The Mystery of the Missing Heiress (8 page)

“Did something happen to it?” Trixie asked. “Mrs. Hendricks said you drove your own car.”

“Oh, yes, this Mrs. Hendricks—she forgot, or did not know, that I put my car in storage and came here by bus. I shall also take the bus when I go to join my friends. Then I can drive back with them, see?”

“Sure,” Jim said quickly. “I'll be glad to drive you anywhere you want to go while you’re here. You just say the word.”

They chatted awhile longer, then Jim renewed his offer to drive his cousin, and they left.

“Wowiel” Mart said as they drove home. “ ‘Sure, I’ll be glad to drive you anywhere, Cousin Juliana,’ ” he mimicked Jim. “Who wouldn’t be? Boy, is she ever neat! A dream from Dreamsville.”

“She’s beautiful—and so friendly.” Honey sighed. “I hope she stays a long, long time.”

A Victim of Amnesia • 7

THE NEXT MORNING, as she was dressing, Trixie called to her mother, “Do you know what happened to my white stockings?” She slipped her red and white Candy Striper pinafore over a crisp white blouse.

“They’re with the other stockings in the laundry basket,” Mrs. Belden answered, stopping in the doorway. “The stockings and socks you were supposed to sort and put away.”

“Oh, Moms, I did forget. I’ve had a million things to think about lately. Moms—”

“Yes?”

“Jim’s cousin is one of the most beautiful girls I ever saw, and so nice. No wonder Mrs. Schimmel was fond of her, especially when she practically raised her. She wears her hair straight back from her forehead, like this.” Trixie struggled to straighten her unruly short curls. “I
wish
I had been born with straight hair. The only place curly hair looks good is on poodles.”

T like your hair the way it is. Here are your stockings. I’ll ask Bobby to sort the rest of them. You’d better run now. Honey will be waiting for you.”

“We’re taking our bikes. I’ll probably stop at Honey’s house on the way back, that is if the other Bob-Whites are there. ’Bye, Moms!”

It was a lovely, crisp, sunny morning in late summer. Sumac was just beginning to redden around the edges—the first reminder, Trixie thought, that summer was waning and soon junior-senior high would begin its fall semester.

Her thoughts raced on as she pedaled her way along Glen Road. At the turn near Manor House, she met Jim just leaving in the station wagon. He was going to pick up Juliana, she knew. They would go on to the courthouse to look after his cousin’s business.

There wasn’t another person in the world like Jim. He never once even thought of the large sum of money that would have been his if Juliana hadn’t shown up. Trixie was sure of this. Money didn’t seem to mean a thing to him. He’d even forgotten the half million dollars his great-uncle had left him. Well, maybe he hadn’t forgotten it, but certainly he never thought of using it for anything except the school for runaway boys he planned for the future, when he had finished college.

Trixie thought of the frightened runaway Jim himself had been when she and Honey first found him hiding in the old abandoned mansion that had belonged to his great-uncle. He was hiding from that Jones man, his stepfather. It was terrible that anyone could have been as mean as his stepfather had been to Jim—
especially
Jim. He was just the greatest.

So engrossed was Trixie in the memory of that unhappy time that she bumped her bike into the veranda step at Manor House and almost fell.

Honey, waiting in her Candy Striper uniform, ran to help her. “Did you hurt yourself?” she asked. “Weren’t you watching where you were going?”

“Huh-uh.” Trixie shook her head. “I was thinking of so many things. My mind was miles away. Don’t you wish that the Bob-Whites could just go on and on as we are now, just the same age we are now?”

“Heavens! What makes you so serious? It isn’t like you, Trixie, especially on such a pretty day. Did you meet Jim as he drove away?”

“Yes. I guess I was thinking about him and about Juliana and about... oh, just everything. I’m to take the book cart around today, Honey. What are you going to do?”

“Scrub up, I guess. I always get to do some scrubbing. I don’t mind.”

