Super Puzzletastic Mysteries Page 6

“How do you know?” Anya whispered back.

  “I just do. Any time someone says they’re thinking about something, it means no,” Div whispered again. “And Shel . . .” There was something odd about the cat keeper but Div couldn’t put her finger on it. “Mom, Anya and I are going for a walk,” Div suddenly announced.

  Mom was still on the phone with Dolphin Paradise. “Don’t go too far off,” she told them. “The line is starting to move.”

  Div looked ahead where one by one, each visitor went off to one side to talk to the police and then a few minutes later was released through a separate exit. So far, no one had any clues about where the statue had gone. And no one had the statue hidden in their shoulder bag.

  “Where are we going?” Anya asked.

  “To investigate,” Div said. “We were the last ones to see that statue.” She studied the postcard, and the brilliant blue, yellow, and red hues of the Picasso cat. “Keep your eyes and ears open, Anya.”

  When they went upstairs though, they discovered that one whole wing had been cordoned off with yellow tape.

  “Sorry, kids,” a man said, who stood in front of the bedroom. “This is a crime scene.”

  But Div wasn’t ready to give up yet. She remembered the balcony wrapped around the entire second floor. “Come on, Anya,” she whispered. They went to the other side of the floor, through the doors that led to the balcony. From there, they would be able to look inside the windows of Hemingway’s bedroom. But when they rounded the corner, Div and Anya found the balcony packed with tourists, all with the same idea of trying to sneak a peek.

  “This is crazy,” one man said. “Count me out.” He backed away. The rest of the tourists continued pushing to get a view.

  “What’s there to see?” Anya asked. “Isn’t the statue missing?”

  “No one knows for sure,” someone told her. “But it’s very exciting!”

  Div tried to get closer to the window but there were too many people. “I guess we should go back down, Anya,” she said, disappointed. “Mom is probably wondering where we are.” Besides, what had she hoped to find? She wasn’t a trained investigator. And she didn’t know anything about Hemingway. The only thing she knew about were cats.

  They got to the back stairs when Anya said, “Hey, it’s the cat from Hemingway’s bed.”

  “A tuxedo,” Div said. “That’s the kind of cat it is.”

  The black-and-white cat stood, watching them.

  “Meow,” the tuxedo cat said.

  “Hi, kitty,” Div replied. She patted its head gently. “What a sweet kitty.”

  “Meow, meow,” answered the tuxedo cat.

  “Let’s see if you’re a polydactyl. Kitty, show me your paws.” Div checked and saw the distinctive six toes. “Anya, it’s another one.”

  “Meow, meow, meow,” said the tuxedo cat, this time a little more insistently.

  “What’s wrong, kitty? Are you trying to tell us something?” And then Div saw it, lodged between the tuxedo cat’s fifth and sixth toe, a colorful shard of clay. Div pulled it out and held it up. “Kitty!” she exclaimed.

  The cat stared at her as if to say, I told you so.

  Div looked from the tuxedo to the shard, which had yellow, red, and blue colors. “That must hurt, Kitty. So many colors and . . .” Suddenly she could barely speak. “Anya, it’s from the Picasso cat. I just know it.”

  “You mean . . .” Anya’s voice trailed off.

  The tuxedo cat regarded Div for a moment, then started down the stairs.

  “Let’s follow it,” Div said excitedly.

  They ran after the tuxedo as it wove around visitors, climbing steadily down the stairs. Soon they were all at the bottom, then on the pebbled walk that went to the cat houses and eventually the gift store. The cat picked up speed and so did Div and Anya. The cat sensed it was being followed, which seemed to fill it with even more urgency. It bounded into the encircled area of the cat homes.

  Shel was standing in the middle and saw the tuxedo. “Elvis Presley!” he exclaimed.

  The tuxedo dived into a cat house.

  “Shel, I’m sorry but we have to search that cat house,” Div said.

  “Wait, what?” Shel said. “Of course you can’t. That’s Elvis Presley’s house and—”

  Div debated half a second then leaped forward, jamming her hand in.

  “Div!” Anya yelled.

