Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls (2 page)

Stacey sighed again.

“Is anything wrong?” I asked her.

“I just wish I knew more people, that's all.”

“You will, Stace. Look, you haven't even been here two months yet. It takes time to make friends.” Stacey and her parents had moved to Stoneybrook, Connecticut, from New York City in August.

“I guess,” she said.

“Maybe you and I could get together with Kristy and Mary Anne on Saturday. I mean, to do something besides have a club meeting. Are you free Saturday?”

“I'm always free,” said Stacey.

“Oh, come on, you are not. You get lots of baby-sitting jobs, and you get to go back to New York with your parents all the time.”

“That's not the same as having friends.”

“So—let's do something Saturday, okay? I'll call Kristy and Mary Anne.”

“All right.”

“See you tomorrow, Stace.”

“Bye.”

“Bye.”

We hung up, and I stared out the window at the rain. It wouldn't be easy finding something Mary Anne's strict father would allow her to do, or something Stacey's strict diet would allow
her
to do, but I was determined that we would get together. I'd talk to Kristy and Mary Anne in school the next day.

I went back to
The Phantom of Pine Hill.

Stacey, Kristy, Mary Anne, and I did get together on Saturday, but we couldn't think of a thing for the four of us to do together. Mary Anne wasn't allowed to ride her bike to the mall. Stacey couldn't eat s'mores or ice cream or anything fun. (She has diabetes and has to control very carefully the amount of sugar she takes in each day.) And there was only one movie playing in town, and Kristy and I had already seen it.

So we sat around in Kristy's front yard. We were sprawled all over the place, except for Stacey, who was sitting up primly with her legs tucked under her. She wanted to look nice in case Sam should come along or poke his head out the door or something. Mary Anne had the latest edition of
The Stoneybrook News
spread open in front of her, but she wasn't reading it. We were very,
very
bored.

“We could go up in the attic and look through that trunk of antique toys that Mom got from Grandma's,” Kristy suggested.

Stacey and I rolled our eyes. Even though Kristy and Mary Anne are in seventh grade, just like Stacey and I are, they can be very childish. They're not interested in boys or clothes yet, and sometimes they do the weirdest things. Mary Anne still dresses up her stuffed animals. And they even
look
younger than we do. Kristy has long brown hair, which she doesn't do much with yet, and big brown eyes, which will look great with makeup in a couple of years. She's small for her age. She looks more like a ten-year-old. Mary Anne also has brown eyes and brown hair. Her father makes her wear her hair in braids. I wonder how long that will go on. And both of them wear kind of little-girl clothes—kilts and plain blouses and stuff like that.

Stacey, on the other hand, dresses pretty much the way I do. She's tall and slender and she gets her blonde hair professionally cut. She looks older than twelve.

“We could try that new cookie pl—” Mary Anne began, then glanced at Stacey and stopped, remembering the diet problem.

“We could rent a movie,” I said to Stacey.

“Yeah!” said Kristy.

“Yeah!” said Mary Anne.

“The player's broken,” said Stacey.

“Oh.”

I picked up a bright yellow maple leaf and twirled the stem between my thumb and forefinger. “I'll tell you guys a secret,” I said. “Well, Stacey knows about this, but no one else does.”

“How come you already told Stacey?” asked Kristy accusingly.

“I just did, that's all. Okay?”

I saw Kristy and Mary Anne glance at each other and knew what they were thinking—that Stacey and I left them out of things. Well, maybe we did sometimes.

“Do you want to know the secret or not?”

“Yes,” said Kristy grudgingly.

“Okay. Well, here it is …” I said slowly, trying to drag out the suspense. “I'm in love!”

“Ohh!” said Mary Anne softly.

“You
are?”
cried Kristy at the same time.

“Who with?” asked Mary Anne.

I sighed deeply. “Trevor Sandbourne.” I closed my eyes and leaned against the maple tree.

“Trevor Sandbourne?” repeated Kristy.

Mary Anne squinted at me through her reading glasses and pushed one braid behind her shoulder. “Who's he?”

“Only the most gorgeous boy in school.”

“I don't think I've heard of him. Is he in our grade?”

“Yup. He's a poet,” I said. I tried to describe him.

