The Mystery at Monkey House Read Free

see if the ice-cream man has any monkeys in his cart?” Eric asked.
    “We can listen for strange noises coming out of the cart. Or we can tell the man we want to buy some ice cream. I’ll bet he says, ‘Sorry, I’m all out.’ ”
    Cam smiled and asked Eric, “Will you come with me now?”
    Eric nodded and they ran together toward the giraffes.

Chapter Five
     
     
     
     
    C am and Eric ran down the main road. They ran past the camel rides and the elephants to the giraffes’ cage. They found the ice-cream cart still there. The man was sitting on a bench and reading.
    “We’d like to buy some ice cream,” Cam said.
    The man closed his book. “I have ‘Piggy Back’ cones. That’s a cone with two scoops of ice cream. You can get rum raisin and strawberry or chocolate and lemon.”
    “Yuck,” Eric said. “What horrible flavors.”
    Cam leaned close to Eric and whispered, “He doesn’t really have any ice cream in there. He thinks by telling us those horrible flavors we’ll say, ‘No thanks.’ ”
    “I’ll take a chocolate and lemon cone,” Cam told the man.
    “And I’ll take rum raisin and strawberry,” Eric said.
    The man opened the small door to his cart. He reached in and took out two cones.

    “That’s seventy-five cents each,” he said, as he gave Cam and Eric the cones and two napkins.
    Cam and Eric paid the man. Then Eric tasted the ice cream.
    “Yuck,” Eric said again. “This stuff is terrible!”
    “That must be the rum raisin,” the man said. “Everyone hates that flavor.”
    Cam asked, “Are there any other ice-cream carts in the zoo?”
    “Well, yes. There’s one near the zebras and another near the reptiles. But we all have the same flavors.”
    Cam said, “Click,” and closed her eyes. Then she said, “The zebras are all the way at the end of this road, right past the camels and the bison.”
    Cam and Eric walked quickly down the road. When they came to a trash can Eric stopped. He held his ice-cream cone over the can and shook it gently.
    “What are you doing?” Cam asked.
    “I’m trying to shake off the rum raisin scoop without losing the strawberry.”
    Cam took the top scoop off of Eric’s cone and dropped it into the trash. Cam wiped her fingers on her napkin and said, “Let’s go.”
    The ice-cream vendor was sitting on a bench near the zebras. She was sleeping with her feet resting on the ice-cream cart.
    “She doesn’t look like someone who has just stolen some monkeys,” Eric told Cam.
    “Shh,” Cam whispered. She crawled to the ice-cream cart. She put her ear next to it and listened. Eric put his ear against the side of the cart and listened, too.
    “I don’t hear any monkeys in there,” Eric whispered.
    “Neither do I,” Cam whispered.
    “All you’ll hear in there is ice cream,” someone said in a loud voice. “And ice cream doesn’t talk.”

    Cam and Eric looked up and saw the ice-cream woman standing there.
    Eric stood and told the woman, “Some monkeys are missing. We thought they might be inside your ice-cream cart.”
    “Monkeys! What I have in here is worse than monkeys,” the woman said as she opened the small door. “I have chocolate and lemon, and rum raisin and strawberry ice cream. I haven’t sold a cone all day.”
    Cam licked her ice-cream cone and said, “It does taste pretty bad.”
    The woman closed the small door and sat on the bench again. She put her feet on the cart. “Monkeys!” she said, and laughed as she closed her eyes.
    There was a trash can nearby. Cam dropped the lemon ice cream into the trash. She took a few quick bites and finished the chocolate and the cone.
    Cam and Eric walked toward the reptile house to find the third ice-cream cart. They walked past a pond. A man was standing there and throwing bread crumbs to the ducks and geese.
    Quack, quack, honk, honk, the ducks and geese called as they chased after the bread crumbs.
    Cam watched the ducks and geese eat the crumbs. She listened to the sounds