The sign for Sam’s Scrap Yard stuck out of a tall dirt hill. Wild leafy vines crawled along the dirt and snaked around the sign. A tangle of watermelons, cantaloupes, pumpkins, cucumbers, and zucchinis covered the hill.
The children rode their bikes past the hill into the scrap yard. There were old cars everywhere. Most were missing windows and tires. Some had no doors, others no bumpers. Many seemed more rust than paint.
“Woof! Woof!” A large dog came from around an old school bus.
“Cat!” called a deep voice. “Stay!” The dog stopped. A man hurried around the bus and stood next to the dog. He looked a bit like Spooky the Scarecrow with his baggy pants and rumpled shirt.
“Your dog’s name is Cat?” Jessie asked the man.
“Yup. Already got a dog named Dog. Cat likes to bark, which makes him a good watchdog. But he wouldn’t hurt a flea. Anyway, I’m Sam. Can I help you?”
Jessie handed Sam one of Duffy’s For Sale photos. “Do you remember this place?” she asked.
“Yup, I cleared every bit of that junk.” Sam squinted at the photo. “This doesn’t show that old van I had to haul.”
“A van?” Jessie said. Her heart beat faster. Had they found the fake armored car? “Is it still here?” she asked.
Sam scratched his stubbly beard. “Should be around someplace. Let’s take a look.” He led them around cars and trucks, through mountains of rusty fences and metal beams.
As they walked, Violet asked him about the vegetables growing out front.
“That’s the darndest thing,” said Sam. “Those hills were always an eyesore—full of weeds and all sorts of litter. But this spring, little plants came sprouting up. Every morning I came to work and found more and more plants. I figured the wind blew in a bunch of old seeds.” He laughed. “I sure do like the look of all that greenery.” Suddenly, Sam stopped. “There,” he said, “there she is.”
The van was a sorry sight. The metal trim was ripped off the sides. Gone were the tires and doors, bumpers and hood.
“What happened to it?” Henry asked.
“People come here looking for parts to fix their cars,” explained Sam. “They’ll take a mirror from one car and a door handle from another.”
Henry examined small holes poked everywhere on the outside of the van. “Nail holes,” he said. “The thief hammered the metal panels right into the sides of this van.”
Violet peered inside. “There’s green paint on the steering wheel,” she said. “The thief touched it while he was painting.” She looked closely at the paint. “I think I see fingerprints!”
Jessie examined the back of the driver’s seat. The plastic headrest was torn. Pieces of yellow foam crumbled out. A few long blond hairs were caught in the jagged plastic. She remembered what Sally had said, that the man who rented Duffy’s Garage had a long blond ponytail. Jessie touched the strands.
“These aren’t real hair. That ponytail was a wig. And these,” she touched a couple of black hairs caught in the torn leather, “might be hairs from the black wig he wore when he robbed the bank.” She started to pull the hairs out.
“Stop!” warned Henry. “We mustn’t touch any of this. It’s all evidence.” He read detective books and he knew that it was best not to touch anything that the police might need to solve a case. He saw that the floor of the van was littered with old newspapers, paint rags, fast food, and candy wrappers. Henry wanted to climb in and look through everything. But he knew he couldn’t. “Let’s go,” he said. “We have to tell the police what we’ve found.”
Chief Morgan sat at the front desk typing up a police report. Next to him was a plate of cookies, with a sign that said: Fresh baked zucchini cookies—help yourself.
“We found it!” cried Benny. “We found the fake armored car!”
In a rush, the Aldens told the chief about everything they’d found—the van and the metal panels nailed on to make it look like an armored car, the stranger with the blond ponytail who’d rented Duffy’s Garage …
As they talked, the chief waved over two detectives who wrote down the children’s information. One of them hurried off to Sam’s Scrap Yard while the other went to Duffy’s Garage.
“Should we wait here,” asked Jessie, “in case the detectives have questions for us?”
“They won’t be back for a while,” said the chief. “I’ll call your house when I learn anything. Meanwhile, take a few cookies with you.” He pushed the plate toward them. “My wife’s been baking zucchini cookies, zucchini cakes, zucchini sweet rolls—you name it, she bakes it. Zucchini is growing wild all over town. Watermelons, too, and cantaloupes, cucumbers, tomatoes.”
Violet nibbled a cookie thick with raisins. “We saw your friend Cesar Canton and his daughter at The Applewood Café,” she said. “His daughter says he misses his farm. She is very happy you and Cesar play chess every day.”
“Not every day,” said the Chief. “We just play Saturday and Sunday.” He emptied the rest of the cookies into a bag. “Here, take them all. If I eat one more cookie, I’ll turn into a zucchini.”
As the children unlocked their bikes, Jessie said, “The chief said he plays chess with Cesar twice a week. But Cesar’s daughter thinks Cesar is playing chess every day.” She smiled. “What do you think Cesar is doing the other five days of the week?”
