It was a long weekend.  Molly went over to Harold’s house on Saturday and they mapped out how they used Sherlock Holmes to approach the case.  It was difficult because they had no idea what the others were doing and how they all were going to fit together.  In the end, they made a poster board chart similar to what Molly had done in her blue notebook.  They decided they would keep it in her locker until club meeting, but Harold would take it to school.

  At the bus stop, it was cold.  Molly arrived first and pulled her coat tightly around herself.  Since she was first, she was able to lean against the street sign and look around in all directions.  She watched Bev turn the corner onto the street from where she stood, a block away.  Bev was having trouble with a poster as the wind kept catching it.  Molly smiled to herself as she thought that her friend looked like a kite having trouble taking off into the sky.  She turned her attention back to her street and saw Harold was having the same trouble with the wind that Bev was with their poster.  Molly laughed out loud.

  “What’s so funny?” Harold said as he joined her.

  “Yeah, what’s so funny?” Bev asked from behind Molly.

  “Nothing,” Molly said.  “Nothing at all.”

  The bus ride was quiet.  Molly wanted to say so much but knew that if she said one word, they would say too much.  They continued in silence to Molly’s locker where they deposited both posters carefully into it.

  “You know you will have to be careful opening it,”  Harold said.

  Molly smiled at him and said, “I do.”

  “I won’t be here every time you open it,”  Harold said, smiling back to her.

  “I know,”  Molly sad still smiling at him.

  “But I will be,” Bev said, pushing Harold’s arm.  “Let’s get to class.  It’s going to be long day.”

  When the final bell rang, Molly slowly packed her backpack.  Mr. Eichenberger was talking to a few students, but the rest of the class rushed out to get to their busses to go home.  Today, Molly wished she could go with them.  Her day was not over, it seemed like it was just beginning.  She pulled the backpack over her shoulder and waved to her choir teacher as she left the room.  She slowly hurried her pace as she turned the corner toward her locker.  Harold and Bev were already there.  She saw June with them, too.  She slowed her walk.  Harold was leaning against her locker and he looked at her when she arrived.

  “You took your time,” he said as he stood away from the locker door.

  She didn’t say anything and dialed her combination.  When she opened the door, Harold pulled out the two posters and handed one to Bev.

  “You guys go on ahead of me,” Molly said.  “I need to dump some of these books from my backpack.”

  Harold nodded and the three of them walked away from Molly.  She pulled out her books, placing them in her locker, leaving only her basics, math, and history.  Finally, she made sure that her blue notebook filled with all her notes about Sherlock Holmes was safely inside her backpack and closed her locker door.  She pulled it over her shoulder and ran to Hall 01.  She came to a halt when she turned the corner and saw Miss Marvel waiting at the door.  She smiled at Molly.

  “Ready?”  Miss Marvel said to her.  “It is going to be an interesting club meeting.”

  Molly stepped inside and surveyed the room because it was full of people.  The club members were seated at a row of student desks in front of the room.  To the left of the door, next to an empty chair, sat Principal Marty and Assistant Principal Charles, all decked out in his three-piece suit.  Across the back of the room, Detective Tracy sat next to the slide projector that was set up on a student desk.  An empty chair was on the other side of the projector.  Beneath the windows across from Molly, sitting on chairs, was Mr. and Mrs. Rogers, Miss Heinz, and Miss Chapin.  Molly took a deep breath.

  “Go ahead and sit down Molly,” Miss Marvel whispered to her and patted her shoulder.

  Molly looked back at her and nodded.  She walked past Bev, who was opening the red notebook, June, and Harold.  She sat at the empty desk next to him and lowered her backpack to the floor.  She looked at Ted, who was sitting on the other side of her, then Carol and Jason on the end.  They nodded at her and Molly smiled.  She reached down, pulled out her blue notebook and set it in front of her on the desk.  She looked up at Miss Marvel  who was standing in front of the classroom. 

  Miss Marvel had her hands folded in front of her Kelly green suit with a bright yellow blouse beneath the jacket.  Her red hair was pulled back in her familiar ponytail and her green eyes flashed in the spotlight of the slide projector.  She looked down at the club members and nodded her head.

  “Welcome to the Whodunnit Club meeting.  We are waiting for one more guest and we will start our presentation.  In the meantime, if you don’t mind, I would like to provide some instructions to the club.  First, Beverly, please take a record of everyone who is here with us today.”

  “Done,” Bev interrupted her.

  “Really?  Good job, Bev, and thank you.  Remember, we each had an assignment and I will tell you when it is your turn to report what you had put together.  I see we have a couple of posters.  Jason, would you mind putting up the easel?  Thank you, but before you do that, Jason, how are you and Carol going to make your presentation?”

  “We were just going to stand up and tell what we did,” Jason replied. “I didn’t know we needed visual aids.”

  “That’s fine, Jason.  I was wondering if you needed the projector for any prints before the last one?”

  “Good idea.  Do you have the unidentified print from each of the boxes?”

  “They are already in the slide carousel,” Miss Marvel assured him. “Explain everything but the information about the final fingerprint.”

  “Easy.  We don’t know anything about the final one.”

  Miss Marvel smiled at him and said, “Can you put up the easel, please?  Ah, I hear our final guest arriving at the door.  Harold, will you get the door, please?”

  Harold got up to open the door just as Mrs. Young walked up to it.  He held it open for her and she stepped into the room.  She stood inside and slowly looked around the room.  Molly noticed that the brown bag hung from her shoulder.

  “I am sorry to be late, but someone called the office,” Mrs. Young said.

  “You are not late, Mrs. Young,” Miss Marvel said.  “We were just starting.  Please have a seat next to Principal Marty.  Thank you.  As I was saying, Welcome to The Whodunnit Club meeting.  I don’t know if you know our club members, but you will know them soon enough as we make our presentation today.  I do believe you know everyone along the back of the room except for one gentleman, our friend, Mr. Tracy, from our local police department, who so kindly agreed to hear our presentation today.”

  Miss Marvel walked toward the door and stopped in front of a chair that was sitting next to it.

  “The Whodunnit Club was intended to be a mystery reading club focusing on the writing of Sir Conan Doyle and, in particular, the character of Sherlock Holmes. Then one day, we were approached with a school mystery to solve.  We believe we have solved it.  If you please, hold all of your questions until the end of our presentation.  Bev and Ted, you are our first presenters,” Miss Marvel sat down in the chair.  “Be sure to introduce yourselves first.”

  Bev stood up and walked to the easel, placing a poster on it.  Ted joined her and they stood on either side of it.

  “Hello, I am Bev, and this is Ted.  Our assignment is to tell you how we got involved in the case.  We created a chart to kind of put a timeline to the club’s introduction of the case.  But before this,” Bev said as she pointed to the poster.  “We were introduced to Detective Tracy by Miss Marvel at one of our first club meetings because we were interested in one of Sherlock Holmes’ skills, fingerprints.  Detective Tracy taught us about fingerprints.  He explained to us us what they are, how to get them and how to record them.”

  “The case started at the dance,” Ted explained.  “Miss Marvel gathered us together to talk to Mrs. Rogers who informed us that money had been stolen from the photo booth.  It was decided not to go to the police because it happened at school.  We were told that it was a school matter, and we were asked to try to solve it.  We decided to take it on and use one of Holmes’ skills, observation, and to be observant for the rest of the dance.”

  “The following Monday,” Bev took up the story as she pointed to #2 on the poster. “We were informed of a second theft at the dance, the Cooking Club’s admission money to the dance.  It was noted by Miss Heinz.  We diagramed the floor plan of the dance floor.”

  The sound of the slide projector startled Bev as she turned and found the illustration of

map.”

  “Perfect,” Bev said as she turned toward the screen.  “Here, you can see we tried to account for everyone at the dance and the location of the photo booth, here, the concession stand, here, and all of the exits.  That X behind the concession table is where the cooking club’s money box was during the dance.  Here is the admission table outside the door in the lobby.”

  “Nice drawing,” Detective Tracy said.

  “So to summarize,”  Ted said.  “There were two robberies at the dance from the same room.  Number 3,” he pointed at the poster.  “We were asked to be involved in a third robbery at the gym, the night of the Drama club’s play, A Comedy of Errors.”

  Behind Ted, the screen flashed with another diagram of the gym.  Ted turned to look at it.

  “Great! “ he said.  “Here you can see the gym in a totally different configuration, but the robbery occurred, here, outside at the concession table sometime after intermission and final curtain.  It was reported to us by June Jones.”

  “An additional observation,” Bev quickly added.  “A white sweater was left on the back of a chair.  We noticed it when we left for the night.”

  “Oh,” Ted jumped in. “The total amount of money missing is $973.00.”

  “Excuse me,” Miss Marvel said as she stood up.  “I believe you are getting into our next presentation.  Thank you Bev and Ted for establishing the case for us.  Thank you, Detective Tracy, for adding the diagrams for us to see.  Ted, can you pin your poster on that bulletin board for us to see?  I wish we had posters of the gym layouts to pin next to it.”