“Oh!” exclaimed Kristy, right in the middle of my description. “I know who you mean. He's really quiet. He's in my math class. He sits in the row behind me—right next to Alan Gray.”

“Oh, you poor thing,” I said. “Alan Gray. Ick.”

“Yeah,” added Mary Anne, sounding pretty disgusted. I mean, pretty disgusted for Mary Anne, which for most people isn't very disgusted at all. See, Mary Anne lives alone with her father, who is really, really strict and overprotective. Because of him, Mary Anne is shy and “held in,” if you know what I mean. Mr. Spier thinks that because Mary Anne's mother is dead, he has to go overboard with this careful upbringing, making Mary Anne super-polite and kind of old-fashioned.

“Who's Alan Gray?” asked Stacey, reminding us that she was a newcomer to Stoneybrook.

“Alan Gray,” said Kristy witheringly, “is the most disgusting boy in this whole solar system. He's been awful since kindergarten. Probably since birth. And I can tell you it's no picnic having Alan sit right in back of me. Yesterday he told Mr. Peters that I was late for class because I had to go to the doctor for a flea bath.”

“That's
awful
!” exclaimed Stacey.

“I know. He really hates me. He doesn't bother anyone else half as much as he bothers me.”

“Well, you
are
the only girl who ever fought him back, you know,” I pointed out.

“Yeah,” said Kristy with a grin.

A slow smile spread across Mary Anne's face as she remembered what we were talking about. Even Mary Anne had thought it was funny.

“What?”
demanded Stacey, looking frustrated.

“Fifth grade,” I began. “That year Kristy, Mary Anne, Alan, and I were all in the same class. Kristy really got Alan. He'd been tormenting us—all the girls, really—for the entire year, and by June we had had it. So one day, Kristy comes to school and all morning she brags about this fantastic lunch her mother has packed: a chocolate cupcake, Fritos, fruit salad, a ham and cheese
sandwich, two Hershey's Kisses—really great stuff. Kristy says it's a reward for something or other. And she says the lunch is so great she's got to protect it by keeping it in her desk instead of in the coat room. So, of course, Alan steals the bag out of her desk during the morning. Then at noontime in the cafeteria, he makes this big production out of opening it. He's sitting at the boys' table, and they're all crowded around, and us girls are looking on from the next table. Alan is the center of attention, which is just what he wants.”

“And just what I wanted,” added Kristy.

“Right. So Alan carefully takes all the packages and containers out of the bag and spreads them in front of him. Then he begins to open them. In one he finds dead spiders, in another he finds a mud pie.”

“David Michael had made it for me,” said Kristy. (David Michael is Kristy's little brother. He was four then.)

“She'd even wrapped up a sandwich with fake flies stuck on it.”

Stacey began to giggle.

“It was great,” said Mary Anne. “Everyone was laughing. And Kristy had packed a real lunch for herself, which she'd kept in the coat room. All
afternoon, the kids kept telling her how terrific her trick had been.”

“The only bad thing,” said Kristy, “is that ever since, Alan has thought he has to bother me constantly in order to keep up his reputation. He's like the plague.”

“Thank goodness Trevor isn't like that,” I said.

“If he was, you wouldn't have fallen in love with him,” Stacey pointed out. She brushed her curly blonde hair out of her eyes.

“That's true. Poets are sensitive and thoughtful.”

We fell silent.

Mary Anne flipped idly through
The Stoneybrook News.
“Taylor's is going to have a sale,” she announced.

“Mmm.” (I had closed my eyes and was trying to conjure up a picture of Trevor in my mind.)

“There was a fire at the mall this week.”

“Mmm.”

“Everyone's supposed to get flu shots by November.”

“Mmm.”

“Aughhh!”

Kristy, Stacey, and I jerked to attention.

“What is it? What is it?” I cried.

Mary Anne had turned pale.

With one shaking hand, she pointed at the paper. With the other hand, she held the paper away from her, as if it might bite.

“Is something on the paper?” I shrieked.

I jumped away. I absolutely
hate
spiders.

“No,
in
the paper,” Mary Anne managed to say.

Kristy grabbed it from her, and she and Stacey kneeled on the ground and leaned over the pages Mary Anne had it opened to.

