The Case of the Old Man in the Mailbox Read online

  Chapter 3

  Jingle All the Way

  “Well, at least now we are pretty sure that someone else’s mail is coming here on purpose. And based on that someone’s immediate reaction—running—when spotted, combined with the trajectory of that run—straight back behind my house—and the ease with which he avoided detection once he reached his target destination, we can reasonably assume that that someone likes to hang out in my backyard woods,” Scooter said matter-of-factly.

  AJ grinned as he added, “Yeah, someone named Stanley P. Mathisen!”

  Leave it to AJ to state the obvious.

  I had so many questions running through my mind. If this guy lived in Scooter’s woods, how was he mailing letters to his friend in Chicago? And how did he travel to whatever body of water was in that picture? And what did he do with that huge fish he caught? These questions did not have obvious answers, so I asked one that I thought needed to be answered real quick: “So what do we do now?”

  “Well so far we have only seen him run into the woods, right?” Scooter asked.

  AJ and me answered in unison, “Right.”

  “So, technically, the only reason we think he stayed in the woods is because that is where we last saw him, correct?”

  “Right, Scooter,” I said, “But we have heard stories from kids on the bus about an old man who roams those woods at night. I know we laughed them off as ghost stories, but maybe those stories are true and this is the guy they saw.” I tapped the picture of Stanley Mathisen still on the computer monitor for a little extra emphasis.

  “I see where you are going with this, Tyler, but all we really know for sure is that he comes around my house to get his mail and he probably knows the woods pretty well because he uses them as an escape route.” Scooter pointed out into the backyard. “For all we know, he could be staying anywhere, and he just happens to get from Point A to Point B through those woods.”

  “And he just happens to have a thing for Scooter’s mailbox!” AJ said, amusing himself.

  Not giving AJ the satisfaction of even a snicker, I went on, “Well, let me ask you this, Scooter.”

  “Yeah?”

  “The next housing development is—what—a quarter-mile away? And it’s all woods between here and there. I know we have spent plenty of time back in those woods over the years, but wouldn’t you concede that the Titanic could be hidden somewhere in those woods and we wouldn’t even know it?”

  “So what’s your point?” Scooter was beginning to sound frustrated.

  “My point is that he could be living in your woods and all those ‘stories’ could be true. That’s all I am saying!”

  “And all I am saying is, let’s not jump to any major conclusions yet. Let’s go with what we know.”

  A little side note: That phrase is one of my pet peeves. It seems like Scooter’s favorite thing to say is “Let’s go with what we know.” It drives me nuts, but he is usually right. I try and connect the dots way too quickly and then find out that some of the dots were actually crumbs from breakfast. Scooter, on the other hand, likes to collect his thoughts. Sometimes I just wish his thoughts were a little closer to each other so it wouldn’t take so long to do the collecting.

  AJ, man of action that he is, was getting antsy, too. “So what do we do now? We know he uses your mailbox. We could boobytrap your mailbox with some paintballs or something, so when he opens it up he’ll be covered in paint. And we could use really bright paint, so we can find him even if he lives deep in the woods!”

  The mental picture gave all of us a chuckle.

  “There are a couple problems with your plan, AJ,” Scooter said. “Firstly, the mailman has to get in the mailbox. Secondly, we would have to make sure my parents don’t check the mail while the box is boobytrapped. If either the mailman or one of my parents stumbled into our trap, I am sure I would be grounded until I graduate college. And besides, I don’t think Mr. Mathisen will be checking the mail anytime soon. He was almost caught the last time, and I am sure he will be lying low for a while.”

  “Well, I don’t know how, but I would really like to catch up with Mr. Mathisen,” I jumped in, “if for no other reason than because I want to ask him where he sleeps at night and how he managed to avoid being seen getting into your mailbox until yesterday.”

  “Yes, I agree. I have no hard feelings toward him. His use of our mailbox is no big deal, either. I think my juvenile curiosity is the sole motivation for wanting to find him.”

  “Did you just say ‘juvenile curiosity’?” I asked with a chuckle. “Scoot, you are a nerd.”

  “Yeah, and how about ‘sole motivation’?” AJ grinned. “Sounds like an Eighties band.”

  “Sorry, guys,” Scooter chuckled, “I got carried away there with the vocab we’re working on in English class. All I am saying is, my curiosity is killing me. Things just don’t quite add up, and when things don’t add up, it eats at me.”

  If only he knew how many more times things wouldn’t add up and how much trouble his curiosity would get us in.

  “We have two options,” he continued, “either we go and find him, or we give him a reason to find us.”

  “Well, as I said before, that’s a lot of woods to search,” I said. “It would be like finding a needle in a haystack when the needle’s trying to hide from you. So what could we do to make him want to find us?”

