The Riddle of the Red Purse Read online

  The Riddle of the Red Purse

  Patricia Reilly Giff

  Illustrated by Blanche Sims

  Love and welcome to

  Jeanne Patricia Lyons born August 9, 1986

  Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  A Biography of Patricia Reilly Giff

  CHAPTER 1

  MS. ROONEY WAS writing on the board.

  Dawn Bosco crossed her fingers.

  She saw Linda Lorca cross hers too.

  “Paper monitor,” Ms. Rooney wrote. “Sherri Dent.”

  Good. Dawn didn’t want to be paper monitor.

  “Erase boards,” Ms. Rooney wrote. “Jason Bazyk.”

  Dawn crossed her fingers harder.

  She was dying to be class president.

  She bet Linda Lorca was too.

  “Fish monitor: Jill Simon.”

  Dawn sat back. Who cared about being fish monitor?

  “I have fish at home,” Jill said. “Two guppies. One swordtail. Three—”

  Jill was always talking about her birthday fish.

  She had even brought fish food for show-and-tell.

  Yucks.

  Ms. Rooney began to write again: “Class president.”

  Dawn crossed her toes.

  Class president was the best job.

  Ms. Rooney wrote a big D.

  “Dawn Bosco, I bet,” said Linda Lorca. “That bossy thing.”

  “I am not,” said Dawn.

  Ms. Rooney wrote the rest of Dawn’s name.

  Class president! She couldn’t believe it.

  Linda Lorca put her tongue out.

  Dawn wanted to stick hers out too.

  She didn’t, though.

  Ms. Rooney said the president had to be good as gold.

  Ms. Rooney wiped the chalk dust off her hands. “Do good jobs.”

  She looked at Dawn.

  It was time for the pledge.

  That was the president’s job.

  Dawn rushed to the front. “Class, stand,” she said in a nice loud voice.

  Half the class stood.

  “Just a minute,” Jill said. “I have to feed the fish.”

  Alex Walker stuck his head out of the closet. “Hold on,” he said. “I have to find my homework.”

  “You should have done that before,” Dawn said. She tried to sound like Ms. Rooney.

  “I told you she was bossy,” said Linda Lorca.

  Ms. Rooney shook her head at Linda.

  “I pledge allegiance,” Dawn began.

  The rest of the class said the pledge too.

  Then it was time for show-and-tell.

  Dawn had something to show.

  Something important.

  She looked at the box under her desk.

  Could she call on herself first?

  Maybe not.

  Everyone was raising his hand. Dawn made believe she didn’t see Jill Simon.

  Jill would show-and-tell for too long.

  She wasn’t going to call on Linda Lorca.

  She called on Sherri Dent.

  Sherri went to the front. “I have something to tell.”

  “I hope everyone is listening,” Dawn said. She smiled the way Ms. Rooney did.

  “Do you see I’m a little tan?” Sherri asked.

  “You look good,” said Jason.

  “I went to California for the winter break,” said Sherri. “I swam every day.”

  She waved her arms around. “This is me swimming.”

  “Go, go, go,” said Jason.

  Dawn looked at the back of the room.

  Jill Simon was bending over the fish tank.

  One of her braids was getting wet.

  Dawn frowned.

  Jill should be paying attention.

  Sherri went back to her seat.

  “Now I have something to show,” Dawn said.

  She pulled a polka dot box up to the front.

  She opened it for the class.

  “Wow,” said Sherri.

  On top was a pink polka dot hat.

  Dawn put it on her head.

  “This box helps me solve mysteries,” she said. “It has all the detective stuff.”

  “Dawn thinks she knows everything,” Linda Lorca said.

  “I found Emily’s ring last time,” Dawn said. “The blue one. Didn’t I?”

  “That’s right,” said Emily.

  “Your hat is a little big,” Sherri said.

  “Miles too big,” said Linda Lorca. “Elephant head.”

  Dawn made a face at Linda. She held up a magnifying glass. “I have a wig too. No-one can tell who I am.”

  “Neat,” said Sherri.

  “Yes,” said Ms. Rooney. She came to the front of the room. “It’s time for math now.”

  Dawn pushed the box back to her desk.

  She sniffed when she passed Linda Lorca.

  She was sick of being good as gold.

  If only she could find a mystery.

  She’d solve it right this minute.

  Linda Lorca would be sorry.

  That big baby.

  CHAPTER 2

  IT WAS AFTER SCHOOL.

  Dawn stood near the schoolyard fence.

  She closed her eyes tight.

  A snowflake landed on her nose.

  “No peeking,” Jason shouted.

  Dawn listened hard. Jason was running around the side of the school.

  She could hear him.

  She could always hear Jason. He was loud.

  “Ten. Twenty. Thirty. Here I come,” Dawn yelled. “Ready or not.”

  She opened her eyes.

  The ground was white.

  So were the tops of the swings.

  The sky was dark, though. It was almost time to go home.

  Dawn looked around.

  Jason’s footprints were gone.

  She ran toward the school.

  The wind blew hard. It pulled at her scarf.

