Voices at Whisper Bend by Katherine Ayres

…
    Charlotte’s mouth went dry. This couldn’t be happening. She and Betsy had made plans to catch the thief together. Now she was all by herself. She peered out the window.
    What if Paul wasn’t working alone? What if it wasn’t even Paul out there? Suddenly his warning popped back into her head. Watch out for dark alleys, he’d said. Hadn’t two men just broken out of jail in Pittsburgh? Would they come to Braddock?
    No, of course they wouldn’t. Besides, if her trap was working, she couldn’t give up the chance to catch the thief red-handed. Heart pounding, she tucked the flashlight under her arm, grabbed the baseball bat, and eased open the door to her room. On tiptoe she made it to the top of the stairs, then crept down through the inky blackness and into the kitchen. With shaking fingers, she eased open the back door. The night air chilled her face; as she tiptoed out to the porch her bare feet felt damp. One step at a time, she inched toward the alley.
    Something hissed. Then something yowled and brushed her leg. She jumped backward. With a crash, two silvery cats sprang from the scrap pile and bounded over the fence into Mrs. Dubner’s backyard.
    A light went on there, and Charlotte heard a voice. “Hush, you silly rascals. Hush now. There, that’s better.”
    Cats! Crazy old Mrs. Dubner’s cats. There should be laws to keep people like her from acting so strange and scaring the neighbors, Charlotte thought.
    She took deep breaths and tried to make her heart stop racing. Cats, just cats. She flashed her light on the alley, to make sure. All she could see were an old cast-iron sink, a rusty bucket, and a mess of tin cans. She re-piled the metal and crept carefully back to her room to watch. Paul Rossi might still show up tonight, she told herself.
    It took half an hour for Charlotte’s heart to return to its regular speed. In another half hour, she was yawning. Sometime after midnight, she gave up and crawled into bed.
    At first light, she tumbled out of the covers and checked the window. Her scrap pile sat in the alley, undisturbed. Darn it, anyway. Why hadn’t that rotten Paul Rossi snapped up her bait? She fell back into bed and tried to make a new plan as she waited for the rest of the family to wake up.
    No brilliant ideas came that morning, not in bed, not at breakfast, not on the way to school with Betsy. When she reached the school yard, more bad news waited.
    â€œSomebody came back to the cellar last night,” Marnie Cussick announced. “Teachers are in there now, looking around.”
    â€œSomebody stole our scrap again,” her sister said. “It’s wicked and rotten.”
    No! Charlotte felt like somebody had set her on fire. She shoved her way through the crowd of kids gathered near the cellar door, to where Paul Rossi stood alone, watching the angry faces. “Now I know why you didn’t grab the scrap from my alley. You had other plans last night, didn’t you?”
    â€œWhat are you talking about, Charlotte? You calling me a thief?” He stared at her hard, without blinking.
    â€œWhat if I am?” She stepped closer to him. “You skip school sometimes. Don’t deny it. And you’re always getting sent to the principal and bringing in those crime stories.”
    â€œSo what? That doesn’t mean I’d mess with the war. I’m no traitor. I got two brothers in the Marines.”
    Betsy came up behind her and took Charlotte’s hand. “You have brothers in the war, too? I didn’t know that.”
    Charlotte stepped back. She hadn’t known it either. She swallowed. “But still … where did you get that bruise on your cheek?”
    â€œMind your own business.” He swiped his cheek and glared as the bell rang, ending the argument but not Charlotte’s suspicions.
    Still, to be fair, right after the Pledge of Allegiance she made a complete list of people who