Sam the Man & the Secret Detective Club Plan Read online

  To Xyrell Goldston, Star Reader and All-Around Good Guy

  —F. O. D.

  To Xyven and Sean and “The case of Mom’s missing cheese puffs”

  —A. J. B.

  * * *

  Chapter One

  * * *

  Sam the Detective Man

  Sam Graham was a mystery man.

  Doing detective work had never been his plan, but when his sister lost her sock, Sam discovered he had a talent for figuring things out.

  The sock had pink and purple stripes. Annabelle had looked for it under her bed and behind the dryer and inside her book bag, but the sock was nowhere to be found.

  “Did you check your sock drawer?” Sam had asked when they discussed the case at the dinner table.

  “Of course I checked my sock drawer,” Annabelle said. “That was the first place I looked.”

  Sam thought about this for a moment. “Did you check every sock ball in your sock drawer? It was Dad’s week to fold the laundry, and he always makes sock balls out of the socks.”

  “It’s the best way to keep socks together,” Sam’s dad said.

  Sam pointed a broccoli stalk at his dad. “But this week when you folded the laundry you were watching TV at the same time, right?”

  “That’s right,” Sam’s dad said. “The Monday-night football game was on. But what’s that got to do with anything?”

  “You always fold stuff in the same order,” Sam explained. “Shirts, pants, T-shirts, underwear, socks. By the time you get to socks, I bet you’re pretty bored.”

  Sam’s dad shrugged. “Sure, I guess you could say that.”

  “Plus, you were pretty into the football game by then, am I right?” Sam asked.

  “You are indeed right, Sam the Man,” his dad replied.

  “Okay,” Sam said. “Here’s my idea. You accidentally made a sock ball out of socks that didn’t match. I bet if Annabelle went through her sock balls, she’d find her pink-and-purple–striped sock. You can only see the outside sock of a sock ball. The missing sock could be an inside sock.”

  “I’ll go check,” Annabelle said.

  Two minutes later, she came downstairs waving a pink-and-purple–striped sock. “Sherlock Sam was right! Dad mixed up the socks.”

  Sam’s dad smiled. “Very smart, Sam the Man. But what about the first sock—I mean the pink-and-purple–striped sock that wasn’t lost? Why wasn’t it in a mismatched sock ball too?”

  “That’s easy,” Annabelle said, sitting back down at the table. “I never wash it. It’s my lucky sock, and if I washed it, all of its good luck would get rinsed out.”

  “You never wash it?” Sam’s mom asked. “As in never ever?”

  “Never ever,” Annabelle said. “I depend on that sock.”

  She turned to Sam. “You’re a good detective. You should start your own detective agency.”

  That sounded like a good plan to Sam. Maybe he could even charge money for solving mysteries. If he started a club for detectives, they could work on a lot of cases at once. That way they could make lots of money and also maybe get a little bit famous.

  Sam liked the idea of being rich and a little bit famous.

  Walking to the bus stop on Monday morning, Sam decided to ask his best friend, Gavin, about starting a detective club together.

  “I don’t know,” Gavin said after they’d gotten on the bus and Sam had explained his plan. “I mean, I like the idea of being a detective. But finding missing socks doesn’t sound very exciting to me.”

  “We’d work on bigger cases than that,” Sam said. “Stuff like stolen diamonds and kidnapped cats. It’ll be great.”

  “Kidnapped cats?” Gavin said. “When has anyone ever kidnapped a cat?”

  Sam scrambled to come up with a better example of a mystery they could solve. “Okay, what about that time last year when someone stole Miss Fran’s coffee cup and it was never found?”

  Miss Fran was their art teacher. She’d been very sad about her missing coffee cup.

  Gavin remembered. “Yeah, that cup had a picture of her dog on it. She was really upset.”

  “If we’d had a detective club, we could have cracked that case,” Sam argued. “We could have saved Miss Fran’s coffee cup!”

