Chapter Two

“I’m Mel Kramer,” the man said. “And I’m worried.”

“This is my friend Cam,” Eric told Mr. Kramer. “She has a great memory. She’ll remember if she saw your daughter.”

Mr. Jansen said, “Cam is also great at solving mysteries.”

“Did you see her?” the man asked Cam. “Did you see Karen?”

“What does she look like?” Cam asked.

Mel Kramer held his hand at the height of Cam’s shoulders.

“She’s about this tall,” he said. “She has strawberry red ribbons in her hair.” He smiled and said, “She’s so cute.”

Mr. Jansen asked, “What is she wearing?”

Mr. Kramer thought for a moment.

“An avocado green shirt and a banana yellow belt.”

“Strawberries! Avocados! Bananas! ” Eric whispered. “That’s a wacky salad but it’s making me hungry.”

Cam closed her eyes. She said, “Click!”

She said, “Click!” again.

“Cam has a photographic memory,” Eric told Mr. Kramer. “It’s like she has pictures in her head of everything she’s seen. Now she’s looking at pictures of people she’s seen at the airport. Maybe one of them is Karen.”

Cam opened her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t see her.”

“She was right over there,” Mel Kramer said. He pointed toward the men’s bathroom. “I told her I was going in for just a minute. I told her to wait for me.”

Cam, Eric, and Mr. Jansen looked where the man had pointed. There was a large sign on the door that said MEN.

“I was going into the bathroom, but she thought it was a restaurant.”

“It says MEN on the door,” Eric said. “Why did she think that’s a restaurant?”

“She saw MEN and thought it said MENU,” Mr. Kramer explained.

“When Cam was five, she did the same thing,” Mr. Jansen said. “She was just learning to read. She saw the first few letters of something and thought she knew the whole word. Once she saw a sign that said TOY STORE and she thought it said TOE STORE.”

“I remember that,” Cam said. “I wanted to go and look at all the toes!”

Mel Kramer turned, looked at the door to the men’s room, and said, “I was only in there for a minute or two, and now she’s gone.”

“It only takes a minute for someone to get lost,” Mr. Jansen told him.

There was another announcement:

 

Flight sixty-three for Los Angeles now boarding at gate twenty-three.

 

“I help Cam solve mysteries,” Eric told Mr. Kramer. “We may be able to find your daughter.”

Eric pointed to the toy shop near the men’s room.

“Karen could have gone in there.”

They all walked to the store. There was a small table in front. On it were several battery-powered animals walking and bumping into each other.

“Look at that monkey,” Eric said. “Bam! It just crashed into the giraffe. And—bam!—the elephant crashed into the lion. These crashing toys are fun!”

Mr. Jansen said, “Karen loves stuffed animals. Maybe she saw the crashing animals in the front and went inside to find the stuffed animals.”

It was a small store with toys, games, and books for children. Lots of parents and their children were looking at the toys. Cam, Eric, Mr. Jansen, and Mr. Kramer walked through the store. They found the stuffed animals, but they didn’t find Karen Kramer.

“She knows not to wander off,” her father said. “We’ve been in this airport lots of times. This is the first time she’s gotten lost.”

Mr. Jansen said, “Maybe she went with someone to the gate where your airplane is boarding.”

“She knows not to go off with a stranger. I’ve taught her that—don’t talk to strangers, and if you need help, find the police. But maybe she went by herself to the gate.”

Mr. Kramer’s hands shook as he took two long slips of paper from his pocket.

“These are our boarding passes,” he said softly. “Karen knows we are supposed to leave from gate eighteen.”

He looked at the signs against the wall.

“Gate eighteen is that way,” he said, and pointed to the right. He started toward the gate. Then he stopped. “To get to the gate you need to pass through the security check. And to pass through security, you need a boarding pass. She doesn’t have one. I have it.”

Eric leaned close to Cam and whispered, “He’s about to cry.”

“I’m worried,” Mr. Kramer said. “This is the first time she’s gotten lost.”

“Don’t worry,” Eric told Mr. Kramer. “We’ll find your daughter.”