The Riddle of the Red Purse (4 page)

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 freezing,” he said. “On the way where?”

“On the way to Wuff Wuff’s Pet Store.”

“Good idea,” he said. He stopped to think. “Why?”

“We can show the list to the man,” Dawn said. “Maybe he’ll remember someone with a red purse.”

Jason blew on his fingers. “Let’s hurry. We don’t have all day. I have homework to do.”

They raced down the street.

They stopped at Dawn’s house.

Dawn threw her books onto the table.

She took two cookies.

One for her. One for Jason.

Noni smiled. “Take two more.”

Jason took a bite. “Almost as good as my mother’s fig cookies.”

Outside they hurried around the corner.

It was a long walk to Linden Avenue. The wind was blowing hard.

Dawn kept turning in circles.

“I’m a windmill,” she yelled.

At Wuff Wuff’s, Dawn put her hands over her ears.

Dogs were barking.

Cats were meowing.

Birds were squawking.

A hamster raced around on a runner.

“Look at that guy go,” Jason said.

Dawn nodded. “He loves it.”

The man was in the back. He was dropping fish food into a tank.

“Pretty,” said Dawn.

She watched the fish swimming around.

“Can I help you?” asked the man.

Dawn held out the purse. “We found this.”

“It’s not mine,” the man said. “Ask one of the snakes.”

He started to laugh. He slapped his leg.

Dawn pulled out the list.

“See,” she said. “ ‘Food for Angel.’ ”

The man scratched his head. “We had kittens last week.”

He looked up at the ceiling. “Yes. Someone came in and bought one. I think she called her Angel.”

Dawn leaned closer.

So did Jason.

Jason smelled like sugar cookies.

“What did she look like?” Dawn asked.

“Skinny like a stick,” said the man. “Red hair. Brown eyes. A skillion freckles.”

Dawn raised one shoulder. “I don’t know anyone with red hair.”

“What’s her name?” Jason asked.

“Cindy,” he said. “No, Candy.” He scratched his head again. “Maybe it was Catherine.”

“Think hard,” Jason told the man.

“Katie,” said the man.

“How old was she?” Dawn asked.

“Fifteen,” said the man. “Sixteen.”

Dawn sighed. “Thanks anyway. It’s the wrong person.”

They started back out of the store.

They stopped to watch the fish again.

One of the fish was swimming along the bottom.

It swam around a little castle in the sand.

“Come on,” Jason said. “We have homework.”

They went outside.

“How do you know it was the wrong girl?” Jason asked.

“There are no teenagers in our school,” Dawn said. “Only kids from six to twelve.”

“So?” Jason asked.

“So she couldn’t have dropped the purse in the schoolyard.”

Jason sighed. “We walked all the way here for nothing.”

Dawn shook her head.

The wind blew her scarf across her face.

“Not for nothing,” she said. “I was wrong about something.”

She tucked her scarf around her neck. “I think I can solve the mystery.” She nodded. “Tomorrow.”

T
ODAY THERE WAS
more snow.

Dawn wore her red boots. They came up to her knees.

She gave Noni a quick kiss. “I have to hurry.”

Dawn was the first one in the school-yard.

The snow was high.

She waded through it.

She bumped into the picnic table.

She fished around underneath. Then she put something in her schoolbag.

The school bus stopped at the gate.

Other children were coming.

She saw Jason. He was hopping across the snow.

“Are you ready to solve the riddle?” he asked.

“Two of them,” Dawn said.

They went inside. Jason pulled off his hat. Snow flew all over.

Dawn reached into her schoolbag.

She pulled out a mitten. A red one. “The mystery of the missing mitten,” she said.

Jason’s eyes opened.

“My detective book says ‘THINK,’ ” said Dawn. “I thought. I remembered. The picnic table was our jail. You left the red mitten in jail.”

“Bad news,” Jason said. He held up his hand.

“What?” Dawn asked. She marched along. She liked the slap-slap her boots made.

“I lost the other red one. I lost the green one too.” He raised his shoulders in the air.

They went into the classroom.

Dawn pinned her boots with a clothespin.

She went to the back of the room.

She said hello to Drake and Harry, the class fish.

Jill was feeding them.

