Edgar Allan's Official Crime Investigation Notebook (13 page)

Maia threw her a surprised look.

“Sure!” Mr. Crew said.

Edgar raised his hand. “Can we write a play instead of a poem?”

“Absolutely. Plays can be written in poetry form,” Mr. Crew said. “The most famous plays—Shakespeare's plays—were all written in verse.”

Edgar, Destiny, and Taz exchanged smiles.

“You can work anywhere in the room as long as you're reasonably quiet,” Mr. Crew added.

Taz pointed to the back of the room, where Mr. Crew had a beanbag chair, and the trio rushed over. Edgar couldn't help noticing that Maia looked a little disappointed when she saw her former best friend eager to work with them, as if it was okay for Maia to have a new friend, but not Destiny. He smiled.

All period they worked on the script, and they secretly rehearsed the play all during recess.

When they came back in for social studies, they asked Mr. Crew if they could perform it.

“How long is it?” he asked.

“Short and sweet,” Taz said. “Actually, short and spicy!”

Mr. Crew laughed. “Go for it. We're all ears.”

“That's a metaphor!” Kip called out.

Mr. Crew smiled. “Metaphor spotting! This is great!”

Edgar, Taz, and Destiny took their places.

“Can we have popcorn?” Kip asked.

Mr. Crew laughed. “Popcorn is for movies, Kip. This is live theater!
Shh!
”

As narrator, Destiny was the first to speak. “Presenting ‘The Tale of Glurpy' by Edgar Allan, Taz Raskel, and Destiny Perkins.”

Edgar added, “All characters are fictional. Any resemblance to any person is coincidental.”

Taz stuck his hands out like fins, and Edgar hid behind the door.

NARRATOR (DESTINY)
:

One dark and dreary morning long ago

A happy goldfish swam inside his home.

GLURPY
(
TAZ
, flapping his hands and using a fishy voice):

How I do love to flap my little fins

For when I race against myself I win!

Taz ran around in a circle, flapping his hands and making fish faces, and then he pretended to win.

NARRATOR
:

Next to the fishie lived a crazy dude

Who'd rather read and write than eat his food.

All day he read and wrote poems with such glee.

He wished the world loved poems as much as he.

CRAZY DUDE
(
EDGAR
, rubbing his hands):

I have a plan that is so cleverish

I'm going to sneak into this room and steal the fish!

In place of Glurpy I will leave a poem

And then I'll take the stolen goldie home.

My students then will find the poem and read it

and think that poetry is great. Nothing can beat it!

Edgar tiptoed across the room and taped a note to the board. Then he grabbed Taz by the arm. Taz yelped and flapped his fins.

GLURPY
:

Put me back, you crazy dude! Right now!

CRAZY DUDE
:

I didn't know that fish could talk back!

Wow!

NARRATOR
:

Soon many students read the poem he left.

They loved it. “Poems are worth a little theft.”

From that day on, they read poems old and new.

The thief was glad. His name

was…Mr….

Destiny paused for effect.

“Mr. Crew!?” Maia exclaimed.

“Mr. Crew?” Patrick echoed.

Destiny said her last line. “The thief was glad. His name was Mr. Drew. The end.”

“Well. Well. Well.” Mr. Crew stood up. “What a fascinating play about a fish named Glurpy and a fascinating ‘crazy dude' named Mr. Drew.”

The class grew very quiet.

Edgar's heart began to pound. Mr. Crew's eyeballs were looking right at him, and they looked guilty!

“Where did you get your inspiration for this play?” their teacher asked.

Edgar glanced at Destiny and Taz. They both nodded their heads as if to say Go for it. He cleared his throat. “Before I answer that, may I ask you a few questions, Mr. Crew?”

“Go right ahead, Edgar.” Mr. Crew sat on the edge of his desk.

Edgar began to pace back and forth at the front of the room. “You don't like coffee, do you, Mr. Crew?”

“No I don't.”

Edgar pointed to Mr. Crew's electric teapot. “You make tea right here in your room, don't you?”

“Yes I do.”

