The Black Jacket Mystery

about it later!”
     

Suspicious • 3
     
    OUTSIDE, THE EARLY darkness had settled, but the kitchen of the small farmhouse was warm and cozy as Trixie and Honey came hurrying in from upstairs. Mrs. Belden was taking the roast out of the oven, with Brian’s help, and Mart was lounging idly at the end of the sink, watching.
    “That’s it. You’ve got it now. Watch out you don’t let it slide off the platter.” Mart was superintending.
    “It’s a poor job that can’t afford a boss,” Trixie confided to Honey loudly with a nod toward Mart.
    Mart snickered. “Come on, small fry. Get moving. It’s all we men can do to keep from fainting from starvation. Where’s the silverware and stuff? Get crackin’, gals!”
    Honey giggled and started to pick up the silverware to carry it into the dining room, but Trixie tossed her head defiantly. “If you’re so hungry, why don’t you lend Moms a hand, instead of posing around in your new sweater, unconscious?” She flounced into the dining room with the cups and saucers.
    “Me do menial work?” Mart barked after her. “Seems to me you were the best table-setter at the ranch last Christmas,” Honey said mildly, flashing him a smile.
    “Hey! So I was!” Mart stuck out his chest.
    “Show Moms how good you were!” Brian laughed, and before Mart could back away, his big brother had deftly brought some hot plates from the warming oven and thrust them into Mart’s hands. “Here!” Mart did an impromptu juggling act trying to keep from dropping the stack of hot plates. “Ow! They’re hot!”
    Mrs. Belden looked up from decorating the meat platter with tiny sprigs of parsley from her kitchen window garden. “Mart!” she called sternly. “Stop clowning, this minute, and take those plates into the dining room!”
    But Mart was still shifting the plates from one hand to the other, trying to find a cool spot. Brian laughed, and Honey called anxiously, “Don’t drop them!”
    Mart made a dash for the dining room but collided with Trixie and lost his grip on the plates.
    Down they went with a crash.
    Mart covered his eyes and turned his head so he wouldn’t see the wreckage. “Yipe! There goes my next month’s allowance!” he moaned.
    Trixie’s snicker made him move his hands from his eyes and look around. Nobody seemed worried or shocked. In fact, there were grins on Trixie’s and Brian’s faces. He stole a quick look at the floor and grunted with surprise.
    “Hey, none of them got busted!” he exclaimed.
    “Of course not.” Trixie’s voice was pitying. “Those are Moms’s new plastic dishes. They don’t break.”
    “Why didn’t somebody tell me that? Here I was getting a nervous breakdown—” Mart was aggrieved.
    His mother interrupted. “You’ll get worse than that, young man, if you don’t pick up those plates, wash and dry them, and get them onto the table by the time Dad comes in and says—”
    “When do we eat?” Peter Belden stuck his head in from the dining room.
    The interruption was so well-timed that everyone but Mr. Belden himself broke out laughing—even Mart, who was hurriedly gathering up the plates.
    “Did I say something funny?” Mr. Belden asked his wife, perplexed by the reaction.
    “Not funny.” She laughed. “But you timed it just right. Were ready now, if Brian will carry in the roast. And no more jokes, Brian. Girls, you may bring in the salad and the vegetables.”
    Bobby was already seated at the table, waiting more or less patiently. He had learned a long time ago to keep out of the kitchen when a meal was being prepared. It was no fun being stepped on or tripped over, and it always seemed to be his fault when it happened, or so Trixie claimed, in spite of his protests.
    “I’m starved,” he told his parents plaintively. “I got a big empty place and it says ‘grr-r-r!’ at me.” He patted his fat little stomach soothingly.
    “Just a couple of minutes more, lamb,” Moms told him. “And we have a big surprise for you. Just watch the door.”
    Brian marched in and set down the meat platter with a flourish in front of his father.
    “Ah!” Mr. Belden beamed down at the roast as he took up his great-grandfather’s horn-handled carving set and gave the knife a last whip across the sharpener. “That’s what I’d call a fine roast of beef!”
    Bobby stared at the meat with a scowl. “If that’s the susprise, I like chicken better,” he said in an aggrieved voice. “That ol’ roast beef