Jones & Parker Case Files Read online

  Jones and Parker Case Files: Sixteen Mysteries to Solve Yourself

  © 2015 Focus on the Family

  A Focus on the Family book published by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188

  Adventures in Odyssey and Focus on the Family and its accompanying logo and design are federally registered trademarks of Focus on the Family, 8605 Explorer Drive, Colorado Springs, CO 80920.

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  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of Focus on the Family.

  Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holman Christian Standard Bible,® copyright © 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2009 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Holman Christian Standard Bible,® Holman CSB,® and HCSB® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.

  Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the Holy Bible, King James Version.

  Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version,® NIV.® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.®

  Editor: Jesse Florea

  Design by Beth Sparkman

  Cover and interior illustrations by Gary Locke

  These stories were previously published in Adventures in Odyssey Clubhouse magazine, formerly named Focus on the Family Clubhouse.

  ISBN 978-1-58997-806-5

  For manufacturing information regarding this product, please call 1-800-323-9400.

  Printed in the United States of America

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  ISBN 978-1-62405-459-4 (ePub); ISBN 978-1-62405-460-0 (Kindle); ISBN 978-1-62405-458-7 (Apple)

  Build: 2015-04-22 11:54:29

  Contents

  Case File #2010-01: Case of the Sealed Safe

  Case File #2010-06: Mystery of the Vanishing Paint

  Case File #2010-11: Thanksgiving Rush

  Case File #2011-06: Ant Farm Agony

  Case File #2011-09: The Math Problem

  Case File #2011-11: The Wayward Whirlybird

  Case File #2011-12: Eugene’s Not-So-Bright Idea

  Case File #2012-06: Penny’s Not-So-Green Thumb

  Case File #2012-09: Bully Brouhaha

  Case File #2012-10: The Tool Tussle

  Case File #2012-11: Scream for Ice Cream

  Case File #2013-05: Case of the Missing Dinner Date

  Case File #2013-06: The Open-and-Shut Case

  Case File #2013-07: It’s Not Easy Being Green

  Case File #2013-09: The Fluffy Caper

  Case File #2014-05: Table for Who?

  Case Solved! “Case of the Sealed Safe”

  “Mystery of the Vanishing Paint”

  “Thanksgiving Rush”

  “Ant Farm Agony”

  “The Math Problem”

  “The Wayward Whirlybird”

  “Eugene’s Not-So-Bright Idea”

  “Penny’s Not-So-Green Thumb”

  “Bully Brouhaha”

  “The Tool Tussle”

  “Scream for Ice Cream”

  “Case of the Missing Dinner Date”

  “The Open-and-Shut Case”

  “It’s Not Easy Being Green”

  “The Fluffy Caper”

  “Table for Who?”

  Matthew Parker’s Secret Codes Matthew Parker’s Mystery Decoder

  Matthew Parker’s Mother’s Day Decoder

  Matthew Parker’s Web Decoder

  IN THE DETECTIVE AGENCY BUSINESS, cases can show up in the most unlikely places. Take last Monday, for example. My protégé, Matthew Parker, and I were waiting to get flu shots in the office of Dr. Lilly Graham, a new doctor in Odyssey. We went early so we wouldn’t miss too many classes at school.

  I have to admit, doctors’ offices make me nervous—something about the smell of rubbing alcohol and disinfectant. This office was especially creepy because no other patients had arrived. Come to think of it, the receptionist hadn’t even arrived.

  Suddenly from the back room, I heard a loud splat and a shriek of “Oh no!”

  Just as suddenly, my detective instincts kicked in. “Hurry, Matthew. Someone’s in trouble!”

  I followed the sound down a hall to a quaint office. Freshly opened packing boxes and papers littered the floor. A small woman, who appeared older than my mother but younger than my grandmother, was looking over a puddle of coffee on her desk. The tipped-over cup told me what I needed to know. The stethoscope around the woman’s neck told me the rest.

  Dr. Graham had spilled her coffee.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “I’m just fine. Thanks for asking,” the woman answered as she mopped up coffee with a paper towel.

  “I’m Emily Jones, and this is Matthew Parker,” I said.

  “Jones and Parker?” she said. “As in the Jones and Parker Detective Agency?”

  “You’ve heard of us?” Matthew said, wide-eyed.

  “A patient told me about you yesterday,” Dr. Graham said. “You solved the mystery of his missing bow tie.”

  “Ah!” I said, remembering the case. “Alan Jakes and the Case of the Missing Neck Adornment.”

  Dr. Graham smiled. “It’s good you’re here this morning, because I now have a mystery to solve.”

  My ears perked up.

  “A mystery?” Matthew asked. “Here? Now?”

  Dr. Graham nodded. “That’s right. I can’t open the safe. I was about to call a locksmith, but since you’re here—”

  “My sidekick and I would love to help!” I said.

  “I’m her partner,” Matthew said.

  “Sidekick,” I whispered to Dr. Graham.

  “I’m right here,” Matthew said. “I can hear you.”

  Dr. Graham looked amused. “This is a first for me. I’ve never worked with such a young detective agency before.”

  “You can count on us!” I said, grabbing my detective notebook from my pocket. “Start from the top and leave nothing out.”