Patrick interrupted. “I don't see what this has—”

Taz held up his hand. “Let Edgar finish.”

“Thank you, Taz,” Edgar said. He turned his attention back to Mr. Crew and picked up his teacup. “You made a cup this morning, didn't you?”

“Yes I did.”

“At about what time?”

“At about 9:00 o'clock.”

Edgar lifted the teabag out of the trash can. “Hmmm. I see it's ‘Tennyson Tea.' Isn't that your favorite brand?”

“Yes it is. It's delicious.”

“But you ran out of Tennyson Tea last Friday, didn't you, Mr. Crew?”

“Yes I did.”

“Did you purchase tea over the weekend?”

“Well . . . no I didn't.”

“I see. Then where did you get this tea?”

Mr. Crew smiled.

“You stole the tea from Ms. Herschel's room, didn't you, Mr. Crew?”

Patrick huffed. “Why would he steal his own gift?”

Edgar ignored him. “You stole the goldfish and the iris and the fan and the tea, didn't you, Mr. Crew?”

A buzz of excitement went through the classroom.

“You're not supposed to make an accusation unless you have proof,” Patrick said.

“I know.” Edgar smiled. “May I continue?”

Mr. Crew crossed his arms. “Go right ahead.”

Edgar nodded. “The first theft occurred on Tuesday, October 2. That's the same day we began our poetry unit. You said, ‘how lucky' because you could use the metaphor of the poem left by the thief to teach us about metaphor. Well, you stole the goldfish and left that note for a ‘good reason', didn't you, Mr. Crew? It was to get us interested in poetry.”

“What a fascinating idea!”

“You love poetry, and you wanted to teach us that every poem is like a little mystery that is waiting to be
solved. So you created little mysteries for us to try to get our attention. You snuck into Ms. Herschel's room when she went out for coffee. The third time, Ms. Herschel locked her door, so you asked Mr. Browning to unlock it for you. You told him that you needed to borrow her calculator, didn't you? The fourth time, you saw Patrick and his dad installing the video device, so you waited until they were gone, then you asked Mr. Browning to unlock the door again—so you could return the calculator, you said. And you snuck in, careful not to be filmed. You stole a goldfish, an iris, a fan, and some tea. What do all those things have in common? Well, the goldfish was a gift from Maia to the class, the iris was a gift from you to Ms. Herschel, the fan was a gift from a Spanish student to Ms. Herschel, and the tea was supposed to be a gift to you. They are all gifts. And if you take the first letter of each of those objects you get ‘g-i-f-t.' ”

Edgar pointed to the message that Mr. Crew had painted on the wall.

A POEM IS A GIFT.

Mr. Crew smiled. “Well. You have quite a theory. But I still don't see the proof.”

Edgar walked over to Mr. Crew's closet and opened the door. With a flourish, he removed a sweatshirt that was blocking the front of the middle shelf. One by one Edgar set the stolen objects on Mr. Crew's desk: the silk iris, the lovely black and red fan, and the box of tea.

A pair of black gloves came next. “I believe you wore these gloves to prevent your fingerprints from being left
at the scene of the crimes,” Edgar said. Then he held out the final evidence: an empty goldfish bowl and a net. “You didn't want to hurt Slurpy, so you transferred the fish to another tank in this bowl. Am I right?”

Edgar's classmates stared at the empty bowl.

Mr. Crew clapped. “Bravo! You have done it! I am the thief!”

The class erupted.

“Where is Slurpy?” Maia asked.

“Safe and sound in Ms. Barrett's tank,” Mr. Crew said. “Excellent detective work and a very cool idea to put on the play.”

“That was Destiny's idea,” Edgar said.

“But Edgar is the one who solved the mystery,” Destiny said.

“Well done, Edgar.”

Everyone clapped. Edgar looked around. It was as if he were onstage and the spotlight was shining right on him.

“Edgar, would you and your fellow actors like to get Slurpy and return everything to Ms. Herschel?” Mr. Crew asked.

Edgar nodded eagerly. He, Taz, and Destiny raced to the kindergarten room. Being the only ones in the hallway made them feel important.

