Ann Martin: Claudia And the Clue in the Photograph

I popped over to Mary Anne's, and within seconds I had done my job and broken the tie. (I picked Buddy's picture, since there were already about seven pictures of the triplets all set to go into the album.) Then I sat down and started leafing through the rejected pictures, just to make sure the "selection committee" hadn't missed any of the ones I thought we should use.

Most of them were rejects for a reason. All the thumb ones and all the totally black ones were in there, plus a few of those "missing-head" shots of Charlotte's. But then I came upon a series of pictures that made me gasp

with surprise. Without saving a word to anybody, I grabbed five or six of them and jumped up from the table. "I'm taking these," I told Jessi. "Gotta run!"

Jessi told me later that as she watched me head out the door she knew, just knew that I had found another clue to the mystery. But she could also see that I was in a big hurry, so she didn't stop me to ask questions. Instead, she turned back to helping the kids complete the album and compose a short letter to Dawn. She knew she'd be hearing about what I'd discovered soon enough, and meanwhile, there was a project to finish.

Chapter 13.

Jessi was right. I was in a big hurry. I ran all the way home from Mary Anne's, clutching that handful of photos. Then I pounded upstairs to my room and sat right down at my desk. I turned on the overhead lamp for better light, grabbed my loupe, and prepared to take a closer look.

Up until that afternoon, I was sure I had seen every bank photo taken that Sunday. But now I was looking at pictures I hadn't seen before. These weren't pictures of the bank's facade, or even pictures of me taking pictures of the bank's facade. These were pictures of a different part of the bank, one I hadn't been thinking about before. The ATM. Actually, the pictures were supposed to be of Suzi. I think Buddy had taken them. Unfortunately, only Suzi's right shoulder had made it into the picture. But the ATM had been captured perfectly.

What’s an ATM? It’s an Automatic Teller

Machine, one of those places where you can get cash by inserting your bank card into the machine, and then punching in your personal code number. And the ATM at the Stoneybrook Bank is around the corner from the main entrance, which is why I hadn't given it a second thought. Before now, that is.

What had caught my eye, over at Mary Anne's, was that out of six pictures of the ATM, five featured one woman. I could tell she had been standing at the machine for quite a while, because it always took Buddy a long time to set up and shoot each picture. That made me suspicious.

Normally, it only takes a couple of minutes to withdraw cash from those machines. I know because I've seen my mom do it plenty of times. Practically every time we're downtown together she ends up making a stop there. "I don't know where the money goes," she always sighs. "Didn't I just take out some cash yesterday?" She inserts her card, punches in her number (it’s my birthdate she once told me, even though it’s supposed to be a secret), and waits, tapping her foot impatiently, until the machine spits out her fifty dollars.

I've always thought ATMs were pretty cool, the way the money comes out just like magic.

Anyway, I bent to take a better look at the

photos, and what I saw made me take a deep breath. Each picture showed the woman pulling a stack of bills out of the ATM. Apparently, as she pulled out each stack of bills, she set them on the little shelf while she punched in more numbers, because once I arranged the pictures in order, I could see the pile on the shelf growing and growing. In the last picture, the stack of bills looked really, really thick.

I sat back and let out that deep breath in a big sigh. Suddenly, there was a new angle to the bank mystery.

What if that woman had somehow rigged the machine, so that it would give her as much money as she wanted? (Usually, there's a limit to how much you can take out in one day. Plus, you have to have the money in your account to begin with.) And if those bills were big ones, like hundreds, that meant she could have withdrawn thousands of dollars! That could mean that Mr. Zibreski was innocent after all. Maybe he really was just a hardworking banker, and maybe my friends and I had been wasting our time investigating him. I picked up the loupe again and studied the woman more carefully, but it was hopeless. Her back was to the camera, and there was nothing unusual about the way she was dressed — in a jogging suit and running shoes — that would help me identify her.

Suddenly, I felt as though I needed to show the pictures to somebody else. Somebody who could help me figure out what they might mean, and what we should do about it. I grabbed the phone and dialed Mary Anne's number.

"Mary Anne, are you guys almost done?" I asked, without even saying hello first.

"Actually, we just finished. Mal's on her way out the door with Nicky and Vanessa, and Kristy and Jessi are about to walk the other kids home."'

"Great!" I said. "Tell them that I want you all to come by my house as soon as you can. I have big news."

"What?" asked Mary Anne, sounding excited. "Did you crack the case?"

"Well, maybe," I said cautiously. "I think I have some important new information." "We'll be there as soon as we can," she said. Just as I was about to hang up, I thought of something. "Mary Anne!" I said. "Wait! Can you bring the finished album — and all the pictures that didn't go into it? I want to look at every photo one last time."

Mary Anne promised to bring every single picture, and we hung up. I went back to examining the photos on my desk. By the time my friends showed up, about fifteen minutes later, I had convinced myself that the woman

at the ATM was the true bank robber.

Kristy turned up first. "Mary Anne says you found a new clue," she said. "That’s great! What is it?"

I showed her the pictures, and explained my theory about how the woman must have rigged the machine.

"Or maybe somebody else rigged it," Kristy said thoughtfully. "There could be a gang at work here, you know."

“Rigged what?" asked Jessi, who had just come into the room. I explained all over again, showing her the pictures. Then Mary Anne and Mal arrived. By then I was tired of explaining, so I let Kristy do it.

They pored over the pictures, taking turns with the loupe until everybody had seen enough. "Did you bring the other pictures?" I asked Mary Anne.

"Right here," she said, showing me the shopping bag she'd lugged over.

"Let's dump them out and look them all over," Kristy suggested. "Who knows what else we might have missed?"

We sat down on the floor with the pile of pictures and started to sort through them. "You know," said Kristy, while we were working, "I saw this article in the paper about people who were rigging ATMs* I can't remember exactly what they did, though."

"I remember!" said Jessi. "It was really pretty ingenious. They put this fake ATM into a mall, and they rigged it so it would record the codes people punched in. Then the robbers just made up copies of the cards, went to real ATM machines, and withdrew the people's money by using their secret codes."

"Did they get away with it?" I asked. Even though I knew what they'd done was wrong, I couldn't help admiring how tricky they'd been.

"Nope, the police caught them," said Kristy. "I remember that part." She picked up a photo. "Hey, here's another picture of that woman, and in this one you can almost see her face!"

"I found one, too," I said. "Let’s start putting them in sequence. Would you look at the pile of bills she has in this picture?"

Mal studied the print. "Wow," she said. "Just think, if every one of those bills really is a hundred-dollar bill we're looking at a lot of money."