  Shel lunged but it was too late. Div pulled out a brightly colored object. She held it up, a clay statue that was heavier than she imagined, brilliant in shades of yellow, red, and blue, a cat statue only because of its tail and paws, because it was now missing a head.

  Shel gasped. “What? Oh no! Elvis! What have you done?”

  Before anyone could say anything, up the path came Mr. Frost and the two police officers, one of them holding a ziplock bag.

  “Shel!” exclaimed Mr. Frost. “What’s going on? We found cat cookie crumbs on the display shelf. And now the statue is here—and what happened to its head?”

  “It was hidden in Elvis Presley’s cat house,” Anya said.

  “Anya!” Div cried. Could nothing stop her sister from blurting?

  “Shel, this is a grave situation,” Mr. Frost said. “I don’t even know where to begin.”

  “First we’ll take fingerprints,” one of the police officers said.

  “Wait, I didn’t take the statue!” Shel sputtered. “Why would I?”

  “Well, you sure didn’t want me to sell it to Wally,” Mr. Frost said slowly. “Even if the money would mean we could keep the house operating for many more years.”

  “But . . . but . . .” Shel was choking on his words.

  Div’s mind rapidly calculated everything she had seen so far: Shel’s devotion to the cats, the art couple insisting on buying the statue for their collection, and finally the crumbs in the ziplock bag that the police officer held. And then she remembered something else: how art might be the right thing in the wrong place. That’s what made it interesting. Where else had she seen that—the right thing in the wrong place?

  Div spotted someone on the pebbled path and she stood up suddenly.

  “Shel didn’t take the statue,” she said. “But I know who did!”

  For the solution to this story, please turn here.

  The Perfect Alibi

  by Fleur Bradley

  Time just wasn’t on my side that day.

  I was running late, really late, so I yanked my bike off the main road and took the shortcut home from George’s house. He’s my best friend and we were so into the Lego robot we were constructing, I left later than I should to beat my mom’s deadline. George lives across town. It takes about half an hour on my bike to get to his apartment.

  I didn’t have a half an hour.

  So, like I said, I took the shortcut—the one that goes through the forest (super creepy, especially once it gets dark), and passes the big stone church and the Cumberland Mansion.

  More on that place later.

  I raced on my bike, past the church where the clock in the stone steeple told me I was in trouble.

  It was seven fifteen.

  I was supposed to be home by seven. And the church clock was meticulously set to the correct time by the maintenance man every Monday. Boring but true. We once did a school field trip to the church, where we met the man and saw his clunky set of clock-setting tools.

  Anyway, like I said, all my hurrying wasn’t enough to get me home on time. And my mom wasn’t listening when I tried to explain why I was late and how close George and I were to a mega breakthrough in the robot department.

  “Francesca,” she said when I dashed through the back door and tried to act nonchalant, “you have to start following the rules around here.” She was at the kitchen table grading papers for the high school English class she teaches. “This is the fifth time you’re late this month.”

  Sometimes it stinks to have a mom who keeps track of stuff so accurately.

  “You know you need t
o be home before dark,” she continued. “Even on a Friday.”

  Then she sighed. It’s always worse when she sighs.

  “I need some time to figure out your punishment. I’ll tell you what it is later.”

  I went to bed dreading what she might dream up.

  I found out soon enough. The next morning at breakfast, Mom looked way too pleased with herself. My punishment was going to be brutal. I could tell.

  I ate my cereal and waited. It seemed as if the cinnamon in my Cinnamon Toast Crunch had a little extra bite to it. Maybe it was helping Mom punish me.

  Mom smiled as she wiped down the kitchen counters.

  It was time for me to take my punishment.

  “Francesca,” she said, “I was putting away the garbage can last night when all of a sudden, I had a brilliant idea. You know Mr. Griffin, from across the street?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Our neighbor Mr. Griffin is a grumpy old guy who complains about everything: my older brother’s skateboarding on the sidewalk, my water balloon fight’s leftover balloon bits (“They mess up my lawn!”), dogs even thinking about sniffing one of his trees to do their business. Mr. Griffin is always watching you from his window, even when you think he isn’t.

