by David Lewman
“Sign it ‘Love, Club CSI,’ ” she joked.
“With hugs and kisses,” Corey added, laughing.
When Ben had finished writing the e-mail, he sent it off to the five cast members, stressing how important it was for them to send back their photos of the set as soon as possible. Since all the cast members had their own phones, pictures started coming back almost immediately.
All five actors had snapped at least one or two pictures of the set with their phones. Melissa had taken dozens of shots. Ben put them all together in one big folder (which was in another even bigger folder devoted to the Nobody’s Home case).
“Hey, I just thought of something,” Corey said. “What about our recording of the set? Shouldn’t we look at that?”
“You can’t see act two’s set on the recording,” Hannah said. “It was blocked by the set for act one. Remember?”
“Oh yeah,” Corey said.
Ben opened the photos one by one, zooming in on each part of the set, looking for anything that might be painted pink. Hannah and Corey leaned in close, staring at the computer’s screen. Among the different actors’ pictures, they were able to examine the entire set.
There was nothing pink on the original set. Which meant Courtney hadn’t gotten hot-pink paint on her sweater while innocently painting the original set.
“Makes sense,” said Ben. “After all, the set is the inside of an old mansion. I don’t know how much hot-pink paint they used back in the day.”
“So we were right in the first place!” Corey said triumphantly. “Courtney got that pink paint on her sweater when she trashed the set. She is the jerk!”
“Saboteur,” Ben corrected.
“Same thing,” Corey said, shrugging.
The next day Club CSI told Miss Hodges about their photographic analysis.
“Well, this does seem to indicate a very strong possibility that Courtney did vandalize the set,” she agreed.
“Should we confront Courtney?” Corey asked. “She’s just a sixth grader, so it’s not like it’d be scary or anything.”
“I think it’d be better for Mrs. Gordon to talk to Courtney,” Miss Hodges said. “Why don’t you go to Mrs. Gordon with your evidence and then suggest that she discuss your findings with Courtney herself?”
That sounded like a good idea.
In her office on Tuesday morning, Mrs. Gordon held the two strips of coffee filter paper Ben had pulled out of an envelope and handed to her.
“What am I looking at, exactly?” she asked.
“Chromatograms,” he said. “It proves that the hot-pink paint from Courtney’s sweater matches the hot-pink paint on the vandalized set. See how the color patterns are exactly the same?”
Mrs. Gordon nodded.
He set his Quark Pad on her desk. “And then there’s this,” he said, clicking on the play triangle.
Mrs. Gordon listened to the recording of a door opening, footsteps, and jingling keys.
“Ben noticed that when Courtney walks, her keys jingle,” Hannah said. “And they sound just like that.”
“So she was the one in the theater that morning, ruining the set with pink paint that she accidentally got on her sweater,” Corey said.
Mrs. Gordon shook her head, looking unhappy. “I don’t understand it. Why would Courtney try to ruin the play? She loves theater, and she’s worked so hard on Nobody’s Home.”
“We were hoping you would ask her that,” Corey said.
Courtney sat on a chair in Mrs. Gordon’s office, staring at the floor. Mrs. Gordon spoke to her gently.
“Can you explain these things, Courtney?” she asked. “The recording of the jingling keys? The pink paint on your sweater?”
Courtney held her mouth in a tight line. Then she took in a deep breath and blew it out.
“Yes, Mrs. Gordon,” she said in a small voice. “I can explain the keys and the paint. I can’t lie anymore. I did it. All of it. I took the props and I messed up the set with paint. I’m really sorry.”
She kept staring at the floor, sitting very still.
“I thought you loved working on the play,” Mrs. Gordon said.
“I do,” Courtney replied.
“And you are such a good stage manager,” added Mrs. Gordon. “Why would you do something like this?”
Courtney swallowed back tears. “Because . . . I had to.”
“Why would you have to ruin the show?”
