The Mystery at Monkey House Read Free Page B

thieves.”
    The police officer opened his car door and got out. Mr. Cooper told him the truck had been in the zoo at the time the monkeys were stolen.
    The police officer walked over to the truck. Mr. Cooper, Cam, Eric, Billy, and Wally Russell were right behind the officer.
    “Whose truck is this?” the officer asked.
    “It’s mine,” a young man said. He was wearing a green baseball hat and a sweat shirt. “And she crashed into me.” The young man pointed to a woman standing next to the small blue car. “My neck hurts. And my back hurts. And my truck is dented.”
    “You were turning?” the officer asked.
    “Yes, and that woman crashed right into me. She shouldn’t be allowed to drive a car.”
    “If you were turning and she was going straight,” the officer said, “she had the right of way.”
    The woman said, “He wants me to fix his truck and pay for his bad back. But if I had the right of way, the accident wasn’t my fault.”
    The woman looked at her car for dents or scratches. She didn’t find any so she got into her car and drove away.
    The young man walked toward his truck. “Wait just a minute,” the officer told him. “I want to talk to you about some monkeys.”
    The man turned. “I don’t know anything about monkeys,” he said.
    “Then you won’t mind if I look around,” the police officer said.

    He opened the truck door and looked inside. Mr. Cooper looked, too. They walked around the truck. Cam, Eric, Billy, and Wally Russell followed them. They all bent down and looked under the truck. They looked in the back of the truck, but they didn’t find any monkeys.
    “Can I go now?” the young man asked.
    The officer nodded. The young man climbed into the truck.
    “Hurry,” Eric whispered to Cam. “Say ‘Click.’ Do something!”
    Cam closed her eyes and said “Click” just as the truck started to move. The traffic light was red. The truck waited. Cam said “Click” again. Then the light turned green.
    “Wait!” Cam called out as she opened her eyes. “I know where he has those monkeys hidden.”
    The police officer blew his whistle and ran to the truck. “Pull over to the side of the road,” he said.
    “Look at the sticks in the back of the truck,” Cam told the police officer. “I’ll bet they’re hollow. That’s so the monkeys can breathe. They’re in a cage under the dirt.”
    The police officer and Wally Russell dug their hands into the dirt. “Hey, there’s a cloth here. And there’s something under the cloth. It feels like a cage.”
    Mr. Cooper opened two latches at the back of the truck. The gate dropped down and he found his monkeys.
    Mr. Cooper and Wally Russell pulled the cage out and put it on top of the dirt. There were holes in the top of the cage. Attached to each hole was a wooden tube.
    Mr. Cooper looked closely at each of the monkeys. Cam, Eric, and Billy looked at them, too. Eric scratched his nose and put his hands behind his back as he looked. One of the monkeys scratched his nose. Then he put his hands behind his back. It was the very small monkey, the one that had copied Eric.

Chapter Eight
     
     
     
     
    T he young man with the green baseball hat drove his truck back to the zoo. Wally Russell rode with him. The police officer and Mr. Cooper followed in their cars. Cam, Eric, and Billy rode with Mr. Cooper.
    “How did you know where to find the monkeys?” Mr. Cooper asked Cam.
    “I had lots of pictures of that truck stored in my head. I looked at them and saw that the rakes and the shovels in the back had been moved around. But the sticks hadn’t. They were in the exact same places each time.”
    “That wouldn’t happen if the sticks were not attached to the cage,” Eric said. “If the sticks were in a pile of dirt they would move around when the truck moved.”
    “If you have pictures stored in your head,” Mr. Cooper said, “you must have a photographic memory.”
    “She does,” Eric said.
    “Well, your memory saved the