All around them, vegetables grew around lampposts and parking meters and trees and fences. “I think Cesar does what he loves to do most,” said Violet. “Planting, planting, planting.”
“Did he plant the hill around Sam’s Scrap Yard?” asked Benny. “And the tomatoes outside the wig shop?”
Violet nodded. “He’s planted this whole town.”
“I’ll bet Cesar staked our sunflowers,” Jessie said. “And he got poison ivy on his hands when he cleaned up those weeds behind The Applewood Café.”
Violet looked troubled. “His daughter said farming is too hard for him. Do you think we should tell her what he’s been doing?”
The children didn’t want Cesar to hurt himself by working too hard. But they also did not want to give away the old farmer’s secret. “Let’s ask Grandfather tonight,” said Jessie. “He’ll know the right thing to do. And he will keep Cesar’s secret.”
They biked through the park, where the Heart Healthy Run had been the day before. The yellow-shirted Events Committee members were working to take down the tents. Empty water bottles littered the finish line.
The man with the metal detector was there, too, searching the ground nearby.
“Hi,” Benny called. The man looked up, startled. “I tried one of those,” Benny told him. “I heard the clicking sounds that metal makes and—”
But the man did not want to talk. He hurried away, kicking aside water bottles, stomping over cardboard signs.
Violet stared at the man’s boot prints. They left a V shaped pattern. One of the Vs had no point on the bottom. “That’s the same bootprint we saw in our garden,” she said. “That’s the man who dumped our worms.”
The man was running now. “Hey,” yelled Henry. The man ran faster. “We want to talk to you!”
They started to ride after him.
But suddenly, a scream stopped them cold. “Look out!” cried a voice across the park.
The children turned to look. The top of a big tent rocked back and forth. The sides started falling in. The volunteers were inside! The children raced over and jumped off their bikes.
Henry grabbed one of the tent poles. “Jessie, grab another pole,” he called. Benny and Violet helped, too. Together they held the tent steady enough for the trapped workers to escape.
“Thank you,” said a man. “We … we thought we could take the tents down by ourselves. But we really needed one more worker.”
“It’s just like Fenster to disappear when there’s hard work to be done,” said an angry woman. “Why did he volunteer for the Events Committee? He knew we needed his help with the tents.”
“We’ll help,” said the children. And, with everyone working together, they took down all the tents and packed them away. By the time they finished, the man with the metal detector was gone.
“That’s all right,” said Henry, “I have an idea how we can track him down. Let’s go to Mr. Hamu’s hardware store.”
At the hardware store, Mr. Hamu switched on his computer. “I hope I can help you find the person who has been trespassing in your garden,” he told the Aldens. “Only a few people have bought this expensive kind of metal detector.” He typed the words Metal Detector Model X332 in the computer. Three names appeared on the screen.
He pointed to the first name. “This man moved to Chicago last year,” he said. He pointed to another name. “And this man fell off his son’s skateboard and broke his leg, so he’s not using his detector just now. That leaves this last one. His name is Chaney Dunkard. He lives just down the street.” Mr. Hamu wrote down the address.
“Thank you, Mr. Hamu,” said Jessie. “We’ll talk to him.” She and the other Aldens hoped they could find out who had been making trouble in their garden.
The children biked up to the small house. They saw Mr. Dunkard working at a picnic table in his front yard. He sorted through a pile of metal objects. Jewelry went in one green cloth bag and coins in another. When he saw the children, his eyes bugged out. “What do you want?”
“Why did you dump out our black gold?” Benny demanded.
The man snorted. “You mean that heap of wormy dirt?”
Benny jutted out his chin. “Worm poop is black gold.”
“Worm poop!” Mr. Dunkard made a face. “Yuck!”
“Why did you dump it?” Benny asked again.
“I heard you talking in the Café about ‘black gold.’ I thought you meant real gold. You said it was in garbage cans,” the man answered.
“The cans were on The Applewood Café property,” said Jessie. “At least you could have cleaned up the mess you made.”
“I heard someone coming,” said the man, “so I left. Big deal.”
“Why did you dig up Benny’s tomato plants?” asked Violet. “And his peppers and his onions?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mr. Dunkard said “I didn’t dig up anything. I may have snooped around in some cans, but I don’t dig in other people’s yards.”
“Hey look!” Benny said. He picked up one of the green cloth bags on the table. “This is the same kind of bag we used to make Spooky’s head!”
Mr. Dunkard yanked the bags back. “These are mine. I found them in the alley behind The Applewood Café. They were in the alley garbage can, not on Applewood property. Finders keepers.”
“May I see them?” asked Henry.
“No. You can get out of my yard, is what you can do.” The man with went back to sorting through the treasures he had found. “Worm poop,” he muttered. “Who calls worms ‘black gold?’ Kids. Bah.”
As the Aldens got back on their bikes, they were all thinking the same thing. If Mr. Dunkard didn’t dig up the “traveling tomatoes,” then who did?
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