The Mystery of the Memorial Day Fire

business.”
    “What makes you think that?” Jim asked, unwrapping the sandwich that Honey had just given him.
    “Well, the store blew up, didn’t it? How can Mr. Roberts stay in business if all his equipment and inventory and everything are gone?”
    “Haven’t you ever heard of something called insurance?” Jim asked. “Mr. Roberts probably had his business insured. If not, the owner of the building probably had the building insured. Mr. Roberts will be back in business in no time.”
    “Of course!” Honey said. “Oh, Trixie, isn’t that wonderful! Now you can stop worrying!”
    Trixie took the sandwich that Honey gave to her and smiled her thanks without speaking. Somehow, she just couldn’t believe that all of the worries about Nick Roberts and his father were over.

4 * “ Arson!”

    “JUST THINK,” Trixie said to Honey on the following afternoon as they got on the school bus. “Day after day after tomorrow, we’ll be free, for three whole months!”
    “Well, we won’t have to go to school for three months,” Honey said cautiously. “I don’t know if I’d call that freedom, though. Unless you mean that we’ll be free to spend hours working on the clubhouse and even more hours trying to figure out some way to pay for the materials.”
    “Oh, woe,” Trixie said, slumping down in her seat. “I’d forgotten about the clubhouse problem. Maybe I should use that, instead of the fire, to take my mind off the geometry and history tests I still have to face.”
    “If your grades are as bad as mine are,” Honey said, “you’d better not use anything to take your mind off your schoolwork. If I don’t study day and night between now and Friday, I’ll spend the summer in summer school and be no use to the Bob-Whites.”
    “Your grades aren’t that bad, Honey Wheeler,” Trixie said reprovingly. It was true that Honey had once had problems with her grades, as had Trixie. But the general enthusiasm of the Bob-Whites seemed to have infected even the girls’ school-work. Now, while they weren’t exactly scholars, their grades were much better than they had been. “I didn’t really mean what I said about using the fire to take my mind off my schoolwork, either. In fact, at this point I’d gladly use my schoolwork to take my mind off the fire. I’m really sick of hearing about it.”
    It was impossible to avoid the subject of the fire, though. It had been a major and memorable happening in the little town of Sleepyside-on-the-Hudson, and everyone wanted to talk about it.
    Ka-boom! was still Bobby Belden’s favorite sound. He shared his memories of the explosion with his brothers and sister time and time again. “Didja see how red it was when it went ka-boom, Trixie?” he’d ask. “Didja hear how loud it was?” Trixie would answer, “I saw it, Bobby, and I heard it. It wasn’t fun, though, it was awful — really awful. Two buildings were destroyed and it’s just a miracle that nobody was hurt. Do you understand that?”
    In response to his sister’s question, Bobby always nodded solemnly and said, “It was really awful, Trixie.” But moments later he’d be enthusiastically yelling “Ka-boom\” again.
    “He’s just too young to understand,” Brian had said quietly after one of Bobby’s ka-booms had made Trixie jump in fright. “Don’t worry, though, tomorrow something new will catch his attention and he’ll forget all about the fire.”
    “I hope we can all start to forget,” Trixie had told her brother.

    Trixie’s hope wasn’t to be realized. On Saturday morning when she came downstairs to breakfast, the school year was part of the past, but the fire seemed destined more than ever to be part of the town’s future.
    “Arson!” screamed the headline on the front page of the Sleepyside Sun. Brian and Mart were already huddled over the paper when Trixie joined them at the table.
    “Gleeps!” Trixie exclaimed when she saw the big, black type. “Do they really think the fire was set deliberately?”
    “The authorities are no longer speculating,” Mart said. “The cogency of the evidence is beyond contradiction.”
    “They know it’s arson?” Trixie guessed from Mart’s windy description.
    “That’s right,” Brian said. “The fire marshal says that the fire was deliberately set in the basement of Mr. Roberts’s store.”
    “The alligation permits the authorities to make that allegation,” Mart said.
    “What’s he talking about?” Trixie asked in