by Janice Hanna
“So how do we do it? Build the blog, I mean.” Sydney looked like she wasn’t sure about all this. She spread out her arms and began to do jumping jacks.
Kate decided to join her. “B–building the b–blog won’t be the p–problem!” Kate huffed and puffed as she jumped up and down. “I’ve b–built Web sites before.” She stopped jumping and bent over, panting. After a minute, she rose up and stared at Sydney, who continued doing jumping jacks. “I did our school’s Web site.”
“Of course!” Sydney dropped down to the ground and began to do sit-ups. “I’m sure it’ll be great, if you’re making it!”
“Should be easy.” Kate pushed up her glasses. “But this Phillies site will be a little different because I don’t know much about the team. I guess it would help to know a little something about them. How much can you tell me, Sydney?”
“Quite a bit,” her friend said, bobbing up and down on the floor. “But since I’m not from Philly, it might help to have Andrew help us.”
“Or…the Camp Club Girls!” Kate rose from the bed and began to pace the room. “While we’re concentrating on the problem, they can help us.”
“What? We’ll ask them to go ahead and do the research we need?” Sydney said. She rolled over onto her stomach and started doing push-ups. “Wait, I thought I wasn’t the only one who was out of town this week… .”
“Yes,” Kate said. “I think nearly all of them are out of town. I think Elizabeth is home but helping out at her church’s VBS, so I don’t think she’s available much either. So we may not have our normal contact with the rest of the girls, but we can try to talk to them at night, I guess.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Now Sydney was huffing and puffing. Still, she never lost count as she pushed up, down, up, down.
“Probably someone will be able to help us learn more about the Phillies. Then we’ll have some good stuff to put in our blog. The girls will find all the statistics and quotes we need to put together great stories and articles. In the meantime, let’s go downstairs and eat breakfast; then we’ll get busy on that blog site.”
“Okay, just twenty more!”
Sydney finished her exercise routine; then they raced down the stairs, almost tripping over Dexter, who played with his electronic car on the bottom step. “Hey, watch where you’re going!” he cried out. “You could’ve stepped on my car.”
“Sorry, Dex,” Kate said. “We have work to do. But first things first!”
They went into the kitchen and fixed bowls of cereal. Kate filled her bowl to the top, but Sydney carefully measured out a small portion.
“This stuff has a lot of sugar in it,” she said. “So I’ll just cut back a little on how much I eat.”
“Okay. Whatever.” Kate shoveled in big spoonfuls of the crunchy stuff, talking with her mouth full. “This will be great, Sydney. I love being a detective, don’t you? Like Nancy Drew, even!” She took another bite then added, “Oh, and guess what? Maybe after we figure out who’s doing this to Tony Smith, we’ll be on the news. We could be famous.”
“Supersleuths forever!” Sydney shouted.
“Supersleuths forever!” Kate echoed with a giggle.
Sydney sipped her orange juice and her eyebrows shot up. “Hey! Maybe the newspaper will want to write an article on my sports connection. I’ve played softball, you know. And I’m going to be in the Olympics someday.” She began to talk about all of the things she hoped to do before she turned twenty, but Kate had a hard time keeping up. Her thoughts were on the blog they were going to start after breakfast.
“True, true.” Kate took another big bite of the sweet cereal and then paused to think about that. “This is so exciting! Supersleuths of America, unite!”
“Go, Inspector Gadget!” Sydney hollered. “We’re going to be famous!”
Kate laughed and finished eating. As she rinsed out her cereal bowl, her mother entered the kitchen.
“You girls are up early. I’d planned to make French toast. Looks like I’m too late.”
“French toast?” Kate’s mouth began to water. “Yum! I’m not full. What about you, Sydney?”
“Well…” Sydney didn’t look so sure.
“Aw, come on! My mom makes the best French toast in Pennsylvania,” Kate said. “Don’t you have room for at least one piece? Or two? I could eat a dozen!”
“I don’t know how you do it,” Kate’s mother said. “You must have a hollow leg.”
