Bailey’s Peoria Problem

by Linda McQuinn Carlblom

  “Okay.” Alexis plopped her suitcase on the other bed and started unpacking.

  “I don’t know about you, but something about this Marshall Gonzalez case seems weird.” Bailey moved clothes from her suitcase to the top two dresser drawers, leaving the bottom two for Alex. “Why would distant relatives care about this guy now after seven years? Did they just find out about his disappearance?”

  “I know what you mean,” Alex agreed. “Maybe he’s still alive.” She dug in her suitcase for her toothbrush. “I’m going to take a quick shower.”

  “Okay. I’ll take one when you’re done. But let’s think some more about this case.”

  After her shower, Bailey slipped into her silky pink capri pajamas with soft gray kitties on the pants.

  Alex, already in her nightgown, grabbed her toothbrush and toothpaste and entered the steamy bathroom, leaving the door open. “Now about this Gonzalez case. We could make a list of what we know so far and what we still need to find out.” Alex started brushing her teeth.

  “Good idea. We’ll need to work quickly on this since we only have a week until we have to go home.” Bailey parked her empty rolling suitcase in the corner. She pulled back the sheets on her twin bed and put her traveling companion, a sandy brown stuffed dog named Ginger, on her pillow.

  Alex spit out her toothpaste. “How will we be able to get away to investigate with all the sheep to shear?” Bailey took a notebook from her backpack.

  “Tomorrow’s Sunday, silly. Uncle Nathan doesn’t believe in working on the Sabbath. We’ll go to church in the morning and just relax in the afternoon. Even on the other days we’ll probably only shear in the morning. He knows kids need time to play. Usually after lunch we’re free to do whatever we want. And believe me, after that long, you’ll feel like you’ve worked all day!” Bailey began scribbling in the notebook.

  “What do we have so far?” Alex asked, knowing Bailey was writing down clues.

  “Not much, really. Just Marshall’s name, and that he’s a millionaire with distant relatives in California who want to declare him legally dead so they can inherit his money. He has no close relatives and very few friends. He’s been missing for over seven years.”

  “It may not be much, but it’s a start.” Alex wiped her face with a cleansing pad, the antiseptic smell filling the room. “Obviously, the motive for wanting him to be declared dead is money.”

  “Right.” Bailey took her turn in the bathroom now, toothbrush in hand.

  “For starters, we should find out where Gonzalez lived, don’t you think?”

  Bailey nodded, her mouth foaming white. She spit and wiped her mouth on a towel. “I wonder how he got so rich.”

  “Good question. We’ll check that out, too.” Alex yawned.

  “I think I’m gonna sleep good tonight. It’s been a busy day.” Bailey crawled into bed.

  “Me, too, but I can’t wait for tomorrow. We’ve got more than sheep shearing to do while we’re here this week.” “Yeah! We’ve got a mystery to solve!”

  The Mystery Man and the Mystery House

  Sunday morning dawned bright but cool, as Bailey and Alex dressed for church.

  “Maybe we can find out more about Marshall Gonzalez today,” Bailey said, hairbrush in hand. She grimaced with the pull of every tangle in her fine hair.

  “Probably won’t be until later if we do. I doubt the sermon will be about Marshall,” Alex joked.

  After church, Bailey and Alex chowed down on burgers at the local Steak ’n Shake with Uncle Nathan, Aunt Darcy, and George and Helen Jones, a couple from their church. Brian took off to eat with his friends from the youth group.

  “What do you make of the headlines these days?” asked Mr. Jones.

  Uncle Nathan stuffed a plump fry into his mouth. “Which ones?”

  “This business about Marshall Gonzalez.” Mr. Jones sipped his soda. “You think he’s really dead?”

  Bailey and Alex shot excited glances at each other but kept eating while they listened.

  “Hard to know for sure,” Uncle Nathan said. “But nobody’s seen anything of him for a lot of years, so I guess he could be dead.”

  “Never found a body though,” Mr. Jones added.

  “This is hardly mealtime conversation, George.” Mrs. Jones reached for the salt.

  “Just talking about the news, dear,” Mr. Jones said, patting his wife’s hand.

  “I heard Marshall lived not too far from here,” Aunt Darcy added.

