Baby-sitters Club - Claudia And The Clue In The Photograph Part 6

The Spier-Schafer dining room table was crowded, to say the least.

And it was covered - covered - with mounds of pictures. Every photo we'd taken that Sunday was sitting on that table, and there was no room left for anything else. Jessi took one look at the pile of photos and the crowd of kids, and, as she told me later, "I wanted to turn and run out of the room." She had a feeling, right from the start, that it wasn't going to be easy to sort out that mess.

"Dawn's going to love these!" said Nicky, holding up a handful of pictures of the triplets having their hair cut. "We have to put all of them in the book."

"No way!" said Suzi. "If we put all those in, we won't have room for these other good ones." She waved a handful of pictures at Nicky.

Charlotte and Becca were giggling and shrieking as they looked through the pictures of themselves with "moose ears" and "rabbit ears." Jamie was looking over their shoulders and jumping up and down as he giggled, too.

Matt Braddock was signing enthusiastically to Mary Anne, who kept shaking her head and signing, "Whoa, slow down, Matt."

Haley interpreted. "He says these pictures we took of the picnic are the best ones, and they should be in the front of the book. And I agree with him. Ours are the only pictures. that don't have thumbs in them, and none of them are out of focus."

"Hey, what are you trying to say?" asked Buddy. "Are you telling me that our pictures are no good?" He looked at the picnic shots. "And anyway, why would Dawn want to see a whole bunch of pictures of kids she doesn't even know?"

Haley started to translate for Matt, and then gave up when he started to look mad. She folded her arms and just sat there, glowering at Buddy.

Jessi exchanged glances with the other sitters. "Okay," she said, speaking loudly so she could be heard over the din, "let's chill out for a second. We have a lot of work to do here - "

"And we won't be able to do it if we're fighting," finished Kristy.

"Do you guys want to make this book or not?" asked Mal.

"Think how much Dawn will love it, if we ever finish it," put in Mary Anne.

"We know," said Suzi. "But it has to be fair. We have to decide how we're going to do it."

"That's right," said Jessi. "So let's start talking, instead of arguing. Okay?"

"I think we should put the pictures in chrontological order," said Charlotte, very seriously.

"Chrontological?" asked Buddy. "What the heck does that mean?"

"I think Charlotte means chronological order," said Jessi. "Like, in the order you took them. Starting with the first ones, and going on from there. Not a bad idea, Char," she added, "in fact, I think that's the way A Day in the Life of Americans put together."

"But do we put the ones I took first?" asked Nicky. "Or the ones old Suzi-goozey took first?"

Suzi made a face. "Don't call me names, Nicky Pike," she said, putting her hands on her hips.

"All right, all right," said Kristy, frowning at both of them. "Here's another question. Should we write captions for the pictures, or just let them speak for themselves?"

"Captions would be nice," said Mary Anne.

"And I'll write them all!" said Vanessa.

"They can be in rhyme, so the whole alb.u.m will be like a wonderful, long poem." Ignoring the gagging noises Nicky started to make, she stared off into s.p.a.ce dreamily, as if she were already beginning to compose.

"Hmm ..." said Mal, looking a little doubtful. "Well, maybe not every picture needs a rhyming caption."

"What are we going to do about this?" Becca asked suddenly, picking up the photo alb.u.m Mary Anne had bought to hold the pictures. "I mean, it's kind of yucky-looking."

Mary Anne looked hurt for a second, but then she nodded. "You're right," she said. The alb.u.m was powder-blue fake leather, with gold trim around the edges.

"We can make a cover for it," said Haley. "You know, with artwork and a t.i.tle and all our names on it and everything."

"Like a real book" said Jamie. "I have lots of books. I can help make the cover!"

"You1 can't even write yet," Vanessa reminded him. "I have the best handwriting here," she added. "I can make the cover after I do the captions."

"You're not the boss!" screeched Jamie. He looked as if he were about to cry.

Suddenly, Jessi had had enough. "That's it!" she said, standing up and glaring around the table at everyone. "This is supposed to be a fun project. Let's stop fighting, and start working." While she was watching the others squabble, she'd had an idea. "Here's what I think we should do," she began. Quickly, she outlined her plan.