  “He was complaining the other day about how his garage was so full of stuff he couldn’t even park his car in there.” Mom gave me an even bigger smile. “You’re going to help him.”

  “Do what?”

  “Clean out his garage.”

  I was about to say “B-B-But” when Mom said, “No ifs, ands, or buts about it.”

  From the look on Mom’s face, I knew there would be no appealing my sentence. So, after I finished breakfast and my morning chores, I mustered up all my courage and walked across the street. I climbed Old Man Griffin’s porch steps, and with my eyes closed, I rang his doorbell.

  I opened my eyes when I heard the garage door rolling up.

  Mr. Griffin was standing in front of the garage, a dark, cluttered cavern full of who knows what. He had a sour look on his face and his arms crossed over his chest. He looked even less thrilled than me about the prospect of our spending the day together.

  “What’s your name?” he asked when I (very slowly) walked to the garage. The place smelled like motor oil mixed with old garbage and wet newspapers.

  “Um, Francesca?” Yes, I said it like it was a question. What can I say? I was scared.

  He arched a bushy eyebrow. “Francesca?”

  “Everyone calls me Frankie. My mom told me I should come over and—”

  He waved his hand dismissively. “I know what she told you. She told me, too. Called me up on the phone. Thought it was another one of those salespeople calling about credit cards. I hate those calls.” This time he waved his hands to dismiss the world. “Your mother says you’ve come over here to help me clean up. What’d you do?”

  I was about to tell him when he waved his hand to dismiss me for the third time.

  “Never mind. I don’t much care. Besides, you and me have work to do.”

  I followed him into the garage. There were boxes stacked on top of boxes. A bunch of broken lawn furniture stacked in a tangled heap. Old lawn mowers leaking ancient oil. Tangled strands of Christmas lights. String-tied bundles of magazines and newspapers. A workbench buried under grimy tools. A wheelbarrow filled with dirt and a dead plant. There was even a wrinkled plastic swimming pool piled in a clump.

  I checked my phone.

  It was 10:05.

  This was going to be a very long day.

  “We’ll deal with the lawn furniture and busted swimming pool tomorrow,” Mr. Griffin said.

  Tomorrow?

  Mom hadn’t said anything about me doing two days of community service.

  I was about to say something when Mr. Griffin wheezed up a laugh. “Ha! Gotcha. Don’t worry, Frankie. Your prison sentence ends today.”

  I smiled. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me. Your mother is the judge, jury, and appeals court on this one.”

  He pulled a box out of one of the tallest stacks and dropped it on the concrete floor with a thump.

  “These are my old files. I’ll go through them, you shred what I give you.” He nodded toward the industrial-sized paper shredder jammed into the corner near the workbench. The one I had thought was another hunk of junk to be dragged to the curb.

  I counted the number of file cartons climbing up to the garage ceiling. It was a teetering cardboard skyscraper. And the stack behind it? Those boxes were labeled “files,” too.

  I groaned—inwardly. I’m polite that way.

  For thirty minutes or more, Mr. Griffin glanced at sheets of paper, grunted, and handed those papers to me, five at a time. Any more and the machine would clog up. I took those five pieces of paper over to the shredder and fed them into the thing’s hungry mouth.

  When I went back for more, Mr. Griffin was staring at a stack of pages. He seemed caught up in whatever he was reading.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “An old case,” Mr. Griffin mumbled.

  “What kind of case?”

  “Burglary.”

  “Were you a lawyer?”

  Mr. Griffin shook his head. “Police detective.”

  I guess that sort of explained why he was always policing our street from his living room window.

  “What’s the case?” I asked.

  I love a good mystery. I read mystery books all the time, but this was a real-life one. That was pretty exciting.

  Mr. Griffin didn’t answer me for a good minute. I stood there waiting for him to hand me the papers so I could go shred them.

  Mr. Griffin tapped the pages and frowned. “You know, this one always stumped me. And it irked the heck out of me.”

  “What was stolen?”

  “A million dollars’ worth of jewelry, the entire Cumberland family’s collection. Several pieces of art. Plus, twenty thousand dollars in cash.”