  “Oh, I do,” detective Tracy walked from the back of the room with a roll of paper.  He stopped next to Ted and unrolled it.  He handed one to Ted, who spread it across the bulletin board.  Detective Tract pinned the corners, handed Ted the second one and they repeated the process.

  “Thank you,” Miss Marvel said to them as they reseated themselves.  “Now Jason and  Carol will discuss what we did regarding fingerprint analysis.”

  Miss Marvel sat at her seat by the door as Jason and Carol stood up and turned to face the audience.

  “First,” Carol said.  “As Bev and Ted said, we had a visit from Detective Tracy, who, at our request, taught us about fingerprints.  We learned that fingerprints are unique to a person and that there are three basic types.  Only a few people have Arches, about 5%; Whorls are found in 25 – 35% of us.  I am a Whorl.  The largest pool of people has Loops, about 60 – 70%.  Part of that discussion led us to learn how to gather fingerprints and how to obtain fingerprints. The reason we were interested in fingerprinting is because Sherlock Holmes was interested in it.”

  “When we were asked to work on the case,”  Ted interrupted Carol.  “We asked for the money boxes.  Miss Marvel asked me and Carol to finger dust and collect any fingerprints from them.  We recovered nine prints, four from the Photo Booth box and five from the Cooking Club’s box.  Harold recovered four prints from the Drama Club box.  Molly then took photos of the prints that she had made into slides.  We still had the issue of what to compare the prints to and that was when the idea of sponsoring the D.A.R.E. event. 

  “Now we also knew the students who were working the events so when they came to the fingerprint stations that we, the Whodunnit Club, were working, we separated their cards from the rest of the students.  Carol, will tell you what happened next?”

  “In addition to collecting the student fingerprints,” Carol continued. “We collected all the sponsor’s fingerprints.  Molly then took the photos of the prints and had slide made of them.  Then we projected the slides images and compared them, as best that we could, to all suspects of our fingerprint cards.  All were accounted for except for one fingerprint.”

  The slide projector clicked behind Ted and Carol to reveal the one fingerprint on the screen behind them.

To be continued…

Miss Marvel stood with her back to the door and softly said to them, “This conversation has definitely got to stay inside this room, understand?  And I need a yes response from each of you.”

  Each voice quietly responded with a quiet, yes.

  “Good,”  Miss Marvel said.  “Molly, no, Bev, go sit in my chair and get out the club’s book.  Jason, behind you on that bookshelf, do you see my Sherlock Holmes book there.  Good.  There is an index card with a cookie recipe on it.  Carefully take it out and place it on my desk.  Molly get your history book out of your backpack and set it beside the index card.”

  “What’s going on?” Carol anxiously asked.

  “These two items may have our missing fingerprint on them,” Miss Marvel said as she slowly walked away from the door and stopped next to Molly.

  “Really?” Molly whispered.  “I didn’t know if you were thinking…”

  “Quiet, Molly, please,”  Miss Marvel rolled her eyes toward the door.  “Bev has told me everything.”

  “What did she tell you?” Ted asked.  “I think we all need to know.”

  “We do and we will,”  Miss Marvel explained.  “But I want us to be prepared because tomorrow at lunch, we will have to decide what to do.  If our missing fingerprint matches to one of those, we may know who our prime suspect is.”

  Silence fell upon them like falling snow, quiet and hushed.  Molly shivered.

  “Jason,”  Miss Marvel broke the silent moment. “Can you take the items and make fingerprint slides from them, please?  Molly, that means you left your book at home.  Okay, now for your exit.  Everyone but Bev and Jason go, quietly, like you got disciplined.  Jason, you go next but act mad like you got the worst of it and, Bev, if you can, cry a little like you got in trouble, too.  Okay, everyone, do not talk of anything, what did or did not happen in here, to anyone.  Got it?” 

  Molly looked at everyone in the room and when she looked at Bev, she was already crying.  Wow, she could be an actress someday.  Miss Marvel walked to the door and quietly opened it and stood there.  One by one they exited the room and into the hall.  Molly slowed as the others hurried away returning to their classrooms.  Bev slowed to match her footsteps as they walked back to their English class.

  “What do we tell Mrs. Chesterfield?” Bev whispered to her.

  “Why,” Molly answered. “Nothing at all.”

Molly had a restless night, and when she woke up, she dressed accordingly, blue jeans and a dark gray sweater.  She went slowly down the stairs to the kitchen carrying her backpack in her arms.  She dropped it by her chair and walked into the kitchen.  As always, her mother was there already, standing at the stove in a floral dress, humming some happy tune.  She turned to face Molly.

  “Well, hello there, daughter of mine, eggs?”

  “Sure,” Molly said as she opened the fridge she was standing next to and withdrew a pitcher of orange juice.  She walked to the counter and reached into a cabinet above it for a glass.

  “Why don’t you grab two glasses and I will join you at the table?”

  “Okay,”  Molly said and took everything to the table and sat down.

  Her mom followed and gave her a plate filled with scrambled eggs and a few slices of bacon and sat down.  They each ate in silence for a few seconds.

  “I like this time of the morning,” Mom said after sipping from her glass.  “Your Dad is gone.  The sun is just beginning to lighten things up and it is quiet.  I listen for you kids to start moving around and I try to gauge who is awake and moving and who is not.  You, Molly, get up and go but your brother, now that is a different story.”

  Molly smiled and sat back and looked at her mom.  She is pretty and is one of those people who always will be.  She always seemed so with it, above the rest of everybody.  Not a know-it-all but someone who does know it all and keeps quiet about it.  Molly realized that she was being looked at in the same way she was looking at her Mom.

  “What is on your mind?” Mom asked, squinting at her.  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes, I am just tired,”  Molly answered her.  “And I have a quiz today in history.  Mr. Dalton enjoys quizzes too much.  I think he is crazy.”

  “Is he the drummer?”  Mom asked as she bit into a slice of bacon.

  “Yes!”

  “Then he is crazy.”

  During her fourth hour class, Molly recalled that she had told her mom a story about a history quiz, but it was a self-fulfilled prophecy.  Mr. Dalton sprang a pop quiz on the class.  Thank goodness, it was an open book quiz, Molly thought to herself.  She was busy reading through the paragraph about the Gettysburg address when Mr. Dalton interrupted them.

  “Time for lunch.  Place your pencils down and turn your books over and you can continue when you get back.  You can even talk about the quiz at lunch to each other and share answers if you want so I expect each one of you to have the same answers.  The right ones.  Now go!”

  Molly rolled her eyes and got up from her seat.

  “I saw that Molly Bennett!”

  She rolled her eyes again and waved at Mr. Dalton, who smiled and waved back.

  Molly found the rest of the club in the far corner of the cafeteria at their own table.  She placed her tray next to Bev, stepped over the bench and sat down.

  “Jason is waiting to share what happened with the fingerprints,” Bev whispered to her.

  Molly looked across the table at Carol, Harold, and finally, Jason.  He hesitated and leaned toward them and stopped.

  “Miss Marvel is coming,” he said and sat up.

  Molly turned and watched their assistant principal walk toward them.  She took a deep breath.  Miss Marvel stood at the end of the table next to Jason.  She folded her arms in front of her and smiled at them.

  “What’s wrong?” Miss Marvel said to them.  “Are you scared of me?  You are definitely my favorite students and there isn’t anything to be afraid of.  In fact, I think you are very brave.  Jason, what do you have for me?”

  Jason reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a folded envelope and handed it to her.

  “What do you think?” Miss Marvel asked him, taking the envelope from him.

  “I think they match.”

  “Okay.  We will talk about this Monday at club meeting.  I have a plan, but it is going to require us to get prepared not knowing what my idea is.  Can you do that?”

  Molly nodded yes along with everyone else.

  “We are going to work in three teams.  Since Jason and Carol worked a lot on the fingerprinting, you prepare a report on what you did, include how we learned about fingerprinting.  Bev, you, and Carol write a report about how we got involved with the case and the steps we took to look into it.  Finally, Harold and Molly, you make a report on how Sherlock Holmes was used to approach the case.  I will work out the details.  Now, we do not talk about it to anyone else .  People are going to ask you because I am standing here in the cafeteria and they are going to want to know what we are talking about.  It is about our club, nothing more and nothing less.  Good work everybody.  See you around,” Miss Marvel said and looked at the envelope then added, “Thanks Jason.”

  She smiled again and walked away.  Molly watched her walk through the cafeteria, stopping at a few tables to say hi to a few students.  When she reached the doorway, she turned and looked directly at Molly, raised the envelope again and nodded at her.

Molly nodded back.

To be continued…

Later that night, Molly walked into the living room where her Dad was sitting in his chair reading his newspaper and her Mother was on the couch watching television.

  “Where’s Billy?”  Molly asked stopping at the entrance to the room.

  “He has homework and I am making him do it,” Dad said, turning a page of the paper.

