Cam Jansen and the Mystery Writer Mystery (5 page)

BOOK: Cam Jansen and the Mystery Writer Mystery
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“Mom, we both saw him. When you drove into the school parking lot, you had to stop. A man was walking across the road.”
“Yes, of course,” Mrs. Jansen said. “Who else but a thief would be walking in such horrible weather?”
Officer Oppen had his pad out again. “Can you describe him?” he asked.
“The car windows were fogged,” Cam said. “But I did see that he was short and fat. I saw his raincoat, too. It was light brown. He had on a large brown hat. ”
“Oh, I also saw him!” Dr. Prell said. “The brim of his hat was bent over his eyes, so I didn’t see his face. But I saw him. He came in and said his daughter was already inside. I told him where to hang his coat and where the books were.”
Dr. Prell shook her head. “I even welcomed him to the book fair!”
“Well, we’ll catch him,” Officer Gray said. “We’ll catch him and welcome him to jail.”
Officers Gray and Oppen left the school.
“That was great!” Jim E. Winter said. “I might put a girl like you in one of my next mysteries. She’ll have red hair and freckles just like yours. I’ll name her Camelia.”
“‘Cam’ is not short for ‘Camelia,’” Eric said. “It’s short for ‘The Camera.’ We call her that because she has a mental camera. Her real name is Jennifer.”
“Oh, yes,” Jim E. Winter said, and wrote in his pad.
Cam stood by the front door to the school. She watched the police drive off in their car.
“Good,” Cam said. “Now that the police car is gone, maybe we can catch the thief.”
With her hands, Cam wiped the fog off the school’s large front window.
“Look at your hands,” Cam’s mother told her. “They’re all wet!”
Cam wiped her hands on her shirt.
“Look at your shirt,” Mrs. Jansen said. “Now that’s wet.”
“I’m sorry,” Cam said. “But I want to see out the window. Before, the police car was here. That would scare the thief away. But now it’s gone. The thief already came here twice to steal. Maybe he’ll try again. If he does, we’ll see him, and we’ll catch him.”
Chapter Eight
“So,” Eric asked Cam, “what do we do? How do we catch the thief?”
“We wait here and watch for him,” Cam said.
“Much of detective work is waiting and watching,” Jim E. Winter told Eric. He looked around. “But when I was a detective, I usually did my watching sitting down.”
There was a bench near the entrance. Mr. Winter pulled the bench to the window and sat on it.
“You know,” Jim E. Winter said, “the thief may not come back. He may have room in his garage for only two cars. Or he may have come back and seen the police car. That would have scared him away.”
“I’m waiting,” Danny said, “and the crook won’t show up. That’s not right.”
“Lots of times,” Mr. Winter told him, “when I was a detective, I waited and watched and nothing happened.”
Danny whispered to Cam, “I could tell jokes. Then waiting here would be fun.”
Cam shook her head and whispered, “No. Waiting for a thief is too serious for jokes.”
“I have a question,” Eric said. “Why did the thief take the car key off the ring? He could have just taken all the keys.”
Jim E. Winter smiled.
“I have two answers to your question. It could be that he thought if he left the key ring, it would take longer for your dad and that other dad to know something was wrong. They would find their keys. They would not know their cars were stolen until later, when they went outside.”
Cam wiped the fog off the window again. Mrs. Jansen quickly gave Cam tissues. She didn’t want Cam to wipe her hands on her shirt.
“What’s the other reason?” Eric asked.
“Oh, the other reason,” Jim E. Winter said, and laughed. “Crooks often do strange things. That’s because they’re usually not the smartest people. If they were smart, they wouldn’t be stealing. In the end, they always get caught.”
“Cam, there you are,” someone called.
Cam turned. It was Beth.
“I was looking everywhere for you,” she said. “Look at my books. Mr. Winter signed them.”
Jim E. Winter turned.
“Oh,” Beth said. “I didn’t know you were here.”
“I chose three of your books,” Cam told Mr. Winter. “I’ll go in right now and pay for them. Then will you sign them for me?”
“Of course I will.”
Cam and her mother returned to the gym. Mrs. Jansen paid for the books. Then Cam brought them to Mr. Winter.
“Did anything happen?” Cam asked Eric.
“No. Just that the window fogged up again and I wiped it.”
Jim E. Winter looked at Cam and smiled. Then he signed the books,
For Cam, a smart detective, from Detective Jim E. Winter.
“Thank you,” Cam said.
Cam looked outside. A car entered the school parking lot.
“Look,” Cam whispered. “If the thief is here, he’ll be watching, too. Maybe he’ll try to steal this car.”
Cam and the others watched the driver and his daughter get out of the car. The driver put the keys in his raincoat pocket. He opened an umbrella. Then he walked with his daughter into the school.
No one followed him.
“Welcome to the book fair,” Dr. Prell told the man and his daughter. “Please hang your coats in room seventeen. And please don’t leave your keys in your coat pocket. The books are in the gym.”
Everyone was quiet after that. They waited and watched.
Cam opened her copy of
My Name Is Blake and the Scary Movie Mystery.
Cam turned to the third chapter. In it, Barry Blake is in the theater. He’s looking for the woman’s purse.
You won’t find it,
Cam thought.
That woman forgot where she was sitting. She’s taking you to the wrong seat.
Cam kept reading. In the fourth chapter, Barry Blake asks the woman if she is sure she brought her purse to the theater.
“Of course I did,” she says. “I had to buy a ticket, didn’t I? Well, I paid for it with some of the money I keep in my purse.”
A mother and her two sons walked past Cam and the others. They left the school. Cam watched them go to the parking lot. The woman found her car and drove off.
Cam read some more. In chapter six, Barry Blake finds the woman’s purse. No one had taken it. The woman had just forgotten where she had been sitting.
I knew it,
Cam thought.
Cam closed the book.
Just then, three police cars drove up. Officer Oppen got out of the first car and entered the school.
“We drove up and down every block near the school,” he said. “We looked in every driveway, and then we saw a garage with the lights on. We looked in the window, and there they were—the two stolen cars.”
“I bet that garage has an automatic electric eye,” Jim E. Winter said. “When you go in or out, the light goes on.”
“Yes,” Officer Oppen said. “We found a man in the garage and arrested him. He’s outside.” Then he said to Cam, “We need you to tell us if he’s the man you saw in the parking lot.”
“I don’t want my daughter to meet any thief,” Mrs. Jansen told the officer. “He might be dangerous.”
“He’s handcuffed,” Officer Oppen said. “We’ll take him out of the car. We’ll shine a big light on him. You’ll be able to see him. But don’t worry. The light will be shining in his eyes. He won’t be able to see you.”
“Well,” Mrs. Jansen said, “that sounds safe.”
Cam joined Officers Oppen and Gray by the door to the school. Officer Oppen held a large light. He pointed it at a short fat man in a light-brown raincoat. Two police officers were standing beside him.
Cam closed her eyes. She said,
“Click!”
She looked at the picture she had in her head of the man in the parking lot.
“Yes,” Cam said, and opened her eyes. “That’s him.”
“Thank you,” Officer Oppen said. He waved to the other officers to let them know that Cam identified the thief.
“I’m sorry,” the short man in the light-brown raincoat called out as he got into the back of the first police car.
BOOK: Cam Jansen and the Mystery Writer Mystery
13.72Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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