  “Whoa,” I mumbled. I mean who has a million dollars’ worth of jewelry? I have a necklace and this sparkle ring I bought at the mall that turned my finger green.

  “I was never able to figure out what happened to a good portion of the loot, or who all was involved. It’s a cold case.” He hesitated, then handed the file to me. “Go ahead and shred it. I’ll never solve that one.”

  I took the file. “Can I look at it?”

  Mr. Griffin shrugged. “Knock yourself out, kid.”

  I opened the file just as George walked up the driveway pushing his bike. “Hey, Frankie. Your mom says you’re doing community service.”

  “More kids?” Mr. Griffin huffed. “I’m not running a local youth group here, you know.”

  “Hey, George,” I said. “You can help if you want.” I smiled eagerly. I’d do anything to get a friendly face in the garage with me.

  “Cool,” said George.

  “Who the heck are you?” growled Mr. Griffin, putting on his extra-grumpy face. I think he saves that one for kids.

  But George didn’t mind. He doesn’t pick up on social cues too much and is friendly to even the nastiest bullies in school.

  “I’m George, sir.” He extended his hand to shake but turned it into a friendly wave when Mr. Griffin just gave him another grunt and a frown. “Nice to meet you. Frankie and I build robots. Do you have any robots in your garage?”

  “Listen, George,” said Mr. Griffin, “unless you’re here to help, you probably want to scram.” He turned back to his box of files.

  “I’d be happy to help, sir.” George parked his bike and came into the garage. “Frankie and I were going to work on our robot, but this looks more exciting. What’s in that file? Is it something secret?”

  “It’s a cold case,” I said. “Mr. Griffin used to be a detective. With the police. We were shredding papers and he found an unsolved mystery.”

  “We should solve it!” George said eagerly. “You and me, Frankie!”

  He plopped down next to
me on the concrete floor.

  Mr. Griffin laughed. “I was a detective for twenty-three years, and I couldn’t crack this case. Now you two kids are going to do it?”

  George ignored him. “Let me see what you’ve got so far, Frankie.”

  I took the pages out of the file. There were forms and more forms, plus a stack of hand-scribbled notes. Then there was a photograph—what they call a mug shot on TV—the kind they snap when someone gets arrested.

  His name was Petey Miller. He looked grumpy. Then again, I probably wouldn’t be smiling for the camera if I just got arrested.

  “That guy, we caught,” Mr. Griffin said.

  George examined the photo. “What happened, exactly?”

  Mr. Griffin hesitated, but began to tell us the story. “Do you kids know the Cumberland Mansion?”

  We both nodded. I said, “I bike by that place every day, when I go over to George’s to work on our robots.”

  “Well, you kids might be too young to remember, but the Cumberland Mansion was burgled five years ago. The thieves got away with a lot of valuables—mostly jewelry and art.” He pointed to the mug shot. “That’s Petey Miller. We busted him trying to sell what he stole. But we never caught any of the other burglars.”

  “I’ll bet Frankie can figure this out,” said George, pulling a lawn chair out of the heap so he had a place to sit. “She’s a wiz at puzzles.”

  Mr. Griffin gave me an incredulous stare.

  I get that a lot—people think because I’m a kid, I couldn’t possibly be good at solving a mystery.

  “You might’ve missed something, Mr. Griffin,” I said very politely. “Our science teacher, Ms. Willow, tells us that sometimes it takes a fresh eye to see something that was there all along.”

  “And there’s no I in team,” George added. “Right?”

  I wasn’t sure if that was really the point we were trying to make, but I nodded anyway.

  Mr. Griffin huffed but didn’t argue.

  George pulled a sheet off another old chair. Dust flew everywhere. “Sit down, Frankie. We can be armchair detectives! Here’s a chair for you, too, Mr. Griffin.”

  He yanked back another sheet. George looked pretty funny, trying to swat away that cloud of dust. It made me laugh. You can’t really be grumpy around George. Unless you were Mr. Griffin. He still looked like the oldest member of the Sour Patch Kids.