The Fabled Fifth Graders of Aesop Elementary School by Candace Fleming

“Follow me.”
    He and Nurse Betadine hurried into the school kitchen.
    “You’ll never believe what happened!” cried Cook when she saw them. “While I was outside for the fire drill, someone ate—”
    Emberly finished her sentence. “The tuna-waffle casserole left over from lunch.”
    “How did you know?” gasped Cook.
    Emberly tapped his head. “Powers of deduction.”
    “Ah,” said Cook.
    “Obviously, playing in the gym made Mr. Pickles hungry, so he came in here for a bite of lunch.”
    Nurse Betadine looked around. “But where is he now?”
    “Kindergarten room A,” said Emberly confidently.
    “K room A?” both women exclaimed.
    “But why?” asked Nurse Betadine.
    “I’d rather not say,” said Emberly.
    Both women followed him to the kindergarten room.
    Seventeen little faces looked up from circle time.
    “Can we help you?” chirped Miss Fairchild.
    “I just want to check your sandbox,” said Emberly.
    “Certainly,” replied Miss Fairchild. She turned back to her students.
    Slowly, methodically, and with his magnifying glass pressed to his eye, Emberly pushed aside the plastic molds and shovels until he found the very clue he’d been searching for. “Just as I suspected,” he said, pointing. “Mr. Pickles was definitely here.”
    “Is that what I think it is?” asked Cook.
    Emberly nodded.
    Nurse Betadine blanched, then shouted, “This sandbox is quarantined. Absolutely no one is allowed to play in it until the sand has been replaced.”
    Miss Fairchild sighed and looked at a little boy in a dinosaur shirt. “Oh, Aidan, not again.”
    “It wasn’t me,” protested Aidan. “Really! It wasn’t me.”
    Emberly rocked back on his heels and jiggled the coins in his pocket yet again.
    He wiggled the clues around in his mind, trying to fit all the pieces together. Mr. Pickles had coughed up ahairball, played with his mouse, eaten a bellyful of tuna, and used the litter … uh … sandbox. What else was there for a cat to do? He thought back to what Ms. Bozzetto had said earlier:
Mr. Pickles is a particularly heavy sleeper
. In his mind’s eye he saw the hair-covered pillow.
    “Eureka!” exclaimed Emberly. “My powers of deductive reasoning tell me there’s only one logical place for him to go. All evidence points to it.”
    Dashing from the kindergarten room, he raced down the hall, pushed his way into the fifth-grade classroom, and—
    Skittered to a dead stop.
    “What the … !” gasped Emberly.
    At the same moment, the others slumped into the classroom.
    “That cat’s long gone.”
    “We couldn’t find him.”
    “Poor Ms. Bozzetto. No more Mr. Pickles.”
    That was when they saw Emberly standing stock-still and clutching his magnifying glass.
    “Emberly, what is it?” asked Mr. Jupiter. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
    Struck speechless, Emberly pointed to the guinea pig cage.
    Everyone looked.
    “I don’t believe it!”
    “How can it be?”
    Inside the guinea pig cage, squeezed between the exercise wheel and a bowl of sunflower seeds, the cat slept peacefully.
    “You found my Mr. Pickles!” squealed Ms. Bozzetto.
    Mr. Jupiter clapped Emberly on the back. “An excellent bit of detectival investigation, Emberly,” he said. “Congratulations.”
    Emberly blushed modestly.
    “Yeah,” said Lenny. “But how did Mr. Pickles get in
there?”
    “And what are
they
doing?” asked Rose, pointing to the guinea pigs.
    Just outside the cage, the guinea pigs lolled happily on the purple pillow. “Eeek, eeek, eeek,” they trilled.
    “I believe they’re singing a song from the musical
Cats,”
replied Mr. Jupiter.
    Stanford turned to Emberly. “You may have solved the mystery of Mr. Pickles’s disappearance,” he said.“But tell me, supersleuth, how do you explain the whole guinea pig–cat mix-up?”
    Slowly, methodically, and with his magnifying glass pressed to his eye, Emberly searched for clues. After a few moments’ investigation, he