  It was a great scarf.

  The best in the class.

  Noni had made it for her.

  Dawn ran around the side of the school.

  Jason was gone.

  She waited. She listened.

  It was hard to hear in the snow and the wind.

  She had to hear him.

  She had to find him.

  They were playing detective.

  Jason was a thief. He had taken a million dollars.

  She was the detective.

  Jason should be easy to catch. She had caught him before.

  She’d put him in jail again.

  Jail was under the picnic table.

  She took a few steps.

  It was really dark in back of the school.

  She turned around. Everyone else had gone.

  She took one more step.

  Her heart thumped.

  What if a real thief were there?

  What if he jumped out at her?

  What if . . .

  She took a step backward.

  She heard something.

  Someone was behind her.

  Maybe a killer.

  Before she could turn, something grabbed her.

  “Yeow,” she yelled. “Noni.”

  “Some detective you are,” Jason said. “Have to call your grandmother.”

  “I was not,” Dawn said. “I was singing.”

  She opened her mouth. “No-ni-la-la,” she sang.

  She liked the way it sounded.

  Noni always told her to sing. “Bellissimo
,” she’d say.

  That meant “gorgeous.”

  Dawn sang a little louder.

  Jason put his hands over his ears. “Yeow,” he said.

  Jim came over.

  He was the man who cleaned the school.

  “Playing hide-and-seek?”

  “Sort of,” Dawn said.

  “It’s getting dark,” said Jim.

  “My turn,” Jason said.

  “No one’s turn,” said Jim. “I have to close the gates.”

  Dawn dusted the snow off her scarf.

  They started for the gate.

  Then she remembered.

  “My mittens.”

  “What about them?” Jason asked.

  “I left them on the swing. Remember? They were soaking wet.”

  Jason looked back. “It’s too late to get them.”

  Dawn put her lip out. “It is not. They have hearts on the fingers. They have flowers on the backs. Noni made them.”

  Dawn ran fast. She sang, “Ni-la-la-ni.”

  What if Jim closed the gates?

  It would be cold in the schoolyard tonight.

  Freezing.

  She was hungry too. Her mother was making Friday-night meatballs.

  She ran fast.

  She scooped up her mittens.

  They were a mess. It looked as if the hearts were melting.

  Then she saw something. Something red and shiny.

  It was somebody’s purse.

  “Hurry,” Jason yelled.

  She thought about Jim closing the gates.

  She grabbed the purse.

  She put it in her pocket. She started to run.

  CHAPTER 3

  IT WAS SUNDAY AFTERNOON.

  Dawn took her last bite of cake.

  Then she slapped her head.

  “What’s the matter?” her mother asked.

  “Dawn’s slapping a bug,” her brother Chris said.

  “There aren’t any bugs in the winter,” said Dawn.

  Chris started to laugh. He pointed at her. “You’re the bug.”

  Dawn crossed her eyes at him. Then she looked at her mother. “I just remembered something. I have to go to Jason’s.”

  She ran up to her room.

  She put on her coat and her polka dot hat.

  The hat fell down over her eyes.

  Dawn took a sock.

  She put it in the hat.

  Just right. She could see.

  She dragged her detective box downstairs.

  Noni was watching basketball on TV.

  She smiled at Dawn.

  Noni went to the closet. She brought back her grey scarf.

  “What is that for?” Dawn asked.

  “It’s freezing out,” Noni said.

  Noni put the scarf around Dawn’s head. She kissed her cheeks. “You’ll be nice and warm.”

  Dawn went outside.

  She hoped no one would see the scarf.

  It made her look like a hippopotamus. A fat grey one.

  It kept her polka dot hat on tight, though.

  She began to sing. “Frosty the la-la. Had a very la-la nose.”

  She wished she knew the words.

  Across the street she saw Chris and his friend Donny.

  They were looking for something.

  “Is that your sister?” Donny asked. “The one with the thing on her head?”

  “That crazy-looking kid?” Chris said. “Don’t be silly.”

  Dawn put her hands on her hips. “I am so, Christopher Bosco.”

  Chris started to make a snowball. Dawn pulled her box around the corner. She went as fast as she could.

  Jason was outside his house. He was making a snowman.

  It had stone ears and a rock nose.

  “Give me your scarf,” he told Dawn.

  “We can’t play snowman,” she said. “We have a mystery.”

  “Yahoo,” Jason said. He rubbed his mittens together.

  “Why are you wearing one red mitten and one green one?” she asked.

  “Simple,” Jason said. “I lost one red one and one green one.”

  “Look what I found.” Dawn took the red purse out of her pocket.

  They went into Jason’s house.

  Jason had a terrible playroom.

  It had an ironing board in the middle.

  It had a TV, a black-and-white one.

  It had two old orange chairs.

  Jason sat in one.

  Dawn sat in the other.

  “Open it up,” Jason said.

  “Wait till you see,” said Dawn.

  She snapped open the purse.

  Jason bent over to look.

  He fell off the orange chair.

  “There’s a paper with writing,” Dawn told him. “And money too.”

