Free Rock 'n' Roll Mystery by Gertrude Chandler Warner Page A

now.”
    â€œOkay, good,” Mr. Lessenger said. “I’ll see you over there in a little while.”
    Tim turned and left without another word. When the Aldens had first met him, he hadn’t seemed very friendly. He just nodded but didn’t say hello, and he didn’t speak to Jessie or Benny when he carried the instruments from his truck to the tent. Maybe he was just the “quiet type,” Jessie thought.
    After Tim left, Jessie busied herself tuning the guitars. She had to use something called a “pitch pipe,” which had six short silver tubes sticking out of it, three on each side.
    When she blew into each tube, a single musical note came out. The six strings on each guitar were supposed to match the six notes made by the pitch pipe. It took Jessie about fifteen minutes to tune all the guitars. Benny’s ukulele had already been tuned.
    â€œOkay,” Jessie said, “now that that’s done, let’s take a little break. We’ll get some doughnuts, and we’ll bring some over to Violet and Henry. They must be hungry, too.”
    â€œOh, boy, doughnuts!” Benny said, jumping off the chair and carefully setting the little ukulele back on its stand. Benny Alden had the biggest appetite of any six-year-old in Greenfield.
    They walked together across the big field. It was a bright, sunny day—perfect weather for a festival. At one of the food tents, Jessie bought a bag of powdered doughnuts and four bottles of apple juice. Then she and Benny headed towards the big stage in the middle of the fairground. This was where all the bands would play during the festival.
    They’d been watching it go up all morning, and every hour it grew bigger. The stage platform had been built first. Then, two towers of colored lights were put up. After that a row of lights was added across the top, including a huge spotlight. Finally, a giant white curtain was hung as a backdrop.
    As they walked toward the stage, Jessie noticed Tim, the young man who worked at Mr. Lessenger’s store. He was standing behind a tree—almost as if he was hiding. He was talking to a young woman with a ponytail that was so long it went all the way down her back. Tim had told Mr. Lessenger he was going right back to the store, and yet here he was. Jessie watched as Tim and the girl shook hands. Then Tim looked around, to see if anyone was watching, but he didn’t seem to spot Jessie.
    That’s odd, Jessie thought.
    Jessie hurried to catch up with Benny. She didn’t say anything to him about Tim. It probably wasn’t important, she thought.

    There were at least twenty people working busily around the stage. One man was fiddling with dozens of knobs and buttons on something called a control board. The Aldens had learned that the control board could change all the sounds during a concert—the high sounds of violins and flutes, and the low sounds of bass guitars and big drums. It could make things louder or softer, and it could also create special effects like echoes. A sign hanging from it said, “Please Do Not Touch.”
    Another man was testing the lights from a second control board, turning on the green lights first, then the red ones, then the blue ones. There was a certain excitement in the air, too, as if something big was about to happen.
    Jessie and Benny found Violet on the other side of the stage, carefully painting a tall wooden sign.
    â€œYou look like you could use something to eat and drink,” Jessie told her. She was always taking care of her brothers and sister, very much like a mother would.
    â€œThanks, I sure could.” Violet chose one doughnut from the bag and twisted the top off her bottle. She took a long sip of apple juice, then said, “I’m just about done with the sign. How do you think it looks?”
    The background had been painted white, and the words “Tonight Only” were in dark green letters at the top.
    â€œI’m