The Mystery at Maypenny's

long route through the preserve, reveling in the fresh air after the long afternoon in the steamy council room.
    Each of the girls was lost in her own thoughts. They rode in silence until they had passed a shallow ravine. Then Trixie suddenly reined in her horse.
    “What is it, Trixie?” Honey asked. “Is something wrong with Susie?”
    Trixie shook her head as if trying to clear cobwebs. “It didn’t register until we’d gone past,” she said. “I saw a flash of something shiny in that little ravine back there.”
    “Maybe it was a crow’s nest,” suggested
    Honey. “You know how they like to steal shiny things.”
    Trixie giggled, remembering plump, cheerful Mary Smith and her missing locket. When Jim had run away, Miss Trask had taken Trixie and Honey to upstate New York to look for him. There they’d met Mrs. Smith, and they had found her locket in the nest of her pet crow. When the girls had returned the locket to its grateful owner, they’d enjoyed spiced grape juice and chocolate cake in the farmhouse kitchen while Jim was picking beans for the Smiths in a field just half an acre away!
    Trixie’s face grew serious again. “This was something lower to the ground than a bird’s nest. It must have been something pretty good-sized, too, to shine through the dense underbrush.” She tugged on the reins and turned her horse. “I’m going back to see what it was.”
    Honey turned her horse, too, and followed her sandy-haired friend.
    At the ravine, Trixie dismounted and tied Susie’s reins to a bush. “You stay here, she said, patting the horse’s shoulder. “I’ll be right back.” Trixie and Honey both walked carefully through the underbrush toward the ravine.
    “I see it now, too,” Honey said. “It isn’t something in a bird’s nest. I’m sure of that.”
    Parting a final layer of brush, the girls gasped and looked at one another.
    The shiny object Trixie had seen was a door handle and the door handle was attached to Jonn Score s battered green car!

The Car in the Woods • 10

    HONEY’S HAZEL EYES were wide open in surprise. Trixie’s blue ones were narrowed in a squint as she tried to figure out how—and why—the young environmentalist’s car had been hidden in this out-of-the-way spot.
    “Wh-What should we do, Trixie?” Honey asked. Trixie looked at Honey solemnly. “The first thing we should do is look inside the car, to make sure John Score’s body isn’t in it.”
    Honey’s face paled, and she swallowed hard. She was no longer the timid girl she had been when she’d first moved to Sleepyside. Still, she was not quite as adventuresome as her friend. The idea of finding a body did not appeal to her.
    Trixie, understanding Honey’s fear, put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “If you want to wait here, that’s all right,” she said.
    Honey shook her head. “I’ll come along,” she said.
    In spite of her show of courage, Trixie was relieved to know she wouldn’t have to search the car alone!
    Together the two girls climbed down the short bank. They walked up to the car and, being careful not to touch it and leave fingerprints, they peered inside.
    Trixie breathed a sigh of relief that left a little circle of steam on the window. The car was empty except for a mess of candy wrappers, used tissues, and an unfolded road map.
    Feeling braver, Trixie got down on her hands and knees and looked under the car. Finding nothing there either, she circled the car twice looking for clues.
    “There’s such a thick layer of leaves down here that ordinary footprints wouldn’t show,” she told Honey. “Still, I’m sure that if someone had tried to wrestle John Score out of the car, they would have dug up some leaves. So it doesn’t look as though there’s been a scuffle.”
    “What if he was—you know—beyond fighting when they took him out of the car?” Honey asked.
    Trixie’s mouth fell open in surprise. “I hadn’t thought of that,” she admitted. “If they’d hit him over the head, tossed him in the car, and driven out here—” She broke off in mid sentence. “Honey, this is silly. We’re coming up with all these fancy explanations for how ‘they’ got him here, and we don’t even know who ‘they’ are—if ‘they’ exist at all.”
    Honey giggled wildly with relief. “You’re right. This whole scene—the deserted car in a ravine, looking inside it for a body—had me so scared I immediately started thinking the worst. I’m getting to be