The Bell Bandit Read Online Free PDF

said Mrs. Treski. "It's Evan. Your grandson."
    Evan's grandmother shook her head. "I don't know him. Make him go away."

Chapter 5
A Thousand Pieces
    The next morning, Jessie sat with her grandmother at the dining room table and ripped the cellophane wrapper off the box of the new jigsaw puzzle. She couldn't wait to get started. Grandma looked like herself this morning. She had slept twelve hours last night, and at breakfast she'd given Jessie and Evan a giant bear hug. They'd even exchanged their Christmas gifts. Grandma was wearing the scarf that Jessie had knit for her draped over her shoulders, and Jessie had a brand-new calligraphy pen and two jars of metallic ink waiting for her upstairs in her room. Evan's present from Grandma was a magic set, and he had given her a Christmas cactus covered in pink blossoms.
    "That looks good enough to eat," said Grandma, staring at the picture of the puzzle that Jessie set up on one end of the table like a billboard. The brightly colored jellybeans reminded Jessie of Christmas lights all in a tangled pile. They even seemed to glisten and glow like lights on a tree. It was the most beautiful puzzle she had ever seen.
    And the hardest. It took Jessie and Grandma nearly ten minutes just to spread out all the pieces on the table and turn each one right side up. Then they had to separate out all the straight-edge pieces that would form the outside frame. When they had finished, they stopped and studied the puzzle.
    "They all look the same," said Jessie. It was true. Even though the pieces were different shapes, the picture on each one was basically the same. There was no way to pick one out from all the others. Jessie had never done a puzzle like this before. She didn't know where to begin.
    "Four corners," said Grandma, tapping the table. "That's how we always start, right?"
    So they searched through the puzzle pieces until they found the four corner pieces and matched those up to the picture to figure out which corner went where. Then they began the slow process of building off the corners to create the outside frame of the puzzle.
    "Grandma, tell me about the New Year's Eve bell," said Jessie. She'd been waiting all morning to ask her grandmother about the bell, but she was nervous. Mrs. Treski had warned both children: "Try not to say anything that might upset her," and she had told Jessie specifically, "Don't talk about how the bell is missing."
    "Well, what do you want to know?" asked Grandma, fitting a puzzle piece onto her side of the frame.
    "Where did it come from?"
    "My great-grandfather put it there to call the neighbors in case of an emergency."
    "Like what?" asked Jessie. "What kind of emergency?" She was hunting for a straight-edge piece with a purple jellybean on it.
    "Oh, all kinds of things. If someone was sick or if there was a lost child or a fire or a pack of wolves getting into the sheep."
    "Back in 1884?" Over the years, Jessie had traced her fingers over that date on the bell a hundred times. She knew the inscription by heart:
    Â 
T HE J ONES T ROY B ELL
F OUNDRY C OMPANY ,
T ROY, N.Y. 1884.
I SOUND THE A LARM
TO KEEP THE P EACE .
    Â 
    The letters were as tall as her thumb.
    "That's when the bell was cast." Jessie's grandma nodded. "That's when the bell was hung."
    "How did they hang it?" asked Jessie. "It must weigh a thousand pounds!"
    "Oh, no," said Grandma, scratching her earlobe, which is what she did when she concentrated. "It doesn't weigh that much. Maybe a hundred pounds. Two men could hang that bell easily. One time, years and years ago, the bell needed to be cleaned, so I lifted it off the hooks and dragged it back to the house on a sledge all by myself. Of course, it's a lot easier to take a bell down than it is to hang it up."
    "You took the bell down?" asked Jessie. "When?"
    "Oh, years ago. A long time ago. Just after your grandfather died. I was still young and strong back then. Not like now." Grandma turned a puzzle piece around in her hand,