The Happy Valley Mystery

by Campbell, Julie

  “The rink is closed tomorrow,” Ben said. “We don’t really need help on the fences. You’d better go skating when you have the chance. The week is slipping by.”

  “No,” Ned said. “Let’s help first. I’ll help, too, and maybe we can get enough done so we can go skating this afternoon. Some of the gang you met last night called me this morning to see if I couldn’t get you to come.”

  “Jim had a call, too,” Brian teased, “from a certain blond girl.”

  Trixie looked up sharply. She hadn’t known that.

  “I told her I couldn’t show up,” Jim said. “We’d all planned to do this work with Mr. Gorman and Ben.”

  “Oh, she’ll keep,” Ned said. “She’ll be there. Dot is one of our star skaters. Anyway, these guys who called me were a lot more interested in having Trixie and Honey and Diana come than they were in having Mart and Brian.”

  “That figures,” Mart said.

  “Mart’s a speed skater,” Diana said proudly.

  “That calls for a river or a lake,” Ned said. “I’m glad he won’t have a chance to show us up.”

  “Trixie and Honey do a figure skating act that’s a wow,” Mart said.

  Ned whistled. “Maybe I’d better recall the invitation, then. Especially after the performance you Bob-Whites put on at the gym. We can’t let the East get ahead of the Midwest again.”

  “We have a lot more ice—lakes and rivers—in Westchester County,” Honey said. “It’s colder there for a longer time in the spring, and we have more chance to practice, I guess, than you do here.”

  “Why don’t you just wait and see how the Iowans skate?” Ben said. “Come on, let’s get started for the creek.”

  The boys followed Mr. Gorman and Ben out to the barn to get the equipment for the fences. Just before he closed the door, Ned called back, “My father grew that beard, Trixie, for a Valley Park centennial celebration. When it was over, he just kept the beard for a while to tease my mother. He was scared when I told him how near he came to ending up in the hoosegow.”

  Well, Trixie thought, so he does think I'm nothing but a joke.

  “It’s mean of everyone to make fun of you so,” Honey said. “And, Trixie, I honestly believe those men we saw last night have been stealing your uncle’s sheep.”

  “You do?” Trixie said and hugged Honey tight. “I thought all kinds of mean, silly things about you, Honey. I thought everyone had abandoned me, for sure.”

  “I’m your partner; don’t you remember?” Honey asked. “But I really did think you sort of jumped to conclusions with Mr. Schulz,” she continued. “And if you’d had a chance to know Ben as you do now, you would never have suspected him.”

  “To a detective, everyone is a suspect,” Trixie said professionally. “Well, maybe I was in too much of a hurry. But, Honey, today is Thursday. That leaves only Friday and Saturday. And I do wish so much that I could have today free to do some more work on this case.”

  “Well, you can’t,” Honey said. “But let’s not plan anything for tomorrow, and let’s you and I just tell the others were going to do exactly what we want to do for one day.”

  “The trouble is, we’ll have to do it on foot if we tell them that,” Trixie said. “I’m going to have a talk with Jim. At least he knows some of the things we’ve done in the past, and he may help.”

  While the boys were out in the fields, Honey, Trixie, and Diana busied themselves with several things. First they helped Mrs. Gorman do the breakfast dishes and dust the house. Then they washed some lingerie and manicured their fingernails. Diana put her hair up on rollers, but Trixie just wet the comb and drew it through her tangled curls. Honey’s long hair was straight and shining.

  “Wasn’t Dan smart to ask your mother to send our skates?” Honey said. “Let’s get them out of the box now. Hey, she sent them airmail special delivery! We could almost have bought new skates for what it cost to send them that way.”

  “Yes, and remember what Ben said about the special delivery part of it,” Diana said, laughing.

  “He said that just meant that Pop Wilson had to go to all the trouble of honking his horn when he left the package at the R.F.D. box down at the bottom of Sand Hill,” Trixie said. “Moms will laugh at that, but she should have remembered that we don’t get special delivery packages at Grabapple Farm, either.”

  “It was good of her to send them,” Honey said. “It’ll be a lot better to have our own skates than to rent or borrow them.”

