The Mystery of the Blue Ring (4 page)

Dawn took a breath. She kept going.

They caught up to Jill on Linden Avenue.

Dawn reached out for her arm.

Jill spun around. “Dawn Bosco,” she said. “Jason Bazyk.”

“Who did you think?” Jason asked. “Santa Claus?” He began to laugh.

“Watch out,” Jill said. “I just saw a—” She stopped. She raised her shoulder. “A horrible boy. He had a moustache growing out of his forehead.”

Jason couldn’t stop laughing. He kept pointing to Dawn.

“That was me,” said Dawn. “Just me.”

She took Jill’s hand. She pointed to the ring.

“Where did you get this?” she asked. “On the art room sink?”

“No,” Jill said. “At Lacy’s department store.”

Dawn shook her head. “Listen, Jill. This is Emily Arrow’s ring.”

“She’s right,” Jason said. “Same gold ring. Same blue stone.”

“No.” Jill began to shake her head.

At the same time Dawn opened her mouth. “Wait a minute.”

“I can’t wait,” Jill said. “It’s pouring out.”

“Something’s wrong,” Dawn said.

“Yes,” said Jason. “It’s wrong to take a ring. It’s wrong to say you got it in Lacy’s.”

Dawn stood up straight. “Sorry, Jason. Jill’s not the thief.”

“Sure she is,” said Jason. “Same gold ring. Same blue—”

“Stop saying that,” Dawn said. “Look at the ring.”

“Same blue—” Jason began. He opened his eyes. “No crack.”

“That’s right,” Dawn said. “Emily’s ring had a crack in it.”

“Of course Emily’s ring had a crack,” Jill said. “She banged it on the swings.”

Rain dripped off Jill’s chin. “Good-bye,” she said. “I’m going home. I’m going to watch TV.”

She started to run.

“Hey!” Dawn called. “Why were you in school?”

Jill turned around. She looked as if she were going to cry. “I hate my onion. I was going to make something else. A string bean, maybe.”

“Beast made the string bean,” Dawn said.

“I know,” said Jill. “I was looking at it. I was looking at Emily’s cucumber, too. I couldn’t think of another vegetable to make.”

Jill wiped away another drop of rain. She began to run.

Jason shook the water out of his shoes. “So long,” he said to Dawn.

He started to run, too.

Dawn walked back for her hat.

It was silly to run, she thought.

She was soaking wet anyway.

D
AWN WAS STANDING
in the art room.

An onion jumped off the windowsill.

So did a string bean.

Emily Arrow’s cucumber rolled up to her. “Thief!” it yelled.

“Lumpy old cucumber!” Dawn shouted. “You can’t even roll right.”

“Time to get up,” her mother said.

She opened her eyes. It was Monday. School.

She still hadn’t solved the mystery.

She sat on the side of her bed. She hated to get dressed.

“Hurry up, Toots,” her mother called.

She looked at her cowgirl boots. They were still wet.

So was her polka dot hat.

She slid into her green jelly sandals.

She reached into her detective box and pulled out a button.

It said:
POLKA DOT PRIVATE EYE

It looked great on her pink shirt.

In the kitchen she ate her Puff and Pops.

She didn’t talk.

She had to think hard.

Somehow she had to find out about Emily’s ring.

She talked to herself on the way to school.

“The art room sink,” she said. “All of us were there.”

She counted on her fingers. “Me. Linda. Jill. And Emily.”

Everyone had been laughing.

Well, not everyone.

She and Emily had been pushing a little.

She remembered the ring on the sink.

The soapy ring.

She stopped in the school yard.

Wait a minute, she told herself. That ring wasn’t Emily’s. It was Jill’s.

Emily was sitting on a swing.

Dawn went up to her. “I have bad news. Your ring wasn’t in the art room. I never saw it.”

“I had it in art,” Emily said. She gave a push with her foot. She sailed up in the air. “I wish someone would believe me.”

“I believe you.”

Emily raised her arms on the swing chains. She stood up on the swing.

“You’re not supposed to stand up,” Dawn said. “Don’t get in trouble.”

“I won’t,” said Emily. She smiled at Dawn.

“I didn’t take your ring,” Dawn said.

“I believe you,” said Emily.

Just then the bell rang.

They ran for the big brown doors.

In the classroom, Dawn took out her notebook.

They had to copy a story.

The story was about salad.

Not vegetables again! Dawn thought.

Jason looked back at her. He made a face, too.

She started to copy what Ms. Rooney had written.

Eat a salad every day.

Slice up some tomatoes.

Add some cucumbers.

Put them on lettuce.

Salad is good for you.

Dawn looked up. Something was bothering her.

What was it?

She closed her eyes.

She took a breath. Salad. Vegetables.

Her eyes flew open. “Snaggle doodles,” she shouted. “I just thought of something.”

Jason turned around. He made crazy eyes at her.

“I know where Emily Arrow’s ring is,” she said.

E
VERYONE STOPPED WRITING.

