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O’Malley Agency. He’d come into the office and told Dorcas that he wanted her to put someone in the neighborhood to look for any kind of suspicious behavior. So Dorcas gave Tree her first surveillance assignment.
    It had been Tree’s idea to start out by borrowing a friend’s dog so that she could pretend to be somebody from the neighborhood out walking her dog, while she got acquainted with the area.
    “The dog-walking thing seemed like a good idea,” Dorcas told Abby’s dad, “but the trouble with Tree doing any kind of surveillance is that she’s entirely too noticeable.”
    Abby could guess what Tree’s problem had been, but she wanted to get Tree’s take on the situation. “So why do you think you didn’t do a good job?” she asked. “I thought your idea about pretending to be a dog walker was a good one.”
    “I know. I did too,” Tree said. “But it didn’t work too well.”
    Abby could imagine. Before she’d been around the block twice, Tree had probably had dozens of guys following her around trying to make a date.
    “Well…” Abby walked around Tree’s chair, thinking and nodding. “Maybe I could help. Mom has a bunch of stuff in the attic that she uses sometimes when she doesn’t want to be recognized. I’ll go see what I can find.”
    Not much later Tree Torrelli was wearing a wig of straggly gray hair, and some “little old lady”-type shoes. Her Miss America figure was hidden under a lot of padding and a dress that looked as if it had been snatched from a bag lady’s cart. Abby approved. “Now you just need some big dark glasses and maybe smudge some eye shadow on your cheeks and hands.” She walked around Tree one more time and pronounced her camouflage a success. “Great,” she told Tree. “Nobody would look at you twice.”
    Abby was still hanging around the office when Dorcas’s Honda pulled into the driveway. Tree jumped up and was starting to take off the wig when Abby stopped her. “No, don’t.” Abby pulled Tree to the chair clients usually sat in. “There. Just sit here and let’s see what happens.”
    Tree seemed uncertain. She started to get up twice and then sat back down, and she was doing it again when Dorcas came into the office. Dorcas nodded at Tree, said hi to Abby, and, turning back to Tree, started to say, “Hello. I’m Dorcas O’Malley. Did you want to…” Then she did a double take and started to laugh. Tree laughed too, and so did Abby.
    “Yeah,” Abby managed to say between giggles. “It was my idea. What do you think?” Apparently what Dorcas thought was that the disguise solved the “too noticeable” problem pretty well, because after she stopped laughing, she agreed to give Tree some more time on the arson case. “Dressed like that you could spend several days in the area without anybody being the wiser. Just another harmless old bag lady.”
    After Dorcas went out, Abby congratulated Tree for being back on the job and Tree thanked Abby for helping with the disguise. Abby could tell how eager Tree was to be the one who solved the arson case.
    “I’m going to keep my fingers crossed day and night for you to be the one to solve the case,” Abby said, letting her smile say that she was halfway joking. But Tree’s answering grin wasn’t halfway.
    Giving Abby a quick hug, she said, “Thanks, Abbykins. I’ll be counting on that.”
    So Abby crossed the two first fingers on her left hand and tried to keep them crossed constantly, and she did remember to, most of the time. But it was the crossed-fingers promise that caused a big problem.
    After school on Monday, Abby and Paige were on the bus to the Bordens’ when Abby realized she’d been forgetting to keep her fingers crossed. So she quickly did it, all eight fingers, two crosses on each hand, to make up for all the hours she’d forgotten. She didn’t do it noticeably at all, just down in her lap, halfway under her notebook, but Paige noticed. Paige was like that. Nothing the