Back at Shady Oaks Lex’s fairy village and Nicholas’s red garden were both ahead of schedule (and I, of course, was trying to get away from Nathan again, if only for a few minutes), so we asked Mr Freebs if we could go visit some of the residents before our class finished up in the garden for the day. Mr Freebs said that was fine (because he didn’t know we were also planning on doing a little investigating during the visit).
I’m normally extremely clever – that’s why I’m a genius detective – but I had a minor brain blip that day.
Definition of brain blip: when your brain kind of hiccups and doesn’t work properly for a second, and you do or say something stupid that you wouldn’t normally do or say.
‘If all three of us set the shiny trinket trap,’ I said to Lex and Nicholas as we walked through the main hall, ‘then there’s a chance the locket thief will fall for one of them.’
‘You mean try setting a trap for every single man in Shady Oaks?’ said Nicholas. ‘There’s way too many of them, Cass, it would take hours.’
‘Not for every one,’ I tutted. ‘Just the ones in blue jumpers.’
‘That was Saturday. Do you not think he might have changed his clothes?’
That was my brain blipping. Of course he would have changed his clothes. There was no telling what the blue-jumpered locket thief would be wearing now.
‘Umm …’ I mumbled.
Nicholas didn’t say anything. He just gave me a look like he felt sorry for me because I was so dim.
‘I’ll come up with something else,’ I snapped. ‘You guys go look for anything suspicious while I have a think.’
‘What do you mean, suspicious?’ asked Lex.
‘You know … anything.’
‘Just wander around, looking for anything,’ Nicholas said.
‘Yes, Nicholas.’
He gave me another look as he and Lex walked away. I was a bit embarrassed and annoyed, so when I got into the sitting room I kind of flopped into a chair and sighed out loud. How did I not think of the locket thief changing his clothes since the weekend?
‘Are you alright?’
Edwina Barnes was sitting next to me.
‘I’m fine, thanks,’ I said, ‘I’ve just been a bit stupid.’
‘Well, I was just about to head to the dining room for a piece of cake. Would some cake cheer you up?’
‘Thanks,’ I said, ‘but I’m okay. Plus, I don’t have much time. I’ll have to go back to school soon.’
‘Alright, pet. Well, you have a nice day.’
I sighed again as Ms Barnes and her carer, Lucinda, left the room. They bumped into a nurse on the way out, and something clattered to the floor with a flash of silver. It was the nurse’s badge – the flash was the silver clasp – and a hand shot out to grab it just as it hit the floor.
‘Oh,’ the short man said, realising what it was and handing it back, ‘this is yours. I thought it was … never mind.’
Ms Barnes’s. He thought it was some shiny trinket of Ms Barnes’s that she wouldn’t miss; something he could steal and get away with it.
There he was. The locket thief.
I ducked behind water coolers and dodged tea trolleys as I followed the short man down the hallway.
He turned right past the dining room, and then left into one of the wings of residents’ rooms. I had ducked behind the corner at the turn of the corridor, but popped out just in time to see the door of Room 25 close behind him.
I could have questioned him alone, but since I’d been an absolute genius and spotted the thief all by myself, I wanted Lex and Nicholas (especially Nicholas) to be there when I got the full confession.
‘Are you sure about this?’ Nicholas said as the three of us stood outside Room 25 a few minutes later.
‘Positive,’ I replied, and knocked firmly on the door.
‘Hello. Can I help you?’
The man who answered couldn’t have looked sweeter. He had a little bowl of dyed brown hair sitting on top of his head, and big grey eyes that made him look like he was permanently smiling. But I wasn’t fooled.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We’re … carrying out an investigation on the premises, and we’d like to ask you a few questions.’
‘Oh yes,’ the man said. ‘I remember you. Please come in.’
‘That sounded very official,’ Lex whispered to me as we went in.
I smiled.
‘What’s the investigation about again?’ the man asked.
‘We’ll ask the questions, sir, thank you.’ I put on a stern expression and consulted my notebook with all the blue-jumpered people’s names. ‘You are Mr Adrian Klein. Is that correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you have been a resident at Shady Oaks for two years, is that correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘Mmhmmmm.’ I meant to carry out the official-sounding questioning a little longer, but I was too excited at having caught a real-life actual thief. ‘And, Mr Klein, is it also correct that you have been stealing shiny trinkets from unsuspecting residents of Shady Oaks like some giant trinket-stealing magpie?’
Mr Klein blushed all the way to his bowl-shaped hair.
‘Oh. Oh my.’
‘That’s right, Mr Klein, you’ve been caught red-handed! Now hand over Carmella’s gold locket, and all the other stuff you’ve stolen, and we won’t have to involve the authorities.’
‘Carmella’s locket?’ he said. ‘B-but I would never take Carmella’s locket.’
‘Mr Klein, I saw you. I saw you steal the green bead from Edwina Barnes’s cardigan. We know you’re the thief.’
‘Well, yes.’ Mr Klein blushed again and hurried to his chest of drawers. He gently lifted something from a dish sitting on top. ‘Yes, I have been collecting Edwina’s things. But … I’m going to return them all.’
In his hand was a loose chain of shiny trinkets. It was a mishmash of rings and beads and bracelets and pins, silver and gold, with blue and green and pink and red stones.
‘You see,’ Mr Klein went on, ‘she doesn’t realise she’s lost them. So I’ve been looking for them, to make this beautiful necklace. It’s a present for her birthday – a lovely necklace of all her lost things. Do you think she’ll like it?’
It was the worst necklace I had ever seen. But I didn’t say that.
‘So you didn’t take Carmella’s locket?’
‘No, of course not. I wouldn’t do that – that’s stealing.’
I believed him. I believed that he didn’t take Carmella’s locket. And I believed that he was making the worst-looking necklace in the world for a woman he liked.
Mr Klein wasn’t the locket thief.
