This bestselling classic mystery from Willo Davis Roberts about a boy who witnesses a murder is “taut with suspense” ( Booklist, starred review). Though Rob saw Mrs. Calloway fall to her death, strangled by the leather strap of her binoculars, he wants to believe that it was an accident. He wants to pretend he didn’t see the hands that pushed her out of her window. Then a flowerpot almost falls on him. And three bullets just miss him. And someone tries to poison his food. When he tries to tell his family that he thinks there has been a murder, they are too busy with his sister’s wedding to care. Will Rob be the murderer’s next victim? Willo Davis Roberts wrote many mystery and suspense novels for children during her long and illustrious career, including The Girl with the Silver Eyes , The View from the Cherry Tree , Twisted Summer , Megan’s Island , Baby-Sitting Is a Dangerous Job , Hostage , Scared Stiff , The Kidnappers , and Caught! Three of her children’s books won Edgar Awards, while others received great reviews and other accolades, including the Sunshine State Young Reader’s Award, the California Young Reader’s Medal, and the Georgia Children’s Book Award. The View From the Cherry Tree One From his perch in the cherry tree Rob Mallory could see into the houses on either side. It was the Mallorys’ tree, but it was closest to Mrs. Calloway’s house; right up against it, as a matter of fact, and one of the numerous causes of problems with their neighbor. It was into Mrs. Calloway’s dining room that he was looking; behind him, at home, female voices came through the open windows. He couldn’t understand what they were saying because they were all talking at once, but he knew, anyway. Something about the wedding. All anybody talked about these days was the wedding, like there was a law, or something, that made other subjects forbidden. The day was warm enough for even Old Lady Calloway to open her windows, and the slight breeze stirred the heavy lace curtains so that he caught glimpses of the inside. He had lived next door to Mrs. Calloway for nine of his eleven years, but he’d never been inside her house. When he was little, he’d believed the stories the older kids told, about how she caught kids and ate them, like the witch in Hansel and Gretel. Now he didn’t believe that anymore, but he wouldn’t have gone inside her house for anything. Mrs. Calloway’s rug was dark red, which ought to have been pretty, but it wasn’t. He couldn’t tell if it was dusty, but he imagined it smelled funny, the way the old lady herself did. The furniture was all old and funny looking, too, very dark and depressing. As he sat with his back against a big limb, eating cherries and spitting out the pits, he saw Sonny creeping across the lawn toward Mrs. Calloway’s house. Sonny was twenty-two pounds of the ­meanest cat in the country. Rob watched with interest as the cat approached the corner of the Calloway house. Mrs. Calloway hated cats, and Rob was supposed to keep Sonny away from her place, but what sense did that make? You couldn’t police a cat all the time. Sonny made the leap from lawn to limb in one long bound, sitting below Rob in the cherry tree for a moment, then inching out toward the blowing curtains in Mrs. Calloway’s window. Rob knew perfectly well that he ought to stop him. The old lady would have fits if Sonny landed in her dining room. That was his mother’s phrase . . . somebody was always “having fits,” or about to. He’d never actually seen it happen, and he couldn’t think of a ­better place to see it than with Mrs. Calloway. Sonny crouched at the end of the limb, his tail twitching, then still. The muscles bunched under the black pelt as he prepared to attack the curtains. And then Rob missed the action because out front a car horn sounded and he let it distract him for just a second. When he looked back, the curtains were still flapping, but Sonny was gone. He waited, hoping something would happen. Like the old lady would start yelling, and maybe she’d froth at the mouth when she had her fit. That’s what dogs did. He’d never seen one, but he’d heard about it. The car horn was just old Max, and now he was coming around the side of the house toward the back door. You’d think Max would quit coming around all the time, now that Darcy was getting married to Steve. Old Max was twenty-one, and for a grown-up he wasn’t bad. He had a sense of humor, which was more than some of the rest of them had. Rob threw a cherry pit, but it was too light; it fell short, so he pitched a whole cherry. The second one hit Max between the eyes. Max paused, looking upward into the tree and stepping off the sidewalk. “That you, Robbie?” “I’m a frog prince.” “No kidding. You do look sort of green at that, but I thought it was the reflection of the leaves. Where is everybody?” “If you mean Darcy, she’s having something altered. It’s an emergency. Everything’s an emergency at our house