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Authors: Gary Paulsen

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BOOK: The Case of Dunc's Doll
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Carruthers laughed. “Well, maybe. But as you can see in the article, many people think it's lovely.”

There was a news clipping taped inside
the case. Amos read the article while Dunc studied the doll.

Amos whistled. “It says the doll is worth fifteen thousand dollars. Is that right?”

Carruthers nodded. “Actually, it's worth considerably more. That article was written fifteen years ago. The worth of the doll might be nearly thirty thousand by now.”

“Thirty thousand? And you just show it to people?”

Carruthers nodded again. “The malls pay me enough to keep the collection going. I travel around and show the dolls, and I have a little pension. It's a nice way to live.”

“You don't sell them?” Dunc asked.

Carruthers shook his head. “No—I just like to show them. And meet people who are interested in them. There are conventions, and sometimes we trade dolls there. That's how I got the Dickens doll—I traded a doll that had belonged to Martha Jefferson. She was Thomas Jefferson's wife.”

Dunc read the article. Amos had moved around to a position where he could watch
the end of the mall where he had seen Melissa.

“It says here there have been attempts to steal the dolls,” Dunc said. “Does that happen a lot?”

“No.” Carruthers smiled. “That's other people's collections. I've never had any trouble at all. I guess I'm just lucky.”

“So far,” Dunc said.

Within a few weeks, he would wish he'd never said it.

•
3

“I figured out how to get rich,” Amos said. It was a week after they'd been in the mall and seen the dolls. They were back in Dunc's garage. He was tearing the front end of his bike apart, regreasing the bearings inside the front fork.

“I'm just going to ask people for money,” Amos said. “They'll give it to me.”

Dunc shook his head. “What makes you think that?”

“Last night my uncle Alfred—the one who picks his feet?—anyway, he was watching
one of these television ministers. The guy just looked at the screen and said: ‘I feel like somebody is going to send me a thousand dollars. God is telling you, whoever you are, to send me a thousand dollars.' ”

“That's different.”

“Why? He's just asking, isn't he? Uncle Alfred says people send in millions of dollars to these television ministers and all they do is just ask for it. So that's what I'll do. I'll put an ad in the paper and just ask for money.”

Dunc had stopped listening. Always neat—sometimes to the point of driving Amos crazy—Dunc had put newspaper under the bike wheel so he wouldn't spill grease on the garage floor.

A headline in the paper had caught his eye.

“ ‘Dolls Stolen,' ” he read.

“What?” Amos asked.

“There's a story here about some dolls being stolen—oh, no.”

“What's the matter?”

Dunc pulled the paper out. “It's that man we met in the mall, that Mr. Carruthers. Somebody broke into his van and stole some of the dolls. The article says the thieves waited until he was away from the van, and they just took four dolls—the ones that were the most valuable.”

“That's too bad.”

“Yeah. Hmmm …” Dunc read some more to himself.

“What do you mean—‘hmmm'?” Amos said. “I don't like it when you do that. Last time you made that sound, I wound up losing my eyebrows and couldn't hear right for two months.”

“It's just that they don't have any leads. It seems a shame. He had to leave town to get to his next show, and he isn't here to try and find the dolls.”

“The police will handle it.”

“They said they didn't have any leads.”

Amos shook his head. “We were going to
take that bike trip next week, remember? You're going to get us all messed up in something to do with dolls. I mean
dolls
.”

“I didn't say we were going to get messed up in anything.”

“I know when you make that sound, that
hmmm
sound—I know what that means.”

Dunc read on. “It says there's a reward. The American Doll Association is putting up a reward.”

“I like my idea for getting rich better. Let's just ask for it.”

“Come on,” Dunc said. “Let's at least take a look at it. You can't tell.”

“But dolls,” Amos said. “
Dolls
.”

Dunc put the paper down. “The way I figure it, the first thing we have to do is talk to somebody who knows something about dolls—see what they mean to people.”

“Dunc, we can't—”

“I figure we go and talk to Melissa.”

Amos stopped. “You say there's a reward?”

Dunc nodded.

“That Mr. Carruthers
was
kind of a nice guy, wasn't he?” Amos said. “Well—maybe it won't hurt to take a look at it.”

•
4

“I've had it.” Amos stopped his bike. Dead. He watched Dunc pedal away and waited. Finally Dunc stopped and looked back.

“What's the matter?” Dunc asked. It was the middle of the afternoon, a beautiful sunny summer day, and they were biking along a country road just leaving the city.

“This is nuts, that's what's the matter,” Amos said. “It's been three days since you saw that dumb newspaper story, and all we've done is run around looking at dolls.
You know what this is doing to our reputation?”

