The Green School Mystery
Page 3
“Hey,” the not-so-tall police officer said when he saw Cam. “There’s the girl with the photographic memory. Do you remember me?” he asked Cam. “I’m Officer Oppen.”
“And I’m Officer Davis,” the other police officer said.
Cam nodded. She remembered them.
“Tell me,” Officer Oppen said. “Is there some picture in your head that will help us find the stolen money?”
“I think so,” Cam said. “I think I might know who took the dimes and how he got them out of the school.”
Chapter Eight
Officer Oppen opened his detective pad.
“Please, tell us,” Officer Davis said. “Who took the dimes?”
“This morning,” Cam said, “we saw someone from the bakery push a cart into school. On it were what looked like just a few wrapped loaves of bread.”
Officer Davis shook her head. “Of course the man from the bakery had bread on the cart.”
Officer Oppen closed his detective pad.
Cam said, “But we have sloppy Joes for lunch. He must have already brought in a cart loaded with hero rolls. Why didn’t he bring the bread in with the heroes?”
“Tell them the rest,” Eric said. “Tell them what happened when you asked Mrs. Apple for a sandwich.”
“She didn’t have sandwich bread,” Cam said. “That’s because the man from the bakery wasn’t bringing in loaves of bread. He was bringing in bricks! He took the bricks from the ones on the side of the school. Then he put the bricks in bread wrappers so no one would know what he was doing.”
Dr. Prell said, “The bricks were for the skylights.”
“The bricks he snuck into school were the ones I found in the box,” Mr. Day said. “He used them to replace the dimes. That way, when I lifted the box it felt like there were rolls of dimes in it.”
“But there weren’t,” Eric said. “The dimes were gone.”
Officer Davis asked Dr. Prell, “What bakery do you use?”
Dr. Prell thought for a moment. Then she shook her head. She didn’t know.
“I know,” Cam said.
Cam closed her eyes. She said, “Click!
“This morning I saw the truck,” Cam said with her eyes closed. “The name of the bakery is Angela’s Wings. It was truck number seven. The telephone number was also on the side of the truck.”
Cam told them the bakery’s telephone number.
Officer Oppen called the bakery. He asked about truck number seven. Then he said, “Please send it back to the school on Jefferson Street.”
When he was done talking on the cell phone, Officer Oppen told Dr. Prell and the others, “Truck seven hasn’t come back. The driver is still making deliveries.”
“Or maybe he’s at the bank,” Mr. Day said. “Maybe he’s changing lots of rolls of dimes for dollar bills.”
“The man I spoke with will call him,” Officer Oppen said. “I didn’t say anything about the money. He probably thinks you need more bread.”
“We’ll wait for him,” Officer Davis said.
“Jennifer and Eric,” Dr. Prell said, “you can go back to the cafeteria. We’ll tell you if you were right about the missing dimes.”
Cam and Eric returned to the cafeteria. Cam sat at a table with Amy, Beth, Hector, and Danny. Eric went to the counter to get the school lunch.
“Look at me,” Danny said. “I have a green shirt and a red mustache and beard.”
Danny had spread tomato sauce on his face. Sauce had also spilled on his shirt and pants.
Beth told Cam, “Mrs. Apple gave him a sloppy Joe, and now we have a sloppy Danny.”
“Hey, I’d like that,” Danny said. “I’d like a sandwich named after me.”
“I wouldn’t eat it,” Amy told him. “It would probably taste funny.”
Cam opened her lunch bag. She took out a cheese sandwich.
Eric came to the table with a tray and a sloppy Joe.
“Can you tell us why you’re late to lunch?” Amy asked. “Can you tell us what’s going on?”
Cam’s mouth was full of bread and cheese. Eric’s mouth was filled with meat and sauce. They both shook their heads. They couldn’t tell Amy about the mystery.
“Five minutes,” Mrs. Apple called out. “You have five minutes to finish your lunches and clear your tables.”
“Oh, my,” Eric said. He quickly took another bite of his sloppy Joe. “Gye valve noo barry.”
“What did he say?” Danny asked.
Cam told him, “Eric said, ‘I have to hurry.’”
Cam, Eric, and the others finished their lunches. They cleared the table. They were on their way back to their classroom when Mr. Day stopped them.
“Dr. Prell wants to see you in her office,” he said.
“Me?” Danny asked. “What did I do?”
“No, not you. She wants to see Cam and Eric.”
Cam and Eric followed Mr. Day to the principal’s office. Dr. Prell, the two police officers, and a young man were there. Next to Dr. Prell’s desk was a cart. On it was a bakery box loaded with rolls of coins.
“I tell you,” the young man said, “I don’t know how those coins got in my truck.”
“I think I know,” Officer Oppen said.
“You’ll have to come with us,” Officer Davis told him.
“Thank you,” Officer Oppen said to Cam and Eric as he walked out with the delivery man. “You helped us solve this mystery.”
“Yes, thank you,” Dr. Prell said.
“Maybe you should give them a reward,” Mr. Day said.
“We already got a reward,” Eric said. “We got gold-and-green buttons.”
“And finding the dimes will help our environment. That’s also our reward,” Cam said.
Eric agreed.
“Before you go back to class,” Mr. Day said, “I just thought of something really funny. The dimes are in rolls.”
No one laughed.
“Don’t you get it?” Mr. Day asked. “The thief delivered hero rolls and he stole dime rolls.”
“I got it,” Dr. Prell said. “It’s just not funny.”
Eric said, “But we know who would think that’s funny. Don’t we, Cam?”
Cam and Eric laughed. “Danny,” they said together.
Dr. Prell said, “He told me the silliest joke this morning. It was about a talking sunflower.”
“We heard it,” Eric told her.
“Let’s go back to class,” Cam said, “but not to hear more jokes. This afternoon Ms. Benson is teaching us geometry, something about triangles. I don’t want to miss it.”
Cam and Eric went back to class.
Just a few days later, the skylights were in. The front hall of Cam and Eric’s school was lit with sunlight.
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 here and answer the questions at the bottom of the page. Please, first study the picture, then look at the questions.
1. Is the sun shining?
2. Is Cam wearing a hat?
3. Is there a school bus in the picture?
4. Are Cam and Eric wearing backpacks?
5. Is Eric holding a bag in his left hand or his right hand?
6. Are Cam and Eric the only ones walking to school?