Monday was a day off, so Dylan and I went for a bike ride. It had stopped raining and the sun was out. We stopped at the golf course clubhouse to have a Coke and cool off. You don't have to play golf to use the clubhouse.
"How's Penny?" Dylan asked. He had taken care of her when my family was on vacation. He was crazy about animals.
"She's fine," I told him. Penny did mope around for two days because she missed Dylan, but she was getting better. "Hey, do you need somebody to take care of your rabbits while you're gone?"
"No. My parents can take care of them," he said.
So his parents weren't going with him. That was a clue! Was Dylan going to camp? Was he visiting relatives on his own? And why would either of those things be a secret? Why couldn't he just tell me?
I needed Mike McKay, the Sports Detective, to help me crack the case. That gave me an idea.
"Want to stop at the library on the way home?"
"Yeah, sure."
We finished our Cokes and went to get our bikes, which were locked up by the putting green. Dylan nudged me.
"Look who's practicing."
I glanced over and saw a guy in bright checkered pants.
"Ernie Hecker!" I whispered. Ernie was the biggest loudmouth in all of Pine City. He came to every Porcupines game and sat behind the visitors' dugout so he could yell at the opposing players.
He glanced over at us. "Boys, it's rude to talk when a player is getting ready to take a swing," he said. "Even if it's just a practice shot."
He must not have recognized us without our batboy uniforms.
"Sorry," said Dylan.
"Me too," I said. I knew that Ernie was right, but he was the last person on earth who should complain about other people talking!
"Shh!" Ernie lined up the putt, took his swing, and missed the hole by a foot. "Darn it! I would have made that if you hadn't distracted me." He glared at us both.
It was all we could do to get to our bikes and pedal away before we burst out laughing.
…
We pedaled over to the library. Dylan got three different books about horses. I got four paperback mysteries about Mike McKay, the Sports Detective.
"You're going to read grown-up books?" Dylan asked me.
"I'm getting them for Danny," I told him. "If he has to rest his ankle, he'll want something to do."
We went to the self-check-out table. I slid one of the books across the scanner, and a card fell out.
"Hey!" said Dylan. "It's a baseball card."
Sure enough, it was a real baseball card. It looked old, and part of the front was peeled off. Across the top was the name Ozzie Virgil. I had a card for a player named Ozzie Virgil Jr., but it was from the 1980s. This must have been his dad!
"The last person to check out that book must have used it as a bookmark and forgotten about it," said Dylan.
"I wonder if there's any way to get the card back to him?"
"Or her," Dylan added.
"Right."
Who said a woman couldn't collect baseball cards and read sports mysteries?
We went to the reference desk. The librarian was clacking away on a computer.
"Excuse me, can we look up the last person who had this book?" I asked. "He or she left something in it."
"Sorry," he said. "I can look up who has a book checked out now, but not everyone who ever checked it out. What did you find?"
"An old baseball card."
"Hmm." He took the book and scanned it. "It hasn't been checked out for weeks. If the borrower was going to call about the card, he or she would have done so by now. I guess it's your lucky day."
"Thanks." The card probably wasn't worth a bazillion dollars, but I felt a little weird keeping it.
"Maybe you can give it to one of the Porcupines to help them out of a jam," said Dylan. "You've done that so many times before, I've lost count."
"Maybe." Some of the Porcupines thought my baseball cards were magic. I thought the cards just reminded them of what was possible. The player on the card had always done something amazing.
Had Ozzie Virgil done anything that was extraordinary?
…
I looked him up on the Internet when I got home. I read that Ozzie bounced between the minor leagues and the big leagues, mostly as a utility player. His claim to fame was that he was the first person from the Dominican Republic to play in the big leagues.
Virgil was probably a nice guy, but if the card had any magic in it, I didn't know what it was. I decided to leave the card in the library book for now. It seemed like that was where it belonged.
For the first time, I really looked at the cover of the book. The title was Never Get Back. I flipped it over and started reading the summary.
When a minor league batboy named Charlie goes missing …
It was about a minor league batboy? And his name was Charlie? This kid and I had the same job—and the same name! "Charlie" and "Chad" were both nicknames for Charles. It was kind of cool but also kind of spooky. I needed to know whether the batboy in this book ended up alive and well.
I opened it up and started reading.
Charlie worked for a team called the Cactus City Scorpions. One day he disappeared right in the middle of a game. Mike McKay, the Sports Detective, was called in to figure out what happened to him. It turned out that Charlie had a really big baseball card collection. Mike McKay suspected that one of the rare and valuable cards might be missing. That part made my heart beat faster. The Charlie character was way too much like me. I put the book down, afraid to read any further.
I would have peeked at the ending, but I didn't want to spoil it for myself. I was no Wayne Zane.
