Sly the Sleuth and the Sports Mysteries (2 page)

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Authors: Donna Jo Napoli

BOOK: Sly the Sleuth and the Sports Mysteries
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“Want to walk with us?” asked Melody. “Pong needs exercise.” She held up an empty plastic bag. “And you know what else he needs.” She giggled.
I like dogs. But I like cats better. And that plastic bag was one reason.
“I'm going to the soccer field with Jack,” I said.
“You don't play soccer,” said Melody.
“I'm on a case,” I said. “Or maybe I am. I haven't decided yet.”
Jack came dribbling back. “Hurry,” he said.
Pong jumped on the soccer ball.
“Well, I guess Pong decided,” said Melody. “We're coming too.”
Birds
“All right,” I said. “What's the problem?”
We stood at the edge of the school soccer field.
“Birds.” Jack pointed at a flock near the far goal.
“Those birds don't look like a problem to me,” I said.
Just then Pong noticed the birds. He yipped and jumped like a wild thing.
Melody let Pong off his leash. He ran straight through the birds. They flew off.
“Hey,” said Jack. “Pong solved my case.”
“What case?” I said.
“Those birds won't leave the field. And the final game is this weekend. It's a big deal. If we win, we'll be the champions. But the birds are in the way.”
“Are you nuts?” I said. “Birds won't stay on the field when teams are playing.”
“Right. But they stay when I practice alone. They won't let me practice. And I need extra practice, so I can get my kick perfect. But it's all solved now. Melody, lend me Pong after school every day this week.”
“Okay,” said Melody. “But I have to come too.”
“That's fine,” said Jack. He grinned. “You don't charge anything. You're better than Sly.”
Melody smiled.
Bad Mood
I left them on the field and walked toward home. This all should have been fine with me. After all, there really wasn't any case. There's no mystery to shooing birds off a field. So nothing had been solved. I shouldn't have felt bad that Jack said Melody was better than me.
Melody is my best friend. I should have been glad Jack said that dumb thing, glad because it made her feel good.
But I wasn't glad. And I didn't want to go home and work on my drawing anymore. Jack was right. My drawing looked bad.
Besides, I'm not crazy about birds, although I had to admit Taxi was. Taxi would have loved this case. Probably any cat would.
“What's the matter with you?” Kate rode her bike in the street beside me. I wasn't surprised to see her. She lives just a couple of houses over from Jack.
“Nothing,” I said.
She hopped off and walked the bike up onto the sidewalk. “Why are you frowning?”
“I'm not,” I said.
“You're in a bad mood.”
“No I'm not.”
“Well, I am,” said Kate.“My mother's acting bad.”
Kate was the only person I knew who expected her mother to do whatever she said. “What happened?” I asked.
“She said I had to go ride my bike for an hour.”
“That doesn't sound bad,” I said.
“I don't like riding my bike. But my mother is on a health kick with her friend Julie. She thinks exercise is wonderful. So after I finished my homework, she made me go outside.”
“You already finished your homework?”
“It was easy. I traced a bird out of a magazine.”
“That's cheating.”
“No it's not. The teacher didn't say we couldn't trace. And don't you tell.” Kate nudged me with her elbow. “Anyway, what choice did I have? It's impossible to draw good with pen.You can't erase.”
“She doesn't want us to erase. That's the point.”
“I know,” said Kate. “She's crazy.”
“She's not crazy,” I said.
“Yes she is. She said we're going to draw birds all winter.”
“There's nothing crazy about that,” I said.
“Sure there is. Birds fly away in winter.”
Ruined Grass
“Wait!” Melody was calling me.
I turned around.
Melody ran up with Pong.
“Oh, I love that puppy,” said Kate. She laid her bike on the ground. Then she sat on the sidewalk and held her arms out to Pong.
Pong ran straight up Kate's front and licked her face. Kate laughed.
“I thought you were helping Jack,” I said to Melody.
“He has a bad temper.”
“Did he get mad at Pong?”
“He got mad at both of us. I'm never helping him again.”
Pong was still licking Kate.
Kate was still laughing.
Melody laughed now too.
I thought of angry Jack, alone on the field with the birds. Sleuths have a responsibility toward their clients. Even clients who fired them before they were hired. “See you later.” I walked back to the field.
Jack was jumping in the middle of the birds. He flapped his arms like a madman.
“What happened?” I called.
“That stupid dog chased the soccer ball instead of the birds.”