The sixth grader sat there for a minute, thinking, still staring at the floor. Then she looked up. Mrs. Gordon was facing her, but she didn’t look mad. She looked really nice, as though she was just trying to understand. Courtney really liked Mrs. Gordon, who was always kind and fair to everyone.
It was time to fess up to the truth. The whole truth.
Chapter 18
Blackmail?” Hannah asked, astonished.
Mrs. Gordon nodded. “That’s what she said. That someone was blackmailing her. That’s why she had to try to stop the play.”
Club CSI had come to Mrs. Gordon’s office to find out how her meeting with Courtney had gone. They were very surprised by what the English teacher had learned.
“Who was blackmailing her?” Corey asked.
“She doesn’t know,” Mrs. Gordon said. “The threats were made in notes and e-mails. No one ever talked to her directly.”
“But what could anyone possibly blackmail Courtney for?” Ben asked, amazed by this new information. “She’s in my advanced math class. She never gets in trouble for anything.”
“Does anyone ever get in trouble in advanced math?” Corey asked him.
“Well, not really,” Ben admitted. “We’re all pretty into the math. But Courtney’s especially polite and quiet.”
“It’s always the quiet ones,” Corey said knowingly. “You know, unless it’s the really loud ones. They can be trouble too.”
Hannah thought the two boys were getting away from the main point. “So, what was Courtney being blackmailed for, Mrs. Gordon? Did she say?”
The English teacher nodded and sighed. “Courtney may be an excellent math student, but she’s been having a lot of trouble in gym class. She was worried about her grade, so she cheated during her physical fitness test. She noticed that the gym teacher had written them in pencil in his grade book. She got her hands on the grade book, erased her actual scores, and rewrote in better scores. The gym teacher never noticed, but someone must have and decided to use that information against her.”
“You mean she was so afraid her gym teacher would find out she’d cheated that she was willing to ruin the play?” Hannah asked.
“Yes,” Mrs. Gordon said. “Grades are extremely important to Courtney. I think she gets a lot of pressure from her parents to bring home an excellent report card. She’s terrified that if her gym teacher finds out she cheated, he’ll fail her and she’ll have to take sixth-grade gym again next year.”
Ben stood up and started pacing around the small office. He really wasn’t even aware he was doing it. Sometimes walking helped him think.
“All right,” he said. “So someone found out Courtney had cheated on her gym test. They sent her notes and e-mails threatening to tell her gym teacher if she didn’t sabotage Nobody’s Home.”
“That’s what she told me, yes,” Mrs. Gordon said.
“So she did it,” Hannah said, taking up the thread of Ben’s summary. “She hid props so no one could find them. As the stage manager, she had easy access to all the props and knew which ones were the most important to the action of the play.”
“Except for that one rehearsal,” Corey remembered. “Last Wednesday. The last rehearsal before the morning someone wrecked the set. On Wednesday Courtney didn’t mess with any of the props. How come?”
“I asked her about that,” Mrs. Gordon said. “She said she hadn’t heard from the blackmailer for a few days, so she started to think maybe the whole thing had been a prank. But that night she received a very threatening e-mail.”
“Wha
t did it say?” Hannah asked.
“I wrote it down,” Mrs. Gordon said, looking through the papers on her desk. “Here it is: ‘Perhaps you don’t believe me, but my threat is real. Your gym teacher will be told. You have to stop the play. Or else!’ ”
“May we have a copy of that?” Ben asked.
“Of course, you can have this,” Mrs. Gordon said, pushing the paper across to them. “The blackmailer’s threat worked. Courtney was so scared that she finally did something that would halt the play, once and for all. She snuck into the auditorium the next morning and splattered the hot-pink paint all over the set.”
“Why’d she write ‘Millicent Did It’ on the wall?” Corey asked.
“She knew having the ending revealed would be a real problem for the production,” Mrs. Gordon said. “She also knew hot-pink paint would be hard to paint over. The message would keep bleeding through. Courtney’s very bright.”
