The Tennis Trophy Mystery (4 page)

“It’s cold in here,” Eric said, “and windy.”

Cam pointed and said, “Mr. Day has the door open.”

Mr. Day turned and looked at Cam and Eric.

Cam whispered, “He wants us to be quiet.”

“And I feel like we’re being punished again,” Eric whispered.

Cam and Eric watched the game.

“This is boring,” Eric whispered. “Why doesn’t he just give us his keys and let us try the lock?”

“He keeps his marking book and tests in the cabinet. He doesn’t want us to see them,” Cam said. “That’s why he won’t give us the key.”

“Pass the ball forward,” Mr. Day told the class. “Play as a team.”

A boy held the ball in his left hand. He swung his right hand back and hit the ball. It flew into the back of the head of the girl in front of him.

“Hey!” she yelled. “That hurt!”

“Hit the ball up,” Mr. Day told the boy. “Hit it over the net.”

This time the boy hit the ball too high over the net. It went straight up and hit the ceiling.

“He’s worse than I am,” Eric whispered.

“Okay,” Mr. Day called out. “That’s it. It’s time to line up.”

After the class left the gym, Mr. Day came over to Cam and Eric. “Let’s try my key,” he said.

“The key won’t fit,” Eric said. “Then all we have to do is find out whose lock is on the cabinet. Once we find him, we’ll have the thief.”

Mr. Day unlocked the door to his office. When he opened it a gust of wind blew papers off Mr. Day’s desk.

Cam and Eric took some of the papers from the floor and put them on Mr. Day’s desk.

“Leave them,” Mr. Day said. Then he looked at the cabinet and said, “It looks like my lock.”

“Sure it does,” Eric said. “That was the whole idea. The thief wanted it to look the same.”

Mr. Day put the key in the padlock. He turned the key. It opened the lock.

“I thought I solved the mystery,” Eric said.

“Well, you didn’t,” Mr. Day said. “I still don’t have my trophy.”

Mr. Day took a pile of papers from a lower shelf of the cabinet.

“What are those?” Eric asked.

“Tests,” Mr. Day told him. “These are tests on the rules of volleyball. I’m giving them next week.”

“The thief left the tests,” Eric said. “That proves he wasn’t a student.”

“No it doesn’t,” Cam said. “He could have taken one copy of the test and left the rest.”

Mr. Day looked at the pile of tests.

“Oh, my! That’s true,” Mr. Day said. “I’ll have to make new tests.”

Cam, Eric, and Mr. Day stared at the cabinet.

“It’s not just the trophy,” Mr. Day said. “It seems someone has a key to my office and to my cabinet. Now nothing I have in here is safe.”

“I think you should get a new lock,” Cam said.

Mr. Day unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk. “I think you’re right,” he said, “but until then, I’m putting everything in here.”

Mr. Day took a lunch bag and a thermos from the drawer. He put the tests in. Cam and Eric took the two trophies still in the cabinet. They gave them to Mr. Day. He put them in the drawer, too.

There were still some books and papers in the cabinet.

“You can leave those,” Mr. Day said. “They’re not valuable. And anyway, there’s no more room in here.”

Mr. Day locked the drawer.

“What do we do now?” Eric asked.

“The painters took my posters off the walls,” Mr. Day said. “You can help me put them back up.”

There was a pile of posters on the floor. The top one was a picture of two Olympic champions and the message, EAT RIGHT. PLAY FAIR. BE A CHAMPION.

Cam and Eric helped Mr. Day tape that poster and several others to the wall.

“Thank you,” Mr. Day said. “My office looks better now.”

Cam looked at the walls. The posters looked great. Very little of the newly painted yellow walls was showing. Cam looked at the cabinet. She looked through the glass doors.

“Look at that,” Cam said. “I should have thought of it before. Look through the glass doors and you’ll know how the thief took the trophy. You’ll know why after he took it, the cabinet was still locked!”

Cam told Mr. Day and Eric to go outside the office.

“Look through the window,” Cam said. “What do you see?”

Eric said, “I see Mr. Day’s office.”

