by David Lewman
“No, it didn’t,” Miss Hodges said. “But that’s not usually how evidence works. You’re not just looking for the one thing that’ll lead you directly to the criminal. You’re building up a case, fact by fact. The more you know, the closer you are to solving the crime.”
That made them feel a little better. But what should they do next? It seemed as though they had run out of trails to follow. They asked Miss Hodges for advice.
“Well,” she replied, “I believe I would think about motive next.”
“Motive?” Corey asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Money has been stolen. Why? What did the thief want that hundred dollars for?”
Club CSI thanked Miss Hodges for her advice.
During their free period, Ben, Hannah, and Corey met to discuss the case. It turned out that all three of them couldn’t stop thinking about why the thief had stolen the hundred dollars.
“I’m thinking the thief wanted to spend the money on something specific,” Ben said.
“Why?” Hannah asked.
“Because he or she took a specific amount,” he answered. “There was more than a thousand dollars in that metal box. But instead of just grabbing it all, the thief took only one hundred dollars.”
They thought about this as they walked down the hallway. “So we’re looking for someone who wanted to buy something specific and only needed one hundred dollars to buy it,” Corey said.
“I think so,” Ben said.
“It makes sense,” Hannah said. “But that person is going to be tough to find. Kids in this school buy stuff that cost at least a hundred dollars all the time.”
“I think it’s worth a try,” Corey said. “We should be on the lookout for someone who has something new. Something they’ve gotten recently. And that costs more than a hundred dollars.”
“Yeah,” Ben agreed. “Unless they bought something that cost less than a hundred dollars and then kept the change.”
“It could be,” Hannah said. “But like you said, they could easily have taken more than a hundred dollars. So the thief probably stole just the amount of money he or she needed.”
They’d reached Corey’s homeroom. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll meet up again at lunch. In the meantime I’ll keep my eyes peeled for kids with new, expensive stuff.”
“So will I,” Ben said.
“Me too,” Hannah chimed in. “See you at lunch.”
Between the next two periods, Ben noticed a kid from his English class wearing a backpack with headphones plugged into one of the arm straps.
“Excuse me,” Ben said to him. “Can you plug your headphones right into your backpack?”
“What?” the kid asked. He couldn’t hear Ben with his earbuds stuck in his ears. He had his music turned up so loud that Ben could hear it.
Ben motioned for the kid to take out at least one of his earbuds. After the kid had removed the left earbud, Ben repeated his question.
The kid grinned. “Yeah,” he said proudly. “I can put my MP3 player in this pocket. Then I plug the earbuds in here.” He showed Ben the place on the strap where the plug went in. “I can even adjust the volume—see?”
The backpack had a volume control on the strap too.
“I’m thinking about getting one of these,” Ben said casually. “How much do they cost?”
The kid shrugged. “I don’t know. My uncle gave it to me.”
“Oh,” Ben said. “How long have you had it?”
“Since my birthday. Like, three months. Why?”
“I just wondered if it was durable,” Ben said, improvising. The kid seemed to buy it.
“Very durable,” the kid said, nodding. “And cool.” He stuck the bud back into his ear and walked away.
Three months. Long before the thief had taken the money.
Corey spotted the shoes from across the room. New basketball shoes. Really nice ones. When class was over, he went up to the kid wearing them, a guy named Tyler.
“Nice kicks,” he said.
“Nice what?” Tyler asked.
“Kicks,” Corey repeated. It was something he’d heard his dad say as a joke. “Shoes.”
“Huh,” Tyler said. “Kicks. I’ve never heard that.” He started to walk away.
“I was thinking about getting a pair of those,” Corey said. “How much are they?”
Tyler stopped and thought.
“Um, like a hundred and twenty-five dollars,” he said.
“Wow, that’s a lot,” Corey said.
Tyler shrugged. “Shoes are expensive. This style might cost even more now. I got them, like, almost a year ago.”
“But they look new,” Corey said.