“‘Angry Pig Goes Hog Wild'?” asked Kristy, reading one of the larger headlines.

“No!” cried Mary Anne.

“‘Depressed Trucker Drives Self Crazy'?” asked Stacey.

“No!”

“What
is
it, Mary Anne? Just tell us,” I shouted. “You're driving
us
crazy.”

Mary Anne had calmed down a little. She took the paper back and read: “‘Phantom Caller on Rampage in Mercer.'” She cleared her throat and glanced at us. Then she began to read again. “‘The thief, whom police have nicknamed the Phantom Caller, struck again in Mercer on Tuesday night. Following the pattern of his previous burglaries, he began making phone calls, this time to the
home of Thornton and Sophia Granville of 236 Witmer Court, shortly after four
P.M.
He never spoke, simply hanging up the phone when someone answered. The Granvilles left their home at seven-thirty to attend a meeting of the school board. When they returned at ten-fifteen, they found all of Mrs. Granville's jewelry missing. Nothing else had been taken, despite the fact that a considerable amount of silver, as well as Thornton Granville's famous and very valuable coin collection, were in the house.

“‘This is the sixth home the Phantom Caller has robbed in the past two weeks and the second home in Mercer. The first four robberies occurred in New Hope.'” Mary Anne stopped reading.

“So what is so scary about that?” asked Stacey. “You should hear what goes on in New York City every day.”

“But don't you see?” asked Mary Anne. “He's getting closer and closer to Stoneybrook—to
us.
First New Hope, then Mercer. Stoneybrook is the nearest town to Mercer.”

“Well, it's still twenty miles away,” I said. “Does he always steal jewelry?”

“Yes,” replied Mary Anne. “Just jewelry. It says in the next paragraph that he really knows what he's looking for. Now here's the scary part: He
makes those phone calls to find out whether anyone's home. But
some
times if the people don't go out he robs them anyway, and they don't know it until they realize the jewelry's missing. He's
in
the house while they are. He's never hurt anyone, but what do you think he'd do if he met someone face-to-face in the middle of a burglary? Now think about
this,”
she went on. “We don't know what kind of jewelry the people we baby-sit for have.”

“Oh,” said Stacey, “no one around here is as rich as those Granvilles sound.”

“But maybe it doesn't matter,” said Kristy. “And what if the Phantom Caller was watching the house or something and saw the parents go out. He might go ahead and rob it if he thought just a baby-sitter and a couple of little kids were there.”

“I still don't know,” said Stacey. “I think you guys are worrying about nothing.”

Suddenly, I clapped my hand to my mouth. “Oh, my gosh!” I cried.

“What?” the others shouted.

“When I baby-sat for the Marshalls on Wednesday, the phone rang twice, and each time I answered it, the caller hung up without saying a word!”

“Oh, no!”

“You're kidding!”

“I think,” said Kristy seriously, “that we should hold an emergency meeting of the Baby-sitters Club—
right now.”

The members of the Baby-sitters Club gathered numbly in my bedroom.

“This is
terrible,”
moaned Kristy. “How can we baby-sit under these conditions?”

Nobody said a word. To ease the tension, I took a gigantic chocolate bar out of my notebook, carefully peeled back the wrapper, and offered pieces to Kristy and Mary Anne. I didn't even bother to feel bad that Stacey couldn't eat any. The three of us chewed in silence.

“Look,” said Stacey after a while, “I think we're worrying about nothing. The Phantom Caller hasn't even robbed anybody in Stoneybrook, so he's still at least twenty miles away.” She turned to Mary Anne. “What makes you so sure he'll come here next? Maybe he'll decide that with the police on his tail he should just clear out and go rob people in Oklahoma.”

“That's true,” said Mary Anne slowly.

“And in the second place, if anyone we sit for
does
have some fantastic piece of jewelry and the Phantom Caller has heard about it, don't you think
we'd
have heard about it, too? I mean, it wouldn't be any secret then.”

“That's true, too,” I said, “but … well, what if we just happened to be baby-sitting somewhere and a burglar just happened to try to break in? Not the Phantom Caller necessarily, but any burglar? It could happen, you know, and we should be prepared.”

