The Garden Plot Read online

  Frank and Joe exchanged a look.

  “I figured maybe she was checking on her sunflowers to make sure they didn’t get blown over,” Vic continued, “but now I know what she was really doing. Sabotage!”

  Joe pulled out the clue book. “I hate to admit it, but Audrika does have a why.”

  “To win,” Frank finished as Joe wrote down the latest information. “We don’t know the exact time Vic’s cukes were victimized, but it had to be overnight.”

  “She was in the vicinity of the crime scene when the crime took place. Vic saw her,” Joe said, making another note.

  Vic threw down the half-eaten cucumber he was holding and started marching toward Audrika’s house. “I’m not letting her get away with this!”

  “Hold on,” Frank said, putting a hand on Vic’s shoulder. “Why don’t you clean up your garden while Joe and I talk to Audrika?”

  “Yeah,” Joe chimed in. “After all, we still don’t have proof that she did anything, and my bro and I are trained in interrogating suspects.”

  Vic shot one last glare at Audrika’s house, then turned back to his plants.

  Frank and Joe knocked on Audrika’s door. Her brother Amir answered. He was a couple of years older than Audrika and was wearing a paper party crown that looked like a birthday cake with candles sticking up.

  “Hey, guys! Did you come to wish me happy birthday?” he asked.

  “Nope,” Joe said. “Happy birthday, though!”

  “Happy birthday, Amir,” Frank added. “Is your sister around?”

  “Hi, Hardys, what’s up?” Audrika said before Amir could reply.

  “More like what’s down,” quipped Joe.

  Audrika seemed confused.

  “Down. As in Vic’s cucumbers,” Frank explained.

  “His cucumbers?” Audrika stepped out onto the porch and took in Vic’s garden destruction. “The woodchucks struck again?!”

  “Or someone,” Frank said, crossing his arms.

  “Wait, why are you looking at me like that?” Audrika asked.

  “Vic saw you sneaking out late last night,” replied Frank.

  “You snuck out of the house?” Amir’s eyes went wide.

  “In the middle of a storm,” Joe added.

  “You know we’re not allowed outside at night!”

  “I didn’t, uh… I mean, it’s just, I—” Audrika fumbled while Frank, Joe, and Amir all waited. “I didn’t sneak out. I just—I left something in the garden. Some, uh, seeds. I didn’t want them to get ruined in the rain.”

  “You didn’t go anywhere else?” her brother asked.

  Audrika shook her head. She had started to turn red.

  “Like, say, the garden next door?” Joe suggested.

  “No! I didn’t go anywhere, but, um—” She looked nervously at her brother. “Just our garden to get the tools, so they wouldn’t, um, rust.”

  Frank leaned in. “I thought you said you left your seeds.”

  “Seeds!” She nodded so fast, it looked like she might hurt herself. “And tools! Just seeds and tools!” Her voice cracked, and she wouldn’t meet anyone’s eye.

  “Then how do you explain—” Before Frank could finish his question, Mrs. Khaleel’s voice called from the house.

  “Amir! Audrika! Come! Your grandmother is video-chatting to say happy birthday!”

  “Nanu!” Amir yelled, running inside.

  “Bye!” Audrika squeaked, then slammed the door in Frank’s and Joe’s faces.

  “Well, that was suspicious,” Joe said. “She was squirming like a garden worm.”

  Frank eyed the door. “She couldn’t keep her story straight. No one flip-flops on an alibi like that unless they’re hiding something.”

  “I think I know what we’ll be doing later.”

  Frank looked back across the street at their own house. Joe’s bedroom window had a clear view of Audrika’s and Vic’s gardens. “Stakeout time.”

  “We can watch and see if the perp strikes again,” Joe suggested as they crossed the street back to their yard. “If the cucumber crusher is Audrika, we’ll catch her in the act.”

  * * *

  “This will be the perfect spot to watch both Audrika’s house and Vic’s garden,” Joe said later that day, setting a pair of binoculars and the clue book beside his bedroom window.

  Frank peeked out through the curtains. “Once the sun goes down, we can take turns to make sure we don’t miss anything. Until then, we should stay away from the window, so no one sees us and gets suspicious.”

  “I know the perfect way to pass the time,” Joe said. “Food!”

  They were in the kitchen, discussing their stakeout plans over a plate of cheese sandwiches with cherry tomatoes from the garden, when—

  “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” Another scream reached them from across the street.

  But this time it wasn’t Vic.

