The Riddle of the Red Purse Read online

  She looked at Dawn’s paper. “Try to learn those words. Write them three times.”

  Dawn looked down.

  She had spelled careful wrong. C-a-r-e-f-u-l-l.

  She leaned over.

  Emily had spelled careful with one l.

  Dawn clicked her teeth.

  She looked at her paper again.

  Bread was spelled wrong too.

  She had forgotten the e.

  Bread.

  It made her think of something.

  What?

  She couldn’t remember.

  “Put your papers away,” Ms. Rooney said. “It’s time for gym.”

  The class went down the hall.

  Jason walked with Dawn. “What do you think?” he asked. “Is the purse Holly’s or Donny’s?”

  “That’s what we have to find out,” Dawn said.

  Mr. Bell came to the gym door. “Today we’re going to have relay races.”

  Dawn kept thinking about the purse.

  She thought during gym.

  She thought at recess.

  That afternoon they had handwriting.

  Dawn was a good writer.

  She made tall, straight I’s.

  She made big, loopy B’s.

  Then her mouth opened.

  She remembered something.

  At last it was three o’clock. She walked down the hall with Jason.

  “What are we going to do?” Jason asked.

  “Don’t worry,” Dawn said.

  They opened the big brown doors.

  Donny wasn’t there yet.

  Holly jumped off the steps. “Where’s my purse?”

  Dawn took a breath.

  She was glad she had thought all day. “I have to ask you a question,” she told Holly.

  “Right,” said Jason.

  Dawn sat down on the step. She pulled out her polka dot hat.

  “Silly,” said Holly.

  Dawn put on the hat. She could feel the steps were wet from the snow.

  She stood up quickly.

  “What question?” Holly asked.

  “How do you spell Bread?” Dawn asked.

  “I think you’re crazy,” Holly said. “You’re as crazy as my brother Richard.”

  Jason jumped up on the step. “Spell it.”

  Holly looked up at the sky. “Bread,” she said. “B-r-e-a-d.”

  “Too bad,” Dawn said.

  “Too bad,” said Jason. He looked at Dawn. “Why?”

  “You’d better keep looking for your purse,” said Dawn. “This one isn’t yours.”

  “You think you know everything,” Holly said. “Even that dumb Linda Lorca said so yesterday.”

  Holly sat down on the steps.

  Dawn opened her mouth.

  Then she closed it again.

  Let Holly get a wet seat.

  It served her right.

  Dawn pulled out the purse. She showed them the store list.

  “Look,” she said.

  MILK

  BRED

  CHEESE

  “I hate cheese,” Holly said.

  Dawn pointed. “The person doesn’t know how to spell bread.”

  Holly looked at the purse. “Hey,” she said. “That’s not mine. Mine was bigger. Fatter.”

  Holly stood up.

  The back of her was wet. “Squish,” she said. She raced down the street.

  Just then Donny opened the school door.

  “Let me,” said Jason. “Hey, Donny. Spell bread.”

  “Out of my way,” Donny said. “I’m going to miss the bus.”

  “What about the purse?” Dawn called after him.

  He waved a purse in the air.

  It was more orange than red.

  “Found it,” he yelled. “Thanks.”

  Dawn looked at Jason.

  He had peanut butter all over his mouth.

  “We have to start over again,” she said.

  He wiped it off. “Good.”

  CHAPTER 6

  DAWN WAS LATE for school. Very late.

  Her mother had made her go back upstairs. She had to wear an undershirt.

  It was tan. The yuck kind.

  She was wearing a brand-new sweater, though. Pink and purple. It was gorgeous.

  Noni had made it for her.

  Dawn was the last one in the classroom.

  Everyone was hanging up his coat and hat.

  Ms. Rooney looked up. She smiled at Dawn. “Good,” she said. “Everyone is here today.”

  Dawn went to her seat.

  It was hard not to yawn.

  She had stayed awake late last night.

