Research Holp

Notes for #34 The Mystery of the Missing Millionaire © 1980
Page # Quote
14 Even in the middle of the worst heat wave in the history of Sleepyside-on-the Hudson, Honey managed to look cool and neat. Her cotton blouse still had neat creases running down the sleeves.
15 Honey: "You forget that I had years and years of doing nothing but looking neat." Even though Honey had spoken without a trace of self-pity, Trixie knew she hated to be reminded of the time before she moved to Sleepyside.
16 Her (Trixie) family was far from rich, but it was a comfortable and happy experience.
17 Trixie: "I'm sorry I'm such a grouch. Hot weather always does that to me. I feel even grouchier when I see that the heat doesn't bother you." Honey: "I know exactly how you feel. In the winter, when the wind is howling and the snow is blowing, all I want to do is bundle up and sit in front of the fireplace."
23 Honey: "He (Mart) could be shut up in his room writing long, mushy letters and checking the mail or answers. But Di is his favorite girl. And he doesn't act any differently around her these days."
24 Mr. Lytell's store was very different from the big supermarket in Sleepyside. Here, the shelves were sparsely stocked. He didn't carry the wide range of items of a big store, because most of his business was in loaves of bread, cartons of milk, and cold pop - things that people in the surrounding neighborhood ran out of or decided they wanted on the spur of the moment.
25 Mr. Lytell spent most of his time in the back room and only came out when he heard the door open and close. He peered at the girls through his wire-rimmed spectacles.
26 Trixie: "Do you have any strawberry pop, Mr. Lytell?" Mr. Lytell: "I suppose if you had your way, I'd stock every kind of pop under the sun, just so it would be there if you wanted it. Makes no difference to you how high my electric bill is either."
27 Trixie: "It's just that I get  so tired of being yelled at. But I'm always doing thoughtless things that upset people,  and then when I do decide to be thoughtful, it turns out that people are 'just having a bad day,' and they yell at me anyway."
28 He (Regan) was strict about when, where, and how they rode. The Bob-Whites were to ride on the paths of Mr. Wheeler's huge game preserve. Galloping along concrete highways, which could damage the horses' hooves, was absolutely forbidden.
29 Honey: "Mr. Lytell rides Belle along this road every day at noon. Mr. Lytell's exercise route goes up Glen Road to our driveway, past the stables, into the preserve, and then back to the store. I'm sure that's why he takes that path - so he'll have a better chance of running into Miss Trask. Of course, he'd never admit it, and Miss Trask wouldn't either."
34 Trixie: "I just found a motor club membership card tucked into a pocket here. It gives Anthony Ramsey's address. He lives in New York City."
39 If he (Mart) wasn't hungry, he must be in the throes of something very mysterious indeed.
42 Mrs. Belden: "Mr. Lytell's store was here long before the big supermarkets opened in Sleepyside. And his store always seemed just as empty then as it does now. Although I don't believe the rumors that Mr. Lytell might be one of the wealthiest people in Sleepyside, I imagine that he has money put aside for the proverbial rainy day."
45 Both girls gasped at the sight of a low, sleek, red sports car parked outside. The young woman seemed to be about twenty years old. She was tall and slender, with blond hair that formed a cascading mane down to her shoulders.
46 Honey: "We were riding along Glen Road around eleven-thirty this morning when we saw it - "
50 The (back) room was tiny, dusty, and crowded. Like the store, the room had shelves running along the walls. But unlike the sparsely filled shelves in front, the shelves in the back room were jammed - with ledger books and cardboard boxes from which receipts overflowed. There were only two chairs in the room: the swivel chair that went with Mr. Lytell's desk and a straight-backed wooden chair that stood beside the desk.
51 Laura: "I'll be a sophomore at Columbia University when school starts next month. My father owns a chain of grocery stores. He built it up from one store. What he does is to find experienced grocery store managers - like you, Mr. Lytell - and gives them pretty much free rein at this stores."
53 Laura: "My father has a partner. His name is Frank Riebe. Somewhere along the way, Frank got greedy. He began pushing to expand faster. He wants central control of the stores. If anything ... happens to my father, Frank can take over the chain."
54 Trixie: "You mean you think your friends would go to Frank and tell him your father had disappeared?" Laura: "I think Frank has bribed some of them."
56 Laura: "I still can't believe the story I invented."
57 Laura: "Esther- that's my father's secretary."
59 Laura: "Just a month ago, on my twentieth birthday, my father took me to a car dealer and let me pick out any car I wanted, then paid for it in cash - twelve thousand dollars!"
60 Trixie: "You (Mr. Lytell) can use the car for collateral and lend Laura the money!" Mr. Lytell: "Are you saying I'm not to be trusted, young lady? I'll write the agreement up, all legal-like. Then you can take one copy, and I'll keep the other."
61 Mr. Lytell placed his copy in the top drawer of his desk, rose, and walked through a door into what Trixie had assumed was a closet, but which she now realized was another small room.
62 Mr. Lytell: "Not that there's anything left to beg, borrow, or steal since I took that two thousand out of the safe."
65 A feeling of jealousy was churning in her (Trixie) stomache. It was bad enough that Laura was staying at Manor House, where she and Honey would share conversations that Trixie would only find out about second hand.
72 Trixie: "I'm delighted. For the first time, I'll get to meet a real private detective and find out how he works."
76 Bobby didn't just sit quietly and listen to a story. He asked a hundred questions about the words and the pictures - and about things that occurred to him for no apparent reason at all.
77 Trixie: "Snow White. That was one of my favorites too." Bobby: "Didn't Mart and Brian read to you?" Trixie: "Nope. At least not that much. Because I learned to read almost as soon as they did."