  “Girls!” Mrs. Gorman called up the stairs. “It’s time for lunch. The boys are coming in from the field. I guess they’ll shower first out in the barn apartment and then come in. Do you want to help me get some food ready?”

  The Bob-Whites had their first surprise when they saw the rink in Rivervale. “It’s as big as the Arena in White Plains!” Trixie said. “And look at the crowd!”

  “Yes, and then look at us, in blue jeans,” Honey said. “Most of the girls are wearing skating costumes. There’s Dot, waving to us. Doesn’t she look like a dream?” Trixie’s heart skipped a beat. Dot did look like a dream. Her short skirt was creamy white, and her pullover sweater matched. Both were embroidered in gay Bavarian designs. Her blond hair was topped by a Tyrolean cap. All the other Rivervale girls looked almost as attractive.

  “They must really make a business of skating here,” Jim said to Ned.

  “A lot of us belong to the Des Moines Figure Skating

  Club,” Ned explained. “We have a Danish teacher. He’s pretty keen.”

  “If they skate as well as they dress for the rink, were sunk,” Trixie mourned. Dot was clinging to Jim’s arm, leading him into the building. Trixie looked down woefully at her jeans and her loose red sweater. “Moms could have sent our costumes,” she told Honey and Diana.

  “I suppose she may have thought we wouldn’t want to look different from the other girls here,” Honey said.

  “We really do look different, but not in the way she may have thought,” Diana said. “What do we care? Trixie, you and Honey skate so beautifully. And the boys are whizzes on the ice. Let’s just make the best of it.”

  That’s easy for you to say, Trixie thought to herself. Honey and Di look beautiful in any old kind of costume. They aren’t competing with girls like Dot, either.

  Inside the building, a jukebox played. Out on the ice, couples skated around the rink, easily and gracefully, in time to the music.

  Boys from Rivervale High crowded around Honey, Diana, and Trixie, helping them adjust their skates. At first Trixie waved them off, but when she saw Honey and Diana accepting help as though they had never seen a skate before, she changed her own tactics. “I’ve got to quit being such a tomboy,” she thought and smiled quickly in gratitude as Ned laced her skates for her... loose around the toes, pulled tight near the ankle, and loose again at the top. Then he slipped some rubber guards over the blades so Trixie could walk across the wood floor to the ice.

  Over by the jukebox, a man in Danish costume—the coach Ned had mentioned—turned off the music and took up a megaphone to make an announcement.

  “We have visitors here from New York,” he said. “They are members of a club called the Bob-Whites of the Glen, in Westchester County, New York. They have just staged a very successful ice carnival in their city, for the benefit of the Central American earthquake victims. We hope they will now give us a demonstration of some of their skating. Most of you saw them during the warm-up period at the gym last night. If they skate as well as they hit the basket, we’ll have to surrender the Des Moines Club Trophy. First, Miss Honey Wheeler and Miss Trixie Belden.”

  “Oh, no,” Honey said under her breath to Trixie. “We just can’t do it. They shouldn’t ask us. All these people watching. Trixie, we had to practice days and days for the carnival. I don’t even remember what we’re supposed to do.”

  “Well, remember fast!” Trixie hissed. “Ned must have put them up to this. He should have said something to us, to give us a chance to refuse.
We have to do it, Honey. We just have to.”

  Honey, inspired by Trixie’s courage and determination, bent and slipped the rubber guards from her skates. “What do we do first?” she asked desperately.

  “Around the rink a few times just skating,” Trixie said, “hand in hand. Then the spiral glide. I’ll take the boy’s part.”

  Honey stumbled as they started out. “Chin up!” Trixie commanded her. Then they swung into a long, easy glide to the music. “There, that’s better. Around the rink once more....”

  Determinedly Trixie guided Honey through all their pet exhibition dancing—figure eights, forward outside figure eights, the bunny hop, and, finally, a ballet jump.

  The crowd applauded excitedly as they finished.

  “They’re just being polite,” Honey said. “We never looked worse. On that snowplow stop, I leaned so far forward I was lucky not to fall on my face.”

