CHAPTER 6

One good thing came from the Great Pumpkin Trophy Heist, as the Patriot-Bugle quickly dubbed it: The Gifford Family Reunion got knocked off the front page.

At first, everybody thought that Belinda Winchester was confused, and that maybe she’d just forgotten to retrieve the trophy from the window of Mahoney’s Antiques before the race. But she protested that she most certainly had retrieved it, and she even had a cell phone photo to prove it—one she’d taken on the bandstand earlier in the day that showed Augustus Wilde hoisting the trophy in mock victory.

Residents and tourists alike quickly spread out all over town looking for it, but in the end, everyone came up empty-handed. The silver pumpkin was definitely gone.

“Who would want to steal a dumb trophy?” I asked, as Mackenzie and Cha Cha and Jasmine and I retreated to the shade of one of the trees on the village green. The rest of my family was gathered nearby, and over by the bandstand, the town council was holding an emergency meeting with the police—well, policeman. Pumpkin Falls only had one: Officer Tanglewood.

“It’s not dumb,” Cha Cha scolded in her deep voice, the one that had earned her the nickname “the kazoo” from Hatcher. “It’s tradition.” She was obviously disappointed. I’d be disappointed too if my team had won, and the trophy we were entitled to show off all year had vanished.

“You have a point, though, Truly,” said Jasmine. “I can’t think of anyone around here who would do something like that.”

We were quiet for a moment, considering.

“Ella?” I suggested, glancing over at the bandstand, where our former postmistress-turned-knitting-shop-owner was lecturing Officer Tanglewood. “She was pretty unhappy about losing.”

Cha Cha didn’t look convinced. “Ella wouldn’t sink that low, would she?”

“It could be anybody!” said Mackenzie. “A local, a visitor—there were a ton of people at the race today who aren’t from around here. Including all of us Giffords.”

I looked at her, astonished. “None of us stole it!”

“I know that. I’m just saying!”

“I’ll bet it was one of those marathoners.” Jasmine’s dark eyes narrowed as she watched the runner with the winning time laughing with his friends. “That guy, for instance. I’ll bet he made that joke about moving here so he’d be eligible to win the trophy next year just to throw everyone off track.”

“We shouldn’t jump to conclusions,” Cha Cha cautioned. “Don’t forget what happened over Spring Break.”

This past March, during Maple Madness, the sap lines at Freeman Farm and Maynard’s Maple Barn had been cut. Everyone suspected sabotage, and things had gotten pretty heated for a while. It had been like the Hatfields and the McCoys around town, with accusations flying and neighbors taking sides against neighbors before my friends and I had finally caught the real culprit.

“Hey,” said Scooter, sauntering over. Calhoun and Lucas were with him.

“Hey back,” I replied.

“Did you guys have any luck?”

We shook our heads.

“Neither did we,” said Calhoun.

The three boys sat down on the grass beside us.

“If the trophy were smaller, I’d say maybe a magpie took it,” I told my friends.

“What’s a magpie?” asked Scooter.

“A bird that likes shiny things.”

The problem was, you’d need a bird the size of an ostrich to carry away a trophy like the silver pumpkin, and ostriches were in short supply in New England. We did have eagles, though. Gramps had taken me to see them out at Cherry Island on Lake Lovejoy.

“Sounds to me like a case for the Pumpkin Falls Private Eyes,” said Scooter, glancing at Mackenzie. Like Lucas, he had a crush on her too.

“This is the last day of our family reunion,” I told him. “We don’t have time for that.”

“Where’s your civic spirit?” he protested. “We should at least pool our knowledge and do a little preliminary investigating together.”

I didn’t want to investigate. I wanted to go the lake, where Grandma G had a big picnic prepared, and where there were paddleboards and kayaks and swimming. It was my reward for running the stupid road race.

“Mackenzie’s leaving tomorrow,” I told him. “We want to spend the day together.”

“You would be,” Lucas pointed out, crossing his pale arms over his chest and trying to sound grown-up and important. “Plus, the trail’s going to go cold if we don’t hop on it.”

“Lucas is right,” Calhoun agreed. “We should move on this.”

