Chapter 7

That night I lost Sherlock Holmes. He’s a world-famous detective. And I lost him.

I did not lose an actual person called Sherlock Holmes. That would be impossible. Sherlock Holmes is not real. He’s a character from mystery stories.

The Sherlock Holmes I lost was made of paper. He was part of my project, and I needed to find him.

“Did you look under the table?” Mom said.

I looked under the table. No Sherlock.

“Did you leave it in your schoolbag?” she asked.

I looked in my schoolbag. No Sherlock.

The project is called the Mystery-o-pedia. It is not for school. It is for me, and it is not finished. When it’s done, it will be an encyclopedia that lists all the famous detectives from books and their greatest mysteries. That is why it’s called the Mystery-o-pedia.

Right now, it was a mess of paper and glue on our kitchen table, and my brain was buzzing.

“Take a break, Myron,” Mom said. “The Mystery-o-pedia can wait.”

She rubbed the back of my head. That usually made the buzz go away. The doctors say my brain feels like it’s buzzing when I get frustrated. But it wasn’t the missing Sherlock that was upsetting me. It was Hajrah and Glitch.

Hajrah was my detective partner. Glitch was our client. In all the stories in my Mystery-o-pedia, the partner and the client work with the detective to solve the mystery. But the mystery of the Snack Snatcher was different. My partner and my client were also my suspects.

Glitch stole stuff last year. Did she steal the snacks this year? Did she hire us to get us off her trail?

Hajrah was hiding in the kitchen closet when the snacks were stolen. She said she didn’t see the thief. Was she telling the truth?

Worst of all, if Hajrah was the Snack Snatcher, I would lose my detective partner and my only friend at my new school. I was just beginning to like having a detective partner.

Alicia came into the kitchen. She got some orange juice from the fridge.

“Why does Columbo have a man in a funny hat stuck to his ear?” she asked.

Columbo is a basset hound. His ears droop to the floor and his body is long and thin like a sausage. Columbo belongs to the whole family, but he likes me best. I change his water and take him for walks. Alicia just makes fun of him. But I know she likes him, too.

A paper cutout of a detective hung from Columbo’s left ear.

“Sherlock Holmes!” I plucked up the detective, then I hugged Columbo. He licked my face. It was wet and warm. I don’t like wet things on my face, but it’s different when the wet thing is Columbo licking.

The buzzing in my head disappeared.

“The picture fell from the table after I put glue on it,” I explained to Alicia. “The glue stuck the paper to Columbo’s ears when he walked by.”

“I always knew his big ears would be good for cleaning the floors,” Alicia said.

“And for solving mysteries!” I hugged Columbo again. I glued the picture of Sherlock Holmes into the Mystery-o-pedia. There were dog hairs stuck to the picture.

I didn’t mind. They were Colombo’s hairs. He deserved a spot in my book for solving the mystery of the missing detective.

The next morning I was late getting to school. It wasn’t my fault. I’m always on time. I do not like being late. Alicia thinks it’s cool to be late for things. She says it’s called being “fashionably late.” Detectives don’t care about fashion.

I got to school just as the last entry bell rang. I hurried to room 15. No one was there.

“Myron! Come here, quick!” Hajrah called to me from down the hall. She was outside the kitchen. She wasn’t alone. Mr. Harpel was there, talking quietly to Mrs. Peterson. Glitch was there, too. She stared at something inside the kitchen.

I joined them at the door.

“The Snack Snatcher struck again!” Hajrah said.

The kitchen was a mess. Packages of food were ripped open and tossed around the room. Red pizza sauce had spilled across the counter. Mr. V. was in the middle of it all with a mop, cleaning up the mess.

“I don’t know how he got into the school,” Mr. V. said. “I’m always the first one here in the morning. I leave the front door unlocked after I get here. That way, teachers can get in if they arrive early. But this mess was here before I even unlocked the doors.”

“I can’t cook like this!” Mrs. Peterson said. “This is the second morning I come in to find a mess in my kitchen.”

“I’m cleaning it up as fast as I can,” Mr. V. said.

“Oh, I didn’t mean that, Mr. V.,” Mrs. Peterson said. “You’re working too hard. Cleaning up fallen trees, patching holes in the roof. And now this! It’s the last thing you need.”

The last thing I needed was Mr. V. mopping up valuable clues.

“I asked them to wait,” Hajrah said to me. “But Mrs. Peterson needs a clean kitchen to start making lunch for everyone.”

“We’ll never solve this mystery if we can’t investigate the crime scenes,” I said.

“I know,” agreed Hajrah. “I got the scoop from Mrs. Peterson. This crime is different from yesterday’s.”

“It looks like the same mess as yesterday.”

“Almost the same mess,” Hajrah said. “This time, the kitchen was ruined before Mrs. Peterson arrived at school. The cupboards were open and food was knocked off the shelves.”

“So the thief struck at night this time. After everyone had left.”

“But how did the thief get into the school?” Hajrah asked.

“If only I had seen the crime scene before Mr. V. mopped it up,” I said. “Now we’ll never know.”

Glitch came up behind me. “Never say never when Glitch and her cameras are around! I took some photos before Mr. V. got the mess totally cleaned up.”

“Those are pictures I want to see,” I said.

“We could look at them in the classroom,” Mr. Harpel suggested.

Twenty minutes later, we were sitting on the carpet looking at photos of spilled pasta sauce projected onto the classroom’s whiteboard. Jordan wandered in. “Is that what Mrs. Peterson is making us for lunch today?”

Hajrah bounced over to make room for him on the carpet. “It’s our latest crime scene!”

Glitch’s photos showed what the kitchen looked like just as Mr. V. started cleaning up the mess. It was better than nothing.

“A lot of stuff is knocked over,” Hajrah said. “The thieves are very clumsy.”

“Maybe they wanted to make a mess,” Glitch said.

“Maybe they wanted to tell Mrs. Peterson they didn’t like her cooking,” Jordan said.

The others kept tossing around their ideas, but I wasn’t really listening. I was looking. Glitch’s photos showed the Snack Snatcher’s mess from different angles. Mr. V. had mopped up most of the pizza sauce from the floor. But there were still red splatters on the walls and even on the small window looking out to the school parking lot.

“Wait!” I said.

All eyes turned to me.

“What is it, Myron?” Hajrah asked.

I walked right up to the whiteboard and pointed to a red splotch on the window.

“The thief really splashed the pizza sauce far,” Glitch said.

“That’s not pizza sauce.” I shook my head. “It’s a different kind of red.”

“It’s auburn,” Jordan said. “I have paints that color at home. It’s great for painting people who have red hair.”

Glitch squinted at the red splotch on the screen. “That’s somebody’s hair?”

“Somebody with red hair,” I said. “Somebody who was very worried about us snooping around the school.”

Hajrah jumped to her feet. “Smasher!”