Authors: David A. Adler

The Mystery at Monkey House (3 page)

BOOK: The Mystery at Monkey House

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The guard looked down at Cam and the lock. Then he looked up again.

“This is the monkey cage lock. Someone cut it and stole the monkeys,” Cam said.

Eric pulled on Cam’s sleeve and whispered to her, “That’s not it.”

“Try your key in this,” Cam told the guard.

The guard looked down at Cam again. Then he pulled a large key ring from his pocket. He picked out one of the keys and said, “This key fits the locks on all the cages. But it won’t fit that lock.”

The guard took the lock from Cam. He put the key in. The key fit. The guard turned the key and the lock opened.

“Let’s look at that cage,” the guard said. He walked quickly to the monkey house. Cam and Eric had to run to keep up.

“Whoever stole those monkeys put another lock on the cage door,” Cam said, as she ran alongside the guard.

The guard looked at the lock on the outside door of the first monkey cage. He tried to put his key in. It didn’t fit. He went inside the monkey house and picked up the telephone.

Billy rushed over to Cam and Eric. “What’s he doing here?” he asked Cam.

“Shh,” Eric said.

“This is Senior Guard Wally Russell,” he said into the telephone. “Someone switched the locks on one of the monkey cages. And some monkeys are missing.”

The guard listened for a short while.

Then he said, “Yes, I’ll wait here.”

The guard looked into the first cage. Billy was right behind him. “I knew those monkeys were stolen,” Billy told the guard. “I just knew it.”

Cam and Eric were standing by the door to the monkey house. “How could someone sneak a bunch of monkeys out of a zoo?” Cam asked.

Cam stood there looking out. At the far end of the path, she saw two guards running toward the monkey house. Behind them was another guard riding a small cart.

“That’s it!” Cam said. “Come with me.”

Cam and Eric ran out of the monkey house. They ran past the guards to the wide paved road near the zoo entrance. Cam stopped near a small boy and a man who were looking at a map.

“Did you see an ice-cream cart go past here?” Cam asked.

“No,” the boy said. “But we did see one when we were looking at the animals with four legs and the real long necks.”

Cam closed her eyes and said,
“Click.”
Then she said, “Come on, Eric. The giraffes are right down this road.”

Cam started to run off again.

“Stop! Just stop,” Eric called out. “I ran with you to get the guard and I ran back to the monkey house. I did that twice. Then I ran here. I’m not running anyplace else unless you tell me what’s going on.”

Cam stopped. She turned and told Eric, “When I saw the guard riding a cart, I knew where the monkeys were. They’re in an ice-cream cart. Those ice-cream men ride all over the zoo. And if you take the ice cream out, there’s room in one of those carts for two or three monkeys.”

“Maybe one of the guards with carts stole the monkeys,” Eric said.

Cam shook her head. “The guards have keys. A guard wouldn’t have to cut the lock.”

“But how will we get to see if the ice-cream man has any monkeys in his cart?” Eric asked.

“We can listen for strange noises coming out of the cart. Or we can tell the man we want to buy some ice cream. I’ll bet he says, ‘Sorry, I’m all out.’ ”

Cam smiled and asked Eric, “Will you come with me now?”

Eric nodded and they ran together toward the giraffes.

Chapter Five

C
am and Eric ran down the main road. They ran past the camel rides and the elephants to the giraffes’ cage. They found the ice-cream cart still there. The man was sitting on a bench and reading.

“We’d like to buy some ice cream,” Cam said.

The man closed his book. “I have ‘Piggy Back’ cones. That’s a cone with two scoops of ice cream. You can get rum raisin and strawberry or chocolate and lemon.”

“Yuck,” Eric said. “What horrible flavors.”

Cam leaned close to Eric and whispered, “He doesn’t really have any ice cream in there. He thinks by telling us those horrible flavors we’ll say, ‘No thanks.’ ”

“I’ll take a chocolate and lemon cone,” Cam told the man.

“And I’ll take rum raisin and strawberry,” Eric said.

The man opened the small door to his cart. He reached in and took out two cones.

“That’s seventy-five cents each,” he said, as he gave Cam and Eric the cones and two napkins.

Cam and Eric paid the man. Then Eric tasted the ice cream.

“Yuck,” Eric said again. “This stuff is terrible!”

“That must be the rum raisin,” the man said. “Everyone hates that flavor.”

Cam asked, “Are there any other ice-cream carts in the zoo?”

“Well, yes. There’s one near the zebras and another near the reptiles. But we all have the same flavors.”

Cam said,
“Click,”
and closed her eyes. Then she said, “The zebras are all the way at the end of this road, right past the camels and the bison.”

Cam and Eric walked quickly down the road. When they came to a trash can Eric stopped. He held his ice-cream cone over the can and shook it gently.

“What are you doing?” Cam asked.

“I’m trying to shake off the rum raisin scoop without losing the strawberry.”

Cam took the top scoop off of Eric’s cone and dropped it into the trash. Cam wiped her fingers on her napkin and said, “Let’s go.”

The ice-cream vendor was sitting on a bench near the zebras. She was sleeping with her feet resting on the ice-cream cart.

“She doesn’t look like someone who has just stolen some monkeys,” Eric told Cam.

“Shh,” Cam whispered. She crawled to the ice-cream cart. She put her ear next to it and listened. Eric put his ear against the side of the cart and listened, too.

“I don’t hear any monkeys in there,” Eric whispered.

“Neither do I,” Cam whispered.

“All you’ll hear in there is ice cream,” someone said in a loud voice. “And ice cream doesn’t talk.”

Cam and Eric looked up and saw the ice-cream woman standing there.

Eric stood and told the woman, “Some monkeys are missing. We thought they might be inside your ice-cream cart.”

“Monkeys! What I have in here is worse than monkeys,” the woman said as she opened the small door. “I have chocolate and lemon, and rum raisin and strawberry ice cream. I haven’t sold a cone all day.”

Cam licked her ice-cream cone and said, “It does taste pretty bad.”

The woman closed the small door and sat on the bench again. She put her feet on the cart. “Monkeys!” she said, and laughed as she closed her eyes.

There was a trash can nearby. Cam dropped the lemon ice cream into the trash. She took a few quick bites and finished the chocolate and the cone.

Cam and Eric walked toward the reptile house to find the third ice-cream cart. They walked past a pond. A man was standing there and throwing bread crumbs to the ducks and geese.

Quack, quack, honk, honk,
the ducks and geese called as they chased after the bread crumbs.

Cam watched the ducks and geese eat the crumbs. She listened to the sounds they made. Then she closed her eyes and said,
“Click.”
She said
“click”
again.

Cam opened her eyes and told Eric, “I know just where those monkeys are. And they’re not inside an ice-cream cart.”

Chapter Six

“T
he honking sounds those geese made helped me solve the mystery,” Cam told Eric, as they quickly walked along the main road. Then Cam saw that a crowd had gathered at the main entrance to the zoo. She ran ahead.

Eric took one last big bite and finished his ice-cream cone. Then he ran to catch up with Cam.

“Where have you been?” Billy asked, as he came out to meet Cam and Eric. “You missed everything. The zoo director and lots more guards came. Five monkeys were stolen.”

“I know where they are. I know who took them,” Cam said.

Cam found Senior Guard Wally Russell and told him, “I know who stole the monkeys.”

A short, fat man with a beard and thick eyeglasses was talking to a few of the guards. He turned and asked Cam, “How do you know who took them?”