Camp Club Girls Get a Clue!

by Renae Brumbaugh

  Before Sydney could respond, the videophone rang. It was McKenzie. Sydney turned on the webcam and picked up the call.

  McKenzie sat at the computer desk in her bedroom. She wore a pink baseball cap with a picture of a racehorse embroidered on the front. Her orange tomcat, Andrew, lounged on the back of her desk chair.

  “We were just going to call you,” Sydney said.

  “I couldn’t wait,” McKenzie replied. She twisted a lock of her hair between her thumb and her index finger. “Do you realize what a big deal this is if you’ve uncovered a plot to assassinate the president? I couldn’t believe half the stuff that Kate told me.”

  “Believe it,” Sydney said. “It’s all true.”

  Elizabeth slid her chair closer to Sydney’s. “Hi, McKenzie,” she offered.

  “Hi, Elizabeth,” McKenzie answered. “Listen, I’ve been thinking. That first note you found said ‘Meade me in St. Louis, July first,’ right?”

  “Right,” Elizabeth confirmed.

  “Get off!” Andrew had jumped from the chair onto McKenzie’s keyboard. He loved to act up when she was online. “I just Googled the president to find out where he’ll be on July first. He’s not anywhere near St. Louis. He’s going to be in Baltimore. So could you be on the wrong track with all of this?” She picked up Andrew and put him on her lap.

  “Your guess is as good as ours,” Elizabeth said. “The first of July is Friday. That gives us two days to find out if we’re right. If nothing happens by the end of the weekend, I’ll have to help out from Amarillo. We’re going home on Sunday night. Uncle Dan has a class starting on the fifth.”

  Sydney picked up a red fine-point marker and scribbled the word Baltimore on a scrap of paper. She doodled all around it. Drawing flowers and animals somehow helped her concentrate.

  “What kind of class is your uncle taking?” McKenzie asked.

  “He’s not taking it; he’s teaching it,” Elizabeth replied.

  Sydney penned the words: Teaching…Teacher.

  “My uncle teaches American history at Amarillo Community College,” Elizabeth continued.

  Sydney scribbled the words: Teacher…College… Professor!

  Oh my goodness, she thought. She decided not to say what she was thinking. As Elizabeth and McKenzie talked, Sydney tore the paper into little pieces and tossed it into the trash can under the desk.

  “So what’s the president doing in Baltimore on Friday?” she asked. She tried hard not to let her feelings show. Inside her brain, a voice shouted, “Oh no! Kate’s right! Elizabeth’s uncle is The Professor, the top guy in the plot to kill the president!”

  McKenzie was feeding Andrew now. She held his bowl of food while he sat on the desk and scarfed it down. “He’s going to be at Fort McHenry for some Fourth of July weekend concert thing. I can’t remember exactly what it’s called. Just a minute, I wrote it down.” McKenzie set the cat’s dish on the desk. The girls heard paper rustling as she looked for the note she’d jotted about the president. “Here it is. It’s called a Twilight Tattoo.”

  Elizabeth gasped.

  “What?” McKenzie asked.

  “That was Moose’s big idea,” Elizabeth said. “He made a plan that involved a tattoo, and the suit guy couldn’t believe that Moose was bright enough to think of it—”

  Sydney interrupted, “Only we thought he meant tattoo, as in a picture branded on your skin.”

  “Tattoos aren’t branded on people,” McKenzie corrected her. “You brand cattle.”

  “Obviously that’s not what it means,” Elizabeth said. She found a dictionary in Sydney’s bookcase. She opened it to the T section and searched. “Tattle…tattler…tattletail… tattoo! Here it is. Oh girls, listen to this: ‘an outdoor military exercise given by troops as evening entertainment’ and ‘a call sounded shortly before taps as notice to go to quarters.’ It all fits! Taps is a bugle call that’s sounded at the end of a day and at military funerals. They plan to assassinate the president at the tattoo!”

  McKenzie leaned back in her chair and put her hands on top of her baseball cap. “I can’t believe this is happening,” she said. “What are you guys going to do? I mean, if you say something and we’re wrong, can you imagine all the trouble it will cause?” She took off her hat and set it on the desk. “Just a second, I’m getting an IM from Alexis. She wants to know what’s going on—”

  “Listen, McKenzie,” Sydney said. “We have to go. Will you tell Alexis and the rest of the girls what we just talked about?”

