Edgar Allan's Official Crime Investigation Notebook (10 page)

After dinner, he took his notebook outside and sat on the concrete steps. The air was damp, but he didn't mind. The sky, dramatic and brooding, was folding over itself in different shades of gray. He wondered if Bandit was still alive and if Taz was watching over him.

I know that everything has to die, but sometimes I wonder why it has to be that way? Why can't it be that everything lives a really long time? Like hundreds of years? Perhaps I will be a doctor in addition to being a detective, and then I can find a cure for cancer.


I just looked at my own hand holding this pencil, and I thought, some day I'm going to die and then this hand will turn to bones.


I think there's something in me that's stronger than bones. My spirit. I don't think it has any one place in my body where it lives. I think it swirls and floats and zips around inside me. It's the moving part of me, the part of me that
feels
. When something really big is happening—either in a sad way or in a joyful way—I think my spirit expands and fills up my whole body. That happened today in a sad way when I saw Taz with Bandit and
again in a happy way when Destiny and I left that poem for him. When we were riding our bikes together, my spirit was filling up my whole body. Even the puddles looked like works of art.


Destiny could feel it, too. Eyeballs never lie.


Edgar pulled out his notebook. He closed his eyes and let a great silence wash over him. Then he opened his eyes and wrote a poem. He read it over to himself. He crossed out a few words and chose better words. He read it again. Satisfied, he took his notebook into the living room. His parents were sitting on the floor, practicing a new card trick. Rosy was jumping up and down in her special Baby Bouncer harness that was attached to the doorjamb.

“I just wrote a poem,” he said.

They looked up.

“Do you want to hear it?” he asked.

“Sure. Let 'er rip,” his dad said.

Edgar read.

Inside


by Edgar Allan


There is a you


inside you


stronger than bone


lighter than wind.


It shines like sunlight


through green magnolia leaves.


Ride through the rain,


it whispers.


Don't be afraid,


it whispers.


If a friend needs you,


sit down next to him


even if the grass


is wet.


His parents were silent. Then his mother smiled, her eyes brimming. “Wow, Edgar.”

“Wow indeed,” his dad said. “That was beautiful.”

Even Rosy had stopped bouncing and was looking up at him, her toes just touching the floor, her big eyes filled with wonder.

“Thank you.” Edgar took his notebook with him into the kitchen and helped himself to an extra large bowl of ice cream with whipped cream on top.

The next morning on his way to the bus stop, Edgar saved three worms from drying out by picking them up and putting them back in the wet grass. The bus was late, so he had time for a quick entry.

Maybe the reason people have pets is because it feels good to take care of something even if you know it might die someday. The good weighs more than the sad.


Perhaps if my parents knew that I was saving worms, they would finally buy me a dog.


On the ride to school, the wheels of his mind turned faster than the wheels of the bus. Today was Friday. What would the day bring? Another crime? More interesting conversations with Destiny? A clue from Taz that he had received their poem and that it had cheered him up?

When his bus pulled up, Destiny was standing by the
flagpole. As soon as Edgar got off the bus, she walked over.

“Do you think the thief struck again?” she asked.

“I was just wondering about that,” Edgar said.

“Great minds think alike,” she said, and they walked in.

Even though Edgar and Destiny had gone to school together since kindergarten, they had never walked down the hall like this, side by side, until today. It felt a little odd. But in a good way, Edgar thought.

When they arrived at the classroom door, all the kids were standing outside it.

“It's locked!” Patrick said.

“I was the first one here,” Kip said.

Just then Ms. Herschel walked up with a cup of coffee in one hand and a stack of books in the other.

Mr. Crew stepped out of his room at the same time. “Ah, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free have arrived!”

“I locked my door, Mr. Crew,” Ms. Herschel said. “There's a thief running around.”

“So I've heard,” Mr. Crew said. “We've been studying the thief's poetry. Any break in the case?”

“Well, this locked door should keep everything safe.” Ms. Herschel shifted the books in her hand. “Mr. Crew, can you do me a favor and open up for me?”

Mr. Crew unlocked her door and held it open.

Patrick squeezed in ahead of everyone else. “Another note!” he squealed.

“No way!” Ms. Herschel exclaimed.

Edgar and Destiny ran to the board, looked at the
note, and then exchanged excited glances. The students crowded around with Ms. Herschel and Mr. Crew.

Patrick read the note out loud.

“My fan?” Ms. Herschel looked at the empty spot on the top of her bookshelf where a beautiful red and black lace fan was usually displayed along with other gifts she had received from past students.