Ten minutes later, the scene in Mary Anne's dining room was very different. The kids had broken up into groups, and each group had-a task. Mary Anne was supervising Haley, Buddy, and Nicky, who were in charge of picking out which pictures should go into the book. They worked at the table without too much arguing, since Jessi had been smart enough to pick one person from each picture-taking group. Right away they picked out a pile of "must-haves" to pa.s.s on to the others.

Becca and Charlotte sat at the other end of the table, working at putting the pictures into some kind of order, as Kristy offered occasional suggestions. Vanessa and Suzi made themselves comfortable at another section of the table, thinking up and writing captions for the pictures - with a little help from Mal. And Matt and Jamie spread out on the floor with all the art supplies Mary Anne could round up. They looked over the construction paper and glue, paints, crayons, and bits of fabric and yarn (all laid out on top of newspaper, of course), and started making a cover for the alb.u.m. Jessi watched to make sure they didn't make too much of a mess.

Finally, the project was under way. And an hour later, when Sharon (Mary Anne's stepmother and Dawn's mom, in case you forgot) poked her head into the dining room, she smiled and said, "You kids work so well together!"

The four BSC members glanced at each other and tried to hide their smiles. Sharon went on. "It's just wonderful that you're doing this for Dawn," she said. "She'll adore it. And as I told Mary Anne, I'll be glad to help out by packing it up and mailing it on Monday."

After we'd thanked her and she left, Mary Anne whispered to Jessi, "I'll make sure it actually arrives at the post office. You know how she can be. That package might end up in the oven!" They both giggled. Dawn's mom is a little absentminded at times.

The work was going well - in fact, the alb.u.m was almost done - when the peaceful scene was broken by an argument between Nicky, Haley, and Buddy. "There's only room for one more picture," said Haley.

"And this is it!" shouted Buddy. He waved a picture of himself in his Krushers T-shirt, on first base.

"No way!" said Nicky. "What about this one where Adam is about to kick the barber?"

"You guys, you guys," sighed Kristy. "You've been doing so well. Don't spoil it by fighting. How about if you let everybody else vote on it?"

The three of them agreed, and Kristy took a quick poll. Unfortunately, when the votes were counted up, the result was a tie.

"We need a tie-breaker. Call somebody else and ask them!" said Buddy. "One of the other sitters. They'll know which is best."

And that's how I ended up taking a break from my studying. Stacey, Shannon, and Logan were out, and I was the only BSC member left to call. I was happy to do the job, since the numbers on the pages of my math book were beginning to run together by that time.

I popped over to Mary Anne's, and within seconds I had done my job and broken the tie. (I picked Buddy's picture, since there were already about seven pictures of the triplets all set to go into the alb.u.m.) Then I sat down and started leafing through the rejected pictures, just to make sure the "selection committee" hadn't missed any of the ones I thought we should use.

Most of them were rejects for a reason. All the thumb ones and all the totally black ones were in there, plus a few of those "missing-head" shots of Charlotte's. But then I came upon a series of pictures that made me gasp with surprise. Without saving a word to anybody, I grabbed five or six of them and jumped up from the table. "I'm taking these," I told Jessi. "Gotta run!"

Jessi told me later that as she watched me head out the door she knew, just knew that I had found another clue to the mystery. But she could also see that I was in a big hurry, so she didn't stop me to ask questions. Instead, she turned back to helping the kids complete the alb.u.m and compose a short letter to Dawn. She knew she'd be hearing about what I'd discovered soon enough, and meanwhile, there was a project to finish.

Chapter 13.

Jessi was right. I was in a big hurry. I ran all the way home from Mary Anne's, clutching that handful of photos. Then I pounded upstairs to my room and sat right down at my desk. I turned on the overhead lamp for better light, grabbed my loupe, and prepared to take a closer look.

Up until that afternoon, I was sure I had seen every bank photo taken that Sunday. But now I was looking at pictures I hadn't seen before. These weren't pictures of the bank's facade, or even pictures of me taking pictures of the bank's facade. These were pictures of a different part of the bank, one I hadn't been thinking about before. The ATM. Actually, the pictures were supposed to be of Suzi. I think Buddy had taken them. Unfortunately, only Suzi's right shoulder had made it into the picture. But the ATM had been captured perfectly.

