Sophie the Snoop (3 page)

A
t last — a real mystery!

The Case of the Missing Phone!

Well,
lip-gloss
phone. But that was even better, in Sophie’s opinion.

Sophie dashed back to the row of cubbies. Mindy’s was near the end. Mindy was pulling all her stuff out. Her best friend, Lily Lemley, was catching it.

“Don’t worry, Mindy. It’s got to be in there somewhere,” Lily said.

“Oh, no, it doesn’t,” Mindy huffed. “My mother
told me some jealous girl might take it.” She glared at the other kids. “And she was right.”

Quickly, the whole class gathered around. Ms. Steele was busy writing on the board.

Sophie stepped up in front of Mindy. “This is a case for Sophie the Snoop if there ever was one!” she declared.

Mindy looked up at her with squinty eyes. Her lips got tight and pinched. “You! I saw the way you looked at my phone. Give it back!” She held out her hand.

“Huh? Who? Me?” Sophie shook her head. “I’m not the thief!” she said. She held up her magnifying glass. “I’m here to solve this mystery!”

Mindy leaned back. “Oh, yeah?” She cocked her head.

At the same time, Lily leaned forward. “Thanks, but no thanks, Sophie. We don’t need your help,” she said.

Sophie sighed.

Okay. Fine. It wasn’t like she really wanted to help them. She was just jumping in because that was what detectives did. (And because maybe if she found the lip-gloss phone, Mindy would let her try it.)

But then Mindy frowned at Lily. “Speak for yourself,” she said. “Go ahead, Sophie. Find it. And hurry! My lips are getting dry.”

Sophie smiled with satisfaction. But she also had to roll her eyes. Snooping for snooty Mindy was not going to be an easy job.

“Okay. Everybody step away from the crime scene,” she announced.

But just as she flipped open her notebook, Sophie heard another voice — Dean’s.

“Hey! My trading cards! They were in my cubby. But now they’re not!” he said.

Then Ben exclaimed, “Tweety! My Tweety Bird! He’s gone!”

And so was Sophie A.’s brand-new chapter book.

And Grace’s shiny new shoes. (They were the only shoes she’d worn since she’d gotten them. Except during gym. Then Grace changed into sneakers and left her new shoes in room 10.)

There was only one answer to these mysteries. And the answer made Sophie’s heart race.

She looked around at her classmates. “I, Sophie the Snoop, suspect that a thief has been in our room!”

A few kids gasped.

“This is awful!” Sophie A. said.

Sophie nodded. She agreed … but she also thought it was great!

In fact, it was almost a snoop’s dream come true. Sophie bet Sherlock Holmes never had so many mysteries to solve all at once!

“We should really tell Ms. Steele,” Grace said calmly. She turned to the front of the room.

What?

“No!” Sophie gasped. “I can solve these mysteries all by myself!” What kind of snoop would she be if she asked a sub for help?

“Are you sure?” Ben asked. “I really need my Tweety back.”

Sophie stood up very straight. “Sure, I’m sure,” she said.

That was when Ms. Steele called, “Um … what’s taking you all so long? Find your workbooks quickly. We, um, have a lot of work to get done.”

Sophie grinned a big snoop grin.

And the world’s biggest case to crack, too
! she thought.

U
h-oh.

Sophie had a problem. A big one.

The problem was that it was hard to crack the world’s biggest case when a substitute teacher was watching you every second!

“Um … excuse me. But what are you doing?” Ms. Steele asked.

Sophie was crouched next to Mindy’s cubby. She had rubber gloves on and held her magnifying glass in one hand. She had just covered Mindy’s cubby with baby powder so she could
dust for fingerprints. But something about the way Ms. Steele looked at her made Sophie say, “Nothing.”

The rest of the students were doing their spelling. They all turned around. Mindy let out a small “Agh!” when she saw the baby powder all over her cubby. Everyone else just laughed.

“Well … it looks to me like you’ve made a big mess. Um … please clean it up and get back to work?” Ms. Steele said.

Sophie sighed and cleaned up the powder (or did the best she could). So much for finding fingerprints. Still, she did have some good evidence in her plastic bags.

She had one very curly blond hair. And a very long black one. And part of a wrapper from a blue crayon. And a bent paper clip. And one butterscotch Life Saver. Sophie was pretty sure it had never been licked. As soon as this case was closed, she might even think about eating it.

Sophie tiptoed back to her seat and tried to do a little work. But all she could think about
was the mystery. (Well, that and how gross Toby was.)

She flipped open her notebook and wrote
The Case of the Room 10 Thief
.

Then she listed the clues she had so far. But they just didn’t make sense!

At last, she put the tip of her pencil on her paper again. She pressed down hard
. Snap
! The tip broke off. Sophie slipped her notebook into her pocket. Then she stood up again.

“Um … what are you doing
now
?” Ms. Steele asked right away.

Sophie held up her pencil. She pointed toward the front of the room. “I’m going to the pencil sharpener,” she coolly told the sub.
To see if the thief left any clues there
! she added in her head.