  “I’ve always wanted to be in a club,” Gavin said, and Sam could tell he was getting convinced. “That’s the problem with second grade, in my opinion—there aren’t any clubs. Well, unless you count the Clean Hands Before Lunch Club, which I don’t.”

  “We could have other people in our club too,” Sam said. “I think we need at least four people to be a real club.”

  Gavin thought about this. “But what kind of people? Some people I know would make terrible detectives. Like Morris Branch. Any time we have to take our shoes off for PE, he can never find them later.”

  “Or Rosie Schute,” Sam added. “She always gets lost from the group when we go on field trips. I think detectives should be able to find their group at the zoo.”

  “Okay, we need a list of what a good detective should be like,” Gavin said, pulling a notebook and a pencil out of his backpack. “First of all, they should be good at figuring out clues.”

  Sam nodded. “And they should just—know stuff, I guess.”

  “They should be able to make good guesses!” Gavin said, writing in his notebook. “Guessing good is important. Also, they need to be good at writing things down.”

  “And asking questions,” Sam said.

  Gavin nodded. “That’s a lot of stuff detectives need to be good at. So who do you think we should ask?”

  “I’m not sure about everyone yet exactly,” Sam said. “But I know who we should start with.”

  “Who?” Gavin asked.

  “The smartest person in our class, of course,” Sam said.

  “That makes sense,” Gavin said. “Are you thinking who I’m thinking?”

  The bus pulled up in front of the school. Sam stood and picked up his backpack. “I bet I am,” he said. “So let’s go ask.”

  * * *

  Chapter Two

  * * *

  The Hard Kind of Puzzles

  Emily Early was sitting at her desk in Mr. Pell’s second-grade classroom. She was reading a book about birds.

  Emily Early was always reading books about birds. Looking at birds was her hobby, and she probably knew more about birds than anyone else in the whole school.

  “What’s the best way to ask her?” Gavin whispered to Sam as they walked into the classroom. “Should we tell her she’ll get a prize for joining? You know, a detective club T-shirt or something?”

  Sam shook his head. “I think we should just tell her why we think she would like our club.”

  “She’d like it because she’s smart, right?” Gavin asked.

  “Sort of,” Sam said. “Solving mysteries is like doing puzzles, and doing puzzles is something really smart people like to do.”

  “I’m only above-average smart, but I like doing puzzles,” Gavin said.

  “You like doing big-piece jigsaw puzzles,” Sam pointed out. “I’m talking about puzzles that are hard.”

  “Oh, you meant hard puzzles,” Gavin said. “I get it now.”

  Emily looked up and smiled when Sam and Gavin reached her desk. “Have you ever seen a picture of a greater prairie chicken?” she asked them. “It has feathers sticking up from its head that look like bunny ears.”

  “That’s cool!” Gavin said. “I wish I had those!”

  “Have you ever seen a greater prairie chicken in real life?” Sam asked.

  “They’re very
rare,” Emily said. “But maybe one day I’ll get lucky.”

  “You could be a prairie chicken detective!” Gavin said. “And if you join our club, we could help you!”

  “We’re starting a detective club,” Sam explained. “To solve mysteries. We were wondering if you wanted to join.”

  “Because you’re so smart and everything,” Gavin added.

  “No one’s ever asked me to be in a club before,” Emily said, sounding surprised. “Who else is a member?”

  “Just us so far,” Sam said. “We’re still deciding who to ask besides you.”

  “You asked me first?” Emily’s cheeks turned red.

  “Of course,” Gavin said.

  “So are you in?” Sam asked.

  Emily nodded. “I’m in.”

  Gavin high-fived her. “Excellent! Let’s meet at recess and decide who else to ask.”

  “That sounds like a plan,” said Sam.

  Emily grinned. “I like making plans.”

  “Sam’s the champion plan-maker,” Gavin told Emily, and Sam gave a shrug. It was true: Sam Graham was the best at making plans.