Chatting, planning, and sometimes silent, the two girls rode down Glen Road into the little town of Sleepyside and around a comer to where the hospital stood.

The morning was to be far from routine.

Trixie didn’t take the book cart around, and Honey didn’t do any scrubbing up. Instead something happened that was to affect their lives profoundly for a long time to come.

All the way home they said little; there was so much to tell, but it could wait until the Bob-Whites all got together.

“Stay for lunch,” Honey begged Trixie as, flushed and excited, they parked their bikes in the driveway at Manor House. “Jim’s back; the Bob-White station wagon is here. Maybe Mart and Brian are here, too. Not one of them will believe what we have to tell them!”

As it turned out, their news would have to wait even longer.

As they rushed inside, breathless, the girls found Miss Trask and the boys, with Juliana, at the luncheon table. Juliana’s voice sounded high and complaining.

“Those men in the courthouse couldn’t give me the slightest idea of when my claim could be settled. They didn’t seem to care
when
I get away from Sleepyside. It may be weeks!”

“It won’t be,” Jim told her soothingly, then went on to explain to Honey and Trixie. “They have to write to The Hague for some affidavits.”

“It’ll take forever,” Juliana moaned.

“It only took one week for Trixie to have an answer to
her
letter. Cheer up, Juliana,” Jim said. “We can do lots of things to have fun. Before you know it, the papers will be here.”

Juliana shrugged her shoulders. “I
have
to get finished and go on to meet my friends.”

“I only went to the Poconos once,” Mart said. “I’ll tell you, I’d a lot rather be right here in Sleepyside.”

“Me, too,” Brian agreed.

Juliana, seemingly aware that she had sounded ungracious, said quickly, “I didn’t mean to be unappreciative. I like to be here, but....” She changed the subject. “What did you and Trixie do at the hospital today, Honey?”

“We found everyone in an uproar,” Trixie began dramatically, taking quick advantage of the chance to tell their exciting story. “Yesterday the police found a girl unconscious on Glen Road!”

She looked around at the shocked faces and went on. “She’s about your age, Juliana, I think, though she does look younger. Oh, I don t mean that you look old.... I’m so mixed up I don’t know what I mean. I saw the girl. So did Honey. Someone must have hit her with a car and just kept going.”

“How shameful!” Miss Trask said. “Was she badly injured?”

Honey shook her head. “I don’t think so; do you, Trixie?”

“No. Otherwise they wouldn’t have let us see her at all. She was in a coma for several hours. It was a concussion, the doctor said. She’ll be all right physically in a few days. That isn’t the worst problem. The worst is that she doesn’t even know her own name or where she came from— Oh, Juliana, I’m sorry. I’ve frightened you. It
is
a terrible thing to think about.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Juliana said faintly. She did look pale. “It’s warm in here. May I open the door?”

“The house is air-conditioned,” Miss Trask told Juliana. “Maybe you’d better turn down the thermostat, Jim.”

“I’ll be all right,” Juliana insisted. “Go on, please, Trixie. This girl—doesn’t anyone know who she is?” Trixie shook her head. “The police have reported it to the Bureau of Missing Persons.”

“And they found that she isn’t listed there,” Honey added. “The accident happened right near Ten Acres, Jim, where your great-uncle’s house used to be. It’s a lonely place since Ten Acres burned.”

“I’ve thought for a long time that there should be extra lights there,” Miss Trask said. “There’s no sidewalk on Glen Road, either—not even a footpath.”

“The police said she might have been injured someplace else and dropped off near Ten Acres,” Honey said. “It’ll be in die paper this evening, I suppose. That’s the trouble when a newspaper doesn’t come out every day. News is usually a day old before it’s published in the
Sun.”

“The girl seemed so nervous and looked so white,” Trixie said. “Imagine not remembering your own name.”

“Did she remember other things?” Juliana asked. “Like what?” Trixie asked.

“Who her friends were. How the accident happened. Anything.”

