Early the next morning, the kids met at the jungle gym on the playground. They had agreed to meet an hour before the Olympics to search for more clues. Kat, Max, Nico, and Luke were waiting for Alice to arrive. While they waited, they took turns swinging from the monkey bars.

Nico swung from one side of the monkey bars to the other. He never seemed to sit still. He couldn’t wait to put his balance beam, somersault, and vaulting practice to good use in the Olympics.

“Hey, if we catch the troublemaker, I know what we should do with him,” Luke said. He was sitting on the end of the playground’s slide. Given a choice between sports and sitting, Luke always sat.

Kat poked Luke in the shoulder. She was wearing yellow and green butterfly clips in her hair today. “Him or her!” she said. “We don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl yet.”

Luke glared at Kat and then smiled. “Or a dog!” he added. “We should consider all the options.”

Nico laughed. He dropped down from the last monkey bar. “If it was a dog, we would have found a paw print!” he said.

“Woof! Woof!” Luke said. He shook his head like a dog and let his tongue hang out until he started drooling.

Kat patted Luke’s head. “Good dog,” she said. “Now put your tongue back in your mouth!”

Luke laughed. He wiped the drool off his chin. “All right, but we can create a new Olympic event when we find the troublemaker,” he said. “It’ll be the Olympic dunk tank. We can get one of the big tanks where someone sits on a board above water until you hit the target with a baseball. We can have the Olympic troublemaker sit in it every day at recess. Then all the kids can take turns dunking him—or her—for the whole week!”

Max nodded and gave Luke a high five. “Great idea!” he said. “But what if we fill the dunk tank with chocolate pudding instead of water? That would be even cooler!”

“It might not be cooler, but it would be slimier,” Luke said.

A few minutes later, Alice showed up on her bike. After locking it to the rack in front of the school, she joined everyone at the monkey bars.

“Let’s start looking for clues,” Alice said. “Luke and Kat can search inside the building. Nico, you take the playground. Max and I will check around the school. Look for anything suspicious.”

While they were searching, the middle-school students started to arrive. They were all wearing bright purple T-shirts that read Olympic Official. The older kids were in charge of running the events. A little while later, Ms. Suraci showed up. She was wearing an official purple T-shirt, too, and was helping the middle-school kids set up the equipment for each event.

Eventually, all five kids returned to the monkey bars empty-handed. They continued to brainstorm. “Maybe the threatening note and phone call were just jokes,” Luke said. “Or maybe someone like Quinn did it. He’s always causing trouble.”

Max nodded. “Maybe. Quinn got called out of our class last week to go to the principal’s office.”

“Hey, look!” Nico said. “They just brought out the balance beams for the gymnastics event.”

In the middle of the grassy field, a couple of seventh graders had set out a bunch of long wooden balance beams. They were just wide enough to walk on.

“Come on, Kat,” Nico said. “Let’s go practice.”

Nico and Kat ran over to the balance beams. The rest of the kids followed. The boards were lined up a few feet apart for the start of the gymnastics event. Everyone picked a balance beam and tried to walk from one end to the other without falling off. Nico was the fastest, but Kat was close behind.

Luke pretended that he was being forced to walk the plank. “Arrr! The pirates are after me!” he yelled as he teetered at the end of his balance beam. “Avast! It’s too late!” Luke’s arms flailed around in circles. He fell down onto the grass.

As Kat hopped off her balance beam, Luke reached out his hand. “Help me, sis!” he said. “There’s sharks in these here waters! Back off, you sharks!” Luke pretended to swat at two sharks with his other hand.

Kat flicked her curly hair back. “Sorry, Luke,” she said. “If you had helped me clean up the basement last weekend like I asked, I’d help you. But you didn’t, so you’re on your own with the sharks.”

“Arrr!” Luke called. “My own sister! A rotten dog! I’m going down….”

“Don’t worry, Luke,” Kat said. “Maybe the sharks will be as lazy as you were and won’t bother to eat you!”

Over on the basketball court, the kids in the Olympic Official T-shirts had set up three archery targets and put bows and arrows out on tables. On the other side of the field, a middle-school kid with a backpack was setting up orange traffic cones for a running event.

At nine o’clock, students, teachers, and families began arriving. A couple of food trucks pulled up in the blue parking zone. A police officer arrived and stood watch.

While the other kids were practicing, Kat left to go to the bathroom. As she reached the top of the front steps, she noticed the posters taped around the door. She stared at one of them for a moment. Then she snapped a picture of it and raced back to the balance beams.

“Hey!” Kat said. “I just figured out where the blue paint came from! Let me see that envelope again.”

The kids gathered around Kat. Alice pulled the envelope out of her pocket and handed it to Kat. “Where did it come from?” she asked.

Kat pointed to the picture she had taken of the posters. “I don’t know where the fingerprint came from, but the blue paint on the envelope seems to match the blue on the Olympic posters. It must have come from Mrs. Zane’s classroom!”

Kat liked to do art projects, so she was good friends with Mrs. Zane, the school’s art teacher. They all called her Zany for short. The kids in the school loved Mrs. Zane’s class because she let them pick music to listen to. Sometimes she even let them take their art projects outside to work on.

Alice nodded. “We need to know for sure,” she said.

Kat took the envelope from Alice. “I know where Mrs. Zane stores the paints,” she said. “I’ll go check.”

Luke held up his hand and stopped Kat. “You have to get ready for the torch relay with Max and Nico,” he said. He took the envelope from her. “I’ll go check the paint. You three go win the event!”

And with that, Luke disappeared into the crowd.