The Case of the Ruined Ram Read online

  The three friends hesitated to answer her. They didn’t want to accuse her, and the three principals, and their classmates of getting the solution wrong without stronger evidence against Mitchell. All they really had was some fishy behavior and a blurry tire print.

  “Oh, that’s okay, Miss Hodges,” Corey said. “Forget it.”

  “Yeah, never mind,” Ben added.

  Miss Hodges smiled gently. “The case has been solved, but there’s no need for you three to feel frustrated by that. You did the best you could. Just because you didn’t solve the case doesn’t mean you’re not great investigators. You’ll get ’em next time.”

  The three friends looked at one another. Miss Hodges thought they were sore losers! She totally had the wrong idea! Now they definitely had to prove Mitchell had destroyed Rocky the Ram. But they’d have to do it without Miss Hodges’s Las Vegas expert.

  “Okay, Miss Hodges,” Hannah said, smiling. “Thanks. See you tomorrow.”

  As they walked down the school hallway, they thought about what they could possibly do next. “We really need that handwriting standard from Mitchell,” Ben said. “I’m guessing it’ll match the original note and the new note.”

  They kept walking, trying to think of a way to get Mitchell to write something for them. Send him a present and hope he’d write them a thank-you note?

  Then Corey thought of something.

  “I wonder if Ricky and Charlie ever got a handwriting sample from Mitchell. Charlie definitely thought of using handwriting analysis to solve the case. He used it to match the two notes to each other.”

  “Are you saying we should go ask Ricky and Charlie for a sample of Mitchell’s handwriting?” Hannah asked.

  “Well,” Corey said, “we could just ask Charlie.”

  Chapter 18

  At lunch, they found Charlie in the cafeteria. He was sitting by himself, eating a sandwich.

  “Hi, Charlie,” Hannah said cheerfully. “How’s your lunch?”

  “It’s okay, I guess,” he said. “Just a sandwich.”

  “We were wondering if maybe we could ask you something about your investigation of Rocky the Ram,” Corey said.

  Charlie thought for a second. Then he said, “I don’t know. I’d have to consult with my partner.”

  “Partner?” Corey said. “Oh, you mean Ricky?”

  “Where is he?” Ben asked.

  “Right over there,” Charlie said, looking toward the back corner of the cafeteria.

  Ricky was sitting with his old friends from the back of the classroom. They were laughing and stealing one another’s food.

  “Fine,” Hannah said. “Consult away.”

  Charlie got up and walked over to Ricky’s table. Club CSI watched as he talked to Ricky, who looked over at them. He rolled his eyes, shaking his head. Charlie said something else to Ricky. Finally, he sighed, stood up, and walked over to Corey, Ben, and Hannah. Charlie followed Ricky, walking just behind him.

  Ricky stood in front of them, his arms folded across his chest. “Charlie says you want to ask us something about our investigation. I told him you’re just jealous we solved the case, so now you’re trying to poke holes in our discoveries.”

  “‘Discoveries’? You found a note pinned to a tree,” Corey said.

  “We’re not trying to poke any holes,” Ben said. “We’re just working on a theory of our own.”

  “Why?” Ricky asked. “The case is solved. The Vikings did it.”

  “When you were doing your investigation,” Hannah said, trying to smooth things over, “did you happen to get a sample of Mitchell’s handwriting?”

  “Again, I’ve got to ask why?” Ricky said. “Why would you need a sample from the guy who wore the costume when we know the football players did it?”

  “I’ll show you,” Ben said. He sat down at the table and opened his backpack. He took out a folder labeled “Tire Prints.” From the folder he took two pieces of paper and laid them side by side on the table. Then he motioned for Charlie and Ricky to sit down.

  Charlie looked at Ricky to see what he was going to do. Ricky rolled his eyes again, but he unfolded his arms and plopped down in a chair. Charlie sat down too. So did Hannah and Corey.

  Ben pushed the two pieces of paper toward Ricky and Charlie. They looked down at them, puzzled.

  “What am I looking at?” Ricky said.

  Charlie touched one of the pieces of paper. “This one looks like a picture of the ram costume.” He touched the other paper. “And this one looks like a close-up of a tire.”

  “That’s exactly right, Charlie,” Ben said. “We found bits of dirt, glass, and stone in that spot on the costume.”

  “The kind of things you’d find in the grooves of a tire,” Corey said.

