector I’ve met about Fraulein Bear. No luck so far.”

“We didn’t get a good look at Herr Bear,” Benny said. “The lady closed the cabinet.”

“Whew,” Doc said, relieved to hear this. “I must have left the key in the lock by mistake when I heard Miss Sayer carrying on before. Well, no harm done. I’ll get Herr Bear from the cabinet so you can get a good look at him.”

Everyone followed Doc into the Bear Den. When they came to the Herr Bear cabinet, the children stared inside.

Doc’s key was still in the lock. But there was no bear staring back. The cabinet was empty.

The next morning after breakfast, the Aldens dressed in their old work clothes. They had important chores to do in the barn. Peggy and Doc had asked them to help with the sheep shearing and said it was a fuzzy, messy job.

“There you go,” Jessie said, when she helped Benny untangle his overalls straps. “Now you look like a real shepherd boy. Maybe the sight of you will cheer up Doc. He’s pretty upset about the missing Herr Bear.”

“I know how to cheer him up, Jessie,” Benny said. “We’ll just tell him we always find things for people. So I know we can find a bear.”

“Thanks,” Doc said, when Benny told him this. “Finding that bear would be a big relief. I’ll keep searching, but I only have one set of eyes. You children have four sets.”

“Plus Mister B. has one,” Benny reminded Doc. “That makes four-and-a-half pairs of eyes.”

As the children made their way to the barn, a few cars arrived with even more guests.

“Now we’re not the only ones staying here with Miss Sayer,” Jessie said. “There’s her van next to the barn, right where Peggy doesn’t want her to park it.”

“Did you kids call me?” Miss Sayer screeched when she heard her name. “Doctor Firman isn’t letting you in here, is he? You could scare the sheep. They have to be calm when they get sheared, you know.”

Jessie tried hard to be friendly. “Peggy invited us to help out.”

“Help out?” Miss Sayer cried. “She won’t even allow me to help out. What do a bunch of kids know about sheep shearing, anyway?”

“Peggy told Grandfather she’s going to teach us how,” Benny said.

“Children shearing sheep?” Miss Sayer said angrily. “I’ve never heard of such a thing!” She turned and stalked away, muttering to herself.

When they entered the barn, the Aldens heard bleats and baas from the Firmans’ small flock.

“Hey, Smudge,” Benny said when he passed the lamb pen. “I guess you’re too little to get a haircut.”

Smudge came right up to the chicken wire that enclosed the pen. “Baa!”

“See you later.” Benny patted Smudge’s warm head. He joined his brother and sisters gathered around Doc and Peggy. Doc was carefully shearing a sheep with electric clippers.

“That’s a good girl,” Doc crooned, holding Daisy, a large ewe. He gently cradled her head with one arm as he clipped her fleece with the other. Every few seconds he stopped to stroke Daisy’s neck or ears, talking to her the whole time. Daisy seemed to melt in Doc’s hands while he clipped her.

“Any of you children want to help me with Snowflake?” Doc asked when Daisy scampered off with her new short hairdo. “Just hold him gently while I clip.”

Jessie knew what to do right away. “Watch likes it when we stroke him under his chin like this.”

Snowflake relaxed in Jessie’s arms while Doc finished the haircut. After that, Doc let each of the children take turns holding the ewes and rams during the shearing.

“You Aldens are very good with animals,” Doc said when he finished the shearing.

“Look at all this fleece!” Benny cried afterward. The barn floor was covered with huge puffs of fleece. “You could stuff a hundred bears with all this wool, even big gigantic ones like Chatter Bear.”

Peggy laughed. “We’re not done yet, Benny, not even close,” she said. “You can help me carry all this fleece to the skirting table in the next room.”

“Is that where you make wool skirts?” Benny asked.

Doc laughed. “It’s a special kind of table where we examine the wool. We pull out any parts that are tangled or dirty. Peggy and I need plenty of helpers to carry in all this fleece.”

The Aldens each took great heaps of wool in their arms. They carried them into a little room attached to the barn. The puffs were so big, the children looked like sheep themselves.

“Okay, toss an armful on the skirting table,” Doc told Henry. “I’ll show you how to make sure it’s smooth and clean. Peggy only uses the finest fleece to cover her bears. The other clean parts are used for stuffing.”

“Save some stuffing for me!” Benny said. He laughed. “That’s what I always say at Thanksgiving!”

“Benny means save some stuffing for Mister B.,” Violet explained.

“And some for the Herr Bear,” Benny said to Doc. “We’re going to find him for you.”

Doc looked a little worried. “I sure wish you would. If I don’t find him soon, I’ll need to contact the owner. But I’d like to avoid that if I can.”

After Doc left, Peggy showed the Aldens how to sort the wool. The children soon figured out which wool to set aside for spinning and which wool would make good bear stuffing.

“See this pile?” Peggy asked. “It’s for Mister B.” She patted a big clean puff of fleece. “We’ll wash it later to get out some of the oils. After it dries, we can plump up Mister B.”

“Mister B. would like that,” Violet said. “Thank you for teaching us so much.”