The Hudson River Mystery

pools of wonder.
    Trixie remembered their ridiculous clothes and forced herself to laugh. ”Jeepers, no wonder you thought we were ghosts. Ghouls is more like it!”
    Honey tried to smile but didn’t quite make it. ”Let’s see what we can do about getting back to shore,” she panted. ”Do you have any towels on board?”
    Carl handed them each a towel, which they awkwardly wrapped around their chilled bodies. Then, between the four of them, they managed to get the boat aimed toward shore. The wind that night was next to nothing, and it looked like it was going to be a long, slow ride.
    So far, neither boy had thought to ask what Trixie and Honey were doing in the middle of the Hudson on a dark Halloween night. And it didn’t occur to Trixie to badger them about their nighttime sailing habits.
    Instead, her mind was dredging up every sliver of information she could remember about Thea, about Bunker, about the young man with the mustache....
    Apparently Honey’s brain was racing in the same direction. ”What do you think,” she began as soon as she could breathe normally, ”about Thea? I mean, why did she try to kill us? Why did she call us her latest haul? Bunker, the shark fins—what were you talking about before? What’s going on? I can’t make sense of anything anymore!”
    ”If you think about it long enough,” Trixie said slowly, ”I think you’ll reach the same conclusion I’ve already reached.”
    ” What ?”
    ”That Thea Van Loon may have once been a children’s book writer, but that certainly isn’t how she makes her living now.”
    Honey gasped. ”Then what—how—”
    ”She lives off of treasure that she hires other people to ferret out for her!”
    ”But she said once—didn’t she say that there wasn’t any treasure in the Hudson River any more?”
    ”Not really,” said Trixie. ”She was just talking about Captain Kidd’s treasure. Naturally, she wasn’t going to mention Lawrence Krull’s treasure to us, the ’pesky girls.’ ”
    ”Bunker’s partner?”
    ”Yes! Remember that library article I was telling you about? It said that Krull’s boat may have sunk because it was loaded down with treasure. It most likely would have to be gold—or at least, that’s the heaviest kind of treasure I can think of. Anyway, didn’t I tell you that the librarian said that a man with a mustache had asked for that file? Well, that man has to be the diver working for Thea, and he had to have seen that particular article.”
    ”But the shark fins—how on earth did they fit in?”
    Trixie was still sorting out the facts in her own mind. Ignoring the two boys’ continued stares of amazement, she said, ”Okay, let’s start this from the beginning. I’m not sure yet how Bunker fits in, but that gold or whatever legally belongs to him. He told us Krull had willed everything to him—that makes sense because the article mentioned Krull’s ex-wife, Kathleen—”
    ”Trixie! Could Thea really be Kathleen, trying to get what she thought rightfully belonged to her?”
    ”I doubt it,” Trixie said. ”In the first place, Thea’s too young. In the second, why would she send her friend with the mustache to the library to look up Krull if she already knew all about him? No, I think this sort of treasure-hunting, or rather stealing, is something Thea does on a regular basis. Look at the trouble she went to with those shark fins, for example.”
    ”For what purpose ?”
    ”Well, here’s what I think.” Trixie’s words were coming out in a rush, the way they always did when she was putting puzzle pieces together. ”I think she had her divers use them as signals when they had something to bring back to shore! That’s why she spent so much time on the river— she was watching for fins. Naturally, she was upset when she found out that I had seen the fin, too, and—what was worse—connected it with her. So she decided to let us think the shark was real! That’s why she told us not to mention it to anyone else.”
    ”But why would she want to use something as, well, as attention-attracting as shark fins?”
    ”Good question. She definitely seems to have some sort of thing —I’m sure Mart could think of a better word—about sharks. That weird poem in Alice in Wonderland , that bedtime story she told Bobby— Anyway, she probably had the divers use the signal as little as possible—just when they were ready to come in for the day, maybe. Maybe she figured the fin would scare