The First Day of School Mystery

by David A. Adler

  Cam nodded.

  Dr. Prell turned. She looked through her window at the cars parked outside and said, “Whoever stole Ms. Benson’s car probably saw her park it. He knew she’s a teacher and wouldn’t come back until school was over. There would be plenty of time before Ms. Benson would notice her car was missing. By then he could be a long way from here.”

  “You said, ‘He knew she’s a teacher,’ and ‘By then he could be a long way from here.’ Do you know the thief is a man?”

  “No,” Dr. Prell admitted. “I don’t know that.”

  “Women steal, too.”

  “You’re right,” Dr. Prell said.

  “And the thief would be a long way from here,” Cam said, “if he or she hadn’t crashed into that tree.”

  Cam thought for a moment. Then she said, “The thief must have left fingerprints on the steering wheel. And maybe someone saw the thief get out of the car.”

  Dr. Prell turned from the window. “What did the police officer say?” she asked.

  “He said this is a mystery.”

  Dr. Prell nodded. “The police know all about fingerprints and witnesses. Let them look for the thief.”

  “But—” Cam started.

  Dr. Prell stopped her. “You’re a smart girl,” she said. “I know you like to solve mysteries, but I think you’ll have to leave this one to the police.”

  Cam nodded.

  “You should go back to class now,” Dr. Prell told her.

  Cam started toward the door.

  “And Cam,” Dr. Prell said, “Ms. Benson is a very good teacher. I’m sure you and your class will have a great year.”

  Dr. Prell wrote a note to Mr. Day and gave it to Cam.

  Cam left the principal’s office.

  “Click! Click!” Mrs. Wayne said, and laughed as Cam walked past.

  Cam smiled and said, “Click! Click!”

  When Cam got back to class, the children were all standing by their desks. Their arms were raised high above their heads.

  Cam gave Mr. Day the note. He looked at it. Then he told Cam, “Go stand by your seat. Lift up your arms and stretch. Exercise will help you think.”

  Cam raised her arms above her head.

  “Arms out,” Mr. Day said.

  He stretched his arms in front of him. Cam and the others in her class did, too.

  “Now, right arm up, left to the side,” Mr. Day said.

  Mr. Day demonstrated, and the children followed his example.

  “Left knees up and hop.”

  The children raised their left knees and hopped.

  A few children banged into their desks. Two boys in Cam’s row fell.

  The door opened. Ms. Benson came in. She looked at the hopping children. Then she looked at Mr. Day.

  “This exercise will help them think,” he told her.

  The children kept hopping, knocking into their desks, and falling.

  Ms. Benson smiled. “Rabbits and kangaroos must be great thinkers,” she said.

  “Rabbits and kangaroos?” Mr. Day asked.

  “They hop a lot,” Ms. Benson explained.

  “Oh,” Mr. Day said. He stopped hopping. He told the children to be seated. Ms. Benson thanked him for watching her class, and he left.

  Ms. Benson stood in front of the class. “This has been a strange first day of school,” she said. “I didn’t plan to be in the police station this morning. I planned to teach. And that’s what I’m going to do.”

  Ms. Benson asked the children to take out their math notebooks. She was about to teach them how to multiply fractions.

  You plan to teach, Cam thought, and I plan to solve this mystery. I plan to find out who stole your car.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Ms. Benson drew large circles on the board. She called them “pies” and drew slices in them. She wrote lots of numbers and fractions on the board. She talked on and on about multiplication and fractions.

  Cam’s classmates listened to Ms. Benson. When she put some problems on the board, they did them. Cam didn’t. She kept thinking about Ms. Benson’s car.

  Rrrr!

  The school bell rang.

  “Oh, my,” Ms. Benson said. “I just started teaching, and it’s already time for lunch.”

  The children closed their books and hurried out of the room.

  “Jennifer,” Ms. Benson called to Cam. “Please wait.”

  Cam and Eric stopped by Ms. Benson’s desk.

  “I know I wasn’t listening to the lesson,” Cam told Ms. Benson. “But I was thinking about your car. There must be some way to find out who stole it.”