  “That’s a fact. Somewhere east of here is what I heard, though I don’t know exactly where.” Mr. Jones dipped his french fry in ketchup before popping it into his sizable mouth.

  “I suppose if we’d bought the Curly Q a year earlier, we probably would’ve met him.” Uncle Nathan sipped his soda.

  “Very likely,” Mr. Jones said. “We only moved here five years ago, so we didn’t know him either. But they say he kept to himself, which is part of the problem of them not knowing what happened to him.”

  “Good heavens.” Mrs. Jones pressed her napkin to her mouth.

  Bailey nudged Alex and suppressed a giggle.

  Alex nudged her back and disguised her smile with a cough.

  “Are you okay, dear?” asked Mrs. Jones.

  Alex took a giant gulp of water. “Yes, I’m fine.”

  “Well,” Uncle Nathan continued, “you’d think someone would have befriended him.”

  “Maybe,” Mr. Jones answered. “But a person can be pretty scarce if he wants to be.”

  “Was he really a millionaire?” asked Bailey.

  “That’s what they say.” Uncle Nathan bit into his burger, juice dripping from its sides. He quickly grabbed a napkin to mop up the mess.

  “How’d he get so rich?” Alex wondered aloud.

  “He inherited his money,” Mr. Jones responded. “From what I’ve heard, he didn’t have the personality to be much of a businessman. He basically just let his fortune earn interest at the bank and spent his time doing whatever he pleased.”

  “Inherited his money,” Bailey said under her breath. “Just like his relatives are hoping to do.” She bit her bottom lip as she thought that over.

  “About all anyone knows for sure is that he pretty much closed his house in Peoria and released all the people who worked for him, except for a caretaker.” Uncle Nathan took a drink of his pop. “Some say he mentioned something about trying sheep herding before he took off, and had even attended a sheep expo at the state fair in Springfield.”

  “Then he must have had a sheep farm somewhere.” Alex looked at Bailey.

  “Only if he acted on what he was thinking about,” Bailey said.

  “So if he was hardly ever seen, even by his neighbors, how does anyone know when he disappeared?” asked Alex.

  “Hmm.” Uncle Nathan rubbed his chin. “That’s a good question.”

  “Maybe he had secret business associates who reported him missing when they didn’t hear from him,” suggested Bailey.

  “Or maybe his bank noticed he wasn’t using any of his money,” added Alex.

  Mr. Jones raised his eyebrows and looked at Bailey and Alex. “You guys are good!”

  “I’ve read a lot of Nancy Drew mysteries,” Alex explained.

  “And I’m just a natural detective.” Bailey took a long draw on her straw, trying to get a taste of her thick chocolate milkshake.

  “Naturally nosy is more like it,” Uncle Nathan teased.

  “Nathan!” Aunt Darcy scolded her husband.

  Uncle Nathan mussed Bailey’s hair playfully. “Aw, she knows I love her.”

  Bailey’s black eyes sparkled at her uncle as she beamed and nodded.

  The waitress soon brought the checks. Nathan and Mr. Jones stood and shook hands good-bye while the women exchanged hugs.

  “Nice meeting you little ladies,” Mr. Jones said to Bailey and Alex.

  “Nice meeting you, too,” Bailey answered.

  “Let us know when you crack the Gonzalez case,�
� Mr. Jones added, smiling broadly. “That’d show those authorities, wouldn’t it? To have two girls figure it out when they’ve been working on it for years!” He laughed and smacked Uncle Nathan on the back.

  Back at the Curly Q, Bailey and Alex changed out of their church clothes.

  “What do you want to do?” Alex asked.

  “It’s a beautiful day now that the sun has warmed things up.” Bailey’s eyes twinkled. “I think we should take a walk.”

  “Ooh, good idea!”

  “We probably won’t even need our sweatshirts now, it’s so nice out.”

  “Let’s go!” Alex started for the bedroom door.

  “Whoa, girl!” Bailey slowed her friend with an outstretched arm. “We need to gather some supplies first.”

  “Supplies? What for?”

  “In case we happen to stumble on some clues for the Gonzalez case. I’ll bring my notepad and my camera watch.” Bailey rifled through her backpack.

