The Mystery of Wandering Caveman - M. V. Carey [21]
Bob grinned. “It’s so crazy that I love it.” He sat down on the ground, took a pad from his pocket, produced a ballpoint pen, and began to write.
“A missing cave man,” he said. “Some mysterious drug in the water system. A ransom note that’s poorly spelled, and that may not even be important. The spelling, I mean. It could be faked. And that brings us to the suspects.”
Bob looked up at his friends. “Brandon?” he said. “He wanted the bones out of the cave, and he could have sent the ransom note to cover up.”
“He was asleep in the park when the bones were wiped.” Pete pointed out. “I woke up leaning on him. Hey, everybody in town was asleep in the park. We don’t have any suspects!”
“We don’t know for sure that everyone in the town was at the ceremony,” said Jupe. “And anyway, the kidnapper may have had some way to avoid the effect of the substance in the sprinklers. If that’s the case, anyone in town could be a suspect.”
“Careful,” said Bob. “Here comes Eleanor.”
Jupe looked around and saw Eleanor Hess coming across the grass.
Quickly Jupe shifted so that he sat between Eleanor and the plaster cast in the ground. “Hi,” he said when Eleanor was fairly close. “We were just . . . just talking about all the strange things that happened today.”
Eleanor nodded, and after she hesitated for a moment as if she were unsure of her welcome, she sat down facing the Investigators. “I . . . uh . . . I’m going up to the foundation now, and I thought maybe you’d like to … to come along.”
“That would be very nice,” said Jupe, “and we’d …”
“You don’t have to,” said Eleanor. “I just thought if you have nothing to do.”
Suddenly she blurted out, “Ten thousand dollars! That’s an awful lot of money!
Uncle Newt’s gone to talk to some other people in town about getting it together and
… and it’s getting to be such a big deal!”
And Eleanor burst into tears.
“Hey, it’s not that bad,” said Bob. “I mean, the cave man is just a bunch of bones.
It isn’t as if somebody were holding a real live person for ransom, is it?”
“No. But my uncle’s as mad as if it were. He’s so mad he scares me. He says he’s losing money every second the cave man is gone. I guess he is. The cave man could have paid much better than the hardware store. Things can get slow at the store.”
“Do you help out there?” asked Jupe.
Eleanor nodded. “When I’m not at the foundation. But I’d rather be at the foundation. Nobody yells there except Dr. Brandon, and he doesn’t really mean it.”
She smiled suddenly, and her cheeks became quite pink. “Dr. Brandon is kind. He says I should go to college — San Diego State or one of those schools.”
“Why don’t you?” Bob asked.
“Well, I’d need one of the cars to get there, and Aunt Thalia says no. She says it’s a waste of money to send a girl to college, and besides I shouldn’t forget what class I come from.”
“What does that mean?” Pete asked.
“I guess it means I’ll be getting uppity if I go to college,” said Eleanor. “Aunt Thalia says my mother got uppity and she thought she was too good for this little town, so she went off and married my father, and look what happened.”
Eleanor stopped. Her face went grim and hard. “She gives me a swift pain!” she announced. “My mother could have been in a car accident anywhere. You don’t have to be wicked or stuck up to get hit by a bus in an intersection. My mother was nice.
She had pretty hair. My father was nice too. He played the oboe for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and I remember him practising. The oboe is really a wonderful instrument. We don’t have any music in the house now — except on radio and TV.”
She stopped again, then burst out, “I want to get away! I’m saving all I can. I have over a hundred dollars saved from my job at the foundation. Uncle Newt and Aunt Thalia use the rent from my parents’ house in Hollywood to pay my expenses, but the foundation money is mine!”
“Have you asked your uncle and aunt about the rent money?” said Jupe. “If you left here, they