back she dropped a paper on Jill’s desk.
She put one on Sherri’s.
She put one on Linda’s.
Ms. Rooney looked up. “Good as gold,” she reminded Dawn.
Dawn went back to her desk.
She’d have the mystery solved in no time.
CHAPTER 7
I T WAS TIME for lunch.
Ms. Rooney’s class marched down to the cafeteria.
“Well?” Sherri said.
“How about it?” asked Linda.
Jill didn’t say anything. She just sniffed.
Dawn raised one shoulder. “I didn’t look yet. My group had reading. I had math and everything.”
“Time to eat,” the lunch monitor said. “You can talk later.”
Dawn slid into the seat next to Jason.
Jason was having peanut butter and jelly.
That’s what he always had.
Dawn had cheese.
“Want to swap?” she asked him.
“Are you kidding?” He took a big bite. The jelly dripped on the table.
Jill was at the next table. She leaned over. “I’ll swap,” she said. “I love cheese.”
Dawn ate Jill’s ham sandwich.
She started her dessert.
Apples and cookies.
The best kind.
She told Jason about the papers.
“Great idea,” said Jason. “There was one dime, one nickel, and two pennies. Right?”
“Right,” said Dawn. “Careful with that jelly. It’ll get on my sweater.”
She opened the first paper.
It was Sherri’s.
It said:
“Sherri is out,” said Jason.
“I guess so,” Dawn said.
Jill’s paper was next.
Jason leaned over Dawn’s shoulder. He smelled like peanut butter.
Dawn tried not to breathe.
She looked down. Jill’s paper was a mess. It had a tearstain on the bottom.
“Wrong,” said Jason.
“All wrong,” said Dawn.
Just then Linda came over.
She had ketchup on her mouth.
She wiped some of it off.
“Where’s my purse?” she asked.
Dawn opened Linda’s paper.
It said:
Jason and Dawn looked at each other.
She reached into her pocket.
The riddle was over.
She was sorry.
Jason was too, she thought.
“Here it is,” she said to Linda.
“How about a reward?” Jason asked. “We could buy some Gummy Bears.”
“Reward?” Linda said.
She opened the purse. “Hey. This isn’t mine. This ugly thing. The stitches are all crooked.”
“Not yours?” Dawn said.
“Not yours?” said Jason. “Give it back.”
Linda dropped the purse on the table.
It landed on the jelly.
Dawn wiped the purse off. “Sticky,” she said.
“Now what?” Jason asked.
Just then Sherri came over. “Where’s my purse?”
Dawn shook her head. “Sorry,” she said. “You couldn’t remember the numbers.”
The bell rang.
The lunch monitor blew her whistle.
“Line up,” she yelled. “Time to go back to the classroom.”
“Not fair,” said Sherri.
“Not fair,” said Jill.
Jason and Dawn went to the end of the line.
“Now what?” said Jason.
“Now we still have a riddle,” said Dawn.
CHAPTER 8
D AWN BANGED OPEN the school door.
“Hurry,” she told Jason.
Jason stuck out his lip. “I’m sick of hurrying. I hurried all day long.”
“Don’t you watch TV?” Dawn shook her head. “Detectives hurry. They run all over the place.”
Jason jumped off the steps. He threw himself onto a snow pile. “Stop, thief,” he yelled.
He brushed the snow off his jeans. “Too bad we don’t have a thief.”
Dawn nodded. “There is something we can do.”
“What?”
“We’ll stop at my house first,” she said. “Get some cookies.”
She looked at her birthday watch.
It had a green face.
It had purple hands.
It said three-thirty.
She wished Jason would stop fooling around. He was jumping up and down in the snow.
He threw a snowball at the telephone pole.
“We can go to my house,” Jason said. “My mother has some fig cookies left.”
Dawn looked up at the flag pole.
The wind was blowing the flag back and forth.
She shook her head back and forth too.
They had sugar cookies at her house.
Noni had made them yesterday.
“My house is on the way,” she said.
Jason shook his hands in the air. “It’s