  “Whatever you do, don’t act the way you feel,” Trixie said. “Bow, smile, wave. There, thank goodness that’s over.” They sat down on the bench.

  “That was excellent,” the Danish instructor called through the megaphone. “Thank you, girls. No wonder the carnival was so great a success. Now we will let our visitors rest for a while, and Dot Murray will give an exhibition of figure skating.”

  It was an exhibition all three girls from Westchester County, and the three boys, too, wouldn’t forget for a long time. Jim led Dot across the board floor and removed her skate guards for her. On the ice, she stood tall, poised, and graceful. She laughingly kissed her hand to the audience, then to Jim.

  Trixie’s heart hit the top of her stomach with a dull thud. Then she completely forgot her unfamiliar jealousy as she watched the lovely figure in white dance around and around the rink, in perfect time to the music. She did everything the girls had done, and more, and did it far better. Her ballet steps were perfectly timed and exquisitely executed. When she ended her performance with a series of Arabian cartwheels, Trixie clapped so vigorously she almost fell off the bench.

  “She’s good, isn’t she?” Jim asked, crowding down on the bench next to Trixie.

  “She’s out of this world! She’s unbelievable! And isn’t she perfectly beautiful?”

  Jim nodded. “Yes, she is, Trixie. And do you know something else? I know a girl who’s the best sport in these United States. I saw you falter when Honey didn’t want to go out on the ice. Then I saw your head go up. That’s it, Trixie! They can’t beat courage, no matter how well they skate.”

  Jim left her then, to lead Dot back over the board floor. Trixie’s heart sang. The whole world was sunny again—so sunny she didn’t realize for a while what had happened when Ned sat down by her and spoke to her. “You sure goofed again, Trixie,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” Trixie asked, her eyes starry. “I couldn’t ever hope to skate as well as Dot does. She’s a professional right now, whether she realizes it or not.” Ned waved his hand in a gesture of frustration. “I didn’t mean that, Trixie. Forget skating for a while.”

  “What are you talking about, then?”

  “Just this: I just called the principal and told him we thought there was a good chance the lambs we used , last night had been stolen. Do you know what he said?” Trixie’s eyes questioned.

  “He gave me one of the worst tongue-lashings I’ve ever had in my life. He said that he himself had arranged with the committee for the purchase of the lambs; that they had been bought from the Schwarz brothers, who own a locker in Valley Park, just the way Mr. Gorman said; that if I said another word to anyone about the meat for the Rivervale High School barbecue having been stolen meat, he’d arrange proper censure. Boy, did he hand it to me!”

  “But—but—you said they offered the lambs at a bargain,” Trixie said.

  “They did. I was there when they did. I didn’t hear anyone call the men by name. I didn’t know them. I don’t hang around food lockers. But Mr. Gorman guessed who they were right away when we told him about it last night, remember? Boy, you certainly made a rumpus about nothing!”

  “Why, Ned Schulz,” Trixie said, “how can you talk that way? You live here. You should have known. You should have told me.”

  “I’ve only lived here a year. You must be some detective, suspecting everyone you see....”

  “I just wish you could talk to the sheriff of Westchester County and the chief of police! They could tell you a few things about what I’ve done. Furthermore, what business would any honest men have going off into Walnut Woods that late at night and—”

  “Ben said there are two roads that seem to go into Walnut Woods,” Ned said. “One is a dead-end road. I don’t know where the other one goes. The Schwarz brothers must have turned off at Army Post Road, and we lost them in the dark. They were the same men we bought the lambs from... the ones we started to follow in that truck.”

  “It isn’t that truck I’m interested in anymore,” Trixie said. “There must be another one—one that’s been going down the other road to a hideout in Walnut Woods. You’ll find out, Ned Schulz... that was stolen meat that was used at the barbecue. Maybe the Schwarz brothers didn’t steal it. I suppose they didn’t. But what was to prevent them from buying it from some men who have been operating around here, stealing sheep and selling them cheap to lockers? Maybe the Schwarz brothers saw a chance to make a little easy money—”

  “Trixie,” Ned said, “you knock me dead! You make up your mind to something, and nothing can change it. Right?”