“She doesn’t remember a thing about any accident, and she hasn’t the slightest idea what she was doing in Sleepyside. She doesn’t remember ever having heard of our town before. She seems well educated, and the nurse said the clothes she wore were pretty.”

“Leave it to Detective Belden to find out all the details,” Mart teased.

“Detective?” Juliana asked. “Detective Belden? Is your father a detective?”

“Nope,” Mart answered, “Trixie is—and Honey. They’re the Belden-Wheeler Detective Agency; at least they expect to be, when they’re older.”

“I see,” Juliana said with a sigh, “just kid stuff.” She looked narrowly at Trixie. “You
do
seem to have a way of ferreting things out.”

“It’s not kidd stuff,’ ” Mart corrected her. He was swift to spring to his sister's defense, just as he was quick to tease and needle her. “Several pretty important cases would have gone unsolved if Trixie and Honey hadn’t helped the police and federal agents. They’ve even won cash awards for our Bob-White club fund.”

Juliana smiled indulgently. “I’m sure that must be so. Miss Trask, have you known of this agency?”

“I surely have,” Miss Trask said firmly. “I’ve not only known about it, but I’ve also been right there with the girls several times when they have unraveled a really difficult mystery—the jewel robbery in New York, for instance. I’ve seen them in operation.
1
don’t make fun of them.”

Hurrah for Miss Trask, Trixie thought. She
never
let the Bob-Whites down. Juliana didn’t have to be so sarcastic, either. Oh, well, maybe she hadn’t meant it that way. Other people hadn’t been too impressed, either, with a detective agency made up of two young girls—until they came bang up against some of their achievements. Sergeant Molinson, head of the Sleepyside police, was still sarcastic, and he had reason to know better.

“I didn’t intend to make fun of them,” Juliana said, so humbly that everyone forgave her. “And I think it is very unselfish of the girls to do volunteer work at the hospital. I’ll have time on my hands until that letter comes through from Holland. Maybe there’s something I can do. Do you think that I might go to the hospital to see this girl? What do they call her, since she can’t remember her name?”

“Janie,” Trixie said. “Dr. Gregory and the nurses gave her the name. It seems to fit her, even though she shakes her head and says she’s sure it isn’t her name. But, Juliana, I really can’t think of anything you could do at the hospital in the short time that you’ll be here.”

“Couldn’t I take her some flowers?” Juliana suggested. “Maybe read to your Janie?”

“I don’t see why not,” Honey answered. “Do you, Trixie?”

“She can read, herself,” Trixie said. “There’s nothing the matter with her mind, they told us. You might visit Janie, though,” she added quickly, “if it’s all right. We’ll have to ask at the hospital.”

The girls did inquire and were assured by the head nurse that Janie seemed lonely and restless, and that it might do her good to have visitors.

So the next day, her arms full of roses from the

Manor House garden, Juliana went to Sleepyside Hospital with the girls. Jim drove them.

They found Janie sitting by herself on a chintz-covered sofa in the pleasant solarium on the second floor.

Sure that Mrs. Wheeler would have wanted her to do so, and urged on by Honey, Miss Trask had thoughtfully provided needed clothing for Janie. The girl made a pretty picture in a leaf-green linen dress which accentuated her lovely blond hair, close-cropped by the doctor to make way for the white bandage wound round her head.

She looked up expectantly as the three girls greeted her.

“This is Juliana Maasden,” Honey told her. “She is my brother’s cousin. She lives in the Bronx. She used to live in Holland, in The Hague.”

A frown crossed Janie’s face and quickly disappeared. “How good to know one’s own name and where one lives,” she said to Juliana. “I
don't,
you know.”

“The doctor promises that you
will
remember, Janie, so don’t worry about it. Relax.” Trixie put the roses in water and held the vase so Janie could see it. “Aren’t they beautiful? They’re from the Wheelers’ garden.”

“Juliana was the one who thought about bringing them to you,” Honey said generously.

“That was kind of you,” Janie said gratefully.

“One thing I do remember... I love flowers.”