In the end, the solution was pretty easy. Nothing magic about it at all.
It was the thief’s own words that helped me solve this mystery.
For the solution to this story, please turn here.
Puzzling It Out
by Eileen Rendahl
The numbers danced in front of Jeremy’s eyes. He threw his pencil down. “I can’t do this.” He shoved his chair back, making a screeching noise. Everyone else in the room stared at him.
Ms. Sullivan looked up from her desk. “What’s the problem, Jeremy?” Her warm brown eyes focused in on him as if he was the only person in the room. It was part of why he liked Puzzle Club. He felt appreciated here, valued. There weren’t many places a seventh grader could feel like that.
“I can’t do this.”
Puzzle Club had been Ms. Sullivan’s brainchild. She was new to Darbyville Junior High, like Jeremy was. Like everything seemed to be nowadays—new and unfamiliar and frustrating.
“How far did you get?” Ms. Sullivan walked over to Jeremy and looked over his shoulder at his paper.
Jeremy looked down at the scribbled and crossed-out numbers. “Not far.”
Chloe Romero walked over, too, copper curls bouncing like springs. “You’re making it more complicated than it has to be. Break it into parts and it gets simple again.”
“I don’t understand.” He crossed his arms over his chest, unwilling to look at the stupid squares again. “All I see is a bunch of numbers that could add up to anything.”
“You have to train your brain to see patterns in numbers. Did you find the magic constant?” Ms. Sullivan asked.
“Yes.” The magic constant was the number everything was supposed to add up to. That he’d figured out, but only because Chloe had told him how. “I added all the numbers up, then divided that number by the number of rows.” One plus two plus three plus four plus five plus six plus seven plus eight plus nine equaled forty-five. Divide that by three and you got fifteen. He hadn’t known what to do next, though. There were lots of combinations that could add up to fifteen, but which one was he supposed to put where and why?
“Let me show you a trick to use with magic squares that have an odd number of boxes.” Ms. Sullivan took his pencil and wrote the numbers one through nine in a row. “Which one is the middle number?”
“Five.” Did she think he was stupid? Anyone could see that.
“Put the five in the middle box.” She handed the pencil back to him.
He did. “What do I do now?” He sounded a little angrier than he’d meant to. He was frustrated, though, and he hated to be frustrated. Like really, really hated it.
“What do you have to add to five to make fifteen?” she asked.
“Ten.” Duh.
“Find different combinations that add up to ten and arrange them around the five.” She stepped back. “Remember, you can only use each number once.”
Jeremy made a list. One plus nine. Two plus eight. Three plus seven. Four plus six. The pattern began to emerge. He plugged numbers into different squares. After a few false starts, he ended up with:
Feeling pleased with himself, he looked over at Chloe’s paper and saw her square. It had thirty-six slots! “How did you solve that?”
She shrugged. “I treated each set of nine like it was its own puzzle.”
He shook his head. “I’m not good at this kind of thing.”
“Doesn’t mean it’s not fun to try,” Ms. Sullivan said.
“I think it’s the definition of not being fun,” he grumbled.
“Maybe you and Chloe could work together on a few. That might help.” Ms. Sullivan went back to her desk and straightened the already neatly stacked papers.
Jeremy’s face got warm. He didn’t like having to ask for help. He didn’t want to work with someone else. He wanted to be able to do it himself.
But it was time to go anyways. There was no point in arguing and no time to work another puzzle. After gathering up their stuff, Jeremy and Chloe walked to the bike racks, Chloe’s flowered skirt fluttering in the afternoon breeze. Their bikes were the only ones left. They’d stayed longer at Puzzle Club than Jeremy realized.
He had one foot up on the pedal ready to roll when a noise caught his attention. He looked around. “Did you hear something?”
“I think so. Where did it come from?”
“Over there maybe? Around the corner in the faculty parking lot?” Jeremy got off his bike and wheeled it toward the lot. They got to the corner and peered around it.