78 Bobby: "There were seven dwarfs and they helped Snow White. And there are seven Bob-Whites, and they help all kinds of people. And the Bob-Whites are a club. So I just wondered if the dwarfs were a club too."
82 She (Trixie) was fascinated by the idea that Mr. Lytell might, in spite of appearances, be a wealthy man.
84 She (Trixie) rummaged in a drawer next to the sink for the old toothbrush she used for her nails.
87 Trixie walked across the large, high-ceilinged entryway to the library. Trixie decided that this man was exactly what she expected a private detective to be. He was short and stocky, but his girth all looked like muscle, except for a slight paunch that swelled above his belt.
88 Honey: "Trixie, this is Mark McGraw, the detective Laura hired."
95 Trixie: "If Mr. Lytell had two thousand dollars in cash in the back room of his store, imagine how much more he must have in the bank!" Honey: "He might not have anything in the bank."
100 She (Di), like Trixie, was not partial to hot weather.
106 Laura: "I major in English at Columbia University. My father wanted me to major in business, but I don't have much of a talent for it. I love to read though." Di: "I wish I did."
108 Trixie: "How come an English major from Columbia University doesn't recognize Shakespeare when she hears it?"
109 She (Trixie) saw a small, battered green car make a fast turn and pull off quickly down the road.
114 In the Belden household, bedrooms were considered private territory. Barging in unannounced was forbidden.
1166 Trixie: "This is that dumb boy's magazine that Uncle Mart still gives you a subscription to every Christmas."
119 Mart: "Need I remind you that our parents are, shall we say, fiscally conservative. My profit is guaranteed!"
120 Mart: "We can't expect Dad to pick up the whole tab (college) for all four of us."
121 Mart: "I don't want to just go to school and study agriculture on Dad's money, then become a teacher using Jim's. He's contributing his whole inheritance to the project. I want to contribute something, too."
127 Trixie: I wonder if Honey and I will have to move to a big city when we set up the Belden-Wheeler Detective Agency. I know we'll have to live in a bigger town while we're in college. I'd rather stay right here, but I guess becoming a full-fledged detective is more important.
142 Trixie: "You know how much I'd been looking forward to helping a real detective solve a case. But if he doesn't want our help - and I'm convinced he doesn't - then that's that. I won't even think about this case if I can help it." Honey: "We've never walked away from a mystery before, not even when everyone told us it was useless for us to try to solve it."
143 She (Trixie) now realized that there was something about the woman (Laura) that she just plain didn't like - something that ran deeper than her feelings of jealousy over Jim's attention.
146 "My name is Burt Anderson. I represent the Census Bureau." Trixie: "My father is Peter Belden. He's thirty-nine."
147 Trixie: "My mother's name is Helen. She's thirty-seven. Brian is the oldest. He's seventeen. Martin is fifteen. I'm fourteen. Robert is the youngest. He's six."
150 The car in which the census taker was driving away - it was the same small, green car she'd seen twice before!
161 McGraw: "Seven days at two hundred a day is fourteen hundred dollars right there. Plus expenses."
165 Honey: "Mr. McGraw is a professional detective. He's been involved in a lot of mysteries. If he jumps to a conclusion, it's probably because his experience tells him it's the right one." Trixie: "We've been in a lot of mysteries, too, and I'd say what we've learned is that jumping to conclusions is exactly the wrong thing to do."
174 Mr. Belden: "The people at this Carlson Company are more intelligent than you (Mart) are when it comes to deception. I think you can pride yourself on seeing through the scheme as soon as you did."
190 Trixie: "I went into Laura's room to get Mr. McGraw's card. The room was empty! The clothes you'd lent her and everything else were gone. I'd surprised her on the phone in the library right after dinner. She called somebody 'darling' and said she'd see him soon. She told me it was her father's secretary, but I didn't believe it."
193 Laura: "This whole con has been a bust from the beginning. We should have tapped the Wheelers, like we'd planned." McGraw: "Wheeler was no good. He's gone too much. And he's too smart. But all those rumors said Lytell had plenty of money stashed - and that he was dumb enough to fall for a con like ours." Laura: "If it was so perfect, why are we leaving town with three lousy grand?"
195 Trixie wrenched herself free and bent low at the waist to keep her arm out of reach while she pulled her leg back as far as it would go and brought it forward with a powerful jerk
196 Honey: "I let the air out of their tires!"
197 Inside, they found the store owner tied and gagged.
199 Trixie looked in the direction the sergeant indicated and was astonished to see the young census taker. Mr. Anderson: "I am a detective. I was hired by a man who had been the victim of a con job. He wanted me to find the two people who bilked him out of ten thousand dollars."
200 Trixie: "You don't look like a detective." Anderson: "That's another thing that makes me a good detective."
201 Trixie: "They must have known that he (Lytell) rides along Glen Road every noon, so they planted the wallet there for him to find."
206 Sgt. Molinson: "A false alarm is exactly what the desk sergeant thought it was. He wasn't going to send a squad car out at all, since you hadn't given your name and address. I hesitated for a moment; I was off duty, and I just wanted to get home to my easy chair. Then I thought of all those lectures I'd given you Bob-Whites about reporting things to the police."
208 Mr. Lytell: "What I have saved for a rainy day doesn't seem like very much these days. A man's plans change sometimes, too."
209 Trixie: "Maybe Mr. Anderson's client will give you a reward, Mr. Lytell. Would that help your change of plans?" Anderson: "I don't believe my client is offering a reward. It seems to me that you (Lytell) are the one who should be rewarding them."
210 Jim: "Honey's right. We don't want a thing." Trixie: "I do." Of all the Bob-Whites, Trixie was usually the most generous and the least willing to accept any sort of payment for her services. Trixie: "What I want is for you to buy a whole case of strawberry pop."