“Or at least ten!” Marja said.
“Maybe three,” Will said. “But that would still be good.”
Sam looked at Mrs. Haynie. “It’s a deal. So what’s the clue?”
“It’s very simple, Sam. If you can figure out what two half dollars and one sports card have in common, you’ll figure out who they belong to.”
“I don’t get it,” Will said.
“I know a lot about clues,” Gavin said. “And that’s not a very good clue.”
“Think about it,” Mrs. Haynie said. She glanced up at the clock on the wall. “You have until three o’clock. Good luck!”
* * *
Chapter Fifteen
* * *
The Case of the Terrible Clue
After recess Sam’s class had social studies. In social studies they were studying maps, and today they were coloring maps. That meant Sam had time to think while he was coloring.
What do two half dollars and a basketball card have in common? Not much that he could tell. In the case they were trying to solve, the half dollars were worth ten dollars each, and the card was worth one thousand dollars. Sam guessed you could say that what these things sort of had in common was that they were valuable. So maybe the person the things belonged to had a lot of money?
The problem was Sam didn’t know any rich people at his school. Besides, if you were rich, wouldn’t you just buy new coins and a new card?
Sam wished Annabelle was sitting next to him. Her sixth-grade brain was a lot smarter than his second-grade brain. Not only could she do division, she was good at crossword puzzles and jigsaw puzzles. Mostly she was just good at figuring things out.
And if Mr. Stockfish were sitting next to Annabelle? They’d have this mystery solved in ten seconds!
Sam sighed. How was he ever going to solve the puzzle of what silver half dollars and sports cards had in common? It was impossible.
After social studies Mr. Pell’s class went to PE, which gave the members of the World’s Greatest Detective Club a chance to talk.
“Anyone come up with anything yet?” Emily asked as their PE teacher, Miss Chambers, pulled stuff from the equipment room. “I don’t have a clue.”
“Well, technically speaking, you do have a clue,” Gavin told her. “It’s just not a very good clue.”
“Maybe it’s a great clue,” Rashid said. “We won’t know until we solve the mystery.”
“If we solve the mystery,” Marja said. She didn’t sound very confident.
“I could really use that fifty dollars,” Gavin said. “I’m thinking about buying a pair of binoculars like Marja’s. You know, for bird-watching.”
“If we get the reward, we have to divide it up,” Will pointed out. “So you wouldn’t actually get the whole fifty dollars.”
“Does anyone know what fifty dollars divided by six is?” Sam asked.
“Eight dollars and thirty-three cents,” Rashid told him.
“Wow, you figured that out fast!” Sam said.
Rashid pointed to his head. “My dad says I’ve got a brain like a calculator. That’s why it only took me 279 tries to figure out the combination on the lock.”
Miss Chambers blew her whistle, so they had to stop talking. Today they were learning how to dribble basketballs around orange cones. Sam thought he might like to have some orange cones for his backyard. He wasn’t sure what for though. He just liked the way they looked, like rubbery orange hats.
The class spent the next thirty minutes dribbling. Every time Sam passed another member of the World’s Greatest Detective Club, they shrugged their shoulders at each other. It was like they were saying, I still haven’t figured out what that stuff has in common; have you?
“Coins and cards, coins and cards,” Sam repeated to himself a hundred times as he dribbled. Metal and paper. Both of them had pictures of famous people on them. Maybe the person they belonged to collected pictures of famous people.
Or maybe the person they belonged to collected coins and cards.
Sam stopped dribbling. He stopped moving.
He knew what the coins and the cards had in common.
They were both things people collected.
Sam knew a lot of people who collected sports cards, and he knew some people were coin collectors too. But it would take days to talk to all the card and coin collectors at their school. So whoever owned the half dollars and the Michael Jordan card probably collected other things. He was probably famous for all his collections, which is why Mrs. Haynie believed they could find him by three o’clock if they figured out the clue.
