The Hudson River Mystery

reception.”
    Honey shook her head doubtfully, wished Trixie luck, and disappeared down the lushly carpeted stairway.
    Trixie went to the phone, steeling herself for a gruff response. Because of her special interest in detective work, her path and the sergeant’s had crossed many times before, rarely to the liking of the brusque policeman.
    Well , this time I'm not ”interfering ” in police business , thought Trixie, holding her breath as she dialed the familiar number. I'm just reporting a missing person.
    But sure enough, this proved to be unpleasant news to the sergeant. ”I’ve got enough real police work on my hands,” he said sternly after she’d finished, ”without playing hide-and-seek with your friends.”
    ”She’s not an actual friend,” Trixie said. ”I just wondered if you’d had any report about her or if you had some information about her in your files—”
    ”Why would we? You haven’t a shred of evidence of foul play or anything else that would bring her to the attention of the police. She’s probably a fine, upstanding citizen, just going about her own business—which is a heck of a lot more than I can say for some people.”
    Trixie chewed her lip. ”Well, then, maybe you could fill out one of those missing persons forms.”
    ”I’ll make a note of your call,” he said grudgingly, ”but I’m not going to act on it till tomorrow. I’m sure your friend, or enemy or whatever, will turn up before then. Doesn’t she have some relatives you could contact if you’re that anxious about her?”
    ”I know of only one friend in town. I could call her, I guess.”
    ”Fine,” he said. ”You do that. Good even-—”
    ”Oh, Sergeant, as long as I’m talking to you—” Trixie paused, cringing at the thought of his next reaction—”I wanted to report something else. Uh, I’d like to report, er, a shark in the Hudson just off Killifish Point.”
    There followed such a long silence that Trixie thought the phone had gone dead. ”H-Hello?” she stammered.
    ”I knew I should have hung up the phone,” said the sergeant distantly, as if he were talking to someone besides Trixie. ”We get the looniest calls on Halloween—”
    ”This isn’t a trick!” cried Trixie. ”And I’m not loony—just ask Honey Wheeler! She’s seen it once, and I’ve seen it twice.”
    ”I’m surprised you haven’t harpooned it already,” he said sarcastically.
    ”Sergeant Molinson,” she said, mustering all the dignity she possessed, ”I am trying to make a serious report.”
    ”Come off it, Miss Belden! You know and I know that there aren’t any sharks in this stretch of the river.”
    ”That’s what I thought, too—until I saw it for the second time today!”
    ”And you know and I know,” he went on, ”that you have a very vivid imagination. ’Fertile,’ I think, would be a good word for it.”
    ”Sergeant!”
    ”Oh, very well. I’ll make a note of it, and I’ll stick that in with your other note until I decide what course of action to take. In the meantime, if you think of anything else I should make a note about, please save it till tomorrow. Halloween tends to be a very busy night here at the station. Now, good night!”
    The phone clicked in Trixie’s ear. She placed her cool hands on her hot cheeks and made a concerted effort not to scream with frustration. Then she pulled the Wheelers’ phone book out of its stand and looked up Loyola’s number.
    It turned out that Loyola had had dinner plans with Thea that night, but that Thea had canceled out.
    ”It’s just as well,” Loyola said. ”I have a lot of studying to catch up on tonight.”
    Trixie suppressed a shocked exclamation at the repulsive notion of studying on a Friday night. ”Did Thea say why she couldn’t meet you?”
    ”Well, yes, as a matter of fact. She said she had some last-minute things to check on at the river, and then she was leaving Sleepyside tonight.” Loyola’s voice sounded puzzled and disappointed. ”She seemed to be in kind of a hurry to get out of town. She wouldn’t answer me when I asked her why.”
    ”How mysterious,” Trixie mused.
    ”Well, I don’t care anymore. Frankly, I think that our friendship—what there was of it—is over. She’s been very standoffish ever since she got back to Sleepyside. I don’t think she wants to have anything to do with me anymore.”
    Just then, Honey appeared in front of Trixie to make vigorous waving motions, which made her appearance