The Hudson River Mystery

papers into the hallway, so it was a moment before she could respond. ”That’s just the point, Di,” she said, stuffing a sheet of equations back into her locker. ”We’ve all been swimming in that river. A lot of us have gone sailing and fishing and iceboating there, too. But most of all, we’ve always thought of the Hudson as, well, as a thing of beauty, if you don’t mind my getting poetic about it. We’ve never considered it as a threat!”
    ”Your English teacher will be impressed,” Jim said dryly. ”But I think I’ll need more proof before I’ll be impressed with your shark story.”
    ”I don’t think you really want proof,” said Trixie ominously.
    Di’s pretty face grew apprehensive. ”What do you mean?”
    ”I mean, do we have to wait until someone gets killed before we believe in the killer?”
    ”Oh, don’t say that,” Di wailed.
    ”Don’t be so gullible, Di,” said Jim. ”You know Trixie’s hyperactive imagination as well as I do.” He bent down to pick up an old test paper Trixie had missed. ”Anyway, Ms. Schoolgirl Sha-mus, what do you propose to do about this so-called killer?”
    Trixie slammed her locker shut just as the first warning bell rang. Briefly she told Jim and Di about getting more information from Thea Van Loon. Then the trio scurried off to their respective homerooms.
    As it turned out, Jim was wrong about one thing. None of Trixie’s teachers were overly impressed with her performance that gray Monday morning. She had grabbed the wrong notebook, after all, and goofed miserably when her turn came up in math class. In English class, her mind drifted back to the shark; when she was called upon, she replied absently, ”The shark did it.” Only then did she realize that the rest of the class had been discussing the whale in Moby Dick!
    To top things off, her history teacher chose that day to give a surprise quiz. At least, it came as a surprise to Trixie. I hope Dan and Brian are doing better on their chemistry test than I’m doing on this, she thought as she guessed blindly on one question after another. Oddly enough, one of the questions had to do with the old Vikings’ fishing voyages. I can’t get away from the subject, Trixie thought with a rueful grin.
    One hour in which sharks did not come up was lunch period. Trixie entered the cafeteria with the resolution to avoid that topic, and she stuck to it. As if by unspoken agreement, none of the other Bob-Whites brought it up, either. Instead, the discussion centered around the previous night’s storm, the upcoming party the Bob-Whites were planning for Halloween, and Mart’s habit of disrupting the Belden canning rituals with his word tricks.
    ”Oh, Mart,” giggled Di, ”you’re so smart at everything else. How can you be such a klutz in the kitchen?”
    ’”My specialty, Diana, is gormandizing preserved and pickled delectables,” he replied. ”The actual concocting of such delicacies is better left to someone with a more mundane turn of mind. Your friend Beatrix, for example, whose mind is eminently suited to vegetables.”
    ”What was that first thing you said?” Di asked. ”You’re going to be some kind of specialist? I thought Brian—”
    ”What he’s trying to say,” Trixie said sweetly, ”is that he eats like a pig and has a brain like one, too! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to put a call through to his feeding trough.” Before Mart could get in the last word, she gulped down the last of her tuna fish sandwich and went tearing down the hall toward the pay phone.
    When Trixie came back to the Bob-Whites’ table a few minutes later, it was with a slower pace and a longer face. She sat down by Honey and began gloomily peeling a banana.
    ”Something wrong?” Honey asked in her sympathetic way.
    ”Oh, I guess it’s not the end of the world,” said Trixie. ”It’s just that Moms has eighty tons of tomatoes that she claims will rot overnight if Mart and I don’t help her right after school. So we can’t go see Thea today, Honey.”
    ”We’ll go tomorrow,” Honey promised. ”Maybe Thea heard you were coming and left a few bushels of tomatoes on our doorstep,” Brian said.
    Trixie made a face at him and retorted, ”You’re just jealous you’ll miss out on all the fun. Where are you disappearing to after school, anyway?”
    ”I told you. That’s why I drove my jalopy to school this morning instead of taking the bus. Loyola and I have to drive into White Plains to