Sophie tiptoed across the room slowly. Her eyes darted all around. She watched her classmates working silently. Did one of them do it? Could one of them have done such a dastardly deed? Was this the beginning of a life of crime, maybe?

Suddenly, Sophie heard a sneeze. She turned.
Was it Kate? Did she have a code note for Sophie? Maybe she had some kind of lead!

But no. Kate made an “ew” face. She wiped her arm and scooted her chair back. The sneezer was Dean, sitting next to her. He closed his eyes and sneezed again.

Poor Kate. And her poor paper. It looked like it got wet.

Sophie’s seat, next to Toby, was definitely the worst. But even though Dean was nice, it looked like Kate’s seat was almost as bad.

And poor Sydney,
Sophie thought as her eyes moved across the room. She had to sit next to Archie today. That was almost torture!

There was nothing nice about Archie, as far as Sophie could tell. He was loud and rude and he picked his nose. Plus he had that dirty-sock smell.

And not that it mattered, but he also stole friends.

Of course, Sophie didn’t care about that.

Not much, that is.

A thought suddenly hit her. What if
Archie
was the thief?

Wow! Sophie started to smile. How great would that be?

Then she could tell Principal Tate. And he could kick Archie out of school. Then Archie could never pick on Sophie — or anybody else.

And he could never, ever go and steal another friend….

Not that Sophie cared about that.

Not much, that is.

But a snoop had to work with the facts. Hopes were not enough, she knew. Sophie needed to make a list of suspects and their motives. (“Motives” was a word for “reasons,” she was pretty sure.)

Sophie pulled out her notebook so she could write Archie’s motives down. But — oh, yeah — she still had not sharpened her pencil. She could not write until she did. So she kept tiptoeing slowly toward the pencil sharpener and made a quick list in her head instead.

Okay, maybe that wasn’t a motive. But it sure was a fact. And facts didn’t lie. They spoke for themselves!

On the other hand, there were Mindy’s lip-gloss phone, Grace’s shoes, and Sophie A.’s book. Why would Archie want those?

He read only comics. And he never dressed up.

Oh, who cared? Maybe
why
wasn’t important. There was another question, though.
How?
How had Archie stolen everything while they were at gym?

Sophie sighed. She needed more facts.

Archie’s table was near the reading corner. Slowly, Sophie tiptoed toward it. As soon as she
got to the bookcase, she crouched down and held her breath.

Sophie didn’t move a muscle. She was like a statue (of a snoop!).

She leaned her ear against the big book Ms. Moffly had read to them about verbs. (
Hey
! she thought.
“Snoop” is a verb and a noun, too
!) Then Sophie listened as hard as she could.

“Stop looking at my paper, Archie. Or I’m going to tell,” Sophie heard Sydney say.

Aha
! Archie was a cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater. More proof that he was a thief!

“I’m not looking at your paper,” Archie said back. “I’m just looking at the spider crawling over it.”

“Aghhhh!”
Sydney screamed.

Archie laughed. “Gotcha!”

The rest of the class started laughing, too.

“Um … quiet. Everyone. Right now,” Ms. Steele said. “Do I need to separate you two?” she asked Sydney and Archie.

“Yes!” they both said.

“Okay … um … then I will?” Ms. Steele said.

Sophie heard the sub get up and walk —
clack, clack, clack
— across the room.

“Um … Cindy? Please switch seats with Sydney?” Ms. Steele said.

“Who? Me?” That was Mindy.

This time Sophie laughed.

Oops
. She shouldn’t have.

The next thing Sophie knew, the sub was leaning over her. “What are you doing
now
?” asked Ms. Steele.

“Uh …” Sophie tried to think. “I dropped my pencil?” she said, looking up.

She did not expect to see the sub smile. (After all, she hadn’t smiled all day.) But it sure looked like Ms. Steele was smiling now. Halfway, at least.

But that was not what surprised Sophie. That was not what made her eyes pop.

What
really
surprised Sophie was the way
Ms. Steele’s lips looked. They were pink and shiny … like she had put on lip gloss!

Lip gloss. Just like Mindy’s
.

Sophie’s mouth fell open.

Archie wasn’t the thief.

Ms. Steele was!

I
t all made perfect sense! It was even right there in her name!

No one had ever been robbed in room 10 until Ms.
Steal
showed up. That was why the sub was so nervous — because she was up to no good!

Why hadn’t Sophie made her a suspect before?

Sophie wondered if this was the first time Ms. Steele had ever robbed a school. Or did she do it all the time? Maybe she was on the FBI’s Most Wanted list and no one even knew! Maybe she even
poisoned
teachers so she could come rob their rooms!

Poor Ms. Moffly. If she was poisoned, Sophie hoped there was an antidote.

She also hoped that cracking this case would make her even more famous than Sherlock Holmes!

Sophie was careful to keep her eyes down as she went back to her seat. She was sure that if Ms. Steele saw them, she would know that Sophie was onto her. And Sophie wasn’t ready for that. She had to tell Kate first!

She sat down at her table to write a note — in code, of course.