  “Good,” Molly said.  “Can I use the phone? I need to call Harold.”

  “What about your homework?”  Mom asked from the couch.

  “Done.”

  “What is it with you and Harold anyway,” Dad looked at her over his newspaper.  “Are you two a thing?  Because if you are, I need to be meaner to him.”

  “No, Dad.  He is just my friend.”

  “Okay, then, you may use the phone,” he said returning to his paper.

  Molly went to the telephone situated on a small nook in the corner of the dining room.  It had a long line attached to it so she could take the telephone from its perch and around the corner toward her parents’ bedroom.  She sat on the floor across from the bathroom and dialed Harold’s telephone number.  The phone was picked up on the third ring.
  “Hello?”

  “Hi June.  It’s me, Molly.  Is Harold around?”

  “Sure,” June said.  “Hang on.”

  Molly put her head back against the wall and looked up at the overhead light. 

  “I wish I would have turned that off,” she said out loud to no one.

  “You wished you would have turned what off?” Harold’s voice came through the phone she had pressed into her ear.

  “Hi, Harold,” she grumbled.  “I wish I would have turned the light off over my head.   Anyway, how are you?”

  “Fine.  What’s up?”

  “I need to talk something out.  I think I have a suspect, but I don’t want to believe who I think it is, really did it.”

  “Who do you think did it?”

  Molly hesitated before finally saying, “Mrs. Young.”

  “Mrs. Young?”  Harold said.  “Why?”

  “Why her or why would she do it?”

  “Both.”

  Molly was silent for a while as she went over in her mind how to answer his question.  She closed her eyes and visualized her page of observations and deductions and took a deep breath.

  “First, I guess I need you to agree on a couple of deductions based on the observations we made at our club meeting.  It had to be someone who was at both events and an adult, right?”

  There was another pause. 

  “Right,” Harold agreed.

  “Here is something I remembered from the dance.  Mrs. Young had a bag over her shoulder when we got there and later, she did not.”

  “Are you sure?” Harold questioned her.

  “Yes, because I was practicing Holmes by forcing myself to be observant.  I stopped when we entered the gym and she was talking to the three principals.  I watched them laugh and Mrs. Young walked away as she pulled the bag up on her shoulder.  Later, I noticed her near the food without it.  That same bag was hanging from her chair at the concession table at the play when we paid.”

  “What does her bag have to do with it?”  Harold questioned farther.

  “I think that is how she got the money out of the building.” Molly said as she nodded her head to herself.

  “Okay, again, why? Why would she do that?”

  “I found out her daughter is pretty sick and in the hospital.  Maybe she took the money for that.” Molly said.  “But we still don’t have the final fact, who owns the fingerprint.”

  “Right,”  Harold agreed.

  “Do you agree that we have to get Mrs. Young’s fingerprint?”  Molly asked him.

    Another long pause and Molly wondered if he was still there.

  “I agree,” Harold’s voice finally came through her earpieces.  “But how?”

  “I have an idea for that, but do we need to tell Miss Marvel before we attempt to get it?” Molly asked.

  The line went silent again and Molly waited.

  “I think we try to get the fingerprint first and then we go to Miss Marvel,” Harold finally said.

  “Okay,”  Molly said.  “I’ll talk to you later.

  She hung up the phone.

  Molly was balancing a plate of chocolate cupcakes on her lap as the bus rumbled to school.  They were roughly covered in plastic wrap. 

  “So how are you going to get her fingerprint again?” Harold asked her for the second time.

  “I am going to place this plate on a book and carry it into the office and hand it to her.  I will notice that I handed her the book and ask her to hand it back to me.”

  “And you think it will work?” Harold said.  “I have to be there to see that.”

  “No!  Bev has to go with me,” Molly said as the bus jumped and she grabbed the plate to keep it steady.

  “Why me?” Bev said from the seat behind them.

  “Because we are always together.  It would be a natural thing for her to see us but not me and Harold,” Molly explained to the two of them. “Get it.  Besides, I need you to carry my book bag.”

  Bev went through the office door first leading Molly to the counter, who carefully held the plate of cupcakes on the largest book she had, her history book.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Young!”  Molly said.  “I have a surprise for you!”

  Mrs. Young rose from her chair and walked to the counter.  She smiled at Molly and asked, “What in the world are these for?”

  “Well, the other day when you stuck your head into our club meeting, I heard you say that your daughter was in the hospital.  So, I wondered what I could do for you since you have been so nice to  me.  I decided to make you cupcakes!”  Molly handed the cupcakes to her.  “Don’t worry, I asked my Mom to help me and, surprise, she did!”

  “Well, they look wonderful!  Thank you so much and what a wonderful surprise,” Mrs. Young said as she took them from her.  “Oh look, what Molly made for me, Miss Marvel!”

  “I see,” Miss Marvel said from where she stood at her office door.  “They do look delicious.”

  “Thank you,”  Molly said.  “I better get to class.”

  “Don’t forget your book,” Bev spoke for the first time since entering the office.  “Miss Marvel, can I see you a second?”

  Mrs. Young handed Molly her book and she took it from her.  She bent down and placed the book into her backpack, carefully placing the end Mrs. Young held in first.

She stood up and waved to Mrs. Young.  Outside the door, Harold was waiting for her when she stepped out and headed to her English class.

  “Did you get it?” Harold asked as they walked down the hall.

  “Yep, and Bev is telling Miss Marvel right now.”

  The bell rang just as Molly sat at her desk.  Mrs. Chesterfield was still writing on the chalkboard with her back to the class.  Molly couldn’t wait to ask Bev what Miss Marvel thought of their deduction.  Mrs. Chesterfield turned around from the board and walked to the front of her desk.  She glanced around the room.  She turned and picked up a booklet from her desk and asked, “Molly, where’s Bev?”

  “She went to see Miss Marvel,” Molly explained.

  At that moment, the speaker crackled, and Mrs. Young’s voice said, “Mrs. Chesterfield?”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Chesterfield said a little louder than normal.

  “Will you send Molly Bennett to the office, please?”

  “Sure.”  Mrs. Chesterfield said looking at Molly.

  Molly nodded back and grabbed her backpack and left the room.

  Molly walked back into the office to find Miss Marvel standing in front of her door and slowly opened it and motioned for her to go inside.  Molly walked slowly in front of Miss Marvel and into a crowded room filled with other students.  The Whodunnit Club was having a meeting.

To be continued…

The members of the club looked at each other after the observation about the white sweater. 

  “Before we start accusing people,” Miss Marvel cautioned them.  “Are there anymore observations?  Okay.  Harold, go to the chalkboard and let’s diagram the crime scene like we did for the dance so Bev can get into our record.”

  As Miss Marvel talked, Molly reached into her backpack and pulled out a blue covered notebook, placed it on her desk and opened it.  She turned a few sheets and stopped at the one titled, The Sign of the Four, Chapter 1 – The Science of Deduction.  She quickly read the points she had written about Sherlock Holmes in this story;  Detection is an exact science to be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner as any science experiment.  Three qualities necessary for an ideal detective, the power of observation, deduction, and knowledge.  Never guess, observe small facts upon which large references may depend.

  “Anything else?”  Miss Marvel’s voice caused Molly to look up at the chalkboard.  It was a rectangle with two smaller rectangles within it labeled tables.  One X was behind one of them and another X at a break in the large rectangle apparently representing the door to the gym.  It was marked with a Y.

  “I am sorry,” Molly said.  “I was looking at some notes I made from one of the Holmes’ stories and I missed what the Y means over that X.”

  “That represents Mrs. Young,” Harold pointed at it.  “Going into the gym the last time June remembers seeing her.”

  Molly nodded.  Miss Marvel confirmed that Bev had replicated the diagram in the red notebook and the room was silent for a few moments.  Harold erased the diagram from the chalkboard. 

  “We need to find who owns that fingerprint,” Molly said.

  “I think that is all we need,” Jason agreed with Molly.  “But we need to know who to target.  Do we have a suspect?”

  “Jason, can you come to my office during your lunchbreak tomorrow so we can get Miss Chaplin’s fingerprints?” Miss Marvel stood up from her seat and walked around the desk.

  “I think we know they aren’t going to be hers,” Ted said.  “She wasn’t at the dance.”

  “But we have to get all of the facts so that the most obvious deduction is the right one,” Molly said.  “Let’s do this right.  Let’s be sure.”

  With that, Miss Marvel nodded and took the slide projector with her, leaving the remaining members of The Whodunnit Club to rearrange the student desks back into their regular positions.  They walked quietly toward the front doors of the school and the activity busses just beyond them.  Molly, Bev, June, and Harold waved good-bye to the others and boarded their bus.  Harold sat near a window next to June and Molly and Bev sat in front of them.  Molly turned to look back at Harold as he was resting his head against the window.

  “What do you think?” Molly asked him.

  “I don’t know.  What do you think?” Harold replied closing his eyes.

  “I am afraid to think,” Bev whispered.