Miss Chambers blew her whistle. “Sam Graham! You’re holding up traffic. Get moving, mister!”
Sam started dribbling his ball again. That had to be it, right? All they had to figure out now was who to ask about the school’s most famous collectors. Not every teacher knew every kid, so it would waste a lot of time to go from classroom to classroom to see if this teacher or that one had the information they needed. They needed to find somebody who would know a lot about everything.
Sam knew exactly who to ask.
The members of the World’s Greatest Detective Club ate their lunches as fast as they could. Instead of going outside after they were done, however, they had a special club meeting. But instead of going to the library, they made their way down the hall to Mr. Truman’s office.
“What if he’s not there?” Marja asked. “Do you think it would be okay to wait?”
“If he’s not there, we could just go ask Mrs. Mason,” Gavin pointed out. “She knows who the box belongs to.”
“How could she, if the box was put in the lost and found without her knowing about it?” Will asked as they reached Mr. Truman’s office.
“I bet whoever the box belongs to asked Mrs. Mason if she’d seen it,” Gavin said. “She probably helped him search the lost and found.”
“But wouldn’t it be cheating to ask Mrs. Mason?” Emily asked. “There’s a difference between figuring something out and someone giving you the answer. I want to figure it out.”
“We’d still be figuring it out,” Gavin said. “We’d just be figuring it out faster.”
“I guess so,” Emily said. “Okay, if Mr. Truman isn’t here, we’ll ask Mrs. Mason.”
Just then Mr. Truman’s door opened and the janitor stuck his head out. “You guys sure like hanging out outside of my office,” he said. “Or do you have another question for me?”
“We have another question for you,” Sam said. “About another thing we found in the lost and found.”
“Let me guess,” Mr. Truman said, stroking his chin. “You’re here to ask about the sheriff’s badge I found in the gym last week. I’m surprised no one’s claimed that yet. It looked real.”
“Somebody lost a sheriff’s badge?” Gavin asked. “That’s so cool!”
“But it’s not what we’re here to ask about,” Emily said. “Have you heard of anyone losing a box with a combination lock on it?”
Mr. Truman raised an eyebrow. “I have indeed. That box contained some very valuable property.”
“That’s right! Do you know who it belongs to?” Sam asked.
“I know exactly who it belongs to,” Mr. Truman said. “Do you have it?”
Rashid stepped forward and held up the box so Mr. Truman could see it. Mr. Truman’s eyes narrowed. “We tore through the lost-and-found closet looking for that thing,” he said. “There’s no way we wouldn’t have seen it. So why don’t you tell me how you really found the box?”
“That’s how we really found it!” Gavin insisted. “You could ask—well, you could ask any person in this group!”
“You could ask Mrs. Mason,” Emily said. “She was there when we found it.”
“But she was on the phone,” Sam said. “Remember? She wasn’t paying attention when I pulled out the box. Otherwise she would have asked for it so she could give it back to whoever it belongs to.”
“Guys, I hate to say this,” Mr. Truman said, “b
ut unless you can prove to me that you found this box in the lost and found, I have to wonder if you had something to do with its disappearance in the first place.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Sam said. “If we stole it, why would we ask you who it belongs to?”
Mr. Truman thought about this. “That’s a good point, Sam. But still, it seems like something fishy is going on here.”
If Sam’s stomach had been hurting during recess, it was hurting even more now. Did Mr. Truman really think they were thieves? That was crazy! How could they prove they’d found the locked box in the lost and found?
Now Sam wished that they’d told everyone in the world about their club and what they were doing. Then they would have all sorts of people who could back up their story. But because they’d kept it a secret, hardly anyone knew what they were up to. Annabelle did, but who was going to believe his sixth-grade sister? They’d say she was just trying to get Sam out of trouble.
There was only one thing he could do, Sam decided. He turned to Mr. Truman. “Could I use your phone, please? There’s someone very important I need to call.”