Dunc came back. A car roared by, and he waited for the noise to drop. “Listen—dolls aren't so bad. You played with G.I. Joe dolls and monster dolls, didn't you?”

“That's when I was young. I was just a kid then. This is different, and you know it.”

Dunc decided to try another angle. “You got to talk to Melissa, didn't you?”

Amos stared at his friend. “You're kidding, right?”

Dunc shook his head.

“She said hi,” Amos said. “And I think she was talking to you when she said it. She looked right through me, and then she talked to you about dolls. Not me. You. For about three minutes. Then she walked away and that was it. For that, you've got me riding my bike all over the city for three days looking at dolls.”

Dunc shrugged. “You know that most of an investigation is work, work, work—almost all for nothing. Until you pop a lead.”

“And that's another thing,” Amos said. “You talk like a cop. We're not cops. We're a couple of kids—”

“Who have a chance at a reward,” Dunc finished. “Now, come on—we're wasting time.”

He turned and started off down the country lane again. Amos held back until Dunc was out of sight around a bend, then he shook his head and biked to catch up.

“Where are we going?” he asked, pedaling alongside Dunc. “I mean, this time?”

“It's a rich man on an estate—his name is Wylendale. He collects all sorts of things. Antiques, art, dolls, guns.”

“Guns?” Amos's ears perked up. “This guy has guns? We're going to see somebody who is armed?”

Dunc laughed. “He has old stuff—old guns. That doesn't mean he's bad or anything.” He shrugged, his bike weaving slightly with the gesture. “Of course, it doesn't mean he
isn't
bad either. I got his
name from Mrs. Dooley—the last woman we talked to.”

Amos nodded, remembering. They had been going from one collector to another for the three days that they'd been working on “the case,” as Dunc liked to call it.

Yesterday they'd gone to see an old woman named Mrs. Dooley. She collected stuffed animals and dolls, and Dunc had talked to her while Amos looked at all the animals.

“Imagine,” he said, riding closer to Dunc, remembering her house, “a special room for a stuffed elephant. A whole elephant.”

Dunc nodded. “She said she never killed an animal in her life but was buying them from other collectors so there would be some way to see how they looked when they were extinct.”

“Right. That's why she had a stuffed cocker spaniel.”

“That was her pet. She told me about it.
He died when he got old, and she loved him so much, she had him stuffed.”

“Was she a widow?” Amos asked.

“I don't know—why?”

“She might have her husband stuffed in the basement.”

“Here we are.” Dunc pulled over to the side of the road. “Wow—look at it.”

They were facing a large wrought-iron gate with the initial
W
welded in steel rods into the iron.

The gate was held locked by a large steel bar that came in from the side and appeared to be controlled by an electrical motor.

“Friendly, isn't he?” Amos said.

“Oh, maybe he just likes his privacy,” Dunc said. “I mean, lots of people have closed gates.”

He paused as a shadow appeared at the side of the gate. It moved into the open, and they could see that it was a dog.

A Rottweiler.

He stopped and stared at the boys across the road.

“He's looking at me like I was made of meat,” Amos said. “Raw meat.”

“Well, that does it,” Dunc said.

“Does what?”

“I've got a feeling—this is it. Why would he keep a locked gate and a huge Rottweiler if he didn't want to hide something?”

•
5

Amos was staring at him.

“Are you out of your mind?”

“Well—it's logical, isn't it?”

The dog still stared at them. It was silent, not even growling. Just staring.

“Look at him,” Amos said. “You're about to mess with somebody who keeps a dog that thinks I'm made out of meat.”

Dunc nodded. “We'll have to handle it right. This time we can't just sneak in. He probably keeps the dog loose all night. We wouldn't get fifty feet.”

“Well, I'm glad we agree on something. So, we'll just drop it all, right? I thought I'd like to live long enough to maybe go to high school.”

But Dunc was already riding back the way they had come, lost in thought.

They were in Dunc's room.

Amos looked around the walls. “You've got all new posters in here.”

Dunc was looking at a map, and he shook his head. “Not new—they're old. I brought them in here approximately 130 days ago.”

Amos stared at him. “You recycled your old posters?”

Dunc nodded. “Visual boredom can stifle the thinking processes. I keep a record on the computer and store the posters in the basement. There's a regular cycle, and I bring in new ones as they come along.”

“Why didn't I know this?”

Dunc shrugged. “I don't know—there's lots of things about you that I don't know. It's just one of those things.”

“What?” Amos asked.

“What, what?”

“What don't you know about me?”

Dunc stood up from his desk and turned to his friend. “Amos, if I knew what I didn't know about you then I would know about it, wouldn't I?”

BOOK: The Case of Dunc's Doll
11.56Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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