  “I think,” Molly said as she leaned against the window still facing Harold. “We have all the facts or will have all of them once we get Miss Chaplin’s prints.  We just have to deduce who could have done the crime and get their prints.”

  “Easy-peasy,” Harold said as the bus started to move out of the school parking lot.

  When she was home, Molly set the dinner table quietly.  She was thinking about the case or, rather cases.  Why would anyone steal from a school fund-raiser? 

  “Penny for your thoughts?” a voice interrupted her.

  Molly turned toward her Dad and said “Hi, Dad.  It’s just school stuff.  I do have a question for you though.  Why does someone steal?”

  “That sounds like a deep question, can I sit down?”  He smiled at her and sat in his chair at the head of the table.  Molly sat down in her chair beside him.

  “Why?” he answered.  “Do you know someone who has stolen something?”

  “No, it is for a history assignment, extra credit,” Molly fibbed to her father.  “I was wondering if you had any ideas, that’s all.”

 “Okay,”  he said leaning back in his chair looking at her.  “I think most robberies are about a want.  You know, I want more than you or something you have.  But some people steal for a need.  They think they need it to pay for something like drugs or alcohol or gambling. Desperate people think they need it to help someone or to feed their family.”

  “Dad, I notice you said, think, they have a need.  Some of those examples you just made are real needs.”

  “I believe there is always a way to work out your needs rather than to commit

 a crime.  Sometimes people just get desperate and don’t think clearly.”

  Molly was silent as she thought about what her father told her.  She looked at him and nodded her head.  He rose from his chair, bent down, and kissed her head.  She smiled and watched him go into the kitchen.  Billy passed him carrying a bowl of green beans that he sat on the table and he returned to the kitchen.  Molly sat back in her chair wondering who needed that club money.

  After dinner, Molly sat at her desk in her room.  She was attempting to read her history assignment, but her mind wasn’t into it.  She pushed it away and reached for her backpack.  She extracted the blue notebook, placed it on her desk and turned the pages to the first blank one.  She drew a line down the middle and across the top of the page  she wrote the question, who needs money? Above the first column she wrote Observations, and across the second she wrote, Deductions.  She folded her arms in front of her and thought over all she had observed starting with the dance.  She wrote in the first column; people distracted, area of thefts not protected, unknown fingerprint found, no logical way of leaving the event unseen.  She tapped her pencil after she wrote that.  The thief didn’t leave the event.  A thought came to her and she hesitated to write it down.  She remembered Sherlock Holmes’ comments to Dr. Watson about the science of deduction, to stay unemotional and unattached when gathering the facts of a case.  She nodded to herself and wrote, Mrs. Young’s brown bag.  In the Deduction column she wrote, the brown bag was missing, it was with her at the start of the dance but not at the end.  She shook her head and drew an arrow from that comment to the observation column.  It was really an observation.  She wrote a final observation, white sweater left at the concession table.  Molly looked down her list of observations and concluded they needed one more fact and that fact is, who is the owner to the fingerprint?  But who is our suspect?

  Molly leaned back in her chair and looked up at the ceiling, trying to clear her mind of the deduction she kept coming back to, hoping to find a different one but failing.  She sat up and wrote in the Deductions column, Mrs. Young.  She added another question at the top of the page, in capital letters, WHY?

  Tuesday was a long day and Molly was cranky.  In her second hour, Physical Education, Coach Huntleigh had them go outside and run.  It was cold and windy and, even though she wore sweats, she was still cold at the end of the day.  She walked into the cafeteria for her last hour class, Resources, and dropped her backpack on the floor at the first table she came to.  She kept her jacket on and sat down.

  Molly looked about the room and the usual groups had already formed, and they were whispering to each other.  Mrs. Irondale was sitting at a table nearest the stage to Molly’s right.  She was looking at a magazine, occasionally looking up to see if the students needed anything.  Molly pulled her backpack up to the table and got the blue notebook out of it.  She pushed the bag aside and opened the notebook to the page of observations and deductions.  She remembered the third part of Holmes’ science of deductions.  She got a pencil out the pocket of the backpack and drew a line at the bottom of the page and wrote Knowledge.  She stared at the name she had written there last night and thought about what she knew about Mrs. Young.  She had to find out more.  Molly closed her notebook and rose from her seat.  She walked toward Mrs. Ironside leaving her backpack behind.

  “Hi, Mrs. Ironside,” Molly said as she stopped in front of her.

  Mrs. Ironside looked up from her magazine and smiled at Molly.

  “Hello, Molly.  What can I do for you?”

  “Oh nothing really.  I need to relax a bit and wondered if we could just talk.” Molly said rubbing her left elbow.

  Mrs. Ironside’s eyes studied her for a few moments and finally said, “Sure.  Please have a seat.”

  Molly sat down and sighed.

  “Are you okay?” Mrs. Ironside asked.  “You look tired.”

  “I am but that’s okay.  I am a teenager or almost one anyway.”

  Mrs. Ironside laughed so Molly decided to start to ask her a few questions.

  “Mrs. Ironside, where are you from?”

  “Right across the river in Grafton, Illinois.  Where are you from?   I know it wasn’t originally here.”

  “California.  It was definitely warmer there.” Molly answered.  “Do you know where Miss Marvel or Mrs. Young are from?”

  “Oh, I don’t know about Miss Marvel, but Mrs. Young is from somewhere in Mississippi.”

  “Mississippi.  I wonder what it’s like in Mississippi,” Molly said, waiting to ask the next question.

  “Oh, the weather isn’t much different than here.  Maybe a little warmer,”  Mrs. Ironside said as she looked over Molly at the other students in the room.

  “Does Mrs. Young have a family?”  Molly asked.

  “Yes.  She is married and has a daughter,”  Mrs. Ironside said and looked directly at Molly.  “Why?”

  Molly didn’t hesitate to answer the question, “She came by our club meeting yesterday and said she was going to visit her daughter at the hospital.  I like Mrs. Young and was wondering what was wrong with her daughter because she seems stressed.  I wondered if there is way to help her.”

  “Her daughter is extremely sick and has to be in the hospital for a while.  I don’t know how you can help Mrs. Young.  Maybe you could ask her,” Mrs. Ironside suggested.  “Now, if you will excuse me, Michael Webber and his buddies need some guidance.”

  Molly stood and watched Mrs. Ironside walk in a slow, determined way toward a group of four boys on the other side of the cafeteria.  She returned to her chair and sat down.  She reopened the blue notebook and wrote next to her note at the top of the page marked WHY? – Daughter in hospital.

To be continued…

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…

The teenagers looked at June in amazement. 

  “How do you know?”  Bev asked June who was still wild eyed and looking around the room.

  “Come on.  Let’s go inside the gym away from these people,”  Molly suggested.  The other three shook their heads in agreement and headed back inside the gym.  Molly looked around and noticed the bleachers opposite the stage were opened a few steps.  “Let’s go sit on the bleachers,” Molly said as she led the entourage toward them.

  “June, are you okay?” Harold said as they sat down.

  “I will be,” June said as she took a deep breath.

  They all sat in silence waiting for someone to do something.  Molly asked herself, what would Holmes do?  She decided to start asking questions.

  “Okay, June, can you just tell us what happened?”

  “Well, Ron, Betsy and I came out to work the concessions during intermission.  Mrs. Young joined us just before other people were coming out, too.  We were all busy selling and we all took care of our own sales.”

  “What does that mean?”  Bev interrupted.

  “We each collected the money from the customer, made change if we had to, and placed all the money in the box,” June answered Bev’s question.

  “Keep going with your story,” Molly said.  “Let’s try to get through it without asking questions.”

  “Okay,”  June started again.  “When we were busy with customers, the lights dimmed twice meaning the intermission was over and people began returning to the gym.  I told the others to go on inside and that I would finish up.  When everyone left, I wiped off the tables and put the candy and soda back in their boxes.  I counted the money and placed it back into the money box.  I made a note as to how much and placed it in my pocket.  I left the money box on the chair and scooted it beneath the table.  I went back to catch the second half of the play.  I sat in the back near the door and when the final curtain call started, I went back to the lobby.  I went to check the box and the money.  When I opened it, all the money was gone except for two dollar bills and four quarters.”

  “Three dollars,” Harold said.  “The price of an admission, a candy bar and a soda.”

  Molly thought over her story and asked,  “Where’s the money box now?”

  “I put it in my gym locker ,” June answered.

  “Good, we know where it is,” Bev said nodding her head.

  “Are you sure you were alone?” Harold asked.

  “Yes! Yes, I am sure.  Everyone was going back for the second half of the play!”  June exclaimed as she started to rock back and forth in her seat.  “I am going to be in so much trouble!”

  Harold moved closer to his sister, pulled her closer to him and hugged her.

  “It will be all right,” Bev said.  “We will figure it out.”

