The Mystery of the Gold Coins

by David A. Adler

  “No. It was this store. It had to be,” Eric said. “Cam said, ‘Click,’ and when she says that, she remembers everything.”

  “I don’t know about clicks, but I do know I haven’t been robbed. Come in and see for yourselves.”

  It was a small, crowded shop. Locked glass cases with coins in them were hanging along the walls. The old man stood next to a large glass counter. It was filled with coins, old dollar bills, and catalogues.

  “I’m Mr. Collins,” the old man said. “I’ve worried that my store might be robbed. The coins in this shop are worth a lot of money. That’s why there’s a lock on each case and an alarm on the door. Everything here is just the way I left it last night.”

  Cam told Mr. Collins that she was sorry to have bothered him. Then she and Eric left the store.

  As they walked toward school, Eric said, “I still think it was Linda Baker’s brother. I’ll bet the Bakers have a shelf just waiting for that science trophy.”

  Cam and Eric stopped at the corner and waited for the traffic light to change. Then, just as they were crossing the street, they heard someone call to them. It was Mr. Collins.

  “Come back!” he yelled. “I have been robbed!”

  Chapter Five

  Cam and Eric ran back into the store. Mr. Collins was standing by the door, holding two small display boxes. The boxes were empty.

  “These were two of my most valuable coins,” he said. “They were gold and almost a hundred years old. And now they’re gone.”

  “Was anything else taken?” Cam asked.

  “No. I didn’t know anything was gone until I found these empty boxes. They were in the case where I left them. And the case was still locked.” He closed the door of the case.

  Mr. Collins telephoned the police. Then, after he hung up the telephone, he said to Cam and Eric, “I just don’t understand it. I’ve been robbed and I haven’t even opened the store yet. The locks weren’t broken.”

  Cam and Eric stood by the door and waited for the police. Mr. Collins kept shaking his head and saying, “I just don’t understand it.”

  Cam and Eric heard a siren. The noise got louder and louder. Then a police car drove up and parked in front of the coin shop. The siren stopped. Both front doors of the car opened. The driver got out first. It was a tall, thin policewoman. Then a policeman got out from the other side of the car. He was fat and had a mustache. Both police officers came quickly into the store.

  The policeman asked Mr. Collins, “What was taken?”

  “I don’t understand it,” Mr. Collins told the police. “I have all the best locks. They’re brand-new. I didn’t even know I was robbed until these children told me.”

  “Can you tell us what was taken?” the policeman asked again.

  “Two gold coins.”

  Mr. Collins showed the police the empty display boxes and the case they were kept in. Then Cam and Eric told the police about their science fair and the photograph Cam took of Eric and his sundial.

  “A man was leaving this store when I took the picture,” Cam said. “He followed us to school and stole the film right out of my camera.”

  “It’s too bad we don’t have that picture,” the policewoman said.

  “But we do have a picture of him,” Cam told her. “I went, ‘Click,‘ and took Eric’s picture with my mental camera before I used my real camera. I also went, ’Click,‘ when the man ran past the window at school and when he dropped my camera in the woods.”

  “You have pictures! You should have showed them to us right away,” the policeman said.

  “They are not real pictures,” Eric explained. “They’re mental pictures. Cam can look at them and tell you exactly what the man looks like.”

  The policewoman smiled and said, “That’s almost as good.”

  She took a pencil and pad from her pocket and asked Cam to describe the man.

  Cam closed her eyes and said, “Click.”

  “The best picture I have of him is when he ran past the window at school. He was wearing a red plaid jacket, a yellow shirt, and brown pants. He’s thin and not very tall. He has dark hair and wears big eyeglasses with red frames.”

  “What!” Mr. Collins said. “Did you say red eyeglasses? That’s Jimmy!”

  Chapter Six

  Jimmy? Jimmy who?“ both police officers asked Mr. Collins.

  “I told you that when I moved in I had new locks and an alarm put in. Well, Jimmy works for the locksmith. Jimmy worked here for almost a week. When he finished, I brought in all these coins. I thought they’d be safe here.”

  “Where does Jimmy work? What’s the name of the locksmith?” the policeman asked.

  “He works for Lenny at Sea Side Hardware. It’s in the Hamilton Shopping Mall.”

