by David Lewman
“I just thought of something,” Corey said. “Searching the cafeteria might be a complete waste of time.”
“Why?” Hannah asked. “That’s where the meat loaf was made, so if anyone sabotaged it, that’s probably where it happened.”
“I know, but remember what Miss Hodges said about protecting the crime scene?” Corey asked. “Mrs. Collins and the janitor probably already cleaned up the kitchen yesterday, before anyone had gotten sick.”
Hannah was impressed with Corey’s logic. “That’s true.”
“It’s still worth a look,” Ben said. “Lots of times criminals try to clean up crime scenes, but they still leave trace evidence behind.”
“But maybe we’d better hurry and check it out before anyone else gets in there,” Hannah said.
“Fine, but we’ll need permission. And we won’t have time to put a whole kit together,” Ben said.
Hannah stood up and grabbed her backpack. “We’ll just have to improvise. Come on, let’s go get permission from the assistant principal.”
“Club what?” the assistant principal, Mrs. Miller, asked.
“CSI,” Ben repeated. “Crime scene investigation.”
Mrs. Miller looked alarmed. She tended to worry a lot. She might have been a little too nervous of a person to handle school administration. “No one said there’s been a crime committed. If one had been, we’d call in the police. This was just an accident.”
“Actually,” Hannah said, “lots of people are saying there’s been a crime. Everyone in school is talking about it. And they’re trying to guess who might have done it. No one can concentrate on their schoolwork,” she added for good measure.
“Oh dear.” The assistant principal sighed. “I wish Principal Inverno were here to handle this.”
“We just want to help,” Corey said. “Maybe if we investigate the kitchen, we can eliminate some of the suspects and stop the rumors.”
“Suspects?!” Mrs. Miller cried. “I really don’t like the sound of that.”
“Well, until we can solve this, you’re going to hear lots of talk like that in this school—suspects, crimes . . . ,” Ben pointed out.
“Revenge, murder, vampires,” Corey added.
Mrs. Miller raised an eyebrow.
“Well, maybe not vampires,” Corey amended. “Or murder. But revenge is always a possibility.”
Mrs. Miller thought for a moment. “Are you an official school club?”
“Oh yes,” Hannah said eagerly. “With a faculty advisor.”
“And Principal Inverno knows about your club?”
The three friends nodded enthusiastically. “He’s known about it almost right from the very beginning,” Ben confirmed.
“He’s a fan,” Corey added.
Mrs. Miller made her decision. “All right. You can investigate the kitchen.”
“Thank you!” Hannah said, jumping up and heading out of the assistant principal’s office. Ben and Corey followed her.
“But be careful!” Mrs. Miller called after them. “Don’t break anything! Or turn on the stove! Or touch the knives! Or make a mess! Or slip and fall!”
The three Club CSI members carefully entered the cafeteria’s kitchen. “Remember,” Ben said, “try not to touch anything until we all decide it’s a good idea. Like if we’re gathering a piece of trace evidence.”
“Can I gather an apple?” Corey asked. “I’m starving.”
“No!” Hannah said. “Remember what Miss Hodges said? No eating at the crime scene.”
Corey sighed. “Just my luck. I finally get into the school kitchen, and I can’t eat anything. Okay, what are we looking for?”
That was a good question. What were they looking for? As they glanced around the room, it looked like a normal cafeteria’s kitchen. There was a large refrigerator, a stove, a microwave, a dishwasher, and racks of pots and pans.
“Just keep your eyes open,” Ben said a little uncertainly. “Be on the lookout for anything unusual.”
“Like a big bottle of poison with a skull and crossbones on the label?” Corey suggested.
“That’d be good,” Hannah said. She started to take pictures of the kitchen with her cell phone’s camera. Corey started to walk around the kitchen in a spiral pattern.
Ben noticed there were cutting boards hanging from pegs on the wall. There were three different colors of plastic cutting boards hanging together—red, yellow, and blue. Hannah took a picture of them.
