The Mystery of the Phantom Grashopper

door.

    “... and it was late when we started home,” Miss Lawler s soft voice went on with her story. “The storm had been pretty bad, and the roads were icy. I remember my car spinning out of control, and then we hit the tree— When I regained consciousness in the hospital, they told me my brother had been killed.”
    The Bob-Whites were sprawled on floor cushions, listening while Miss Lawler talked. The adults had moved their chairs close around the blazing fire. Bobby was asleep, his head resting on Reddy’s broad back.
    “But it wasn’t your fault,” Trixie whispered.
    “I was pretty ill after that,” Miss Lawler continued. “I spent some time in a hospital. When I was finally feeling better, I took a job as a counselor in a halfway house.”
    “Is that where you met Sammy?” Honey inquired sympathetically.
    Miss Lawler nodded. “He’s the same age my brother was,” she said. “I wanted desperately to help him....”
    Mr. Gibbons coughed self-consciously. “Sammy had been in jail for theft. Living at the halfway house was one of the conditions of his parole. Sammy is an intelligent young man. He seemed to have a lot of potential, and we all expected him to do well. Then he ran off with his former partner. I tracked them here.”
    “What about the partner?” Brian asked.
    “He was arrested this afternoon,” Mr. Gibbons said. “He told me all about the weather vane caper. After that big storm was over, Sammy took advantage of the fact that the streetlights were out. He climbed a tree behind Town Hall, took the weather vane down through the inside of the building, and let himself out the front door. He had arranged for his partner to pick it up on Louis Road the next day, using the song on the radio as a signal. But when Sammy heard about the reward the next day, he changed his plans.”
    “And he used another song—’St. Louis Blues’—to let his partner know,” Trixie concluded.
    “Right, Trixie,” Mr. Gibbons said.
    Miss Lawler shook her head. “Sammy came to me and told me that he knew who had stolen the weather vane and where it was hidden. He begged me to help him return it, and I thought—”
    “That’s what you were doing when we saw you driving with Sammy in your station wagon!” Honey exclaimed.
    “Yes,” Miss Lawler said. “I really believed that Sammy wanted to do something good, so I helped him return the weather vane, even though I hadn’t been able to make myself drive a car since the accident. I had hired someone to drive my car to Sleepyside when I came. I didn’t know that Sammy had stolen the coin collection.”
    “Well,” Mr. Gibbons said, standing, “with all the evidence that you young people collected, Sammy and his partner will be going back to jail for a good long time. You’re quite an alert detective, Trixie.” Trixie blushed. “It wasn’t too alert of me to think that you were Sammy’s partner,” she apologized.
    “Say, Trixie,” Mart began slyly, “perhaps you were in too much haste to baste, after all.”
    Trixie lifted an eyebrow at him.
    “Well,” Mart explained, “if you can manage to lose another button from your Bob-White jacket—and I can think of unlikelier occurrences—maybe it will be placed with the other artifacts inside our weather vane before it’s recoppered and restored to its perch.”
    “Gleeps!” Trixie crowed. “I told you Hoppy would make us Bob-Whites famous someday!”