I laughed.
“It's not funny.”
“What else happened?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know. You got mad at Melody too.”
“She said she could kick better than me. Then she scored on me. But only because she fouled me. Her and her stupid ballet.”
“Kicking's not that important,” I said.
“In soccer it is. If I don't get better at kicking, the coach will make me stay on the bench the whole game.” Jack looked really worried.
I knew how he felt. I love baseball, but I'm not that good at it. “Why don't you practice somewhere else?” “Like where?”
“Your backyard.”
“My mother says soccer ruins the lawn.”
I looked out over the field.The grass was missing in lots of places. Jack's mother was right.
Jack kicked the ground. “What makes these dumb birds come here?”
That was the mystery. “We'll get rid of them,” I said.
“You're hired,” said Jack.
A Goal
I walked along the perimeter of the field.
Jack dribbled the ball in circles around me. “Why aren't you scaring the birds off?”
“Did they leave when you tried to scare them?”
“You know they didn't.You saw.”
“Exactly,” I said.
“Well, if you're not going to scare them off, how are you going to solve my problem?”
“Have you tried playing through them?”
“It doesn't work.They stay there,” said Jack.
How could that be? “Let me try,” I said. I kicked the ball toward the birds.
Squawk!
Oh, no!
The ball bounced off a bird and into the net.
The bird walked unsteadily. I was amazed it wasn't dead. I ran to it. It flew away. I laughed in relief.
“Wow,” said Jack. “You scored. Maybe I should kick the ball into a bird.”
“I didn't mean to do it,” I said. “Besides, you might hurt them. You can't play here anymore. Not till I get rid of them.”
“How?”
I didn't know. But clients never like to hear that kind of answer. “Are they always out here?”
“No. They came on Monday, and they've been here every afternoon since.”
“Only in the afternoon?”
“In the morning there are hardly any of them.”
The Blot
Jack dribbled ahead of me. “Solve my case fast,” he called. He waved and went up his walk.
By the time I got home, it was late. I helped make dinner. After we ate, I went back to my drawing.
I shaded in the wings of my bird.
Birds. So many birds all at once. Birds on the soccer field. Birds in the homework. And Kate said we would be drawing birds all winter.
But, like she said, birds fly away in winter. Not all of them, of course. But the ones that stay behind aren't easy to find.
Unless you do something to attract them.
It was November. Why were there so many birds on the soccer field?
Something was attracting them.
What would attract the birds all of a sudden? And only in the afternoon? And this late in the fall?
In thinking so hard, I pressed on the pen. The plastic near the tip broke. Ink slopped on my drawing. It formed a big blot over the bird's head.
That's exactly how I felt.
Stuart
“Why are we walking so fast?” asked Melody.
“I don't want Jack to see us.”
“We can't walk fast enough not to be seen,” said Melody. “We'd have to go faster than the speed of light.” She giggled.
“I didn't mean it that way,” I said. “I just meant if we walk fast, maybe Jack won't jump out as we go by.”
“I was joking,” said Melody. “You're touchy today.”
The blot was still over my head. I couldn't get a grip on Jack's case.
That's how the day went. I couldn't get anything right.
In art we taped our pen drawings to the wall. Mine was almost as bad as Ben's, and Ben's was the worst.
Then Mrs. Stambaugh chose the tallest kids to help her put up two big bird feeders outside the art room windows. That's how she was going to attract the birds. I'm short. I didn't get to help.
Finally, it was lunchtime. Usually I eat with Melody. But that day I wanted to be alone. I sat on the bleachers by the soccer field.
A few kids were playing a pickup game. There were hardly any birds around.
I ate my sandwich slowly. It was one of those sunny, crisp days that makes you feel lazy. I stretched out on a bleacher and closed my eyes.
A whistle startled me. Everyone else had already gone in from lunch recess. I sat up and stared.
The whistle was coming from Stuart. He's the school custodian. He was pushing a green thing across the soccer field. It was a metal funnel on wheels.
Birds fluttered down onto the field behind him.
“Hi, Stuart,” I said.
“Why, hello, little miss.” Stuart called all the girls “little miss” and all the boys “little sir.” It didn't bother us.We knew Stuart had a tough time telling us apart. He was really nearsighted. His glasses were half an inch thick.

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