“Check this out!” Corey said. “It looks like Miss Hodges’s recipe!” Ben and Hannah examined the piece of paper pinned to a bulletin board. It listed all the ingredients for the meatless meat loaf. Hannah took a picture, which was a lot quicker than copying the recipe by hand.
Near the recipe was a shopping receipt for groceries. Hannah took a picture of it, too.
Overall, the kitchen seemed very well organized and extremely clean. They did find one hair on the counter, which Ben put in a plastic bag with a label that read: HAIR FROM THE CAFETERIA’S KITCHEN.
“Let’s look inside the refrigerator,” Hannah suggested.
“Should we open it without using our hands?” Corey asked.
“Why?” Ben asked.
“Fingerprints,” Corey said.
“We don’t have the equipment to lift fingerprints. And Miss Hodges hasn’t shown us how to do that yet,” Ben said.
“Haven’t you already read ahead to the fingerprint chapter in our forensics book?” Corey asked.
Ben looked sheepish. “Well, yes,” he admitted. “But we’d need some powders and other special equipment.”
“Should I go ask Miss Hodges to help?” Corey asked.
Hannah shook her head. “I don’t think we can go to Miss Hodges for help with this investigation.”
Corey looked puzzled. “Why not?”
Hannah shrugged. “She’s a suspect. At least in some people’s eyes. So until the evidence has cleared her, we can’t really let her in on our investigation.”
Corey looked disappointed. “Shoot. Taking fingerprints would be cool.”
“Maybe on our next case,” Ben said, smiling.
Hannah opened the refrigerator door and the three of them peered in.
Milk, eggs, ketchup, mustard, barbecue sauce—pretty normal stuff. But on a lower shelf they spotted . . .
“Meat loaf!” the three of them said at the same time. There was one container with a small amount of leftover meat loaf in it. Ben carefully took a sample of the meat loaf and placed it in a plastic bag.
“Whatever you do, don’t eat that meat loaf,” Corey warned.
“I won’t,” Ben assured him.
“And I mean even if you’re really, really hungry,” Corey added. “Like me.”
They checked the rest of the kitchen thoroughly. They peered into cabinets. They opened drawers. They even tried checking the trash, but it had been emptied.
Corey thought about scanning the floor for footprints, but it was really clean. “I think they mop it every night,” Ben said. “I don’t see any crumbs or anything.”
Corey agreed. “If there are any mice in here, they must be starving.”
Hannah looked in the pantry closet. “I’ve got an idea! Let’s check the recipe and the grocery store receipt to see which ingredients Mrs. Collins had to buy to make the meatless meat loaf.”
“Okay,” Corey said. “Then what?”
“Then we can take samples of those ingredients with us,” Hannah explained. “If there’s more here in the pantry, I mean.”
“Great idea,” Ben said, turning toward the recipe and the receipt. He called out the ingredients as Hannah and Corey looked for them in the pantry.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN MY KITCHEN?”
Ben, Hannah, and Corey whipped around. Mrs. Collins was standing in the doorway. She looked furious.
“Hello, Mrs. Collins,” Ben said, trying to act casual. “Mrs. Miller gave us permission to—”
“I didn’t give you permission! A
nd this is my kitchen!” she snapped. “Students aren’t allowed in here. Now get out.”
“We’re just trying to help,” Hannah protested. “We’re investigating why people got sick from the—”
“I said get out!” Mrs. Collins shouted, pointing to the door.
The three friends hurried out, taking their samples with them. Mrs. Collins glared at them as they went.
Ben stuck the meat loaf sample in the science lab’s small refrigerator. He didn’t want it to spoil. But he hid it far toward the back, since he also didn’t want anyone tampering with it. Not even Miss Hodges.
He put the other pieces of evidence in a pocket of his backpack and then zipped it shut. He wished he had some kind of safe to lock them in, but at least he’d have the plastic bags with him at all times.
“Did you see how mad Mrs. Collins was?” Corey asked.
