Mrs. Shelton smiled. “He can’t steal my car,” she said. “He won’t know which one it is.”
“He doesn’t have to know,” Cam said. “He’ll just push the clicker and see which car’s lights blink.”
“Oh, you’re right. What do we do?”
“We call the guards.”
Mrs. Shelton picked up the telephone handset again and called the security guards. “I’m calling about my stolen purse.”
She listened for a moment and then said, “Yes, I’ll wait.”
“We can’t wait,” Cam said. “The thief is getting away!”
Cam rushed out of the room. Mrs. Shelton put down the telephone. Then she and Eric followed Cam.
“Where are we going?” Eric asked.
“Downstairs,” Cam said. “We’ll tell the guards to go to the parking garage and look for the thief.”
Cam pressed the button for the elevator.
“The police are here,” Mrs. Shelton said. “That’s why the guard told me to wait.”
“Good,” Cam said as the elevator door opened. “We’ll talk to the police. Maybe they can catch the thief.”
Cam pressed the button for the main floor. She waited. When the doors didn’t close, she pressed the button again. She was in a hurry.
The doors closed. The elevator was on its way down.
“You can describe the thief,” Eric said.
“And I’ll describe my car,” Mrs. Shelton added.
The elevator stopped on the second floor. Cam, Eric, and Mrs. Shelton moved to the back of the elevator as a young man pushed on a woman in a wheelchair.
Cam tapped her foot.
“Hello,” the man said, and pressed the button for the main floor. “I’m Bob and this is Gail.”
Cam squeezed past the wheelchair and pressed the button a few times.
“We’re in a hurry,” Cam explained as the doors closed.
“You should never hurry,” Bob said.
“That’s right,” Gail added. “I hurried and crashed into a telephone pole.”
“Her car was ruined,” the man said, “but Gail is fine now.”
The elevator doors opened. Bob slowly wheeled Gail out. Cam, Eric, and Mrs. Shelton followed them.
“There they are,” Cam said. She pointed to a security guard and two police officers who were by the hospital entrance. Cam ran to them.
“Don’t run!” Bob called out. “Don’t run!”
Eric and his mother slowly followed Cam.
“The thief,” Cam told the police officers and security guard, “the one who stole the purse, may be in the parking garage.”
“I think she’s right,” Mrs. Shelton said. She told them about the keys and the clicker. Then she described her car. “The car is on the fifth level, so it will take him time to find it.”
“But once he does,” the officer said, “he just drives to the exit, takes the ticket off the dashboard, pays the parking fee, and drives off.”
“Oh, no,” Eric said. “I have the ticket.”
Eric took the ticket from his pocket and showed it to the police officers and the guard.
“That’s great! He’ll have to fill out a lost ticket form,” the security guard said, “and that will take a while.”
The two police officers quickly left the hospital and walked toward the parking garage. The guard took the walkie-talkie off her belt and called the garage attendant. She told him about Mrs. Shelton’s car.
“He just left!” the guard said. Then she quickly returned her walkie-talkie to her belt clip and ran out of the hospital.
Cam, Eric, and Mrs. Shelton went to the large window and looked out.
“There’s my car!” Mrs. Shelton said.
Her car was leaving the parking garage. The guard caught up to the police officers. She pointed to Mrs. Shelton’s car. The officers got into their car and turned on the siren.
Rrrr! Rrrr!
The police sped off after the thief.
Ring! Ring!
“Mom,” Eric said. “It’s your cell phone. It’s ringing.”
Mrs. Shelton pressed a button and spoke into her cell phone. “Hello,” she said, and listened. Then she asked, “Are you sure?”
She put the phone back on her waist clip.
“It was the woman at the nurse’s station,” she told Cam. “She said your brother was born. I think she mixed us up with the Nor-mans again.”
“Maybe she didn’t mix us up,” Cam said. “Maybe my parents were wrong when they told me I was getting a sister.”
Cam, Eric, and Mrs. Shelton took the elevator to the fourth floor. The doors opened and Mr. Jansen was standing there, waiting for Cam.
“It’s a boy,” he said. “He was born first. And a girl. Mom had twins!”
“Wow! That’s double great!” Cam said. “That’s why Dr. Berger told us she didn’t know when Mom would have her babies. She said ‘babies’ because she knew Mom was having twins.”
“We knew it, too,” Cam’s father said. “You asked Mom if you would be getting a sister and she said, ‘Yes.’”
“And you said I would be surprised.”
“Are you?”
“Yes!” Cam said and hugged her dad. “I’m more than surprised. I’m so very happy.”