Free The Case of the Piggy Bank Thief by Martha Freeman Page B

Parks!”
she said. “My very own sister! It was
you
who let Humdinger out of his cage yesterday! And then you liedabout it, too. Not to mention you’re so dumb you kept the evidence.”
    â€œTessa, you’re crazy,” I said. “I was right here with you when Humdinger got out, remember?”
    Tessa said, “Oh, yeah. . . . So if you didn’t take the pink twisties off Humdinger’s cage, where did they come from?”
    I had to think before I remembered picking them up that morning. I hadn’t wanted Mr. Golley to get mad at us for littering. While I was explaining to Tessa, it hit me. “Wait a second. Does that mean . . . ?”
    My sister and I looked at each other.
    â€œCammie,” Tessa said slowly, “I saw that my piggy bank was gone yesterday—right after we came back from chasing Hooligan and Humdinger. Do you think that’s when it disappeared?”
    â€œProbably.”
    â€œSo what if all that running around downstairs and scaring the visitors was just a whatchamacallit,” she said, “you know, when somebody distracts you on purpose so they can do something bad, like for example
steal the piggy bank right out of your laundry hamper
?”
    â€œYou mean a diversion,” I said, and now my brain kicked into gear. “Plus, what about this? A certain somebody showed up awfully fast in the East Room—almost like he knew in advance we’d need help catching Humdinger.”
    Tessa said, “Oops.”
    I said, “Oops what?”
    â€œOops, I guess that might’ve been my fault,” she explained. “I showed a certain person some of our shortcuts around the White House.”
    â€œLike the kitchen stairs?” I said. And by now my mind was racing. “Because
that
would explain the jelly bean stains, the ones on Hooligan’s face just now. He kept finding jelly beans when we were tracking. I think
somebody
must have dropped them when he was using the stairs.”
    For a moment the only sound was the quiet of two brains working. I don’t know about Tessa, but I was feeling pretty clever.
    Then my brain ran into a massive roadblock.
    â€œWait a sec. None of this makes any sense at all,” I said.
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œIt’s the same old problem. Nobody would’ve stolen your piggy bank for two dollars and twelve cents. And nobody knew about the gold coin. I mean, that’s what you told me before. You swore,” I reminded her.
    â€œNobody did know!” Tessa insisted. “Except . . .”
    â€œExcept
what
?”
    Tessa looked at her feet. “Well, except I might’ve told a certain braggy, annoying someone that I happened to find something really special out on the South Lawn where Hooligan had been digging,” she said. “But I never said anything about gold.”
    I wanted to yell at my sister, but anger would onlyhave burned up precious time and brain cells. “So maybe this certain person wanted to know what special thing you had found?” I said. “And maybe you wouldn’t tell him, and maybe he was going crazy with curiosity?”
    Tessa looked at her shoes. “Well, yeah. Maybe.”
    â€œAnd then he would’ve decided to find out for himself by looking where everybody knows you hide your secret stuff—in your laundry hamper.”
    Tessa’s shoes must have been really interesting. “Yeah. Maybe.”
    â€œSo when he found your bank, he took that, and finally had to break it to get at what was inside—”
    â€œAnd then”—Tessa finally looked up—“at the museum, he found out the coin was worth a million dollars and panicked and got a tummyache, same as I did when I heard Wen Fei and Stephanie tell Professor Mudd they’d found gold. But why did this someone hide the piggy bank pieces by burying them?”
    â€œI think I know,” I said. “I mean,