  “You have a camera watch?” Alex’s eyes grew to the size of a CD.

  “Yeah.” Bailey nodded like a bobblehead. “Kate told me about them at camp last summer, so I checked them out online and added it to my birthday list. I got it from my dad when I turned nine in January but haven’t had much chance to try it out yet.”

  “You’re awesome!” Alex hugged Bailey. “Speaking of Kate, we really should call the other Camp Club Girls to let them in on our latest mystery.”

  “They may have ideas we haven’t even thought of yet,” Bailey agreed. “I’ll call Kate and Sydney, and you call Elizabeth and McKenzie. With all of us working together, we’ll have this mystery solved by the end of the week!”

  The girls sat on their beds and flipped open their cell phones.

  “I’m so glad my parents finally got me a new cell phone before we came to Uncle Nathan’s.” Bailey bit her lip as she found Kate’s number and pushed TALK. “Kate? It’s Bailey!”

  Alex, sitting cross-legged on her bed, chatted away to Elizabeth while Bailey filled Kate in on the details they already knew from the Gonzalez case. Then each one called the next girl they were assigned. A half hour later, Bailey and Alex had hung up.

  “Did Kate have any ideas about this case?” Alex pushed her phone back into her jeans pocket.

  “She’s going to check the Internet for all the newspaper articles and public records she can find on Gonzalez,” Bailey said. “And she’s going to see if she can find an older online map of the area that might show exactly where his ranch was.”

  Alex did a cartwheel between the two beds, her cheerleading skills bursting to the surface. “Good work! That Kate is a genius!”

  “How ’bout you? Did Elizabeth or McKenzie have any ideas?”

  “Elizabeth will give it some thought and, of course, prayer. In the meantime, she said for us to be careful and not to get in over our heads.”

  Bailey laughed, knowing Elizabeth’s tendency to worry, then added, “I know she really will take the praying part seriously. That’s bound to help us!”

  “Yeah,” agreed Alex. “And McKenzie asked why Gonzalez was such a loner. She wondered if he had bad relations with his family or maybe never even knew his distant relatives. As she put it, there must be some reason he was so withdrawn.”

  “Hmm.” Bailey’s eyebrows wrinkled in thought. “I never thought of that. But she’s right. It’s not natural to avoid all other human contact. There must be more to his story.”

  “What about Sydney? Did she say anything?” Alex asked.

  “Not much. She’ll have to think it over. She said to call her as we get more to go on.”

  Alex nodded. “I told Elizabeth and McKenzie that we’d keep our phones charged, on, and with us at all times in case they need to contact us.”

  “Good.” Bailey laughed. “Oh, and I forgot to tell you—Biscuit says hi!”

  Alex burst out laughing. Biscuit was the dog they all found last summer at camp, but with Kate’s parents’ consent, it became Kate’s dog after camp, since the two of them had grown especially close. Biscuit had even helped the Camp Club Girls solve their first mystery and had become known as the Wonder Dog.

  “Good ol’ Biscuit,” Alex said, grinning broadly.

  “I think we’re ready for our walk now.” Bailey patted her pockets. “I’ve got everything we need—notepad, pen, cell phone, and camera watch.”

  “Let’s go, then!”

  At the bottom of the stairs, Bailey called into the living room, “We’re going for a walk! We’ll be back in a little while!”

  “Okay,” Aunt Darcy answered.

  “We have our cell phones,” Alex offered.

  “Good thinking. See you later.”

  The girls walked down the country road past huge oak trees that provided a cool canopy of shade. Small splashes of sunshine shone between the leaves. The sheep pasture was soon on their right, and the girls could hardly talk over the loud bleating. Alex covered her nose and mouth with her hand to block out the smell.

  “Hey, look over there!” Bailey pointed beyond the pasture.

  “What is it?” Alex squinted her eyes to see.

  “I’m not sure yet. We’ll have to get closer.”

  Alex and Bailey were almost jogging as they moved nearer to a run-down house.

  “Boy, does that need a fresh coat of paint!” Bailey said. She was glad the noisy sheep would keep her voice from being heard by anyone but Alex.

