A to Z Mysteries: The Empty Envelope Read online

  Ruth Rose ran water into the teakettle and set the kettle on the burner. Then she turned on the stove.

  The kids sat and stared at it.

  “Sure is taking a long time to boil,” Dink muttered, brushing his fingertips over the sunflower stamps.

  Suddenly steam began whistling out of the kettle spout. Dink handed Ruth Rose the empty envelope.

  Ruth Rose held the envelope so the stamps were right over the kettle’s spout.

  In a few seconds, moisture began gathering on the stamps. Then the stamps began to peel away from the envelope.

  “Cool!” Josh said. “I feel like a spy!”

  Ruth Rose shut off the stove. Using the tip of a toothpick, she removed the three sunflower stamps from the envelope.

  Hidden beneath the stamps, covered with cellophane, was a smaller stamp. It was blue. In the center of the stamp was a picture of an old-fashioned airplane. The plane was flying upside down.

  Dink removed the cellophane. “It’s an old stamp,” he said.

  Josh poked a finger at the stamp. “The dumb thing is printed wrong,” he muttered. “What’s the big deal about an upside-down airplane stamp?”

  Ruth Rose studied the stamp. “Maybe it’s valuable,” she said. “My grandfather has a stamp that’s worth two hundred dollars!”

  “I wonder if Doris Duncan knew this was here,” Dink said.

  The kids looked at each other. Then they stared at the little blue stamp.

  “We should go to the library and look at a book about stamps,” Ruth Rose said finally.

  Dink glanced at the kitchen clock. “We better make it fast. Doris Duncan will be back in less than an hour!”

  Dink slipped the stamp inside the empty envelope and stuck all five envelopes under his shirt. “Okay, let’s go,” he said.

  Ruth Rose went to the bottom of the hall stairs. “MOM, I’M GOING TO THE LIBRARY!” she yelled.

  They hurried through the living room, out the door, and down Ruth Rose’s front sidewalk.

  As they started up Woody Street, Josh nudged Dink with his elbow. “Look. There’s some weird guy watching us.” He pointed at a dark car parked on the other side of the street.

  Ruth Rose looked. “What guy?”

  They all looked. There was no one in the car.

  “Come on,” Dink said. “We’re running out of time!”

  The kids ran all the way to the library. When they charged up the front steps, they were out of breath.

  Mrs. Mackleroy looked up as they burst through the door. “Slow down, kids,” she said. “Why, your faces are red as beets!”

  “Hi, Mrs. Mackleroy,” Ruth Rose panted. “Can you show us a book about stamps?”

  “What kind of stamps, Ruth Rose? United States? Foreign? We have many many books about stamps, dear.”

  “Do you have one about stamps with pictures of upside-down airplanes?” Dink asked.

  Mrs. Mackleroy smiled. “You mean inverts,” she said. “Stamps that were printed upside down by mistake.”

  She walked to a shelf and returned with a big flat book. “You should find your stamp in here,” Mrs. Mackleroy said.

  “Thanks a lot,” Dink said.

  Dink carried the book over to a corner table. He set it down, looked around, then pulled the envelopes from inside his shirt.

  He carefully removed the blue stamp and placed it on the table.

  “There’s a zillion upside-down stamps in here,” Josh said, riffling through the pages. “How do we find ours?”

  “Try the index,” Dink said. “Under Jenny.”

  Josh turned to the index in the back of the book. He ran his finger down the J section. “No Jenny,” he said.

  “Try looking under airplanes,” Ruth Rose suggested.

  “Good idea!” Josh backed up a few pages to the A’s. He found a listing for airplanes and turned to page 329.

  And there it was. A picture of the little blue stamp.

  Below the picture was a drawing of the airplane, only bigger. The caption read: CURTIS JENNY SINGLE-ENGINE AIRPLANE.

  “Hey!” Josh said. “Jenny’s the airplane!”

  Silently the kids read the paragraph about the stamp.

  “OH MY GOSH!” Ruth Rose yelled.

  Mrs. Mackleroy tapped her pencil on the desk. “Ruth Rose, please,” she said.

  Dink picked up the little Jenny stamp. His fingers were shaking.

  “This is worth fifty thousand dollars!” he whispered.

  “F-f-fifty thou…holy moly!” Josh squeaked.