  “That’s a job for the police,” Ms. Benson said.

  “Cam is really good at solving mysteries,” Eric said.

  “Cam? Who’s Cam?” Ms. Benson asked.

  Eric explained to her about Cam’s amazing memory. “And we saw your car this morning,” Eric said. “Maybe Cam will remember something that will help the police.”

  Ms. Benson smiled. “I don’t think the police need your help,” she said. “I think you should go to lunch. And when you get back, pay attention to the lesson.”

  Cam and Eric went to the cafeteria. They sat at a table by the window and opened their lunch bags.

  “Hey,” Danny, called to Cam from the next table. “Did Benson yell at you? Are you in trouble for not doing the math?”

  “I’m not in trouble,” Cam answered.

  “Oh yes you are,” Danny said. “That Benson is tough.”

  “I think she’s nice,” Janet Teller said.

  Cam unwrapped her sandwich. While she and Eric ate their lunches, they talked with their friends about the summer and Ms. Benson.

  Eric pushed a straw into his drink container and grabbed it. Juice squirted out of the straw and onto his shirt.

  “Yikes!” Eric said. “Look what I did!”

  “You should be more careful,” Janet said.

  After lunch, the children returned to class, and Ms. Benson started a geography lesson.

  “What’s the world’s most important food?” she asked.

  “Cotton candy,” Danny called out.

  “Please, raise your hand,” Ms. Benson told him.

  “Milk is important,” Janet said when Ms. Benson called on her.

  “Yes. That’s true,” Ms. Benson said. “But for more than half the people of the world, rice is their most important food.”

  Cam tried to pay attention to the lesson, but she kept thinking about Ms. Benson’s car.

  “And other than water,” Ms. Benson said, “people have more coffee than any other drink.”

  “More than soda? More than juice?” Danny asked.

  Juice, Cam thought. She looked at Eric. There was a stain where juice had spilled on his shirt.

  I wonder, Cam thought.

  Cam closed her eyes. She said, “Click!” and looked at a picture she had in her head.

  “I just remembered something,” Cam called out, and opened her eyes. “Ms. Benson, I just remembered something I saw in your car.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Cam said, ‘Click!’” Danny called out, and got up. “Hey, I’m a camera,” he said, and blinked his eyes a few times. “Click! Click! Click!”

  Janet turned to Danny. “Don’t make fun of Cam,” she told him.

  “What did you remember?” the other children asked Cam.

  “Please, sit down,” Ms. Benson told Danny. “And if you want to say something to me or to the class, please raise your hand.”

  Cam raised her hand.

  “Do you want to say something?” Ms. Benson asked Cam.

  “Yes,” Cam answered. “When you talked about drinks, I remembered that Eric spilled his drink. Then I thought about cleaning his shirt and I wanted to ask you if you brought some clothing to the cleaners this morning.”

  “That’s a strange question.”

  “There’s a cleaners near the school,” Cam said. “Mrs. Lane, our bus driver, goes to it. This morning, whil
e she was driving, a cleaning ticket fell out of her pants pocket.”

  “I didn’t go to the cleaners this morning.”

  “Well,” Cam said. “There was a pink piece of paper on the front seat of your car. I think it’s a cleaning ticket.”

  “I saw it, too,” Eric called out.

  “It’s not mine,” Ms. Benson said. She thought for a moment. “And do you know what’s on a cleaning ticket?” she said as she went to her closet. “A name.”

  Ms. Benson opened her closet. She took out a small telephone, and pressed some buttons.

  “Hello Officer Oppen,” she said. “This is Margie Benson.”

  “Margie,” Danny whispered. “Our teacher’s name is Margie.”

  “There may be a cleaning ticket in my car,” Ms. Benson said, “but it isn’t mine. It might be the thief’s. If it is, the thief’s name will be on the ticket.”

  Ms. Benson listened. Then she thanked Officer Oppen and said good-bye.

  “This is exciting,” she said, and smiled at Cam.