Ms. Sullivan stood by her car, talking to a tall guy with blond hair cut short. Jeremy had never seen him before. Had Ms. Sullivan been the one who yelled? She was speaking in an animated way, her hands flying as she spoke. The man grabbed one of her wrists.
Jeremy stepped out from where they peered around the building. “Hey!” he shouted. “What are you doing?”
Ms. Sullivan and the man froze for a second, then turned toward Jeremy. “What are you still doing here? You should be on your way home,” Ms. Sullivan said. She sounded angry. She pulled her wrist away from the man and ran her hand over her head as if to smooth her close-cut afro.
“We’re just getting our bikes. Are you okay?” He took another step forward, not sure what it was he was going to do, or even why he felt like he needed to. He just knew that he did and that it was making his heart beat way too fast.
“Well, go on home,” Ms. Sullivan said. “I’m fine.” She made a shooing gesture with her hand. “I’m just taking care of some business. Get the picture?”
“You’re sure?” he called. He wasn’t sure what she meant by him getting the picture. It sounded weird, not like something she would usually say.
“Absolutely.” Ms. Sullivan made the shooing gesture again.
Chloe made a gesture for him to follow her. They left, but Jeremy felt uneasy about it.
“Did the way Ms. Sullivan told us to leave sound weird to you? That bit about getting the picture?” Jeremy asked Chloe as they rode.
Chloe thought for a second. “Sort of. Does it matter?”
“I suppose not.” It was one more thing he didn’t quite understand. He added it to the list of his frustrations and dropped it.
The next day, Jeremy and Chloe had science with Ms. Sullivan third period. He didn’t register something wasn’t right until he was through the door of the classroom. The room was silent. Usually there was a happy buzz.
“Take your seats, please,” a woman with long dark hair pulled back into a ponytail tight enough to stretch her cheeks a bit barked at Jeremy and Chloe as they walked in. “We have a lot to cover.”
Jeremy looked at Chloe whose eyes were opened wide in surprise.
“Come on,” the woman said. “We don’t have all day.”
Someone else was sitting in the desk he usually sat in.
“Find your name tag and sit in that seat, please. I’ve assigned you places to make it easier to take roll,” the woman said.
Jeremy turned in a circle, finally spotting his name on a desk in the dreaded front row. He threw himself into the chair and looked around again. Chloe was behind him three rows and to his left.
The woman clapped her hands. “I’m Ms. Hobson.” She wrote her name on the whiteboard and underlined it three times. “I’ll be taking over this course for the foreseeable future.”
Jeremy raised his hand. “Where’s Ms. Sullivan?”
Ms. Hobson turned slowly. “Please do not speak until I call on you to speak.”
Jeremy put his hand up in the air and waited. After what seemed like hours but probably had been thirty seconds, Ms. Hobson squinted at his name tag. “Yes, Jeremy?”
“Where’s Ms. Sullivan?” he repeated.
“She’s taken a leave of absence.”
“Why?” he asked.
She cocked her head to one side, like a bird looking at a worm it was about to eat. “I don’t think that’s really any of your business, Jeremy.”
He was about to ask
another question, but she spoke over him. “Take out your textbooks, please, and turn to page sixty-four. Lindsey, would you please read the first paragraph.”
Class with Ms. Hobson had been excruciating. They’d read the textbook out loud. Each one taking a turn. No questions until they’d read the whole chapter. Jeremy’s eyes had started to cross he was so bored by the time they finished.
“No way Ms. Sullivan would take a leave of absence and not tell us she was going,” Jeremy said to Chloe as they left the classroom.
Chloe shrugged. “Grown-ups are weird. You never know what they’re going to do.”
It still didn’t sound right to Jeremy. The weird grown-up thing was right, but not Ms. Sullivan. She was . . . different. Special. She cared about them. She wouldn’t take off without telling them or leaving some kind of message. “Maybe something happened to her and they don’t want to tell us. Maybe something with that guy from the parking lot.”