  The kids stared at the small blue stamp. After a minute, Dink slipped it back inside the envelope and put it in his pocket.

  “No wonder Doris Duncan came all the way to Connecticut!” Ruth Rose said.

  Dink nodded. “Yeah. She was after the stamp the whole time. I knew that story about her mother smelled fishy.”

  Josh closed the stamp book. “Well, we still have to give the stamp to her.”

  Dink and Ruth Rose looked at each other.

  “Don’t we?” Josh asked.

  “I guess…” Dink said.

  “What do you mean, ’I guess’?” Josh said. “It’s hers, Dink. It was on her letter, no matter who sent it to her.”

  “But why was it hidden?” Dink asked. “Why the whole story about Doris’s mother? Why the fake letters? Unless…”

  “Unless what?” Josh asked.

  Dink looked at Josh and Ruth Rose. “Unless the stamp is stolen…”

  “Yes!” Ruth Rose said. “It’s worth so much money! Maybe O. Bird stole it. Then he—or she—had to find a way to get it to Doris, so they thought up the letters from ‘Mother.’”

  Josh just looked at them. “You guys are crazy,” he finally said. “Besides, there’s no way to be sure.”

  Ruth Rose jumped up. “O. Bird sent the letters from New York, right? Maybe that’s where the stamp was stolen!”

  Ruth Rose hurried over to Mrs. Mackleroy’s desk, spoke to her quickly, then came back.

  “What’s going on?” Dink asked.

  “Mrs. Mackleroy is getting us the last few weeks’ New York Times,” Ruth Rose said. “We can check to see if there’s anything about a missing stamp.”

  Dink looked at the clock. “Five-fifteen. Doris Duncan will be at my house in forty-five minutes!”

  Mrs. Mackleroy walked over and dumped a pile of New York Timeses on their table. “Here you are, kids. Good luck!”

  Josh stared at the mountain of papers. “Geez, it’ll take us all night to read these!”

  “We don’t have all night,” Dink said, reaching for the pile. “Start reading!”

  The kids each took a stack. They set aside the sections they didn’t want, like sports, real estate, and entertainment.

  For almost half an hour they turned pages.

  The clock above Mrs. Mackleroy’s desk ticked the minutes away.

  “My eyes are getting blurry,” Josh said. “There sure is a lot of stolen stuff in New York! Some guy even stole a chimpanzee from the zoo!”

  Dink’s back was hurting from bending over the table. His head ached, too, and his fingers were smudged gray from ink.

  And then he found it.

  “Here it is!” Dink said. He pointed to a headline and read:

  Josh gulped. “You were right, Dink,” he whispered. “You can’t give the stamp to Doris Duncan!”

  Mrs. Mackleroy approached their table. “I have to close up soon,” she said.

  Dink whipped his head around to look at the clock. Five-forty-eight! “Guys, we have twelve minutes before Doris Duncan comes back to my house!”

  The kids thanked Mrs. Mackleroy, stacked the newspapers, and hurried out of the library.

  On the library steps, Dink said, “Maybe we should tell Officer Fallon about Doris Duncan.”

  “But we still can’t prove she did anything wrong,” Josh said.

  “Josh is right, Dink,” Ruth Rose said. “Doris Duncan never got the letters or the stamp. If you tell
Officer Fallon that she and O. Bird stole it, they’ll say, ’Prove it!’”

  “But what am I gonna do?” Dink asked. “It’s almost six o’clock! I have to tell Doris Duncan something!”

  The kids began walking toward Woody Street.

  “I have an idea!” Ruth Rose said. “Why don’t we glue the sunflower stamps back on the empty envelope, then hand over all five letters to Doris Duncan? She’ll probably take them to her hotel room to read. Then we can run back here, give the Jenny stamp to Officer Fallon, and tell him the whole story.”

  “But how does that prove she’s guilty?” Dink asked.

  “Because then she’ll have the letters!” Josh said.

  Ruth Rose nodded. “And when Officer Fallon gets the letters from Doris and reads the hidden message, he’ll know she and O. Bird stole the stamp.”

  Dink grinned. “Right. Then we can show him what we just found in the newspaper. Okay, let’s go!”

  As they hurried down the library steps, Dink saw a dark car pull away from the curb.