  We all just sat there in silence for a while. Then AJ spoke up. “I guess we could make flyers telling Mr. Mathisen we have his mail and post them on telephone poles throughout the neighborhood?” I’m not sure if he was trying to be funny or serious.

  “Actually, I have a better idea!” Scooter said as he stood up, and before we knew it, he was out the door and headed down the stairs. When AJ and me got downstairs, we found Scooter rummaging through the closet, pulling yarn out of his mother’s crotchet kit. He looked up as we neared.

  Scooter continued, “I don’t know why he would come back around this house after the scare AJ gave him, but I just have this hunch that he will. So if and when he does we will know it.”

  AJ and me looked at each other a little puzzled, but Scooter had a little half-smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye, which told us that he was up to something. It’s the face he always gets when he has a “spectacular brainchild,” as he would say.

  Scooter went on to explain his plan. Then, it took us a little over an hour to set it all up. Scooter first ransacked his mother’s yarn closet (he said she had so much yarn she would never even miss it), and then we went to the garage and dug out the Christmas decorations. Scooter found a huge wreath made entirely of jingle bells, and he had AJ and me take it apart by unraveling the large wire that held all the bells in place. It was kind of fun until Scooter informed us that we would have to put it back together later. Then, he said, “Off to the backyard!”

  Let me explain a little bit about the layout of Scooter’s yard so you understand the plan. The front yard is a very small patch of grass next to the driveway leading up to the garage. There is an eight-foot strip of grass that runs down each side of the house and connects to the backyard. But once you get to the backyard, you are now standing on Mr. Parks’ pride and joy, what he likes to call “The Lawn.”

  We like to call it our football field. It is almost a perfect rectangle of grass that runs the full length of the back of the house and then some, perfect for football—we just make the end zone lines where the house ends.

  The yard goes back from the house about fifty feet before you hit the treeline. So you can guess where out-of-bounds is. (“That was a nice diving catch, but sorry, you were out of bounds! Here, let me unwrap you from those fir branches.”) Anyway, if you are standing on the back porch you can see that the first thirty feet of trees are mostly fir and madrone, so the woods aren’t very thick at first, but then after that you start to get into much more dense pine and fir, where the sun barely gets through, let alone anything else.

  On the right and left, you will f
ind what they call green-belts, which are like fences made of trees and bushes. They are about thirty feet wide and separate Scooter’s yard from his neighbors’ yards. Unfortunately, Mr. Parks has let them stay natural for way too long, especially the green-belt over on the left side of the yard. Over the years, blackberry bushes have gotten a mind of their own and basically exploded from the treeline and moved all the way up to the edge of the lawn.

  So now, instead of relatively painless trees and shrubs, there is a wall of thorny blackberries that runs the full width of the football end zone. In some places, the blackberry vines are taller than I am! Although they’re great for picking berries in the summer, it stinks when you have to mow the lawn on that edge, not to mention running out the back of the end zone playing football.

  So back to the yarn and jingle bells. Scooter took us out into the woods among the fir and madrone and had us weave the yarn in and out and around all the trees at about knee level, so if you were to look down at the woods from above, it would look like a gigantic spiderweb. We used up two big rolls of yarn, starting at the front treeline and going back as far back as we could without running into the thicker woods. AJ went to the right until he ran up against the neighbors’ woods, and I went as far left as I could without poking myself on some blackberries.

  Then Scooter came in behind us and tied jingle bells to pieces of yarn throughout the woods, so there were jingle bells hanging everywhere about eighteen inches off the ground. Oh, you should have seen it!

  Standing on the lawn, looking at the woods, AJ spoke up, “I see now! In the dark you won’t be able to see the yarn, and nobody can enter your woods without making a whole lot of Christmas noise!”

  I said, “And I don’t know if you planned it this way, Scooter, but I think we put the yarn just high enough that a grown man will trip on it but any critters will pass under it without making a sound.”

  “That’s right,” Scooter said. “Tonight I’ll hang out at my window and be the lookout while you two sit on the back porch with the light out. The second we hear jingle bells, you two flick on the back porch light, which should pretty well illuminate the whole backyard and most of the woods. If we see him, then you two go chase him. If you can’t catch him, at least I should be able to see where he goes from my lookout window.

  “I’ll try and help give directions the best I can from up there,” he said, pointing up at his second-story bedroom window. “We’ll use my walkie-talkies to coordinate our efforts.”

  AJ and me agreed it sounded like a great plan and we decided to meet in the backyard after supper at around 8 p.m. It would start getting dark around then, and I knew by that time I would have the dishes done. Or better yet, somehow trick my sister into doing them. Either way, the date was set for eight.