“Did she happen to say where she got the hot-pink paint?” Ben asked.
“Yes, I asked about that, too,” she said. “Courtney said it was the last can of paint left in the supply room. The rest of the paint had been used up, but nothing on the set had been painted hot pink. After she wrecked the set, she got rid of the can of hot-pink paint, throwing it away in a trash can far from school. She didn’t realize she’d gotten some on her sweater.”
Mrs. Gordon smiled for the first time. “She was pretty amazed by your chromatography analysis. In fact, I’d say she was impressed.”
She turned around and picked up a script and a piece of paper on the table behind her. “Courtney thought you might be interested in some more evidence, so she gave me these to pass along to you.”
Hannah took the script and the piece of paper. It was a handwritten note.
“That’s the first note the blackmailer sent to her,” Mrs. Gordon explained. “It was slipped into her locker. And this is Courtney’s script, with all her markings to help her do her job as stage manager. She thought they might be helpful.”
“Helpful for what?” Corey asked. “The case is solved. Courtney did it.”
“And she’s apologized. Profusely. But now that we know Courtney did it, we need to find out who made her do it,” Mrs. Gordon said. “I’d say Club CSI has a new case. A case of blackmail.”
As they walked home from Woodlands Junior High after school, Hannah, Ben, and Corey discussed the new turn their case had taken.
“I still don’t really understand why Courtney sabotaged the play,” Hannah said. “She loves theater. Why didn’t she just go to a teacher or the principal when she got the first mean note?”
Corey bounced a tennis ball on the sidewalk and caught it as they walked. “What I don’t understand is why she cheated on her test in the first place. Who cares if you get a bad grade in gym?”
Hannah reached over and caught the ball. “Have you ever gotten a bad grade in gym?”
“Of course not,” Corey said.
“Then you don’t know what it’s like,” Hannah said, tossing him the tennis ball.
“It can be tough when your parents expect you to get straight As every time,” Ben said. His own parents expected excellent grades from him, but they never punished him if he got a B. Although, come to think of it, he didn’t remember ever getting a B.
“It’s not just the bad grade,” Hannah pointed out. “It’s the shame of getting caught cheating. That could feel terrible. Courtney must have been really scared. I actually feel sorry for her.”
“So do I,” Ben said. “I’ve noticed after math class that sometimes Courtney gets bullied in the hallway by seventh graders. It’s hard standing up for yourself when you’re used to being bullied.”
“Really?” Corey asked, catching the ball behind his back. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Maybe one of these bullies is the blackmailer.”
They walked on, thinking about the possibility.
“I don’t know,” Hannah said slowly. “You said these bullies were seventh graders, right, Ben?”
Ben nodded. “Yeah, they were.”
“But Courtney’s in sixth-grade gym,” Hannah observed. “So none of the bullies would be in gym with her. How could one of them have found out about her cheating on her test?”
That was a good question. Corey didn’t have an answer.
“Still,” Corey said, “I think the bullies are worth checking out.” He turned to Ben. “We’re not talking really big bullies, are we? I mean, they’re seventh graders like us, right?”
“Yeah,” Ben said. “They’re not huge. And maybe one of them somehow found out about Courtney’s cheating, even if they weren’t in the same class with her. It’s possible.”
“But why would one of these bullies want the play ruined?” Hannah asked.
Corey shrugged. “Maybe they hate theater.”
“Okay, so what’s our next move?” Hannah asked.
“Do we know any of the bullies who have been bothering Courtney?” Corey asked.
“Not really,” Ben said. “But I know someone who does.”
Chapter 19
Ricky Collins sat on the living room floor playing Zombie Monster Attack, his favorite video game. His mom wouldn’t be home from her job as the head of his school’s cafeteria for at least half an hour. When she came in, she’d tell him to do his homework before dinner. But for now, he could play the game.
He would have liked to have turned up the volume, but his dad, who worked nights at a bakery, was still sleeping.
