The Mystery of the Castaway Children

Blinking rapidly to adjust her eyes to the light change, Trixie stared at the picture of the two boys, one somewhat older than Bobby, the other an infant younger than Moses. The baby was bald. His eyes were fixed on a rattle the older boy held before his face.
    “I can’t tell,” Trixie admitted at last.
    “Here, let me look at that!” scoffed Mart. After a long moment, he, too, said sheepishly that he wasn’t sure.
    Even Brian, who looked at bone construction, could not swear that the baby was Moses.
    “Babies change from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour,” Mrs. Belden said as she handed the picture back to the sergeant. “One day we say he’s just the picture of his father, and the next day we see only the slightest resemblance.”
    “I guess I’d better take a look at the baby in person,” the sergeant decided.
    Trixie escorted him to the guest room. At the door, she flicked on a lamp and waited to see if Moses mewed before she crossed the room. She beckoned the sergeant to follow her. In that brief instant, it seemed to her that the hooked rug was out of place again.
    With photograph in hand, the sergeant stood beside the clothes basket and stared down at Moses. Trixie, too, looked from Moses to the picture and back again many times. After only twenty-four hours of careful attention, Moses was losing the neglected, battered look that had caused so much concern. Pinkly clean, he smelled of talcum and baby oil. One tiny fist was raised above his ear, his thumb folded across his cupped palm.
    Trixie felt like putting her finger in that hand, to feel the warmth and total dependence of his small body. Instead, she followed the sergeant as he awkwardly tiptoed from the room. Once the two were back out on the porch, the sergeant took command.
    “I still don’t know if that’s the same kid,” he told the group, “but among all of the Missing Persons reports and photos, only the baby in this picture seems to fill the bill. The problem is, there are two kids missing, Davy and Robert. You may have found Robert.” He paused and scratched his head. “It’ll be a shock to the parents if I call them to identify Robert and can’t produce Davy.”
    “Won’t it be a worse shock if you call them to come here and Moses isn’t Robert after all?” Honey spoke up quietly.
    The sergeant agreed, and Trixie quickly followed her friend’s lead. “Why don’t we just take the baby right to the parents?” she suggested. “If we suddenly appear at their door with a baby, they won’t have had time to build false hopes, in case Moses is someone else’s son.”
    “I was hoping you’d think of that,” the sergeant said. “It’s already occurred to me that you two girls might go along with me to the Dodges’ house. You could watch the baby while I’m driving and also give a firsthand report to the parents on how he was found.”
    Something clicked in Trixie’s brain. “The Dodges—you mean the family over on Saw Mill River?”
    The sergeant nodded.
    “Oh, Peter,” Mrs. Belden put in worriedly. “Isn’t that the man you were talking about—the one whose belongings were auctioned because he couldn’t get a loan?”
    “Apparently it is,” said Peter Belden, frowning. “That’s too much trouble to have all at the same time!” Trixie cried. She scrambled to her feet. “I’ll go get Moses. I certainly hope he turns out to be Robert Dodge.”
    “They’ll still have trouble,” Bobby declared suddenly. “ ’Cause where’s Davy?”
    All eyes peered into the dark that had thickened to the texture of rich velvet. Yes, where was Davy?

Kidnapped? ● 6

    INSIDE THE POLICE CAR, Trixie held Moses on her lap while Honey looked after the supplies they would need for his ten-o’clock feeding. To relieve the tension they all were feeling, Trixie spoke in a droning, soft voice of the clues she and Honey had uncovered in the woods. “There’s even a horse’s-fly sheet in Ella Kline’s laundry basket,” she finished.
    “What’s that got to do with anything?” the sergeant grunted.
    “I’m just telling you what we found,” Trixie replied. She became aware that they had entered the “spider web,” the tangle of roads that included Taconic State Parkway, Saw Mill River Parkway, Saw Mill River Road, and all the other roads and highways. The Dodge property was somewhere in this confusing jumble.
    The sergeant soon turned onto a private road. The police car’s headlights illuminated boulders,