Tyler shrugged again. “I take good care of my kicks.”
Hannah wasn’t really into purses, but she knew a nice one when she saw it. This one had fringe hanging from the front of it, which made it dance back and forth on the arm of a skinny girl with blond hair who was walking quickly down the hallway.
Hannah quickened her pace, falling in step beside the girl. She turned and glared at Hannah. “May I help you?” she asked.
“Sorry,” Hannah said. “I was just admiring your purse. Is it real leather?”
The girl smiled. “Thanks! Yeah. I just got it.”
That was promising. “Would you mind if I asked you how much it cost?” Hannah asked.
“Well,” the girl said, looking a little embarrassed. “It was actually on this huge sale. And my mom had a coupon. So it was only about thirty dollars.”
Even though she was disappointed by the girl’s answer, Hannah managed to look very enthusiastic. “Wow! What a great deal! You must be a brilliant shopper!”
The girl looked a little puzzled. “Thank you,” she said. “I guess.”
At lunch, Corey was talking to Ben between bites of turkey.
“You know,” Corey said with food in his mouth, “I never really noticed before, but the kids in this school have a lot of new stuff. If you start looking for it, you see it everywhere.”
“Tell me about it,” Ben agreed. “I’m starting to think the students at Woodlands Junior High are a little too into buying things.”
Corey took a long drink of milk. “Do you think any of the stuff you saw was bought with stolen money?”
Ben shook his head. “Not really. I mean, I guess it could have been, but everything I asked about was either bought long before the theft or given to the person as a gift.”
Corey nodded. “Yeah, me too. And I’m starting to feel kind of uncomfortable asking people where they got things. They must think I’m really weird.”
“They already think I’m weird,” Ben said.
“No, they don’t,” Corey said, coming to the defense of his friend, even though he knew that some kids in the school did think Ben was weird. To change the subject, he asked, “Where’s Hannah?”
“I don’t know,” Ben said. Then he spotted her approaching their table. “Here she comes.”
“And she looks excited!” Corey noticed.
Hannah plopped down into a seat next to Corey and Ben. She just smiled at them for a moment, enjoying knowing something they didn’t know yet.
“Well?” Corey asked.
“What’d you find out?” Ben asked, leaning forward.
“At first I tried just keeping my eyes peeled for new stuff, but that didn’t really work,” she said. “The kids in this school buy a ton of new stuff.”
“We were actually just talking about that,” Corey said, nodding.
“So instead of just walking through the halls and classrooms trying to spot someone with something expensive, I started asking around,” she continued.
Ben suspected it was easier for a girl to “ask around” than it was for a guy, but he didn’t say anything.
“Can I have one of your chips?” Hannah asked Corey.
“Yeah,” he said. “One.”
She took a chip and crunched it. “So I found out that there’s this eighth grader named Brittne
y who just got one of those Quark Pads.”
Ben looked doubtful. “A lot of kids have those.”
“Yeah, pretty much everyone except me,” Corey complained.
“But listen to how she got it,” Hannah said, sneaking one of Corey’s chips. “It was given to her as a gift by this eighth-grade boy who likes her named Greg Marshall.”
Corey whistled. “Wow, that’s a nice gift. He must really like her.”
“Yeah, it’s such a nice gift that Brittney’s mom wouldn’t let her keep it,” Hannah said.
“Wait,” Corey said. “So she had to give it back? I’ll take it!”
“When Brittney tried to give the Quark Pad back to Greg, he said, ‘You have no idea what I went through to get that for you!’” Hannah went on, relishing this part of the story.
“He said that? An eighth grader?” Ben asked, hanging on every word.
“Yep,” she said. “And then he ran off without taking back the Quark Pad.”
All three of them thought about this story. It was very interesting. “I think maybe we should talk to Brittney,” Ben said.
“That shouldn’t be too hard,” Hannah said. “She’s eating lunch right over there.”