  She had been reading The Polka Dot Private Eye Book.

  It was great.

  It told her how to solve mysteries.

  Linda and Sherri and Jill were in back.

  They were fighting.

  It was a whisper fight.

  They didn’t want Ms. Rooney to hear.

  Ms. Rooney didn’t like fighting.

  Linda saw Dawn. “It’s all your fault,” she said.

  Jill was crying. “I want my purse.”

  “You mean, my purse,” said Sherri.

  “No, mine,” said Linda.

  Dawn pulled off her jacket.

  She saw Linda look at her sweater.

  Good thing she didn’t know about the undershirt.

  Dawn thought about her book. It said:

  ASK QUESTIONS.

  YOU’LL FIND THINGS OUT.

  She looked at Jill. “What does your purse look like?”

  “Red,” said Jill.

  “Mine too,” said Sherri.

  Linda put her nose up close to Dawn. “Red,” she said in a loud voice. She looked up at Ms. Rooney.

  Ms. Rooney was writing in her book.

  She wasn’t watching.

  “I know red,” said Dawn. She talked as loud as Linda. “But how big? How fat? Stuff like that.”

  “They’re all the same,” said Jill.

  “They can’t be,” Dawn said.

  “Smarty pants,” said Linda. “We made them at Brownies.”

  Just then Ms. Rooney stood up. “Class President,” she said, “it’s time for the pledge.”

  Dawn raced to the front of the room.

  “Class, stand,” she said.

  She looked at Jill.

  She looked at Sherri.

  She looked at Linda.

  Whose purse was it?

  The class said the pledge.

  Then Jill had something to show. It was a picture of her new fish.

  Jason had something to show too.

  It was a letter from his pen pal.

  He read it out loud.

  He made lots of mistakes.

  Jason wasn’t such a good reader.

  Then it was time to copy the board story.

  It was a story about the sunny South.

  It was easy.

  Dawn raced through it.

  Sherri raised her hand. “I was in California,” she said. “Remember? I went swimming. That’s like the sunny South.”

  Ms. Rooney smiled. “That’s true.”

  Dawn tore three pages out of her notebook.

  She wrote the same thing on each paper.

  Gorgeous, she thought.

  She went up to the pencil sharpener.

  On the way back she dropped a paper on Jill’s desk.

  She put one on Sherri’s.

  She put one on Linda’s.

  Ms. Rooney looked up. “Good as gold,” she reminded Dawn.

  Dawn went back to her desk.

  She’d have the mystery solved in no time.

  CHAPTER 7

  IT WAS TIME for lunch.

  Ms. Rooney’s class marched down to the cafeteria.

  “Well?” Sherri said.

  “How about it?” asked Linda.

  Jill didn’t say anything. She just sniffed.

  Dawn raised one shoulder. “I didn’t look yet. My group had
reading. I had math and everything.”

  “Time to eat,” the lunch monitor said. “You can talk later.”

  Dawn slid into the seat next to Jason.

  Jason was having peanut butter and jelly.

  That’s what he always had.

  Dawn had cheese.

  “Want to swap?” she asked him.

  “Are you kidding?” He took a big bite. The jelly dripped on the table.

  Jill was at the next table. She leaned over. “I’ll swap,” she said. “I love cheese.”

  Dawn ate Jill’s ham sandwich.

  She started her dessert.

  Apples and cookies.

  The best kind.

  She told Jason about the papers.

  “Great idea,” said Jason. “There was one dime, one nickel, and two pennies. Right?”

  “Right,” said Dawn. “Careful with that jelly. It’ll get on my sweater.”

  She opened the first paper.

  It was Sherri’s.

  It said:

  “Sherri is out,” said Jason.

  “I guess so,” Dawn said.

  Jill’s paper was next.

  Jason leaned over Dawn’s shoulder. He smelled like peanut butter.

  Dawn tried not to breathe.

  She looked down. Jill’s paper was a mess. It had a tearstain on the bottom.