* * *
Chapter Sixteen
* * *
The World’s Best Detective and Bird-Watching Club
Sam thought it was pretty lucky that Mr. Stockfish’s daughter, Judy, had made Sam memorize their phone number in case anything happened when he and Mr. Stockfish took their walks. His fingers trembled as he punched the numbers on Mr. Truman’s phone—what if he’d remembered wrong? But Mr. Stockfish picked up on the second ring.
“What do you want?” he said in a gruff voice. “I’m watching the news.”
“Is that how you always answer the phone?” Sam asked. “It’s not very polite.”
“Is that you, Sam Graham?” Mr. Stockfish asked. “Why aren’t you at school?”
“I am at school,” Sam told him. “And I need you to talk to the janitor.”
“Did you throw up?”
“No!” Sam said. “But even if I did throw up, why would I ask you to talk to the janitor?”
“Beats me, Sam,” Mr. Stockfish said. “It’s just the first thing that came to mind.”
That’s when Sam explained that Mr. Truman didn’t believe that Sam and the other members of the World’s Best Detective Club had found the locked box in the lost and found.
“Well, I wasn’t there when you found it,” Mr. Stockfish said when Sam was done explaining. “But I remember that you told me about it that afternoon.”
Sam handed the phone to Mr. Truman. “This is a witness. Sort of.”
Mr. Truman took the phone from Sam and listened. And listened. And listened some more.
It turned out Mr. Stockfish had a lot to say.
After he finally got off the phone, Mr. Truman turned to Sam and said, “Your friend has convinced me. He told me all about your club and how you’re looking for the owners of things you’ve pulled out of the lost and found. But why didn’t you tell me that in the first place?”
Sam shrugged. “I didn’t think you’d believe me.”
“I’m sorry, Sam,” Mr. Truman said. He looked at everyone. “I apologize to all of you. When I couldn’t find Aidan’s box anywhere two weeks ago, his father was very angry at me. He even suggested I might have found it and kept it myself. It’s been a very stressful situation.”
“Aidan?” Rashid asked. “Is that who the box belongs to?”
“Yes,” Mr. Truman said. “Aidan Howzer. He’s a nice kid, but he’s always losing stuff. He collects a lot of different things—sports cards and coins, of course, but also postcards, stuffed animals, bottle caps, stamps, autographs, thimbles . . .”
Marja, who had been taking notes, looked up. “Thimbles?”
“That’s weird,” Gavin said.
“Yeah, sort of,” Mr. Truman agreed. “But some collectors will collect anything and everything.”
“I’m sorry that Aidan’s dad thought you stole his box,” Sam said. “But I guess we’ve finally solved our mystery.”
“Only now we have another mystery,” Gavin said. “The mystery of who put Aidan’s box in the lost and found.”
Sam sighed. He was glad they’d dug the box out of the lost-and-found closet and figured out who it belonged to. But did he really want to spend the next week—or month or year?—trying to figure out who stole it in the first place?
“Let’s solve that mystery next week,” Sam said. “Maybe for the rest of this week we could be an actual bird-watching club.”
“That’s a great idea, Sam!” Emily said. “Let’s go outside right now and look for red-tailed hawks. My dad saw one yesterday when he was driving home from work.”
“Okay,” Sam agreed. “I just need to go grab something first.”
The rest of the club members were over by the baseball field when Sam got outside. Everyone was looking up at the sky. Sam was curious about what they were looking at, but there was one thing he had to do before he could join them.
The fifth-grade soccer game was breaking up by the time Sam ran over to the field. Chris Gutentag was walking off the field with another kid, and he looked surprised when Sam called out his name.
“Do I know you?” he asked when Sam got closer. “Are you friends with my little sister or something?”
Sam held out the red jacket with the little soccer ball patch on it. “I think this is yours,” he said. “And I think you put it in the lost and found because it smelled bad.”
