by Sophie Lee
Sophie Lee grew up in Newcastle, New South Wales. Her parents were both teachers.
Sophie’s career in film, television and theatre has spanned twenty years. She has evolved from a family favourite, hosting the popular half-hour Bugs Bunny Show for the Nine Network, aged twenty, to becoming an accomplished actress in iconic Australian films such as Muriel’s Wedding and The Castle. Sophie’s film credits include He Died With A Felafel in His Hand, Bootmen and Mimi and she also starred alongside Kate Winslet and Harvey Keitel in Oscar winner Jane Campion’s film Holy Smoke.
Sophie is currently studying Creative Writing at UTS and lives in a beachside suburb of Sydney with her husband, three children and two French bulldogs.
Alice in La La Land was her first novel, published in 2007.
For my father
First published 2009 in Pan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited
1 Market Street, Sydney
Text copyright © Sophie Lee 2009
Illustrations copyright © Jonathon Oxlade 2009
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
ISBN: 9780330424189 (pbk)
Lee, Sophie, 1968-
Edie Amelia and the monkey shoe mystery / Sophie Lee;
illustrator, Jonathon Oxlade.
For primary school age.
Other Authors/Contributors: Oxlade, Jonathon.
A823.4
Typeset in Century Schoolbook 13/18pt by Midlands Typesetters,
Australia
Printed by McPherson’s Printing Group
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Edie Amelia and the Monkey Shoe Mystery
Sophie Lee
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Acknowledgments
Heartfelt thanks to my mum and dad for their tireless efforts and to my sublime editor, Julia Stiles.
Thank you: Ursula Dubosarsky, Piers Fisher Pollard, Anna McFarlane, Claire Craig, Sue Bobbermein, Pan Macmillan, UTS, Nellie Flannery and Shanahan Management.
Thank you to my dear husband and children for their unflinching support.
To my muse, Mister Pants, eternal gratitude, my little friend.
The Pride of the Green
There was no doubt at all that Edie Amelia Sparks was in possession of a fine talent for keeping things ordered when all around her was in chaos.
Edie and her parents lived in a house called ‘The Pride of the Green’, which wasn’t proud and wasn’t in a green at all, but in a busy street with other people’s houses on either side. It had a purple front door, a lopsided roof and creaky window shutters that looked as if they might well blow off in the next big wind.
Inside it was strewn with detritus (which is just a fancy word for mess) and looked like a rubbish tip. Half-finished inventions, scientific doodlings and discarded recipes littered every available surface. The furniture was cobbled together from recycled organic tomato tins, rice bran pickle wrappers and cardboard boxes, and it was not uncommon for dishes to pile up in the sink for a few days while a new brainwave was being puzzled over.
Edie, you see, had rather unusual parents. Her father, Michaelmas, was an out-of-work inventor. Cinnamon, her mother, wrote popular macrobiotic cookbooks and, with the help of Michaelmas’s inventions, especially his jet-propelled mechanical arm which shaped and steamed her sweet and sour tofu balls, was able to supply large orders of her nutritious snacks for the deli counter of the local health food store.
The Sparks’s kitchen was cluttered with baking trays, cake tins, measuring jugs, motorised cooking implements in various stages of creation and a frightening array of ingredients. And Edie knew that as long as Michaelmas was inventing and Cinnamon was cooking, double the mess would follow.
Edie alone kept a tidy, organised room at the top of a narrow and rather dangerous spiral staircase down which people and animals sometimes fell.
She had an eye for a pretty dress and, unlike her parents, kept her clothes in tidy piles, lovingly folded and put into the correct drawers. It was this adherence to tidiness that made her a thoroughly good detective. She had her own little desk, with a pin board above it on which she had stuck pictures of unicorns and French bulldogs and other things that she cherished. Coloured pencils stood invitingly in empty jam jars arranged by size, and cheerful pink curtains were secured by bows so that she could enjoy the view of their long backyard. She had a special pair of prism binoculars that made this pursuit particularly satisfying, and today she was peering through them at her father, who was erecting a rather unusual marquee for her birthday party.
Edie watched as Michaelmas licked his lips and rubbed at a grease stain on the front of his shirt before getting back to work.
Birthday Preparations
Edie Amelia’s birthday party was to be held in two days’ time in the backyard, under a marquee fashioned from recycled plastic bags and air-dried salmon skins. Cinnamon Sparks’s sideline project was a book on biodynamic recycling, the thousand and one salmon skins being an experiment for her chapter on do-it-yourself ethical decorations.