  But who was best at everything else?

  Sam, Gavin, and Emily met by the monkey bars at recess. Emily pulled out a little square of paper from her pocket and unfolded it. “I’ve been working on some ideas about who to ask to join our club,” she said. “First I think we should ask someone with good handwriting to take notes on our cases.”

  “I have terrible handwriting,” Gavin said. “But that’s okay, because I can just type stuff up on the computer.”

  “But we won’t always have a computer with us when we’re working on a case,” Sam said. “In fact, we probably hardly ever will.”

  “That’s my point,” Emily said. “But it would be good if someone could carry a notebook and write stuff down. In my opinion, Marja has the best handwriting in our class.”

  “She does really good Gs,” Gavin agreed. “I like someone who can do a good G.”

  “Plus, she has binoculars,” Emily said. “It’s always good to have a pair of binoculars when you’re looking for things. So that would be another good reason to have her in our club.”

  “Okay, let’s ask Marja,” Sam said. “We also could use someone who’s really good at math. Math people are good at figuring things out.”

  “Rashid!” Gavin and Emily said at the same time. Rashid was the best math person in their class. He could subtract numbers like seventeen-minus-six without even blinking.

  “And someone who’s really strong,” Gavin added. “In case a bad guy tries to beat us up.”

  “I don’t think we’re going to do cases with bad guys in them,” Sam said. At least he hoped not.

  “Well, what if we’re working on a case where we’re looking for a lost dog, and we finally find it but it’s really big and nobody but a superstrong person could pick it up?” Gavin asked.

  “Someone strong could come in handy for lots of reasons,” Emily said, “especially if they’re tall too.”

  “I think we should ask Will,” Gavin said. “He’s the best athlete and the second-tallest person in our class.”

  “Plus, people like him,” Emily pointed out. “He would be good at getting suspects to spill their secrets.”

  Sam thought that figuring out who to ask to join their club was almost like solving their first mystery. It was fun to solve mysteries with other people, he decided. It was like having a computer made out of a bunch of brains stuck together.

  “I think we should write Marja, Rashid, and Will letters to ask them to join,” Emily said. “We can give them their letters in the morning, and if they want to be in our club, they could meet us at the monkey bars at recess.”

  Gavin jumped up and down. “I’ll write the letters! I’ll do it on the computer so that they look official!”

  “Now all we need to decide is where to meet,” Sam told Gavin and Emily. “Every club needs a meeting place.”

  “How about here on the playground?” Emily suggested.

  Sam shook his head. “We should probably meet where no one can hear us when we’re talking about clues, in case they’re top secret.”

  Gavin raised his hand. “Like maybe a closet?”

  “Too small,” Sam said.

  The bell rang for the end of recess. “I can’t think of any place,” Emily said as they walked back to Mr. Pell’s class.

  “I’m out of ideas too,” Gavin said.

  “Me too,” Sam had to admit. “I guess we have a mystery to solve.”

  “We do?” Gavin looked confused. “What is it?”

  “The mystery of where our club should meet,” Sam said.

  “Ahh,” Gavin said. “That’s a good mystery. But how are we going to solve it?”

  Sam stood up straight, trying his best to look like a professional detective. “I’m not sure,” he said. “But I know someone who can help.”

  * * *

  Chapter Three

  * * *

  The Clubhouse Plan

  After Sam got home from school and ate two frozen waffles and drank a glass of orange juice, he went across the street to pick up his neighbor Mr. Stockfish. Every afternoon, he and Mr. Stockfish visited their chickens in Mrs. Kerner’s backyard. It was a walk that would have taken Sam three minutes by himself, but Mr. Stockfish liked to move at a very slow pace, so together it took them at least ten.