  Elizabeth got up and started unpacking her backpack. “Tell her to get a prayer group going, too,” she said as she looked through her backpack for anything odd, like a tracking device.

  “I heard,” McKenzie said. “Will do, and I’ll tell the girls to try to figure out more of this. We’ll be in touch with you later.” McKenzie waved at the camera and signed off.

  Elizabeth had everything out of her backpack now. Her camera, a tube of sunscreen, her hot-pink iPod, a pair of socks, lip gloss…all of it lay in a pile on her bed. She turned the yellow backpack upside down and gave it a few hard shakes. Nothing fell out. “See,” she said. “No tracking device. If anyone is tracking me, it’s not with this backpack.”

  Sydney sat quietly at her desk pretending to straighten papers and organize her bookcase. There was one important clue that she and Elizabeth hadn’t discussed, and they couldn’t avoid it any longer. “That note we left behind,” Sydney said. “The one that said ‘Lieutenant Dan, we’ve got legs.’ What do you think it meant, Beth?”

  Once again, Elizabeth said nothing.

  Sydney felt anger inside of her. She didn’t want to be mad at her friend, but something was very different about Elizabeth. She wasn’t acting like the same girl Sydney knew from Discovery Lake Camp.

  “What’s going on with you?” Sydney asked. “Every time I try to talk about your uncle, you clam up. Don’t you know you can talk to me if something’s bothering you?”

  Elizabeth sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed. “My uncle saved his whole company of men in Vietnam by putting himself in the line of fire,” she said. “He got shot, and he might never walk again, and, Sydney, that’s not right! I get mad at God sometimes because bad things happen to good people. I get mad at my uncle’s Vietnam buddies because they can walk and he can’t. Then I get mad at myself for feeling that way. I know what kind of a man my uncle is, and now you want me to believe he’s a bad guy and is trying to kill the president. Well, he’s not! I don’t know what the note means, but it isn’t what you think.”

  Sydney walked across the room and sat on the bed next to Elizabeth. “I don’t want your uncle to be a bad guy, Beth, and he probably isn’t. Help me prove that he isn’t, okay? I’m on your side. I really mean that.”

  Elizabeth held the pendant that hung around her neck. It was a habit that helped her to remember the scripture verse engraved on it: “Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”

  “I want your uncle to walk again,” Sydney continued, “but sometimes bad things do happen to good people, and you just have to accept that.”

  As Elizabeth held the pendant, it came off the chain. The pendant remained in her hand, and the chain slipped to the floor. “Oh,” she said. “I can’t believe that happened. Uncle Dan just took this to the jewelry store the day before we came out here. He had it matched to this nice silver chain.” She picked up the chain and checked out the clasp. “That’s strange. It doesn’t look broken. I guess I must not have fastened it right. Will you do it, please?” Elizabeth held up her long blond hair while Sydney fastened the clasp.

  “There,” Sydney said. “It’s as good as new. And how about us? Are we good as new?”

  Elizabeth smiled. “We are,” she said softly. “Let’s make a pact to prove that my uncle Dan isn’t a terrorist. Agreed?”

  “Agreed!” Sydney said.

  Just then, Sydney’s cell phone began to buzz. She took it from her p
ocket and found a message from Bailey: Mr. Green is on the move! Log on now and watch where he goes.

  Quickly Sydney and Elizabeth logged on to Kate’s tracking site. The green blip was moving steadily away from Foggy Bottom. Its rate of speed told the girls that Moose was not traveling on foot. The blip was on New York Avenue heading northeast out of town. Elizabeth and Sydney sat at the desk and watched for more than an hour as it slowly traveled to the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, on to Maryland 295 North, and along I-95 North. Then it stopped.

  “Why is he stopping?” Elizabeth wondered. “Isn’t he in the middle of a freeway?”

  “Maybe a toll booth or traffic,” Sydney answered.

  “So now we know he’s in a car,” Elizabeth added.

  “Or a taxi or a bus,” Sydney said.

  Soon the green blip left I-95 and began weaving through the streets of Baltimore.

  “Either he’s lost, or he’s looking for something,” Sydney observed. “It doesn’t look like he knows where he’s going.”

