We eat our snacks at a picnic table outside the Life Sciences Building. Samantha and Lloyd are deep in conversation at another table, probably planning our next activity.
Nathaniel does not bother opening his bag of trail mix. When he catches Mason eyeing it, Nathaniel slides it over to him. “All yours, dude,” he says. Nathaniel checks his cell phone for messages. When he sighs, I know it means there is no news about Willy.
Nico plays pretend piano on the picnic table, his fingers tapping on invisible keys.
I nudge Muriel. “Does he play piano for real?” I ask her. I would not have pegged Nico as the musical type.
Muriel snorts. “Playing piano requires the ability to concentrate. Nico only plays tables.”
Nico sweeps the back of his hands against the picnic table to indicate his imaginary performance is over. Then he looks up at us. “I still say the chef did it,” he says. “So he could get a day off and apply for a job at a decent restaurant,” he says.
“It’s not much of a motive,” I say. “Couldn’t he just have taken a sick day?”
“Maybe he used them all up,” Nico says. “Or how about this? Maybe he wanted publicity for the cafeteria. He seems like the kind of person who needs a lot of attention.”
“You would know,” Muriel says.
Nico, Muriel and Stacey each have two pieces of string cheese and a box of raisins. Stacey finishes her cheese before she starts on the raisins. She must like keeping food separate in her stomach too.
Nico tears a strip off the cheese and holds it over his lip so it looks like a pale yellow mustache. “Now who do I remind you of?” he asks.
“Why are you such a dork?” Muriel asks him.
“It’s in my genes. Which happen to be your genes too.”
“And mine.” Stacey shakes her head, but I can tell from the way she is pursing her lips that she’s trying not to laugh. “I think we can rule the chef out. Not just because of the meat, but also because his fingerprints haven’t turned up anywhere.”
“We haven’t dusted the coffee cup.” I make a point of not using the words plastic-coated or nonrecyclable. That would only set Stacey off again. “Or examined the footwear evidence.”
Suddenly Nathaniel bangs his fist on the picnic table so hard he sends my water bottle flying. “Sorry about that,” he says, reaching over to pick up the bottle, which is now half empty. “But can we please stop talking about some made-up case? Especially when there’s a real case right in front us, begging to be solved.”
The picnic table is still vibrating when Stacey says, “Samantha told us to leave the real case to the police.” Her voice is calm and firm. It’s the tone people use when they are convinced they are right. Mrs. Johnson uses that tone a lot. “Besides,” Stacey adds, “we don’t want to be the kind of campers who can’t solve their own case.”
Nathaniel straightens his shoulders. “We’ll solve the cafeteria case,” he says. “But we all know the police aren’t going to do anything about the missing dogs.”
I am thinking about Willy and the other missing dogs. Who knows how many there are? Some people must just assume their dogs have run away. Where are they, and are they safe and being well treated? What if some are on special diets, the way Roxie is? How would the dognapper know what to feed them? “Maybe we could at least do a little investigating…” I say. “Nothing dangerous,” I add quickly.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Stacey says. “We’re just a bunch of kids.”
“A bunch of smart kids,” Nico says. “Okay, I’ll admit it, maybe I’m not that smart. But you guys are.”
Stacey looks over to the table where Samantha and Lloyd are sitting. “They wouldn’t be happy about it.”
Nathaniel leans across the table toward Stacey and drops his voice. “They don’t need to know. But like Lloyd told us, it takes a team to solve a case. Unless we’re all in, this isn’t gonna work.” He looks Stacey in the eye. “So what do you say?”
“I don’t know,” Stacey answers.
“We’d just be doing reconnaissance,” I tell her. I have always liked the sound of the word reconnaissance, but this is the first time I have ever been able to use it in real life. “If we learn anything, we’ll pass the information on to Nathaniel’s father. Right, Nathaniel?”
Now Nathaniel looks at me. When he does, I’m pretty sure he has no intention of passing any information on to his father. “Right,” he says. “Let’s review what we know so far.”
Stacey whips out her forensic-science notebook so she can start a fresh list.
“What we know so far is that a Chihuahua, a standard poodle and a Pomeranian are missing. All purebreds,” Nathaniel says.
Stacey writes the word purebreds, underlining it so hard I am sure she is leaving an imprint on the next page.
I tell the others about Larry and how he warned us to keep an eye on Roxie because he had heard there was a dognapper on the loose.
Nathaniel is perking up. “Let me get this straight. You’ve got a German shepherd—a purebred?”
“Yup. Roxie. She’s a beauty. Ask Mason—the two of them hit it off.”
Nathaniel is not interested in hearing Mason’s opinion of Roxie. “We might be able to use Roxie as bait,” he says.
“No way,” I tell him. “Don’t even think about it!”
Stacey raises one finger in the air. “I thought we weren’t going to do anything dangerous.”
“We’re not,” Nathaniel tells her.
“What we need to do is apply Locard’s Exchange Principle,” Mason says, “and even if we aren’t detectives, we should consider possible motives.”
“He’s right.” There I go, agreeing with Mason again! What is going on here?
“I can only think of a couple of reasons why anyone would steal dogs. One would be”—Mason glances at Nathaniel—“for animal experiments. Sorry, Nathaniel. The other reason—and the one that’s more likely—is for profit. Maybe the dognapper is reselling purebreds for less than breeders do. I bet lots of people would be interested and not ask too many questions.”
Great deals on purebred dogs? Why didn’t I think of it before? The Kijiji ad my dad and I saw when we were looking for a guard dog! I am so eager to tell the others that I start blabbering. “This ad! On Kijiji! My dad and I…we saw this ad! On Kijiji!”
“Could you calm down a little?” Muriel says.
Muriel’s cell phone is in front of her on the picnic table. “Do you get the Internet on that thing?” I ask.
“Of course I do,” she says. “I’ve got three gigabytes of data,” she adds proudly.
She is about to explain how data is measured when somehow I manage to say, “Google Kijiji + Montreal + purebred dogs. Now!”
The first listing is the one my dad and I saw. Muriel reads the information out loud: “Amazing deals on purebred dogs of all kinds, Montreal.”
Nico whistles. “We need to get in touch with this guy right away and set up a meeting.”
Stacey is gripping the edge of the picnic table like it is a ledge she is about to fall off of. “Going online to set up a meeting doesn’t sound very safe to me.”
“Don’t worry,” Nico says. “It’ll be safe—Muriel will take care of it.”