  “Wrong,” said Jason.

  “All wrong,” said Dawn.

  Just then Linda came over.

  She had ketchup on her mouth.

  She wiped some of it off.

  “Where’s my purse?” she asked.

  Dawn opened Linda’s paper.

  It said:

  Jason and Dawn looked at each other.

  She reached into her pocket.

  The riddle was over.

  She was sorry.

  Jason was too, she thought.

  “Here it is,” she said to Linda.

  “How about a reward?” Jason asked. “We could buy some Gummy Bears.”

  “Reward?” Linda said.

  She opened the purse. “Hey. This isn’t mine. This ugly thing. The stitches are all crooked.”

  “Not yours?” Dawn said.

  “Not yours?” said Jason. “Give it back.”

  Linda dropped the purse on the table.

  It landed on the jelly.

  Dawn wiped the purse off. “Sticky,” she said.

  “Now what?” Jason asked.

  Just then Sherri came over. “Where’s my purse?”

  Dawn shook her head. “Sorry,” she said. “You couldn’t remember the numbers.”

  The bell rang.

  The lunch monitor blew her whistle.

  “Line up,” she yelled. “Time to go back to the classroom.”

  “Not fair,” said Sherri.

  “Not fair,” said Jill.

  Jason and Dawn went to the end of the line.

  “Now what?” said Jason.

  “Now we still have a riddle,” said Dawn.

  CHAPTER 8

  DAWN BANGED OPEN the school door.

  “Hurry,” she told Jason.

  Jason stuck out his lip. “I’m sick of hurrying. I hurried all day long.”

  “Don’t you watch TV?” Dawn shook her head. “Detectives hurry. They run all over the place.”

  Jason jumped off the steps. He threw himself onto a snow pile. “Stop, thief,” he yelled.

  He brushed the snow off his jeans. “Too bad we don’t have a thief.”

  Dawn nodded. “There is something we can do.”

  “What?”

  “We’ll stop at my house first,” she said. “Get some cookies.”

  She looked at her birthday watch.

  It had a green face.

  It had purple hands.

  It said three-thirty.

  She wished Jason would stop fooling around. He was jumping up and down in the snow.

  He threw a snowball at the telephone pole.

  “We can go to my house,” Jason said. “My mother has some fig cookies left.”

  Dawn looked up at the flag pole.

  The wind was blowing the flag back and forth.

  She shook her head back and forth too.

  They had sugar cookies at her house.

  Noni had made them yesterday.

  “My house is on the way,” she said.

  Jason shook his hands in the air. “It’s freezing,” he said. “On the way where?”

  “On the way to Wuff Wuff’s Pet Store.”

  “Good idea,” he said. He stopped to think. “Why?”

  “We can show the list to the man,” Dawn said. “Maybe he’ll remember someone with a red purse.”

  Jason blew on his fingers. “Let’s hurry. We don’t have all day. I have homework to do.”

  They raced down the street.

  They stopped at Dawn’s house.

  Dawn threw her books onto the table.

  She took two cookies.

  One for her. One for Jason.

  Noni smiled. “Take two more.”

  Jason took a bite. “Almost as good as my mother’s fig cookies.”

  Outside they hurried around the corner.

  It was a long walk to Linden Avenue. The wind was blowing hard.

  Dawn kept turning in circles.

  “I’m a windmill,” she yelled.

  At Wuff Wuff’s, Dawn put her hands over her ears.

  Dogs were barking.

  Cats were meowing.

  Birds were squawking.

  A hamster raced around on a runner.

  “Look at that guy go,” Jason said.

  Dawn nodded. “He loves it.”

  The man was in the back. He was dropping fish food into a tank.

  “Pretty,” said Dawn.

  She watched the fish swimming around.

  “Can I help you?” asked the man.

  Dawn held out the purse. “We found this.”

  “It’s not mine,” the man said. “Ask one of the snakes.”