  Eventually the green blip traveled east of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and stopped again. The girls waited for about twenty minutes, wondering if the blip would move. It didn’t.

  “I know that neighborhood,” Sydney said. “It’s just across the harbor from Fort McHenry. I’ve been there with my aunt Dee; sometimes she fills in at the fort when a ranger is on vacation. Anyway, that neighborhood where Moose is now was once upon a time a place where pirates hung out.”

  “Interesting,” Elizabeth said. “So now what do we do?”

  Sydney was busy typing an e-mail to the Camp Club Girls.

  Subject: Camp Club Girls Unite

  Moose has moved from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. (Rusty is probably with him.) Let’s group chat tonight at 8:30. We need to make a plan to save President Meade, and we have to pray for guidance and safety. Tomorrow Elizabeth and I will go to Baltimore to check out Fort McHenry and to find out more about the Twilight Tattoo. We’ll meet you in the chat room.

  “We’re going to Baltimore?” Elizabeth exclaimed. “How will we get there?”

  “That’s easy,” Sydney answered. “Aunt Dee! The National Park Service has a van that travels from the Wall to Fort McHenry every day. I’ll tell Aunt Dee that I want to take you to see the fort, and we can hitch a ride with a ranger. We can spend the whole day in Baltimore sleuthing things out. Plus, we can get into the fort for free.”

  “What if we run into Moose and Rusty?” Elizabeth asked.

  “We won’t as long as the girls are tracking them,” Sydney replied. “They can let us know if Moose and Rusty are near, and then we can ditch them. Right now, we have other things to think about. The Camp Club Girls need to get organized. We’re on a mission to save the president.”

  On the Move…

  The girls wasted no time getting to the chat room at 8:30. None of them had much of an appetite at supper that night. Their minds were on how to solve the mystery of Moose, Rusty, and President Meade.

  Alexis Howell was the first to “talk.” She had been working on the latest clue left by the Wall.

  Alexis: Have any of you seen the movie Forrest Gump?

  That note, “Lieutenant Dan, we got legs,” is like a line from the movie. The line goes: “Lieutenant Dan, you got new legs.”

  In one part of the movie, Forrest Gump is a soldier in Vietnam. His platoon gets ambushed and Forrest saves his wounded officer, Lieutenant Dan. Afterwards, the lieutenant is real mad at Forrest.

  Bailey: Why is he mad at him?

  Alexis: Because Dan wanted to die in battle as a hero. Instead he lost his legs and was disabled for the rest of his life. He figured he’d be better off dead.

  Elizabeth and Sydney sat at the computer watching the words flash across the screen.

  “Some of it is like what happened with my uncle,” Elizabeth said to Sydney. “But Uncle Dan never complains that he lost the use of his legs, and I’m sure that he doesn’t think he’d have been better off dead. The clue has to have another meaning.”

  Sydney typed on her keyboard.

  Sydney: Then what happened?

  Alexis: Forrest and Dan went into shrimping together and got rich. Years later, when Forrest got married, Lieutenant Dan showed up at the wedding walking. Forrest said, “Lieutenant Dan, you got new legs.” The Lieutenant showed Forrest his new metal legs and said, “Custom-made titanium alloy. It’s what they use on the space shuttle.”

  McKenzie: I’m sorry, Elizabeth, but this seems to point right to your uncle Dan. He was wounded in Vietnam and can’t use his legs. So Moose and Rusty are using their legs to help him. I bet that’s what it means: Lieutenant Dan, we got legs!

  Alexis: McKenzie, we can’t jump to conclusions. Elizabeth’s uncle is innocent until he’s proven guilty.

  An uncomfortable pause filled the chat room and Sydney’s bedroom. Neither Sydney nor Elizabeth said a word. The only sounds were the soft hum of the computer and the gentle patter of rain on the roof.

  Bailey: What’s titanium alloy?

  Kate: It’s a metal made of titanium and other chemical elements. It’s super-strong, lightweight, and it can withstand high temperatures. The military uses it to make stuff, like planes and weapons.

  The storm was getting stronger. The girls heard the rain falling harder on the roof.

  Sydney: Let’s make a plan for tomorrow when Elizabeth and I go to the fort. A storm’s coming, and we’ll have to shut down the computer soon.