Chloe dialed the combination on her locker and it sprang open like it had been booby-trapped. The duffel bag she’d shoved in earlier dropped out and her volleyball bounced across the courtyard. Chloe chased the ball while Jeremy picked up the duffel. As he bent over, he noticed something else next to Chloe’s locker. A puzzle piece.
He held it up. “Is this yours?”
Chloe shook her head. “Never saw it before.”
Jeremy shoved it in his pocket and they walked to his locker to leave his science notebook and retrieve his copy of Wonder. There were two puzzle pieces of about the same size as the ones at Chloe’s locker under the book.
By lunchtime, they had found twenty-five puzzle pieces tucked everywhere from Jeremy’s clarinet case to Chloe’s gym locker.
“What do you think it means?” Chloe asked, moving the pieces around on the metal table where they ate lunch.
“I think it means we’re supposed to put the puzzle together,” Jeremy said.
“Great,” Chloe said. “Let’s do it.”
“It’s only twenty-five pieces. I can do it faster by myself.” He looked for the colors and lines and shapes that went together. They leaped out at him the way numbers apparently leaped out at Chloe.
“Is that a picture of the rock wall in Gulch Park?” Chloe asked.
It sure looked like it.
“What should we do?” She leaned over the picture. Her curls tickled at Jeremy’s nose.
“Ms. Sullivan asked if we got the picture and now there’s a picture right in front of us. I think we should go there after school to find out.”
Gulch Park was a few blocks out of their way on their regular route home. The rock wall from the puzzle stood at the edge of the park close to a set of picnic tables under some shade trees.
“Now what?” Chloe asked.
“I’m not sure.” Jeremy got off his bike and slipped off his helmet. He pulled out his phone and found the photo he’d taken of the assembled puzzle. Chloe looked over his shoulder.
“I’m not seeing anything special. It’s just a photo of the wall.”
She was right, mainly. It was a photo of the wall, but it was taken at a different angle from where they were standing. “Maybe if we stand wherever the picture was taken from, we’ll see something.” He walked to his left. He was close, but it wasn’t quite right. He backed up a few steps and clunked into a tree trunk. “Ouch!” He rubbed his head.
Chloe walked over to look again, too. “They were higher up when they took it.”
Jeremy turned around and looked at the tree. “Do you think it was taken from up there?” He pointed at a branch almost within his reach.
“Maybe,” Chloe said, standing on her tiptoes as if that would help.
“Only one way to find out, I guess.” He put his phone away, rubbed his hands together, crouched down, and then jumped, managing to catch onto the branch. He planted his feet against the trunk and pulled himself up, wriggling onto the branch so he was straddling it.
“I could have given you a boost,” Chloe said, arms akimbo as she looked up at him.
“I didn’t need one.” He took out his phone to look at the picture again and then looked at the rock wall. “This is it,” he called to Chloe.
“Do you see anything?”
He looked around. Why would someone lead them here? He was about to climb back down when he saw a piece of ribbon tied around a twig a little farther out on the branch. He inched forward, stretching out. Good thing he’d had that growth spurt. He snagged the ribbon and tugged. It came free, bringing an envelope with it. He tucked it into his pocket and swung down from the branch to drop to the ground next to Chloe.
“What did you find?”
“I’m not sure.” He pulled the envelope out and opened it. There were two folded pieces of paper inside. The top one was slick, like a page from a magazine. It was from a publication for employees of Dynamic Recreational Inc. with an article about their employee of the month, Lorinda Clarkson, a research chemist in the quality assurance department. Jeremy hadn’t heard that name before, but he knew the face. “That’s Ms. Sullivan!”
“I’ve heard of that place. What does Dynamic Recreational do?” Chloe asked. “And why would Ms. Sullivan pretend to be a research chemist for them?”
Jeremy tucked the article back into his pocket. He’d heard the name of the company, too. They’d been in the news. He’d look up the details when he got home. He unfolded the second piece of paper. It had a series of letters and pictures on it.
“What’s that?” Chloe scowled at the piece of paper.
