The Zoo Crew

“Tyler!” a woman’s voice cried. “Come back here!”

  Nancy looked down and saw the toddler, Tyler, clinging to her legs. He was grinning up at her. “Monkey girl!” he crowed.

  Nancy couldn’t help laughing. “Hello again,” she said to the child. “Did you get away from your parents again?”

  She peeled the toddler off of her legs. Then she looked down at him and gasped.

  There was fresh black dirt all over the little boy’s white shoes!

  6

  Making Sure

  Nancy’s mind raced. She’d noticed Tyler’s shoes earlier when his father was holding him. They had been white and clean then. Now they were coated in dirt—and it looked just like the dirt in the flowerbeds!

  Before Nancy could think about that any more, Tyler’s parents arrived, huffing and puffing. “Sorry about that,” the father said. “He figured out how to get himself out of the stroller within the first thirty seconds.”

  Nancy smiled politely. “That’s okay,” she said.

  Tyler was already pulling his mother toward the exhibit. “Teddy!” he cried, pointing at the bears.

  As the family stepped forward to look at the animals, Nancy raced back to her friends. Even Brenda stopped taking pictures long enough to wander over and see what was happening. Nancy quickly told them what she’d just seen.

  “Awesome!” George declared. “That’s just the clue we needed. The kid did it!”

  Nancy shook her head. “We still don’t have enough proof,” she cautioned. “We can’t just accuse him until we’re totally sure.”

  “But how can we make sure?” Mari asked.

  Nancy pulled out her notebook. She added Tyler’s dirty shoes to the “clues” list. Then she stared at the other item on that list—the handprint.

  “We need to see if it’s really Tyler’s hand,” she said. “If it’s small enough, we’ll know it’s got to be him. If it’s too big, it’s probably one of us.” She shook her head. “I should have thought to measure it earlier, when we first saw it.”

  “Never mind.” George sounded excited. “Come on, let’s go check it out!”

  “Wait,” Brenda said, holding up her camera. “I have a better idea. I have lots of pictures of the handprint right here in my camera’s memory. Just let me find them. . . .”

  Nancy looked over Brenda’s shoulder as she pressed a tiny button to scroll through the photos she’d already taken. Picture after picture flashed onto the tiny screen, starting with several photos of the zoo entrance, followed by pictures of the fountain and then some of the monkeys. Nancy couldn’t help smiling at a photo of the half-dozen monkeys hanging off the bars at the front of their cage. But she also felt a little impatient.

  “Hurry up,” George cried, clearly feeling the same way.

  “Hold your horses,” Brenda said. “Almost there . . .” She pressed the button a few more times. “Here they are!”

  Nancy leaned closer, peering at a photo of the handprint. On the tiny screen, it was hard to see it at all.

  “I can’t tell the size from that,” she said. “You didn’t show enough of the background to tell.”

  “Well, excu-u-use me,” Brenda said, sounding insulted. “Look, I took some more—this one has lots in the background.”

  She pressed the button again. This time it was a picture looking in the other direction, with the monkey cage in the background. Nancy had to admit that Brenda’s camera took good pictures—she could see every detail on the faces of the five monkeys staring through the wire at the scene outside. What she couldn’t see very well, though, was the handprint.

  “It’s no good,” she told Brenda. “It’s too hard to see it in the dirt like that. We’d better go look in person.”

  “I just hope it’s still there,” Bess said worriedly.

  Nancy hadn’t thought of that. What if the zookeepers were already cleaning up the damage? The print might be gone.

  “Come on,” she said. “We’d better hurry!”

  As the five girls raced back toward the crime scene, they passed the elephant enclosure. Nancy noticed that another group from their class was watching the elephants.

  She slowed down. The group included Alison Wegman, Sarah Churnichan, Jenny March, Katie Zaleski, and Vicki Wolf. Nancy was a little surprised. Alison and Sarah weren’t really friends with the other three girls. In fact, they were usually friends with Brenda—when Brenda and Alison weren’t fighting, that was.

  “Hey, guys,” Nancy said to her friends. “Maybe we should stop and talk to them. They might know something about the mystery.”

