The Bell Bandit Read Online Free PDF Page B

seeing if it would fit, but then put it back with the others on the table.
    "Grandma?" Jessie asked in a near whisper. "Did you take the bell down—sometime this year?"
    Grandma laughed. "What a thing! No, I couldn't take that bell down anymore. That old bell is still up there on Lovell's Hill. Always will be." She had stopped working on the puzzle and was using her good hand to rub her shoulder as if it ached.
    "Maybe you wanted to sell it?" asked Jessie, thinking of the appraisal letter.
    "No, Jessie. I would never sell the New Year's Eve bell."
    "Maybe you ... forgot."
    "I didn't forget, Jessie," said Grandma, shaking her head.
    "But you could have—"
    "No!" Her grandmother dropped her hand to the table so that it made a sharp rapping sound. "Now stop, Jessie! The bell is on the hill. It's always been there, and it always will be there. So, enough."
    "Okay, Grandma," said Jessie, but inside she wondered if maybe her grandmother's forgetfulness was a clue to the mystery of the missing bell.
    They worked on the puzzle for another minute in silence, and then Jessie heard a strange thud on the front door. When she got up to investigate, she found Maxwell standing in front of the house with skis on his feet and ski poles in one hand. In his other hand, he had a snowball, and Jessie noticed the
splot
of white on the front door where he had already thrown one.
    "You're home," said Maxwell.
    "Uh-huh," said Jessie. They stared at each other for a minute, Maxwell rocking back and forth on his skis, Jessie with her arms crossed in front of her.
    "It's not polite to ask someone to invite you in," said Maxwell.
    "Why not?" asked Jessie.
    "I don't know," said Maxwell. "It's just a rule my mother taught me."
    "It doesn't make sense," said Jessie. "How's the person supposed to know you want to get invited in if you don't ask?" She wondered why they were talking about this. It was a strange topic for Maxwell to bring up out of the blue.
    Maxwell nodded his head. "But it's a rule," he said.
    "Maxwell!" Jessie's grandma had come to the open door. "Do you want to come inside?"
    "Uh-huh!" he said, using his pole to unsnap his boots from his skis. Jessie followed her grandma back into the house with Maxwell right behind.
    "It's a good thing you're here," said Grandma. "I need to go lie down for a few minutes, and Jessie needs a puzzle partner. Want to take over?" she asked, pointing to the dining room table.
    Maxwell didn't even answer. He just walked over to the table and sat down in the chair that Grandma had left empty.
    "Prepare to be amazed," Grandma said to Jessie, and then she headed up the stairs.
    When Jessie sat in her seat, Maxwell had already fit together three pieces. But they weren't pieces of the outside frame of the puzzle. They were pieces that belonged in the vast, empty middle—the part of the puzzle Jessie hadn't even tried to solve yet.
    And he kept finding more. He fit another piece onto the three he'd already joined. And then another. His eyes roamed quickly over the pieces, and he moved his hands over them, too, his fingers snapping and wiggling as he thought about which piece to pick up next. Sometimes he made a mistake—a near miss—but just as often he got the right piece on the first try.
Snap.
The piece fit in perfectly, and then Maxwell started to look for the next one.
    "How do you do that?" asked Jessie. She was really good at jigsaw puzzles, the best in the family, the best of anyone she knew. But she couldn't start
in the middle
of a thousand-piece puzzle, especially one that was a picture of nothing but jellybeans.
    "I'm smart," said Maxwell, continuing to add pieces.
Snap. Snap.
    "Well, I'm smart, too, but I can't do that," she said. She tried to concentrate on the frame she was building, but Maxwell's movements were so annoying, she couldn't keep her mind on what she was doing.
    "Jellybeans," said Maxwell, snapping his fingers and looking at the pieces.
    "Yeah, jellybeans," said Jessie,