The fair had come to town, and brought with it the smell of cotton candy and popcorn, the bright lights of the Ferris wheel and the screams of delight from riders on the rickety roller coaster.
Kent Spade had just returned from the restroom to join his daughter, Samantha, at a picnic table just inside the front entrance. He wiped his dripping-wet hands along the sides of his blue jeans before sitting down.
“Nice manners, Dad,” Samantha said, drolly.
“What? They were all out of paper towels.”
He immediately dug into a slice of greasy pizza that he and his daughter were sharing.
“Hard to believe it’s already August,” Samantha said. “Heck, a new school year is just around the corner.”
“You know, Sam,” said Kent, “I’m wrapping up all the programming here, and…”
His voice trailed off.
“Yeah,” Sam said softly. “I know.”
Kent Spade set up and programmed new computer systems; the work took him and his daughter around the country, and now the job that had brought them to the town of Sallami was almost complete, which meant that it would soon be time to move on. Sam might start her seventh-grade year here in Sallami, but she’d likely finish it in some other part of the country. Constant moving was a part of her life, but that didn’t mean she had to like it.
What made it hard was that she’d made some real friends here in Sallami. Billy Archer, Flo Mason, Andy D’Brillo, the Markel twins … It would be hard to say goodbye to all of them. Plus, Sallami was a town that seemed rife with mysteries, and Sam liked nothing more than the chance to solve a good case as often as possible.
Fortunately, another such mystery was just around the corner, to take her mind off the prospect of moving.
“Get out, get out, get out!” a man’s voice shouted. Sam and Kent looked toward the rear of the French fry stand just in time to see the aluminum door fly open and Vinnie Furnier, the bad-seed neighbor of her friend Billy Archer, come stumbling through it. A short little man came behind Vinnie, shooing him out with a broom.
“Out, out,” he repeated. “And don’t ever come back.”
“OK, already, I get the picture,” Vinnie said, flinching as the broom smacked him on the head. “I’m gone, man.”
It looked to Sam like Vinnie had gotten himself into trouble yet again. Since she’d come to Sallami, she had caught the older boy in two big lies: The first, when he tried to steal Billy’s paper route, and the second when he’d tried to scare Billy by climbing on his roof and peeking in his bedroom window. The boy was incorrigible.
Vinnie saw the two of them staring at him and came sauntering over, brushing off his shirt where he’d fallen in the grass and trying to reclaim his dignity.
“Figures you’d be here to see all this,” he said. “You’re like the bad penny of my life or something.”
Meanwhile, the little man who’d beaten him with a broom had followed him to the picnic table. “But don’t think you can get away scot-free, young man,” he yelled. “I want that money you stole from the cash register.
The man raised the broom to take another swing at Vinnie, who flinched involuntarily. Kent Spade stepped in between the two.
“Enough with the broom,” he said. “Care to tell me what’s going on here?”
“That little no-good beatnik stole fifty dollars from the cash register while I stepped away from the French fry stand,” he said. “And only for a few minutes, too, the dirty little…”
He raised the broom again, but Kent snatched it away.
“And you are?” he asked.
“I’m Brant Brockman, manager of this fine potato vending establishment, which is owned by my brother.” Brockman shook first Samantha’s hand, then her father’s. He wore a bow tie and appeared fastidiously neat, right down to his polished shoes. His skin was as wrinkly and dry as a mummy’s, right down to his sandpaper handshake. When he touched Kent’s still-damp hands, he turned up his lip as if he’d touched a dead animal on the side of the road.
“Maybe we can help you figure out where the money is, Mr. Brockman,” said Sam. She briefly explained that she was an amateur detective.
“Great,” muttered Vinnie. “The great Buttinsky butts in again.”
Ignoring his comments, she asked him, “Vinnie, did you steal the fifty dollars?”
“No, I didn’t,” he said. “I took this crummy fair job to try to save extra dough for a car, but I never took any money. I swear.”
Samantha asked Vinnie if he had access to the cash register. He said he did, and that while he wasn’t too good at making change, he knew he hadn’t shorted the register by such a large amount. He told her that the minute Mr. Brockman had returned, he opened the register and started screaming, then immediately chased him out the back door.
“Then answer me this, smart guy,” said Mr. Brockman. “Why when I counted the register was there fifty dollars more than when I came back?”
“How do you know that the missing amount is exactly fifty dollars?” asked Kent. “Didn’t anybody buy French fries while you were gone?”
Vinnie answered. “No, business was pretty slow. ‘Cuz it’s so hot, everybody wants ice cream instead of crummy French fries, I guess.”
Brockman scowled. “Thief worked fast, too. I was only gone to the restroom for a minute or two, and when I came straight back to the stand…. How am I going to tell Casey when he returns, huh?”
“Tell me what, Brant?” said a man behind him. He was also short, with polished shoes and a neat bow tie. Samantha could tell immediately that he was Brockman’s brother.
She said, “Your brother doesn’t know how to tell you that he stole fifty dollars from your cash register!”
HOW DID SAMANTHA KNOW THAT BRANT BROCKMAN WAS THE THIEF? SEE BELOW FOR THE SOLUTION.
Mr. Brockman told Samantha that he’d only been gone from the French fry stand for a few moments to use the restroom. But when he shook Samantha’s hand, she noted that his hands were completely dry. Her father’s hands were still wet from washing his hands in the restroom.
A person as neat and clean as Brant Brockman would never leave the restroom without washing his hands, Samantha reasoned, and so she realized that he had lied about his whereabouts.
When Samantha shared her deduction with the two Brockmans, Brant realized he was caught. He admitted to taking the money from the register and hiding it in his car near the front entrance during his supposed bathroom break. Since business had been slow, he thought he could use the opportunity to get rid of Vinnie, which would give him even more opportunity to raid the register during the fair.
Casey Brockman fired his brother and gave Vinnie his job back, with a raise. Although the fair only lasted three more days, Vinnie was appreciative of what Sam had done for him and started being nicer to her friend, Billy Archer.
