Mystery of the Stolen Roses: Chapter 6

                                                            A Talk With the Suspect

    Sara made it to James Brown. When she got there she warned him not to move. Sara was surprised when the man looked startled at her cry. He looked at her in a confused way. “What do you mean?” he asked.

   Just then Betsy and Jennie reached Sara. Betsy told Sara that they had heard everything. All this while James Brown looked confused.

  “Would you be kind enough to tell me what’s going on?”he asked. The next minute he gasped. “You’re the one who called me a thief!”

   “Yes, I am. You took my roses, didn’t you?”Sara asked him.

   James replied,”Yes, but only because Horton told me to. Didn’t you know I was coming to pick them up?”

  ”Why, no. Was I supposed to?” It was Sara’s turn to look confused.

  “Your parents mustn’t of told you. Your parents sold Bill Horton the rose bushes. And so did yours,”he said, indicating Jennie.

   “My parents would never sell my roses! They bought me them for my birthday!” Jennie cried.

   Sara decided to call her parents to see if they had sold the roses to Bill Horton. Sara remembered that he was the name in the letter.

  When Sara came back from calling her parents and Jennie’s too, she walked up to James Brown.

   “My parents never sold anyone roses, and Jennie’s parents didn’t either,”she told him. “What are you trying to cover up? Why did you steal them?”

    James Brown turned pale. “Do you mean I was- stealing them?” As the girls nodded, he sat down and buried his face in his hands. A minute later he suddenly shot his face up. His face was white and as he stood up.

  “I know what you’re going to do! You think I’m the thief and that I’m lying! You’re going to call the police!” He turned and ran away as fast as he could.

Mystery of the Stolen Roses: Chapter 5

                                                           Intruder

    “It’s in Masonville,”continued Jennie. ” My dad took me there when it was used for touring. That was about ten years ago. It isn’t used for touring anymore. I think the man’s name who owned it was Fransis Brune. I know he sold it to a couple with a son. A while later the woman’s husband had a heart attack and died. I can’t remember their names, but I do remember that the woman is disable.”

   At that moment the telephone rang. Mrs. Parkerson got up to answer it. After a minute conversation she put it down.

   ” That was Maria Hender. She needs me at her house right away,”Mrs. Parkerson told them. “Sorry I couldn’t talk a little longer.” She grabbed her keys and went out the door followed by the girls.

 When they were in Sara’s house they sat down to discuss the mystery. Finally Jennie sighed.

   ” It’s just too complicated for me,”she said. Sara smiled.

  After awhile Betsy and Jennie got up to leave, but right when they went out, the door was opened up again. Betsy burst through the door with Jennie behind her.

  “Sara! A man’s in Mrs. Parkerson’s house! You have to come quick!”Betsy said all in one breath.

  Sara jumped out of her chair and ran out the door with Betsy and Jennie. When they got to the Parkerson’s home the girls saw a shadow in the Parkerson’s room. The window was open and a trellis stood underneath it. Sara and Betsy began to climb.

  When Sara reached the window she looked inside. A man, fitting the description that Mrs. Parkerson gave, was searching the jewelry box. He finally held up a beautiful bird pin with rubies in it. When he saw the girls he turned and ran down the stairs two at a time. Sara and Betsy followed him, but he had gotten a headstart. When he got to the bottom of the stairs he unlocked the door and ran out. 

  By the time Sara got out the door he had disappeared. The girls heard a car start and roar away. Jennie came back from chasing the man. She said that he hopped into a car.

   ” I couldn’t get the license plate number,”she told them.

 

    The next day Sara, Betsy, and Jennie went downtown to go shopping. As they were looking at the clothes, Betsy and Jennie were surprised to see Sara suddenly run away. As they were trying to find out why she had done that Jennie suddenly spotted James Brown at the other end of the store. Sara was running toward him.

   “Come on! We’ve got to catch him!”Jennie cried. She and Betsy started to run toward the man. 

Mystery of the Stolen Roses: Chapter 4

                                               A Valuable Clue

    When Sara woke up she found herself in bed. She tried to sit up, but fell back into her bed. She looked up and saw her parents standing by her bed.

   “Please try to relax,”her mom told her. Sara suddenly recalled what happened.

  “Where’s Mrs. Parkerson? Is she alright?”she asked.

  “She’s fine. She’s resting right now, and you should, too.”

