The Case of the Missing Moola Read online

  Money is missing from the class-trip fund . . .

  and Corey from Club CSI is a suspect!

  The Case: Funds for a class trip have gone missing.

  The Crime Scene: Mrs. Ramirez’s classroom at Woodlands Junior High

  The Victims: The whole seventh grade! They were selling magazines to raise money for a class trip to Washington, DC.

  The Weapon: Who knows? It doesn’t look like the lock on the cash box was broken.

  Persons of Interest: Anyone and everyone is a suspect, even Mrs. Ramirez! One student remembers Corey talking about how much he could use that money to buy a Quark Pad. . . .

  The Assignment: Hannah and Ben have to find a way to clear Corey’s name and find out who really stole the money.

  Look for more books about Club CSI at your favorite store!

  SIMON SPOTLIGHT

  Simon & Schuster, New York

  Cover illustrated by Chris King

  Design by Victor Joseph Ochoa

  Watch clips, take a quiz, and find more

  books featuring your favorite characters at

  KIDS.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  SIMON SPOTLIGHT

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  © 2012 by CBS Broadcasting Inc. and Entertainment AB Funding LLC.

  All Rights Reserved. CSI: CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION in USA is a trademark of CBS Broadcasting Inc. and outside USA is a trademark of Entertainment AB Funding LLC.

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  SIMON SPOTLIGHT and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  ISBN 978-1-4424-3395-3 (pbk)

  ISBN 978-1-4424-4670-0 (hc)

  ISBN 978-1-4424-6687-6 (eBook)

  Library of Congress Control Number is available from the Library of Congress.

  Cover illustration by Chris King

  Design by Victor Joseph Ochoa

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  About the Author

  For about the hundredth time, Corey counted the small stack of crumpled bills. “Forty-six . . . forty-seven . . . forty-eight,” he muttered to himself. “Forty-eight dollars. Not bad. Just wish it was mine.”

  He could really use the money. With forty-eight dollars he could buy a video game, go to the batting cages, and still have some left to put toward that new electronic tablet he had his eye on, the Quark Pad. To buy one of those, he’d only have to save up for about . . . a million years.

  He sighed. Unfortunately, even though he was holding all that cash right in his hands, it wasn’t his. He stuck it in his pocket, so he’d stop staring at it. But he still kept thinking about it. “Forty-eight dollars . . .”

  Corey closed his locker door and jogged to homeroom. He didn’t want to be late. At Woodlands Junior High, Principal Inverno and all the teachers constantly stressed how important it was to be on time. And the basketball coach liked him to run as much as possible.

  Besides, he really liked homeroom. His teacher, Mrs. Ramirez, was nice. And today was special. Not just an ordinary Monday toward the end of the school year.

  As he hurried into the classroom, Jacob Ritter came up alongside him. Jacob was supercompetitive. From blowing bubble-gum bubbles to throwing free throws, Jacob always wanted to be the best. “So,” he asked, “what’s your final total?”

  Smiling proudly, Corey answered, “Forty-eight.”

  Jacob snorted and shook his head. “Too bad.”

  “Too bad?” Corey asked. “I thought forty-eight was pretty good.”

  “I guess,” Jacob said, shrugging. He slung his backpack off his shoulder and slid slowly into a seat. His bag hit the floor. Thump.

  “Why?” Corey asked, sitting down next to him. “How much did you raise?”

  Jacob grinned. Clearly, this was exactly the question he’d wanted Corey to ask him. He leaned back in his seat and put his hands behind his head. “My final total was a hundred and forty-four.”

  “A hundred and forty-four bucks?!” Corey exclaimed.

  “That’s right,” Jacob said, nodding slowly. “A hundred and forty-four dollah, dollah bills, y’all. I’ll bet that’s the most anyone collected!”

  “Well, that’s . . . really good,” Corey admitted. He wished he could say something funny to take Jacob down a notch or two, but he couldn’t think of anything offhand. If only his best friends, Ben and Hannah, were there. He always felt more clever when they were around.

  The three friends had known one another since they’d entered kindergarten in their small Nevada town, but in seventh grade they’d ended up in separate homerooms. Luckily, they still had several classes together, including their favorite, forensic science with Miss Hodges. They liked that class so much, they’d even started their own extracurricular organization, Club CSI.

  Corey was proud that as a member of Club CSI, he’d helped solve the mystery of why the cafeteria’s meatless meat loaf had made several people sick. The principal of the school had even congratulated Club CSI on a job well done. If Corey helped solve more crimes, he thought, maybe someday the mayor would shake his hand and give him a medal. Or even the president . . .

  The bell then rang, ending Corey’s daydream. Mrs. Ramirez, a short woman with brown hair and glasses, got right down to business. “Good morning, class,” she said cheerfully. “Today we’re going to start by finding out how much you’ve all collected from selling magazine subscriptions.”

  A small cheer went up among the students. They knew Mrs. Ramirez would let them goof around a little in homeroom. But just a little.

  “I’m hoping, as I’m sure you all are, that you’ve brought in enough money to pay this class’s share of our trip to Washington, DC,” Mrs. Ramirez said, smiling. “All right. Please bring up your money to me one at a time.”

