All Eyes on First Prize by Franklin W. Dixon

Author:Franklin W. Dixon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aladdin

5

Who Is the Smasher?

Wait a second!” Frank exclaimed. “Chrissy Parker and her friends were playing with dolls today.”

“And remember Chrissy got mad and took her doll inside?” Joe said. “She could have come in here and wrecked both Brett’s and Mike’s projects.”

“But why?” Mike asked.

“Maybe it was to get back at Brett for teasing her and taking her doll away,” Joe suggested.

Frank shook his head. “I don’t think so. Chrissy isn’t mean. And anyway, she wasn’t mad at Mike.”

“Then maybe she wanted to win first prize herself,” Joe said.

Frank hesitated. He remembered that Chrissy was the one who said she never had a chance to win when the science fair was for the whole school. Maybe Chrissy did want to win very badly. But he couldn’t imagine Chrissy doing anything like this. It just wasn’t like her.

“I don’t think she would do this,” he said. “Somebody had to be very angry to do this. These projects are smashed to pieces.”

“Let’s look for more clues,” Joe said. “We might not have much more time here.”

“I’ll do more fingerprinting,” Frank said. “You two go on searching.”

“Oh no!” Joe exclaimed.

“What?” Frank and Mike looked up.

“Down here on the floor,” Joe said. “Do you see what I see?”

Frank and Mike saw that Joe was pointing at a trail of crumbs. Joe bent down, picked up a crumb, and sniffed at it.

“They’re chip crumbs, Frank,” Joe said. “Smells like Nacho cheese flavor. Billy and Chet were both eating chips at lunchtime.”

“And we know that Billy went into the building,” Mike reminded them. “He said he was told to go to the office.”

“And Chet went into the building to get his scarf,” Frank said in a puzzled voice. “And he came out again without it.” Then he shook his head. “But Chet’s our friend. He would never do a mean thing like this.”

“Then why did he say he was going to get his scarf?” Joe asked. “What was he doing in here?”

“It’s just possible that he decided to get back at Brett for teasing Billy,” Frank said. “But he would never smash Mike’s project.”

“So it had to be Billy after all,” Joe said quietly. “He was eating chips. He had plenty of reasons to get back at Brett. And he did tell us that he was going to get even someday.”

“Can you really believe that?” Frank asked. “But maybe Zack was right for once. Billy could have come in here and knocked over the projects by accident. He is very clumsy, we know that.”

“And then he was too scared to admit it,” Joe added. “We should try talking to him. Maybe he’ll tell us the truth.”

“Okay, I’ve got some fingerprints,” Frank said. He stood up, holding a strip of sticky tape. “Let’s take them over to my board to see how they match up.”

Mike was trying to put the pieces of his burglar alarm back together. He held the robot head in one hand and the body in the other. Wires were sticking out in all directions.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.