“You're right,” said Kristy. “Good baby-sitters should be prepared for anything.”

“Maybe,” said Stacey, “we should arrange a code we could give each other over the phone that would be a signal for the other person to call the police. Let's say I'm baby-sitting for Jamie Newton, and I hear a burglar. Okay. I want to call the police, but I don't want the burglar to
hear
me calling the police, right?”

“Right,” said the rest of us.

“So what I do is call Claudia, for example, and I say, ‘Hi, it's Stacey.
Have you found my red ribbon?'
and that's a signal that I'm in trouble and need Claudia to call the police.”

“Hey, that's a neat idea!” said Kristy.

“Yeah!” agreed Mary Anne. “But how would Claudia know where you are? How would she know where to send the police?”

“That's right. That's a good question” I said, “because what if the burglar was
listening in on an extension?
I couldn't just say, ‘Okay, I'll call the police. Where are you?' That wouldn't do you any good at all.”

“Aughh! Listening in on an extension! That is
so
creepy!” screamed Kristy.

“But it could happen,” I said. “It happened in that thriller.
The Night of the Weird.
You know, the one where they find the baby-sitter—”

“Stop! Stop! Stop! Don't say any more. I don't want to know!” cried Kristy.

“All right, but the point is,” I said, “that we should all know where each one of us is sitting and when.”

“Well,” said Mary Anne, “there's the record book.”

The record book is where we keep track of our baby-sitting appointments as well as all other important club information. Kristy makes us keep a club notebook, too. Each time we complete a job, we're supposed to write up what happened. Then the other club members will know about
any problems with kids or their families or homes and know what to expect the next time they sit for the client.

I should mention here that each of us holds an office in the Baby-sitters Club. Mary Anne is secretary, which is why she was thinking of the record book. Kristy is president, since the club was her idea. I'm vice president, since the headquarters is my bedroom and I have a private phone. And Stacey is treasurer, since she likes numbers.

“What about the record book?” asked Stacey.

“It's got all the information in it—our appointments, the money we've earned, everything. I could bring it to school every day so we could check the calendar. And during our regular Friday afternoon meetings we could check it for the weekend. That way each of us would be sure to know what the others are doing—where they're going to be baby-sitting.”

“That's a good suggestion,” said Kristy, “except that, as president, I'll take responsibility for the book during school. If anything happens to it, it'll be my fault.”

“You don't have to do that,” I said. “We could take turns.”

“No, it's easier if the same person always has
it. I don't mind. So I move that I should bring it to school every day.”

“I second the motion,” said Mary Anne, looking relieved.

“Good,” said Kristy. “Now, what about burglar alarms?”

“What about them?” I countered.

“I think that if we're baby-sitting and anything strange happens—a silent phone call, a funny noise outside,
anything
—we should rig up some kind of burglar alarm so that at least we'd know if someone tried to break into the house.”

For a moment, nobody spoke. At last, Mary Anne said, “You mean like stacking tin cans in front of a door so that if the door opened, the cans would crash down and alert you?”

“Exactly!” cried Kristy. “That's a good idea.” She tore a piece of paper out of my social studies notebook and wrote:

1. Stack cans in front of door or window (inside).

“But,” she added, “make sure you don't put the stuff where the kids you're sitting for could
fall over it. And make sure you put it away before the parents come home.”

“Right,” we agreed.

“Okay. Other ideas? Claudia?” asked Kristy. She was beginning to sound like some of my teachers.

“No,” I said crossly, feeling embarrassed. Then I added, “Do you have any?” realizing that Kristy had been doing a lot of talking and writing and not much thinking.

There was an awkward silence. Then, “How about a Smell Alert?” said Kristy with a giggle.

Mary Anne and Stacey laughed, but I thought Kristy was sounding pretty childish again.

“What,” I demanded, “is a Smell Alert, if I may ask?”

Kristy couldn't stop giggling. “You put something really gross, like garbage, outside the house where the burglar is bound to step in it. Then when he breaks in, you smell him before you even hear him. A Smell Alert!”

I had no intention of laughing. All I said was, “You know, a burglar
could
be a woman. It doesn't have to be a man.”

“Aw, Claud, it was a
joke,”
said Kristy. “Come on.”