  Molly leaned back against the bleachers behind her and closed her eyes.  She began to visualize the scene as June had told it.  She could see the lights in the atrium blink twice and people start filing through the doors back into the gym.  There was June telling Ron and Betsy to go on ahead and she would finish up.  They laughed and June smiled as she grabbed the candy from the table and dropped them into box beside the table.  She pulled a second box onto the table and withdrew the soda from the ice container and placed them in the box.  June pulled the half-filled box from the table to the floor.

  “June, what happened to the ice bucket?”  Molly asked.

  “I don’t know.  I think it is still there.”

  “Harold, will you go and see if it is there now?”

  Molly closed her eyes again and returned to her review of June’s story.  June turned her attention to the money box.  It was still open with the money crammed inside it.  June shook her head and pulled the bills out, separating them by value, leaving the change inside.  At least that is what Molly would have done it.

  “How much money was there?”  Molly asked, keeping her eyes closed.  She heard the gym door open and Harold’s footsteps draw closer to them.

  “The bucket is still there, and all of the ice has melted,”  Harold reported.  “The two boxes are where she left them, on the floor.  Molly, I saw your Dad’s car outside.  So is my Mom. I guess she came to get June.”

  “Okay,” Molly opened her eyes.  “I guess we got to go but first, a couple more questions and then a quick plan before we go outside.  How much money was stolen?”

  “I have it here on my note,”  June looked at the paper she pulled from her pocket and looked at Molly. “Two hundred and ninety-seven dollars.  I even wrote down that it was fifteen tens, thirteen fives, twelve dollars in quarters and sixty one- dollar bills.  That was before they left the three dollars.”

  “I knew you would do that!”  Molly said.  “Harold, where did you leave the money for what you gave us when we were leaving?

  “I didn’t.  I was going to give the money to June later.”

  “Okay,”  Molly said.  “Now, before you and Bev go get the money box, one more question, June,  was there anything else you could remember?  Anything at all?”

  “No,” June said.  “I told you guys everything.”

  “Okay, go and get the box.  Harold and I will wait for you here.”

  Molly watched the two girls walk toward the girls’ locker room door and once they were inside, she turned to Harold.

  “You go home with your Mom, too.  June has to take the box to your house and don’t say anything to your parents,” Molly instructed Harold.  “Do you have a fingerprint kit at home?”

  “Actually, I do,” Harold answered smiling.  “I see where you are going with this.”

   “Bring the box and the print to my house tomorrow then the three of us will figure out how to bring the case to the club.”

  The locker room door opened, and the two girls walked to join them.  June had her coat on and was holding the brown money box.  Bev zipped up her jacket.

  “Let’s go,” Harold said stepping toward his sister.  “We are not going to say anything to Mom and Dad, okay?”

  “Okay,” his sister answered him as she hugged him as she started to cry.

  “Shhh, it will be okay, June,” he hugged her tighter.  “It will be all right, Sis, I promise.”

  Molly and Bev watched the siblings embrace.  Bev stepped forward and joined the hug.  Molly stepped did the same and wrapped her arms around everyone and said, “We have to go before they come in to get us.”

  They slowly unfolded and headed toward the gym door.  Molly was the last one out and paused to look at the tables.  The two tables were empty except for the ice bucket on the far end of the table.  The two boxes sat on the floor just as Harold had confirmed.  Four brown folding chairs were pushed neatly at the edge of the table closest to the wall.  She looked at the third chair and on the back of it was an off-white sweater.

  “June?” Molly called out.  “Is that your sweater?”

  June stopped and looked at the table and said, “No.  I don’t know who’s that is.”

  Molly nodded and followed them out into the night.

  “Molly!” Billy yelled from the front of the house.  “Harold and Bev are here!”

  Molly jumped off of her bed and hurried to the front door.  Harold and Bev met her in the living room.  Harold was carrying the box and Bev was rubbing her hands together.

  “It’s getting cold out there,” Bev said.

  “Let’s go to my room.”

  “Well, hello there,” Mrs. Bennet said as she entered the room.  “What’s going on?”

  “We are going up to my room to do a school project,” Molly said as she turned to go there.

  “I am baking cookies.  Do you want some?”

  “I could go for some cookies,” Harold said.

  “Of course you could,” Bev said.  “So could I.  Thanks, Mrs. Bennet.”

  Molly sighed as she followed her friends behind her mother into the kitchen.

  Cookies in hand, Harold sat on the desk chair as Molly and Bev sat on her bed.  Molly had already set up the slide projector on top of the desk facing the wall like she had done before.

  “Did you get any prints?”  Molly asked Harold.

  “Yes I did,” he said as he opened the box, removed four slide frames, and handed them to Molly.

  Molly took then from him, stood up, and reached across Harold to the slide projector.  She slipped the four slides into the carousel.

  “Bev, can you turn off the lights?

  Bev got up from the bed and did what she was asked to do. When thew lights went out and the room appeared a little bit darker, Molly turned on the projector and sat back on the bed.  She picked up the remote and clicked it.  A dark image appeared on the wall.  Harold fiddled with the focus ring around the lens of the projector and the image became clear.

  “I think we have a fingerprint,” Bev whispered.

To be continued…

Molly sipped her Dr. Pepper as she waited at a table in the Food Court for her best friends.  Jamestown Mall was busy with shoppers bustling about on this first Saturday of November.  Molly had stood in line at the burger place for a cheeseburger, fries, and a soft drink because it was shorter than the Chinese food line that Bev and Harold were still standing in.  They were getting closer to ordering their food.  She watched them laughing as they talked to each other.  Harold wore a hoodie that was unzipped.  It was dark blue that he had over a forest green sweatshirt and blue jeans.  Bev had a light blue coat, zipped up partially, with a hood, fur-lined, that bobbed up and down as she laughed.  Molly shook her head.  Bev is always cold.  Molly was getting hot, so she unzipped her jean jacket revealing a loose fitting sweatshirt that hung over her shoulders. 

  Molly’s friends were finally placing their orders at the window and had moved down the line to pay for it.  She looked around the room.  A small merry-go-round spun slowly around in the center of the room.  A line of small kids and their parents were waiting to get on the colorful horses that slowly went up and down on the carnival ride.  Picnic tables surrounded it in a concentric pattern until it reached the main hallway that led to the shops of the mall.  A small ice cream stand was on the edge of the tables and a pretzel stand was nearby.  Molly’s eyes fell on a woman who was waiting to order a pretzel.  She was a plump woman wearing a long, dark gray coat with her back to Molly.  Her dark blond hair fell to her shoulders and she was talking to a man, slightly taller than her.  He had gray, almost white hair that was neatly cut.  He had a beard, snow white, and it was also neatly trimmed.  He looked at the woman and smiled as she was telling him a story.  Molly couldn’t see her face very well, but she noticed a big brown purse hanging from the woman’s shoulder.  Molly thought that it wasn’t exactly a purse, but a huge bag and it looked familiar.

  “Hi,” Bev said as she sat next to Molly placing her tray on the table.  “Can I have a fry?”

  Molly smiled at her friend as Harold sat down across from her.  He reached out and took a fry off of Molly’s tray.  She playfully pushed his hand away.

  “I’ve been thinking about the case,” Molly said as she began to nibble on a fry.

  “It’s been a month,” Harold said as he removed the lid from the Styrofoam container in front of him.  “I don’t know if we will ever find out whodunnit.”

  “What else can we do?” Bev said as she picked up the plastic fork from her tray and stuck it into chicken lo mein.

  “I wonder what Holmes would do?”  Harold added as he stuck his fork into his General Tso’s pork fried rice.

  Molly lifted her cheeseburger to her mouth and looked toward the pretzel booth.  The couple she had noticed was gone.  She wondered what was familiar about the woman.

  “Shall we go to the fall play tonight?”  Bev broke her train of thought.

  “Play?” Harold answered Bev’s question.  “What play?”

  “Yes, the drama club is performing a Shakespeare play, The Comedy of Errors,” Bev said as she sipped from her cup.  “I’d like to go.”

  “Sounds fun,”  Moly said.  “How do we get there?”

  Molly’s father happily agreed to take them to and from the play.  The three friends hurried to the front door through the cold wind.  They entered the school and stood just inside the door in the gym lobby once again.  Molly thought to herself that the gym is used for every activity that SLMS puts on.  They scurried to the line that formed into the gym itself.  Two tables were set up to the left of the entrance.  The closest table to the door sat a student and next to him sat Mrs. Young.  On the front of the table a poster was taped, and it said, A Comedy of Errors, a fund-raiser for the Drama Club.  Admission – $2.00.  Molly recognized the boy.  It was Ron, and she couldn’t remember his last name, but he was in her math class.  She stepped closer to the table and she looked at the second table.  It had a variety of boxes of candy, chocolate bars and licorice, and soda cans carefully displayed in a bucket of ice.  Another poster was taped to the front of that table that simply said, Concessions – 50 cents.  Two girls were behind the table waiting on customers.  She recognized one of them.

  “Harold,” Molly tugged on his elbow.  “Isn’t that June?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Your own sister and you didn’t know about a play tonight?” Bev asked him.

  “I forgot,” Harold waved to his sister who just noticed them standing in line.