  “If you’ll come with us,” the policewoman said to Cam, Eric, and Mr. Collins, “we’ll go there and see if we can find Jimmy.”

  Cam and Eric got into the back seat of the police car. Mr. Collins locked the front door of his store, set the alarm, and then got into the back seat, too.

  The policewoman drove the car into the shopping mall parking lot. She parked it in front of the Sea Side Hardware store.

  Cam, Eric, Mr. Collins, and the two police officers went inside the store. Tools and garden supplies filled the front of the store. In the back, behind a counter, there were rows of keys hanging, and a bald man wearing a blue shirt stood there. Along the side of the store were books, magazines, and candy and soda machines.

  The policewoman whispered to Cam, Eric, and Mr. Collins, “Do you see Jimmy anywhere?”

  Eric pulled on Cam’s sleeve and pointed. Someone with dark hair and eyeglasses with red frames was buying something from one of the machines.

  “That’s him,” Cam whispered to the policewoman.

  “Yes, that’s Jimmy,” Mr. Collins said.

  The police walked toward the machines. Cam, Eric, and Mr. Collins followed them.

  Jimmy saw the police coming. He looked frightened, but he didn’t run off. He turned back to the machine. As he put his money in, Cam looked straight at him and said, “Click.”

  “All right, young man,” the policewoman said. “There are a few questions we’d like to ask you and your boss.”

  They led Jimmy to the back of the store.

  “Are you the locksmith?” the policewoman asked the man behind the counter.

  “Yes, I’m Lenny.”

  “Did you put in new locks and an alarm in Collins’ Coin Shop?”

  “I didn’t. Jimmy did. He’s new here. It was his first job alone, but I checked his work. He did a fine job.”

  “Well, the store was robbed. Two gold coins are missing. And these two children saw Jimmy leaving the store when it should have been closed.”

  “I didn’t take any coins. You can check me,” Jimmy said.

  Jimmy took a pen, a few coins, and some dollar bills from his pants pockets. He put them on the counter. Then he turned his pockets inside out and said, “See, I don’t have any gold coins.”

  Eric pointed to a red plaid jacket hanging behind the counter.

  “Can we check your jacket, too?” Cam asked.

  Jimmy hesitated for a moment. Then he said, “Sure. Check anything you want. You won’t find any gold coins.”

  Lenny handed the jacket to the policeman. The policeman emptied the pockets. He took out some tissues, chewing gum, and a large ring of keys.

  The policewoman picked up the keys. “What are all these for?” she asked.

  “Those are my house keys,” Jimmy said.

  Mr. Collins took a ring of keys from his pocket. He compared the two sets of keys.

  “Some of these look just like mine,” Mr. Collins said.

  Lenny compared the keys and said, “Some of these are the same.”

  “All right, Jimmy,” the policewoman said, “you’ll have to come with us and answer some questions.”

  “What about my coins?” Mr. Collins asked.

  “You’re not
getting any coins back,” Jimmy said, “because I don’t have them.”

  Chapter Seven

  Jimmy put his pen and money back into his pockets. Then he put his jacket on.

  As the police were leading Jimmy to the front of the store, they passed a man kicking the soda machine. When he saw the police, the man stopped kicking the machine.

  “I lost two quarters,” he said.

  “Well, don’t break the machine,” the policeman told him as he walked past.

  Cam stopped. She looked at the man and the machine. Then she closed her eyes and said, “Click. ”

  She opened her eyes quickly. The police and Jimmy were just leaving the store.

  “Stop!” Cam called to them. “Come back here.”

  The policewoman rushed back. “What is it now?” she asked.

  “Just wait here. I think I know where the gold coins are. And,” she said to the man, “you’ll get your quarters back.”

  Cam ran to the locksmith’s counter. “Someone lost money in the soda machine,” she told Lenny.

  Lenny opened the cash register and took out some coins.

  “No. Don’t give him the money. Please, open the machine and see what’s wrong.”

  Lenny took some keys off a hook and followed Cam. He pressed some buttons on the soda machine, but nothing happened. He put a coin into the machine and pressed the buttons again. But still nothing happened.

  “When we came in,” Cam whispered to Eric, “Jimmy was standing right here. He put something into the machine. It might have been the gold coins.”