  “Hey, Josh, isn’t that the same car you saw parked on my street?” he asked.

  “Yeah, and the same weird-looking guy is driving!” Josh said.

  “Josh, there wasn’t anyone in that car,” Ruth Rose said.

  “Maybe he ducked down when you looked,” Josh said. “But I know I saw someone in the driver’s seat!”

  “Whoever it is, we have to get going,” Dink said. “It’s nearly six o’clock!”

  The kids ran up Main Street.

  They took a shortcut through Center Park, then raced past the rose garden.

  They were out of breath by the time they reached Woody Street.

  A few houses away from Dink’s, Josh suddenly grabbed Dink and Ruth Rose. He yanked them down behind Miss Alubicky’s front hedge.

  “What’s wrong?” Dink asked.

  “That same car is parked in front of your house again!” Josh said.

  The kids peered over the hedge. A man and a woman got out of the car. Dink recognized Doris Duncan. The man was short and dressed in a green suit and purple tie.

  “That’s him!” Josh whispered. “The guy I saw in the car before!”

  The kids watched Doris and the man talk for a few minutes, then get back into the car. But the car didn’t drive away.

  “What the heck are they doing?” Josh asked.

  Dink gulped. He put his hand over the envelope holding the $50,000 stamp.

  “They’re waiting for me,” he said.

  “What’re we gonna do?” Ruth Rose asked. “That guy looks mean!”

  “Maybe we should just give them the letters,” Josh said.

  “We can’t!” Dink said. “The three sunflower stamps are still in Ruth Rose’s house. They’ll know we found the stolen stamp!”

  “And we can’t go home,” Ruth Rose said. “They might grab us. Then they’d search us, and they’d find the stamp on Dink.”

  “Let’s cut through the backyards to my house,” Josh said. “We can call Officer Fallon and tell him we’re being followed!”

  “Okay” Dink said. “We can’t just stay here.”

  The kids crawled across Miss Alubicky’s lawn on their hands and knees. Suddenly her dog started barking at them.

  Dink glanced back at the car. The driver’s door flew open. The man in the green suit climbed out of the car and hollered at the kids.

  “Let’s go!” Josh yelled. They jumped up and raced through Miss Alubicky’s backyard.

  The man shot after them, crashing through Miss Alubicky’s hedge.

  “He’s coming after us!” Dink cried. “Faster!”

  The kids tore across Eagle Lane and cut into the woods. They hid in some thick bushes to catch their breath.

  The man stopped at the edge of the woods. The kids watched as he bent over, catching his breath.

  “Come on!” Josh whispered. The minute they started running again, the man plunged into the trees after them.

  They were faster than the man. A minute later, they raced through Josh’s yard.

  “Run into the barn and climb up to the loft!” Josh yelled.

  “But we’ll be trapped up there!” Dink said.

  “Just do it!” Josh said. “I have an idea!”

  The three kids sprinted into the barn. Dink and Ruth Rose scrambled up Josh’s rope ladder into the loft.

  Below him, Dink watched Josh shove open the rear door of the barn. But instead of running outside, Josh dove into a pile of hay.

  Dink couldn’t believe his eyes! “He’s staying down there!” he said to Ruth Rose.

  “Quick! Get the ladder!” Ruth Rose whispered.

  Dink grabbed the ladder and pulled it into the loft.

  Seconds later, the man in the green suit barreled through the barn door. Up in the loft, Dink could hear him gasping.

  The man looked around the dim barn, then raced out the open rear door.

  Dink almost laughed with relief. He started to get up. Suddenly Ruth Rose yanked him back down.

  The man ran back into the barn. He stood in the middle and swiveled his head around like a snake.

  Dink and Ruth Rose froze and carefully peered over the edge of the loft.

  After a minute, the man kicked a pail across the floor and stomped out of the barn.

  Dink swallowed and let himself breathe again. He closed his eyes until he heard Josh whisper, “He’s gone,” from the hay pile.

  Dink looked down and saw Josh’s head pop up. With hay stuck in his red hair, he looked like a scarecrow.

  Dink lowered the rope ladder. He and Ruth Rose climbed down. His legs felt like rubber.

  They flopped down in the hay next to Josh. “What should we do?” Dink asked. “That jerk will just go back and sit outside my house.”

