The class filed to art for the last period of the day. Mr. Flange stood before the art supplies, his mustache hanging down in glorious ringlets over his mouth.

“Mr. Bloom did lend him his goop after all!” whispered Dontel.

“Did he ever,” said Smashie. “Hello, Mr. Flange. You . . . look very nice today.”

Mr. Flange gave a nod. Between his mustache and Smashie’s hair, the air was filled with the scent of lavender and lilac.

Mr. Flange gestured silently toward the paints and the rolls of mural paper.

“You want us to make the signs and banners for the musicale?” Joyce said.

Mr. Flange nodded.

“Then we better get going.”

The children put on the big shirts they used to protect their clothes and got to work.

Dontel and Smashie went to cut several lengths of mural paper. They planned to paint on them the names of each of the sixties go-go dances the class was to perform, and tape the signs up on the wall of the stage behind the dancers.

“Scissors, please,” said Smashie.

“Smash,” said Dontel firmly, “we don’t have time for you to go to the nurse today. You are going to have to let me do the cutting.”

Smashie opened her mouth to squawk, but then shut it. Dontel had a point.

“Oh, fine,” she said.

Dontel went to work.

“Let’s make the letters in the Pony sign look like ponies!” said Smashie.

“Great idea!” said Dontel. “We can use the horse on the front of your Investigation Notebook as inspiration.”

Smashie fished it out. She lowered her voice. “And we can update our Suspect List again,” she said. “Should we put Mr. Bloom on and then cross him out? Just as a record of our mistake?”

“I don’t think so,” said Dontel. “We really didn’t suspect him. And then it all turned so awful.”

As if on cue, Joyce appeared over their shoulders. Her hair was in two braids. Now that her roller-skate wheels had been washed out, she only had her regular hair until the night of the musicale. The braids did a lot to hide the terrible haircut.

“Did you give Mr. Bloom the apology brownies yet?” Joyce demanded.

“No!” said Smashie. “He’s still at his conference!”

“Oh,” said Joyce. “Well, don’t forget to do it when he comes back. The kids are only forgiving you because you said about the brownies.”

“Jeepers,” said Dontel. “It’s a lot harder to get forgiven in our class lately.”

Joyce sighed. “We’ve been through a lot,” she said. “I mean, the whole Patches thing . . .” She shook her head. “I’ll remind the kids how you helped with that.” Her face grew a bit hard. “Even if the taxing part didn’t go so well.”

“Thanks, Joyce,” said Dontel. “We better get back to work on our signs.”

“Me, too,” said Joyce. “I’m doing John’s ‘Come On Over to My Place’ sign, and I don’t even know what to do for it. Do I do all the food the person in the song lyrics offers? Or do I do a lot of dwellings?” She wandered back into the main section of the art room, still muttering.

Smashie tapped her horse notebook. “I’ll sketch,” she said. “You add Charlene to the Suspect List.”

Dontel did.

“Her motive probably is boring old like-like,” said Smashie. “But she is shorter-tempered than usual these days, too. Is that what people are like when they write like-like notes?”

“Well, remember that she’s pretty worried about her mom’s business getting off the ground, too,” Dontel pointed out. He looked thoughtful. “We’ll know more when we see what she has taped to the car sign. Let’s look at the Opportunity List and make sure that Charlene fits all those, just to be thorough.” And they flipped to that page in their respective notebooks.

“Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, and yep,” said Dontel, thwapping the page. “Charlene fits them all. Plus, she has plenty of motive.”

“She does,” agreed Smashie. Then she looked up sharply. “Dontel!” Her voice was distressed.

“Smash? What’s wrong?”

Smashie looked at him, horrified. “Was at the planning meeting? Access to the basketball bin? Learning about the tens and ones? WAS IN CHARLENE’S HOUSE? SMELLS LIKE THE GOOP? AND HAS A MOTIVE, TOO?” She aimed her styled head at Dontel. Her eyes were anguished. “Dontel, we can’t shy away from facts! Someone else fits those criteria!”

“Who?” said Dontel.

And underneath Charlene on the Suspect List, Smashie carefully wrote: