The Great Shelby Holmes and the Coldest Case

by Elizabeth Eulberg

  Also by Elizabeth Eulberg

  The Great Shelby Holmes

  The Great Shelby Holmes Meets Her Match

  For Beth Eller and Courtney Griffin, who have been amazing cheerleaders for Shelby, Watson, and me.

  (Let’s hope it doesn’t go to Shelby’s head.)

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Acknowledgments

  Something was wrong with Shelby Holmes.

  You couldn’t really say she was in a bad mood since her usual mood was ah . . . ​sour. But it was clear there was something going on and it wasn’t good. I practically had to jog to keep up with her after school on Monday. She was muttering under her breath.

  “Everything okay, Shelby?” I asked.

  Her reply was a grunt.

  Okay, that was a typical response from her. Next, I would attempt to do what Shelby always did: not simply see, but observe. I would put all the detective skills she had taught me to use and figure out what was going on.

  This was what I’d noticed so far: she was her usually prickly self on the way to school. Nothing new there. It was really at lunch when things changed. She sat by herself at her regular table. However, instead of eating, she folded her arms and glared at her lunch bag. After that, she slammed her locker door between classes, and people cleared the way for her more than usual. She didn’t speak at all in science class, and her agitated behavior continued on our walk home.

  It had to be something that happened with her lunch. She normally spent lunch period with her head crammed into a book and devouring an assortment of desserts. She didn’t want to “waste precious research time” talking to her friends. Well, her friend. Singular. Since she only had one and that honor went to yours truly.

  Shelby kept speed walking as we went farther away from the Harlem brownstone where we both lived. “What happened with your lunch?”

  Shelby abruptly ended her power walk to turn to face me. “Lunch?”

  “Yeah, you seemed upset with your lunch.”

  “Go on.” She looked impressed.

  Wait. This must’ve meant that I was onto something. Soon I’d be like Shelby, deducing a person’s life story with a single glance!

  “Where are you going right now?”

  “To Kristos.” Kristos is a deli in our neighborhood, where Shelby liked to get her sugar fix.

  No way. It couldn’t be.

  The pieces of the puzzle started to come together. Shelby being really angry. Her not eating lunch.

  I couldn’t believe it. The impossible had finally happened.

  And if my deduction was correct, we were all going to suffer for it.

  “Your parents aren’t letting you have any sugar.”

  Shelby’s pale face turned the same color as her bright red hair. Between clenched teeth, she said, “Yes, my parents voiced their objection over the amount of sweets I’d been consuming. And they decided to share their concern with every purveyor of sweets in the neighborhood.”

  So here was the thing: Shelby’s parents were completely right. Not like I’d ever admit that to Shelby. The girl inhaled sugar. And not like a cookie here or there. Several candy bars or cookies at once. Sometimes I didn’t think she even breathed between bites. Candy was her preferred payment method when we solved a case.

  “If you can’t buy candy, I can get you some.” While Shelby really should cut back on her sweets, I wasn’t going to be the one to deny her candy. I valued my life too much.

  Shelby tilted her head. “Think, Watson.”

  “Ah, I can handle buying candy. I’m around you enough when you eat it.” It didn’t really bother me that Shelby constantly ate sugar around me. Now, if she did that with pizza and didn’t share, we’d have a problem. Anyway, it seemed pretty simple to me: Shelby’s parents have told people she couldn’t buy sugar, but that didn’t mean—“Oh.”

  “Exactly,” Shelby replied, knowing I figured it out.

  If I went into Kristos to buy candy, they’d know it was for Shelby since I’m not only Shelby’s friend, I’m also diabetic. Therefore, the ban affected me as well.

  (Shelby needed to start giving her parents more credit for how smart they were.)

  “What are you going to do?” I asked.

  Shelby walked right up to a woman on the street corner who was waiting for the light to change. She got onto her hands and knees, examining the woman’s boots.

  “Can I help you?” the woman asked Shelby. She was probably in her midthirties and dressed in a jacket and skirt.

  “You really should only walk on the sidewalk. The street can be a very dangerous place to stroll,” Shelby stated as she stood back up and wiped her hands on her baggy jeans.

  Where was Shelby going with this?

  “Okaaay,” the woman replied before turning her attention back to the stoplight.

  Shelby continued, “While the construction on 128th Street can be a bit of a nuisance, you should’ve crossed over to use the sidewalk on the other side. But I understand it was more convenient to walk on the road. If you crossed over, you’d have to do it yet again to turn on Frederick Douglass.”

  The woman glanced back at Shelby, her eyes wide. “What? How did you . . . ​Have you been following me?”

  I couldn’t help but smile. I loved when Shelby did this. How she could seemingly pull information out of thin air so easily. But it wasn’t easy. It was deductive reasoning.

  “No, I wasn’t following you,” Shelby replied with a smile. “It was quite simple, and I can explain if you would be so helpful as to go into that store and purchase me a candy bar. I’ll even give you the money.”