  It was Audrika!

  MOUSE MANEUVERS

  Frank and Joe ran across the street for the third time in two days. Audrika was on the ground, wailing in front of her tattered vegetables.

  “My peppers are pulverized!” she cried. “My cabbages are kaput!”

  Half of Audrika’s once-perfect soccer-ball-size cabbages had been gnawed to bits. There were pieces of purple and white cabbage everywhere, almost like the vegetables had exploded. Her magnificent multicolored peppers hadn’t escaped the massacre. Some of them were chewed off right down to the bottoms of the stems.

  “I didn’t see this twist coming,” said Joe, sizing up the mess.

  Frank turned his attention back to Audrika. “What happened?”

  “I came out to check on my veggies, and they were just—” She picked up a hunk of cabbage covered with tooth marks. “All that hard work—gone!”

  Joe sighed. “So is our entire theory of the case.”

  “You guys didn’t really think I would ruin Vic’s cucumbers, did you?”

  “Well—” Frank looked away. “You did have a motive, and you were acting pretty suspicious when we asked you about why you’d snuck out last night. But it doesn’t make any sense for you to be a victim and the villain.”

  “Unless you really did sabotage Vic’s garden and were trying to make it seem like you were attacked too, so we wouldn’t suspect you,” Joe suggested, flipping open the clue book.

  Audrika jumped to her feet and put her hands on her hips. “You think I’d destroy my own garden? And sink my chances of winning the contest?”

  “Yeah, it’s not a very good theory,” Frank agreed.

  “Unless Vic attacked your garden to get back at you, and you’re both guilty,” Joe said.

  Audrika growled.

  “Sorry,” Joe added quickly. “I’m not accusing you. It’s just that there’s something strange going on, and we have to consider all the possibilities so we can cross the ones that don’t fit off our list.”

  “So you think Vic could have done this?” she asked, eyeing her next-door neighbor’s house.

  Joe wrote Vic’s name under Suspects. “He thinks you might have destroyed his garden. He could have wanted revenge.”

  “I don’t know, Joe.” Frank looked around at the damage. “This really appears to be a woodchuck attack. Whatever attacked Vic’s garden seems to have struck Audrika’s garden too.”

  “Let’s examine the crime scene more closely—” A rustling sound over by the collard greens in the corner of the garden interrupted Joe’s thought.

  “I don’t think we’re alone.” Frank stalked toward the collard greens.

  A furry brown head popped up between the plants and met his gaze, a leaf still dangling from its bucktoothed mouth.

  Frank gasped. “The perp is still here!”

  Joe buried his face in his hands. “And it is a woodchuck!”

  Frank threw his arms up. “But how does it keep getting past my Woodchuck Defense System?”

  Audrika shouted as she ran at the collard green thief. “Go away, woodchuck! You’re not wel
come here!”

  “He’s making a run for it!” Joe called out as the woodchuck bolted from the collards toward the fence, its round belly almost touching the ground.

  “It’s cornered. There’s no way it’s going to be able to get out of—” Frank’s mouth dropped open.

  Audrika gasped.

  Joe blinked his eyes rapidly. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  The chubby fur ball dove headfirst for the fence—and somehow squeezed its oversize rodent body right through one of the tiny, two-inch squares in the metal wire, popped out the other side, puffed back up to its normal size, and waddled to freedom.

  “It—it—” Audrika was too stunned to finish her sentence.

  “Shrank,” Joe said.

  “Like magic,” Audrika whispered.

  “Not like magic,” Frank said. “Like a giant mouse!”

  WHY DID THE WOODCHUCK CROSS THE ROAD?

  Frank, Joe, and Audrika watched in disbelief as the woodchuck dashed across the street and disappeared.

  “I guess the case is solved,” Joe said, sounding a lot sadder than he usually did when they cracked a case. “A woodchuck really did do it. But they’re so cute. I feel betrayed.”

  “I guess my Woodchuck Defense System isn’t as impenetrable as I thought.” Frank kicked at one of the posts. “That one wasn’t as big as Woody, but I still didn’t expect the critters to be able to squeeze their bodies together like that.”

  “You’re the one who told us groundhogs weren’t really hogs,” Joe pointed out.

  Frank hung his head. “They’re relatives of the mice that slip through the cracks in Vic’s house.” He turned to Audrika. “I’m sorry my defense system failed you.”

  “It’s not your fault,” she said. “You guys did your best. That woodchuck was like a magician. An evil magician.”