“Well, I don't
have
any ideas.”

“Okay, okay, we'll keep thinking. Now I'm going to write out our code words. You guys
have
to keep these a secret. Keep the whole page a secret.
No
body should know our code…. I'm serious now.”

“Okay,” we agreed.

“Should we stick with what Stacey said?” asked Kristy.

“What did she say? I forget,” said Mary Anne.

“She said, ‘Have you found my red ribbon?'” I replied quickly, glad to be able to answer something.

“Right,” said Kristy. “And that means that there's some kind of trouble and the baby-sitter needs the police.”

“I think,” I said slowly, “that we should stick with what Stacey said, but that we should have a few more code words so we can give more information.”

“Yeah. In case there's a burglar listening in on the phone, the person who gets the phone call should answer
in code
to let the baby-sitter know her message was understood and that the friend knows where she's sitting and everything,” added Stacey.

“How about this for the answer?” suggested Mary Anne. “The person would say, ‘No, the blue
one.' It's simple, and it's still in code.”

“That's good,” said Kristy, but I could see her shiver at the very thought of a burglar listening in on her conversation.

“I think we should also have a way to let someone know whether we're in really
big
trouble,” said Stacey, “like if a burglar is in the house and we've actually seen him—or whether we just
think
there's trouble.”

“Yeah,” I replied. “That's important.”

“Okay,” said Kristy, “how about this: After the person who gets the call for help goes, ‘No, the blue one,' the baby-sitter goes, ‘Now I'm in for it,' if there's big trouble, or, ‘That's okay,' if she's not sure there's trouble?”

“All right,” we agreed.

“I sure hope I can keep all this straight,” I said.

“Let's practice,” Kristy suggested. “Claudia, let's say you're baby-sitting for David Michael at my house and you hear a noise at the window. What would you do?”

“I'd call Stacey,” I said.

“Let's hear your conversation. Remember, you don't know where the burglar is, if there is a burglar, so you have to use the code.”

“Okay … Okay, I'd pick up the phone and call Stace—”

“Ring! Ring! Ring!”
said Kristy, imitating the phone.

Stacey placed an imaginary receiver at her ear. “Hello?”

“Hi, Stace. It's Claud. Did you see my ribbon—”

“No.
Have
you
found
my
red
ribbon?” interrupted Kristy.

“No, I haven't,” I said.

“Claud!
Come on. Do it right.”

“I'm trying…. Okay. Ring, ring, ring.”

“Hello?” said Stacey.

“Hi, it's Claudia. How are you?”

“Not ‘How are you'!” cried Kristy. “Get to the point. You're not making a social call. You're scared to death!”

I sighed. “Hi, Stacey. It's me, Claudia. Have you … have you
found
my red ribbon?”

Silence. Then Stacey burst out laughing. “I forget what I'm supposed to say!”

Kristy looked ready to kill us. “Claud, call Mary Anne instead.”

“Okay. Ring, ring.”

“Hello?”

“Hi, Mary Anne. It's Claudia. Have you found my red ribbon?”

“No, I haven't.”

“No, the blue one!”
shouted Kristy. “Mary Anne,
you
made up this part of the code. You ought to know it.”

“I know. I just—I don't know. Start over, Claud.”

We practiced a while longer until we had the code pretty well memorized. Even so, Kristy told us that when we each had a copy of the code words, we should read them over once a day to make sure we didn't forget them. She is so bossy sometimes.

Later, as the girls were getting ready to leave my room, Mary Anne suddenly clapped her hand over her mouth. “Oh, no!” she exclaimed.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I just thought of something. What if my father hears about the Phantom Caller? I bet he won't let me baby-sit anymore.”

“But we decided we don't have to worry about the Phantom Caller,” I pointed out.

“I know, but if Dad finds out about our code words, forget it. It'll give him something to worry about. I don't think he's thought of robbers and stuff.”

“Maybe we should keep
all
this a secret from
all
our parents,” said Kristy. “You know how parents are. Mary Anne's right. They're big worry-warts. Let's just go on as if we never thought of any of these things today. Agreed?”

“Agreed!”

The emergency meeting of the Baby-sitters Club was over. But our adventure was just beginning.