Sly the Sleuth and the Sports Mysteries

by Donna Jo Napoli

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgements

  Case # 1: - Sly and the Soccer Switch

  Case # 2: - Sly and the Kick Craze

  Case # 3: - Sly and the Basketball Blues

  DIAL BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

  A division of Penguin Young Readers Group

  Published by The Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand,

  London WC2R 0RL, England

  Text copyright © 2006 by Donna Jo Napoli and Robert Furrow

  Illustrations copyright © 2006 by Heather Maione

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  All rights reserved

  Text set in Bembo

  S.A. on acid-free paper set also:

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Napoli, Donna Jo, date.

  Sly the Sleuth and the sports mysteries / by Donna Jo Napoli and Robert

  Furrow ; illustrated by Heather Maione. p. cm.

  Summary: Sly uses her detective skills to help her friends solve the case of the soccer switch, the kick craze, and the basketball blues.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-14405-3

  [1. Sports—Fiction. 2. Schools—Fiction. 3. Mystery and detective stories.]

  I. Furrow, Robert, date. II. Maione, Heather Harms, ill. III. Title.

  PZ7.N15Slg 2006

  [Fic]—dc22

  2005004817

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  Thanks to

  Barry and Eva Furrow, Richard Tchen,

  to Karen Riskin and Rebecca Waugh

  and Lauri Hornik

  Case # 1:

  Sly and the Soccer Switch

  My Policies

  I’m Sly the Sleuth. I run an agency called Sleuth for Hire. People bring me their problems. I solve them. So far I have solved every case.

  My father says I should not get too cocky about it. Cocky people make mistakes. Plus, no one likes them. And he points out that I’ve only had three cases so far. They were all about pets. And they rhymed: the case of the Fat Cat, the case of the Wish Fish, and the case of the Frog Dog.

  I’m not cocky. I’m just optimistic.

  I like solving problems. It’s fun.

  That’s one of my policies: I only take cases that are fun.

  And only cases that a cat would care about. So when someone tells me a problem, I first ask myself what my cat, Taxi, would think.

  These policies have never failed me yet. The cases I take make me happy.

  I love being a sleuth.

  Islands

  My fourth case started with a bang.

  Brian and I were sitting on the floor drawing. Brian is my neighbor. He goes to nursery school.

  Bang! The porch door shook.

  Brian jumped to his feet. “Earthquake!” he screamed.

  “There are no earthquakes around here,” I said.

  Bang!

  “Volcano!” screamed Brian.

  “No volcanos either,” I said.

  Bang!

  “Call the police,” screamed Brian.

  I opened the door.

  A soccer ball hit me in the belly.

  “Ouch,” I said.

  “Sorry.” Jack fetched his ball and held it under one arm.

  “Knocking is better,” I said. “It’s more traditional.”

  “I can’t help it,” said Jack. “I love to kick.”

  “I love to kick too,” said Brian.

  They both looked at me. I shrugged. “I play baseball. Not a lot of kicking in baseball. What’s up, Jack?”

  “There’s a problem.”

  “I knew it,” said Brian. “Lava!” he screamed.

  “What’s he talking about?” said Jack.

  “What are you talking about, Brian?”

  “Boom.” Brian swung his arms over his head. “Volcano, lava, islands. Water everywhere.”

  “Brian, has your teacher been talking about how islands are formed?”

  “We can get boats,” said Brian. “I love boats. And Wilson will be happy. Islands are good for Wilson.”

  Wilson was Brian’s name for all his frogs. He had a few dozen.

  “How do you do that?” said Jack. “How do you figure out what Brian’s talking about?”

  “I’ve had a lot of practice,” I said.

  “And you’re good at that sort of thing,” said Jack. “That’s why you can solve my case.”

  Mistakes

  I went to the kitchen drawer.That’s where

  I keep my sharpest pencil and my special pad of paper. Those are tools of the trade.

  “Start at the beginning,” I said.

  “Soccer,” said Jack.

  Soccer is not my idea of fun. And Taxi hates soccer balls.

  I put the pencil and pad back in the drawer.

  “Go talk to your coach.”

  “Coach is baffled too,” said Jack.

  “Baffled?” said Brian.

  “Confused,” I said to Brian.

  “Baffled booffled,” said Brian.

  “Go back to your drawing,” I said.

  I sat on the floor, picked up my pen, and went back to my own drawing.

  “I need your help,” said Jack.

  “I don’t know anything about soccer.”

  “I do,” said Brian. “I know everything.”

  My drawing was homework. And I wasn’t going to finish it if Brian kept talking and Jack didn’t leave.

  I went back into the kitchen. I filled a bowl with brownies. I filled another bowl with grapes. I held both bowls in front of Brian.