  The kids sat in the cool barn and thought. Then Ruth Rose sat up straight.

  “I think I know how we can prove Doris Duncan and O. Bird stole the stamp,” she said. “If I’m right, Officer Fallon will arrest them at the same time!”

  “How?” Dink and Josh both said.

  “I need a telephone,” she said. “Can we go in your house, Josh?”

  Josh crawled out of the hay and peeked out the barn door. “I don’t see anyone,” he said.

  He quietly opened the door. The kids raced across his backyard and into the kitchen.

  “What’s your plan?” Dink asked Ruth Rose.

  She told him.

  Josh threw his arms into the air. “That is so excellent!” he cried.

  Dink’s eyes got big, then he grinned. “It’s perfect! If it works, the stamp goes back where it belongs and those two crooks go to jail!”

  Ruth Rose’s first call was to Officer Fallon.

  The boys listened as she explained about the letters, the stolen stamp, and her plan.

  Ruth Rose listened, then started nodding. “Uh-huh. Got it. Right. Okay, bye!”

  “What’d he say?” Dink asked.

  Ruth Rose gave Dink a thumbs-up. Then she called information and got the number for the Shangri-la Hotel.

  She dialed, then asked, “Is Doris Duncan there, please?”

  Ruth Rose grinned at Dink and Josh. She mouthed the words “They just walked in!”

  When Ruth Rose started talking, she used a tough-guy voice.

  Dink and Josh listened with their mouths open.

  “Hello, Ms. Duncan? My name is Ruth Rose. I’m a friend of Dink’s, and I got those letters you want!”

  Ruth Rose made a gaggy face at the boys, then continued. “I got yer stamp, too. The one of the upside-down airplane.”

  She lowered her voice into a deep whisper. “And I know it’s worth a lot of dough!”

  Ruth Rose listened, then continued. “Dink is so dumb, he didn’t know it was valuable. I’ll sell it to you for five hundred bucks.”

  Dink and Josh broke into wide grins. Dink had to stop himself from laughing out loud.

  Ruth Rose made a shushing motion with her free hand. “No,
not tonight. I gotta go to my grandmother’s. I’ll meet you in the library tomorrow at high noon!”

  Josh nearly fell on the floor laughing.

  “Don’t worry,” Ruth Rose said. “I’ll have the stamp. You just bring the five hundred smackers!”

  Then she hung up.

  “Ruth Rose!” Josh yelled. “You sounded like a real crook! How did you do it?”

  She smiled. “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”

  At noon the next day, Dink and Josh peeked out of Mrs. Mackleroy’s office. Ruth Rose was sitting at a table, reading a book.

  The library was nearly empty. An old woman sat reading a newspaper. A man was snoozing near the door with his cap pulled over his eyes. Mrs. Mackleroy was on her lunch break.

  “Ruth Rose looks so calm,”Dink whispered. “I feel like I’m gonna be sick!”

  “If you throw up, I’ll kill you,” Josh said. He grinned. “And Mrs. Mackleroy will rip up your library card!”

  A minute later, Doris Duncan walked into the library. The man in the green suit followed her. He had long, strong-looking arms and a thick neck.

  Dink shuddered. It was the man who had chased them! He nudged Josh as the two walked across the room.

  “Are you Ruth Rose?” Dink heard Doris Duncan ask.

  Ruth Rose nodded. She held up the five blue envelopes. “The stamp is in here,” she said, showing Doris Duncan the empty one.

  “I hope Ruth Rose gets the money first,” Josh whispered.

  Ruth Rose looked at the man and raised her eyebrows. “Who’s he?” she asked in her bad-guy voice.

  “This is my associate,” Doris Duncan said. “Mr. Otto Bird.”

  “Aha!” said Dink in the office.

  “Did you bring the cash?” asked Ruth Rose.

  The woman snapped her fingers. Otto Bird yanked some bills from hispocket and handed them to Doris Duncan.

  “Lemme see da stamp foist,” he croaked.

  Josh started to giggle. Dink clapped a hand over his mouth.

  Ruth Rose slid the stamp out of the envelope.

  “See, there’s the upside-down airplane,” Dink heard her say.

  Otto Bird snatched the stamp out of Ruth Rose’s fingers. With his other hand, he whipped out a magnifying glass.