“A hollow leg?” Kate stared down at her legs. “What do you mean?”
Her mother laughed. “That’s just something my mom used to say. It means I can’t figure out where you’re putting all of that food you eat! Your stomach surely isn’t big enough, so you must have a hollow leg it goes into.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Kate shrugged. “I’m just always hungry. But maybe I’m about to go through a growing spell or something.” She laughed. “Maybe by next week I’ll be six feet tall!”
“Now, that would be a story for the papers!” Sydney said, snickering.
Kate looked at her friend and sighed. Sydney was so great at eating only healthy foods. And she was so tall and muscular. So athletic. Maybe that was the way to grow taller—to eat only healthy foods and to exercise a lot. Oh well. Not everyone had to have muscles, right?
Dexter joined them at the table. He put his battery-operated car on top of the wooden table and pressed a button on the remote control. It raced across the table and over the edge, into Kate’s lap.
“Better watch out, Dex,” she cautioned. “If you keep running over me with this car of yours, I’m going to confiscate it.”
“Confiscate?” He looked at her curiously. “What’s confiscate?”
“It means she’s going to take it and keep it,” Sydney explained. “You’ll never see it again.”
Dexter’s eyes widened. “No way!” He snatched the car and put it on the counter nearby, then watched it as he ate.
They enjoyed some warm, yummy French toast. Kate ate until she was very full.
Biscuit came to the side of the table and whined. Kate tore off a tiny piece of the French toast and slipped it to him, hoping no one would notice. He gobbled it up and cried for more.
“Shh,” Kate whispered. “You’ll get me in trouble!”
“I heard that,” her mom said. “Don’t you feed that dog any more table scraps, Kate Oliver. He’s going to end up chubby.”
“Chubby? Biscuit?” She looked at him and shrugged. Maybe he had put on a couple of pounds since coming to live with her, but surely a few nibbles of people food couldn’t hurt him.
After eating, Kate decided it was time to work on their new Phillies blog site. She signed onto the Web then went to her favorite blogging site and clicked the START A NEW BLOG button. Over the next half hour, she and Sydney put together a cool-looking site filled with the Phillies colors—red, white, and blue. With her friend’s help, Kate added some basic information about the ball team.
“I’ll fill in the side panels with information later,” Kate explained, “but this is enough for now.” She paused a moment then added, “But now we need to write something really cool about Tony Smith…something to convince fans he’s a great guy!”
“Well, you heard all that stuff he said the other night when we were eating ice cream—how he loves playing baseball.” Sydney nodded. “How he’s played since he was a kid? I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if we used some of the things he said.”
“Great idea!” Kate quickly wrote the title to a new article: TONY SMITH—A PLAYER PHILLIES FANS CAN TRUST.
“This article should do it,” Katie said. “I’ll bet that person who’s been writing the bad things about Tony is watching the Web to see what others say. So this article we write will be like putting out bait. I’ll bet he writes some sort of comment.” She paused a moment. “But we need a lot more information about Tony. Good stuff.”
“We need actual quotes,” Sydney said with a sparkle in her eye. “More specific stuff than what
he shared after the game. Stuff about the team, and about how much he loves his teammates and his coaches. And Philadelphia! We really need to play up the Philadelphia connection. This is the City of Brotherly Love, you know.”
“Yes, I know.” Kate grinned. “I’ve lived here all my life, remember?”
“Oh yeah.” Sydney gave her a sheepish look. “So do you think Tony will give us an interview? We could be, like…reporters!” Sydney smiled. “I always thought it’d be fun to be a sports reporter, and now I get to be, thanks to this Web site!”
“Blog site,” Kate corrected her. “And I don’t know if he’ll give us an interview or not. Maybe we could call Andrew and ask.”
Just then the phone rang. Kate looked down at the caller ID, noticing Andrew’s number. She stared back up at her friend, stunned.
“Wow!” Kate and Sydney looked at each other.
“It’s like a miracle,” Kate whispered. “God was listening to us.”
“He’s always listening to us!” Sydney echoed. “But that’s extra super cool.”
