"Martin, Ann M - Baby-sitters Club Mystery 022 - Stacey and the Haunted Masquerade" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin Ann M)

SM: Why Ч ?
JW: Oh, my goodness, would you look at the time? I have to go. I Ч I have dinner plans!
SM: Well Ч well thanks for your time. If you have more time later, I'd like to ask you more Ч
JW: I'm afraid that won't be possible.
That's it. There's nothing else on the tape. He left the Rosebud so fast I didn't even have a chance to say good-bye. And the weird thing was that it was only about four o'clock. Why would he have to rush off for dinner at that hour?
It was very interesting, but I couldn't figure out what it meant. This -dung about the girl, for example. That was new to me. All I knew was that my friends and I had to keep investigating until we could put the pieces of the puzzle together. And we had to work fast.
Chapter 11.
"How do you find somebody who isn't there? How do you even start looking for somebody who isn't there?"
"What?" Kristy put down her fork and stared at me. "Stacey, what are you babbling about?"
I looked around the table and realized that all of my friends were staring at me. I also realized that I must have spoken out loud when I hadn't meant to. I was so caught up in thinking about how to find out more about the girl Mr. Wetzler had mentioned that I'd barely been aware of the fact that I wasn't alone. I was startled to find myself at a table in the SMS cafeteria surrounded by my friends, who were looking at me with concerned expressions. It was the Tuesday before Halloween weekend. We had spent lots of time during the last two BSC meetings trying to understand how what Mr. Wetzler had told
me fit into our mystery. But nobody had come up with any answers Ч yet.
"ItТs okay, I haven't gone around the bend," I assured them. "I'm just trying to figure something out." I started to peel an orange.
"Well, clue us in," said Abby.
"It's about that girl, the one Mr. Wetzler told me about. ThatТs the first we've heard about a girl being mixed up in what happened at the dance. It just seems like Ч "
"Like if we can find out more about her, we'd be able to solve the mystery," Claudia finished. She crumpled up an empty Doritos bag and tossed it at me. "Good thinking, Stace!"
"I think itТs mean that he seems to blame everything on her," Mary Anne mused. "How could one girl be responsible for a stampede?" She bit into her sandwich thoughtfully.
"You never know," said Logan, who was sitting next to her. He had already gulped down a school lunch with double helpings of everything Ч tacos were on the menu that day Ч and now he was looking hungrily at Mary Anne's sandwich. She offered him a bite, and he took a big one. "But Stacey's right. No matter what, the first thing we have to do is find the girl."
"But how?" I asked. "We don't even know her name."
"And even if we did, she wouldn't be in the yearbook," said Kristy, "because she left school in the fall."
"Whoa!" Claudia said. "Hold on a second. Hey, Kristy, remember that really cute guy back in sixth grade? The one with the curly blond hair and the eyes?" She turned to me. "It was like he had these two laser beams," she explained. "When he looked at you with those blue eyes of his, you'd just feel like fainting."
"Claudia Ч " Kristy began.
"What was his name?" Claudia asked, dosing her eyes as she tried to think. "Robin? Robert? Roger! That's it. Roger. Roger Casey." She sighed. "He was so cute. I was devastated when he left school because his family moved to Kansas."
"ThatТs all very sad, Claudia," said Kristy sarcastically. "But what on earth does it have to do with what we're talking about?"
"Oh! Right," said Claud a little dreamily. I could tell she was still thinking about those laser-beam eyes.
"Claudia, tell us," I prodded her. I knew she was onto something, but so far I didn't have a due as to what it might be. "Why are you telling us about this guy?"
"Here's the thing," said Claudia. "I had such a crush on him, and I was so sad when
he moved. My only consolation was that when the yearbook came out I'd have a picture of him, to remember him by. But when the yearbook came out, he wasn't in it, because he had left school before pictures were taken."
"So?" asked Kristy. "ThatТs what I was just saying. This girl wouldn't be in the yearbook." She looked confused, and a little irritated.
"Aha!" said Claudia. "But here's the kicker. I'll never forget turning to the page where Roger's picture should have been. It wasn't there. Instead, three pages later, there was a little list of all the people 'not pictured.' "
"So what are you saying?" I asked. "That Roger wasn't the only, one?" Now I was confused.
"I see!" said Logan, jumping out of his chair. "She's saying that there was a list! Of
names."
"Names of people who left school before the year was out!" Mary Anne exclaimed.
"So all we have to do Ч " Abby began.
"Is check that year's yearbook!" I finished. "This girl's name will be on the 'not pictured' list! Claudia, you're a genius!"
Claudia smiled. "I am," she admitted. "And I owe it all to a diet based on chocolate and chips." She cracked up. "Come on, what are we waiting for? LetТs hit the library!"
We cleaned up our table and headed back
to the yearbooks. We grabbed the one from the year of the dance. Sure enough, there was a short list of names on the last page of the eighth-grade section. "Not pictured," it read, "are Julia Berkman, Elizabeth Connor, Herbert Franks, Susan Hsia, Steven Levy., and Mark Whipple."
"Three boys and three girls," said Mary Anne. "I wonder what happened to them?"
"The question is, which one is the girl we want to know about, and what happened to her?" I asked. I stared at the names, as if I could figure out everything if I looked at them hard enough.
"It could be any one of them," said Abby. "How are we going to find out which it is?"
"We'd need for find out why each of them isn't in the yearbook," said Kristy. "Like, did she move, or was she expelled, or what?"
"But how do we find that out?" I moaned. "This is just another dead end." I was bummed out. We had come so far, and now we were stuck.
"Um, no itТs not. Not exactly," said Logan, clearing his throat nervously. "I think I know how we can find the information."
"You do?" Kristy asked him. She narrowed her eyes. "How?"
"Well," said Logan, glancing around to see if anyone else was listening, "itТs like this."
He waved us closer, and we bent our heads to listen as he whispered. "One time, Alan Gray and I were poking around in the basement Ч "
"Logan!" Mary Anne hissed. "We're not supposed to go down there!"
"I know," he said. "That's why I'm whispering."
"Oh. Okay, go on."