  June smiled and waved to the three of them.  Molly waved back.  She liked June.  She was so the opposite of Harold.  Where Harold was laid back and quiet, which Molly was one of the things she liked about him, June was noisy and very talkative. 

  “Hi, Molly,” Ron’s voice turned Molly’s head to face him.  “Do you have two bucks?”

  “Hi, Ron.  Here you go,” Molly handed over the two dollar bills she had crunched in her hand.

  “I hope you like Shakespeare,” Ron said to her taking the money from her and placed it in an off brown metal box.

  “So you are in the Drama Club.  Do you act?”  Molly asked him.

  “I would like to, but I painted the backdrop for this play so take a look at it.  You better move on; you are holding up the line.  I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Young,” Molly said as she stepped away from the table.

  “Hello, dearie,” Mrs. Young said to her.  “Enjoy the show.”

  Molly nodded to her and moved forward toward the door, wondering where her two buddies went off to.  She stepped aside and looked around the room.  The line of students behind her had about five people in it.  Three more were at the concession table.  The rest of the space was empty.  She turned to look at the clock that was mounted above the doorway and it read almost ten minutes to six.  The door opened and Bev stuck her head out obviously looking for her.  She waved to Molly to join her.

  Molly stepped toward her and casually glanced toward Ron again and something  attracted her attention.  A brown handbag hung over the back of Mrs. Young’s chair.

  “Sorry,” Molly said.  “I was catching up with Ron.”

  “Harold has saved us seats,” Bev said to her.  “We are sitting in the middle seats of the third row.”

  Molly looked at how the gym was set up for the play.  A huge accordion style wall spanned across half of the gym.  It was so big that a doorway was placed in it for people to go through to get to the other side.  At the door another student, a girl, dressed in the dress code of the time of William Shakespeare, green tights, fluffy sleeves, and a hat with a feather in it.  Following Bev, she was stopped at the door by the girl who handed her a playbill.  She took a look at it.  The outside was a duplication of the original announcement of the play, except for the label that announced, SLMS  presents – Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors,  Below the announcement, a picture of two identical people dressed like the girl at the door.  Their hands were on their knees and they were staring at each other.  Bev pulled at Molly to follow her.

  This part of the gym was set up with about ten rows of chairs divided into three sections of five seats per row.  Bev led her to the first aisle.  They turned and walked to the third row of the middle aisle and there, three seats in, sat Harold.  No one was sitting in the row but Harold.  Bev went first and sat on the other side of Harold.  Molly sat beside him and looked around her.  The stage was at eye level and they could see the stage lights shining on the dark maroon curtain that fell across it.  Behind her, sitting mainly in the middle section and in the aisle edges of the of the outer sections, were a mixture of students and adults.  Molly estimated there were about 80% of the seats were filled.  She spotted an adult couple was walking down the aisle and they stopped at her row.

  “Excuse me,” the man said to her.  “Can you move in a seat so we could sit together?”

  “Sure,” Molly as she stood up.  She waited for Harold and Bev to move over a seat and then she sat down again.

  “The woman came into the aisle first.  “Thanks.  Our daughter is in the play and we want to get a good view.  These are great seats.”

  “They are,”  Molly said to her.  “And what character is she playing?”

  “She is playing Emilia, the mother of the twins.”

  “Twins?”  Molly said.

  “Ah, you don’t know Shakespeare,” the woman said smiling at her.  “I won’t tell.  So pay attention to the story and you will see.”

  The overhead lights blinked twice and finally dimmed to black.  Soft music began to play over the speaker system and the curtain slid stage right across the stage.

  The play was separated with an intermission after the third act of five and the three friends enjoyed a soda and a candy bar in the lobby.  At the end of the play and the final curtain, the houselights went up and a voice came over the speaker system thanking them for attending and reminding them that there were two more showings of the play on the following day.  Molly was grateful it was over.  As she stood up, the woman beside her asked, “What do you think of Shakespeare?”

  “It was an interesting story but hard to understand because of the way they were speaking,” Molly said as they entered the aisle.  “Your daughter is very pretty.”

  “Why, thank you.  Shakespeare is hard to understand, at first, but then it gets mesmerizing.  I really enjoy it,” the woman smiled at her.  “Well, excuse me.  We have to run to see our daughter.  Nice meeting you.”

  “You, too,” Molly called after her,

  Harold had gone ahead of the two girls and was waiting for them at the door.  He handed them each a soda can and a chocolate bar, turned on his heels and headed toward the door marked Men in Gym Hall.  June stopped him before he reached it and said something to him.  Molly watched as Harold pointed to them and June hurried toward them.

When she stopped in front of them, she looked around the room where clumps of people stood around the actors of the play.

  “What’s the matter?” Bev asked June who looked wild eyed staring about the room.

  “I’m waiting for Harold,” she said.  “then I will tell you.”

  “What happened?” Molly stepped closer to her.  “Are you hurt?”

  “No,” June answered.  “Where is Harold?”

  “There he is,” Bev pointed him out when she saw him push through a group of people holding flowers.

  “Did she tell you?” Harold asked them when he stepped into the group of three.

  “Tell us what>” Molly asked looking at June.

  June looked at the three of them and began to whisper, “We’ve been robbed!”

To be continued…

Molly inserted the slides into the wheel of the family’s slide projector one at a time.  She placed the projector on the floor beside her bed and stood up.  She walked over and closed the door to her room and turned off the overhead lights. She went back to the projector, picked it up, set it on the desk chair and turned it on. The light beam immediately illuminated the opposite wall.  She put a book beneath the projector and the light moved higher up the wall.  She grabbed the remote that was hanging from the projector and laid back in her bed against the pillows she had arranged across the back wall.  She clicked. The image changed from a bright light to a black smudge.

  “Oh no,”  Molly said as she hurriedly sat up.  She reached over and slowly turned a ring that was on the lens of the projector.  Looking back over her shoulder, she watched the image on the wall. 

  The black smudge slowly changed shape as she turned the lens.  In the center of it, small white lines started to appear.  In the middle of the image, loops wrapped around each other and the end of each line stretched and thinned toward the outside.  She has a photo of a fingerprint!  She clicked the remote again and another fingerprint appeared.  This one was circular with thin lines rotating around each other.  She clicked again and another one appeared.  She almost shouted out loud as she clicked through them all and she could clearly see each one.  When the wall became nothing but a bright light again, she leaned back.  What’s next?

  “On Monday,” she started talking to herself.  “We will compare these prints to the cards and hopefully be able to identify them.  But how do we know which prints came from which box?  We marked the original frames, but these slides are not matched to them.  Man.  Is that a problem?  Do we need to know that or is it enough to know whose prints are whose?”

  Room 101 was already arranged when Molly, Bev and Harold walked in for their club meeting.  A slide projector was set up on a desk in the middle of the room.  The screen was pulled down in front of the chalkboard from its mounting above it.  Six desks were lined up in front of the screen.  Ted, Carol, and Jason were already sitting at three desks allowing the three of them to sit at the ones closest to the door.

  “Please close the door and turn off the lights Harold,” Miss Marvel said from a desk next to the projector.  “Molly, do you have the slides?”

  Molly walked to Miss Marvel, placed her backpack on the desk and unzipped it.  She reached into it  and handed the slides to her.

  “Thank you.  How do they look?”  Miss Marvel asked her, taking the slides from Molly.

  “Great!  I am so happy about them,” Molly told her and turned to sit at her seat.

  “Jason, will you hand out the fingerprint cards I gave you, please? Hand out two apiece.  Thank you.”  Miss Marvel said as she slid the slides into the projector’s slide carriage. 

  Molly looked at the two cards handed to her.  She looked at the names across the bottom of the cards.  One was Happy’s and the other card belonged to Miss Marvel.  She heard the hum of the projector being turned on and she looked at the screen in front of her.  Miss Marvel was adjusting the focus of the image on it.  A fingerprint popped into view.  The scraping of a desk moving and high heels clicking toward her was the only sound that could be heard as she stared at the screen.

  Miss Marvel walked to the cabinet in front of the room and removed a small box from it.  She walked down the line of students, handing each one a magnifying glass.

  “I got these from the Biology department.  Jason give me two cards, too.  Now, do the best you can to try to match the card to the image up here.  If you think you have a match, have someone next to you doublecheck it then set it aside and ask Jason for another one.  Hopefully, we can identify them.  Good luck.”

  Molly looked closely at the image on the screen and noted that it was a loop, the most common fingerprint.  It traveled upward, left to right, angling slightly back to the left, in long, thin, loops.  She took the magnifying glass and looked at her first card, it wasn’t a loop but a whorl and it was circular.  She set it aside and looked at the second one.  It was a loop, but it went more to the right than left like the image on the screen.

  “Any matches?”  Miss Marvel asked from behind them as she had returned to her seat next to the projector.  No one answered and the screen changed to the next slide.

  Molly studied the image.  It was another loop.

