John, Mike, Ben and Sally have formed a detective club called the Barton Avenue Detectives. The following story is the third of six cases contained in this collection.

The Made-For-TV Robbery (part 1)

On Saturday Sally was over at John's house looking through the paper for a case the detective club could investigate. The only trouble was, the police seemed to be solving all the crimes so there wasn't much left for anyone else to work on.

John grumbled about it as he scanned the pages. "Fat chance we have with them grabbing all the headlines. You'd think they'd get tired of arresting everyone all the time and take a rest for a change. It isn't fair. We've got to work too."

"They're only doing their job," Sally said.

"Well, what about our job?" asked John. "We're the Barton Avenue Detectives. We've got a right to solve some crimes too. But they just go around catching all the crooks and locking them up. Pretty soon they'll have them all put away and where will we be then? No crooks. No crimes. And there won't be any detective club either because there won't be anything left for us to detect!"

Sally had to agree. She was just about to suggest that they start a newspaper club instead when John cried out triumphantly and pointed to the page he was reading.

"Here it is - the perfect case. Look at this headline, Sally!"

He held up the paper for her to see. Milk Store Bandit Strikes Again. It was definitely a possibility, and the best part was, the police didn't have a clue who the bandit was.

"He's held up five places already," read John happily. "Here's his description: tall and thin, wears a trench coat and a hat, pulls a stocking down over his head..." He stopped reading. "A stocking? What's he want to wear a stocking for? He'd look ridiculous."

"Sure he would," agreed Sally. "But he doesn't wear it on the street or anything, just when he's doing a robbery. Then the stocking mushes up his face so you can't tell what he really looks like."

"Oh, I see what you mean. Pretty neat. Anyway, Sal, this is right up our alley," John continued. "All we have to do is figure out where he's going to strike next. Just imagine the headline then: Kids From B.A.D. Do It Again."

"But how do we know which store to watch?" asked Sally.

"Maybe we could guess."

"Are You kidding? There are hundreds of milk stores in this city. Our chances are next to nothing."

"Yeah, that's true," admitted John. "Maybe it's not such a hot case after all. Do you see anything else in the paper? Maybe there's a kidnaping we missed."

But they didn't have time to check, because just then the other two detectives came running up onto John's porch. Mike was out of breath but Ben was shouting all the way.