“That’s what I thought you thought,” she said. “That’s why I wanted to confess. I was just so embarrassed before that I couldn’t stand to tell you. After all, I had ruined your film once, and that was bad enough. Doing it twice was ridiculous. So when I realized what I had done that day, I just ran out of the house. I couldn’t face you.”
“Janine, you are a wacko!” I said, laughing. Then I remembered the “z-alarm” I had set up — and set off! — that night and I started to laugh even harder. It was such a relief to know Janine had been the one who had opened the door.
“So you’re not angry?” asked Janine.
I was laughing too hard to answer her, but I managed to shake my head. Then she started to laugh, too.
* * *
About a week later, I was putting the finishing touches on a special display in my room when Stacey walked in. She was a little early for our BSC meeting.
“Claudia!” she said, looking around at the pictures I’d hung. “These are great.” She stepped closer to one of them. “Looks like Mr. Geist thought so, too.” She was pointing at a big red A+ written on a Post-it note stuck to the side of the photo.
“He loved them,” I admitted, feeling a little shy all of a sudden. I remembered the way he’d smiled when he told me how well I’d carried out the portrait assignment. That’s what those pictures were: my portraits, which I’d finally finished and handed in. Now I had them back, and I couldn’t wait for my friends to see them. I gazed around the room and saw the faces of the BSC looking back at me. There was Kristy, shooting me the peace sign, and Mary Anne, throwing her hands over her face, Stacey, striking a pose and looking totally cool, Shannon, looking serious and thoughtful. And there was Jessi, caught in mid-plié, and Mal, showing the camera her pile of books.
Just to make the show complete, I’d added snapshots of Dawn and Logan, so the entire BSC was up there on my walls. The picture of Dawn was one she’d sent us from California, and it showed her carrying a surfboard as she walked across a beautiful beach. And Logan’s picture showed him in his track uniform, after a big race.
“This is so, so cool,” said Kristy, who had come in behind Stacey. “Can I have a copy of the one of me?”
“Sure, no problem,” I said. And by the time the rest of the club members had showed up and looked at the pictures, I had orders for copies of all of them, and I had also promised to make up a set to send to Dawn. I was going to be busy in the darkroom that night, but I didn’t care. I was proud of my work, and happy that my friends liked the pictures as much as they did.
“I did really well on my math test, so my parents agreed to let me keep on taking photography classes when regular school starts this fall,” I told them. “Mr. Geist says I’m one of his most promising students!”
“Yay, Claud!” said Stacey. “I think you deserve a big round of applause — not only for these pictures, and for passing math, but for all the work you did on solving the bank mystery.”
“Hear, hear,” said Kristy. She started to clap, and everybody else joined in.
I gave a little curtsy. “Thank you, thank you,” I said. “And now, to celebrate —” I held up a huge box of Mallomars. “Mallomars all around! And popcorn, too,” I added, passing the bag to Stacey.
Once our meeting began, we were busy for a while taking phone calls and setting up jobs. Then, during a lull, Kristy said, “You know, I’ve been thinking about that lady with the baby carriage. I’d like to track her down.”
“Why?” I asked. “She’s innocent. We know that for sure now.”
“I know,” said Kristy. “But she does have a baby, you know. She might need a sitter one of these days.”
That’s Kristy for you. She never stops thinking about business!
Just after our meeting ended that day, the phone rang one more time. I grabbed it. “Hello?” I said.
“Is this the famous Girl Detective of Stoneybrook?” somebody asked.
“Dawn!” I said. “I guess you got the newspaper clippings I sent you.”
“I sure did,” she said. “Great work! And I got the book you guys made, too. It’s wonderful. I can’t tell you how much it made me miss Stoneybrook.”
I talked with Dawn for a few minutes, and then I passed the phone around the room so she could talk to everybody else. Before she hung up, she told Mary Anne that she was writing a thank-you letter to the kids who had made the book.
Dawn’s letter arrived a few days later, and here’s what it said:
The author gratefully acknowledges
Ellen Miles
for her help in
preparing this manuscript.
About the Author
ANN MATTHEWS MARTIN was born on August 12, 1955. She grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, with her parents and her younger sister, Jane.
There are currently over 176 million copies of The Baby-sitters Club in print. (If you stacked all of these books up, the pile would be 21,245 miles high.) In addition to The Baby-sitters Club, Ann is the author of two other series, Main Street and Family Tree. Her novels include Belle Teal, A Corner of the Universe (a Newbery Honor book), Here Today, A Dog’s Life, On Christmas Eve, Everything for a Dog, Ten Rules for Living with My Sister, and Ten Good and Bad Things About My Life (So Far). She is also the coauthor, with Laura Godwin, of the Doll People series.
Ann lives in upstate New York with her dog and her cats.
Copyright © 1994 by Ann M. Martin
Cover art by Hodges Soileau
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC, THE BABY-SITTERS CLUB, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
First edition, August 1994
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
e-ISBN 978-0-545-76955-6
Claudia and the Clue in the Photograph Page 10