  Bess shook her head. “Why bother?” she said. “We already know who did it, remember? We just have to prove it.”

  Nancy was pretty sure that Bess was right. Still, she hesitated. Her father always told her to be thorough when she was on a case.

  “It will just take a second,” she said, veering off into the elephant area. “I’ll be right back.”

  She hurried up to the other girls. When she got closer, she noticed that Alison and Sarah were standing a little apart from the other three.

  “Hi,” Nancy said. “What are you guys doing?”

  Katie shot Alison and Sarah a sour look. “I don’t know,” she said. “Why don’t you ask them? They’re the ones who keep running off and making us try to find them.”

  Sarah rolled her eyes. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “We only lost you once.”

  Alison giggled. “Right,” she said. “You’re just mad because you thought you were going to get it from Mrs. Reynolds.”

  “What do you mean?” Nancy asked her.

  “They hid from us,” Vicki spoke up. “For like ten whole minutes. We still didn’t know where they were when Jason came and told us Mrs. Reynolds wanted to see everyone.”

  “Yeah,” Jenny put in. “We thought we were in trouble for losing part of our group.”

  “Big deal.” Alison snorted. “We found you before you got to the snack bar, didn’t we?”

  “Wait,” Nancy said, a little confused. “Where were you two that whole time?”

  Sarah smirked. “That’s for us to know and for you not to find out.”

  “Nancy!” George called from the main path, sounding impatient. “Hurry up!”

  Nancy hung back for a few more seconds, staring from Alison and Sarah to the others and back again. Was this another clue? If Alison and Sarah had been gone for ten minutes, that would give them plenty of time to commit the vandalism. . . .

  “Nancy!”

  “Coming,” Nancy called back, turning and hurrying back toward her own group. “Listen,” she told them. “I think I just found out something weird. . . .”

  She filled the others in as they hurried on toward the flowerbeds. They all agreed that Alison and Sarah’s behavior was a little strange.

  “But still not as suspicious as that kid’s dirty shoes,” George pointed out.

  “Yeah,” Brenda agreed. “Besides, Alison is being a jerk, but she wouldn’t do something like that.”

  Nancy didn’t know if what Brenda said was true or not. But she agreed that they should first check the handprint again.

  A couple of zookeepers were cleaning up the flowerbeds when the girls arrived. Luckily, though, they’d started at the other end from where the handprint was.

  “There it is,” Mari said, pointing.

  Nancy looked around at her friends. “Okay, who has the smallest hands?”

  “I do. Why?” Bess held up her hand.

  “Bess, you put your hand next to the print in the dirt. If it’s a lot smaller than your hand, we’ll know the print was made by someone with really tiny hands.”

  “Good idea!” Bess cried.

  She carefully squatted down beside the print and held her hand over it. “Check it out!” she cried. “It’s way smaller than my hand!”

  7

  Case Closed?

  A-ha!” George crowed. “That proves it. The culprit has to be little Tyler! Let’s go!”
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  “Wait,” Nancy said. “I want to write this down first, and check over the other clues. . . .”

  “Forget all that,” Brenda said, her eyes flashing with excitement. “We have to find that kid again before he leaves or something. I want to get this on film!” She held up her camera.

  “It’s digital,” George argued. “That’s different from film.”

  Bess rolled her eyes. “Come on!” she cried.

  “Yeah,” Mari added eagerly. “Nancy cracked the case! This is so cool!”

  Nancy followed as the other girls took off. They were right, weren’t they? The case was closed.

  “They’re probably still near the bears,” Bess said breathlessly, leading the way down the zoo path.

  They didn’t even have to go as far as the bear exhibit before they located the little family. As soon as they rounded a curve on the path near the elephant enclosure, they spotted Tyler sitting on the ground playing with a stuffed tiger while his parents talked to Zookeeper Zane.

  Nancy slowed down. Had the zookeeper already figured out the case before she did?

  But when she got a little closer, she could hear that the adults were chatting about Tyler’s new souvenir.