  “It’s so far back from the road, it’s still hard to tell, but it sure does look like it needs work,” Alex agreed.

  “Do you think anyone lives there?” Bailey asked.

  Alex shook her head. “Who could live in a place like that?”

  Both girls returned their gazes to the dilapidated house. Moving closer, but still a safe distance away, they studied the place. Shutters hung crookedly from the front windows. A huge oak tree reached over the side of the house, scraping the sagging roof with every gust of wind. Some of the shingles were missing, and those still attached curled up like the front end of a toboggan. A porch wrapped around two sides of the house, but several posts were missing from the railing.

  “Wow,” Bailey finally said.

  “Look at those weeds in the yard,” Alex added. “I bet they’re as tall as you are!”

  “It looks haunted.” Bailey pointed her watch toward the house and snapped a few pictures. “But it does make an interesting photo subject.” They moved, and she took some from another angle.

  “Aaaaack!” Brian jumped out from behind a tree.

  The girls screamed and grabbed each other.

  Brian doubled with laughter until he was red in the face. “You…should have…seen your faces!” he gasped then laughed some more.

  “That was not funny!” Bailey’s hands were in fists on her hips.

  “It sure was from this angle.” Brian wiped his eyes. “What are you guys doing anyway?”

  “None of your business,” Alex answered, eyes shooting daggers at him.

  “We’re just exploring, that’s all,” Bailey sputtered.

  “Sounds fascinating.” Brian rolled his eyes and turned toward home. “See ya later. Sorry if I freaked you out. Feel free to send me your therapy bill.” He laughed again as he turned toward home.

  Bailey looked at Alex, her heart still pounding. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” Alex tucked her curly hair behind her ears. “Guess we probably did look kind of funny.” A smile overtook her fair-skinned face.

  Bailey sighed. “I was afraid that would make you hate Brian.”

  “No. He really is pretty fun.” Alex inhaled deeply to calm her nerves and then looked back to the old house. “All right. Now that we can breathe again, what next?”

  “Maybe we should head back home.”

  “We could check our e-mail to see if the Camp Club Girls have sent us any updates,” Alex suggested.

  “Good idea.” Bailey snapped one more picture.

  “It’ll be fun to see if the other g
irls turn up anything else.”

  Just then a muscular brown dog shot toward them from the house, teeth bared, barking and growling.

  “Run!”

  Bailey and Alex sprinted to the road. Bailey glanced over her shoulder and saw that the dog had stopped at the spot where they’d been taking pictures, though he continued to bark. She shivered at the thought of those teeth tearing through flesh and bone. The girls jogged the rest of the way home, Bailey wheezing with each breath.

  When they reached their room, Bailey grabbed her inhaler. She breathed in as she squeezed the puff of medicine into her mouth and held her breath for ten seconds as it took effect.

  “You okay?” Alex asked.

  Bailey nodded, still holding her breath.

  “That asthma must be such a pain.”

  Bailey exhaled loudly. “It’s not that bad. You just have to learn to manage it, like having your inhaler handy all the time. I should have taken it with me. But it’s no big deal.”

  “Good.” Alex gave Bailey one more worried look. “Then let’s check our e-mail.” She pulled out her laptop and booted it up.

  “Right. And we could download these pictures, too.” Bailey took off her watch. She pressed a button, and a tiny memory stick popped out. “I’ll just slide this into the computer and…”

  Photos popped up on Alex’s laptop before Bailey even finished her sentence.

  “Guess I need to get better at using this thing,” Bailey said, glancing at her camera watch. The pictures, some blurry, others clear, passed by in a slide show on the computer screen.

  “Wait a minute!” Alex whisper-yelled. “Go back to that last one!”

  Bailey went back to a somewhat blurry picture of the front of the house. “What?” she asked.

  “Look closely at that window on the left side.”

  Bailey looked at the picture then at Alex. “What?”

  “I know it’s not clear, but it almost looks like there’s someone in the window.”

  Bailey peered closer at the fuzzy picture. “Maybe…”

  “The person isn’t right up close to the window, but it looks like someone may be inside that house,” Alex insisted.

  “Could be, but it’s too hard to tell from this shot. Let’s keep looking and then go back and take another look at all of them.”