  “I think I have a match,” Harold spoke up.  Molly looked over at him and saw Bev looking at the card with her magnifying glass.

  “I think so, too,” she confirmed.

  “Okay.  Harold put it aside,”  Miss Marvel instructed.  “I am going to remove it from the carousel so give me a second.” 

  The image in front went dark and Molly listened as Miss Marvel removed the slide.  Jason had risen from his seat and handed Harold another card.  The projector clicked on and the screen became bright with white light.  A click resounded and another fingerprint appeared on the screen.  Another loop.  Molly stared at her card through the magnifying glass.  She looked up at the screen to doublecheck.  It went toward the left like the one on her card.  She went back and looked at the card.

  “I think I have a match,” Molly announced.  “Teddy, will you check this out?”

  Teddy took the card from her and stared at it through his glass.  He looked at the screen and back to the card and said, “I think we are on a roll.  Two down!”

  Molly grinned to herself and placed the card to her right.  She looked at the name on the card.  It was Happy Hamilton.  She looked up as Jason handed her another card.  He smiled at her and nodded his head.

  A short while later, Miss Marvel was standing in front of them holding two slides in front of her.

  “We have two prints that are unidentified.  Jason and Carol have just confirmed that this one I marked with a P for photo booth and this one from the Cookie Club box, are from the same person.  These prints could possibly be from our thief.  We need to discover another way to narrow down who the thief might be and how to verify who these prints belong to.  Any ideas?”

To be continued…

Friday seemed to take forever to get here, Molly thought to herself as she sat down in a chair.  She was sitting between Ted and Carol at one of the two tables that were set up in the gym lobby.  They were stationed in front of the entrance door into the gym itself.  On the table before Molly was a black ink pad and a stack of white cards.  She picked up a card from the stack and saw that it was identical to the one her fingerprints were placed on at the club meeting.  Molly looked up when she heard footsteps pause in front of her.  It was Detective Tracy, dressed in a smart, dark blue suit.  The jacket was open and the tie that draped down in front of a dazzling white shirt, was dark blue with thin, diagonal, gold stripes about three inches apart from each other.  There were small circles, trimmed in gold to match the lines, neatly spaced between the diagonal lines.  She squinted her eyes to try to see what was within the circles.  She couldn’t.  Miss Marvel stepped beside him in a long, sky blue dress that stopped mid-calf.  The sleeves streamed down and flared out a little at her wrist.  A multi-blue colored scarf draped from the back of her neck, over her shoulders and down the front, halting at her waist.  Her red hair was in her familiar ponytail and she smiled at them.  Molly thought the two people standing in front of her were perfectly matched.  What an interesting observation, Molly thought to herself.

  “Good morning team,” Miss Marvel said as she held her hands in front of her.  “You remember Detective Tracy.”  He nodded to the group.  “He is going to supervise us as we gather fingerprints today for the police.”

  “I know you will do fine,” Detective Tracy said.  “The big issue will be ink.  If you need more, raise your hands.  Be sure to have the students write their names on their cards or we won’t know whose fingerprints they are.  Mrs. Young will be helping us by gathering the permission slips over there.”

  Molly followed the direction he pointed to and saw another table set up at the corner of the lobby and the hall.  She saw an empty chair sitting at the table, its back facing them.  Mrs. Young hadn’t arrived yet.

  “As you know,” Detective Tracy continued.  “Your school gave us fourth hour, the lunch hour, to complete the process.  They will be coming down that hall and then to you. Any questions?”

  No one volunteered any and Detective Tracy walked away from them toward the table near the hall.  Miss Marvel stepped toward them, leaned down and said, “Do you have the names of the students we need?  Good.  We are doing the classrooms from Hall 01 first, then 02, then 03.  We don’t know what classroom our people are in so be observant.  Be like Holmes.”  She stood up and looked at the club members and smiled.  She nodded and went to joined Detective Tracy near the table.

  Molly reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper.  She unfolded it carefully and smoothed it out in front of her.  On it were ten names she had printed in two columns.  These were the names of the people in the Cooking Club and the Letter-people Club who could have touched one of the boxes.  The five names of the Letter-people Club are Jim Hairston, Pearl Adams, Mary Linck, Richard Rogers, and Jackie Sander.  The five names of the Cooking Club are Melanie Randle, Marissa Carrico, Happy Hamilton, Rebecca Smythe, and Lucy Brown.  Molly didn’t know any of them.  Well, she probably could recognize Jim and Pearl because they were the ones who reported the theft to Mrs. Rogers.

  “What’s that?”  Ted asked looking over her left shoulder.  Carol turned in her seat and looked over Molly’s right shoulder.

  “It’s the ten names,” Molly replied.  “Do you guys want to see?”

  The bell rang.  Molly turned her head toward the hallway as the sounds of lockers slamming and people walking and talking filled the air.  Mrs. Young had joined Detective Tracy and Miss Marvel at the table.  Mrs. Young laughed and it could be heard above the noise around them.

  “You better put that away,” Ted said to her. “We don’t want anyone else know what it is.”

  Molly refolded the page and put it back into her pocket.  She placed her elbows on the table and folded her hands on it.  She looked straight ahead and waited.  She was looking at the parking lot filled with teacher cars through the tinted windows that surrounded the lobby.  Just beyond it, a garbage truck rumbled by on New Halls Ferry Road.  It was a sunny day and the sweetgum trees that lined the school property were bright red and yellow in their mid-autumn colors.  They swayed with the breeze that ran across them now and then.  The bell rang again.  The final sounds of feet scurrying, and doors closing faded.  A voice immediately started to speak over the school’s intercom system.

   “Good day students,” Mr. Charles addressed the school.  “As you know, today we are participating in an outreach program for the D.A.R.E. program sponsored by The Whodunnit Club.  We will be gathering your fingerprints that will be used by you or your parents for identification purposes in cases of emergency.”

  “If people really knew why, they would not be happy,” Ted whispered into Molly’s ear.

  “We will be asking all the rooms in Hall 01 to come to Gym Hall…” Mr. Charles droned on.

  “Gym Hall,”  Ted continued in Molly’s ear. “Who came up with these names?”

  “Shhh,” Molly looked at him with a grin on her face.  “Focus, Teddy,”

  “Teddy?” Ted gawked at her.

    “Teddy,” Carol chimed in, leaning her head in front of Molly.  “I like it.”

  The thundering of feet could be heard from the hall.  Miss Marvel and Detective Tracy stood at the edge of the table waiting as the students lined up to hand Mrs. Young their parent permission forms.  The students were directed from the table toward the fingerprinting tables.  A slight girl, a curly blond, wearing jeans and a bright yellow sweatshirt started toward Molly.  Molly sat up straight and opened the ink pad.  She placed the pen in front of the stack cards and pulled one card off of the pile and placed it in front of the pad.  She looked up just as the girl stopped in front of her.

  “Hello,” Molly greeted her.  “My name is Molly.  What is your name?”

  “Happy,” the girl replied.  “Happy Hamilton.”

  Molly couldn’t believe what she heard.  This is one of the girls on the list.  Her very first fingerprint.

  “Hi, Happy.  I like your name.  First, print your name on the line at the bottom of this card.  Thanks.  Notice, the two rows of boxes.  We are going to put your prints of your left hand in these boxes then we’ll flip the cards and place your right prints on this row.  See?”

  “Yes, I get it,” Happy responded to the instructions.

  “When I did mine, I rolled my fingers one at a time on the ink pad and then rolled them on the card.  Let’s start with your thumb, it’s the hardest.”

  The gym door behind them opened and a box of tissues was placed in front of each of the fingerprint stations.

  Happy looked up puzzled as Molly turned around toward a man in a forest green coverall.

  “For their fingers,” he explained,  “When they finish up.  She told me to do it.”  He pointed to Miss Marvel.  The man was the janitor.  He turned and went back through the gym doors.

  Molly helped Happy finish placing her prints on the card.  She pulled a tissue from the box and handed it to Happy.  “You might want to go to the restroom and wash them, too.  Nice to meet you.”

  Molly pulled the card from the front of the table and placed it in front of her.  A boy stepped in front of her and she began the process again.

  After the last student left the lobby followed by Mrs. Young down the Gym Hall,  Detective Tracy whispered something to Miss Marvel, who giggled and then nodded her head.  He turned, waved to the club, and went out the front door to the parking lot.

  Miss Marvel walked over and stood in front of them. 

  “Okay,” Miss Marvel took a deep breath.  “Good job everyone.  I am immensely proud of you.  It took a little longer than we thought it would, but it is done.  Now, let’s collect the cards.  First, the suspects and then the rest of them.”

  Miss Marvel walked to Teddy and he handed her one card.  Molly did the same.  Carol handed her three cards.  Harold was next with two then Bev handed her another. Finally, Jason handed her two more cards.

  “I count ten cards,” Jason said to Miss Marvel who was counting them in her hands.

  “Me, too,” Miss Marvel said.  “Who has the list?  Bev?’

  “Not me.  Molly has it.”