“Fine,” I snapped, getting to my feet. It was unlikely we could solve this mystery before tomorrow, but it was also unlikely that my friends would shut up about it if we didn’t at least try. There was one obstacle, though. “Our parents will say no,” I warned. “They’re sticklers about us all staying together during our family reunion.”

Surprisingly, though, this time they weren’t.

“Sure,” said both my father and Uncle Teddy, when Mackenzie and I asked if we could hang out with our friends for the afternoon instead of joining everyone at the lake.

“Just be back home in time to freshen up for the clambake,” my mother added.

My sister Lauren, who had officially become a member of the Pumpkin Falls Private Eyes over Spring Break, was torn between staying with us and going swimming with our younger cousins.

“This is a wild-goose chase,” I told her. “Go to the lake. You have to go back to camp tonight after the fireworks, remember? It’s the last chance you’ll get to hang out with everyone.”

“Promise you’ll tell me if anything interesting happens?”

I nodded. “I promise.”

Hatcher opted for the lake too. “Sorry, Droo—I mean Truly,” he corrected himself. “I won’t see our cousins for a whole year otherwise.”

Uncle Teddy gave Mackenzie money to treat us all to lunch at the food truck, and then my family left. After we ate, we retreated to Lovejoy’s Books, which was air-conditioned, for our meeting.

The bookshop was busy. We’d been planning to close for the Fourth of July, but with all the tourists in town, my father and Aunt True had changed their minds.

“Gotta make hay while the sun shines,” Aunt True had said.

Good call, I thought, eyeing the throng of customers. Belinda had volunteered to man the fort so that my father and aunt could spend the afternoon at the lake, and she’d corralled Augustus into helping. He was holding court over at Cup and Chaucer, dispensing beverages along with recommendations for books—most notably his own.

“I see you like Earl Grey tea,” I overheard him tell an older lady who was hanging on his every word. Augustus had a lot of fangirls. “You may enjoy my own Earl of Hearts.”

I smothered a grin. I’d have to tell Hatcher about that one later.

“It’s too crowded to meet here,” said Calhoun, glancing around.

I agreed. “The library is open. How about we go there?”

The library was usually closed on Sundays, but Mr. Henry and the staff had decided to keep it open for race day, so that visitors could use the restrooms. No unsightly porta-potties for Pumpkin Falls, no sirree. We headed back down Main Street toward the village green. Our town’s lone police car was parked outside the library. Inside, we found Officer Tanglewood at the front desk, chatting with Mr. Henry.

Officer Tanglewood smirked at us. “Well, if it isn’t Nancy Drew and—what is it you call yourselves? The Pumpkin Falls Private Eyes?”

“As I recall, John,” said Mr. Henry, giving us a discreet wink, “these enterprising young people were the ones responsible for finding the sap rustler last March. And Truly here proved herself a real-life Nancy Drew indeed! You’ll remember that she was the one who found her sister when she went missing.”

That wiped the smirk off Officer Tanglewood’s face.

“What can I do for you?” asked Mr. Henry, and I explained that we were looking for a quiet spot to meet.

“There’s no one in the children’s room at the moment,” he told us. “It’s all yours. I assume you’re turning your attention to the missing trophy. Any strategies you can share?”

My friends all looked over at me. For some reason they’d decided I was in charge of the Pumpkin Falls Private Eyes. Which I wasn’t.

“Well,” I began, then stopped. We didn’t really have a plan yet. Officer Tanglewood saw me hesitate. His lips started to curl again, and I felt my face flush with annoyance. “I thought we’d ask Janet at the Patriot-Bugle if we could look over the photographs she took of the race this morning,” I said, plunging ahead with more confidence than I felt. “She may have taken one that shows where the trophy went, or who took it, if it’s been stolen.”

“Brilliant!” said Mr. Henry. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Unless you’ve already taken care of that, John?”

Now it was Officer Tanglewood’s turn to redden. “I was just about to.”

“Crowdsourcing!” blurted Lucas. We all turned and stared at him, and not just because his voice had cracked.

“Crowd what?” asked Jasmine.

“Sourcing,” said Mr. Henry, who was a walking dictionary. Most librarians are. “Also brilliant. It means tapping the collective wisdom of the public—asking for their help, often through social media.”

“Plenty of people besides Janet took pictures,” Lucas continued. “I saw them. We can put the word out online to send us anything that looks suspicious.”