  Lenny unlocked the machine and opened it. Inside were cups ready to slide down a small metal ramp, tubes leading to containers of soda syrup, and a clear plastic coin chute. There were coins stuck in the chute. The first two were gold. Lenny gave the chute a few hard taps and the coins dropped down. Lenny gave the man his money, and he gave the gold coins to Mr. Collins.

  “One of these must be bent,” Lenny told Mr. Collins. “That’s why it got stuck.”

  Mr. Collins said, “I’m glad. If the coins weren’t bent, we might not have found them.”

  The police drove Cam, Eric, and Mr. Collins back to the coin shop. Then they took Jimmy to the police station.

  “I said before that I didn’t know about ‘Clicks,’ ” Mr. Collins told Cam, “but now I do. They help you remember, and they helped find my coins.”

  Eric looked through the window of the store while Mr. Collins opened the door.

  “You may have a good memory,” Eric told Cam, “but you -forgot about your camera. It’s on the counter. We better hurry back to school with it before it’s too late to put it in the science fair.”

  “Don’t go so fast. I want to give you something for helping me,” Mr. Collins said.

  He opened the door. Then he opened one of the cases and took out a handful of coins. He gave five of the coins to Cam and five to Eric.

  Eric looked at the coins.

  “These are pennies,” he said.

  Mr. Collins smiled and said, “Yes. If you want to spend them, they’re worth just one cent each. But to a collector they’re worth much more. These are Indian head pennies, and they’re quite old. The last ones were made in 1909.”

  Cam and Eric thanked Mr. Collins for the coins and invited him to the science fair. Then Cam took her camera and walked with Eric to school.

  Chapter Eight

  That evening Cam and Eric were standing by their projects. Ms. Benson and the other fifth grade teachers walked with the science fair judges from table to table. They asked the children about their projects. Each of the judges wrote notes on a pad. Later they would announce the winner of the science fair.

  Cam’s parents were at the science fair. So were Eric’s parents, his twin sisters, Donna and Diane, and his baby brother, Howie. They all came to Cam’s table.

  “Did the judges get here yet?” Cam’s father asked.

  “No, but they’ll be here soon. They were just with Eric.”

  “Do you know what to say?”

  “They’ll ask me how I made the camera and how it works. And I know all that.”

  “Don’t forget to tell them that the first picture you took was of me,” Donna said. “They might think it’s Diane because we look alike. You tell them it was me.”

  The teachers and judges walked up to Cam’s table.

  “This is Jennifer Jansen,” Ms. Benson told the others. “She made a camera. Can you tell us about it, Jennifer?”

  “There’s no film in it now, so I can open it for you.” Cam took the top off the camera. “It started as a box.”

  Cam showed the teachers and the judges where she put the film and how she had made the shutter with a pin, some tape, cardboard, and aluminum foil.

  “And the most important thing is,” Cam said, “that I made sure no light gets into the camera. If light gets in, the film is ruined.”

  The judges asked Cam some questions. Then they walked over to the next table.

  Everyone waited for the winner to be announced.

  Ms. Benson walked onto the stage. She spoke into the microphone while the other teachers and the judges stood behind her.

  “Before I announce the winner, I want to thank everyone for coming here tonight. I also want to thank all our fifth grade students for working so hard.”

  Someone tapped Cam and Eric on their shoulders. It was Mr. Collins. “I hope you both win,” he said.

  One of the judges handed Ms. Benson a trophy. Then Ms. Benson said, “This year’s winner is Joan Cooper for her project, ‘Soda, Sugar, and Teeth.’ Joan, will you come up here, please.”

  Eric whispered to Cam, “Well, at least Linda Baker didn’t win.”

  Joan walked onto the stage, and Ms. Benson gave her the trophy. Lights flashed as her parents and some other people took pictures.

  “Why don’t you take her picture?” Mr. Collins asked.

  “There’s no film in my camera.”

  “No, use your other camera, the one that saved my coins.”

  Joan was shaking hands with one of the judges. Cam looked straight at her and said, “Click.” Then Cam looked at Mr. Collins. He was talking to Cam’s parents and to Eric and his family.

  “I’m taking your pictures, too,” Cam told them.

  Cam’s mother combed her hair. Eric’s mother held Howie up so that he would be in the picture. Then they smiled.

  Cam looked straight at them all and said, “Click.”