Ann Martin - Claudia And the Clue in the Photograph

"Just that we're still wondering about him, since he shows up in so many of the pictures," I said hesitantly.

"We were also wondering about the lady with the baby carriage," Mary Anne added, her voice just a little shaky, "but now we're pretty sure she's innocent."

Sergeant Johnson smiled. "You're probably right about that," he said. "As for your friend Mr. Zibreski, well — " He leaned closer and lowered his voice. "He is under investigation." He leaned back.

"He is?" I asked.

Sergeant Johnson nodded. "This is just between us, understand?"

We all bobbed our heads and said, "Yes sir!"

"We don't really have anything on him," said Sergeant Johnson, "but we're suspicious, just like you. We searched all the employee offices, including his, but we didn't find a thing. Then he gave us an alibi that didn't check out with what your other photos proved about his being at the bank on Sunday. So we searched his apartment, too. Nothing there, either." Sergeant Johnson scratched his head. "Zibreski's been completely cooperative, but somehow we think there's something fishy about him. But there's no sign of any irregularities in his banking accounts. What we really need is a picture of him carrying something out of the bank that afternoon. A suitcase, for example. Something he could have put all that money into. You don't have anything like that, do you?" I thought for a minute and shook my head.

"Without that,” said Sergeant Johnson,

frowning, "and without a definite time frame for the pictures you took, we really can't prove a thing."

Time frame. Time frame. My thoughts were racing. "We'll keep trying to find something,” I said.

"Good, good," he said, standing up. I stood up, too, and so did Mary Anne and Stacey. I realized that our little meeting had ended.

Sergeant Johnson saw us to the door and sent us off with a pleasant good-bye. It seemed as though we had a real friend at the police station, and that was reassuring. But as soon as we walked out of the building, I started to feel nervous again about Mr. Zibreski. I looked all around, wondering if he had followed us, and if he knew we were talking to the police about him. Mary Anne and Stacey were glancing over their shoulders, too, so I figured they were thinking the same thing.

"Maybe he really is dangerous," said Mary Anne, and I knew she was talking about Mr. Zibreski. "I'd feel safer if we were back at your house, Claud."

We raced back to my house, convinced, once again, that Mr. Zibreski was at our heels. I was still thinking over what Sergeant Johnson had said about needing a time frame, and by the time we all pounded up the stairs to my

room I'd had an idea. I threw Mary Anne's pictures down on my desk and then pulled out all of the other bank pictures and added them to the pile. "Let’s look at these again, and see what we can find in each of them that might help us tell time."

"Huh?" asked Stacey.

"I know what she means," said Mary Anne. "Like, if there's a clock in the background or something," she explained to Stacey, showing her a picture that featured a dock.

"Or if the shadows are falling a certain way," said Stacey, catching on. She picked up another print and showed it to us. "See? This one must have been taken later than the one Mary Anne is holding."

"Exactly!" I said. "So, let’s put them all in order." We settled down to work, spreading out the pictures on the floor and sorting them into piles. Some of them showed the dock. Some showed the lighted window. Some showed Mr. Zibreski walking toward the bank, and others showed him heading away from it. And lots of them showed the woman with the baby carriage, who walked up and down in front of the bank, sat down on a bench for a few shots, and then seemed to leave the area.

Eventually, we had them arranged in an order that made sense to us. Then I took the pile, straightened the pictures, and flipped through them.

"It’s like a movie!" squealed Mary Anne.

"Do it again," said Stacey, eagerly.

I flipped through the pictures again, a little slower this time. Since they, weren't all taken from the same spot it wasn't exactly like a flip book, but you could definitely get an idea of the action. We watched as Mr. Zibreski appeared from the right, crossed paths with the woman with the baby carriage, and disappeared. The light in the bank's window went on while the woman with the baby carriage paraded in front of the bank, sat down on the bench, and then vanished. Then the light in the window went off, and Mr. Zibreski reappeared and headed to the left. The dock that showed in some of the pictures kept track of the time throughout the whole thing. "Whoa!" said Stacey.

"Whoa is right," I said. "This is awesome!"

"It looks like Mr. Zibreski gees into the bank, turns on that light, stays a while, and then leaves," said Mary Anne, breathlessly. "This is proof!" She paused. "Isn't it?"

"Well, no," I admitted. "It’s not proof that he robbed the bank. But it does seem to prove that he went inside that day, between one o'clock and one-thirty."

'That doesn't necessarily mean anything," said Stacey. "He could just be a workaholic, like my dad."

We flipped through the pictures about a hundred more ,times. Then we did it some more, for the other members of the BSC. (They arrived for our meeting to find the three of us still sitting on the floor.) Everybody was pretty impressed by what we'd done, but we agreed that there was no point in going back to Sergeant Johnson, since the pictures still didn't show Mr. Zibreski carrying anything. If he'd really stolen that money, he would have had to carry it out of the bank, after all. The bank had been thoroughly searched, and the money wasn't inside.

"You'd better hide those," said Jessi at one point, gesturing at the pictures. "I mean, what if Mr. Zibreski really is following you? He'd love to get his hands on them."

Later that night, as I prepared to go to bed, I kept replaying Jessi's comment in my mind. At first I tried to convince myself that there was no way Mr. Zibreski could really be after me, but the more I thought about it, the more scared I became.

Here's what I did before I went to bed: First, I hid the pictures beneath my most-unfavorite clothes (my gym uniform, for one!) in my bottom drawer. Then, I rigged up my own,

patent-pending super-alert z-alarm. I ran strings from my bed to the door of my room, and I tied old film canisters all along them so they'd jangle if they were touched. Then I set an old suitcase full of books against the door, figuring that it would make a loud thump if it was knocked over. I put a jar full of marbles next to the suitcase, so if the suitcase fell over it would knock the marbles all over the floor and make walking impossible.

Guess what? The alarm worked perfectly! But it wasn't Mr. Zibreski who set it off.

It was me.

I got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and walked straight into every one of my own traps. First I stubbed my toe — hard! — on the suitcase, and a second later I was slipping and sliding all over the room on those marbles, while the film cans jangled away. I must have looked pretty funny. Someday maybe I'll laugh about it. Someday, when the bruises have disappeared!

Chapter 12.

Does Jessi sound frustrated and overwhelmed in that note of hers from the dub notebook? Well, that’s because she was. And with good reason.

I missed out on most of the chaos, because I was home cramming for an extremely important math test that was scheduled for Monday. It was going to count for a big part of my grade, and if I didn't pass it I had the feeling my parents would never let me touch a camera again. They were already beginning to suspect that my photography course was much, much more important to me than my math class. They were right, of course, but I had to show them that I could still pass math.