Edgar Allan's Official Crime Investigation Notebook Read online

  EDGAR ALLAN’S OFFICIAL CRIME INVESTIGATION NOTEBOOK

  Mary Amato

  Holiday House / New York

  Copyright © 2010 by Mary Amato

  All Rights Reserved

  HOLIDAY HOUSE is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  www.holidayhouse.com

  The text typeface is ITC Slimbach Book.

  ISBN 978-0-8234-2448-1 (ebook)w

  ISBN 978-0-8234-2677-5 (ebook)r

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Amato, Mary.

  Edgar Allan’s official crime investigation notebook /

  by Mary Amato. — 1st ed.

  Summary: When someone takes a pet goldfish then other items from

  Ms. Herschel’s classroom, each time leaving a clue in the form

  of a poem, student Edgar Allan competes with a classmate

  to be first to solve the mystery.

  ISBN 978-0-8234-2271-5 (hardcover)

  [1. Mystery and detective stories. 2. Lost and found possessions—Fiction. 3. Teachers—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction. 5. Poetry—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.A49165Edg 2010

  [Fic]—dc22

  2010011604

  ISBN 978-0-8234-2386-6 (paperback)

  For all the people who have shared the love of poetry with me, especially Mrs. Chattin; Mrs. Osborne; Mr. McCauley; Frau Hildebrandt; Mr. Osborne; Mari Vlastos; Natasha Saje; David Christman; Julie Lowins Zielke; Andrew Schindel; Jed Feffer; Richard Washer; Phyllis Mentzell Ryder; Ivan, Sol, and Sylvia Amato; and my kids.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The classroom was as dark and quiet as an old graveyard at dawn. The thief crept in, taped a mysterious message on the board, tiptoed to the Pet Corner, and peered at the fish.

  You’re mine now, the thief thought with a sly smile.

  At Wordsworth Elementary School, just before the day began, someone stole the fish from the tank in Ms. Herschel’s fifth-grade classroom. Now the fifth graders were gathered around the message left on the board, everyone talking at once.

  Well, not everyone. One student, Edgar Allan, wasn’t saying a word. He had his eyes closed and was imagining what the ordeal must have been like for the fish. He could almost feel the rushing of the water against his fins and tail as he was being lifted out. Edgar wasn’t sure how fish brains worked, but he bet the fish was scared.

  “Please close your mouths and take your seats,” Ms. Herschel said. “We won’t get anywhere with all this noise.” Their teacher set down her coffee cup, sat on the edge of her desk, and looked at her students over the rims of her dark-framed glasses, waiting for them to settle down.

  As Edgar walked to his desk, a shiver rippled through him. A strange chill always lingers at the scene of a robbery, even after the thief has gone, and Edgar could feel it in the air. He sat and looked at his classmates. Everyone was sitting quietly, except for a skinny boy named Kip, whose leg was jiggling against his desk, and Taz, the tallest in the class, who was pretending to swim to his seat in the last row while making fish faces.

  “Taz, do you think this is funny?” Ms. Herschel asked.

  “I don’t think it’s funny,” Maia said. “I gave Slurpy to the whole class as a gift. Whoever stole that cute little fish was mean.” She tossed back her long black hair and threw a hard glance at Taz.

  “Very bad,” Gabriela, the new girl, quickly agreed.

  “Stop staring at me,” Taz said to the girls. “What do you think? I came in here and ate it for breakfast?” He laughed and made a slurping sound.

  Destiny Perkins sat up taller in her seat. “Stealing anything is wrong. But stealing living things seems worse because whatever you’re stealing is probably scared.”

  Edgar glanced at Destiny, realizing that she must have imagined what the fish was feeling, too.

  “If I wanted to, I could steal something and not get caught because I’m fast,” Kip said, and he was about to leap up and prove it, but Ms. Herschel stopped him.

  “What if Slurpy is dead!” Maia exclaimed.

  Patrick, a boy who couldn’t sit straighter if he tried, raised his hand. “I think Slurpy was stolen, not murdered, because of what the note says. The thief left clues in it.”