  Brian stuffed a brownie in his mouth.

  I knew he would. His mother makes only health foods.

  I held the bowls in front of Jack.

  Jack stuffed grapes in his mouth. Then he stuffed brownies in his pockets.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  “I might get hungry later,” said Jack. “You never know. Or I can sell them.”

  Jack was always short of money.

  “It’s not nice to sell other people’s food,” I said.

  “You offered,” said Jack. “So it’s mine now. What’s that?” He frowned at my drawing.

  “Birds,” I said. “It’s homework. Haven’t you had art class yet this week? The new art teacher is crazy about birds.”

  “If it’s homework, why are you using a pen? Ink doesn’t erase.”

  “That’s the whole point. We’re not supposed to think of stray marks as mistakes. We’re supposed to think of them as opportunities.”

  Jack pointed. “That lo
oks like a mistake to me.”

  “Go away now, Jack.”

  “You make a lot of mistakes, Sly. You’re making a mistake not to take my case.Taxi would love it.”

  Friends

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll take the bait. Why would Taxi love your case?”

  “I’ll show you,” said Jack. “Come.”

  “Where?”

  “The soccer field.”

  Brian grabbed his green crayon and scribbled on his paper. “This is a soccer field.”

  I gathered Brian’s crayons and stuck them in his backpack. Then I rolled his picture up and put it in too. I handed Brian his backpack. “See you later.”

  Brian left.

  Jack ran ahead of me on the sidewalk, dribbling his soccer ball.

  I caught up with him at the corner. We crossed together. Jack ran ahead again. He passed his house and jumped and waved. I wasn’t surprised that he jumped. Jack jumps a lot. But the wave was a puzzle.

  “Who are you waving at?” I called.

  “Wish Fish,” called back Jack.

  I squinted at Jack’s window. Yup, that was a fishbowl on the sill. And I could even make out Wish Fish’s scarlet body.

  “Hey, wait,” came a voice from behind.

  I turned around.

  Melody raced up with Pong on a leash. Melody is my best friend. Pong is her puppy.

  “Want to walk with us?” asked Melody. “Pong needs exercise.” She held up an empty plastic bag. “And you know what else he needs.” She giggled.

  I like dogs. But I like cats better. And that plastic bag was one reason.

  “I’m going to the soccer field with Jack,” I said.

  “You don’t play soccer,” said Melody.

  “I’m on a case,” I said. “Or maybe I am. I haven’t decided yet.”

  Jack came dribbling back. “Hurry,” he said.

  Pong jumped on the soccer ball.

  “Well, I guess Pong decided,” said Melody. “We’re coming too.”

  Birds

  “All right,” I said. “What’s the problem?”

  We stood at the edge of the school soccer field.

  “Birds.” Jack pointed at a flock near the far goal.

  “Those birds don’t look like a problem to me,” I said.

  Just then Pong noticed the birds. He yipped and jumped like a wild thing.

  Melody let Pong off his leash. He ran straight through the birds. They flew off.

  “Hey,” said Jack. “Pong solved my case.”

  “What case?” I said.

  “Those birds won’t leave the field. And the final game is this weekend. It’s a big deal. If we win, we’ll be the champions. But the birds are in the way.”

  “Are you nuts?” I said. “Birds won’t stay on the field when teams are playing.”

  “Right. But they stay when I practice alone. They won’t let me practice. And I need extra practice, so I can get my kick perfect. But it’s all solved now. Melody, lend me Pong after school every day this week.”

  “Okay,” said Melody. “But I have to come too.”

  “That’s fine,” said Jack. He grinned. “You don’t charge anything. You’re better than Sly.”

  Melody smiled.

  Bad Mood

  I left them on the field and walked toward home. This all should have been fine with me. After all, there really wasn’t any case. There’s no mystery to shooing birds off a field. So nothing had been solved. I shouldn’t have felt bad that Jack said Melody was better than me.

  Melody is my best friend. I should have been glad Jack said that dumb thing, glad because it made her feel good.

  But I wasn’t glad. And I didn’t want to go home and work on my drawing anymore. Jack was right. My drawing looked bad.

  Besides, I’m not crazy about birds, although I had to admit Taxi was. Taxi would have loved this case. Probably any cat would.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Kate rode her bike in the street beside me. I wasn’t surprised to see her. She lives just a couple of houses over from Jack.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  She hopped off and walked the bike up onto the sidewalk. “Why are you frowning?”

  “I’m not,” I said.

  “You’re in a bad mood.”

  “No I’m not.”

  “Well, I am,” said Kate.“My mother’s acting bad.”

