Molly led June, Bev, and Harold, with the money box, directly to the sixth grade office on Monday morning. The four of them clamored through the door and up to the counter causing Mrs. Young to look up at them from her desk.
“What is all of this commotion so early in the morning?”
Molly composed herself and asked, “Can we see Miss Marvel, please?”
“Well,” Mrs. Young smiled as she rose from her chair and pulled at the white sleeves of her white sweater. “I will go see.”
Molly watched her go to the door of Miss Marvel’s office and softly knock. She heard a response from within and Mrs. Young entered the room. Molly looked at her friends and shrugged as they turned toward the closed door. Molly glanced at Mrs. Young’s desk. A typewriter was positioned at the far end on an attached furniture unit. It was turned so that Mrs. Young could swivel in her chair to type at it. On top of the desk a large desk pad was front and center with a pencil cup carefully placed at its upper right with a small black stapler across the top. A nameplate was angled at the top left facing the counter and the phone was sitting on the left of the placemat. The chair was angled toward Molly in the position Mrs. Young left it. The lower desk drawer was open and sitting inside it was her purse. Well, it was actually a large brown bag. The same one Molly saw over Mrs. Young’s shoulder at the dance.
The office door opened. Mrs. Young came out and returned to her desk. Miss Marvel stood in the doorway with her hands folded in front of her, and she smiled at them.
“Can I help you?”
Molly pushed forward, looked at Miss Marvel and said, “We have to talk.”
“Certainly,” Miss Marvel stepped aside and the four of them entered the office. Miss Marvel closed the door.
“What is so important?” she asked as she walked around her desk as the four students lined up in front of it.
“There’s been another robbery,” Harold spoke first.
“What? When?” Miss Marvel leaned forward in her seat.
“Saturday night at the play,” Harold said.
“Tell me about it,” Miss Marvel encouraged.
“It was my fault,” June spoke up.
“And you are?”
“I am June, Harold’s sister, and I am a member of the Drama Club,” June told her, and she continued to tell her tale to Miss Marvel. The money box was given to Miss Marvel and Molly explained what they had done finding the fingerprints.
“Okay,” Miss Marvel said after the story had been told. “First, June, this is not your fault. I will talk to Miss Chaplin. Can you come to our Club meeting this afternoon?”
“Sure,” June said as she nodded her head.
“Okay,” Miss Marvel said as she rose from her seat. “All of you must move along to class now, except for Molly. Can you stay just a moment longer? Thanks.”
Molly waited next to the desk as the other three left the room. Miss Marvel looked at her and smiled.
“Sit down, please,” Miss Marvel said as she sat back down in her chair. “What else did you see, Molly?”
“Not much more than what June described except for an off-white sweater left at a chair at the concession tables. The fingerprints may tell us more. Do you still have the student cards here?”
“Of course, I do. Oliver, er, Detective Tracy, is allowing me to keep them a while longer, “Miss Marvel answered. “I will bring them this afternoon.”
“It might be easier to just bring the two slides we couldn’t identify to compare to these new ones,” Molly suggested to her.
“Of course. That is a much better approach. Now, Molly, try to concentrate on your classes and not the case. Tell Mr. Branson to come to me if he crabs at you for being a little late to homeroom. See you later.”
The bell rang.
The rest of the day went slowly for Molly. When the final bell rang and the halls filled with kids, slamming their locker doors, and hurrying to their busses, she didn’t wait for Harold and Bev at her locker. Instead, she hurried directly to Hall 01 and Room 101 for The Whodunnit Club meeting. She wasn’t the first one there. Ted, Carol, and Jason were arranging the desks in a circle.
“No,” Molly said to them as she put her backpack on the floor. “We need them in a row and add another seat. We are going to have a guest today.”
Behind her, the door opened, and Miss Marvel’s voice said, “Oh good, you are starting to arrange the desks. Jason, can you help me with this slide projector. Thank you.”
Just as the door closed, it opened again, and the remaining members walked in with June. Once the desks were arranged, and all were seated, Miss Marvel stood in front of them and said, “I guess some of you may be wondering about our guest today. This is Harold’s sister, June, and she is going to tell us about another club’s fund-raiser money being stolen.”