  “Interesting, Patrick,” Ms. Herschel said. “Would you like to read the note aloud?”

  Even though Ms. Herschel had said nothing about using her pointer, Patrick walked to the board, picked up the teacher’s wooden stick, and pointed to each line in the note as he read it aloud.

  “See the title?” Patrick pointed. “Thief. Not murderer! And the thief takes the fish carefully.”

  “A cat did it!” Kip said.

  Maia rolled her eyes. “The thief is like a cat, meaning sneaky.” She threw another look at Taz.

  “I think you’re right about the thief being sneaky, Maia,” Ms. Herschel said. “But let’s not jump to conclusions about who did it without more clues.”

  “Maybe none of us did it,” Destiny said. “Maybe it was a professional thief.”

  An invisible finger of ice touched Edgar’s spine. A professional thief! He opened his notebook and began writing.

  Tuesday, October 2

  My whole body is shivering. A criminal has been in this very room where I’m now sitting. All my life I’ve been waiting for something like this to happen.

  I’ll record clues in this notebook. I will catch this thief before anyone else does!

  Excited, he closed the notebook and wrote in big letters on the front:

  Edgar Allan’s Official Crime Investigation Notebook

  Still standing at the front, Patrick pulled a silver camera out of his pocket. “Ms. Herschel, may I take a picture of the evidence?”

  “Great idea, Patrick,” Ms. Herschel said. “But then I’m afraid we really have to begin our science lesson.”

  Edgar couldn’t believe his ears or eyes.

  Ms. Herschel is letting Patrick takes pictures of the crime scene.

  This is not fair. Some of us do not have cameras.

  Never fear! I will design a trap to catch the thief. I will put a fake fish in the tank with a string attached. When the thief takes the fish, the string will pull on a net that falls down from the ceiling.

  As Patrick strolled by Edgar’s desk on his way to his own, he grabbed Edgar’s notebook and started to read it.

  “Give it back!” Edgar whispered angrily.

  Patrick scribbled a message and tossed it back to Edgar.

  Your trap is stupid.

  Edgar glared at his classmate who was now busy writing on the cover of his own notebook. When Edgar leaned over to see what he was writing, he almost fell off his chair.

  Patrick just wrote “Patrick Chen’s Official Crime Investigation Notebook” on his notebook, which is basically stealing my idea, so who is the criminal now?

  He covered his notebook with his arm so Patrick couldn’t get another glimpse.

  Patrick leaned over and whispered, “What a crime solver needs is a theory about why someone would commit the crime. I’ve got one. Do you?”

  “Of course,” Edgar said. Then he hunched over his desk and wrote:

  Help! I need a theory. Why? Why? Why steal a small, goldish red fish with a white belly that bothered no one and gave joy to the happy students at Wordsworth Elementary School?

  All I know is there are criminals out there who do bad things and innocent fish pay the price.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Edgar’s brain was bubbling, and a theory was finally coming to the surface.

  “Time for math,” Ms. Herschel said. “Let’s see who can solve today’s math br
ain teaser.”

  Not math, Edgar thought. Not at a time like this!

  While she read the day’s word problem out loud, he grabbed his notebook.

  What if the thief knows something about Slurpy that we don’t know? Perhaps Slurpy is a rare species, a one-of-a-kind fish, that can be sold on eBay for big bucks! Now, that’s a theory!

  Edgar raised his hand.

  “That was quick problem-solving, Edgar! What’s the answer?”

  “I don’t know. I was just wondering if I could go to the computer station and do some research on a certain important topic.” He glanced at Patrick to see if he was impressed.

  “No you may not. We are doing math now.”

  Doesn’t Ms. Herschel know that asking me to stop investigating is like asking a fly to stop flying or a bee to stop beeing or a cheetah to stop cheeting?

  Ms. Herschel repeated the word problem. “Two years ago my dog had eight puppies. I kept one-fourth of them. Last year my dog had six more puppies. I kept one-half of them. How many puppies do I have now?”

  Taz raised his hand. “You’d have zero puppies because now they would all be grown-up dogs!”