“Yeah, I noticed,” Hannah said. “I think it was the way she screamed at us.”
“That, my friends,” Corey said dramatically, “is the behavior of a guilty person.”
“Except she acts like that all the time,” Ben said. “Almost makes you feel sorry for Ricky.”
“We’ve got to stick to the evidence,” Hannah reminded Corey.
“Speaking of which, what are we going to do next with all the stuff we collected?” he asked.
“Well,” Ben answered, “we’ve got to analyze it as best as we can. I’ve got a pretty good microscope at home—”
“That’s a shock,” Corey said, smiling.
“But we’re going to need more information, too,” Ben continued. “Why didn’t everyone who ate the meat loaf get sick?”
“Maybe some of us have a special meat loaf immunity,” Corey suggested.
“Maybe,” Hannah said doubtfully. “But it’d be good to get a list of everyone who got sick. We could also use some more information on food poisoning.”
Corey raised one index finger. “To the Internet!”
Over the next two days, during lunch and after school, the three investigators gathered as much information as they could. They planned to get together and compare their findings. A few of the kids who had gotten sick returned to school, but most stayed home. Principal Inverno, who was out of the hospital but still sick, was still out.
In forensic science class Miss Hodges taught the students about analyzing hairs. She held up a plain yellow pencil. “A strand of hair is similar to a pencil,” she announced.
“No wonder mine’s so hard to comb,” Corey whispered to Hannah, who ignored him. Ben was taking lots of notes.
“The pencil’s lead is like the hair’s medulla,” Miss Hodges said, writing the word on the board. “The wood is like the hair’s cortex, and the yellow paint is like the hair’s cuticle.”
She went on to explain how the cuticle has scales, almost like a fish. Checking the hair’s scales helps an investigator decide whether or not a hair is human.
Miss Hodges had the students pluck their own hairs and examine them under the lab’s microscopes, paying attention to their color, thickness, curliness, and other characteristics.
“I never realized hair was so complex,” Corey said.
In the afternoon the three friends managed to meet up by the trophy cases. Ben shared the list he’d put together of all the people who gotten sick from the meatless meat loaf.
Hannah looked at the list of names for a pattern. “Principal Inverno and ten students. All boys.”
Corey looked over her shoulder. “That’s weird.”
“What’s weird?” Ben asked.
“Almost every single one of those dudes is on the swim team,” he said. Then he confirmed, “Yeah, all but one of them.”
“That’s interesting,” Ben said. “Maybe we should talk to the swim team.”
“That’s going to be tough,” Corey said. “Most of them are still home sick.”
At the indoor pool they found the coach of the swim team teaching a gym class. After explaining why they were there, the coach guessed he could take a second to answer their questions. “Keep swimming laps!” he yelled to the class, his voice echoing in the big tiled room.
After Ben asked, the coach confirmed that the whole swim team had gotten sick. “We had a big meet against Washington Junior High on Monday,” he said, shaking his head. “Had to forfeit.”
This gave Corey an idea. “Isn’t there a big rivalry between our swim team and Washington’s?”
“Yep,” said the coach. “Has been for years. So that was pretty much our biggest meet of the year. Killed me to forfeit.”
“Then isn’t it possible,” Corey went on, “that someone from Washington did something to make our team sick?”
“You mean it might not have been the meat loaf at all?” Hannah asked.
“Maybe,” Corey said. “We’ve got to keep our minds open to all theories at this stage.”
The coach considered this. “I guess it’s possible. It does seem like a weird coincidence that the whole team got sick on the day of our biggest meet.”
“Could someone have put some kind of bacteria into the pool?” Ben suggested.
The coach looked alarmed for a second. He grabbed his whistle and then started to raise it to his lips to blow, so that he could get everyone out of the pool. But then he lowered it, looking relieved.
“No, that couldn’t be it,” he said firmly. “Smell that chlorine?”
All three of the investigators nodded. It was easy to smell the strong scent in the air. It hit you the moment you walked through the door.