Dawn went up to Ms. Rooney’s desk.

She whispered in her ear.

Ms. Rooney kept nodding. She was smiling too.

It was time for the pledge.

Today everyone was ready.

Then it was time for show-and-tell.

“I have to call on myself first,” Dawn said.

Linda Lorca clicked her teeth.

Dawn held the purse up in the air. “I’ve solved the riddle of the red purse,” she said.

“Me too,” said Jason.

Dawn opened the purse. “See this stuff in the bottom.”

“It looks like vanilla cookies,” Jason said.

“It looks like sand too,” said Dawn.

Sherri raised her hand. “There was sand in California. Lots of it. I went swimming every day.”

Dawn nodded. “At first I thought the purse was yours.”

“Even though you didn’t remember the dimes and the pennies and the nickels,” said Jason.

Dawn walked to the back of the room.

“Look, everybody,” she said.

Everyone stood up.

“I see Drake,” said Sherri. “Harry too.”

“Look at the fish food,” said Dawn. She held up the box.

She poured a little into her hand.

She took a little of the sandy stuff out of the purse.

“It’s the same,” said Jason.

Dawn looked at Jill.

Jill was smiling. She was nodding her head up and down. “I put some fish food in the purse,” she said. “I brought it for show-and-tell.”

“Here’s your purse,” said Dawn.

Jill came to the back of the room.

“You’re a great detective,” she told Dawn. “How did you guess?”

Dawn held up her fingers. “I’ll bet you bought your fish at Wuff Wuff’s.”

“Right,” said Jill. She tucked her purse in her pocket. “My angelfish. I buy my fish food there too. The fish just love it.”

Dawn took a breath. “One more thing. You’re the only one who likes cheese.”

Ms. Rooney smiled.

Emily Arrow clapped.

Linda raised her hand high. “Wait a minute,” she said. “Jill had the pennies wrong. She had the nickels wrong. She even had the dimes wrong.”

Jill looked as if she were going to cry. “I can’t help it,” she said. “I’m terrible at math.”

Linda nodded. She looked at Dawn. “Not bad,” she said. She started to smile.

Dawn smiled too.

She went back to her seat.

The riddle was solved.

She couldn’t wait for the next mystery.

She hoped it would happen soon.

Patricia Reilly Giff came from a family of storytellers. She learned to read when she was four and never stopped, delighted with that widening world of story. She read through her classes in her elementary school, St. Pascal Baylon, and through her years at her high school, the Mary Louis Academy. Perhaps that’s why math and science are still so mysterious to her.

She majored in history and education at Marymount College and then went on to St. John’s University for a master’s degree in history, delighted that she could read her way through the lives of kings and queens, through plagues and wars.

In 1959, she married James Giff, a New York City detective, who had stories of his own. It was a perfect match because he thought it was fine that she spent hours reading instead of attending to the pots on the stove or the potatoes growing in the closet.

She spent the next twenty years raising their three children—James, William, and Alice—teaching, first in New York City and then Elmont, Long Island, and attending Hofstra University for a professional diploma in reading.

But always she wanted to write stories of her own, so her husband built her a small office out of two closets in the kitchen.

That was the beginning. She wrote about her childhood and her children, she wrote about the children she taught, and now she writes about her grandchildren and what interests them. She visits school and libraries and loves to talk with people who enjoy reading.

She received an honorary Doctor of Letters from Hofstra University and from Sacred Heart University. Several of her books were chosen as ALA-ALSC Notable Children’s Books and ALA-YALSA Best Books for Young Adults. They include
The Gift of the Pirate Queen; All the Way Home; Nory Ryan’s Song
, a Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Golden Kite Honor Book for Fiction; and Newbery Honor books
Lily’s Crossing
and
Pictures of Hollis Woods
.
Lily’s Crossing
was also chosen as a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book. She’s also won the Christopher Award.

In between, she cares for an indoor garden of almost two hundred plants—and reads, of course.

Patricia Reilly Giff on a September day in 1937 in St. Albans, New York. The future
Polk Street Mysteries
author is two years old.

Patricia Reilly Giff (age four) with her sister, Annie (age two). The picture was taken at Christmastime circa 1939.