Mr. Henry turned to Officer Tanglewood. “I’m sure you’ve thought of that, too.”

“Of course,” the policeman blustered, making it perfectly obvious that he hadn’t.

“Well, it certainly can’t hurt to have these intrepid young people here duplicate your efforts,” Mr. Henry said smoothly. “The more the merrier when it comes to solving a mystery, right? Especially one involving such an important symbol of our town’s heritage.”

Officer Tanglewood looked like he was wishing we’d all just disappear, Mr. Henry included. My friends and I headed upstairs, only too happy to oblige.

“I love this place!” said Mackenzie happily.

I did too. I’d been coming to the children’s room at the Pumpkin Falls Library since I was a little kid, and despite the fact that it was definitely in need of renovation—the paint was faded and peeling, for starters, and the chairs and sofas were nearly threadbare, and I suspected that the weird blotch on the ceiling meant there was a leak in the roof—it was one of the coziest places in town.

We headed automatically for the floor pillows under the big bronze sculpture in the corner that depicted a scene from Charlotte’s Web. Everyone in the room except Calhoun, who had only moved here a couple of years ago, and Mackenzie, who had visited for the first time over Spring Break, had grown up sitting in the doorway of Zuckerman’s barn for story hour, beneath the bronze cobweb that contained Charlotte. At least now, at our age, we didn’t fight over who got to sit next to Wilbur and who got stuck next to Templeton.

“What do we have so far?” I asked, pen poised over my notepad to start making a list. We almost always began our meetings by making a list. I jotted down two headings: What We Know and What We Don’t Know.

“We know the trophy is missing,” said Lucas.

Scooter shot him a look. “Duh!”

“Scooter!” Mackenzie chided, which earned her a worshipful glance from Lucas.

“Sorry,” mumbled Scooter. If anyone could make him behave, it was my cousin.

“Maybe add a column for ‘Suspects,’ and one for ‘Action Items,’ ” suggested Calhoun. “I like Lucas’s idea for crowdsourcing—and yours, Truly, for looking at Janet’s photos.”

He smiled at me, and I smiled back, then wrote down his suggestions.

“We should find out what time Belinda picked up the trophy from Mahoney’s,” said Jasmine.

I wrote that down under What We Don’t Know.

“And when it was last seen,” added Cha Cha.

I wrote that down too. “How about suspects? Do we have any?”

In the end, we came up with the marathon runner, an older man whom Lucas claimed to have seen lurking outside Lou’s Diner and, after some discussion, Ella Bellow. I stared at the list glumly. There was discouragingly little to go on. We brainstormed for a while, not making much progress. When I finally looked up at the clock, I realized with a start that Mackenzie and I had less than half an hour before Lobster Bob was due to arrive for the clambake.

“To be continued,” I told my friends, leaping to my feet. “Our parents will have our heads on a platter if we aren’t home in time to change for dinner.”

As we were leaving, Mackenzie paused by a rack of brochures advertising all the tourist attractions in the area. Gramps and Lola had taken us to a lot of them over the years. We’d been to Story Land when we were little (kind of like a smaller, lamer version of Disneyland) and hunted for souvenirs at Clark’s Trading Post. We’d climbed Mount Monadnock when we were older and gone swimming and boating at Lake Winnipesaukee and ridden the Mount Washington Cog Railway to the highest spot in the northern Appalachians. Other places I hadn’t been to and had no interest in visiting included the World’s Second-Largest Chainsaw (the largest was in Michigan, apparently) and New Hampshire’s Favorite Dairy Museum. I knew that some people called our state “Cow Hampshire,” but who would want to visit a museum about cows? And did “favorite” mean that there was more than one?

“Hey, check this out!” Mackenzie plucked a brochure from the bottom row.

“Check what out?”

“This.” She thrust it into my hands.

A woman wearing a bikini top and a fish tail floated on the brochure’s aquamarine cover, smiling broadly and waving. I read the words in her thought bubble aloud: “ ‘Do you dream of being a mermaid?’ ”

Can’t say that I do, I thought, and handed it back.

“Sounds like fun, right?” said my cousin.

“For Lauren and Pippa, maybe,” I replied.

For me? Not in a million years.