What's an ATM? It's an Automatic Teller Machine, one of those places where you can get cash by inserting your bank card into the machine, and then punching in your personal code number. And the ATM at the Stoneybrook Bank is around the corner from the main entrance, which is why I hadn't given it a second thought. Before now, that is.

What had caught my eye, over at Mary Anne's, was that out of six pictures of the ATM, five featured one woman. I could tell she had been standing at the machine for quite a while, because it always took Buddy a long time to set up and shoot each picture. That made me suspicious.

Normally, it only takes a couple of minutes to withdraw cash from those machines. I know because I've seen my mom do it plenty of times. Practically every time we're downtown together she ends up making a stop there. "I don't know where the money goes," she always sighs. "Didn't I just take out some cash yesterday?" She inserts her card, punches in her number (it's my birthdate she once told me, even though it's supposed to be a secret), and waits, tapping her foot impatiently, until the machine spits out her fifty dollars.

I've always thought ATMs were pretty cool, the way the money comes out just like magic.

Anyway, I bent to take a better look at the photos, and what I saw made me take a deep breath. Each picture showed the woman pulling a stack of bills out of the ATM. Apparently, as she pulled out each stack of bills, she set them on the little shelf while she punched in more numbers, because once I arranged the pictures in order, I could see the pile on the shelf growing and growing. In the last picture, the stack of bills looked really, really thick.

I sat back and let out that deep breath in a big sigh. Suddenly, there was a new angle to the bank mystery.

What if that woman had somehow rigged the machine, so that it would give her as much money as she wanted? (Usually, there's a limit to how much you can take out in one day. Plus, you have to have the money in your account to begin with.) And if those bills were big ones, like hundreds, that meant she could have withdrawn thousands of dollars! That could mean that Mr. Zibreski was innocent after all. Maybe he really was just a hardworking banker, and maybe my friends and I had been wasting our time investigating him. I picked up the loupe again and studied the woman more carefully, but it was hopeless. Her back was to the camera, and there was nothing unusual about the way she was dressed - in a jogging suit and running shoes - that would help me identify her.

Suddenly, I felt as though I needed to show the pictures to somebody else. Somebody who could help me figure out what they might mean, and what we should do about it. I grabbed the phone and dialed Mary Anne's number.

"Mary Anne, are you guys almost done?" I asked, without even saying h.e.l.lo first.

"Actually, we just finished. Mal's on her way out the door with Nicky and Vanessa, and Kristy and Jessi are about to walk the other kids home."'

"Great!" I said. "Tell them that I want you all to come by my house as soon as you can. I have big news."

"What?" asked Mary Anne, sounding excited. "Did you crack the case?"

"Well, maybe," I said cautiously. "I think I have some important new information." "We'll be there as soon as we can," she said. Just as I was about to hang up, I thought of something. "Mary Anne!" I said. "Wait! Can you bring the finished alb.u.m - and all the pictures that didn't go into it? I want to look at every photo one last time."

Mary Anne promised to bring every single picture, and we hung up. I went back to examining the photos on my desk. By the time my friends showed up, about fifteen minutes later, I had convinced myself that the woman at the ATM was the true bank robber.

Kristy turned up first. "Mary Anne says you found a new clue," she said. "That's great! What is it?"

I showed her the pictures, and explained my theory about how the woman must have rigged the machine.

"Or maybe somebody else rigged it," Kristy said thoughtfully. "There could be a gang at work here, you know."

"Rigged what?" asked Jessi, who had just come into the room. I explained all over again, showing her the pictures. Then Mary Anne and Mal arrived. By then I was tired of explaining, so I let Kristy do it.

They pored over the pictures, taking turns with the loupe until everybody had seen enough. "Did you bring the other pictures?" I asked Mary Anne.

"Right here," she said, showing me the shopping bag she'd lugged over.

"Let's dump them out and look them all over," Kristy suggested. "Who knows what else we might have missed?"

We sat down on the floor with the pile of pictures and started to sort through them. "You know," said Kristy, while we were working, "I saw this article in the paper about people who were rigging ATMs* I can't remember exactly what they did, though."