“Chlorine kills bacteria,” the coach explained. “That’s what it’s for. And I just rechlorinated the pool before the team’s last practice. We had a last-minute practice right before lunch.”
“Do you mind if we take a sample of the pool water?” Hannah asked.
“Not at all,” the coach said. “Go right ahead. But I really don’t think you’ll find anything. Swimmers are always telling me I overchlorinate this pool. They claim it takes the color out of their swimsuits.”
The next day Ben confirmed what the coach had told them. “I couldn’t find any bacteria in that pool water at all,” he said. “But it had lots of chlorine in it!”
“I guess it kind of makes sense,” Hannah said. “Not everyone who got sick was on the swim team.”
“That’s right,” Corey agreed. “There’s Principal Inverno, and that one other kid. What was his name?”
Ben consulted his list of the people who got sick the day after the meatless meat loaf was served. “Dirk Brown.”
“Maybe we should go talk to Dirk Brown,” Hannah suggested. “He’s still out sick.”
“Good idea,” Corey said. “We could bring him a get-well card.”
Dirk Brown sat up on the couch in his family’s living room, looking at the card Hannah had just handed him. “Thanks,” he said, a little confused. “It’s really nice of you guys to come by and give me a get-well card. I’m feeling a lot better. I should be back at school on Monday.”
“That’s great,” Hannah said. “Do you mind if we ask you a couple of questions?”
“About what?”
“Well, we’re investigating how you and the others got sick at school,” Ben explained.
“Oh,” Dirk said, still looking a little puzzled. “Sure. Ask away.”
Ben took out his notebook and a pen, ready to write down Dirk’s answers. Dirk looked a little nervous about being interrogated.
“Great,” Corey said. “First of all, did you swim in the pool at school this week?”
Dirk shook his head. “Nope. I haven’t been in that pool since last semester for gym. I don’t really like swimming in it. Too much chlorine. Makes my eyes red for the rest of the day.”
Ben looked up from his notepad. “Did you eat the meatless meat loaf?”
Dirk nodded unhappily. “Yeah. I did. I’m pretty sure that’s what made me sick.”
Hannah leaned forward in her chair. “But the part we don’t get is,
why didn’t everyone who ate the meat loaf get sick?”
Dirk shrugged. “I don’t know. Who else got sick?”
“The swim team and principal,” Corey answered.
“That’s who I ate the meat loaf with,” Dirk said.
The three investigators looked startled. “What do you mean?” Corey asked.
Dirk leaned back on the couch. His stomach still didn’t feel absolutely great. “I missed the regular lunch period that day because I had a doctor’s appointment. I had to eat lunch late. When I went into the cafeteria, the only other people there were the guys on the swim team. They were eating late too, because they’d had an extra practice for some big swim meet.”
Ben frantically wrote notes. This new information seemed important. “Oh,” Dirk added, “and the principal was there too. He’d already eaten lunch earlier, but he said he just had to have some more of that delicious meat loaf. He really seemed to like it. Took a big piece with lots of gravy.”
“Did you like it?” Corey asked.
Dirk shrugged. “It was okay, I guess. But now I don’t think I’d ever eat it again.”
“Was there anyone else in the cafeteria?” Hannah asked.
“Just the cafeteria lady,” Dirk answered.
“Mrs. Collins,” Ben said.
“Right. Oh, and I saw her son, too. The big mean kid. What’s his name?”
“Ricky,” Corey said.
“Yeah, Ricky. He was there too.”
The three investigators exchanged looks. They nodded to one another and then got up to leave.
“Thanks, Dirk,” Hannah said. “You’ve been a lot of help.”
“I have?” Dirk asked, surprised. “Great. Thanks again for the card. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go to the bathroom. Again.”
Dirk quickly left the room. Ben, Hannah, and Corey showed themselves out.
As they headed down the sidewalk, the three friends started talking rapidly about what they’d learned from Dirk.
“So the people who got sick all ate the meat loaf later, after everyone else did,” Ben said.