Hannah pointed at a pretty, red-haired girl sitting a few tables away. Ben got up right away and started walking over to her. Corey and Hannah followed close behind him.
When he reached the table, Brittney looked up curiously. “Yes?”
Now that he was face-to-face with this eighth-grade girl, Ben wasn’t sure what to say. He turned to Hannah and let her take over.
“Hi,” Hannah said. “My name’s Hannah. You’re Brittney, right?”
The girl nodded. Hannah asked her if the story about Greg Marshall and the Quark Pad was true.
Brittney looked embarrassed. “I can’t believe everyone’s talking about this. I do not want to be Greg Marshall’s girlfriend. He’s just a big, weird guy.”
“Do you still have the Quark Pad?” Corey asked.
“Yeah,” Brittney said. “He wouldn’t take it back. But my mom doesn’t want me to keep it. I’m not sure what to do with it.”
“May we borrow it for a little while?” Ben asked.
Brittney looked confused. “What for?”
Hannah explained that they were Club CSI and that they thought the Quark Pad might be an important clue in an investigation. Shrugging, Brittney handed the Quark Pad to Hannah. Ben stopped Hannah before she took it.
“Careful,” he said. “Try to handle it by the edges.”
“I’ll do better than that,” Hannah said. She took rubber gloves out of her backpack, put them on, and took the Quark Pad.
“To the laboratory!” Corey said. “I’ve always wanted to say that.”
The three friends quickly borrowed the materials they needed from Miss Hodges. Then they started working on getting fingerprints from the Quark Pad.
“There are fingerprints all over it!” Corey said.
“Yeah,” Ben said as he carefully applied powder. “The glass surface is perfect for fingerprints.”
“A lot of these fingerprints are probably going to be Brittney’s,” Hannah observed.
“True, but I’m hoping Greg Marshall’s are still on here too,” Ben said.
It didn’t take them long to find a set of fingerprints that matched the Mystery Print they found on the box the money was stolen from.
“That’s it!” Corey said. “If these are Greg’s fingerprints, then he must be the thief!”
“Well, it’s not definite,” Ben said cautiously. “There could be another explanation. But it does seem pretty likely.”
“What do we do next?” Hannah asked. “We can’t just walk up to Greg Marshall and say, ‘Um, excuse me, but did you happen to steal a hundred dollars from the locked box in Mrs. Ramirez’s homeroom?’”
“Didn’t Brittney say Greg is big?” Corey asked.
“And weird,” Ben added.
“And an eighth grader,” Hannah said.
They sat there for a minute, thinking. It didn’t sound like it would be much fun to accuse some big, weird, older guy of stealing money.
“Maybe we should just pass this information along to Miss Hodges or Principal Inverno and let them handle it,” Ben suggested.
“But then Club CSI wouldn’t get credit for catching the thief,” Corey protested.
“Besides,” Hannah said, “I don’t think this counts as proof that Greg stole the money. I think we need more information.”
“From where?” Corey asked.
“From Greg,” Hannah said.
They were quiet again, trying to decide what to do now.
“So we’re right back to confronting a big, weird eighth grader,” Corey said gloomily.
“At least there’ll be three of us,” Ben pointed out. “And we could try to talk to him someplace where there are a lot of other people around.”
“You know, we don’t even know what this guy looks like,” Corey said. “I’m picturing something kind of like a cross between Frankenstein and Napoleon Dynamite.”
“Okay,” Hannah said. “Let’s do it tomorrow. First thing in the morning, I’ll try to find Brittney and ask her to point out Greg Marshall to me. Then we’ll decide on the best time and place to talk to him—together.”
“Sounds good,” Ben agreed.
Corey nodded. “Great. I just have one question.”
“What?” Hannah asked.
Corey picked up the Quark Pad. “Do you think I’ll get to keep this?”
Smiling, Hannah took the tablet back and put it in her backpack.
“Is that a yes?” Corey asked.