  “So we looked at the picture closely, and we realized we were looking at a car’s tire print,” Hannah said.

  Charlie looked closely and then nodded. “You’re right. That’s a good catch. I should have seen that.”

  Ricky frowned. He looked confused. “Wait. So you’re saying the football players ran over the costume with a car before they threw Rocky on the bonfire?”

  “Not exactly,” Ben said. He lowered his voice. He didn’t want other kids in the cafeteria overhearing his accusation before he had better proof.

  “I’m saying Mitchell drove over the costume before he threw Rocky on the bonfire.”

  “Why Mitchell?” Charlie asked.

  “Because the other picture is of a tire on Mitchell’s car,” Corey explained. “And it matches the tire print from the costume. We think.”

  Ricky stared at the two pictures. Then he shook his head. “Maybe,” he said. “I don’t know, though. They’re not exactly alike.”

  “It’s tough to get a good, clear tire print from a hairy mascot costume,” Hannah pointed out.

  “Plus,” Ben said, “whoever wrote the notes is right-handed. And Mitchell is right-handed.”

  Ricky snorted. “So are lots of people! I’m right-handed! You think I wrote the notes?”

  “It’s not just the tire print and the fact that Mitchell’s right-handed,” Ben said. “It’s also the way he acted when we talked to him and tried to get a writing sample from him. But we need harder proof. We really need that writing sample.”

  “Did you happen to get a writing sample from Mitchell when you were doing your investigation?” Hannah asked.

  Ricky and Charlie shook their heads. “No, we didn’t,” Charlie said. “I should have thought of that too.”

  “He probably wouldn’t have given you one, anyway,” Corey said. “He wouldn’t even write down his e-mail address for us.”

  Ricky was thinking. Suddenly he snapped his fingers. Snap!

  “I got it,” he said. “The sign-in sheet at the gym.”

  Ben started nodding and smiling. “You’re right! That’s a great idea!”

  Corey looked confused. “Um, I’m lost,” he said.

  “Mitchell had to go into the gym all the time to put on the mascot costume,” Ben explained. “Every time he went in, he had to sign in. If we can get a copy of those sign-in sheets, we’ll have a sample of his handwriting.”

  “A nonrequested standard,” Charlie said.

  “Perfect!” Hannah said. “We’ll go over to the gym after school to see if they’ll let us have copies of the sign-in sheets.”

  The three friends started to make a plan, but Ricky put up his palm and whistled loudly to stop their conversation.

  They looked at him.

  “No,” he said. “It was my idea. If anyone’s going to the gym, it’s me and Charlie.”

  “Why?” Corey asked. “I thought you said the case was solved.”

  “Fine,” Ricky said firmly. “We’ll all go.”

/>   Chapter 19

  The two teams met after school and walked to the high school together. Once they got to Woodlands High, they found the same assistant coach who had shown Club CSI the room where the mascot costume had been stored.

  “What brings you back here?” he asked. “I heard the case was solved. The players over at Jefferson did it.”

  “Yes, we heard that too,” Hannah said. “But we wanted to tie up a few loose ends.”

  The assistant coach shrugged. “Well, okay. How can I help?”

  “You know the sign-in sheets by the front door to the gym?” Ben asked.

  The coach nodded. “Sure.”

  “Do you happen to keep those?” Ben asked. “Going back to, say, the beginning of the school year?”

  “You know, I don’t actually know the answer to that question,” he said frankly. “But we can find out. Follow me.”

  He led them out of the gym and into the high school’s main building. They walked down a long hallway to the main office.

  “Mary,” he said to the woman behind the counter, “these fine young students from the junior high were wondering if we keep the sign-in sheets from the gym.”

  She smiled. “We certainly do.”

  “May we look at them, please?” Charlie asked politely.

  “I don’t see why not,” Mary said, turning toward a filing cabinet. She found a folder full of sign-in sheets and handed it to Charlie.

  It didn’t take the five investigators long to find several sheets with Mitchell’s name written on them. “May we have photocopies of these sheets?” Hannah asked. “We could pay for the seven copies.”

  Mary laughed. “That’s all right. I think we can afford seven copies for you.” She quickly made the copies and handed them to Hannah.

  “Thank you so much,” she said.

  Outside, they wasted no time in comparing the sign-in sheets to Hannah’s picture of the first note.

  “A magnifying glass would help,” Charlie said.

