The Mystery of the Vanishing Victim

brother?”
    “I think he’s a perfectly perfect brother,” Honey said. “You think he’s pretty special, too.”
    Trixie blushed. The special feelings she had for Jim were ones she tried to keep to herself. “Well, what are we going to do?” she asked, partly to change the subject.
    “It seems to me that Sergeant Molinson’s advice about the hit and run applies just as well here,” Honey said. “We have to wait until the victim is identified. Only then can we start looking for connections. In the meantime, we’d better hurry and get a lot more donations in the time we have left before Jim picks us up. Otherwise, we’ll be way behind in the contest.”
    “All right,” Trixie said reluctantly. “I guess it won’t do any good to double my troubles by winding up Mart’s temporary slave.”
    The girls’ luck for the rest of the afternoon was neither good nor bad. They found no one home at a few houses, they were refused entry at some houses, and they were promised donations at several more.
    When the station wagon picked them up at five o’clock, Jim, Mart, Dan, and Di were all inside, eager to discuss their afternoon’s adventures.
    “How did you two do?” Di Lynch asked as the girls got into the wagon.
    “Pretty well, I think,” Trixie answered. “The first house we went to was definitely the best. The woman who lives there is a regular rummage collector, and she had stories to tell about each thing. It took us ages and ages to get out of her basement, but she promised to have everything ready to pick up this evening.”
    “Then, at another house,” Honey put in, “Trixie had a story of her own to tell. We didn’t get out of there for ages, either.”
    “There are two kinds of people in the world, I’ve decided,” Jim said. “There are those who like to talk to strangers and those who don’t.”
    His words reminded Trixie of the haggard woman who had reacted so violently to the word miser. She frowned, wanting to tell the other Bob-Whites about their conversation with the woman, but not wanting to, at the same time.
    Trixie turned to look at Honey. Her best friend, also frowning, shook her head almost imperceptibly. She, too, was unwilling to have yet another theory dismantled.
    Completely oblivious to Trixie and Honey’s wordless exchange, Mart announced, “Our most commodious consignment far outshines yours; therefore I conclude that our total intake is also greater.”
    “Oh, Mart, let me tell them about it, please!” Di Lynch pleaded. Di was usually impressed with Mart’s enormous vocabulary, but in this case, it seemed, the story was so good that she didn’t want it delayed by translations.
    “Go ahead, Di, please,” Trixie said. “We’d love to hear you tell the story.”
    “Well,” Di began, her violet eyes sparkling with excitement, “our big find, like yours, was at the very first house we went to. At first the woman who answered the door seemed sort of unfriendly. I felt my stomach sinking right down into my shoes, because I really don’t enjoy going door to door like that, and finding somebody who wasn’t very friendly right off the bat like that would have simply—“
    “Di!” Trixie interrupted. “You’re supposed to be giving us the shorter version, remember?”
    Di put her fingers to her mouth. “I guess I was getting a little carried away,” she said. “Anyway, it turned out that the woman wasn’t really unfriendly, no
    She was just distracted because she had something else on her mind. When she finally heard what we were saying, that we wanted donations to the rummage sale, she got this big, bright smile on her face.
    “You see, the reason she was so upset is that she’s having a whole new houseful of furniture delivered tomorrow, and she couldn’t figure out what she was going to do with what she has now!” Di clapped her hands together delightedly and bounced up and down on the car seat as she concluded her story.
    “Are you saying that you got an entire houseful of furniture at your very first stop today?” Trixie asked, unwilling to believe what she’d just heard.
    “Well, no, not exactly,” Di said, with an impish grin. “The woman’s dining room set was an antique, so she decided to keep that. All we got was the couch and two chairs, a coffee table, and two end tables from the living room; a double bed and two sets of twin beds, all with matching dressers and chests of drawers and night tables, of course,