“I’m not even going to look,” Mr. Day said. “I know what’s in there.”

Cam asked, “Do you see the cabinet?”

“Yes,” Eric answered.

“Look through the cabinet doors,” Cam told Eric. “What color are the walls?”

“Yellow,” Eric said. “I can see the walls through the glass doors on the cabinet.”

“Yes,” Cam said. “That’s what I saw when I looked in. I saw the walls because there’s no back to the cabinet. It’s open.”

“So what?” Mr. Day asked. “It’s always been open. No one can get into the cabinet from the back because it’s always against the wall.”

“Not always,” Cam said. “It wasn’t against the wall when the office was painted.”

“That’s when the trophy was taken,” Eric said. “The cabinet was away from the wall.”

“And the painters left the door open,” Mr. Day added. “They wanted fresh air in the office, to help the paint dry and to get rid of the smell.”

A first grade teacher followed by his class came into the gym. The children were talking and laughing. Mr. Day turned and looked at them. The talking and laughing stopped.

Mr. Day told Cam and Eric, “I have to teach now. And you should get back to your class.”

Cam and Eric left the gym.

“We solved part of the mystery,” Eric said. “We know how the trophy was taken.”

“But we don’t know who took it,” Cam said.

Cam and Eric walked into their classroom.

The children had their math textbooks and notebooks open. They were working quietly. Ms. Benson asked Cam and Eric to come to her desk.

“What happened?” she whispered. “Did you find the trophy?”

Cam and Eric told Ms. Benson everything. Then they sat in their seats. There was a math assignment on the board, problems one to twenty beginning on page fifty-four. Cam opened her book.

Cam read the first problem.

“Joan and Jane are traveling to the city.”

Why?
Cam wondered.

“The city is 150 miles away.”

Why did someone steal the tennis trophy?
Cam asked herself.

“Joan is traveling by bus. Jane is traveling by train.”

Because it’s made of silver, and silver is valuable,
Cam thought.
That’s why the trophy was stolen.

“The bus travels at a steady 30 miles an hour. It makes no stops. The train travels at 60 miles an hour. It makes six 20 minute stops. Who gets to the city first, Joan or Jane?”

Jane gets to the city first,
Cam wrote.
Jane gets to the city in four and a half hours. Joan gets there in five hours.

Cam read the next problem.

“Two stores have a sale on silver vases. In one store, the vases are $150 each. In the other store, vases are $200 each, but if you buy two, you get the third for free.”

Three vases,
Cam thought.

“Which store sells the vases for the lowest price?”

The lowest price,
Cam thought.
That’s easy. It’s the buy-two-get-one-free store. But someone might not want three vases.

Hey,
Cam thought.
Three silver vases. Three silver trophies.

Cam closed her eyes and said,
“Click!”

She looked at the picture she had in her head of Mr. Day’s cabinet.

“That’s it!” she said again. This time she said it aloud. “I think I know who took the tennis trophy.”

“What’s it?” Eric asked.

“The three vases,” Cam answered. “That gave me the solution.”

“That’s an easy one,” Eric said. “The vases are cheaper in the buy-two-get-one-free store. But who wants three vases? Who has that many flowers?”

“I’m not talking about vases,” Cam told Eric. “I’m talking about Mr. Day’s trophies.”

Ms. Benson had walked to the back of the room. She stood by Cam’s desk.

“Why aren’t you working?” she asked Cam.

Ms. Benson turned and looked at Eric. “Neither of you has done much work today.”

“She solved the mystery,” Eric said. “Cam knows who took the trophy.”

“It’s the three vases that gave me the answer,” Cam said. “Mr. Day had three trophies. They were all made of silver. But someone reached in through the back of the cabinet and took just the tennis trophy.”

“Maybe the thief was in a hurry,” Ms. Benson said. “Maybe, just as he grabbed the tennis trophy, he heard someone coming and ran off.”

Cam said, “Maybe
she
only wanted the tennis trophy.”

“Why?” Ms. Benson asked.

“She?” Eric asked.