  Kate was the only person I knew who expected her mother to do whatever she said. “What happened?” I asked.

  “She said I had to go ride my bike for an hour.”

  “That doesn’t sound bad,” I said.

  “I don’t like riding my bike. But my mother is on a health kick with her friend Julie. She thinks exercise is wonderful. So after I finished my homework, she made me go outside.”

  “You already finished your homework?”

  “It was easy. I traced a bird out of a magazine.”

  “That’s cheating.”

  “No it’s not. The teacher didn’t say we couldn’t trace. And don’t you tell.” Kate nudged me with her elbow. “Anyway, what choice did I have? It’s impossible to draw good with pen.You can’t erase.”

  “She doesn’t want us to erase. That’s the point.”

  “I know,” said Kate. “She’s crazy.”

  “She’s not crazy,” I said.

  “Yes she is. She said we’re going to draw birds all winter.”

  “There’s nothing crazy about that,” I said.

  “Sure there is. Birds fly away in winter.”

  Ruined Grass

  “Wait!” Melody was calling me.

  I turned around.

  Melody ran up with Pong.

  “Oh, I love that puppy,” said Kate. She laid her bike on the ground. Then she sat on the sidewalk and held her arms out to Pong.

  Pong ran straight up Kate’s front and licked her face. Kate laughed.

  “I thought you were helping Jack,” I said to Melody.

  “He has a bad temper.”

  “Did he get mad at Pong?”

  “He got mad at both of us. I’m never helping him again.”

  Pong was still licking Kate.

  Kate was still laughing.

  Melody laughed now too.

  I thought of angry Jack, alone on the field with the birds. Sleuths have a responsibility toward their clients. Even clients who fired them before they were hired. “See you later.” I walked back to the field.

  Jack was jumping in the middle of the birds. He flapped his arms like a madman.

  “What happened?” I called.

  “That stupid dog chased the soccer ball instead of the birds.”

  I laughed.

  “It’s not funny.”

  “What else happened?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know. You got mad at Melody too.”

  “She said she could kick better than me. Then she scored on me. But only because she fouled me. Her and her stupid ballet.”

  “Kicking’s not that important,” I said.

  “In soccer it is. If I don’t get better at kicking, the coach will make me stay on the bench the whole game.” Jack looked really worried.

  I knew how he felt. I love baseball, but I’m not that good at it. “Why don’t you practice somewhere else?” “Like where?”

  “Your backyard.”

  “My mother says soccer ruins the lawn.”

  I looked out over the field.The grass was missing in lots of places. Jack’s mother was right.

  Jack kicked the ground. “What makes these dumb birds come here?”

  That was the mystery. “We’ll get rid of them,” I said.

  “You’re hired,” said Jack.

  A Goal

  I walked along the perimeter of the field.

  Jack dribbled the ball in circles around me. “Why aren’t you scaring the birds off?”

  “Did they leave when you tried to scare them?”

  “You know they didn’t.You saw.” />
  “Exactly,” I said.

  “Well, if you’re not going to scare them off, how are you going to solve my problem?”

  “Have you tried playing through them?”

  “It doesn’t work.They stay there,” said Jack.

  How could that be? “Let me try,” I said. I kicked the ball toward the birds.

  Squawk!

  Oh, no!

  The ball bounced off a bird and into the net.

  The bird walked unsteadily. I was amazed it wasn’t dead. I ran to it. It flew away. I laughed in relief.

  “Wow,” said Jack. “You scored. Maybe I should kick the ball into a bird.”

  “I didn’t mean to do it,” I said. “Besides, you might hurt them. You can’t play here anymore. Not till I get rid of them.”

  “How?”

  I didn’t know. But clients never like to hear that kind of answer. “Are they always out here?”

  “No. They came on Monday, and they’ve been here every afternoon since.”

  “Only in the afternoon?”

  “In the morning there are hardly any of them.”

  The Blot

  Jack dribbled ahead of me. “Solve my case fast,” he called. He waved and went up his walk.

  By the time I got home, it was late. I helped make dinner. After we ate, I went back to my drawing.

  I shaded in the wings of my bird.

  Birds. So many birds all at once. Birds on the soccer field. Birds in the homework. And Kate said we would be drawing birds all winter.

  But, like she said, birds fly away in winter. Not all of them, of course. But the ones that stay behind aren’t easy to find.

  Unless you do something to attract them.

  It was November. Why were there so many birds on the soccer field?

  Something was attracting them.

  What would attract the birds all of a sudden? And only in the afternoon? And this late in the fall?

  In thinking so hard, I pressed on the pen. The plastic near the tip broke. Ink slopped on my drawing. It formed a big blot over the bird’s head.