"I remember!" said Jessi. "It was really pretty ingenious. They put this fake ATM into a mall, and they rigged it so it would record the codes people punched in. Then the robbers just made up copies of the cards, went to real ATM machines, and withdrew the people's money by using their secret codes."

"Did they get away with it?" I asked. Even though I knew what they'd done was wrong, I couldn't help admiring how tricky they'd been.

"Nope, the police caught them," said Kristy. "I remember that part." She picked up a photo. "Hey, here's another picture of that woman, and in this one you can almost see her face!"

"I found one, too," I said. "Let's start putting them in sequence. Would you look at the pile of bills she has in this picture?"

Mal studied the print. "Wow," she said. "Just think, if every one of those bills really is a hundred-dollar bill we're looking at a lot of money."

"A ton of money!" Kristy said. "This is it! I'm sure of it. It's the big break we've been looking for."

"All right!" I said. "I can't wait to show these pictures to Sergeant Johnson. He's not going to believe we cracked the case. We really have proof this time." Mary Anne and I finished laying the photos out/ in order.

"We did it!" sang Jessi and Mal. They jumped up and started to dance around the room. "We did it! We did it!"

"Ahem." We stopped carrying on and looked up to see Janine, standing in the doorway with her arms crossed. "Once again, I couldn't help overhearing your conversation. I hate to be the one to tell you, but your deductions are based on invalid reasoning." "What?" all four of us said at once. "You have pictures of a woman removing numerous bills from the ATM, correct?" she asked. "And, judging from the dimensions of the piles she has acc.u.mulated, you think the pictures may show, that she's responsible for the robbery?"

"That's right," I said, a little doubtfully. I was beginning to see that we'd gotten carried away, but I still wasn't sure where Janine was going with this.

'The largest denomination of bills in most ATMs is twenty dollars," Janine said. "So?" I asked. I still didn't get it. Janine picked up one of the pictures. "So this pile she has couldn't be worth more than several hundred dollars. And even if she was able to override the limit on withdrawals, it couldn't be more than a thousand," Janine said. "I'm sorry to ruin your case, but facts are facts." She put the picture down and folded her arms again.

"Oh," I said. "Now I get it." I blushed. We had definitely gotten more than a little carried away. At least I hadn't called Sergeant Johnson yet. That would have been pretty embarra.s.sing.

"Cheer up," said Janine. "Your reasoning may have been flawed, but your persistence is admirable. Keep it up! You may still figure it out."

"Thanks," said Kristy, looking depressed.

"Yeah, thanks," echoed Mal.

"Claudia," said Janine, "aren't you supposed to be studying for that test?"

I nodded and glanced at my math book. I had been stuck in the middle of a hard problem before Mary Anne called me, and I wasn't too eager to go back to it.

"I'd be glad to help you," said Janine. "Let me know when you're ready." She left the doorway, heading for her room.

For a second, n.o.body spoke. I think we were too embarra.s.sed.

"We should go," said Mary Anne finally. "We don't want you to flunk that test."

"Sorry for the false alarm," I said.

"That's okay," said Kristy. "Hey, don't you want to see the finished alb.u.m before we go?" I could tell she was faying to cheer me up.

"Sure," I said. We sat down on my bed and looked at what they'd put together that day. You know what? It was terrific. And seeing it did cheer me up. The cover had this great drawing: a map of Stoneybrook, with all the familiar places - downtown restaurants, the schools, our houses - drawn in. The t.i.tle was written in a banner across the top, in what I recognized as Vanessa's best handwriting: A Day in the Life of Stoneybrook - An Alb.u.m for Dawn.

And the pictures inside were perfect. There was something special about each one. "This is bound to make Dawn miss Stoneybrook so much that she'll hop on the next plane home," I said, closing the alb.u.m. "You guys did a wonderful job."

My friends left after that, taking the alb.u.m with them. And then Janine and I hit the books. She is great at helping me with my studying. By the time we had read through three chapters, doing all the problems' along the way, I felt prepared for my test. The only weird thing was that Janine seemed kind of distracted. She was fidgety, and she wouldn't look me in the eye. I thought maybe she felt bad about having to break the news to us that our "proof' wasn't proof at all. Then again, maybe she was having boyfriend troubles. You never can tell with Janine. And anyway, I didn't have the energy to wonder about it. One mystery at a time is enough for me.