  Dr. Graham reached down and opened a large cabinet door. Inside was a black safe with a gold dial on the front. “This is the problem.”

  “It’s a safe!” Matthew said.

  I smiled. “He’s keen at observation.”

  Matthew rolled his eyes.

  “So what’s the problem with it?” I asked.

  “Well, as you may know,” Dr. Graham said, “the previous doctor retired and handed his practice over to me. I was trying to get things organized when I found a note from Dr. Swink that said he put some patient files in the safe. But I don’t have the combination.”

  “Did he forget to leave it for you?” I asked.

  “No, Dr. Swink is one of the most meticulous people I’ve ever met. He left the combination in a note taped to the front of the safe. I had just pulled it off when my coffee spilled on it.”

  With two fingers she held up a small piece of notebook paper drenched in brown liquid. Only the top and bottom of the note were readable. The note was written in blue ink with a ballpoint pen, and the handwriting was neat.

  I read:

  I looked at the paper for a few moments, trying to decipher what I could.

  “Why not just contact Dr. Swink?” Matthew asked.

  “He’s vacationing where there�
��s no phone or email service on a remote island in the Caribbean,” she replied.

  “I could fly down and talk to him,” I offered.

  “I need those records today,” Dr. Graham said, smiling at me.

  A chime rang in the lobby, and Dr. Graham jumped up. “That must be my receptionist. I’ll be right back.”

  “We’ll keep sleuthing,” I said.

  “This is a tough one,” Matthew said.

  I knelt down and skimmed my finger along the bottom of the safe. I grabbed the handle and pulled. It clicked but didn’t open. I spun the dial and tried again. Nothing happened.

  I turned my attention to the soaked note and noticed that the paper was the same color and size as a nearby notepad.

  “May I borrow your pencil?” I asked Matthew.

  He pulled it out from behind his ear. “What are you up to?” he asked.

  “This is an old trick used by private eyes.” I pressed the edge of the pencil against the top sheet of the notepad and lightly rubbed the gray lead back and forth.

  “I get it!” Matthew said. “If Dr. Swink wrote a note on the top page of the pad, the pressure of the pen would make an impression on the page underneath.”

  “That’s right.” I held up the paper. We could see the impression of Dr. Swink’s neat handwriting.

  “Brilliant!” Matthew said.

  “Mere detective work,” I said, then frowned. “But this isn’t the note he wrote to Dr. Graham.”

  “It looks like some kind of checklist,” Matthew observed.

  “He made a checklist on his last day in the office,” I said.

  Matthew shook his head. “He was really detailed. Look, he even scheduled time to ‘remember.’”

  “Interesting,” I said. “Who schedules time to remember?”

  Matthew laughed and pointed to the third check. “He left a cod on the safe. I bet that fish started to smell!”

  I wasn’t amused. “No, the e just didn’t show through. It says he left the code on the safe.”

  Matthew pointed to numbers at the top. “Is that the code?”

  “I assume that’s the date he wrote the note,” I said.

  Matthew and I peered at the safe once more. It stared back at us defiantly.

  Dr. Graham came back in the room. “Well? Have you figured out how to open the safe?”

  I nodded. “I think so.”

  Matthew’s eyebrows shot up. “What?!”

  “The answer has been right in front of us this entire time,” I stated.

  “I can’t wait to hear it!” Dr. Graham said.

  I told them my solution. And I was right.

  Do you know how Emily opened the safe?

  What are the clues?

  Turn to the “Case Solved!” section on page 100 to find out.

  “THERE’S MR. WHITTAKER!” my sidekick, Matthew Parker, shouted as he ran into the Hardware Emporium. I followed reluctantly, because we were in the middle of brainstorming mottos for our detective agency. I didn’t want to stop.

  The best we’d come up with so far was “Jones and Parker: We hit the marker.” We hadn’t been brainstorming long.

  “That’s the strangest thing,” Mr. Whittaker was saying to Mr. Watson, the owner of the hardware store. Then he turned to Matthew. “Well, hello there! What brings you by?”

  Matthew smiled and shrugged. “Emily and I were just brainstorming mottos for the detective agency. What do you think of this? ‘Jones and Parker: Mysteries are history.’”

  Mr. Whittaker’s white eyebrows rose. “Not bad. I’m actually in the middle of a mystery myself. Maybe your inventive minds could help.”

  My heart skipped a beat. I stepped forward. “The Jones and Parker Detective Agency can help. No mystery is too small, and neither are we!”

  Matthew leaned toward Mr. Whittaker and whispered, “The motto’s still being worked on.”

  Whit chuckled. “So I see.”

  “It’s really not much of a mystery,” Mr. Watson piped up. “Mr. Whittaker can’t find the paint he’s looking for.”

  “But I saw it in your shop not 30 minutes ago!” Whit said. “It was right over there.” He pointed toward the front window. “As I was walking by outside, I saw it clear as day: a whole stack of gallon-size paint canisters. The entire bottom row was bright green—exactly the color I need for my latest invention.”

  Matthew’s eyes lit up. “What’re you working on?”