Chris Gutentag’s cheeks turned red. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The thing is,” Sam continued, feeling a little shaky, “there’s something you can do to make stuff stop stinking so much. It sounds weird, but if you wash stinky things with vinegar, it really works.” He held the jacket out to Chris. “Really. Smell it.”
Chris sighed. “You’re crazy,” he said, but he took the jacket from Sam and sniffed. His eyes widened. “Wow, that smells so much better than it used to!”
“So then it is your jacket, right?” Sam asked.
“Yeah,” Chris said, looking at his feet. “And my parents won’t buy me a new one, so I guess I should say thanks for making this one not stink so bad.” He looked up at Sam. “I mean, it’s really weird that you washed it for me, but—I don’t know, it’s sort of cool, too. So thanks.”
Sam shrugged. “That’s okay.”
He wanted to tell Chris the whole story, about how he and his friends had this detective club and Sam had come up with the idea to search the lost and found for interesting things, and how Chris’s jacket wasn’t actually interesting but they knew it would make Mrs. Mason happy if they tried to find the owner of at least one jacket. But Chris Gutentag was already walking away, so Sam didn’t say anything.
But as he ran over to meet the members of the World’s Best Detective/Bird-Watching Club, he was feeling pretty good about his lost-and-found plan.
* * *
Chapter Seventeen
* * *
Sam the Man and the Lost-and-Found Plan
“So what are you going to do with your eight dollars and thirty-three cents?” Mr. Stockfish asked Sam that afternoon as they walked to Mrs. Kerner’s house. “I think I should get part of it since I’m the one who helped you out of a jam.”
“I guess so,” Sam said. “We won’t get our reward until next week though. Aidan said his dad would bring it to school on Monday and leave it with Mrs. Mason.”
“Your club solved three mysteries in a row,” Mr. Stockfish said. “That’s an impressive record.”
Sam stopped to scoop up a rock from the ground. It was gray and egg-shaped. Maybe it was a fossilized egg laid by an ancient bird on this spot two thousand years ago. Maybe it was laid by the first chicken that wasn’t a dinosaur!
Probably not, but Sam would get Annabelle to help him do some research on the computer when he got home.
Doing research was a little bit like solving a mystery, Sam thought. He wouldn’t mind being the sort
of person who solved mysteries about fossils and dinosaurs.
“I don’t know if I want to keep being a detective, at least the kind who solves crimes,” Sam told Mr. Stockfish as he slipped the rock into his pocket. “I mean, sure, if there was a big case maybe. But there aren’t a lot of big cases in elementary school. Most of the cases aren’t really cases at all.”
“I think the locked box was a big case,” Mr. Stockfish said, leaning toward a bush to give it a sniff. “And you cracked it. Plus, you made eight dollars. I’m kidding about sharing it. I’m just glad I could help you out.”
“Me too,” Sam said. “For a minute I think Mr. Truman really thought we were criminals. We might have gotten kicked out of school. It was lucky you were home. You know what else is lucky?”
“What?”
“That kid who the box belonged to—Aidan? He collects stuffed animals. He was really excited when I told him about the snake in my garage.”
“A lot more excited than your mother was when she tripped over it, I would assume,” Mr. Stockfish said.
“Yeah, that wasn’t good,” Sam said. “Now there’s a rule that I can’t store anything in our garage without getting my parents’ permission first.”
“So what are you going to do with your money?” Mr. Stockfish asked again when they reached Mrs. Kerner’s driveway. “Eight dollars isn’t a whole lot, but it’s not nothing.”
Sam had been thinking about this all afternoon. He thought about starting a monster truck fund, so he could buy a monster truck when he was sixteen and had his driver’s license. He thought about saving up for another chicken to add to Mrs. Kerner’s flock. He also thought about spending it all on candy, although he had a feeling his mom and dad wouldn’t like that idea very much.
Sam the Man & the Secret Detective Club Plan Page 6