Kate picked up the phone and started talking fast. “Hey, Andrew. I’m so glad you called. We were just talking about you. Sydney and I are starting a blog site and we need your help. Do you think your dad will give us an interview? We really need to get some great quotes to put in our first article.”
“Probably, but there’s something happening right now, Kate. Turn on the radio.”
“The radio?” she asked. “What station?”
He told her, and Kate turned it on right away. She heard a man’s voice saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, I guess this confirms the rumors we’ve been hearing about Tony Smith’s thoughts on playing for the Phillies. You heard it in his own words.”
“Heard what in his own words?” Kate said. She turned her attention back to the phone. “What was it, Andrew? Your dad was on the radio?”
“No.” Andrew sounded more upset by the minute. “That’s just it. He wasn’t on the radio. He never gave an interview, I mean. But it was his voice. How did they do that?”
“Wait. You’re saying they found someone with a voice like his who pretended to be him?”
“No, that’s the crazy part. It really was my dad’s voice. We all heard it, and even my mom said so. We know his voice. My dad is so upset right now.”
“Of course, but…” Kate exhaled loudly. “It just doesn’t make any sense. First people start rumors about him, and now his voice is on the radio, telling people the rumors are true?”
“Yes. But it doesn’t make any sense.”
“No kidding.” She sat on the edge of the bed. “Andrew, we’re going to get to the bottom of this, I promise. Someone taped your dad’s voice without his knowing it.”
“But how? And when? He hasn’t given any interviews in weeks, not since all the rumors started. Coach Mullins told him not to. Said the reporters would twist his words. So he’s stayed away from reporters. He’s already really upset. You know he’s been working with that charity for kids with muscular dystrophy, right?”
“Of course!” Kate knew all about it. The top secret project she and her father had been working on was a special robot to help kids with muscular problems. She hadn’t told a soul yet, not even Sydney or the other Camp Club Girls. First they had to work out some of the kinks. There was no point in getting people excited about something that might not even work.
“My dad’s worried that the people at the Muscular Dystrophy Foundation won’t trust him now,” Andrew said, sounding sad.
“Why would he think that?” Kate asked.
“Because it’s already happening. Have you seen that bank commercial my dad is in?”
“Sure, I see it all the time. I love the part where your dad says, ‘A penny saved is a penny earned.’ That’s a Ben Franklin quote, you know.”
“Yeah, I know. But you won’t hear my dad saying that anymore. The president of the bank just called and said they’re not running the commercial anymore. They’re taking it off the air because they think my dad is bad for business.”
“Oh, Andrew! I’m so sorry. But I’ll be praying, I promise. And we’re going to do everything we can to fix this. With God’s help, I mean.” Kate paused a minute. “When is the next game?”
“Saturday afternoon.”
“Can you get tickets?”
“We have season tickets. Four seats. So that’s not a problem.”
“Good ones?” she asked. “Close to the dugout?”
“Well, sure. Same seats as last time. We always sit in the same place. But what are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking I’d better learn a lot more about the team before I go. In the meantime, just stay calm. Oh, and write down everything you know about the Phillies for our blog, okay? And it would be great if you could get a couple of quotes from your dad, telling how much he loves the team. We’ll use those in our articles.”
“O-okay.” He sighed.
“I’m so sorry about all of this, Andrew. But don’t worry. God has this under control. I know we can trust Him.” “I know.
It’s just hard.”
“Well, let’s pray about it, then.” Kate began to pray out loud over the phone, something she’d never done before. It made her feel really good to pray for Andrew, and by the time they hung up, she could tell he felt a little better.
Afterward, Kate put the phone down on the desk and looked at Sydney with a dramatic sigh.
“What happened?” Sydney asked, her brow wrinkling in concern. “Sounds bad.”
“Yes, it is. What a mess! Someone is really working hard to make Mr. Smith look bad. And it’s working. The bank just canceled a commercial he’s in. And Andrew’s afraid it’s going to get even worse—that the people at the Muscular Dystrophy Foundation will drop him as a spokesman, too.”