  Ms. Benson returned the telephone to her closet. “Well,” she said to the class. “Let’s continue the lesson.”

  Ms. Benson went to the bulletin board on the side wall. “Most of the world’s rice grows in Asia,” she said. She pointed to the map of the world and asked, “Who can find Asia?”

  “Who lost it?” Danny asked.

  Ms. Benson glared at Danny. Then she looked at the children who had raised their hands. She called on Eric and asked him to come to the map and find Asia.

  He did.

  Ms. Benson continued the lesson. She told the children where coffee beans grow. Then she asked them to find those continents on the map.

  Cam was no longer listening. She thought about the cleaning ticket and wondered if the police would find the thief.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Just before the end of the school day, the door to Ms. Benson’s classroom opened. Dr. Prell and the police officer with the short beard walked in.

  Dr. Prell told Ms. Benson, “Officer Oppen has good news.”

  Officer Oppen smiled. “We caught the car thief,” he told Ms. Benson. “But something still puzzles me. How did you know there was a ticket in the car?”

  “She didn’t!” Danny shouted, and jumped up. He pointed at Cam. “She’s the smart one. She has a Click! Click! memory.”

  “That’s right. Jennifer Jansen knew about the ticket,” Ms. Benson said, and pointed to Cam. “I’m lucky to have smart students.” She told Officer Oppen about Cam’s amazing memory.

  “That cleaning ticket helped to solve the mystery,” Officer Oppen told her. “We looked at the name and address on the ticket and we knew who stole the car.”

  Officer Oppen told Ms. Benson that the thief was at the police station. “He told us he was walking home from the cleaners when he saw you park your car. He told us he was only borrowing it, that he was going to return it before school was out.”

  Danny called out, “I don’t believe him.”

  Officer Oppen said Ms. Benson’s car would have to stay at the police station. Then it would have to be repaired.

  Dr. Prell told Ms. Benson, “I can drive you home.”

  “Well,” Officer Oppen said, “that’s about it.”

  Officer Oppen put his hands on his hips and tried to look mean. “Unless there are some other problems here.”

  When he said that, he looked right at Danny.

  Danny was still standing.

  Ms. Benson asked Danny, “Do we have any problems here?”

  “No,” he said, and quickly sat down.

  Rrrr!

  The school bell rang. It was time to go home.

  While the children got ready to leave, Ms. Benson thanked Cam for her help. “I’m glad you’re in my class.”

  Eric was standing next to Cam.

  Ms. Benson told Eric, “I’m glad you’re in my class, too.”

  Officer Oppen thanked Cam. “The best defense against crime,” he said, “is alert citizens.”

  “We have to go,” Eric said, “or we’ll miss our bus.”

  Cam and Eric hurried out of the room.

  “Don’t run!” Mr. Day shouted to them from the other end of the hall.

  Cam and Eric stopped running.

  “There you are,” Mrs. Lane said when Cam and Eric got on the bus. “I thought you’d never get here and we’d never get home.”

  “Never get home!” Tommy-in-Kindergarten said. “How will I eat my dinner! How will I get to sleep!”

  “I’m sorry, Tommy,” Mrs. Lane said. “I always complain.”

  “And we always get home in time for dinner,” Eric told Tommy-in-Kindergarten. Then Eric turned to Cam and said, “And you always solve mysteries.”

  “Not always,” Cam said.

  “Well, lots of times,” Eric told her. “And I’m always happy to help.”

  Mrs. Lane started to drive off. It was time to ride home after a very exciting first day of school.

  A Cam Jansen Memory Game

  Take another look at the picture opposite page 1. Study it. Blink your eyes and say “Click!” Then turn back to this page and answer these questions. Please, first study the picture, then look at the questions.

  1. Are Cam and Eric sitting in the seats right behind the bus driver, Mrs. Lane?

  2. Where are Mrs. Lane’s sunglasses?

  3. Is Cam wearing sandals or sneakers?

  4. Is Cam wearing a jacket?

  5. How many children are wearing hats?

  6. Are there any animals in the picture?What kind?