  Ms. Herschel had to laugh. “Well, you’re right. Okay, how many dogs do I have now?”

  Patrick and Destiny raised their hands at the same time. Before their teacher could choose who to call on, Patrick blurted out the answer. “One-quarter of eight is two, plus half of six is three, so you would have five dogs plus the mother dog.”

  “Good problem-solving, Patrick!” Ms. Herschel said. “Now, I’ll put four new problems up on the board and set the timer. See if you can get all four done before the timer rings.”

  Patrick is smart. I’m afraid he’s going to solve the crime before me. It’ll be like the science fair all over again. Patrick brought that recycling robot that crushed empty cans and lit up. All I brought was a rock.

  Okay it was a very nice smooth rock and my question was what makes some rocks smooth? But still it was just a rock.

  The room was silent, except for the scratching of pencils on paper and the sound of Kip’s leg jiggling against his desk. Everyone was working on the math problems, except Taz, who was playing with a keychain.

  Edgar had a sudden urge to blow his nose. As he walked up to get a tissue, he stopped by Maia’s desk and whispered, “What kind of goldfish was Slurpy?”

  She looked up from her math work and whispered back. “He was an ordinary goldfish, Edgar.”

  “How do you know?” he asked.

  “My mom is the manager of Pet Place,” she whispered.

  “I got my iguana at Pet Place!” Sammy said.

  “Edgar,” Ms. Herschel called out. “You’re wasting time and distracting others.”

  Disappointed, he took a tissue and blew his nose. On his way back to his seat, he glanced at the Pet Corner, which was in the back, by the sink. The empty tank on the counter, where Slurpy had been, looked as sad as a box of chocolates after all the chocolates are gone. In a cage next to it, Mister Furball, the hamster, popped out of a toilet paper roll and began sniffing around. Edgar tried to lock eyes with Mister Furball, but Ms. Herschel told him to sit down and get to work.

  There is one person who I’m sure witnessed the crime and could tell me the name of the criminal! Unfortunately that person is a hamster.

  He tried working on math, but a new theory was gnawing away at his mind. What if the thief was interested in stealing all kinds of pets, not just fish? He might return to the scene of the crime and steal poor Mister Furball! Maybe the thief was still here, hiding somewhere in the school—in a closet—and he was planning the next theft at this moment.

  Realizing that his pencil needed sharpening, Edgar raced to the sharpener, which happened to be near the Pet Corner. While sharpening, he looked at Mister Furball’s cage. Perhaps he could build a trap that would catch the thief and save Mister Furball. Certainly no one else in the room had thought of this. Edgar glanced at himself in the mirror that was over the sink, to see if he looked as distinguished as he felt. Unfortunately, he hadn’t grown any taller, and he had slept on his thick brown hair so it was sticking up in the back, but his big brown eyes looked full of daring and his feathery eyebrows could do wonderful things on command.

  Fired up, he bolted to Ms. Herschel’s desk and whispered, “May I be excused from doing math so I can immediately build a hamster protection device?”

  “No, Edgar. You have to do the math like everyone else.”

  Only temporarily discouraged, an even more brilliant thought popped into his head. “If you bring in one of your puppies, I’ll train it as a classroom guard dog!”

  “I don’t have any puppies, Edgar. That was just a word problem.”

  Crushed, Edgar sat back down. Mister Furball was standing on his hind legs with his little paws on the bars, looking right at him.

  Never fear, Mister Furball! I will ask Mr. Crew to let me skip language arts to do a complete search of the school. Unlike Ms. Herschel, Mr. Crew has a heart.

  Edgar wasn’t positive, but he thought he saw Mister Furball smile.

  CHAPTER THREE

  On the way from Ms. Herschel’s room to Mr. Crew’s room, where Edgar had language arts, there was a janitorial supply closet big enough to hide a thief and his loot. Edgar walked toward it quickly. There was no guarantee the thief would be hiding inside, but Edgar was not about to pass by a possible hideout and leave it unchecked. The secret was to stay one step ahead of Patrick.