  A black-haired girl named Jean popped up out of her seat in the first row and hurried up to Mrs. Ramirez’s desk. Jean liked to be first. She was big on getting things over with.

  “Here’s mine, Mrs. Ramirez,” she said a little nervously. “I really tried to sell as many subscriptions as I could.” She handed a slim stack of bills to the teacher.

  As Mrs. Ramirez thumbed the bills onto her desk one by one, she counted out loud. “Thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven. Thirty-seven dollars. Good job, Jean.”

  Jean grinned, relieved. She’d worried that she hadn’t sold enough magazine subscriptions. It wasn’t easy. Nowadays it seemed as though everybody just read magazine articles online for free.

  “Who can tell me something interesting about the number thirty-seven?” Mrs. Ramirez asked the class. Mrs. Ramirez was a math teacher, and she never missed a chance to mix a little math into her homeroom class.

  Everyone looked stumped. C
orey raised his hand tentatively. “It used to be Ron Artest’s number?”

  Now it was Mrs. Ramirez’s turn to look stumped. “And who, exactly, is Ron Artest?”

  “A basketball player,” Corey explained. “For the Lakers.”

  “Except now he wants people to call him Metta World Peace,” another boy, Victor, added.

  “I will never get used to that,” Corey said. “It’d be really hard to go to a game and yell, ‘Go, Metta World Peace!’”

  “What have you got against world peace?” Victor asked, grinning.

  Mrs. Ramirez felt they were seriously getting off the topic at hand. “Thirty-seven,” she announced, “is a prime number. Which means . . . ?”

  “A number bigger than one that can be evenly divided only by one and itself,” answered Emma Welch. She was really good at math.

  “That’s right!” said Mrs. Ramirez. “Next?”

  A kid named Lukas gave Mrs. Ramirez the money he’d collected. Again, she counted it out loud, announcing the total: “Fifty-four dollars. Quick, is fifty-four divisible by three?”

  “Yes,” several kids said.

  “How do you know?” Mrs. Ramirez asked.

  Corey actually knew this one. He raised his hand, and Mrs. Ramirez called on him. “Because five plus four equals nine, and nine is divisible by three, so fifty-four is too,” he explained.

  “Very good!” Mrs. Ramirez said. Corey couldn’t help but look proud.

  The next student brought up twenty-eight dollars. “And what’s special about the number twenty-eight?” the homeroom teacher asked.

  The students thought about the number twenty-eight. Divisible by four. Divisible by seven. And two. And fourteen. But was that special?

  “My birthday is on the twenty-eighth!” said Mrs. Ramirez, laughing. “So I’m always happy when I see the number twenty-eight!”

  After Mrs. Ramirez counted each student’s money, she wrote the amount on an envelope, along with the day’s date. Then she put the money in the envelope and handed it back to the student. She also wrote each student’s total on a separate piece of paper so she could add it up at the end. She liked her students to see her doing math by hand instead of using a calculator.

  Each student would then open the metal box on Mrs. Ramirez’s desk and place his or her envelope in the box. The money in the box would be kept safe by a combination padlock.

  Jacob held back until all the other students had turned in their money. He was pretty sure he’d sold the most magazine subscriptions, and he wanted his contribution to be the triumphant finale. Each time Mrs. Ramirez announced a student’s total, Jacob listened carefully to make sure it wasn’t higher than his. And in every case, it wasn’t. Sweet. The morning was going exactly as Jacob had imagined it.

  “Is that everyone?” Mrs. Ramirez asked.

  “No, Mrs. Ramirez,” Jacob said, getting to his feet. “I’ve still got mine.”

  He strolled to her desk, savoring the moment. As she counted the fat pile of bills, the other students murmured in appreciation at the impressive total. “One hundred and forty-four dollars! Very well done, Jacob!” Mrs. Ramirez said. “That’s the highest total yet!”

  Jacob smiled and nodded. “Well,” he said, “it’s not so tough when you’re a highly skilled salesman.”

  Mrs. Ramirez handed Jacob his envelope. As he was putting it in the metal box, she asked, “Can you tell me the square root of one hundred and forty-four?”

  Jacob frowned. “The square root? Um, let’s see . . .”

  “Twelve!” Emma quickly blurted out. She knew Mrs. Ramirez was asking Jacob, but she just couldn’t help herself.

  “I was asking Jacob, Emma, but yes, twelve is the square root of one hundred and forty-four,” Mrs. Ramirez said. “One hundred and forty-four is also known as a gross—twelve times twelve.”

  “Jacob’s total is gross,” Victor said. The class laughed.

  Corey wished he’d said that.

  “So,” Mrs. Ramirez said, adding up columns of numbers and writing with a pencil, “that brings our grand total to . . . one thousand two hundred and eighty-six dollars! Just two hundred and fourteen dollars short of our fifteen-hundred-dollar goal!”

  Everyone cheered. “Washington, here we come!” Jean said.

  “I’m sure we’ll be able to raise the rest of the money with our bake sale in two weeks,” Mrs. Ramirez added. She closed the padlock on the metal box, put the box in her desk drawer, and locked the drawer.