Ted, Carol, and Jason turned their eyes toward June who went to stand next to Miss Marvel and told her story. When she finished, the members of the club waited for Miss Marvel to continue.
“We will ask her more questions in a minute but first,” she stopped because the door opened. Standing in the doorway was Mrs. Young in her white sweater and her bag hanging from her shoulder. A dark gray winter coat hung from the crook of her right arm.
“Excuse me,” she said directly to Miss Marvel, ignoring everyone else. “I am off to the hospital to visit my daughter and remember, I will be late tomorrow.”
“Yes, I remember. Please tell her hello for me,” Miss Marvel said to her.
“Well, good night,” Mrs. Young said, smiled at everyone and closed the door. Molly continued to watch her through the window in the door. Mrs. Young removed the bag from her shoulder and placed it on the floor. She removed the coat from her elbow and put it over her shoulders pulling her arms through its sleeves. She reached back and fluffed her dark blond hair out at the collar. She reached down and picked up the bag, put it over her shoulder and walked out of view. Molly sat straight up in her chair and thought back to the mall. Mrs. Young was the woman at the pretzel stand, she was sure of it. The clicking of the remote drew her back to the task at hand. On the projection screen in front of her, the image of a fingerprint was displayed. Ted, Carol, Jason, and Harold were using magnifying glasses and looking at fingerprint cards.
“I think I have a match,” Jason spoke still looking down at the slide frame on his desk.
“Have Carol look at it, please” Miss Marvel said from the back of the room.
Carol took it from Jason and stared at it through her magnifying glass, occasionally looking up at the screen. Finally, she said, “I think so, too.”
The projector clicked off and Harold got up to turn on the lights. The members waited for Miss Marvel to return to the front of the classroom. She dragged a student desk in front of them and sat down.
“Observations?” Miss Marvel asked.
“Whose fingerprint is that?” June asked.
“I don’t think it’s a student,” Molly said leaning back in her seat.
“I don’t either,” Miss Marvel said quietly.
“Did we get Miss Chaplin’s prints?” Jason asked.
“No, not yet. But she does know what happened,” Miss Marvel said. “I told her.”
“Everything?” Bev asked looking up from the red notebook.
Miss Marvel simply looked at her in response.
“Okay, what do we know?” Jason asked, looking down the row of club members.
“Three club fund-raisers have been robbed,” Ted said.
“Three?” June asked bewildered. “This is not the first one?”
“No,” Harold turned to her.
“No,” Miss Marvel spoke up. “June, you must promise not to tell anyone about this until we get enough information to go to the police. The teachers who responsible for these clubs involved asked us to look into it because they feel it’s a school matter. June, can you do that?”
June looked around the room at them. She finally looked at her brother and said, “Okay. I would like to help, too.”
“Okay,” Miss Marvel said and looked at Molly. “Back to observations. What do we know?”
“They all happened at events at school, in the gym, where many people were there. There was a distraction before the theft. At the dance, all attention was at the stage.”
“The dance?” June asked.
“Yes,” Carol responded. “The photo club and the cookie club were robbed at the dance.”
“And at the play?” Ted asked redirecting their attention back to their observations.
“It must have happened after intermission and before the play was over,” June said. “When no one was around.”
“I think we have eliminated students,” Molly said. “because of the fingerprint.”
“How much money was stolen?” Jason asked.
Bev turned some pages in her notebook and said, “The first theft was the photo booth and they lost $191.00 then the cooking club lost $488.00 and now the drama club lost $294.00. That’s a total of…”
“Nine hundred and seventy-three dollars,” Jason said.
“Amazing,” Harold said as he sat back in his chair.
“I told you, I am good with numbers,” Jason stated quietly.
“Okay, that is getting to be serious money,” Miss Marvel said. “So let’s get serious. Any more observations?”
“Just the sweater,” Molly said. “I remember when we left the play that night, I noticed a sweater hanging from the back of one the chairs. It was a white sweater.”
To be continued…
My First Stories 