Adventures of a New Year's Kiss: A Holiday Romantic Mystery (Funeral Crashing Young Adult Mystery Books) Read Free

enough for me.
    I wanted Mrs. Rowan to ask the class, though, because I wanted to see how my suspects would react. I could ask them, of course, but I got a little shy around people and it made me anxious just thinking about trying to interrogate anyone. This was a better idea anyway. Mrs. Rowan had an air of authority since she was a teacher. Maybe one of my suspects would turn the necklace in or maybe I’d get a glimpse of a guilty face. Regardless, my time to get back the necklace was limited. Winter break started on Friday and that was tomorrow. If I didn’t find it before school let out for break then the necklace was surely gone forever. In the two weeks of winter break even a guilty person would forget about their minor crime. Then again, if they got careless and wore the necklace to school after we came back in the New Year, I'd have them! The only problem was that Kyle would know I'd lost the necklace by then and his heart would have already been broken.
    "Anything else?" Mrs. Rowan asked because I had been just standing there in silence, thinking in my head.
    "No," I said.
    Then I turned and ran to Chemistry class. My brain was whirling as I dodged around people in my rush to get to class. Was this how Kait felt trying to solve murder mysteries? I didn't really like it. I felt a little sick. Kait seemed to like it, though. I guess I could see why if I thought about it. If you actually solved the case, the reward was solving the puzzle. In my case, my reward was getting my necklace back. I'd be pretty happy with that result. I had to focus on that and try to not to throw up with worry in the meantime.
    Okay. Although I wasn’t a sleuth like Kait, I had read some mysteries, so the first step seemed to be to narrow down the suspects. Who had the opportunity to steal my necklace? Even better, who had a motive to steal it?
    I thought about the five girls with lockers in my section of the locker room. I didn’t know Sarah and Megan that well. Thus, the difficulty I had in telling them apart from each other even though they were not twins at all. I mostly just knew that they were Ariel’s friends and that they were popular. I thought of them as a unit. They seemed sort of like her henchmen. I didn’t know if they’d steal my necklace or not, so I was inconclusive on if they had a motive. They did both have the opportunity to steal it before class, though.
    Then there was Ariel. If I were Kait, maybe she would have stolen it to torment me. Since I wasn’t, I kind of doubted that she’d do it. She seemed to have everything. Ariel always wore the most expensive and stylish clothes. There was no reason why she’d steal something of mine. She could just go to the mall and buy herself the same necklace if she wanted to or order it online or even have her boyfriend Troy buy it for her. So, I didn't have a motive for Ariel either, although I did suppose she had the opportunity before swim class actually started when I left her, Sarah, and Megan talking about their boyfriends. Hmmm. I’d put her last on my list. I didn’t want to antagonize Ariel if I didn’t have to. I didn’t want it to come around on Kait because she was my friend now. I also knew how horrible Ariel could be if she thought you were her enemy. Mostly everyone just left me alone. I preferred it that way.
    Then there was Scarlett. I thought she’d be more likely to steal something from Ariel, Sarah, or Megan just because she thought that they were ridiculous. The necklace didn’t even seem to be her style. Still, Scarlett would have had the opportunity to take my necklace while I was in the shower since she didn’t take one.
    And my last suspect was Claire. The only motive I could think of for her was that I knew she wasn't rich. There were like six kids in her family and they did not have much money. I didn't know much more about her except that she was like me. She wasn't popular and she wasn't unpopular. We just didn't know each other. Still,