The Case of the Piggy Bank Thief (4 page)

INSTEAD of answering Mike's questions, Professor Mudd sat at his desk and scowled. Was he mad? Or just thinking? With his bushy eyebrows, it was hard to tell the difference. Either way, I felt intimidated, and I guess Zach, Nate and Dalton did, too, because several seconds passed with us all standing around in silence. Finally, Professor Mudd looked straight at me. “Yes, Cameron?”

I gulped and said in a small voice, “We found a hole, too.”

Professor Mudd snorted, threw up his hands and called, “Roy? Bring the maps and come with Mike and me. We'll have to plot the locations of these dratted holes. Buried treasure—ha! That's the
last
thing I need. Oh—and Daryl? Could you help our young volunteers clean up, please? We'll see you kids back tomorrow, I trust? I realize it's Sunday.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “If it's okay, I mean.”

“Why wouldn't it be okay?” the professor said. Then he grabbed a clipboard and left.

After that, Daryl went with us to the trench where we had been digging so we could retrieve our tools, clean them up and put them away. All this time I hadn't seen Stephanie or Wen Fei anywhere. Had they left because they were mad the professor didn't believe that their new gadget had found gold? But now it looked like somebody else believed it. Otherwise, what were all these holes doing out here?

“I don't get it,” I said a few minutes later. Nate, Dalton, Zach and I were walking back toward the White House with Jeremy, who had come over from his station at the west fence to accompany us. “Why isn't Professor Mudd excited about the idea there might be gold out there?”

“That's just how professors are,” Zach said. “I mean, our dad's one, so that's how I know. Probably, Professor Mudd's already sure what he's going to find at that dig site. If he finds something different, like gold, then that means he was wrong.”

I nodded. “I get it. If there's one thing grown-ups hate, it's being wrong.”

Zach nodded. “Professors hate it most of all.”

This gave me an idea. “Hey, Nate—maybe you should be a professor when you grow up. I mean, you already think you know everything.”

Nate didn't argue or act insulted. He just nodded and said, “You're right.”

By then we were back at the door to the White House, the South Entrance under the Dip Room awning. Malik, my second-favorite Secret Service officer, was stationed outside. We said hi to him and bye to Jeremy, then went inside.

On the stairs to the second floor, Nate asked, “Cammie, are you thinking what I'm thinking?”

I grinned because I was. “You mean how the holes and the missing gold are almost like a mystery?”

Nate looked at his watch. “And it's not that late. How about if we make a list?”

Zach and Dalton didn't know what we were talking about, so Nate explained. The first time we solved a mystery, Granny gave us tips, and one thing she told us to do was to start by writing a list of everything we knew.

“Granny is the only person in our family with actual crime-fighting experience,” I added. “A long time ago, before she was a lawyer and a judge, she used to be a police officer.”

At the second-floor landing, we agreed to meet in a few minutes in the West Sitting Hall. In the whole White House, it's got the most comfortable sofa, so it's my favorite spot for thinking.

First, though, I wanted to check on my sick sister.

I thought I'd find her in her pajamas in bed, or—yuck—in the bathroom.

But when I went into our room, I got a big surprise.

My sister was dressed, sitting on the floor and folding clothes.

Okay, so that was strange, but it wasn't the surprise. The surprise was how the rest of our room looked pretty much like Kansas after the cyclone!

FOR a minute, I stood in the doorway and surveyed the damage. Not only were most of Tessa's clothes on the floor, but every dresser drawer was open, her bedding was flung everywhere and two chairs had been tipped over. There were still crayons and paper on the floor by the love seat, too.

I had a scary thought. What if Tessa had a fever and it had gone to her brain?

I haven't been around a lot of crazy people, but from movies I get the idea that you're supposed to stay calm so you don't upset them.

So, very quietly, I said, “Uh . . . Tessa? Could you tell me what you're doing?”

Tessa didn't look up. “Sure, Cammie. I'm putting my clothes away.”

So far, so good.

“Uh, okay. But did something happen?” Then I had another idea. “Wait, was it Hooligan?”

Tessa shook her head. “For once, you can't blame
Hooligan. How 'bout if I said I had an irresistible urge to tidy up for Mrs. Hedges? Would you believe that?”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “No.”

Tessa sighed and folded another T-shirt. “Didn't think so,” she said. “So okay, the truth is I was looking for my piggy bank, but I can't find it anywhere! And now I'm pretty sure for real it must be stolen.”

“How much money was in it?” I asked.

“Two dollars and twelve cents,” Tessa said. “Plus a little more.”

“I don't think that's enough for anyone to steal it,” I said.

“Do you think someone could've really wanted the bank part?” Tessa asked. “Do you think it could be, like, an antique?”

“No way,” I said. “I mean, no offense, but with the paint flaking off, it looked like a piggy bank with pimples.”