  “Just remember this, Ned. There’s something queer going on back there in that woods. And I intend to find out what it is.”

  Jim’s and Brian’s skating redeemed the Bob-Whites. The crowd, too, had many complimentary things to say about Honey and Trixie’s performance.

  Trixie’s mind wasn’t on any of it. “Tomorrow,” she thought, “and Saturday... that’s all the time left to solve the mystery for Uncle Andrew. I know I’m on the right track. I have to be!”

  However, when the Bob-Whites had returned to Happy Valley Farm and eaten their dinner, something happened that drove all thought of the stolen sheep far from Trixie’s mind.

  Poor Little Orphan • 12

  MR. GORMAN WASN’T at the dinner table. Self-conscious about having made a third mistake, Trixie was glad of it. She wouldn’t have to listen to any more teasing. It had been bad enough having Mart and the other Bob-Whites keep reminding her that their trip the night before had just been another wild-goose chase.

  I’d wish the earth could open and swallow me up, or that somehow I could vanish from here and find myself back at Crab apple Farm. I’d wish that, Trixie said to herself, except that I’m not going to quit now.

  “A penny for your thoughts,” Jim offered quietly. “You’re dreaming, Trixie. Your mind must have been miles away.”

  “Not really,” Trixie said. “I’m just sorry Honey and I had to put on that crazy performance at the skating rink this afternoon.”

  “It wasn’t that bad,” Jim assured her. “It wasn’t bad at all. It’s that Dot had to follow you right away. A person just can’t do everything perfectly...

  “I know that, Jim. Wasn’t she marvelous? Just like a poem. I never saw anything more beautiful. Honestly, though, that isn’t what I mind so much. I just hate to have wasted all that time at the rink.”

  “It could have been just fun, Trixie. That’s what were supposed to be doing here. Having fun. And I’d like to have Dot see you on Satan’s Baby. He’s well named. I’ll bet she couldn’t stay on him two minutes.” Trixie laughed happily. “You’re wonderful, Jim,” she said. “I suppose I can ride, but maybe Dot can ride just as well. What I mean about wasting time is that I made another boo-boo trying to track down those thieves. Now it's Thursday night. Jim, will you go with me to Walnut Woods tonight and try again to see where that flickering light is?”

  “I will not!” Jim said decisively. Then, as Trixie’s face fell, he added, “I’ll go with you tomorrow, though, Trixie. What’s th
e use of going back there again at night? We were there once in pitch-darkness and had to back out. Wait till tomorrow.”

  “Then we’ll waste this whole evening. I wonder where Mr. Gorman is. Did anyone hear where he is?” Trixie asked Honey, who sat at her side.

  “Some trouble out in the field,” Brian answered from across the table. “Ben s gone out to see what’s delaying him.”

  “Do you suppose more of the sheep are missing?” Trixie asked anxiously.

  “If they are, you can take your bird-dog nose off the ground,” Mart said. “You’ve missed the scent too often.”

  “It isn’t anything about stolen sheep,” Mrs. Gorman said. “It’s just that ewe he’s been watching so carefully— the one who’s going to have twin lambs. We’ve been trying to call the veterinarian. He doesn’t answer. The operator thinks his phone is out of order. And that ewe is liable to have her lambs at any moment.”

  “How can you tell?” Diana asked, wide-eyed.

  “You couldn’t make a mistake,” Mrs. Gorman said. “When a lamb is about to be born, the ewe stops grazing and runs about, calling to her baby. She doesn’t know it hasn’t been born yet, and she nuzzles other lambs, looking for her own. It’s sort of pathetic. Here come my husband and Ben now.”

  “Did you get hold of the veterinarian?” Mr. Gorman asked, closing the door behind him.

  “He doesn’t answer,” Mrs. Gorman told him, and she explained that the telephone might be out of order.

  “Then I’d better go over to his house and get him,” Ben said, “or we’ll lose the ewe and the lambs.”

  “We’ll lose them anyway, Ben,” Mr. Gorman said resignedly. “There just isn’t time to wait any longer. She has to have help. I’ll go out again, Mary,” he told his wife, “and see what I can do.”