Free Boys in Control by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

the red toenails.
    “Oh, I can't let you do that,” said Wally.
    “But we'll pay for anything we find now and take it off your hands,” said the woman in the pink jacket.
    “Well …” Wally hesitated. He wondered if she'd buy everything that was piled in his room. He didn't know these women, but then he didn't know a lot of women in Buckman. “I'll have to go call Mom,” he said.
    “Certainly,” said the red toenails.
    Wally shut the door, but not quite all the way becausehe didn't want to seem rude, and went to the phone in the kitchen.
    The owner of the hardware store answered. “Your mom's with a customer, Wally,” he said. “She'll be with you in just a minute.”
    Mrs. Hatford must have been selling a customer nails, because Wally could hear the sound of nails being poured into one of the metal scoops on the scales. The hardware store had a metal scoop where you put the object being weighed. Then Mrs. Hatford would take little round weights and put them on the other side of the scales, one by one, until both sides of the scale dangled evenly in the air. There was no digital anything in the hardware store, and that, said the owner, was just the way he liked it.
    Finally Mrs. Hatford got on the line. “Wally?” she said.
    “Mom, I came home from practice early because I was tired of watching Jake, and there are two women out on the porch who want to look at what we've collected for the yard sale so far.”
    “Who are they?” his mother asked.
    “I don't know.”
    “Well, it doesn't much matter, because we can't let anyone buy anything until the sale opens on the twenty-ninth. That's the rule. We have to be fair. Otherwise people would be sneaking over all the time and buying the best things before anyone else got a chance. Tell them I'm sorry, but they'll have to wait till the lastSaturday in May. Goodness, I had no idea the sale would be so popular!”
    Wally went back to the door and put his hand on the knob. “I'm sorry,” he said as he opened it. Then he stopped. The porch was empty. At that moment he heard the floor creak in the hallway and when he turned around, he saw the two women poking around in the walk-in closet.
    “Oh, forgive us, but we're just so eager to see what you have for sale,” said the woman in the pink jacket.
    “Mom says I can't let you buy anything before the twenty-ninth,” said Wally. “Sorry.”
    The women looked disappointed. “Well, we won't even try to buy anything, then, but if you could just let us look the things over? Have a peek? Just show us where they are?”
    Something told Wally that he didn't much like these women. He knew his mother's rule about strangers in the house. “No,” he said, and opened the front door wide. “I guess you'll have to go now.”
    “Of course,” said the woman with the red toenails. “We're just too eager. We do love a good yard sale. Thank you anyway, young man.”
    “You're welcome,” said Wally, and shut the door.
    He went to the kitchen again and ate his crackers. Then he called his mother and told her what had happened.
    “You mean they walked right into our house while you were on the phone with me?” she gasped. “Why,Wally, they could have been kidnappers! They could have whisked you away before you knew it!” There was a pause. “Did they take anything?”
    Wally began to worry. “I don't know. I don't think so.”
    “Go look in the dining room and see if the green vase is still on the buffet,” said Mrs. Hatford.
    Wally went into the dining room and looked. “The vase is still there,” he told his mother.
    “Did they go upstairs?”
    “No.”
    “Well, look in the living room and see if that little marble dish on the coffee table is still there.”
    Wally went into the living room.
    “It's there,” he told his mom.
    “What about the little picture hanging beside the coatrack in the hall? Is that still there?”
    “Just a minute,” said Wally. He checked the wall by the coatrack. “Yes,” he