  Molly was already smoothing it out on the table.

  “Okay.  I will read the names and you check them off.”

  Molly placed a checkmark beside each name as Miss Marvel read them.  When they finished, there was a silence that settled around them.  A feeling of fear and anticipation crept up and down Molly’s back.

  “We have all the prints.  The Rogers and Miss Heinz prints are locked in my desk with all of ours.  Where are we with the photos, Molly?”  Miss Marvel asked her from where she stood in front of Jason.

  “I am picking them up from the Fotomat today,” Molly answered her.

  “Okay, we will start looking at them Monday,” Miss Marvel said.  “Go to lunch.  Your teachers already know that you will be joining fifth hour late.  I will gather the remaining cards myself.  See you later.”

  Molly pushed her chair back, rose to her feet and followed Teddy around the table.  The members of the Whodunnit Club walked down the hall in silence to the cafeteria.  As they walked inside, six identical lunch trays were waiting for them on a table in the middle of the room.  They walked to the table and sat down.  Molly looked around at the group and they looked back at her.

  “What’s next?” Harold asked.

To be continued…

“What do you guys think?”  Bev asked the club members.

 “Interesting,” Jason said from his seat as he twisted the brush over the top of the handle on the photo club’s money box.

  “How so?”  Carol asked as she, too, was twisting a brush over the top of the cooking club’s money box.

  “We don’t know who could have done it,” Jason said.

  “We do know who it didn’t steal the money,” Molly said.  “None of the teachers on the stage, none of the principals, and none of the students.”

  “So who ran off with the money?” Harold asked.

  Molly heard clear and distinct footsteps coming down the hall.  She turned her head to see the door open and Miss Marvel walked through the doorway.  She handed the red spiral notebook back to Bev and walked around the circle handing each member a copy of the dance’s floor map.  She walked to the pair that were in desks separated from the rest of them.  She handed Jason and Carol a copy of the map, looked at their work and smiled.

  “It looks like we have some fingerprints,” Miss Marvel said.  “Use the tape kit in the fingerprint box and try to get the prints from the boxes.”

  “Mis Marvel?” Harold said as she walked back to her seat.

  “Yes, Harold,” she said to him shaking her head.  “You don’t have to be so formal here.”

  “I know but I can’t help it.  My question is how are we going to get copies of the fingerprints to match those taken from the boxes.”

  “Well, I was thinking about that over the weekend,” Miss Marvel sat up straighter and folded her hands on the top of her desk.  “I had an idea and I called our friend, Detective Tracy.”

  “Wait,” Ted cut her off.  “I thought we weren’t going to the police.”

  “Please, hear me out,” Miss Marvel continued.  “I simply asked him, how do I contact McGruff the Crime Dog?”

  “McGruff the Crime dog?” Bev asked.

  “Yes, he works with D. A. R. E.” Miss Marvel answered.  “Does anyone know what D.A.R.E. is?”

  “Drug Abuse Resistance Education,” Jason said from behind them.  “It’s an acronym.”

  “Right.  It is a community outreach program offered by our police department and

McGruff is their spokesman, ah, spokes dog.  D.A.R.E. has a program to fingerprint children for free.  You will hear an announcement in the morning that we will be fingerprinting every child in the school this Friday,” Miss Marvel said to them.

  Molly raised her hand.  Miss Marvel laughed and simply looked at her. 

  “Well, who gets these prints?” she asked.

  “The police,” Miss Marvel said.  “Eventually.”

  “Eventually?” Molly asked.

  “Yes, eventually.  I will be keeping the print cards for safekeeping,” Miss Marvel said, smiling.  “I can be Sherlock Holmes, too.”

  Jason and Carol joined them in the circle.  Molly watched as Jason handed Miss Marvel a stack of white square slide frames.  Miss Marvel carefully set the pile in front of her.

  “The tape kit includes slide frames to mount the prints on,” Jason said.  “Once we pulled the print from the boxes, we placed a second piece behind it to seal the print inside it. The frames are bifold and we placed the print between them and sealed them.”

  “Thank you, Jason and Carol,” Miss Marvel.  “How many prints do we have?”

  “Nine,” Carol said.  “We got four from the photo booth box and the rest from the cooking club box.  We marked the photo booth prints with a P.”

  “Thanks,” Miss Marvel said. She took a slide on the desktop in front of her.

  Molly leaned forward as she watched the club sponsor place four frames on a row and five in another.  She looked around the circle of desks and smiled because everyone was leaning forward, too.  Her smile turned into a frown as she heard footsteps that were turning into their hall.  The footsteps were short and quick with a slight clicking sound.

  “Someone’s coming!” she said out loud and sat up straight.  Miss Marvel quickly snatched the slides from the desk and folded them in her hands in her lap.  The room was quiet as the footsteps got nearer.

  “Act natural,”  Miss Marvel said.  “Someone, please ask a question, quick.”

  The door opened.

  “Did Holmes have any other skills he used to solve crimes?” Molly asked the group and watched their eyes turn to her.

  “I think he kind of did things on the fly,” Harold said.

  “Really,” Miss Marvel said.  “I thought we decided he was more organized than that.”

  “Excuse me,”  Mrs. Young interrupted.  “Miss Marvel, you left this in the copier tray.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Young,” Miss Marvel said as she reached for the paper.

  “May I ask what this is?  It looks rather detailed,”  Mrs. Young asked.

  Molly looked at her more closely.  A white sweater was wrapped around her neck and draped over her shoulders with the sleeves hanging down beside her arms.  She wore a plain blue dress that stopped at her shins.  The dress was long sleeved with white lace peeking out of the cuffs.  The same lace bordered the collar.  A thin black belt encircled her waist.  She folded her hands in front of her.  Her thumbs were spinning around each other as she waited for an answer.

  “We are doing an observation drill,” Miss Marvel explained.  “It is one of Sherlock Holmes’ skills that we are trying to learn.  We were all at the dance and this is a map of the layout of the gym that night.  How did we do?”

  Molly noticed that Mrs. Young’s thumbs stopped spinning as she smiled and said to them, “It looks pretty accurate to me.  Good afternoon.”  She turned and left the room.  The room remained quiet until the sound of her footsteps faded away.

  “Whew!” Bev said as she leaned back in her chair.

  “Why did you tell her the truth?” Ted asked Miss Marvel.

  “Sometimes,” Miss Marvel said as she began to lay out the fingerprint slides in their previous formation.  “Stating the obvious is the most disarming.”

  “What does that mean?” Ted asked her.

  “It means this, she knows this is the Whodunnit Club and we are studying Sherlock Holmes.  The observation drill makes sense, so she was satisfied.”

  “How do you know that?” Ted continued to ask questions.

  “Her thumbs stopped spinning,” Molly answered for Miss Marvel.  “She relaxed, Ted, she relaxed.”

  Miss Marvel’s eyes glanced up from what she was doing and met Molly’s eyes.  She smiled at her and said, “Thank you, Ted.  Keep asking questions.  Now, let’s talk about what is in front of us.  We have nine fingerprints.  What do we do?”

  “We need to figure out a way to narrow down our suspect pool,” Jason said.

  “Why don’t we figure out who isn’t a suspect?” Bev asked the group.

  “What do you mean?” Ted asked the obvious question.

  “Who do we know that might have touched those boxes?” Bev answered with a question.

  “Good idea,”  Miss Marvel said.  “Let’s brainstorm but let’s do it in an orderly fashion.  We will go around our circle and when it is your turn, say one name, and then we will move on to the next person.  If you cannot think of one, say pass.  When we all say pass, we will stop and that will be our list.  Bev, you begin.  Remember to write down everyone’s choice.  Let’s first focus on the photo booth box.”

  “Ok, Mr. Rogers,” Bev said as wrote in the notebook.

 They continued around the circle until everyone couldn’t come up with anymore names and then they started again for the cooking club money box.  In the end, there were thirteen names, three adults and the rest were kids.  Ten students to fingerprint.

  “Okay,” Miss Marvel said.  “We now know whose prints we need to be sure to keep Friday.  Oh, and I think it would be good idea if we volunteered to work the event so we can set aside their print cards for the kids.  How do we get the adult prints?”

  “We ask them?”  Jason said.  “It’s the least they can do.  In fact, I can ask them and get them, if you want?”

  “Okay, Jason,”  Miss Marvel agreed.  “But take Ted with you.  He needs the fingerprinting practice, too.”

  “I just thought of something,” Molly said.  “We have to remember to get our fingerprints because we might have touched the boxes, too.”

  “That’s right.  I have those in my office locked in my desk,”  Miss Marvel said.  “I have a question for the group.  How do we view these prints to compare to the ones we will be getting on the fingerprint cards?

  “Well,” Harold spoke up. “Maybe we can take photos of them and have real slides made from them.  We can have those done overnight at one of those Fotomat booths that are in parking lots.”

  “That is a great idea,” Mis Marvel said.  “Who has a good camera available to do that?”

  Molly raised her hand and said, “I do.”

To be continued…