Baby-Sitters Beware (11 page)

The clerk didn't seem to notice Ms. Renn's agitation. She filled in the form calmly, then pushed it across the desk for Ms. Renn to sign.

"You like to ski?" the clerk asked pleasantly.

Ms. Renn said, "It’s very popular in the winter here, isn't it?"

"It certainly is," said the clerk. She gave Ms. Renn the key.

Ms. Renn snatched it up and looked wildly around. I saw her look past where we were standing. I thought she appeared startled. Or maybe — afraid?

I turned quickly, but all I saw was the back of a man, climbing into one of the lodge cars.

When I turned back around, Ms. Renn was hurrying out one of the side doors of the lodge.

"You know," I remarked, "for people who are on vacation, some of these guys are way

too tense and weird, if you ask me." "Hey, it’s not our problem," said Claudia.

"We're here to have fun, remember?" Her

voice had an edge to it. "True," I said. I lowered my dark glasses.

"Let’s hit the trails."

Chapter 13.

Jessi.

Insulation equals isolation. At least, that seemed to be Mal's new philosophy of life, as I discovered when I reached the Pikes' house on Saturday morning. I could hear hammering and other construction (and presumably insulation) related sounds coming from the attic when I arrived. I was greeted in triplicate: the triplets, Adam, Byron, and Jordan, met me at the door.

"Hi, guys," I said. "Anybody home?"

It was a weak joke, but they thought it was funny. After much eye rolling and snorting and elbowing of one another, they let me in.

"Mal's in her room," said Adam. "She told us to keep an eye on things until you showed up."

I didn't like the sound of that. It’s not that I think the triplets, who are ten, aren't capable of keeping an eye on the younger Pikes, namely, Vanessa (nine), Nicky (eight), Margo (seven), and Claire (five) in their own home with their parents on hand.

But "keeping an eye on" isn't the same as baby-sitting. Mal was not doing her job.

"So where is everybody? Besides Mal, I mean?" I asked casually.

"Watching TV," said Adam. He added, "We

were, too, but they wouldn't let us watch wrestling."

'"Wrestling is on at this hour of the morning?" The thought didn't thrill me.

"Yeah! The Man of Molten Iron is taking on the Brickhouse Brothers," said Jordan enthusiastically.

Byron didn't say anything. He's the quietest of the triplets, and I suspected he wasn't as interested in wrestling as the other two.

"Well, why don't you go watch whatever it is the others are watching. I'll join you in a minute, and we'll think of something else to do." A good baby-sitter does not just park her charges in front of the television. I had no intention of doing that to the Pikes. But I wanted to have a word with Mal first.

Mal was sitting on her bed, the BSC notebook open in front of her and stacks of paper around her. She had stuck a pencil over one ear and a highlighter pen over the other.

That stopped me for a moment. "Wow," I said. "That looks like a bigger job than I thought."

"It is," said Mal. "Huge."

"The triplets tell me they've been keeping an eye on things. 'Things' is everybody watching television."

"That's nice," said Mal. She took her pencil,

wrote something on a piece of paper, put the pencil back, took the highlighter and highlighted it, then put the paper on a stack.

"You want to help?" asked Mal in a not-very-encouraging voice. "No, thanks," I said. "I have to baby-sit."

Mal knew what I was hinting at. But she didn't respond. She just made another note on another piece of paper.

I returned to the den full of Pikes. I was just in time. The triplets were playing catch with the remote control. The channels were flipping by at dizzying speed and the volume was set at full blast. Vanessa had set her hands on her hips and was stomping her foot. Margo and Nicky were leaping around the room trying to catch the remote in mid-pass. Claire's face was very, very red and I knew it was a matter of moments before she began to shriek. Or cry.

I made a grand jete-save, grabbed the remote, and clicked off the television.

The silence was deafening. Everybody looked at me.

"Aw, what’d you do that for?" Jordan complained.

"What do you think?" I asked.

Jordan made a face.

There was a lot of pent-up energy in that room. Suddenly I had an inspiration. "How

would you guys like to do some detective work?" I asked.

"You mean play detective?" Nicky asked.

"No, real detective work — if we can invite Becca over."

"I'll call her," said Vanessa instantly. She and my little sister Becca are good friends.

While we waited for Becca to arrive, I filled everybody in on her sighting of the man with the blue tattoo. "Becca's a little freaked out by the tattoo," I said. "And my friends and I think he might be a man we helped catch and send to jail for being a counterfeiter."

"Neatsy," said Claire. She wrinkled her brow. "What’s a count and fitter?"

"Counterfeiter," I corrected her. "That's a person who makes fake money and then tries to use it like real money."

"Like Monopoly?" asked Claire.

"Sort of," I said. "But you can tell that Monopoly money isn't real. The only thing it will buy you is Monopoly property. The man with the blue tattoo made fake money that looked real and then spent it. Only it wasn't real, so the people who took it were cheated."

"Oh," said Claire. I wasn't sure she understood, but she seemed caught up in the idea of being a detective just the same.

Soon Becca arrived. We told her about our

plan to solve the Mystery of the Man With the Blue Tattoo. She didn't exactly look thrilled, but, like Claire, she went along with the enthusiastic crowd.

"Okay, triplets, you're in charge of seeing that everyone is bundled up warmly enough. It’s pretty chilly outside. I'm going to get Mal and we'll let your parents know where we are going."

Mal hadn't moved from her spot on the bed.

"Mallory Pike," I said. "You are supposed to be helping me baby-sit. I know you're mad because you didn't get to go to Shadow Lake. But it’s not fair to sulk in your room and leave me to do all the work."