“Not your Spanish fan!” Mr. Crew exclaimed. “Didn't a student give that to you?”

“Yes! It was right here—do you all remember it?”

Edgar did. He enjoyed looking at all the knickknacks Ms. Herschel kept on her shelf.

“This is getting serious!” Mr. Crew said. “I'd better go back and check my room.”

“I could skateboard around the neighborhood,” Kip
offered. “And if I see somebody with a fan I could chase him down.”

“I think you'd better stay in the classroom, Kip,” Ms. Herschel said. “Patrick, did your fingerprint test on the last note turn up anything?”

“No,” Patrick said. “My dad said it was contaminated with too many prints. Nobody touch this one!”

“He's right,” Ms. Herschel said.

She handed him an envelope for him to put it in. With a great flourish he pulled a tissue out of her box and used it to keep his own fingerprints off the message as he tucked it into the envelope.

“Everyone have a seat,” Ms. Herschel said.

“Maybe you should call the police,” Maia suggested.

Ms. Herschel sighed. “I was hoping that one of you would solve this mystery so that we wouldn't have to bring in the police, but maybe you're right.”

Edgar and Destiny exchanged glances again.

Destiny is excited that something else got stolen, too. She wants to solve this mystery with me!


Taz walked in and handed Ms. Herschel a note from his mom and noticed that something was going on. “What's up?” he asked.

“My fan from Spain was stolen,” Ms. Herschel said. “Have a seat.”

As Taz walked to his seat, he looked first at Edgar and then at Destiny.

He got the note and knows we wrote it! I can tell! And he's excited there was another crime, too! Isn't it amazing how much eyeballs can say?


“Where have you been?” Patrick whispered to Taz.

“None of your business,” Taz said.

Edgar was dying to ask Taz the same thing and to find out if Bandit was feeling better. He also thought that maybe Taz and Destiny would be interested in his theory about Ms. Herschel being a coffee hog and the thief being another teacher who was taking revenge, but Ms. Herschel interrupted his thoughts by beginning the day's lesson.

I could get a lot more done in school if there wasn't so much school work to do.


“So where were you between 8:20 and 9:00, Taz?” Patrick glued himself to Taz's side as the class walked from math to language arts.

“At the dentist,” Taz said.

Edgar chimed in. “So that means Taz couldn't have committed the crime, Patrick. Your theory is blown.”

Patrick threw him a look. “He
says
he was at the dentist.”

“Smell my strawberry-flavored fluoride!” Taz breathed on Patrick.

Edgar laughed.

Mr. Crew was waiting at his door. “Any more clues or evidence?”

“I'm working on it,” Patrick said.

“I guess you need a new theory,” Edgar said, enjoying Patrick's look of annoyance.

As they took their seats, Destiny said, “Mr. Crew, I was thinking about the poem that the thief left this time. I think maybe the thief wants to get caught.”

“Why do you say that?”

“It's like the poet wants to tell us in the poem that he or she is the thief.”

“I agree,” the teacher said. “It almost sounds like a confession. Sometimes it's easier to write down things that you can't say out loud. How many of you agree?”

Many hands went up.

Mr. Crew smiled. “A poem is a way to express yourself. Some poetry is called ‘confessional poetry' because the poet is really confessing a deep emotion in the poem. You can use poetry to get something off your chest.”

Like when a teacher writes a love poem for a custodian, Edgar thought.

“Today we're going to work completely independently,” Mr. Crew continued. “What I want you to do first is spend a little time reading some poems by other poets, . . .” he pointed to his bookshelves filled with poetry books in the back of the room, “and see if you can find any poems that seem to express some kind of deep emotion or say something that the poet may have had a hard time saying out loud. Then I want you to experiment. Write something of your own. And here's what's different: You don't have to turn this one in. You may share it if you want, but you don't have to.”

“Can it be deep and funny at the same time?” Taz asked.

“There's always a place for humor.”

“If we don't have to turn it in, we could just sit here all period and scribble,” Sammy said with a grin.

Mr. Crew shrugged. “I'll take that risk. I want you to experience the idea that poetry can be helpful to you, a way to express yourself even if nobody reads it but you. Go back and pick out a book to give you some inspiration.”

The students picked out books and brought them back
to their desks and began reading quietly. Edgar looked around the room. He was dying to know what was on each person's mind.

The room was hushed. The idea of taking time in school to write something that didn't even have to be turned in had a different feel to it. It somehow seemed less like work and more like . . . real life.

When Edgar was in the middle of his second draft, Taz walked by to sharpen his pencil. He dropped off a note.