  “. . . and we had a hard time convincing him that he wanted that tiger,” Tyler’s father was saying with a chuckle. “At first he wanted the giant stuffed gorilla that cost seventy-five dollars—it was bigger than he is!”

  The zookeeper laughed. “Hey, maybe someday he’ll become a zookeeper like—whoa! Slow down, girls.”

  Nancy and her friends skidded to a stop in front of them. “Good, you’re here,” George told the zookeeper. “We want to clear the good name of our class.”

  Zookeeper Zane blinked. “What are you talking about?”

  Brenda spun around and pointed at Tyler accusingly. “We’re talking about him,” she cried dramatically. “That’s your vandal, right there! Nancy just proved it!”

  The zookeeper still looked confused. So did Tyler’s parents. “What are you saying, girls?” Tyler’s mother asked, as Brenda started snapping pictures like crazy. “That’s his toy—we don’t mind if he gets it dirty.”

  Nancy shook her head. “No, no, that’s not what we’re talking about,” she said. She felt bad about accusing such nice people, but the truth had to come out. “Um, we sort of think your son may be behind the damage to the flowerbeds earlier.”

  At first the zookeeper looked like he understood, but then he looked annoyed. “I don’t think so,” he said.

  “Look, we know you think one of us did it,” George blurted out. “But we’ve got evidence!”

  “What evidence?” Now Tyler’s father was the one who looked annoyed. “Listen, Mr. Zane told us about the vandalism. And we realize Ty here is a handful. But we’d never let him do something like that without owning up to it.”

  “But look at his shoes,” Mari put in, pointing to Tyler. “There’s dirt all over them, just like the dirt in the flowerbeds.”

  Tyler’s mother glanced over at the toddler. “That’s from the mulch on the ground in the zoo’s playground,” she said, sounding upset. “We haven’t been anywhere near the flowerbeds you’re talking about since we ran into you girls there earlier.”

  “That’s right,” the zookeeper said. “I saw these nice people on the playground myself, just moments before one of my staff paged me about the vandalism. There’s no way young Tyler could have had anything to do with it.” He glared at Nancy and the others.

  “Oh.” Nancy felt her face turning bright red. So much for her careful investigation. . . .

  Brenda snapped another picture, then sidled up to Nancy. “Maybe all of them are in cahoots,” she whispered loudly.

  Nancy shoved her away, hoping the adults hadn’t heard. “We’re really, really sorry,” she blurted, tears springing to her eyes. “We were just trying to clear our classmates’ names, and we thought—”

  “There, there, ” Tyler’s mother said soothingly. “Don’t get upset on our account. There’s no harm done.”

  “That’s right.” Her husband put an arm around Nancy’s shoulders. “Besides, we owe you one for rescuing Ty when he was going for that deep-sea dive earlier. So now we can call it even, right?” He smiled and winked at Nancy.

  She smiled weakly in return. “Right,” she said. “But we’re still really sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Tyler’s father said. “In the future, though, you might want to be more careful about how you conduct your investigations, okay?”

  “That’s right,” Zookeeper Zane added sternly. “Next time, maybe you should keep your detective games to yourselves, all right?”

  As the girls turned and walked away, George clenched her fists. “Did you hear that?” she muttered. “It sounded like they think we’re all nuts.”

  “Can you blame them?” Nancy shrugged. “We really messed up this time, guys. I messed up. I knew we should’ve looked over our clues again.”

  She sighed loudly. She couldn’t believe her detective skills had failed her this time. How could she have made such a silly mistake?

  “Well, maybe we wouldn’t have messed up like that if a certain someone wasn’t so bossy.” George turned and stared at Brenda.

  Brenda glared back at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded.

  “Never mind,” Nancy said quickly. The last thing she wanted right now was a fight. “We still have time. If we put our heads together, maybe we can still solve this case.”

  Bess’s eyes widened. “Are you sure?” she said, sounding worried. “But that mean zookeeper . . .”

  “He’ll get over it if we actually solve the crime,” Nancy said. “Let’s just look at the evidence again, okay?”

  They all sat down on a park bench nearby. Nancy opened her notebook and stared at the page.