Emily Arrow put down her pencil.

Ms. Rooney stood up from her desk.

“I know where your ring is,” Dawn told Emily again.

“Where?” Emily asked.

“Where?” asked Jason.

“Yes,” said Ms. Rooney. “For goodness’ sake! Tell us where.”

Dawn went to the front of the room.

She stood on tiptoes.

Ms. Rooney bent down.

Dawn whispered in Ms. Rooney’s ear.

Ms. Rooney smiled. “I’ll bet you’re right.”

Ms. Rooney clapped her hands. “Line up, class. Let’s go see if Dawn Bosco can find Emily’s ring.”

Dawn rushed to the front of the line.

Emily Arrow rushed to the front of the line, too.

Then she stepped back. “You go first,” she told Dawn.

“No, you,” said Dawn.

Jill Simon stepped in front of them. “I’ll go first,” she said.

They started down the hall.

“Hey!” Jill turned around. “I don’t even know where we’re going.”

“To the art room,” said Dawn.

“Right,” said Ms. Rooney.

They passed the principal’s office. Mr. Mancina was coming out of the door.

“We’re on our way to solve a mystery,” said Ms. Rooney. “Dawn Bosco is our class detective.”

Mr. Mancina winked at Dawn. “It’s always good to have a private eye around,” he said.

They turned the corner and stopped at the art room door.

Mrs. Kara was there. She was putting pieces of green wool on everyone’s desk.

She straightened up. “Today the sixth graders are going to make tablecloths,” she told Ms. Rooney.

Dawn wished she were in sixth grade.

She’d love to make a tablecloth.

They marched into the art room.

“Wait a minute,” said Mrs. Kara. “You’re not the sixth graders.”

Everyone laughed.

Ms. Rooney put her arm around Dawn’s shoulder. “Dawn has something to show us,” she said.

Dawn walked over to the windowsill. Outside she could see Carmen, the crossing guard. She was blowing her whistle.

Dawn walked along next to the sill. She looked at the vegetables.

They were hard now, not so gray anymore. They looked white.

She picked up Emily Arrow’s cucumber.

It was a terrible cucumber.

One end was skinny.

The other end had a fat lump.

Dawn picked up the cucumber. “Sorry, Emily,” she said.

She smashed it down on the sink.

Bits of hard clay flew up all over the place.

Inside was a ring.

A gold ring with a blue stone.

A cracked blue stone.

“I can’t believe it,” Emily said. She gasped. “I remember now. I took off my ring. I didn’t want to get clay on it.”

Everyone laughed.

“I must have rolled it into my cucumber,” Emily said.

“Good work,” Jason told Dawn.

“Excellent,” said Ms. Rooney.

“I thought it was a carrot,” said Jill.

Dawn looked out the window again.

Carmen looked up and saw her.

They waved at each other.

Dawn couldn’t wait for school to be over.

She had to tell Carmen about the ring.

She’d ask Emily to come with her.

She and Emily would go home together.

She still had some clay—red, and yellow, and green.

They’d make some vegetables, or rings, or maybe a polka dot hat.

Patricia Reilly Giff came from a family of storytellers. She learned to read when she was four and never stopped, delighted with that widening world of story. She read through her classes in her elementary school, St. Pascal Baylon, and through her years at her high school, the Mary Louis Academy. Perhaps that’s why math and science are still so mysterious to her.

She majored in history and education at Marymount College and then went on to St. John’s University for a master’s degree in history, delighted that she could read her way through the lives of kings and queens, through plagues and wars.

In 1959, she married James Giff, a New York City detective, who had stories of his own. It was a perfect match because he thought it was fine that she spent hours reading instead of attending to the pots on the stove or the potatoes growing in the closet.

She spent the next twenty years raising their three children—James, William, and Alice—teaching, first in New York City and then Elmont, Long Island, and attending Hofstra University for a professional diploma in reading.

But always she wanted to write stories of her own, so her husband built her a small office out of two closets in the kitchen.

That was the beginning. She wrote about her childhood and her children, she wrote about the children she taught, and now she writes about her grandchildren and what interests them. She visits school and libraries and loves to talk with people who enjoy reading.

She received an honorary Doctor of Letters from Hofstra University and from Sacred Heart University. Several of her books were chosen as ALA-ALSC Notable Children’s Books and ALA-YALSA Best Books for Young Adults. They include
The Gift of the Pirate Queen; All the Way Home; Nory Ryan’s Song
, a Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Golden Kite Honor Book for Fiction; and Newbery Honor books
Lily’s Crossing
and
Pictures of Hollis Woods
.
Lily’s Crossing
was also chosen as a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book. She’s also won the Christopher Award.

In between, she cares for an indoor garden of almost two hundred plants—and reads, of course.

Patricia Reilly Giff on a September day in 1937 in St. Albans, New York. The future
Polk Street Mysteries
author is two years old.

Patricia Reilly Giff (age four) with her sister, Annie (age two). The picture was taken at Christmastime circa 1939.