 

   In the morning, when Sara was feeling better, Jennie and Betsy came to see her. They decided to go see Mrs. Parkerson and find out what happened. They were all curious to find out who stoled the necklace.

  When Sara rang the bell Mrs. Parkerson answered. She invited them in and led them to the cozy living room. After they all sat down and were sipping the tea Mrs. Parkerson made, Sara told her why they were there. Mrs. Parkerson began her story.

   ” I was downstairs in the kitchen doing dishes when I heard a noise up in my room. It wasn’t my husband because he wasn’t home because he had to work late. I went upstairs and in my room a man was digging through my jewelry box! He saw me and pushed past me then ran down the stairs and out the door. I ran after him and then you know what happened next,”Mrs. Parkerson said.

  ” Did you see how the man looked?”asked Betsy.

  Mrs. Parkerson thought for a moment. ” Yes, I do. He was tall, stocky, and had brown hair.” Sara knew that it was not James Brown.

  ” Oh, I almost forgot. He dropped this.”Mrs. Parkerson pulled something out of her pocket. It was a picture of a beautiful mansion. Underneath this was the words: Special Roses. Jennie gave a little gasp.

   ” What’s wrong, Jennie?”Sara asked, surprised at Jennie’s gasp.

   ” I think I’ve seen that before! If I’m right, that’s the Bookner’s Palace!”

Mystery of the Stolen Roses: Chapter 3

                                        A Stolen Necklace and a Mysterious Phone Call

  Sara stopped and looked back. They were zooming down the road in the oppisite direction of her. The car turned a corner and Sara decided she wouldn’t be able to catch up with it, so she started home.

   When Sara got home it was already 1:30 and she was very hungry. While she ate she told her mom the whole story. ” You better be careful, Sara. Those man could harm you,”her mom warned.

  “I’ll be careful,”Sara promised.

  The next day Sara went outside to look for footprints. It rained overnight and now she couldn’t find any. She told herself to look right away next time. After a quick snack she drove to headquarters to tell the police about the roses.

   As she was driving into town, Sara noticed a red, rusty, old car following her. There was mud splattered on the license plate and a woman was driving the car. Sara turned to the left and the right but the car wouldn’t stop following her. What will I do? Sara thought. She decided to keep on driving to the police station. 

   While the car was still following Sara she saw the man who had tried to dig up her rose bushes digging up someone’s roses! She got out and yelled. He looked up and ran away. Sara glanced to the side and saw the woman drive off. Sara ran after the man but soon lost him.

  Sara went back to the house and knocked on the door. A man opened the door and Sara told him about his rose bushes.

  “I’m glad he didn’t take them away,”Sara told him. She said goodbye, drove to headquarters, told them the story, then left for home.

   That night, just as Sara was getting ready to climb into bed, she heard a scream from her next door nieghbors. At that moment Sara heard the same whistle she heard at her house when the thief tried to steal her roses. She looked out the window and saw a man running away from the Parkerson’s house. Out from behind him Mrs. Parkerson came running and yelling,”Police! Help! Someone took my necklace…”Suddenly, someone came from behind Mrs. Parkerson and hit her on the head!

   Sara heard a car drive away. A minute later another car drove off. Sara quickly ran down the stairs and was about to call the police when the phone rang. She picked it up, but before she could say hello, a voice said,”Stay out of this or you’ll get in trouble!” He hung up.

  “Strange,”Sara said. “But whatever happens I won’t give up!”

  As Sara ran outside to help Mrs. Parkerson someone came up behind her and hit her hard on the head! Sara fell forward.

Mystery of the Stolen Roses:Chapter 2

                                           Chasing Some Suspects

    Quickly, Sara got out of her car. The man was already walking into the store. Sara ran in and looked around and saw the man walking to the shovel section. Quietly, Sara followed him, He looked up and down the aisle, and finally picked one out. He walked back to the counter to check out.

    Sara looked at the shovel that the man had picked up. It was the same brand name that the one in her trunk had! Had the man relized she had his shovel and came to get a new one? Why that particular one?

    She followed him back to the counter and out the door. He hopped into a blue Ford truck. Sara pulled out a piece of paper and jotted down the license plate numbers: 541GOR9. Suddenly Sara relized there was another man in the truck. They had the windows open and when Sara got close to the truck she heard what they were saying.