Mallory looked startled. "Oh!" she exclaimed. Then her cheeks reddened. "Was that what I was doing? I guess it was. I'm sorry."

"Good," I said. "We're going on a Blue Tattoo Manhunt, so come on."

Mal grinned sheepishly. "Okay," she said.

And that was that.

A few minutes later, we were headed out the door. Mr. and Mrs. Pike, both of whom were wearing masks like the ones Abby sometimes wears on bad allergy days, were wrestling big'pink rolls of insulation around the attic. They seemed almost relieved when we said we were going out. Mr. Pike gave us

money, in case we wanted to get a pizza for lunch.

"The bright side of insulation, I guess," Mal remarked, putting the money in her pocket.

Traveling with a large group of kids, especially the Pike kids, with triplets among them, is a guarantee that you will not be anonymous. (I was glad we weren't trying to stake out Mr. Seger's house!) And traveling with a large group of kids who are trying to be detectives is pretty daunting, both for the baby-sitters and for the unwary passersby.

"Where was this tattoo?" I asked Becca.

"On his face," she said in a small voice. She squinted her eyes tightly shut for a moment.

"Did it cover his whole face?" asked Vanessa, looking worried.

"Was it a monster? Something good?" asked Jordan.

"Oh, ick, you're sick," said Vanessa.

"It wasn't a monster," said Becca. "I don't remember. It was just blue, that’s all."

"We'll find him," said Nicky.

That meant that every male passerby was subject to the full force of eight pairs of eyes, staring penetratingly at his face. And of course, Mal and I looked, too. We just tried to be more discreet about it.

One man smoothed his hair back nervously.

Another man with bushy eyebrows frowned menacingly. Several men pretended not to notice at all.

Nicky was staring so hard that he walked into a fence. Fortunately, he wasn't hurt.

"Too bad it wasn't wet paint," said Adam. "That would've been cool."

Mal and I exchanged a glance while the trip^ lets and Nicky snickered.

When we reached downtown Stoneybrook, we divided the group into partners. When we passed the post office, Vanessa dragged us over to it so we could look at the wanted posters. But the post office was closed.

"I don't think his poster would have been up in the post office, Vanessa," I said. "Wanted posters are for people who haven't been caught yet. And we don't even know if this is the same guy."

"But he could be in there," she insisted. "What if he is the same guy, and he escaped from jail, and he's come back to Stoneybrook to get revenge?"

Becca, who was Vanessa's partner, suddenly looked very worried.

I felt a pang of fear. This was too dose to what we thought the burglars were doing — stalking the BSC.

Quickly I said, "Well, it’s not the same guy."

Vanessa opened her mouth to argue but then Jordan said, "I think we should look in the hardware store."

"The toy store," said Margo.

"Toys,"^ echoed Claire.

"Hardware," said Vanessa. "Hammers and nails and insulation and pails."

Mal whispered, "See? It’s catching. Now Vanessa is making rhymes about insulation."

We split up to continue our search. Not surprisingly, no one saw a man with a blue tattoo in either the hardware store or the toy store, although the kids saw many, many other interesting things.

Then Margo suggested we look for the tattooed man at the ice-cream shop.

"No," I said firmly.

I looked at Mal. She patted her pocket. "We could look for him at the pizza parlor," she said. "That is, if anybody wants to eat pizza for lunch."

The vote was loudly and unanimously in favor of continuing our search there.

We chose the good old Pizza Express. Of course, the Pikes and Becca were already deep into the argument about what kind of pizza we were going to order before we even reached the counter.

We stopped.

Becca tugged on my arm so hard it almost came out of its socket.

"Ow. What is it, Becca? What’s wrong?"

She pointed. "It’s him!" she whispered. "It’s the man with the blue tattoo!"

For the second time that day, all the Pikes were silent.

We stared at the man behind the counter — not the one waiting to take our order, but the one making salad.

"Nothing like a good fresh salad, is there, Pete?" he said to someone else in the kitchen who we couldn't see.

The someone said something in reply, and the man with the blue tattoo said, "The secret is, you make it fresh from scratch every day."

"May I help you?" asked the guy who was taking orders.

We all looked at him. Finally Mal regained her senses, or at least some of them. "Yes," she said. "We'd like a blue ... a pizza."

"Blue pizza we don't have. You want a few more minutes?"

"Yes," said Mal.

We retreated. "It’s him," I said. "But is it him? You know, the counterfeiter?"

"Nope," said Mal. "I remember that description from the notebook. The counterfeiter's blue tattoo was on his earlobe. This tattoo is on the guy's cheek."

I was suddenly enormously relieved.

We made our pizza decision and went back to the counter. It was only after we placed our order that I realized that Becca had melted to the back of the group. She was still keeping a close eye on the salad-making tattooed man.

"Becca," I said softly. "It’s okay. See? It’s just a tattoo. Like . . . like permanent makeup. Or face-painting."

"I don't like it," said Becca firmly.

She kept watching him while she ate her pizza. And she looked back over her shoulder half a dozen times as we walked home.

"He's not going to hurt you," I reassured her. "He's just an ordinary guy, you know. With a tattoo. Lots of people have tattoos."

"Yes," said Becca.

There was only one thing to do.

Back at the Pikes', I whispered in Mal's ear. • "I'll ask Mom," said Mal. "Great idea. I'll be right back."

She returned in a few minutes with a shoe-box full of old makeup.

"I'm not wearing makeup," said Nicky immediately.

"You mean you don't want a tattoo?" asked Mallory.

That got his interest. It got everyone's — except, at first, Becca's. She still hung back. She watched as we drew designs on the Pikes' arms and cheeks with eyebrow pencil and eyeliner, then filled them in with eyeshadow and lipstick.