  She scooped everything out.

  There was gritty stuff on the bottom. Sand or something.

  It got under her fingernails.

  “Yucks,” she said.

  Jason held up the paper. “It’s a list for the stores.”

  A&P WUFF WUFF’S PET STORE

  MILK FOOD FOR ANGEL

  BRED

  CHEESE

  “Double yucks,” Dawn said. “I hate cheese.”

  “Look at the money,” Jason said.

  Dawn put the money on the ironing board. One dime. One nickel. Two pennies.

  “Sixteen cents,” she said.

  Jason rolled the dime across the board. “Seventeen.”

  He looked at her. “We could buy Gummy Bears.”

  Dawn shook her head. “We’re detectives.”

  Jason’s mother came to the door.

  “We have a mystery to solve,” Jason told her.

  “I hope it’s the mystery of the missing mittens,” she said. “How about some cookies?”

  “Great,” Dawn said. She hoped they were chocolate chips.

  Jason took the magnifying glass out of the box.

  He looked at the gritty stuff in the purse.

  “Looks like crackers,” he said. “The vanilla kind.”

  Mrs. Bazyk came back with the cookies.

  They were the fig kind.

  They had things that got caught in your teeth.

  Dawn shivered.

  Jason put two in his mouth. “It’s the riddle of the red purse,” he said. Cookie crumbs flew all over.

  “What’s a riddle?” Dawn asked.

  “It’s like a mystery.” He looked up. “What can we do?”

  Dawn took a cookie.

  She was starving to death.

  “I have an idea,” she said.

  CHAPTER 4

  MS. ROONEY CALLED the roll.

  Today three people were out. Sherri, Linda, and Jill.

  Dawn had a little cold too. Noni had given her cough drops. The brown kind.

  Dawn put them in the back of her desk. Then she went up to Ms. Rooney. “Can Jason and I put up some signs?”

  “May I,” Ms. Rooney said. She looked at the signs.

  POLKA DOT PRIVATE EYE FOUND

  RED PURSE

  17 cents

  See Dawn. See Jason.

  Room 113.

  “Nice,” said Ms. Rooney. “Go ahead.”

  Dawn put one in the front of the room.

  Then they went out to the hall.

  Jason stuck a sign on the bulletin board.

  Dawn put one on the art teacher’s door.

  They put one in the gym.

  “Now what?” Jason asked.

  “Now nothing,” Dawn said. “We have to go back. We have to do math and stuff.”

  “Yucks,” said Jason.

  “Double yucks,” said Dawn.

  She tried to think.

  What else could they do?

  “Wait a minute,” said Jason. “I thought of something.”

  Too bad, Dawn thought.

  She was the real detective.

  She should have thought of something.

  “We could ask the princip
al,” Jason said. “We could talk on the speaker.”

  “Right,” said Dawn. “Tell the whole school.”

  They rushed down the hall.

  “Why not?” said Mr. Mancina. He turned on the switch.

  Dawn said, “A-hem.” She tried to make her voice sound important. “This is the Polka Dot Private Eye.”

  Jason leaned over. He almost knocked the speaker off the table. “It’s Jason too,” he said.

  “We found a purse,” said Dawn. “It has seventeen cents.” She wished Jason didn’t take up so much room.

  “Come to Room One-thirteen,” said Jason.

  Mr. Mancina patted them on their shoulders. “Good thinking.”

  They started back for the classroom.

  They stopped for a drink.

  Then they looked out the door. It was snowing.

  “I forgot,” Dawn said. “I’m the class president.”

  “So?”

  “We have to go right back. I have to be good as gold.”

  They hurried back to the classroom.

  “We heard you,” said Richard Best.

  “Lucky,” said Emily Arrow. “I always wanted to talk on that thing.”

  Ms. Rooney clapped her hands. “It’s time to start spelling,” she said. “Take out a piece of paper.”

  Just then the door opened.

  It was Holly Best, Richard’s sister.

  “You found my purse,” she said.

  Ms. Rooney looked up.

  The door opened again.

  It was Chris’s friend Donny. “I’ve been looking all over. Where’s the purse?”

  “A boy doesn’t have a purse,” said Dawn.

  “It’s my sister’s,” Donny said. “She’s going to kill me if I don’t give it back.”

  “Hey,” said Holly Best. “That purse is mine. Seventeen cents and everything.”

  Dawn looked at Jason.

  Ms. Rooney frowned. “Settle this after school.”

  “I’ll be on the school steps,” said Donny. “At three o’clock.”

  Holly made a face. “Don’t worry. I’ll be there too.”

  They went out the door.

  Dawn took out a piece of paper.

  She put her name on it.

  She tried to think.

  Now they really had a riddle!

  CHAPTER 5

  DAWN WAS READY to cry.

  Emily had a hundred percent on her spelling.

  So did Jason.

  Dawn had two wrong. Only ninety percent.

  Ms. Rooney was giving out stars. Green ones.

  She went around the room. “Good work,” she told Emily.

  “Terrific,” she said to Jason.