  Kip was already at Mr. Crew’s door, but his other classmates were behind Edgar, which would mean they would witness how smart he was to think of investigating the closet. He reached the door, turned the knob, and opened it, ready to duck if the thief had a weapon.

  A push from behind sent Edgar stumbling into the little room. The door slammed shut, plunging him into total darkness. He reeled around, yelling and groping for the door. “Help!” He banged on the door. “Help!”

  The door flew open, and Clarice Stolnup was standing there, laughing her head off. Clarice was a small blond girl in the other class who had a large mouth, mean eyes, and a passion for making other people miserable. Edgar avoided her whenever possible.

  “What were you looking for?” Clarice said. “Toilet paper?”

  “That wasn’t funny, Clarice,” Destiny said, but Edgar was sure he heard some other people laughing.

  Embarrassed, he hurried on to Mr. Crew’s room. By the time he walked in, Patrick was already standing at the teacher’s desk, showing him the thief’s message on the viewing screen of his camera.

  “This is fascinating, Patrick!” Mr. Crew was exclaiming, his eyes dancing like candle flames on a chocolate birthday cake. Their language arts teacher was genuinely fascinated about most things, which was why his students loved him. “This message is like a poem. The thief is using the image of a cat to describe himself or herself.”

  “Maia said that!” Gabriela exclaimed.

  “Good job, Maia,” Mr. Crew stepped over to Maia’s desk for a high five. “That’s called a metaphor. How lucky! I was going to start our unit on poetry today, and now I can use this as a springboard. We can start with metaphor.”

  “I know who the criminal is,” Patrick said.

  “Really?” Mr. Crew stroked his black mustache. “Well, make sure you have solid evidence before you go pointing a finger, Patrick.”

  Patrick showed Mr. Crew his crime investigation notebook. “I’m already working on that.”

  Edgar sat down, disappointed.

  I can’t even ask Mr. Crew about leaving his room to search the school because Patrick is hogging all the space up there. I will wait until everybody is working and Mr. Crew is alone at his desk. Then I’ll make my move.

  “Okay, everybody!” Mr. Crew pulled his chair over to the board and hopped up on it. “Kip, will you hand me that paintbrush and that can of paint?”

  “What for?”

  “Watch!” He took the paintbrush from Kip, dipped it in the
paint, and wrote in big letters on the wall above the board.

  A POEM IS A GIFT.

  “I’d rather have candy,” Kip said.

  “I’d rather have a new soccer ball,” Sammy said.

  “I’d rather have Slurpy back,” Maia said.

  Edgar had always wanted a dog, but now that the idea of a guard dog had leaped into his mind, he wanted one more than ever.

  Mr. Crew gave the paintbrush back to Kip and hopped down from his stool. “I hope by the end of this unit, you’ll all come to enjoy poetry. Who thinks they know what I mean by saying a poem is a gift?”

  Maia raised her hand. “The writer of the poem is giving it to the world like a beautiful gift.”

  “What if it’s an ugly poem?” Taz said and laughed.

  “I don’t think every poem has to be beautiful,” Destiny said. “You can write a sad poem. If you write a poem to express yourself, then it’s a gift to yourself.”

  “That’s a terrific way to put it.” Mr. Crew smiled, and his mustache smiled, too.

  “Mr. Crew, I got a question,” Taz said. “Why didn’t you just write it on the board like a normal teacher?”

  Mr. Crew laughed. “I’m writing it on the wall because I don’t want it to get erased. I want you to remember it. A poem is a gift.”

  Taz put one hand over his heart and sang,

  Happy birthday to me.

  Don’t give me a flea

  all covered with chocolate . . .

  or I’ll stick you in a tree.

  Mr. Crew laughed again. “See? Taz made us laugh with his poem. That was a gift.”

  Patrick scribbled something down in his crime notebook. Edgar noticed and couldn’t help wondering what it was.

  “Hey, Mr. Crew,” Taz said. “How come you can write on the wall, but if we do we get in trouble?”

  Mr. Crew laughed. “I got permission from the principal. Try that next time. Now, back to metaphor.” Mr. Crew pulled his chair to his desk. “Who remembers what that means?”