  “Still top secret.” Mr. Whittaker winked.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” Mr. Watson said. “We haven’t sold any paint today. If we had green paint there, it would still be there.”

  Mr. Whittaker explained that he had seen the paint through the window, but stopped to talk to local handyman Red Hollard before buying it. Mr. Whittaker figured it would still be there when he returned since there was a large stack.

  I inspected the stack of paint cans still displayed by the window. Each canister was similar except for a label on the front, indicating the color. They were stacked in rows of blue, orange, purple, and yellow.

  “Mr. Watson, could one of your employees have moved some of the cans?” I asked.

  “Afraid not. I’m the only one here this morning,” Mr. Watson said. “And what you see is all we’ve got. But I’ll give you a good deal on another color, Whit.”

  Whit shook his head. “No, thank you. I really needed that green.”

  I wanted to believe Whit, but the evidence was stacked against him. (Yes, that pun was intended. Puns are staples in detective reports. And yes, that pun was intended, too.)

  Matthew crawled around on his knees, staring at the floor between the window and the first row of blue paint. He picked at the carpet fibers.

  “What are you looking for, Matthew?” I asked.

  “Evidence,” he said simply.

  “Matthew likes to get dirty,” I said. “That’s what makes us such good partners.”

  Matthew pumped his arm in victory. “She called me her partner!”

  I couldn’t believe I had let that slip. I wouldn’t want my sidekick to get a big head.

  “And, partner,” Matthew said, “I’m observing that there’s enough room between the window and the blue paint cans to fit a row of green paint . . . but there’s no indentation in the carpet.” He rubbed the window and left streaks in the yellowy dust that covered the bottom of it. “Are you sure of what you saw, Mr. Whittaker? The window’s pretty dirty.”

  Mr. Whittaker chuckled and removed his round glasses. “Maybe my glasses are failing. I guess that’s a good example of how our eyes can fool us. But I was sure of what I saw. There was a row of green cans. Right there. Oh well, I’ll get the paint somewhere else.”

  Mr. Whittaker turned to leave. I looked back at the stacks of paint cans. “Wait, Mr. Whittaker! I know what happened. You did see green paint!”

  How can Emily be certain?

  What are the clues?

  Turn to the “Case Solved!” section on page 101 to find out.

  BEING A PRIVATE investigator means being on your game at all times. Unfortunately, that can mean 5:00 a.m. on the day after Thanksgiving.

  My lug of a brother, Barrett, somehow talked me into getting up early so we could stand in line outside Greenblatt’s Department Store. He promised me I could find some great early-bird Christmas gifts for Mom and Dad . . . but I knew why he really wanted to go. He’d been saving for the Verminoids Special Edition video game.

  “They’re only releasing 10 games per store!” he exclaimed. “It has 20 new levels. Twenty!”

  Mom and Dad wouldn’t let him go alone, so I reluctantly volunteered on the condition that we would find Mom’s and Dad’s gifts first. I tried to get my sidekick, Matthew Parker, to join us, but he just laughed and said he’d think of me as he counted Zs.

  At exactly 5 o’clock, the clerk unlocked the door. The line of cold shoppers cheered.

  “Get ready to run!” Barrett shouted.

  Suddenly the doors
flew open and the crowd stampeded in. We squeezed our way in and headed to the music aisle. I spotted the CD Mom wanted and grabbed one from the stack on the endcap.

  “Got it!” I shouted triumphantly.

  “We gotta go! We gotta go!” Barrett shouted, pulling a wrinkled newspaper ad out of his pocket. He unfolded it quickly, slightly tearing the thin paper. “Dad would like this book.”

  I took the ad from him and scanned the store.

  “Over there!” I pointed to a large sign that read “BOOKS.”

  We dashed through the men’s clothing department and got to the book just before a crowd of others.

  “Got it!” Barrett handed the book to me. “Now to get my video game! This way.”

  As we arrived in the electronics department, a Greenblatt’s employee grabbed the sign above the Verminoids games. It read “VERMINOIDS SPECIAL EDITION—ONLY 10 GAMES LEFT!”

  With the bold stroke of his black permanent marker, the employee crossed out the number 10.

  Barrett’s face turned white.

  “Oh no,” he said. “We’re too late. They’re all out.”

  My stomach twisted. I felt horrible.

  “I’m so sorry, Barrett. I know you worked hard to save for your game.”

  “That’s all right,” he said, a disappointed look on his face. “At least we got Mom’s and Dad’s gifts. I’m thankful for that.”

  “Right. And you have a sister who’s willing to stand out in the freezing cold with you when she would have rather stayed in bed.”

  “Yeah, and that, too.” He smiled.

  As we turned to leave, the same employee drew the number “1” on the sign.

  Barrett’s eyes widened.

  “There’s one left!” Barrett shouted.

  Suddenly, my lug of a brother turned into a cross between a ninja and a ballet dancer. He vaulted into the air, spun in midleap, landed in front of the table, and snatched the remaining Verminoids Special Edition game.

  “Nice job,” the Greenblatt’s employee said, offering Barrett a high five.

  While Barrett did the chicken dance, I borrowed the employee’s marker and grabbed the game out of his hands.