Chapter Six: Clued In (Sarah's POV)
Once again, "Cheaper By the Dozen is woefully not mine. PS. Sorry it took so LONG for this to come online…I was really busy and internet is not reliable here. Anyway, enjoy this chapter.
I never thought that I would say this, but I miss Mark. True, he is a nerd, but he really wasn't that bad! It's now one a.m. and we are no closer to finding Mark than when we began the search hours earlier. Charlie had taken Gunner, but he and the rest of the dogs lost Mark's scent quickly. I was in the process now of trying to come up with a scheme that Henry, Jake, Kim, Jessica, Mike, Nigel and Kyle and I could use to find Mark. For some reason, my notorious planning skills were not working as well they normally do.
"How about we see if Beans can come back to life and see if he will lead us to him?" Kyle suggested. I managed to restrain from rolling my eyes and laughing. I did not want Kyle to feel the same way that I often made Mark feel.
"Well, Kyle that would be a good idea, but I don't think that would be possible. I mean, there isn't anyone here with the name of Jesus Christ." I said as calmly as I could.
I sat quietly for a few minutes twiddling my thumbs and tried to think of some way to help find Mark. I thought about every detective movie that I had seen in my life. Nothing really stood out. All the recent detective movies relied on fancy, expensive gadgets that I knew we would not be able to get our hands onto it. Kimmy interrupted my thoughts with a sudden realization.
"Guys, all the police are doing and as well as Mom and Dad, are just using the old fashioned dog search, among other novelties. I propose that we search this house top-to-bottom looking for clues that may lead us to him. I think that the reason no one has found him yet, is that everyone has been looking for Mark directly and not searching for clues that he may have left!" Kimmy stated as Jessica nodded in agreement. Once again, the twins have brainstormed another awesome plan.
"Ok, let's use that plan. Henry, you search with Mike, Kyle and Nigel are partners, Kim and Jessica as usual, you two go search together, and Jake I will be partners. Henry and Mike, why don't you two search the basement, Kyle and Nigel…um….can you handle searching the bathroom to see if he like left a note?" Kyle and Nigel nodded and proceeding to run off. "WAIT! Meet back here in thirty minutes!" "Ok…let's see…Kim and Jessica, search the computer room, and make sure no file is left untouched on the computer. Henry, Mike, you two search the outside surrounding grounds, Jake and I will search his room. LET'S GO!"
As soon as I gave the command, everyone ran to their specific places. Jake and I rushed into Mark's room. There was a peculiar smell. Make that an awful smell. I quickly spotted the source. "Here is Beans," Kim mentioned that she found him in here. I don't know if she took him out of his room and then placed him back in here, or if he was left in here untouched." Jake covered his mouth and nose.
"This place REALLY stinks!...Um, what do you think that we should look for?" Jake asked, glancing around. I spotted Mark's desk out of the corner of my eye. I walked over and noticed that there were piles of papers on the desk and around it.
"You search the desk, I'll search the bed and closet." I walked back to the bed and looked around. There wasn't anything on top of the bed besides Beans and Mark's stuffed frog that he had gotten on one of our summer vacations. I gave the frog a slight squeeze and whispered to it that Mark would be back to him soon. Normally, I would not be caught dead talking to an animal, whether real or fake, but these were extreme circumstances. I focused my search on under the bed. To my dismay the only things that were there were some random photos of Mark on various birthdays and the family on vacations throughout the years. I sighed and decided to hold onto them.
"Did you find anything yet, Jake?" I asked, moving over to the closet. Sheesh, it was a royal mess, but then again so was my room, so I really couldn't talk but so much.
"Nothing as of yet, just a lot of old school papers and a state project from the third grade. He received an "A" on it," Jake noted, setting the report down. Man this was going even slower than I thought that it would. It was almost time to meet the others and Jake and I had not found anything that amounted to much of anything. Even the search of the closet was proving to be fruitless.
"Here, just take that project and I will take a couple of random things, maybe we can gather a little more information if we all compared notes." Thinking quickly, I grabbed a few pictures from under the bed and Mark's stuffed frog. Jake I glanced at each other and then ran down the stairs to find that only Nigel and Kyle were back. Nigel was holding something.
"Here, we found this, it's Mark's rain slicker, but it was lying on the ground!" Nigel said, showing the item to me, proudly. Kyle beamed too. I wasn't sure why a rain slicker was such a great find, but I didn't want to hurt their feelings plus Jake and I hadn't found anything of value either.
"We found a few things that we brought downstairs as well. Let's just wait for the others before we discuss anymore items." Jake suggested, looking at his watch. The action must have been contagious because I caught myself staring at my watch. The rest of the group were ten minutes late. Henry and Mike didn't surprise me with being late, but for Jessica and Kim to be tardy, that was a whole different story. Several more minutes pass and Kim and Mike both run up to us from separate directions.
"You have to come and check out this!" They both yell. The two must have startled themselves because they looked at each other confused. "Did you find something?" They both ask-once again at the same time. This routine was getting really old, very fast.
"Whoa, both of you take chill pills, ok!" I interrupted them and then addressed Mike. "So Mike, did you find anything?" I really hoped that it wasn't anything stupid and that it would help lead us to Mark.
"Yeah, Henry found a whole bunch of papers, we aren't sure of what to make of them. He is gonna bring them up here. He said something about meeting in a room that would not be interrupted by adults.
Hum..Important papers…I prayed that these papers would help solve the over-due mystery. I then turned towards Kim. "So, Kim what did you and Jessica hack off the computer?"
"Jessica is going to bring the print-outs, but we found some very interesting details that either Mom or Dad were careless with or one of us kids owns a credit card, among other peculiarities." Kim matter-of-factly stated to us.
As if on cue, Henry and Jessica both run towards us from different areas of the house. Both had perplexed facial expressions. Before they could start talking, I ushered them into my room and locked the door.
"Ok, everyone drop whatever you found onto my bed." I placed the photographs and stuffed animal on my bed and the rest followed my lead. "Alright, let's see what we have. Nigel and Kyle found a rain slicker…Kim could you get my portable white board and take notes? Thanks…Jake and I found random photographs, a stuffed animal and a geography-history project…Mike and Henry found…let's see…documents, they look like some official kind…and Kim and Jessica found interesting information on the family computer," I summed up everything and then let Kim and Jessica take over the meeting, as they were better at this stuff than I was.
"Guys…we found some emails that Mark received. I was able to hack into his e-mail account and look what I found!" Jessica proudly displayed an email. It looked like it was spam mail from an airline company, but then I read the subject line. "Thank you for choosing to fly with us!"
"You mean, Mark is on a plane right now?" I questioned. "No wonder no one has found him!" Kim shook her head in approval but also gestured to something in the text of the e-mail. I read the line that she was insistent that I read. "'Thank you Mr. Justin Mathews for choosing us to fly with. Your flight date is…'" I stopped reading. "So Mark is going by the alias of Justin Mathews?" That is a huge step in the right direction." I nodded with approval. "Ok..someone write that on the board." I noticed that Jessica looked like she had more news.
"The tickets were purchased with a credit card. As I have watched Mom and Dad use their credit cards many times, I realized that the part of the number they show on the email isn't either of those numbers. However, they are close matches to our gift cards that act as credit cards that we received a long time ago. This number may very well be his card. So, write that on the board as well. Ok that is all that we have."
"Mike and I found some court papers. We aren't sure of what to make of them." Henry offered, gesturing towards the papers. Kim, Jessica, Jake and I each took a page and studied it. As if on cue, all of our heads shot up, alarmingly.
"That's not possible…" I trailed off. The looks on my siblings' faces read the same message.