But wait! She still had not sharpened her pencil. The tip was still broken off.

Great
.

Now she was stuck.

Sophie couldn’t get up
again
… but she couldn’t keep this news all to herself, either. Sophie looked sideways at Toby. He might have an extra pencil she could use. She hated to ask. But she guessed she had to.

“Uh … Toby?” she said.

Then she stopped. This was hard. Sophie had not asked Toby for anything in a long time — except to mind his own business, that is. But that did not count.

“What?” Toby said. His face had a “why are you even talking to me?” look all over it. Then he grinned and asked her a question. “Hey, have you solved any of those mysteries yet?”

That surprised Sophie a lot. Almost as much as Ms. Steele’s shiny lips.

Then she frowned. Toby was teasing her. He probably thought she was not even close to solving the thefts yet.

Well, she had news for him!

“As a matter of fact, I have solved them,” she said. She crossed her arms.

“Really?” Toby’s eyes got big.

Sophie smiled. “They don’t call me Sophie the Snoop for nothing, you know.”

Toby kept staring at her, like he was waiting
for her to say more. But Sophie was not about to tell him what she’d found out. Kate had to be the first to know.

“So?” he said finally.

“So,” she said back. “So can I borrow a pencil?”

“That’s it? A pencil?” Toby asked.

Sophie nodded. “Yes.”

What did he think she was going to say?

“Don’t worry. I’ll give it back,” she told him.

Toby handed her a freshly sharpened yellow pencil. “Keep it.” He shrugged.

Really?

“Thanks,” Sophie said, shocked. She tried hard to keep her eyebrows from shooting up.

Was Toby being nice? For the first time all year?

“Now that it’s got your cooties all over it, I don’t want it,” Toby added.

Sophie rolled her eyes. No. He was the same old pain in the neck. Sometimes she could not believe that Toby used to be her friend.

But at least she had a pencil now. She turned back to her paper and began to write with it.

After a few minutes — and some erasing — she finished the note. Done! She grinned and folded it tight. Then she put it on the edge of the table and fake sneezed with all her might:
“A-CHOO!”

Eve and Sydney were sitting nearby. They both turned and said, “Bless you.”

“Uh, thanks,” Sophie told them. If only Kate had heard her, too. But no, she did not seem to.

So Sophie sneezed again.

And again.

And again.

“A-CHOO!”

“AAA-CHOOOO!!!”

Eve and Sydney looked at her funny.

Toby leaned away. “You’d better not sneeze on me like Dean did!” he said.

Sophie groaned. There was too much sneezing in this class.

Maybe the owl sound would get Kate’s attention, even if it did sound weird.

Sophie hooted.
“Whoo! Whoo!”

Kate looked over.

Yes
!

Kate winked and got up to sharpen her pencil. She took the long way, past Sophie’s desk. She picked up the note as she walked by. Back at her own table, she opened it.

Sophie watched. It took Kate a whole minute to decode what it said:

The thief is Ms. Steele!

At last, Kate got it. She looked up. Her eyes were round. Her mouth shaped the word “Really?”

Sophie nodded hard.

Then Kate bent over the paper. She checked her code key and wrote something down. But Sophie couldn’t get up and grab the note until it
was time to put their spelling workbooks away.
Ugh
!

Finally, back at her table, Sophie read it.

She hurried to check her code key.

You have to tell the pahinciafaab!

Pahinciafaab?
What was that?

Sophie tried to read it again.

You have to tell the prinadcipb!

Sophie sighed and scratched her head.

Then Toby leaned over. “What do you have to tell the principal?” he asked.

Sophie turned to him and glared. “Hey! That’s a secret code. You can’t read it,” she said.

(Still, at the same time, she was kind of glad he did.)

And Kate was very right. Principal Tate had to be told. And who had to tell him? Sophie the Snoop!

Sophie could just see it. He would be so proud! He might even make her the official Snoop of the School! With her own desk. In the school office. Wouldn’t that be cool?

But then Sophie thought of something else. What if Ms. Steele denied the whole thing? What if she lied and said she was innocent? (She was a criminal, after all.) If she did, Sophie would probably need even more proof.

Just then, Ms. Steele spoke up. “Um … attention, please. It’s, um, time for lunch?”

Lunch! Sophie had almost forgotten. The class lined up.

Then, suddenly, a thought hit her. A big one! As soon as they all left, Ms. Steele would be alone in the room again. She could steal more stuff. She might even try to escape with all the stolen loot!

Sophie could not let that happen. She knew what she had to do. She had to stay in the classroom. She had to snoop on Ms. Steele!

Besides, it was Meat Loaf Day. Sophie did not mind missing that too much.

So instead of lining up for the lunchroom, Sophie whispered to Kate, “I’m going undercover!” Then she slipped on her 3-D glasses. (Who knew? They might help.)

Sophie ducked behind the open classroom door. There! Her trap was set.

It would have been the perfect place to snoop from, Sophie was sure. Except for one thing: As soon as the class left, the sub closed the door.

“Sophie! What are you doing
now
?” Ms. Steele said.