The next morning at school, Hannah spotted Brittney in the hallway. “Brittney!” she called. Brittney turned, looking slightly annoyed.
Hannah hurried up to her. “Sorry to bother you again, but I was just wondering if you could show me who Greg Marshall is. Do you see him anywhere right now?”
Brittney searched up and down the hallway. “There he is,” she said. “Over there. Getting a drink of water.”
Hannah glanced in the direction Brittney was looking. At the water fountain, she saw a big guy leaning over to have a drink. He had dark, messy hair—kind of long.
As he stood up, he looked over toward Brittney. Hannah quickly looked away so he wouldn’t see her staring at him. When she looked back, he was gone.
But she’d gotten a good look at him. A big guy who looked like Greg would be hard to miss.
Later that morning Hannah pointed him out to Ben and Corey.
“Just when we thought we went to a small school and knew most people—How did we miss him?” Ben asked.
“No idea,” Corey said. “But he’s not average height, that’s for sure.”
Between classes, they tried following Greg, but there was never a good chance to talk to him.
Luckily, they all had the same lunch period.
Looking around the cafeteria, Ben spotted Greg sitting at a table by himself.
“This is perfect,” Ben said. “He’s alone, so we can talk to him.”
“But there are lots of people around, so he won’t try anything violent,” Corey said. “Probably.”
The three friends casually approached Greg. “Mind if we join you?” Hannah asked.
Greg looked a little surprised to have three seventh graders he didn’t know join him for lunch, but he shrugged and then gestured to the empty seats around him. Club CSI sat down with their suspect.
For a moment they weren’t sure what to say. Then Corey asked, “Did you have Mrs. Ramirez for homeroom last year?”
“Yeah,” Greg said. “She was nice.”
“Yeah,” Corey agreed. “I’ve got her this year.”
“Did Brittney have Mrs. Ramirez for homeroom too?” Hannah asked.
Greg blushed and looked down. “Yeah, she did.”
Hannah carefully took the Quark Pad out of her backpack. “Greg, did you give this Quark Pad to Brittney?” she ask
ed gently.
Greg looked stunned. “Where did you get that?”
“Brittney gave it to us,” Ben said.
“But it was a present! For her! And I went to a lot of tr—” Greg suddenly stopped talking.
“It was a really nice present, Greg,” Hannah said. “Too nice. Her mom won’t let her keep it.”
“I know,” he muttered. “She told me that.”
Ben took out an ink pad and a white card. “Greg, would you mind letting us fingerprint you?”
Greg looked nervous. “What? Why?”
“For our forensic science class,” Ben answered. That was sort of the truth.
“I don’t think so,” Greg said. He started to gather up his things.
Corey decided to go for it. “Greg, the reason we want your fingerprints is we’ve got the fingerprints of the person who stole a hundred bucks from our class’s school trip fund, and we want to see if your prints match. If you’re innocent, you shouldn’t mind giving us your fingerprints.”
“No way. I don’t have to give you my fingerprints!” Greg said vehemently. He stood up from the table and looked around, as if trying to figure out the quickest way out of the cafeteria.
“You’re right, Greg, you don’t have to,” Ben said quietly. “But like Corey said, if you don’t have anything to hide, then why not just cooperate? And if you did do it, you can’t run from it. You must know deep down that you’re going to be caught. Everyone knows about the missing money.”
Greg just stared at them for a few moments, breathing hard. Nobody said anything.
Then he put his head down on the table and covered it with his arms.
“Okay,” he said, his voice a little muffled. “I confess. I took the money.”
The three members of Club CSI exchanged a quick look. They’d found the thief! Still, they couldn’t help but feel kind of sorry for the guy. He didn’t seem tough at all. He actually seemed like a nice kid.
“I just wanted to buy something nice for Brittney,” he said. “I’ve been watching her, trying to figure out what she might really like. I thought maybe a piece of jewelry or clothing or something. Then I heard her talking to one of the kids who has a Quark Pad, saying how much she’d love to have one of those.”