   “Got it?”the other man in the truck asked. He was of medium height and wore a black suit and a hat pulled low over his eyes.

  “Yep,”said the man who tried to steal Sara’s rose bushes.

   “Are you sure you got the right one, James?”

   “Yes, Bill,”said James.

   ”Good. We don’t have any more stops to make, right?”Bill asked.

   “Right. Are we going to head to Mother’s?”James asked.

   “Yes.”Bill answered.”Then I can start on th…”They drove off.

    James and Bill! Could they be James Brown and Bill Horton?Sara thought. She climbed into her car. Should I follow them?she thought. They were stopping at a red light. She decided to try it. When she got to the red light the truck was hoing to turn right. When the green light appeared, she turned right, too.

   After a while of turning to the left and the right the men must have relized Sara was following them. They went on for a while and then they suddenly turned into the woods. Sara slammed on her brakes. There was a path leading staight ahead, then it turned sharply. It was a narrow path and Sara decided to turn back. “Well, I tried,”she said.”You never know what’s around the corner.”

   After Sara turned around she saw, coming out of the path, the blue Ford that she had been chasing!   

Mystery of the Stolen Roses

  This didn’t really happen. This is a mystery that I wrote. I don’t know how good it is, so please read it and decide for yourself.

                                                    CHAPTER 1

                                          Stolen Roses and a Letter

   Sara Thompson walked up and down her familys’ garden. She breathed in the scents of roses and lavender. ” It smells so good,”she said. Right at that moment, Sara’s mom called her. “Coming!”Sara said.

    As Sara was helping her mom fix lunch, her best friend Betsy called. ” Hi, Betsy. How are you doing?”Sara asked. Betsy and Sara had been friends for a long time. They had solved many mysteries together, too.

   “Sara, you have to come quick! Jennie’s rose bushes are missing! I’ll tell you more when you get to Jennie’s.” Betsy hung up. Jennie was also Sara’s friend. Why were her bushes missing? Did some one steal them?

   After Sara explained it to her mom, she went out to her car, but before she could get in she saw something that made her freeze.

   A man was digging up her roses! “Hey, stop thief! You can’t do that!”yelled Sara. The man looked up, dropped his shovel, and ran away. Sara knew she could never catch up with him, so she started to look for clues. She had noticed that the man was tall, had big hands, and walked fast. Sara walked over to the shovel and picked it up, then looked over it.

  “I’ll take this to the garden store in town and see if they sell this,”she said. After putting the shovel in the trunk, she headed to Jennie’s. Betsy was already there.

   “Oh, thank goodness you came!”exclaimed Jennie. She poured out the story. “It all started when I was cleaning my room. I happened to look out my window and saw a man digging up my roses! I ran downstairs and out the door. He was tall and had big hands. I yelled when he started to walk away with the roses, then he started to run. He dropped this.” She pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to Sara. It read:

     ‘ To my best of friends, James Brown,

         Please come to a meeteing on Tuesday. Everyone will be there. We have to discuss something important.

                           Your friend,

                                Bill Horton’

       The stationary that the man who wrote the letter used had a rose at the left-hand corner. “This is a important clue,”Sara said. “I wonder if the man who dug up your rose bushes is James Brown. Why would he want roses? The same thing happened to me.” She told them what happened.

   ” It’s confusing and I’m going to figure it out,” Sara said. She said goodbye, then left. She headed to the garden store in town. As Sara was parking at the store, she gasped.

   The man that had been trying to steal her roses was going inside the store!

      If you like the first chapter and want to know what happens next, look at my blog in a couple days to see what happens next.

An Update on Tillie

   Not too much happening here. So I’ll give you an update on our puppy.

  Tillie’s doing well. She’s learning a lot, too. So far she knows come, sit, stay, and down. We’re trying to teach her fetch and to give it back after she catches it. We’ll have to work on that a little more until Tillie knows it good.

   Tillie is getting better at not jumping on us, though she still does when we get her off her line. Tillie’s listening to me better, but she doesn’t listen too well to the boys. Now that she knows I will hit her on the nose when she does something wrong, Tillie will put down her head. That shows she’s scared of getting hit.

 One of Tillie’s favorite things are her sticks. When we play fetch together and I try to get the stick she’ll run away from me with the stick, then she will lie down some where and chew on the stick. It gives Tillie lots of exercise when we play fetch together, and it’s fun to watch her when she doesn’t see where I threw the stick. She’ll just stand there and look around.

