The Mystery of the Millionaire

from worrying about things I can’t do anything about , too , she thought to herself as she left the kitchen. Getting busy with chores that afternoon had helped her to keep from wondering what the meeting at Mr. Lytell’s store really was all about. Now, the busy schedule at
    Crabapple Farm in August would help to keep her from wondering about Mart and Anthony Ramsey—and Jim.
    Bobby Belden appeared out of nowhere, standing at his sister’s side, eagerly tugging at her hand. “Please read me a story, Trixie,” he begged, sounding as if he’d already asked a dozen times and been refused. In a sense he had. Bobby had an ongoing struggle to get time and attention from the older Beldens.
    “Sure, Bobby,” Trixie replied, stopping her brother in his tracks.
    “Sure?” he repeated, as if unable to believe his ears.
    Trixie laughed and swung him around with his feet in the air. “Sure!” she said again, enthusiastically. Reading a story to Bobby was a sure way to prevent further thinking about her problems. Bobby didn’t just sit quietly and listen to a story. He asked a hundred questions about the words and the pictures—and about things that occurred to him for no apparent reason at all.
    Trixie followed Bobby to his room and sat on the bed while he pulled one book after another off the shelf, trying to decide which story he wanted to hear.
    “This one!” he exclaimed suddenly, thrusting a book insistently into Trixie’s face.
    Trixie took the book and moved it back from her face to a comfortable reading distance. “Snow White,” she said. “That was one of my favorites, too.”
    “Who read Snow White to you?” Bobby asked.
    “Moms did, and Daddy did, too, sometimes,” Trixie told him as she leafed through the familiar pages of the book.
    “Didn’t Mart and Brian read to you?” Bobby asked.
    “Nope,” Trixie told him. “At least, not very much.”
    “Why not?” Bobby asked.
    “Because I learned to read almost as soon as they did,” Trixie explained.
    “Oh,” Bobby said. He was silent for a moment as he thought over the answer, and Trixie took advantage of the silence to open the book and start reading. Otherwise, Bobby’s questions could go on and on, and the book never would get read.
    The little boy listened in relative quiet for a while, stopping Trixie only to rattle off the names of all seven dwarfs and point at their pictures. Then, after Trixie had read another page or two, he suddenly asked, “Were the seven dwarfs like a club?”
    “In a way, I guess they were,” Trixie said. “What makes you ask that?”
    “Well,” Bobby said slowly, “there were seven dwarfs, and they helped Snow White. And there are seven Bob-Whites, and they help all kinds of people. And the Bob-Whites are a club. So I just wondered if the dwarfs were a club, too.”
    Trixie chuckled, surprised, as always, by Bobby’s strange but often accurate logic. “I guess the seven Bob-Whites are kind of like the seven dwarfs, at that, Bobby,” she said. She smiled to herself as she started reading where she’d left off, but the smile slowly faded as she glanced at the picture of Snow White. The slender, elegant figure of Snow White suddenly reminded her of Laura Ramsey, and she felt another pang of jealousy as she remembered that Snow White’s story ended with her rescue by a handsome prince.
    She finished the story as quickly as possible, said good night to Bobby, and hurried to her room. She walked to her dresser and looked sternly at herself in the mirror.
    “You’re being just plain foolish, Trixie Belden,” she said out loud. “The handsome prince Laura Ramsey is counting on to rescue her isn’t Jim; it’s the detective she’s hiring. And that detective will be just as interesting to you and Honey as he is helpful to Laura Ramsey.” Trixie’s voice sounded strong and convincing, but the blue eyes that stared back at her from the mirror didn’t look convinced at all.

A Real Detective ● 5

    THE NEXT MORNING, the eyes that stared back at Trixie from the mirror as she combed her sandy hair had regained some of their sparkle. “Today we meet a real, live detective,” she told her reflection. “I hope Honey calls soon. I can’t wait another minute!”
    The phone rang just as she finished dressing, and she raced down the stairs to answer it. “Hello!” she shouted into the receiver.
    “Trixie?” Honey’s voice came through the wire uncertainly.
    “It’s me, all right. I mean,