Ricky guided his survivor through the smoldering ruins of a town. Just a few zombies left, and then he’d make it to the next level—the farthest he’d ever gotten.
Ding-dong.
Ding-dong?
Someone was at the door. He was tempted to just ignore it. But what if it was his mom? Maybe she forgot her key or something.
Ricky paused the game, got up off the floor, and walked over to the front door. When he looked through a window, he saw Ben, Hannah, and Corey from his forensic science class.
What were they doing here?
“What do you dorks want?” Ricky asked as he flung open the door.
“Hey, Ricky,” Ben said in his friendliest voice. “We just thought maybe you could help us with an investigation.”
“How do you even know where I live?” he asked. “It’s not like I ever invited you over.”
“We came over that time we were investigating the meatloaf mystery, remember?” Corey reminded Ricky brightly.
Ricky scowled. Hannah thought maybe that wasn’t the greatest thing for Corey to bring up. Ricky had been pretty mad at them that time, since they’d treated his mother as a suspect.
“Anyway,” Hannah said, wanting to change the subject, “we thought maybe you could help us find out something.”
Ricky sat down on the front stoop. Even though he liked to act tough, he was actually intrigued. He secretly liked the idea of doing an investigation. He watched a lot of crime shows on TV, and he thought he might even want to be a cop someday (though he never told anyone that).
“Like what?” he asked, pretending to be totally bored.
The three friends took turns telling Ricky about all the things that had gone wrong with the school play. They explained how they’d figured out Courtney was ruining the play. And finally they told about how they’d learned she was being blackmailed.
“Blackmailed?” Ricky repeated, surprised. “That’s messed up. Who’s blackmailing her?”
Corey sat down on the front stoop too, even though there wasn’t a lot of room. “That’s what we’re trying to find out. And that’s where you come in.”
“Me? How?” Ricky shifted away from Corey.
Ben thought about sitting down, too, but there really wasn’t room for a third person, so he just leaned on the handrail. “Well, after our math class together, I’ve noticed some seventh graders bullying Courtney in the hallway.”
“Seventh graders from your math class?” Ricky asked.
�
�No, just some random seventh graders,” Ben said. “But for some reason they keep picking on Courtney. I think one of them is named Zack.”
Ricky looked offended. “Oh, and you think because I’m a goofball in class that I know every bully in school. Well, I’m not a bully. I just like to kid around. I’m really more of a . . . comic.” When he wasn’t thinking about being a cop someday, Ricky thought maybe he’d try being a stand-up comic.
“Do you know Zack?” Corey asked.
Ricky smiled a sly smile. “Yeah, I know him,” he admitted.
“And his friends?” Hannah pressed.
“Yeah, I know them, too,” he said. “They’re all right. They just like to mess with people.”
“Well, we were wondering if one of them might have written the notes and e-mails to Courtney,” Ben said.
“We don’t know those guys, but you do,” Corey added. “So we thought maybe you could talk to them and try to find out if one of them did it.”
Ricky stood up and stretched. “I guess I could do that. But why should I?”
Hannah looked Ricky straight in the eyes. “You know, you say you’re not a bully, but a lot of people think you are. So maybe if you did something helpful now and then, they’d stop thinking that.”
Ricky almost got mad. Almost. But then he thought about what Hannah was saying. It made sense. And if he was going to be a cop someday, he’d have to get information out of people without them even knowing it. Maybe he could practice on Zack and his pals. It might be interesting.
A couple of blocks away Ricky’s mom was trudging along the sidewalk toward home. She’d be there in a couple of minutes, and he wanted to go inside and save his video game before she arrived.
“Okay, whatever,” he said. “I’ll talk to Zack. And his buddies.”
“Try not to let them know what you’re doing, though,” Ben cautioned.
“Duh,” Ricky said. “I’m not an idiot.”
He started to go inside.
“Thanks,” Hannah said. “We appreciate it. Maybe sometime tomorrow afternoon you can tell us what you find out.”