The Mystery of the Memorial Day Fire

on the front page. Overnight she’s a star.”
    “So you think she paid an arsonist to set the fire?” Honey asked, not sounding at all convinced.
    “We know she knows arsonists,” Trixie said. “She quoted lots of them in that article.”
    “She quoted lots of fire marshals and police detectives, too,” Honey reminded her. “Maybe that’s who she was talking to.”
    “Why meet a fire marshal at night?” Trixie countered. “Why stand and talk to him in the alley? Besides, fire marshals and detectives are public employees. They can’t take payoffs from a reporter.”
    “But you don’t know that this was a payoff, Trixie — not really,” Honey said defensively. Always loyal, Honey was pained by her inability to side with Trixie’s version of what had happened.
    “Well, if it wasn’t a payoff, what was it?” Trixie asked.
    “I don’t know,” Honey said. She thought for a moment. “Maybe it was a list of questions about the fire that she wanted the fire marshal to answer.”
    “Then why would she say, ‘I’ll call you if I need you’ when she gave him the envelope? That made it sound like they were finished with their business, not like they were right in the middle of it.”
    “But if the man was the arsonist,” Honey said, “their business together was over weeks ago — as soon as the fire started, in fact. Why wait this long to pay him off?”
    It was Trixie’s turn to sit in silence thinking about the question. “Maybe she wasn’t going to pay him at all,” she said finally. “The arsonist did bungle the job, you know. Maybe”—Trixie pulled herself up to her knees on the bed as she warmed to her own theory—“maybe the fire was supposed to look accidental, and then Jane Dix-Strauss could prove it was arson, so she could look like a hero. So when the arsonist bungled it, she told him she wasn’t going to pay. But he threatened her, and said he’d beat her up or even kill her if she didn’t pay up.”
    “That’s possible, I suppose,” Honey conceded. “But then what about that button you found in the alley? If she hired someone else to set the fire, then when did she lose that button? Or doesn’t the button mean anything any more?”
    “I don’t know,” Trixie said. She sagged back against the headboard of her bed. Her efforts to convince Honey had left her feeling tired.
    “We could tell the story to someone else,” Honey volunteered. “Just because I’m not convinced doesn’t mean no one else will be.”
    “Oh, come on, Honey. You’re always the first person in the world to believe me. Sometimes you’re the only one. If you don’t agree with my version of things, do you think Brian would? Or Jim? Or Mart ?” As she said his name, she wrinkled her nose.
    In spite of the seriousness of the situation, Honey started to giggle. “If you came up with a theory that the sky was blue, Mart would demand more proof,” she admitted.
    Trixie laughed, too, shaking her head at the same time. “Brian and Jim aren’t much better, though. Adults are lots worse. All they ever think about is whether what I’m telling them is dangerous — not whether it’s true.”
    “Well, sometimes we do give them reason for worrying,” Honey admitted. After another pause, she asked, “What do we do now, Trixie?”
    Trixie shrugged. “Nothing, I guess. There’s nobody to tell about what I saw, and nothing to do about it. I guess we’ll just keep it in mind, and wait.”
    “Wait for what?” Honey asked.
    Again, Trixie shrugged. Then, suddenly, she jumped to her feet. “Oh, Honey, I do know!”
    “What?” Honey demanded.
    “Let’s just suppose I’m right — that Jane Dix-Strauss hired an arsonist to set that fire so she’d have big news to write about. The fire won’t be big news forever. What happens when everyone forgets about it?”
    “You don’t think she’d have another fire set, do you?” Honey asked in dismay.
    “Another fire — or something,” Trixie said.
    “Oh, Trixie, you can’t really think that.”
    “I probably couldn’t,” Trixie told her, “if I hadn’t heard what she said to that man: ‘I’ll call you if I need anything else.’”
    When Honey left for home a few minutes later, the two girls were no closer to deciding on a plan of action. Unless you count deciding to do nothing as a plan of action, Trixie thought. She stayed in her room with the door closed. She didn’t trust herself not to tell her brothers about the scene behind