  Ben pulled two from his backpack. Charlie grinned. “You came prepared.”

  They carefully compared the letters in Mitchell’s name to those letters as they appeared in the note. They paid attention to the way each letter was formed.

  It was a match.

  “I wish we had a copy of the second note,” Corey said. “I know the two notes matched, but I’d like to compare the new note to Mitchell’s sign-in.”

  “Here,” Charlie said, handing Corey his phone. “When we found the new note, I took a picture of it with my cell.”

  “All right!” Corey said, sliding his fingers across the screen to enlarge the picture of the note.

  That one matched the writing on the sign-in sheets, too.

  “Okay, I’ll admit it,” Ricky said finally. “Looks like Mitchell’s our man.”

  When they showed the matching writing to Miss Hodges, she was impressed. “Very good analysis,” she said. “I’m particularly impressed by how your two teams worked together.”

  Hannah tried to keep from smiling. She was remembering how hard they’d worked at the beginning to keep Ricky from overhearing their plans.

  Ben showed Miss Hodges the picture of the tire print and the picture of Mitchell’s tire. “If we need more evidence, maybe your expert in Las Vegas could see whether these really do match.”

  “Definitely,” Miss Hodges said.

  As it turned out, they didn’t need the opinion of Miss Hodges’s tire expert after all.

  When they confronted Mitchell with the evidence in Principal Hall’s office, he made a full confession.

  “It was an accident,” he said. “I didn’t mean to ruin the costume.”

  “So you accidentally ran over it and then threw it on the bonfire?” Ricky asked sarcastically.

  “Just tell us what happened, Mitchell,” Hannah said. “It’ll be okay.”

  He sighed. “It was at the away game against Farrow High. After the game I was walking back to my car wearing the costume. I had the head off. As I was about to put the head into the trunk, one of the cheerleaders came up and started talking to me.”

  He blushed. Corey nodded, remembering what Mitchell had said before about wanting to meet the cheerleaders.

  “My trunk latch sticks, and I didn’t want to struggle with it in front of her, so I just set the head down on the ground while I talked to her. We talked for a while, and I was feeling really happy, and I totally forgot about the head.”

  “You backed over it,” Ben concluded.

  Mitchell nodded sadly. “Yeah. I heard it crunch. I stopped immediately, but it was too late. The head was flattened. I knew how expensive the costume was, and I was afraid I’d get in major trouble. Luckily, no one had seen me drive over the head.”

  “So you decided to sneak the costume into the bonfire and then write a note that would make everyone think the Vikings did it, just like twenty-five years ago,” Charlie said.

  “Yeah,” Mitchell admitted. “That’s right. Then you guys started asking all these questions and poking around my car. I thought the second note would put an end to it.”

  Mitchell looked at Principal Hall. “Am I going to jail?” he asked.

  “No,” Principal Hall said sternly. “But you’re going to work to pay back the school for the costume.”

  Relieved, Mitchell blew out a chest full of air. “That’s fair,” he said.

  As the five investigators walked out of the high school together, Corey said, “You know, I just thought of something. Mitchell burned the costume to cover up running over the head. What’s that word for when you destroy evidence to hide a crime?”

  “Spoliation,” Ben and Charlie said at the same time.

  “Right!” Corey said. “Isn’t that what I suggested in the beginning?”

  Miss Hodges made an announcement in class the next day. “I’ve decided that both teams will receive extra credit. They solved this mystery together.”

  Then she picked up an envelope. “And here are the VIP tickets to the football games. Two of you will be sitting together.”

  Hannah, Ben, and Charlie weren’t interested in the football games.

  That left Corey and Ricky.

  Corey looked at Ricky. “I guess I’ll see you at the games, partner.”

  David Lewman has never been a school mascot, because his high school didn’t have a football team, but he did play drums in the school band. He has written more than sixty-five books starring SpongeBob SquarePants, Jimmy Neutron, the Fairly OddParents, G.I. Joe, the Wild Thornberrys, and other popular characters. He has also written scripts for many acclaimed television shows. David lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Donna, and their dog, Pirkle.

  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.

  Jacket illustration by Chris King © 2012 CBS and Ent. AB funding LLC. All rights reserved

  ISBN 978-1-4424-3397-7 (pbk)

  ISBN 978-1-4424-4672-4
(hc)

  ISBN 978-1-4424-6690-6 (eBook)

  Library of Congress Control Number 2012935962