  Kate: It’s been here already. Would you believe Biscuit was outside digging in the pouring rain? He tracked mud all through the house. He’s never done that before.

  As the storm raced toward Sydney’s neighborhood, the girls made a plan for the next day. Kate told Sydney and Elizabeth how to set up their cell phones to view the tracking site. That way Sydney and Elizabeth could see where Moose was at any given time.

  Bailey and Alexis would be their backup. They’d watch Moose, too, and would report to Kate and McKenzie what was going on. Meanwhile, Kate and McKenzie would dig deeper into the clues to look for any new leads.

  Before they signed off, Sydney and Elizabeth promised to stay in touch with the girls by texting them from the fort, and all the girls promised to pray.

  Rain poured down on the brick row house. A huge clap of thunder exploded over the house, making the girls jump.

  Just then Elizabeth’s cell phone rang. She looked at the caller ID and pressed the answer button.

  “Hi, Uncle Dan,” she said.

  “Hi, honey,” her uncle replied. “I’m just checking on you. There’s quite a storm outside. Are you girls all right?”

  “We’re fine,” Elizabeth answered. “We were just getting ready for bed. I’m glad Sydney’s room doesn’t have any windows. I’d rather not see all the lightning.”

  “So what’s on your agenda for tomorrow?” Uncle Dan asked. “Do you and Sydney have something fun planned?”

  “We’re going to Baltimore to see Fort McHenry,” Elizabeth said.

  Sydney sat on her bed waving her arms to get Elizabeth’s attention. “No!” she whispered. “Don’t tell him!”

  But the damage was already done.

  “I have to go now,” Elizabeth said abruptly. “It’s probably not a good idea to talk on the phone in a storm. Good night, Uncle Dan.”

  She ended the call before her uncle could ask anything else about their plans. “I’m sorry. I forgot,” Elizabeth said. “Besides, I won’t treat my uncle like he’s a criminal. Like Alex said, he’s innocent until he’s proven guilty.”

  As the wind howled outside, the two girls shared a time of prayer. They asked God to guide them and protect them. They prayed for their friends and family, and especially for President Meade. Elizabeth asked the Lord to do something soon to prove that her uncle Dan was innocent, and she prayed that her uncle might walk again.

  Then Sydney and Elizabeth climbed into their beds and said good night.

  Sydney awoke the
next morning to someone gently shaking her. It was Aunt Dee. The room was dark and quiet, and Elizabeth was still asleep.

  “What time is it?” Sydney groaned.

  “It’s 7:00 a.m.,” Aunt Dee answered. “If you girls are going to catch a ride to the fort, you have to get up soon. The power went out for a while overnight, so your alarm clocks are behind.”

  Elizabeth stirred in her bed across the room. “What’s going on?” she asked, sitting up and rubbing her eyes.

  “It’s time to get up,” Sydney told her. “We have to leave in an hour to go with Aunt Dee to the Wall.”

  The girls got dressed and logged on to Kate’s tracking site. The green blip was still in the same spot as the night before, just east of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.

  “I’m going to e-mail the girls,” Sydney said.

  We’re leaving in a few minutes to go to the Wall with Aunt Dee. Catching a ride to the fort at 10:00 a.m. Make sure you let us know if Moose moves, in case we’re not looking at our phones.

  At ten o’clock, Sydney and Elizabeth met Ranger Hank Ellsworth at the Visitor Center at the Vietnam Memorial. As they rode along in the backseat of his white park service van, Ranger Hank told them about the fort.

  “My great-great-great-grandpa fought at Fort McHenry,” the ranger said, scratching the short, gray beard on his tan, weathered face. “But you girls probably aren’t interested in hearing about that.”

  He turned the van onto the highway into heavy traffic.

  “No, we want to hear,” Sydney said. “We want to learn as much as we can about the fort.”

  The ranger checked his rearview mirror and changed lanes. “Well, when you get there, you’ll have to use your imagination,” he said. “The story goes like this: Way back in the 1700s, Baltimore was afraid of being attacked by the British. We were at war with Britain. So the people decided to build a fort to protect themselves. They picked a site called Whetstone Point. It was a good place to build a fort, because it was near the city and was surrounded on three sides by water.”