  “That handprint is still our main clue,” she stated.

  “So who could have left such a small print?” Bess asked.

  Mari shrugged. “Julia has pretty small hands,” she said. “So does Sarah.”

  “I think Peter’s hands are smaller than either of theirs,” George added.

  “I don’t think so,” Bess said doubtfully. “I think Julia’s are definitely the smallest.”

  Brenda was sitting at the end of the bench next to Bess. She wasn’t paying much attention to the conversation. Instead, she was scrolling through the photos on her digital camera.

  “Check it out, guys,” she interrupted. “I got a great picture of the elephants. I think I’ll enter that one in the contest and put it on the front page of the Carlton News.”

  “That’s nice,” Bess said impatiently. “So what did we decide, you guys? Should we go talk to Julia and Sarah?”

  “Maybe,” Nancy said, a little distracted. She was still staring down at her notebook. “I just wish we had more evidence, more clues—”

  “Oh!” Brenda broke in again, still looking down at her camera. “I just changed my mind. I got a great picture of the monkeys! I think I’ll use that one instead. Or maybe I’ll use both.”

  Feeling impatient, Nancy glanced past Bess at Brenda’s camera. Then she gasped, her eyes lighting up.

  “That’s it!” she cried. “Brenda, you did it!”

  8

  The Real Culprit

  Bess frowned. “What are you talking about, Nancy?” she asked. “Brenda couldn’t have done it. She was with us the whole time.”

  “Yeah,” Brenda said, sounding huffy. “I didn’t do it!”

  “No, no,” Nancy said hurriedly. She stood up quickly. “That’s not what I mean. I mean you just solved the mystery, Brenda!”

  “I did?” Brenda looked confused.

  “She did?” Bess, George, and Mari asked in unison.

  Nancy laughed. “Come on, I’ll show you!” she cried, grabbing George’s hand and pulling her to her feet. “Follow me!”

  She raced away, with her friends following behind her. Zookeeper Zane was stil
l near where they’d left him, though Tyler and his family were gone. This time the zookeeper was talking to a worried-looking Mrs. Reynolds.

  “Oh, hello, girls,” the teacher said as Nancy and her friends screeched to a halt in front of her. “Mr. Zane and I were just talking about you.”

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Reynolds,” Nancy said breathlessly. “We just came to tell you that we solved the mystery! I know who trampled those flowers!”

  “Really?” Their teacher looked as though she wasn’t sure whether to believe them.

  Zookeeper Zane looked downright annoyed. “Look, I told you girls last time—” he began.

  “I know,” Nancy said before he could finish. “But this time I’m sure—and I have proof!”

  The zookeeper opened his mouth, but Mrs. Reynolds held up her hand to silence him. “Just a second, Mr. Zane,” she said. “Nancy here is quite clever at solving mysteries. Let’s just hear her out.”

  Nancy smiled at the teacher. “Thanks,” she said. Then she turned to Brenda. “Show them the pictures you took of the monkeys,” she said. “The ones from when we first got here, and then the later ones, too.”

  Brenda looked puzzled, but she started pressing the little button on her camera. “Here are the first ones,” she said as the adults leaned closer. She hit the button a few more times. “And here are some more. They’re not that good, because I was really taking pictures of the flowerbeds. The monkey cage was just in the background.”

  “I see,” Mrs. Reynolds said. She looked up at Nancy. “What I don’t see is what we’re supposed to be learning from these pictures.”

  Nancy smiled. “Look again,” she urged. “Don’t you notice anything different between the two sets of pictures?”

  The adults bent over the camera again as Brenda pulled up first one set of pictures and then the next. But it was Bess whose eyes lit up first.

  “I get it!” she cried. “Nancy, you’re brilliant!”

  “What?” George exclaimed impatiently. “What do you get? All I see is a bunch of monkeys!”

  Nancy stepped closer. “Right,” she said. “In the first set of photos, you can see six monkeys in the cage.” She pointed to one of the pictures. “When Brenda took those photos later, she got the whole monkey cage in the background. That makes it easy to see that there are only five monkeys in the cage then! See?”