The Case of the Missing Minute
Page 7
Nothing. I couldn’t believe it. Nothing at all. I was looking pretty dumbfounded by this point. There had to be something. We watched it fall; well, we saw it hang there in midair during one of our jumps. Then it was gone on the next one, so it had to be in the wall.
“Wait,” I said. “Ivy, stand right here.” I pointed to where I thought Mr. Oswald had been sitting that day. “I will be right back.”
I got to the door and put on my muddy shoes. Of course Abacus followed right behind me, which made the whole thing take longer. I put on her shoes and we went outside together. We followed our footsteps from yesterday or months ago, depending on how you looked at it. There at the window I could see our mistake. Actually, Abacus saw the mistake first. She began pointing to the other side of Ivy, away from where we had been looking.
We were looking up at the wrong angle from within the house. From outside we would have been turned around. I tapped on the glass and motioned for someone to open the window. Mr. Barns found the latch and opened it a crack.
“What is it?” he asked.
“You need to look over that way.” I pointed several feet over from where he had cut the hole. I was pretty sure this was the last shot I was going to get so I had to be pretty convincing. “I am sure it is right there,” I told them.
Mr. Barns repeated the same procedure carefully cutting away the wall board. He let out a small gasp. His hand reached in and plucked out a piece of paper that had folded right over the top of the watch. That is probably why the construction workers missed it.
It was astonishment mixed with gratefulness and tears of joy from Mr. Oswald. I have never seen a grown man cry like that, but it was clear that this watch was important to him.
Mrs. Oswald hugged him and said, “I can’t make you sell that watch just to buy a retirement home.”
“No,” he said, “I want you to be comfortable. We are getting too old to take care of ourselves here. The watch isn’t as important as you are.” They both smiled at each other lovingly.
Mr. Oswald opened his safe and pulled out two crisp $100 bills and handed one to Ivy and one to me. My Mom didn’t want us to take the money, but he insisted.
Mr. Barns added $100 to the total. He also insisted, saying that he had to honor the reward. Mom was pretty overwhelmed by all this attention. The 4DDA now had $300 and we had officially solved our first case.
Instead of going home right away, we stayed over for lunch at the Oswald’s. Mom had more of the blue raspberry lemonade than anyone else. I didn’t even find a cat hair in the tuna sandwich this time, but I think Ivy did. I smiled as I saw her picking it out of her teeth later on.
When Dad got home we were so excited to tell him about everything that had happened. He was glad that we solved our case, but he was even more pleased that we had helped the Oswald’s. I think I even saw his eyes water up a little bit when we handed him his own stack of business cards with the name; Benjamin Thomas Stolidmeyer, Lead Agent, 4th Dimension Detective Agency.