The next morning at school, Hannah spotted Brittney in the hallway. “Brittney!” she called. Brittney turned, looking slightly annoyed.
Hannah hurried up to her. “Sorry to bother you again, but I was just wondering if you could show me who Greg Marshall is. Do you see him anywhere right now?”
Brittney searched up and down the hallway. “There he is,” she said. “Over there. Getting a drink of water.”
Hannah glanced in the direction Brittney was looking. At the water fountain, she saw a big guy leaning over to have a drink. He had dark, messy hair—kind of long.
As he stood up, he looked over toward Brittney. Hannah quickly looked away so he wouldn’t see her staring at him. When she looked back, he was gone.
But she’d gotten a good look at him. A big guy who looked like Greg would be hard to miss.
Later that morning Hannah pointed him out to Ben and Corey.
“Just when we thought we went to a small school and knew most people—How did we miss him?” Ben asked.
“No idea,” Corey said. “But he’s not average height, that’s for sure.”
Between classes, they tried following Greg, but there was never a good chance to talk to him.
Luckily, they all had the same lunch period.
Looking around the cafeteria, Ben spotted Greg sitting at a table by himself.
“This is perfect,” Ben said. “He’s alone, so we can talk to him.”
“But there are lots of people around, so he won’t try anything violent,” Corey said. “Probably.”
The three friends casually approached Greg. “Mind if we join you?” Hannah asked.
Greg looked a little surprised to have three seventh graders he didn’t know join him for lunch, but he shrugged and then gestured to the empty seats around him. Club CSI sat down with their suspect.
For a moment they weren’t sure what to say. Then Corey asked, “Did you have Mrs. Ramirez for homeroom last year?”
“Yeah,” Greg said. “She was nice.”
“Yeah,” Corey agreed. “I’ve got her this year.”
“Did Brittney have Mrs. Ramirez for homeroom too?” Hannah asked.
Greg blushed and looked down. “Yeah, she did.”
Hannah carefully took the Quark Pad out of her backpack. “Greg, did you give this Quark Pad to Brittney?” she asked gently.
Greg looked stunned. “Where did you get that?”
“Brittney gave it to us,” Ben said.
“But it was a present! For her! And I went to a lot of tr—” Greg suddenly stopped talking.
“It was a really nice present, Greg,” Hannah said. “Too nice. Her mom won’t let her keep it.”
“I know,” he muttered. “She told me that.”
Ben took out an ink pad and a white card. “Greg, would you mind letting us fingerprint you?”
Greg looked nervous. “What? Why?”
“For our forensic science class,” Ben answered. That was sort of the truth.
“I don’t think so,” Greg said. He started to gather up his things.
Corey decided to go for it. “Greg, the reason we want your fingerprints is we’ve got the fingerprints of the person who stole a hundred bucks from our class’s school trip fund, and we want to see if your prints match. If you’re innocent, you shouldn’t mind giving us your fingerprints.”
“No way. I don’t have to give you my fingerprints!” Greg said vehemently. He stood up from the table and looked around, as if trying to figure out the quickest way out of the cafeteria.
“You’re right, Greg, you don’t have to,” Ben said quietly. “But like Corey said, if you don’t have anything to hide, then why not just cooperate? And if you did do it, you can’t run from it. You must know deep down that you’re going to be caught. Everyone knows about the missing money.”
Greg just stared at them for a few moments, breathing hard. Nobody said anything.
Then he put his head down on the table and covered it with his arms.
“Okay,” he said, his voice a little muffled. “I confess. I took the money.”
The three members of Club CSI exchanged a quick look. They’d found the thief! Still, they couldn’t help but feel kind of sorry for the guy. He didn’t seem tough at all. He actually seemed like a nice kid.
“I just wanted to buy something nice for Brittney,” he said. “I’ve been watching her, trying to figure out what she might really like. I thought maybe a piece of jewelry or clothing or something. Then I heard her talking to one of the kids who has a Quark Pad, saying how much she’d love to have one of those.”
It seemed as though Greg had just been waiting to tell someone what he’d done. Now that he’d started confessing, he was telling the whole story.
“I knew I didn’t have enough money to buy Brittney a Quark Pad. We don’t have much money at home. It’s just me and my mom.”
“So you decided to steal the money to buy it?” Ben asked.
“Borrow!” Greg insisted. “Not steal the money! I was going to pay it back!”
“Okay, we believe you,” Hannah said.
Greg wiped the hair out of his eyes. “I remembered last year when we raised money for our seventh-grade trip, and Mrs. Ramirez kept all the money in her desk drawer. So I slipped into her room when no one was around.”
“How’d you get into the locked drawer?” Ben asked.
Greg looked embarrassed. “Actually, I looked up picking locks on the Internet. It wasn’t that hard. All I needed was a screwdriver and a paper clip. The lock was old and loose.”
“But what about the padlock on the metal box?” Corey asked.
“Well, I remembered the formula for the combination from Mrs. Ramirez’s class last year,” he said.
“You remembered that formula for a whole year?” Hannah asked, impressed.
“I’m actually pretty good at math,” Greg said. “I like it. Anyway, the numbers on a padlock only go up so high, so there are only so many combinations of three numbers that would solve the formula. I worked them all out and wrote them down ahead of time.”
“And when you saw the dial was on 35, you figured maybe that was the last number, and that Mrs. Ramirez had forgotten to spin the dial,” Ben said.
Greg looked amazed. “Yeah, that’s right! I just looked at my list of numbers to see which set ended with 35. Then I knew the combination.”
“And when you opened the box, you saw a fat envelope right on top, so you slipped out a hundred dollars, relocked the box, and stuck it in the drawer,” Corey concluded.
“Was there a security camera or something?” Greg asked. “It’s like you saw the whole thing.”
“No,” Hannah said. “If we’d seen the whole thing, it wouldn’t have taken us this long to come to you.”
Greg let out a big sigh. “It actually kind of feels good to tell someone. Don’t worry. I’ll turn myself in and take my punishment. And I will pay back that money somehow.”
Hannah pushed the Quark Pad toward him. “Maybe you could return this and get your money back.”
Greg shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He took the tablet. “At least if I can’t go out with Brittney, and I’m going to get in trouble, I’ll still have one of these.”
Corey looked a little disappointed that the tablet wasn’t going to end up being his. But then he patted Greg on the shoulder. “It could be worse. At least you didn’t steal the whole four hundred bucks to buy one of these.”
“Four hundred?!” Greg said. “I didn’t pay four hundred. I only paid a hundred.”
“For a new Quark Pad?” Ben asked, astonished.
“That’s impossible!” Corey said.
Greg shrugged. “That’s what I paid. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go find Mrs. Ramirez and apologize. And arrange to pay back the money.”
He got up and walked off. He wasn’t happy, but he actually did feel better than he had in days.
Club CSI watched him go, happy to have solved the crime. But there was something bothering
Ben. . . .