The calls that got the girls’ hearts pounding and pulses racing were the ones for the hospital or the police station or fire department. Vivian had the good sense to put those calls through immediately. Although, yes, she’d sometimes listen in, if only to make sure the call wasn’t coming from her own house. For, as clever as she was, Charlotte could be careless with the stove, and she’d gotten into the habit of making popcorn after school, and Lord knew Edward was bound to cut off one of his arms with one of those sharp tools in the shed, or hammer his hand to the workbench in the basement one of these days.

What she’d really like to hear was something scandalous. Something out-of-the-ordinary. Something like the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg business that Edward had told her about. Soviet spies! The intrigue was international news, but Vivian was mainly interested in the story because the spies had been a married couple. Now, that was intrigue. And if she’d eavesdropped on a call between Julius and Ethel, you can bet your bottom dollar she’d have had some advice to give them.

Based on what Vivian overheard when she was at the switchboard, there was no spying going on in Wooster. No, what was happening in Wooster was that Mrs. Butler had wasted her time making a quilt for an ungrateful daughter, Earl Archer was an absentminded idiot who took his wife for granted, and Ginny Frazier thought she could snag somebody better than Clyde Walsh. Also, it was cold outside, Christmas was a few weeks away, and Freedlander’s had a nice, sober Santa Claus to remind everyone of that fact.

Vivian still had hopes for something more exciting on that cold December night as she sat at the switchboard. Restless, bored, humming nursery rhymes in her head, and halfway hoping to discover spies, or at least a scandal about a married couple, in their little Ohio town. If she’d been able to push aside the farmer, his dell, the lonely spinster cheese, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, she might’ve heard the voice of her dead granny saying what she used to say when you were asking for something that might get you into trouble. Be careful what you wish for.

Chapter 2

The switchboard stayed dark for a few minutes, and Vivian pushed up her mouthpiece and rested her chin in her hand as she thought about spies in Wooster. Not too likely, if you asked her, but Wooster’d had its share of excitement. There had been happenings. The kinds of happenings that stuck in the minds of the townspeople, and made them wonder to themselves in their spare, lonely moments. Got them talking to each other, you know, from time to time, long after the happenings had happened.

Like the excitement from five years ago with the attempted robbery and shoot-out at the William Annat Company department store at Christmastime. A shoot-out! In Wooster! Who would’ve believed it, but three armed men from Akron tried to rob the store. Akron, didn’t that just figure. You’d never hear of a Wooster resident shooting guns off at a department store at Christmas, for chrissakes. If it hadn’t been for a brave store manager and a quick-thinking salesgirl, who telephoned the operator to connect her to the police, who knows what might’ve happened? The quick-thinking salesgirl had been Vivian’s younger sister Violet, and Vivian would’ve been positively out of her mind if she’d been on the phones that night. Ellen Leonard had answered that call.