  The woman stepped back for a moment to get a better look at Shelby with her messy hair and Harlem Academy of the Arts maroon polo shirt. The corners of the woman’s lips curled. “Okay, you’ve got me interested. I’ll play along.”

  The woman waved away Shelby’s money and in a couple minutes came back with a chocolate bar. Shelby tried to grab it, but the woman held it up high. “I believe you owe me an explanation first.”

  “Happily,” Shelby remarked before dropping back down to her knees. She pointed at the woman’s right boot. “You have a fine dusting of dirt on the right side of your right boot, but nothing on your left boot, which indicates that you recently walked by dirt that was to your right. Since we are predominantly surrounded by concrete pavement in Harlem, there aren’t a lot of places in the general vicinity that you could’ve come in contact with dirt, except the construction that has blocked half the sidewalk on 128th Street. Most people would’ve crossed over, unless you were planning on taking the next right, which was Frederick Douglass.”

  The woman looked down at her boot. “But it’s so . . . ​ simple.
”

  It was, but Shelby was the only person who could put it all together.

  “Yes. It’s also correct,” Shelby stated as she held out her hand. The woman laughed as she gave her the chocolate before crossing the street.

  Shelby ripped open the wrapper and wistfully finished off the candy bar in four bites. She had a spring in her step as we made our way back home. But once we turned the corner onto Baker Street, Shelby let out another exasperated sigh.

  “What is it?”

  Shelby glared at me. “That”—she pointed to a woman standing outside our apartment building—“is all your fault.”

  “What did I do?”

  Shelby shook her head as we studied the woman from the corner. “It’s that online journal of yours.”

  I couldn’t make the leap to figure out how a woman standing outside our building had anything to do with the journal I started about our cases. My online readership really only consisted of a few classmates, my parents, and my English teacher. Oh, yeah, and one Moira Hardy, AKA the only person to ever outsmart Shelby.

  “She’s a journalist,” Shelby stated.

  I examined the young Asian American woman writing in a spiral notebook.

  Before I could even ask Shelby how she knew that, she started to explain. “She’s taking notes outside of our building. There are only a few types of people who would do that. Mrs. Hudson has no intention of selling her brownstone. Therefore, we can automatically rule out real estate agents or building developers. Of course, detectives are observant creatures, but this woman isn’t with the police. And you, Watson, should know the other type of people who observe and take notes.”

  “Writers,” I answered as I thought of my own notebook in my backpack that I use to jot things down.

  “Exactly,” Shelby replied with a satisfied nod. “She is dressed in a business casual manner: nice jeans, blazer, not too much jewelry. So she’s professional, most likely a journalist, but not someone on-camera. She has a large messenger bag, which no doubt contains a laptop.”

  “The bag could have other things,” I argued. While I knew it was pointless to ever doubt Shelby, it was the only way I was going to learn.

  Shelby raised her eyebrow. “Okay, I’ll bet you twenty candy bars that she’s a reporter. Or whatever the equivalent of twenty candy bars is to you.”

  No way was I taking that bet. I was curious, not a chump.

  “How do you know there’s a laptop?”

  “Her left shoulder is lower than her right, signaling that she is carrying a lot of weight from her bag. My conclusion is that she has a laptop. Not only that, but she is here to interview us about your blog for her community newspaper, although with the current state of printed papers, I deduce that she writes for an online outlet.”

  “Really? She wants to interview us?”

  Visions of fame floated through my head. My online readership would grow! I’d win awards! I’d be invited to go on television to talk about fighting crime!

  “We certainly will not be participating in any kind of interview,” Shelby said, extinguishing my dreams.

  “Why not?” I whined.

  Shelby scowled. “I will not be traipsed around the press as some pint-sized detective and hear oh, isn’t that just adorable. No, our work should be taken seriously.”

  Okay, Watson. This was going to be a challenge to convince Shelby. I wanted to be interviewed so more people could see my writing. All I had to do was to get Shelby to say yes. And the best way to get Shelby to be agreeable (when chocolate wasn’t around) was to feed her ego.

  “Nobody could take what you do as anything but impressive, Shelby.”

  Her scowl softened slightly. “Well, you and I are aware of that fact.”

  “Of course. But wouldn’t it be beneficial for people to know what a great detective you are? It would increase your profile, and once people read about how brilliant your skills of deduction are, we’ll be flooded with more clients. Because, really, why go to the police, when you could go to Shelby Holmes?”

  (Yeah, I was going a little overboard, but Shelby looked thoughtful at what I was saying.)

  “You have brought up a good point, Watson.” She paused for a moment. “Maybe.”

  Maybe! I was getting somewhere. Now I needed to turn that maybe into a yes. And I knew exactly how to close this deal.

  “And just imagine how annoyed Detective Lestrade would be when she read the article.”

  Shelby brightened up. “You know what? A little press would be good for us. It would get more people to read your journal as well.”