“It’s a rebus.” They’d done those before in Puzzle Club. A rebus combined pictures and letters to create words in unexpected ways.
Jeremy spread the paper out on a nearby picnic table and pulled a pen out of his backpack.
He wrote down “Wfish,” then crossed out the F to get Wish. Then added ring to get Wishring. Take the r away and you had Wishing. He was pretty sure what the next word would be, but he worked the puzzle anyway. Wbell minus a b equaled Well.
He turned to Chloe. “The next clue is at the wishing well.”
She peered over his shoulder. “The one at the grocery store?”
Jeremy gave her a look. “You know another one?”
She shook her head. “Nope.”
Jeremy folded up the papers, stuffed them back in his backpack, picked up his bike and pointed it in the direction of the grocery store. “Let’s go.”
“Now?” Chloe got back on her bike, too, but didn’t turn it to face toward the grocery store.
“Why not?”
“Because my mom will kill me if I’m not home in the next fifteen minutes.”
Jeremy pulled out his phone and looked at the time. More time had gone by than he’d realized. His parents would be none too pleased if he was much later either. “Meet me there before school?”
Chloe sighed. “That’s so early! Can’t we go after?
“Don’t you have volleyball practice?” Sometimes Jeremy thought he knew Chloe’s schedule better than she did.
“Oh, yeah. See you there.”
Jeremy got home just in time to wash his hands and set the table for dinner. That, plus the actual dinner, plus helping his little sister clear felt like it took a bazillion years, even though it was only six thirty when he finally got to the computer and looked at the clock.
He plugged Dynamic Recreational into the search bar and hit return. The company website was big and colorful with tabs for brands and news and contact forms. The brand that took up the biggest part of the page was Origanisms, little stuffed animals that burst out of cubes if you entered the right codes. They’d been insanely popular last year. There’d been so much trading back and forth their sixth grade teacher banned kids from bringing them to school. He went back to the search results.
Over the next five entries he learned Dynamic Recreational was being accused of releasing toys that contained an unsafe chemical called chthalones. Someone from inside the company—a whistleblower—had tipped the gov
ernment off there was something wrong with the Origanisms. The court case was scheduled to start tomorrow right here in Darbyville.
Jeremy typed Lorinda Clarkson into the search bar. The first item was a link to a professional networking site. He clicked on it. It was definitely Ms. Sullivan. Why would she be pretending to be Lorinda Clarkson? Finally, it dawned on him. Maybe it was the other way around. Maybe Lorinda Clarkson was pretending to be Ms. Sullivan.
The next morning, Jeremy pulled up to the wishing well in front of the grocery store. Chloe arrived five minutes later. “Now what?”
“I’m not sure. Do you see anything out of place?” he asked.
Chloe gazed around. “Do you think we have to climb a tree again?”
“There really aren’t any.” Jeremy wheeled his bike closer to the fountain, then walked around it. If he hadn’t really been looking, peering down into the well, he would have missed it. Another ribbon like the one that had been attached to the tree tucked up under the concrete rim. He pulled it.
Another envelope. They sat down on one of the nearby benches and opened the envelope. They found a letter addressed to Chloe and him.
* * *
I’m sorry to make this difficult, but this information mustn’t fall into the wrong hands. You’ve figured out who I am by now. I was put in a witness protection program until it was time for me to testify in the case against Dynamic Recreational.
Someone has betrayed me, someone from the inside. I’ve been suspicious for a while. I’d planted most of these clues as a fail-safe, knowing that I could quickly hide the puzzle pieces for you to find to start you on this journey. I couldn’t leave plain directions in case someone else found them before you did, so I made them into puzzles and then made sure you would know how to solve them. I hid the data, too. I didn’t want it to be on my person.
I’m not sure who to trust, except you two. I don’t know who or where along the line the traitor is. I do know this, though. I need someone to bring me copies of the data that proves Dynamic Recreational knew Origanisms were dangerous and released them anyway, someone they would never suspect, someone they won’t be watching.
Super Puzzletastic Mysteries Page 17