“I’m carsick!” twelve-year-old Rosemary Greenwood complained to her best friend, Elisa Wilson. Their class was on a field trip to a museum and the bus was twenty minutes late. It was already 9:45 when the bus finally screeched to a halt in the parking lot. As everyone walked off the bus, Elisa noticed a strange looking man putting fliers in every mailbox in sight. As she pointed this out to Rosemary, he ran out of fliers and hopped into a shiny black limousine to start driving away.
A few minutes later, their teacher told everyone to quietly walk into the museum. Rosemary and Elisa decided to sneak out of the museum as soon as possible to follow the weird stranger. The more they thought about what he was up to, the more suspicious it seemed.
Once the class had had broken up into groups of two and started wandering around, the two girls headed towards an exit that was out of the teacher’s sight. They quietly snuck outside and ran to the nearest mailbox to find out what was inside. There was a bright orange slip of paper that said:
Put $500 In this
envelope by Tuesday
or you’ll be sorry…
Underneath was a white envelope with an address on it. “I’ll bet that address leads to the mans house!” Rosemary decided. “I suggest we use this address to find him then.’’ said Elisa. “How?” Rosemary asked. “Uh…we could walk,” Elisa finally replied as she shrugged her shoulders. “That would take a long time though!” Rosemary said. They were both quiet for a moment, and then they decided to ask around until they found someone with a map.
After twenty minutes with no luck they sat down on a bench, extremely frustrated. Suddenly, a yellow taxicab pulled up and the man inside rolled down his window. “ Do you two need a ride?” he asked. “Yes!” Rosemary exclaimed, but at the same time, Elisa said, “No!” “I’m not supposed to get into a car without an adult I know!”, she quickly whispered to her friend. “Well, do you have a better way to find the crazy guy?”, Rosemary hissed back, still whispering. “No”, she replied slowly. “Yes, we’ll need a ride to 4321 Mooney St. 92187, please.” Rosemary said sharply to the driver, to break the tension. Elisa noticed that the driver was starting to look worried. “Do your parents know that you’re here?” he said haltingly, as if suspicious of what the girls were up to, and he seemed to have an inkling about the fact that the girls were not exactly where they were supposed to be.
Quickly, Rosemary lied, “Oh, they’re getting coffee and snacks across the street and told us to meet them at our friend’s house, which is where the address we gave you leads to. They said to catch the next cab that pulls up!” Again, Elisa lied at the same time. “They dropped us off to let us do some schoolwork at the coffee shop!” she said. The man (also again,) looked even more suspicious about the girls. “What we meant is that our families went to the coffee shop across the street, and planned on going to our friend’s house afterwards, but at the last minute the parents decided to get snacks for us while we took a cab to our friend’s house. They said that they could walk over to meet us later.” Rosemary corrected with a quick smile. “On a school day?” the driver asked,sounding doubtful. “We…er…had a day off today!” Elisa said. “Okay,” said the driver,”but that will cost twenty dollars!”. “Where on earth are you going to get that from?” Elisa asked in a whisper. “I have my ways…” Rosemary replied mysteriously as she pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of her pocket and handed it to the man.
They got into the car and finally drove into a very, very nice neighborhood with huge houses. On the next corner was a giant mansion, with the address 4321 Mooney St..
As the cab pulled up to the house, Elisa whispered to Rosemary her plan to get into the house. “While the cab drives away, we’ll walk up to the front door and pretend to knock. As soon as the cab is out of sight, we can sneak over to the side gate and help each other over it. When we drove by, I saw a long vine that we could climb up. It leads to an open window on the third story of the house. We can sneak in there, find an empty room, and find out more about the man. If we get caught, the plan fails and we go home.” “Okay.” Rosemary said back quietly.
Meanwhile, their class field trip has just ended and both Elisa’s and Rosemary’s parents and their teacher have the police looking for them. The police have called a search team to begin exploring further than the museum.
Back at the mans house,”I think I found something!” Elisa said in a hushed tone. Suddenly, she heard continuing footsteps headed towards the room the girls had ended up in (which, luckily, happened to be the office). The girls dove behind an open closet and waited.