  “Wow, one thousand two hundred and eighty-six dollars,” Corey murmured. “With that much money, I could buy two Quark Pads. . . .”

  “Dream on,” Victor said.

  “Thanks,” Corey answered. “I will.”

  On Thursday, Corey was back in homeroom. So far, it hadn’t exactly been the greatest week of the school year for him. On Tuesday he’d forgotten to bring his science homework. On Wednesday he’d been caught off guard by a question because he was staring out the window during history class.

  It was hard to concentrate this close to the end of the school year. Sometimes it felt like there was a choir outside singing, “Summer, summer, summer . . .”

  But today he was going to focus. He was going to pay attention, no matter how tempting it was to look out the window and think about baseball. Or basketball. Or his family’s summer trip to a lake in the mountains. Maybe this year he’d get up the nerve to dive off the high rock into that icy cold lake water—

  Focus!

  He forced his eyes away from the window and stared straight ahead. At the front of the classroom, Mrs. Ramirez was looking through her attendance sheet. The bell rang, and she looked up.

  “Good morning, class,” she said.

  “Good morning,” the students repeated, though it sounded more like a drone than a hearty greeting. Maybe they all had spring fever.

  Mrs. Ramirez took attendance and then used a remote to switch on the TV mounted on a bracket near the ceiling. “All right,” she said. “Let’s all pay close attention to the morning announcements.”

  “Good morning, Woodlands Junior High School,” said the girl on the TV screen. Corey thought she was an eighth grader. Most of the kids who got to be on the morning announcements program were eighth graders. Sometimes he thought being on TV might be fun, though he’d rather appear as a professional basketball player. A player who would never change his name.

  The announcements were pretty standard—about where to pick up yearbooks, birthdays, and what delicious items would be featured in the cafeteria at lunchtime. Corey kind of wished they wouldn’t talk about lunch. Any mention of food made Corey hungry. And lunch period was still hours away.

  After the morning announcements were done, Mrs. Ramirez turned off the TV and said, “I see that Bill is back with us today.” Bill Hamm had been absent for the first half of the week.

  “How was the big family reunion, Bill?” the teacher asked.

  “Good,” Bill said. He didn’t much like talking in front of the whole class. But he did have something he was looking forward to sharing. Something . . . impressive.

  And he was going to get his chance right away. “Did you happen to bring in the money you collected from selling magazines?” Mrs. Ramirez asked.

  “Yep,” Bill said. Then he smiled, a wide, proud grin.

  “Well, then, please bring it up to the front,” Mrs. Ramirez said.

  Bill stood up. He was tall and lanky, and everyone watched as he walked to the front of the classroom. He certainly looked pleased with himself.

  Corey whispered to Jacob, “Uh-oh. Do you think Bill might have shattered your unbreakable record?”

  “No way,” Jacob shot back. But he looked worried, like he was holding his breath.

  Bill pulled a stack of bills out of his back pocket. Jacob exhaled, relieved. The stack seemed smaller than the one he had brought in on Monday. Still, could it all be big bills instead of singles?

  Then Bill pulled another stack out of his other back pocke
t. Corey whistled. Jacob groaned.

  Mrs. Ramirez took the two stacks of cash, combined them, and started counting. The whole class leaned forward in their seats, listening, waiting to hear what the total would be.

  When she said, “One hundred and fifty,” Jacob slumped in his seat.

  “That,” Corey said, “is the sound of a record shattering.”

  But Mrs. Ramirez wasn’t done counting. She kept going until she reached the last bill. She put it on the stack on her desk and said, “Two hundred and sixteen dollars! We’ve reached our goal! In fact, we’re two dollars over!”

  The class cheered. Bill smiled, looking embarrassed. Mrs. Ramirez handed him an envelope with his total written on it. As he put the money in the envelope, she asked him how he managed to raise so much money.

  Bill shrugged. “I have a lot of relatives,” he said.

  Mrs. Ramirez addressed the class. “Should we double-check our math to make sure we’ve reached our fifteen-hundred-dollar goal for the trip to Washington?”

  “Yes!” they shouted. The students had managed to shake off their spring fever, and were excited about their grand total.

  Mrs. Ramirez took a key out of her pocket and unlocked her desk drawer. She lifted up the metal box and set it on her desk. She quickly spun the dial on the combination padlock, removed the lock, and pulled the lid open. Click.

  Mrs. Ramirez offered the metal box to Bill. He picked up the box and added his bulging envelope to the others.

  Mrs. Ramirez gave Bill a little nod of appreciation. He handed the box back to her. She took all the envelopes out one by one, opened them, and counted the money inside. But when she finished, instead of one thousand five hundred and two dollars, she came up with a total of one thousand four hundred and two dollars. A hundred dollars short!

  Could she have counted wrong?

  As the class watched, Mrs. Ramirez carefully counted the money again.

  One thousand four hundred and two dollars.

  She didn’t think she could possibly have made a mistake. And as she checked each student’s envelope, she realized Jacob’s envelope held only forty-four dollars.