  “Oh, yeah, I didn’t think of that.” (And seriously, the fact that I didn’t crack up right then and there showed how much better I was getting with acting. Real undercover work was just around the corner. I could feel it.)

  “All right, let’s go,” Shelby announced as we approached the woman.

  The reporter was too wrapped up in writing in her notebook to see us coming.

  Shelby cleared her throat. When the reporter looked up, she broke into a huge grin. “Oh, isn’t this just adorable.”

  Before Shelby could insult the reporter, I reached my hand out to her. “John Watson, nice to meet you.”

  She shook my hand, while her eyes remained on Shelby. “Nice to meet you, John.”

  Shelby started walking up the stairs to the front door of our brownstone.

  I gestured for her to follow Shelby. “We should go inside.”

  The reporter looked surprised. “But you don’t know who I am and why I’m here.”

  Shelby turned around. “Yes, we do.” She crossed her arms with an annoyed expression on her face. “Apparently you underestimate what Watson’s been reporting about me. But I can verify that it’s all true. And then some.”

  The reporter hesitated for a minute before she followed Shelby up the stairs with me trailing behind her.

  Soon she would realize what a genius Shelby was (and that I wasn’t such a slouch, either), and if we were lucky, a lot more people would want to put Shelby Holmes and John Watson on the case.

  “Did my famous son get enough breakfast?” Mom asked two days later as she poured herself another cup of coffee.

  “Yes. I didn’t realize notoriety could make you so hungry,” I joked as I finished off the last of the scrambled eggs.

  I scrolled through the article Lynn Chan had written in the Harlem Observer, a community blog, about Shelby and me called “Harlem’s Smallest Sleuths.” It was pretty good, even with that title. It talked about how we were able to find the Lacys’ missing dog and how we helped our science teacher, Mr. Crosby. It even mentioned a few of the cases we’ve cracked for our classmates.

  I hadn’t had a chance to talk to Shelby about it yet, but I was sure she’d have a ton of objections, especially to the fact that she was described as “adorable,” and yes, “pint-sized.” But at least she wasn’t referred to as a “sidekick.” That stung a bit. Sure, I didn’t know as many random facts as Shelby, but I was getting a lot better with deciphering clues and deductive reasoning.

  Also, it would’ve been nice if they had run a picture of us where I wasn’t in the background. But maybe it was because the photo they did use for the article—featuring Shelby on the steps of our brownstone with her arms folded and an impatient grimace, while I was three steps up—was the only one where she wasn’t overtly glaring at the camera. I had thought Shelby would’ve liked the attention that came with being interviewed and having her picture taken.

  I had thought wrong.

  Mom looked over my shoulder and read from the piece, “While they are small in stature, Shelby Holmes and John Watson can match wits with any detective twice their size.” She patted me on the back. “My son, the media sensation.”

  Well, I didn’t know about that, but it felt nice to get credit for what we’ve done.

  “Did you send it to your father?” Mom asked.

  “Yeah.” I’d told Dad about it last night during our nightly phon
e call. I hadn’t seen him since we moved over two months ago. He was supposed to come and visit soon, but he hadn’t mentioned it in a while. I knew I’d be seeing him next month for Thanksgiving, but that was too far away.

  “That’s great,” Mom said as she rubbed my hand. “I know you miss him, but you’ll see him soon enough.”

  I guess. But it was a little unsettling that I’d become used to him not being around.

  “Plus,” Mom said with a smile, most likely trying to change the topic to a happier subject. “I bet this article will get you guys even more cases now.”

  (See, I was getting better at reading body language. That and I knew my mom really well. She could sense when I was down about the divorce.)

  “Yeah, I hope so.”

  Complaints about the article aside (as I knew Shelby would have plenty), it would probably help us get cases from people beyond our school and neighborhood.

  At this point, I wanted a case from anybody. Shelby was very particular with what kind of cases she felt were “worthy” of her talents. We hadn’t had one in over a week. And while that doesn’t seem like a lot of time, I was itching to get back to it. I was getting better with each case. Soon, I’d be able to solve something all on my own! (Okay, maybe I shouldn’t get too far ahead of myself.)

  “Now don’t forget our rules.”

  “I promise I won’t,” I replied. “No more secrets.”

  Mom and I had an agreement when it came to working with Shelby: I had to tell her about the cases, and she needed to know where I was at all times. And I had to be extra careful with my diabetes and not go too long without eating or hydrating. Which totally made sense, but see, I kind of, sort of wasn’t 100 percent truthful to Mom when I started working with Shelby.

  Okay, okay. I had lied to Mom.

  And yeah, I almost died that one time.

  Oops. My bad. (For real, my bad.)

  But now Mom knew everything. It was nice to be able to share our cases with her. I didn’t like lying and keeping something from her that meant so much to me. Now during dinner I’d entertain her with tales of working with Shelby. Usually, she would shake her head in disbelief over something Shelby had done or said. Which, honestly, was how most people reacted to Shelby’s talents. And attitude.