Edie wanted to make sure everything was perfect for the big day, so she put down her binoculars and laid out her birthday clothes in readiness. Checklists had made her feel calm of late, especially with all the changes that seemed to be taking place around her. Edie did not particularly like change; it made her feel fluttery. ‘Blue and green floral print shirt. Check. Matching padded skirt in the same print. Check. Itchy but festive navy woollen stockings. Check.’
She breathed heavily with concentration. So far her preparations were going well, but her outfit would not be complete without her favourite shoes, the red moccasins with brown monkey faces on the toes. She reserved these shoes for special occasions. Monkeys were her favourite animals—she believed them to be very lucky—and so it seemed fitting that she would begin a bold new era as a grown-up nine year old with monkeys grinning broadly on her feet.
Edie reached into the shoebox under her bed. She took out the right shoe and popped it onto her foot, surprised at how tight it felt. Sh
e reached into the box for the other shoe and let out a shriek. It was not there.
‘Mum, help. Help!’ she cried.
‘What on earth is the matter?’ said her mother as her head appeared at the bottom of the spiral staircase. She smelled of salmon skins.
‘Mummy,’ gasped Edie, ‘my left monkey shoe, it’s not here, and both shoes are always in their box, ready for special occasions. Don’t you see? Someone must have taken it!’
Although Edie was a rational girl with a high forehead who wore her hair in a symmetrical light-brown bob, she was given to the occasional fit of passion, which her mother described as being ‘histrionic’ (which was just a dramatic way of saying she was a bit of a fusspot).
‘Oh goodness, Edie Amelia, I thought something terrible had happened,’ said her mother, rubbing her hands briskly on her apron. ‘Your shoe will be in there somewhere. You just haven’t looked properly. Now, I really must get on, I have two hundred and thirteen more salmon skins to air-dry. And really, dear, it’s silly to be histrionic.’ She disappeared back into the kitchen humming a cantata (which is a rather lovely medium-length piece of music).
‘Sorry,’ muttered Edie.
Her mother was right, she really should try harder not to indulge in such uncontrolled behaviour. After all, wasn’t it her duty to revive the much-needed order that had been missing in their household ever since her father had lost his job?
Edie noticed her palms were sweating: uh-oh, she was heading down a Worry Spiral. Better concentrate on the shoes.
Now, Edie knew that she hadn’t misplaced the shoe, for she was not a messy little girl. Edie’s parents were what other people in the street called eccentric, which Edie took to mean very untidy.
‘Well, in that case,’ she said to no one in particular, ‘I shall have to find it myself.’ And with this she felt her Worries take a back seat.
Edie turned to the personal filing system she had devised from her father’s old briefcase, discarded after his untimely departure from Runcible University. The briefcase was lovely, brown and battered looking (though not with the batter you would find in a fish and chip shop). It had silver buckles that made a satisfying click as you closed them. It was the one Edie’s father had used before the University had given him the heave-ho (which is just a jaunty way of saying he had been dismissed).
Michaelmas Sparks
Edie knew her father was preoccupied. She often heard him murmuring under his breath, and noticed that lately he had several more grey hairs coming out of his nostrils. Up until very recently he had had a wonderful job teaching in the Science Department at Runcible University. He was a very original thinker, and ahead of his time, but most importantly his ideas were entirely his own. Edie knew this drove other scientists wild with jealousy because their glasses would fog up and smoke would pour from their ears whenever Michaelmas Sparks began talking about his latest invention.
In the end, someone in the Science Department had begun a Smear Campaign against Michaelmas (which sounds like it might involve a scientist and a vat of margarine, but it doesn’t). They said that Michaelmas had stolen another scientist’s ideas. Stealing other people’s ideas is called plagiarism and in a university there is simply no greater crime.
To add insult to injury (which is just a nicer way of saying to kick a dog when it’s down), Michaelmas Sparks had recently survived another nasty encounter as well. Three days ago he had returned home with broken spectacles, having been mugged in what he described as ‘a public place, quite near the University’. Michaelmas, so shocked and shaken he could barely get the words out at first, had apparently been minding his own business, going over his newsletter—rather cleverly entitled Ignite the Spark—and doing some thinking on his latest invention, when three men wearing Albert Einstein masks had seized him and quite painfully roughed him up. One of the masked men had held him by the shoulders while the other two had gone through his pockets and bag, spilling the contents. Fortunately a kindly man had come to his rescue and the three criminals had fled the scene.
As a result, Michaelmas was now missing not only his job, but the scientific equations of his most incredible invention to date.
But the battle was not over, and Michaelmas Sparks had vowed to put the nasty mugging incident behind him and fight on until he had cleared his name and was reinstated in his rightful position in the Science Department of Runcible University.
Edie looked up from the battered briefcase when she heard a sharp knock on the front door followed by the distant sound of grown-up conversation and the clattering of paws on timber floorboards.