   Tillie is starting to hate her line. We put her on the line when she does something wrong and when we’re gone somewhere. Now when we put Tillie on she backs up and goes toward the door. Too bad, Tillie, you have to go on anyway!

  I really enjoy having Tillie after we lost our other dog, Halen. She was a very nice dog, too. That is, when she was older. I hope that Tillie will turn out to be a great dog and that she doesn’t run away or get run over!

Happy Easter and Two Cake Recipes

    Happy Easter to everyone out there! Hope it was a great one!                                       

    This year, not only did we celebrate Easter but we celebrated five birthdays, too. Everyone came to our house this year and it was a full house! There were so many people at our house that we had to put more leaves in the table, and when we did that it was too big to have it in the position that we had it in, so we had to turn it diagonal. 

      Since we had so many people over we had to have two cakes. If you like them, here’s how to make them:

     This is what you need to make the bunny cake:

        One cake mix in two pans (any flavor)

        White and yellow frosting

        Peep Bunnies or Chicks

        Jellybeans

       Plastic Easter eggs

      Green sour rope (if you can’t find it use green licorice)

      First, frost the top of one cake for your filling. If you want, you can put jellybeans in the filling. After you put on the other cake, frost the cake. Around the top of the cake, do cursive e’s. On the sides of the cake stick the green sour rope on. Be sure to make an even amount of spaces. When you’re done with that, with your yellow frosting and a star tip do zig-zags in between the green rope. Leave spaces in between every other one.

      In the middle of the cake make a big swirl by using the star tip. Start big then get smaller as you go along. Put some green rope on the cake for grass, then put a little frosting on where the eggs will sit. Inside the egg put a little frosting in, then place the bunnies in. Sprinkle some jellybeans on and you have a beautiful cake!

    Here’s how to make the Dots of Spring cake:

     One cake mix in two pans (any flavor)

    White and yellow frosting

    Necco candy wafers

   Fabric bow or you can use what I used in the picture

   Frost the top of one cake for the filling, then frost the cake. Around the top of the cake do cursive e’s. At the bottom of the cake put on the wafers until the bottom is covered. Stick in the bow on top and put a few wafers around it. This cake can be used as a birthday or Easter cake. It’s easy to make and it looks great!

   

     

Look Everybody, No Snowbanks!

After getting more than a foot of snow, I came up with this cool idea to build a fort in the snow. So I took a shovel, found a place where there weren’t any footprints, and started to dig. I kept digging until I had made a hole big enough for a kitchen. I made my fort at the edge of our woods, so I had to dig a path to our back door. That was hard work.

    The next day I finished working on my fort. It had a living room, kitchen, dining room, bedroom, and I even decided to put in a sunroom. It sure was hard work, but it was worth it!

    Here’s my fort:

  

   Here’s another picture of my fort from a different angle:

 

 Now you know that there is another way to make a fort- all you need is a lot of snow. That’s what Wisconsin’s for!

A New Member of the Family

   Early January, my family decided to get a dog. We had been looking at humane society in a couple of towns, but just didn’t find any that we really liked. There were a couple of dogs for sale in the Buyer’s Guide, so we went to take a look at them. The first one hadn’t been around kids very much, so he was scared of us.

   The plan was that we were going to get a male dog, but the dog in the Buyer’s Guide was a female. We decided to take a look at her anyway. She was 3 months when we saw her. She didn’t have a name yet, because the owner said he only named his dogs if he was going to keep them. The dog was very nice, and she was very good for a puppy.

     After playing with her for a little, we left. After a few days of talking we finally said that we were going to get her. All the way home she barked and barked and barked- and it was loud. She sure was happy when we got home.

   We decided to name her Tillie. Tillie was a black lab and about 30 pounds. Before we got her, she had been an outside dog. So when we went inside, she was a little nervous. Finally Tillie went in.

    When Tillie’s old owner said labs were a fast learning dog, he was right. In about a week, Tillie knew that she had to go to the bathroom outside. She only went four times in the house!

     To teach Tillie how to sit and come and things like that, we signed up for a puppy class. She know’s how to come, sit, and release, but she doesn’t do it at class. She gets too  excited with all the other puppies there. At the end, all the puppies can play together. That was Tillie’s favorite part.

     She has been doing very well at our house. Here are a couple pictures of Tillie: