Chapter Two
Next morning, I could tell it was going to be a hard fight. Even Blind Freddy, the Lollipop Man at the school crossing had heard about my crime in the art room. ‘It was a lovely horse, Charlie,’ he said as I walked past him. ‘Real prize winner. Shame, Charlie, shame.’
‘It wasn’t me,’ I told him.
‘Oh, yeah?’ The Lollipop Man answered, and let the traffic move on even before I reached the safety of the kerb. Blind Freddy was always doing that. In our school it was: Look Left. Look Right. Run for your life!
In the school yard it was even worse. I went to Tim Wong-Smith to explain, but he didn’t want to know. ‘Yeah, yeah, so you say,’ was all he said, then added, ‘Let it go. It doesn’t matter about the horse. Who cares?’
‘I care,’ I said. ‘They’re saying I did it and it wasn’t me.’
Tim did another one of his mournful sighs and went off. Then he stopped about three metres away, turned around and said, ‘I’m sorry it was you who got the blame, Charlie.’
My next stop was the school library. I was looking for a special book to help solve the mystery, so kept my head down because I didn’t want Ms Dingwall, the librarian to see me. I crawled along the row of shelves, but down at that level the books were all the X, Y and Z titles. I wanted the Ds for Detective. They were up higher.
I took a huge risk and stood upright, but too late! Ms Dingwall spotted me!
‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Look who’s popped up out of his burrow. It’s the rabbit boy.’
All right. It’s confession time. When I was in Year Three, I asked her if she could find me a book on how to breed rabbits. That was my ambition at the time, to be a rabbit breeder. Ms Dingwall gave me a book and I took it home.
Next day I brought it back and said it was no good. The book was meant for people with two rabbits and I only had one. Ever since then, Ms Dingwall has called me the rabbit boy.
‘So, what friendless creature are you trying to breed this time?’ she asked. ‘A widowed hamster? A divorced duck?’
Looking her straight in the eye I said, ‘I want to solve crimes the way detectives do.’
‘Ah,’ she said, and thought for a bit. ‘Then you’re looking for a book called Detective Work for Dummies.’
‘That sounds like the one,’ I said. ‘Have you got it?’
‘No, it hasn’t been written yet.’
She is a real joker, that woman. I left her laughing in the library and on the way out ran into Isobel Simms. ‘Bad luck about that horse business, Charlie,’ she said.
‘Yeah,’ I agreed. ‘But now I’ve got to go and make things right, Isobel.’
‘Just let it go, Charlie,’ she advised. ‘It’ll soon blow over.’
‘Yeah, like what happened to Tim’s horse. Can’t wait that long, Isobel. It needs to be sooner than soon.’
‘No such thing,’ she called after me, but I wasn’t listening.
Before the bell rang, I tried to explain things to Rosa Thurwell, but Sean Dingwall came muscling along and said, ‘Look out guys. Hang on to your art work. It’s Charlie Thomson, the anti-art vandal.’
‘I didn’t do it,’ I protested. ‘Rosa believes me. Don’t you, Rosa?’
‘No I don’t,’ she said. ‘Nobody does.’
‘Look, Thomson,’ Sean went on. ‘If you want to hang about with people like us, you need to have at least one gold star.’
‘Got twelve,’ I answered.
‘Where?’
‘On our Christmas tree.’
‘But you didn’t win them. Your mum bought them.’
‘And they’re not gold, are they?’ Rosa added. ‘They’re multi-coloured. With spangles on. Not like ours.’
Everybody laughed until the bell rang. Then Sean and Rosa went giggling together into the class where Mr Sandilands smiled at his star pupils.
‘That’s the way to start the day,’ he said. ‘With lots of bright, sparkly laughter.’
Except none of it came from me.
The only one in the class who was still friendly was Tim Wong-Smith. I found him sitting alone at lunch time, eating a sandwich and pining for his horse.
‘Hi, Timbo, Old Timmo, Timbogle,’ I greeted him.
‘My name’s Tim,’ he said in a cold sort of way. ‘And my horse was called Thunder.’
‘Lovely name, Tim,’ I agreed. Then I got on to the real reason for me talking with him. ‘The thing is, Tim,’ I went on, man to man, ‘I’m trying to find out who did that stuff in the art room — made the mess and wrecked your horse.’
‘How are you going to do that?’
‘Detective work,’ I said. ‘Find suspects, then ask them questions.’
‘But you’re on the outer and no one’s talking to you.’ Tim pointed out. ‘It’s a bit dopey asking questions when you won’t get any answers.’
‘All right, so what we need to do is find out who was the last person in the art room —’
‘Wait, wait, wait one minute,’ Tim interrupted. ‘You said “what we need.” Where do I fit in?’
‘Well, Tim,’ I said, ‘we should work together on this. After all, I got the blame, and you lost your horse. So there are two good reasons, right?’
Tim nibbled around the edge of his sandwich in a thoughtful sort of way. ‘That could be fun,’ he said at last. ‘Me trying to discover who damaged my horse.’ He smiled at this idea.
‘It’s not just the damage to your horse, Tim,’ I told him. ‘You lost your chance to win the art prize. Think about that.’
Tim said, ‘Yeah, I lay awake last night, upset about not winning that art prize.’
‘And I was awake too,’ I agreed. ‘Wondering how I could solve the mystery.’
‘The broken horse mystery.’ Tim did one of his big sighs.
‘Any suspects?’ I asked.
‘Nope. How about you?’
‘Nope.’ I paused. ‘But I don’t like Sean Dingwall, so we could start with him.’
Next day Tim suggested we do a reconstruction of the crime. At lunch time, we ate our sandwiches quickly and slurped our drinks in one gulp. Then we slipped into our empty classroom where I pretended to be Sean Dingwall.
‘Okay, Charlie,’ Tim said. ‘Maybe Sean sneaked over to the book cupboard, got the key, then went to the art room. So sneak!’
Stealthily I opened the book cupboard door and unhooked the key. Then together we tiptoed our way to the art room and opened the door. I felt a bit stupid doing it because it wasn’t proving anything. The only good thing was it made Tim enthusiastic about us doing detective work together. So I thought, well, why not?
‘Okay, Charlie,’ Tim whispered. ‘Sean goes inside, then turns up the fans to position five.’
Still pretending to be Sean, I tiptoed into the room and turned on the ceiling fans. They gathered pace and before long, there was a huge, whirling snowstorm of papers. They billowed everywhere. The last lesson had been finger painting with the Year Ones. Wet art works flew everywhere and a really horrible blue one stuck to the leg of my jeans.
On the front desk stood another chicken wire sculpture. This one was of a whale or it might have been a Boeing 737, hard to tell with some art works. But even though the fans were on high, the sculpture stayed on the desk. The wind from the fans didn’t move it.
Just then came a voice that didn’t belong to Tim.
‘What on earth are you doing in here, Thomson?’ It was Ms Carter, as large as life. Not to mention spitting chips.
‘Um, ah,’ I began. ‘Tim and I were working out how his horse got damaged. Weren’t we, Tim?’ I looked around. ‘Tim? Tim?’
Ms Carter tapped her foot on the floor. She pursed her lips and turned her face into a frowny one. She said, ‘I don’t see any Tim here.’ Icicles dripped from her words. ‘Thomson, are you up to your old tricks?’
Stars Page 2
