Game Store Mystery by Gertrude Chandler Warner Read Free Book Online Page A

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CHAPTER 7
Another Robbery
    The Aldens raced out the front door and across the parking lot. But the noise they were making alerted the intruder, and he dashed away in the opposite direction.
    All they could see was that he was tall and thin and wore jeans and a jacket. He ran around behind the mall. The children hurried after him. But when they reached the back alley, they found it deserted.
    “Where did he go?” Henry asked, glancing left, then right.
    The intruder was nowhere in sight.
    “Where do all these doors go?” Benny asked. “Could he have gone inside one of them?”
    “I think those doors all lead to the different stores in the mall,” Jessie said as she rested against the brick building. “He could have gone inside one of them.”
    Henry tried the door closest to them. “It’s locked,” he said.
    The children continued down the alley, trying each door along the way. But they were all locked.
    There was a fence at the end of the alley. The intruder may have climbed the fence, or, if he had a key, he may have gone inside one of the doors. Either way, he was gone.
    Disappointed, the Aldens turned around and walked back around to the front of the mall.
    “Did anyone get a good look at him?” Jessie asked.
    “No. It was too dark,” Violet said.
    Queenie was pacing back and forth on the sidewalk. “My goodness,” she said when she saw the children. “I heard you all go running out of the store, but I didn’t know where you went. I was worried.”
    “We’re sorry,” Violet said. “We didn’t mean to worry you. But we saw somebody pulling letters off that sign. We wanted to see if we could catch him.”
    “And did you catch him?” Queenie asked hopefully.
    Benny shook his head. “He was too fast.”
    “Which letters did he take this time?” Jessie asked.
    The group walked over so they could read the sign. The children remembered that the sign was supposed to say STOP IN AND SAY HELLO TO QUEENIE AT THE GAME SPOT. Now it said STOP IN AND SAY HEL_O TO _ _EENIE AT THE GA_E SPOT.
    “There’s an L, a Q, a U, and an M missing,” Violet said.
    “Hey, what’s this?” Benny reached for a piece of brown cloth that was stuck to a thorn on one of the rosebushes in front of the sign.
    “Looks like part of a pocket,” Jessie said as she fingered the cloth.
    “Do you suppose our intruder could have lost it in his rush to get out of here?” Henry asked.
    “Maybe,” Violet said.
    Benny handed the cloth to Henry, and he put it in his pocket.
    The next day, when the Aldens arrived at the Game Spot to finish up the painting, they were greeted with more bad news.
    “The jewelry store was broken into last night,” Raina told the children.
    “Oh, no,” Jessie groaned. “Not another robbery!” She noticed Queenie and Carter standing off to the side talking with George. She moved closer to hear what they were saying.
    “Why is this thief targeting my mall?” George demanded as he banged his fist on the table. “There haven’t been any other robberies in town. All the robberies have been here.”
    “And they’ve all involved safes,” Carter pointed out. “I wonder if there’s something wrong with these safes? Maybe we should get Tony to come out here and take a look.”
    “Was there anything else taken from the jewelry store?” Henry asked.
    “No,” Queenie replied. “It was just like the robbery here and the one at the Java Café. There was no forced entry. Nothing else out of place. The store owner came in this morning and found the safe door standing wide open and its contents emptied.”
    “It sounds like whoever the thief is, he’s good at picking locks,” Jessie said. “He was able to get into the stores, and then he was able to get into the safes.”
    “Well, he may not have had to pick locks to get into the stores,” Queenie said. “He may have been able to get in with keys. Remember, I told you I was missing that key? It turns out Sandra next door was also missing a