Tessa dropped what she'd been folding. “You take that back!”

I shrugged. “Fine. But only because I have to meet Zach, Nate and Dalton. We might have a new mystery to solve.” Tessa had been there when we found out about the gold, but I had to explain about the holes. “Do you feel better?” I asked. “Do you want to help us?”

Tessa shook her head. “I've got my own mystery to solve: the case of the piggy bank thief.”

NATE, Zach and Dalton were waiting for me in the West Sitting Hall. “Is Tessa any better?” Nate wanted to know.

It was too much to explain about the piggy bank.

“She looks better,” I said, “but she isn't up for solving a mystery yet.”

“What is it we're doing, again?” Dalton asked.

I had gotten my notebook from my desk, and I held it up for him to see. “I write,” I explained, “and everybody else talks.”

Zach, Dalton and Nate totally took that last part seriously. I mean, I had barely sat down before they all started yakking at once. I wrote as fast as I could to keep up:

•
New gadget shows gold buried under northwest corner of dig site
.

•
Gold was found Friday afternoon by Wen Fei (student) when she surveyed the site
.

•
Saturday afternoon when Zach, Nate, Cammie, Dalton went to look, no gold, only hole
.

•
Mike found at least seven holes around dig site
.

•
Professor Mudd says gadget is probably wrong, probably no gold
.

•
Wen Fei and Stephanie mad because Professor Mudd doesn't believe in gold
.

“Can we put questions on the list?” Zach said.

“Sure,” I said.

“Okay, I want to ask how we know if any gold is really missing,” Zach said.

I wrote that down, then added two more questions:

•
Who dug the holes?

•
Why did they dig the holes?

•
Was it because they expected to find gold?

So much writing made my fingers tired. Now I stopped for a second and shook them out.

Nate said, “We should mention the fat, waddling cat.”

Zach said, “Why? That doesn't have anything to do with the missing gold.”

“Granny says to write down anything strange, even if we don't see how it's related,” I explained. “And the cat was out there where the gold was supposed to be.”

Zach grinned. “Plus, cats dig, too, you know? Like when they—”

“Ewww!”
I made a face. “I am not writing
that
part down.”

What I did write was:

•
Fat, waddling cat hangs out in hedge between dig site and Rose Garden
.

“If we're going to write that, then we should go ahead and put in the other strange thing that happened today—Humdinger,” Nate said. “You know, how he got out and went downstairs.”

“Wait . . . what?” Dalton said. “No! I mean, that doesn't have anything to do with the missing gold. It's not like it was even outside.”

I shrugged. “It does seem crazy. But Granny says we should pay attention to coincidences.”

Dalton frowned, and I wrote:

•
Humdinger escaped from cage (how?), flew downstairs (how?) and practically caused riot among million White House visitors
.

“Now what do we do?” Zach asked.

“We study the list and see if anything looks extra weird,” Nate said.

“Like the timing. See?” I said. “Wen Fei did her survey yesterday afternoon, and there was no hole out
there then. So the hole was dug and the gold disappeared sometime after that but before we were out there today.”

Nate nodded. “Right. So whoever dug up the gold must have done it overnight or earlier today.”

“That's good,” Zach said. “It eliminates about ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the population. After all, the White House has a big fence around it and it's guarded. The only people out there those times are people allowed to be out there.”

I said, “In other words, us, the staff, the Secret Service, the marines, the Park Service people and the people who work in the West Wing, like Ms. Major. That's still a lot.”

“There's something else, though,” Nate said. “The thief has to be somebody who knew there was gold in the first place.”

“And that's almost nobody,” Zach said. “I mean, the only people who knew about the gold are Wen Fei and Stephanie, right?”

“But what about the other students?” I asked. “And Professor Mudd?”

Zach shrugged. “But none of them believes it about the gold.”

“And there's something else I thought of,” Nate said. “What happened to Wen Fei and Stephanie today? After the argument with Professor Mudd, they disappeared.”

“They were mad,” I said. “He wasn't very nice to them.”

“That's one explanation,” Nate said. “But here's another one: Maybe they were making their getaway with the gold! I don't know about you guys, but right now I'd say Wen Fei and Stephanie are our prime suspects.”

MY cousin Nate is some kind of piano genius, and now he had to go practice. With him gone, detecting was officially on hold.

And I had nothing to do till dinner.

Uh-oh.

Was it possible I would have to take extreme measures?

Like doing my homework for Monday even though it wasn't Sunday night yet?

Back in our bedroom, Tessa had tidied up, except for the crayons and drawing paper. Cleaning must have tired her out, because she was lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling. I told her we had figured out that Wen Fei and Stephanie might be suspects, partly because they were the only ones who really believed there was gold at the dig site at all.