‘Well, hello there, Christmas, to what do we owe the honour of this visit?’
Edie’s father was greeting a fellow scientist from Runcible University, Christmas Jones, a tall and, it has to be said, not entirely brilliant scientist. She winced as she heard her father’s whinnying laugh, something he seemed to reserve for callers like Christmas. Snippets of their chatter drifted up the stairs, interrupting her train of thought.
‘. . . came for my copy of Ignite the Spark, Michaelmas, old chum . . . everyone’s anxious to know how you’re getting on, you know . . .’
‘. . . kind of you, dear fellow, very kind . . .’
‘. . . did you manage to find the microchip, Sparks? I’d be happy to take it and put it in the Department vault for safekeeping.’
‘Not as yet, Christmas, dear man, but come through to the back, I’m working on something special for my number-one girl . . .’
Edie could hear a forced cheeriness in her father’s voice, as if he were putting on a jolly act. She began to scratch a mosquito bite on her wrist till it bled.
The voices faded. Edie heard the back door slam. She took her binoculars from the top drawer behind her assortment of categorised paperclips and the old blue scissors, and watched her father and Christmas in the backyard.
Michaelmas resumed his party duties adding salmon skins to the marquee. She could no longer hear their conversation but watched as Christmas Jones turned away, made a face, then vigorously blew his nose.
Those salmon skins will get you every time, thought Edie, permitting herself a smile.
Cinnamon arrived, smiling graciously and bearing a tray of refreshments. Edie’s mother liked her husband to have visitors, she thought it ‘brought him out of himself’. Edie observed that she’d dusted off the special green mug reserved for guests, which appeared to be full of a steaming drink (hot carob and soy milk, Edie guessed) and a plate of what must have been the quinoa cheeseballs Cinnamon had been perfecting for Edie’s party. Edie found them unusual to say the least.
Christmas smiled politely and seemed to make a big fuss of accepting the hot drink and not one, but two of her mother’s delicacies on a recycled napkin. The men resumed their conversation as Cinnamon headed back to the kitchen.
Michaelmas, who was applying more and more salmon skins to the marquee, didn’t seem to notice as Christmas poured his beverage into a nearby pot plant and fed his quinoa cheeseballs to Mister Pants, who had been hovering on the sidelines.
Mister Pants
Mister Pants was a very unusual dog. He had two enormous ears and a tiny snout. People thought he didn’t look like a dog at all. At different times he had been said to resemble a baby rhino, a bat, a wombat or even a goblin.
He rarely barked. Instead he snuffled and snorted, licked and sneezed and harrumphed. He was allergic to many things, including pollen and paint fumes, which would make his snuffling louder still. He was once bitten by a spider and his face blew up to double the size. On the odd occasion that he ran, both back legs stayed straight, which gave him the appearance of a wind-up toy.
Mister Pants, like most French bulldogs, loved to eat. He loved to eat raisins, chicken, walnuts, lentil patties, raw eggs, macadamia biscuits, wholemeal spaghetti and apples. He was an enthusiastic admirer of the macrobiotic fare for which Mrs Sparks was famous, juniper cutlets being one of his favourites. He also ate things that had no busi
ness being eaten at all, like cardboard, newspaper, small rocks, fertiliser, dressmakers’ pins and his own bed. He had also been known to nibble shoes.
He had been given to Edie as a gift from her parents shortly after Cinnamon had received her first royalty cheque for selling a grand total of three hundred copies of her first cookbook: Macrobiotic Munchkins.
The breeder had named him after a champion boxer, but Edie renamed him one morning when, having been missing for a whole two hours, he emerged from the washing basket, scampering around in circles with a pair of underpants on his head.
There was a special reason why Edie called him intuitive. She believed that he and she had a secret form of communication that nobody else could understand, which her father had most unkindly dismissed as being ‘unscientific’. But Edie would never forget the time that her mother was hanging washing on the line and humming a cantata, unaware of a brown snake slithering through the garden bed towards her. Mister Pants gave one of his rare emergency barks and Edie came running, just in time to warn her mother of the danger.
Edie refocused her binoculars at the precise moment Cinnamon returned to the backyard with yet more cheeseballs and a copy of her father’s home-printed newsletter, Ignite the Spark. She watched as Christmas Jones made a big fuss of rubbing his tummy and licking his lips. She thought it strange that he pretended to enjoy her mother’s food when quite clearly he had given the cheeseballs away to Mister Pants, but she concluded that grown-ups behaved oddly at the best of times, and especially when they were trying to impress each other. She saw her parents bid Christmas Jones farewell and accompany him to the back gate.