  “I thought about having our meetings at the chicken coop,” Sam said after he told Mr. Stockfish about the detective club plan. “But chickens can be pretty noisy. Plus, Gavin is the only club member besides me who lives in this neighborhood. So people would have to get their moms to drive them, and then the moms would probably want to bring snacks to the club meetings.”

  “What’s wrong with snacks?” Mr. Stockfish asked, stopping to examine a bush. “I thought that second graders loved snacks.”

  “It’s not really the snacks,” Sam said. “The problem is the moms. They’d probably want to organize everything and make all the rules. I don’t want it to be the kind of club where moms are in charge. I want the kids to be in charge.”

  Mr. Stockfish thought about this. “How many kids are we talking about?”

  Sam added it up in his head. If everyone they asked to join said yes, there would be Gavin, Will, Rashid, Emily, and Marja.

  “Five people,” Sam reported. “No, make that six. I forgot to add me.”

  “That’s a good size for a club—not too big, not too small,” Mr. Stockfish said with a nod of approval. “Have you thought about having the meetings at school?”

  “We want the meetings to be sort of secret,” Sam explained. “It’s hard to be secret at school.”

  “Sometimes the best secrets are hidden in plain sight,” Mr. Stockfish said, sounding mysterious.

  “I don’t even know what that means,” said Sam.

  Mr. Stockfish leaned down to examine a pile of twigs and dry grass on the sidewalk. “What if you and your friends pretended to be a different kind of club? You could say you were a book club. My daughter Judy has a book club that meets at our house every three weeks. No one ever talks about books though.”

  “So you’re saying that maybe they’re not a book club at all? Maybe they’re actually a detective club?”

  “It’s possible,” Mr. Stockfish said. He scooped up the pile of twigs and dry grass and showed it to Sam. “Just as it’s possible this is an old robin’s nest. Actually, this is a robin’s nest.”

  Sam looked at the nest. He thought it was neat that Mr. Stockfish knew what kind of bird it belonged to. Sam wondered if Mr. Stockfish was a bird-watcher like Emily Early. Emily spent every weekend going on bird-watching trips with her family. She kept a list of every kind of bird she’d ever seen. She should probably start a bird-watching club—

  Wait a minute.

  Sam the Man had come up with a plan.

  “I don’t think anyone would believe us if we said we were a book club,” Sam told Mr. S
tockfish. “But we could say we were a bird-watching club and everyone would believe it. Emily, who’s in our club? She’s a bird-watching fanatic.”

  “And since you’re a known chicken fanatic, no one will think it strange you’ve branched out to other winged creatures,” Mr. Stockfish said, laying the nest on the grass.

  “I don’t think I’m a chicken fanatic,” Sam said. “I just like chickens a lot.”

  “There are worse things to like,” Mr. Stockfish said. “Speaking of chickens, I hear our little flock now.”

  They’d arrived at the top of Mrs. Kerner’s driveway. Sam could hear the chickens clucking and clacking. As he and Mr. Stockfish walked toward the backyard, he wondered if Mrs. Haynie, the school librarian, would let them hold meetings in the library at recess, especially if they said they were a bird-watching club. He bet librarians loved bird-watching clubs. He could ask Mrs. Haynie to help them research different birds, so no one would get suspicious and figure out they were really a detective club, especially not Mrs. Haynie.

  Hiding in plain sight. It sounded like a plan to Sam.

  * * *

  Chapter Four

  * * *

  The World’s Best Detective Club

  The next day Sam and Gavin got off the school bus and hurried to their classroom. When they got there, Gavin pulled out three envelopes from his backpack. “We’ll know by recess if they want to join or not,” he said. “The letter I wrote is pretty good, so I bet they’ll say yes.”

  “Then once we have all our club members, we could go to the library and ask Mrs. Haynie if we can hold our meetings there,” Sam said. He had told Gavin his library idea on the bus ride to school.

  “Our bird-watching club meetings!” Gavin said, giggling. “We’ll promise to be be quiet as mice. Wait a minute—do birds eat mice?”