After about twenty seconds, a man appeared. he grabbed a laptop, stack of paper, and three empty filing folders before before leaving the room. Just before he left, Rosemary’s foot slipped and made a crumpling sound as it ripped a piece of paper in half. The man turned and looked around the room for a few seconds, and then left saying,”Must have been the paper shredder again. Its been making random noises all week. I really should replace it.” Merely five seconds later, a paper shredder Rosemary had noticed earlier in the far left corner of the room made an identical noise to the one Rosemary’s foot had made. “ARGH!!!” the man yelled, halfway down the hall. He came back, running, and slammed the door hard before continuing downstairs. “Humph!!!” he said triumphantly. Elisa, looking quite shocked, quietly continued telling Rosemary what she had found about him as soon as she assumed that he was out of earshot.
The man had threatened two thirds of California to vote for him in the Governor’s election, which had happened two weeks before and he had won. He had two letters from the president, claiming he ignored everything anyone asked him to fix, solve, or decide. His name was Clark Hammond and he planned to destroy homes, forests, and anything else “in his way” while building more mansions and other luxuries for himself. He also planned to buy as much waterfront property as he could so he could have it all to himself, and, if you haven’t already noticed, he was greedy and selfish.
When Rosemary was just about to read another file about his plans, she heard footsteps coming closer and closer and closer to the room again. she grabbed Elisa’s hand and they sprinted behind the curtains. Clark walked in (much calmer, now, than when he last left the room,) and immediately started typing something on the computer. “I think he’s printing more fliers to threaten people!” Elisa mouthed silently to Rosemary, “We should call the police!” Rosemary raised her eyebrows. “When he leaves,” she added quickly, still mouthing to her silently. “We’ll grab a telephone to call the police, like you said, but we need to sleep first and wait until tomorrow. If we do it today, he’ll catch us.” Rosemary decided.
That night, the girls found two extra bedrooms on the fourth floor and an elevator (in which they found out that there were seven floors including an attic and basement). From a reminder that appeared on the computer, they found that Clark would be on a trip to the Bahamas from 5:00 a.m. the next day to 9:00 p.m. two days later. Rosemary and Elisa were thrilled about this, because they would have the whole house to themselves for two days to investigate! They memorized where important rooms like the pantry (yes, there was an entire room for the pantry), the office, and the rooms that they slept in. The next day, the girls woke up earlier than Clark at 3:45 a.m. and snuck some food from the pantry.
While they hid in their rooms waiting for him to leave, they discovered that there was a bookshelf in each room and they were back-to-back. Elisa noticed an exceptionally large, green book. When she tried to pull it out, about halfway , it got stuck and she yanked harder. She heard a creaking sound and saw that it moved the bookshelf until it revealed a hole in the wall that was big enough to crawl through. Rosemary, who had been sitting on the other end of “her” bed, reading Clark’s information/watching the whole time, was surprised that she could now see through the wall into her friend’s “room”. They decided to use this if they figured out something overnight and needed to tell each other immediately. The next discovery they made, which was the most important one yet, was that they had a telephone in their rooms, and that Elisa was pretty good at memorizing words and numbers especially when it comes to important ones, like her neighbor’s phone number. I might’ve forgotten to tell you earlier that her neighbor is a police officer (YAY!). The next morning, the girls woke up and decided they had enough information to call the police. Their conversation with the cop began like this:
Elisa: “Hello? This is your neighbor, Elisa Wlilson and I need to tell you something extre—”
Police Officer: “WHAT?!!!!!! YOU’RE ELISA WILSON????? WE’VE HAD TONS OF PEOPLE LOOKING TO FIND YOU FOR TWO—”
Elisa: “Look, this is extremely important. I’ve found information about the governor at his hou—” Police Officer: “YOU’RE AT THE GOVERNOR’S HOUSE?!” Elisa: “Yes, I’m at the governor’s house and I’m with Rosemary Greenwood. Please just let me tell you what I know.”
Elisa did just that (with a little help from Rosemary).
The police soon came and had police in the Bahamas arrest Clark Hammond and immediately send him to California. After four long hours, a police car pulled up to the house and Clark Hammond climbed out, handcuffed. The police from the Bahamas went back, and the police from California took clark to jail. The girls were taken home, and their parents were so glad to have them back safely that they cried joyfully. Rosemary and Elisa were “heroes” for the state of California, but they knew that even the most average person could have done exactly what they had done and become a hero themselves. It was just their luck to have seen that “strange” man putting a flier into everyone’s mailboxes.
P.S. Don’t take this as a chance to go sneak out of every field trip you take to follow a random, innocent person on the street!!!
