"Martin, Ann M - BSC029 - Mallory And The Mystery Diary" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin Ann M)

"Girls?" called Stacey's mother then. "What are you doing up there?"
"Come see what we found," Stacey yelled down the stairs.
Mrs. McGill, sneezing, climbed the stairs to the attic. "Goodness, it's crowded up here!" she exclaimed.
Then Stacey showed her the trunk. "It is pretty," she said to her mother, mostly, I think, so as not to insult Claud and me, "but it's taking up way too much space. And it's locked, so we can't even see what's in it."
"It is taking up an awful lot of space," Mrs. McGill agreed. "We should probably just throw it away. We'll put it out for the garbage collector."
"No!" cried Claudia and I at the same time.
"Nancy Drew and Miss Marple want to see what's in the trunk/' Stacey informed her mother.
"Well, you're welcome to have it/' said Mrs. McGill.
Claud and I looked at each other. How would we decide who got the trunk?
Claud solved the problem. "You take it, Mal," she said. "My room's a crowded mess already. Besides, it'll be easier to get the trunk to your house. You live much closer by."
So I called the triplets and they agreed to lug the trunk out of the attic, down the stairs, through the yards to our house, and up to the room I share with Vanessa.
I had to pay them a dollar each, but it was worth it.
When the trunk had been unloaded in my bedroom, Vanessa just stared at it. "Where did that come from?" she asked.
I told her the story.
"And where are we going to put it?" she wanted to know.
"At the foot of my bed." I managed to shove it over.
Vanessa grinned. "Okay. Now let's open it."
"Can't," I told her. "It's locked." "Locked!" Vanessa sounded angry, but then this poetic look came over her face. "I think," she said dramatically, "that I shall write about a mystery trunk." Vanessa grabbed for pencil and paper, a poem already forming in her mind.
But all I could do was stare at the beautiful trunk. I was sure it held secrets.
Chapter 3.
The next day, Monday, I ran straight home after school, eager to look at my trunk.
It was still unopened.
The evening before, the triplets had begged me to break the locks so we could get inside it, but I wouldn't let them. I wanted the trunk opened, too, but I didn't want to ruin it.
"Try bobby pins," suggested Adam. "They always work in the movies." So we did, but nothing happened.
"Try a credit card," suggested Byron. "That works, too."
His brothers gave him withering looks. "It doesn't work on trunks/' they informed him. "It works on doors to people's houses."
"How about a coat hanger!" cried Vanessa.
That drew more withering looks.
"Coat hangers," said Jordan, "are for get-
ting into your car when you've locked yourself out."
"Isn't there a key somewhere?" asked Nicky, joining us in the bedroom.
I shook my head. "Nope. Stacey and I searched the attic."
"Maybe it's taped to the bottom of the trunk or something," said Vanessa.
The six of us searched every inch of the trunk.
No key.
"Well," I said. "That's that. At least for now. I'll think more about this tomorrow."
Monday afternoon arrived and I didn't have any new ideas. I could tell that the locked trunk was driving Vanessa crazy. She was writing poems like a demon, and casting long, soulful glances at both the trunk and me.
Finally she said, "I bet you could smash those locks with a hammer."
"No way," I replied. "That would ruin the trunk."
I was glad when it was time to leave for a BSC meeting. I wouldn't have to watch the tortured poet anymore.
Our club meetings are held from five-thirty until six every Monday, Wednesday, and Fri-
day afternoon. I like to get to club headquarters (Claudia's bedroom) a little before five-thirty. If you are even a speck late, Kristy starts the meeting without you.
So I was pleased to enter headquarters at 5:25 that day. When I did, I found Claudia, Kristy, and Mary Anne already there. Claud was fishing around on the shelf of her closet, probably looking for junk food. Mary Anne was seated on Claudia's bed, reading the club notebook (I'll explain about that in a minute), and Kristy was in her official presidential position Ч sitting in Claud's director's chair, wearing a visor, a pencil stuck over one ear. She insists that our meetings Ч that the club itself Ч be run in as businesslike a way as possible.
This must be a good tactic, since the club is so successful. Let me tell you how it began, and how we run it.
As I said before, the club was Kristy's idea. It came to her one day when her mom needed a sitter for David Michael, and neither Kristy nor one of her big brothers was available. So Mrs. Thomas started making phone calls. She made call after call, and while she did so, Kristy was thinking, Wouldn't it save time if her mother could make one call and reach a
lot of baby-sitters at once, instead of calling one person after another?
So she got together with Mary Anne and Claudia, who were her neighbors then (they'd grown up together), and the three of them decided to start a club to baby-sit in their neighborhood. They also decided that they needed a fourth member, so they asked Stacey to join. Stacey had just moved to Stoneybrook (for the first time) and was a new friend of Claud's.
The club was a huge success. Soon they needed a fifth member and invited Dawn, who was getting to be friends with Mary Anne, to join. Then when Stacey had to go back to New York, the other girls asked Jessi and me to take her place.
How does the club run? Well, thanks to advertising (a little ad in the Stoneybrook newspaper and a lot of fliers in mailboxes), people around here know when we meet and call us during those times to line up sitters. When one of us answers Claud's phone, that person takes down all the information about the job. Then Mary Anne checks our schedule to see who's free, and we call the client back to tell her (or him) who the sitter will be.
Each of us has a special job to do in order