“Well, I guess my fish-sitting days are over,” Ms. Barrett said.

She helped the trio put some aquarium water in Mr. Crew's empty fish bowl and then let Edgar scoop Slurpy out of the tank and drop him into the bowl.

“Slurpy and the other fish were very compatible,” she said. “Why don't you take along another fish to keep Slurpy company?”

Edgar, Taz, and Destiny thought that was a great idea and chose a gold fish with red-tipped fins named Fred.

When they arrived at Ms. Herschel's room, Ms. Herschel was sitting alone at her desk.

“You solved it!?” she asked when she saw them walk in with the goods.

“It was Mr. Crew!” Edgar said.

She smiled and said, “Great job.”

“Hey,” Taz said. “Were you and Mr. Crew partners in crime?”

She laughed. “Mr. Crew told me what he was going to do,” she admitted. “From what I hear, his little idea worked. He said you all wrote a lot of great poetry in the past two weeks. It also inspired some real forensic studying, especially from Patrick, which was very cool.”

Gently they poured the fish into the newly-cleaned tank.

“Welcome home, Slurpy,” Destiny said. “And welcome to your new home, Fred.”

On their way back to Mr. Crew's classroom, Taz said, “Did you see the look on Patrick's face when Edgar revealed the stuff in the closet?”

“I thought he looked sad,” Destiny said.

“Jealous,” Taz said.

“Maybe jealous and sad at the same time,” Destiny said.

Edgar knew he'd be jealous and sad if Patrick had been the crime solver.

“I realized something sad,” Destiny said. “No more thefts.”

“You're right,” Edgar said. “It's going to feel funny not to have a mystery to solve.” But with teachers like Mr. Crew and Ms. Herschel, it was still bound to be a good year, he thought.

The rest of the afternoon passed quickly. After PE, they went back to Ms. Herschel's room for final dismissal.
While everyone was busy getting their backpacks ready for the end of the day, Edgar noticed Patrick walk over to the trash can and drop his crime investigation notebook in with a
clunk
.

The principal's voice came over the intercom, announcing that walkers were dismissed.

As Patrick left the room, Edgar crossed over to the garbage can, quickly pulled out the discarded notebook, and slipped it into his own backpack.

That evening at dinner, Edgar told the entire story about how Mr. Crew planned and carried out his mysterious plot and how he, Edgar, solved it with the help of his friends. Henri didn't interrupt once, his parents were on the edge of their seats, and Rosy was riveted.

“A genius!” his father exclaimed.

His mom planted a red kiss on his cheek. “We're so proud of you!”

Rosy said, “Goo! Goo!”

Even Henri said, “Yeah. Nice job, bro.”

Edgar couldn't remember ever being as happy.

After dinner, his dad suggested they leave the dishes for a little while. He strapped Rosy onto his back and they all headed out to the front yard, which was nice and flat, to play croquet. When his mom won and did a cartwheel, they all started doing cartwheels, and Edgar noticed with glee that his cartwheel had improved greatly. Then Edgar taught Rosy how to do a somersault, which made her squeal.

Mr. Timmid came out and laughed and said, “You guys are the craziest bunch I've ever seen.”

“Come and join us,” Tubby yelled.

Their neighbor hesitated for a moment, and then he crossed the street. There was something so wonderful about seeing Mr. Timmid trying to do a cartwheel that it made Edgar want to laugh and cry at the same time. He looked at his parents' goofy smiles and imagined how much joy they must bring to sick kids every day, and his heart danced with love and pride.

Nothing could spoil Edgar's mood. Even when it was time to go in and do homework, there was a bright side: At least it was Henri's turn to do the dishes.

After Edgar finished his homework he remembered Patrick's notebook in his backpack. He settled into the comfy reading chair in their living room and, while his parents rehearsed the duet that they were going to play for the Cabaret, Edgar opened it up. Page after page of notes about evidence and suspects in Patrick's careful handwriting. Edgar felt a pang of guilt about reading it, but then he reminded himself that Patrick had thrown it away. Edgar kept turning the pages until he saw the poems.