“This is just so sad.”
“Yes,” Kate agreed. “We need to find out how someone taped Tony’s voice without his knowing. That’s the only way we’ll ever get to the bottom of this.”
Sydney began to pace the room. “Man! Do you think it was a reporter? Maybe someone snuck in the locker room or something? Or…” Her face lit up. “Maybe someone tapped his phone. What do you think?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to get to the bottom of this,” Kate said. “Let’s send an e-mail to the other Camp Club Girls. We need their help. This is too much for the two of us to handle on our own.”
“Good idea,” Sydney said.
Kate sat down at the computer. She began to write an e-mail to the Camp Club Girls.
Dear Bailey, Alex, Elizabeth, and McKenzie:
Please meet me in the Camp Club Girls chat room tonight at 7:00 eastern time. A mystery awaits! Sydney and I need you…ASAP!
As she clicked the SEND button, Kate leaned back in her chair and smiled. “There! That should do it! If anyone can get to the bottom of this mystery, the Camp Club Girls can!”
Camp Club Girls…Unite!
Kate and Sydney spent the rest of the day at the pool, swimming with Dexter. It was nice to enjoy some fun time. Kate thought about the first time she met Sydney and the other Camp Club Girls at Discovery Lake Camp. What fun they’d had, solving their first case and getting to know each other. Now they were all great friends. And on days like today, swimming with Sydney, Kate could almost forget the Phillies and all of the problems Andrew and his dad were going through.
Almost.
After a few minutes of fun, Sydney announced, “I need to swim one hundred laps. Hope you don’t mind, but I want to make the swim team this year and I need to work on my speed and strength.”
Kate shrugged. “Okay. No problem.” She went to the shallow end and sat on the steps. Two women her mother’s age sat on the steps next to her. She couldn’t help but hear their conversation.
“They need to kick that Tony Smith off the team,” a woman in a black bathing suit said. She fanned herself with her hand and rolled her eyes. “Seriously, he needs to find someplace else to go!”
The other woman—dressed in a green suit—reached for a diet soda and took a sip. She shook her head and said, “He’s hurting the morale of the other players. His attitude is terrible! And lately he hasn’t even played well!”
“Excuse me…,” Kate started to say.
The woman looked her way. “Yes?” the lady in the black suit said. “Can we help you?”
“Oh…never mind.”
Kate wanted to explain that it was all a big mistake—that Tony actually loved the Phillies—but decided not to. It would be better to prove them wrong than to tell them they were wrong. And she would do that—with the help of her friends.
The afternoon ended too quickly. Kate’s mom and dad took the girls out to eat at an all-you-can-eat pizza buffet that evening.
“I love, love, love this place!” Kate said as they entered. She stopped inside the door and drew in a deep breath. “Do you smell that? Do you? It’s the most wonderful smell in the world. Smell the garlic? Smell the pizza crust baking? Smell the pepperoni and sausage? Oh, I think that’s the best smell ever!”
“You’re funny! You know that?” Sydney laughed. “Just smells like pizza to me. But look at that salad bar! They have great veggies. I’m going to love this place.”
“Veggies?” This was one of Kate’s favorite places to eat, but she’d never noticed the vegetables before. Oh well. She grabbed a plate and got in line. She loaded up on the good stuff…three pieces of sausage pizza, one slice of pepperoni, a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs, and two slices of dessert pizza.
Sydney grabbed a bowl and filled it with salad, loading it with bright orange carrot sticks, round red tomatoes, and lots of green cucumbers. Afterward, she took a tiny slice of cheese pizza.
Kate looked at her, stunned. “That’s all you’re eating?”
“Sure.” Sydney shrugged. “Why?”
“Oh, no reason.” Kate tried not to feel bad about all of the food she ate as they shared the meal together, but she had to wonder if she was the only one who loved pizza. She even made a second trip back to the buffet for two more slices of pepperoni. Her mother looked at her and said, “Hollow leg!” Kate just laughed.