  He started to laugh. He slapped his leg.

  Dawn pulled out the list.

  “See,” she said. “ ‘Food for Angel.’ ”

  The man scratched his head. “We had kittens last week.”

  He looked up at the ceiling. “Yes. Someone came in and bought one. I think she called her Angel.”

  Dawn leaned closer.

  So did Jason.

  Jason smelled like sugar cookies.

  “What did she look like?” Dawn asked.

  “Skinny like a stick,” said the man. “Red hair. Brown eyes. A skillion freckles.”

  Dawn raised one shoulder. “I don’t know anyone with red hair.”

  “What’s her name?” Jason asked.

  “Cindy,” he said. “No, Candy.” He scratched his head again. “Maybe it was Catherine.”

  “Think hard,” Jason told the man.

  “Katie,” said the man.

  “How old was she?” Dawn asked.

  “Fifteen,” said the man. “Sixteen.”

  Dawn sighed. “Thanks anyway. It’s the wrong person.”

  They started back out of the store.

  They stopped to watch the fish again.

  One of the fish was swimming along the bottom.

  It swam around a little castle in the sand.

  “Come on,” Jason said. “We have homework.”

  They went outside.

  “How do you know it was the wrong girl?” Jason asked.

  “There are no teenagers in our school,” Dawn said. “Only kids from six to twelve.”

  “So?” Jason asked.

  “So she couldn’t have dropped the purse in the schoolyard.”

  Jason sighed. “We walked all the way here for nothing.”

  Dawn shook her head.

  The wind blew her scarf across her face.

  “Not for nothing,” she said. “I was wrong about something.”

  She tucked her scarf around her neck. “I think I can solve the myst
ery.” She nodded. “Tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER 9

  TODAY THERE WAS more snow.

  Dawn wore her red boots. They came up to her knees.

  She gave Noni a quick kiss. “I have to hurry.”

  Dawn was the first one in the school-yard.

  The snow was high.

  She waded through it.

  She bumped into the picnic table.

  She fished around underneath. Then she put something in her schoolbag.

  The school bus stopped at the gate.

  Other children were coming.

  She saw Jason. He was hopping across the snow.

  “Are you ready to solve the riddle?” he asked.

  “Two of them,” Dawn said.

  They went inside. Jason pulled off his hat. Snow flew all over.

  Dawn reached into her schoolbag.

  She pulled out a mitten. A red one. “The mystery of the missing mitten,” she said.

  Jason’s eyes opened.

  “My detective book says ‘THINK,’ ” said Dawn. “I thought. I remembered. The picnic table was our jail. You left the red mitten in jail.”

  “Bad news,” Jason said. He held up his hand.

  “What?” Dawn asked. She marched along. She liked the slap-slap her boots made.

  “I lost the other red one. I lost the green one too.” He raised his shoulders in the air.

  They went into the classroom.

  Dawn pinned her boots with a clothespin.

  She went to the back of the room.

  She said hello to Drake and Harry, the class fish.

  Jill was feeding them.

  Dawn went up to Ms. Rooney’s desk.

  She whispered in her ear.

  Ms. Rooney kept nodding. She was smiling too.

  It was time for the pledge.

  Today everyone was ready.

  Then it was time for show-and-tell.

  “I have to call on myself first,” Dawn said.

  Linda Lorca clicked her teeth.

  Dawn held the purse up in the air. “I’ve solved the riddle of the red purse,” she said.

  “Me too,” said Jason.

  Dawn opened the purse. “See this stuff in the bottom.”

  “It looks like vanilla cookies,” Jason said.

  “It looks like sand too,” said Dawn.

  Sherri raised her hand. “There was sand in California. Lots of it. I went swimming every day.”

  Dawn nodded. “At first I thought the purse was yours.”

  “Even though you didn’t remember the dimes and the pennies and the nickels,” said Jason.

  Dawn walked to the back of the room.

  “Look, everybody,” she said.