  Joe scratched his nose. “I’m sorry too, Audrika. I kept defending the woodchucks, but Woody’s friends were guilty the whole time.”

  Frank got down on his knees and studied the two-inch-square opening where the woodchuck had escaped. He plucked a piece of brown fur from the metal wire. “Something is still weird about this whole thing. If the woodchucks could squeeze through the fence this whole time, why did the hungry hogs leave our garden alone after we put up our WDS?”

  “That’s a good point,” Joe said. “This woodchuck was smaller than Woody, but we’ve seen even smaller woodchucks around, and they never snuck through our fence.”

  “So my defense system may not be foolproof, but it does discourage them.” Frank held up the hunk of fur. “That incredible shrinking ’chuck act was impressive, but it couldn’t have been comfortable.”

  “And there are plenty of yummy treats in the fruit buffet to keep them happy without losing any fur,” Joe said.

  Frank scratched his head. “So why did the woodchuck ignore our fence and pass up all that free fruit to break into your and Vic’s gardens? Especially when they didn’t bother all our neighbors who don’t even have fences around their gardens?”

  Audrika shrugged. “You guys are the detectives.”

  A summer breeze whooshed through the garden, rustling the leaves of the oregano bush in the other corner and making the sunflowers sway.

  Joe sniffed the air. “What’s that?”

  “What’s what?” Frank asked.

  Joe sniffed again, following his nose back across the garden. “Bananas. Rotten bananas. I smelled them the first time Vic’s garden was attacked.” He got down on his knees by what was left of the cabbage patch, dipped his finger in something brownish and mushy, and held it up to eye level. “Banana bits!”

  “Banana bits?” Audrika echoed.

  “Banana bits!” Frank ran to join Joe. “One of woodchucks’ favorite foods.”

  “But I’m not growing bananas—” Audrika began.

  “Exactly!” Frank said.

  There was another lump of mashed banana a few feet away. And another a few feet from that.

  “This one has a woodchuck paw print in it!” Joe said.

  The trio followed the banana trail across the garden to the oregano bush. Tall, thin, leafy green stems led to clusters of tiny pink and purple flowers. The plant had a strong, spicy aroma, but not so spicy that they couldn’t still smell the unmistakable scent of overripe banana.

  Joe pushed aside the herb stalks. “The fence is totally smeared with banana!”

  That wasn’t the most surprising part, though.

  There was a woodchuck-size hole cut in the wire!

  PICK A PECK OF UN-PICKLED PEPPERS

  “That woodchuck may have escaped by squeezing through the fence wire after we cornered it, but I don’t think that’s how it got in.” Joe pushed his entire arm through the hole and moved it around. “This is.”

  “Someone sabotaged my Woodchuck Defense System!” Frank cried.

  “And my garden!” Audrika stomped on a bit of mushed banana.

  “And mine!” Vic yelled, sprinting over from next door. “I was watching from the kitchen window, but my parents wouldn’t let me come out until I finished the dishes.” He paused to study the hole for himself. “A secret groundhog entrance.”

  “I bet the groundhog would have exited that way too if we hadn’t been blocking its path,” Joe said. “We scared the poor thing, and it needed a quick way out.”

  Frank carefully ran his fingers along the edge of the hole. “You can see where someone snipped the fence with wire cutters to make it easy for the critter to mosey right in.”

  “Then they lured it with groundhogs’ favorite grub,” Audrika said, pounding her fist into her palm.

  “The woodchuck is the fall guy!” Joe declared.

  “I bet if we look closely enough, we’ll find a hole cut in Vic’s fence too,” Frank said.

  The four went next door to Vic’s garden, and sure enough, there was another neatly snipped hole hidden behind the coneflowers.

  “We might have discovered it sooner if there hadn’t been that big storm,” Joe said. “The rain must have washed away the smell of the banana bait. I have a finely tuned food sniffer, but that was a doozy of a downpour.”

  “You smelled banana the first time the woodchuck attacked my garden,” Vic said. “Before we put up the fence.”

  Frank tapped his nose. “My brother, the human hound dog.”

  “Forget hound dogs. What are we going to do about the groundhogs?” Audrika demanded. “The block party is tomorrow! The whole garden could get eaten before the judges even get to see it!”

  “Well, I can repair the Woodchuck Defense Systems in no time. The bigger question is, who cut the holes?”

  “I’m happy Woody and his friends are off the hook,” Joe said, “but we still don’t know who framed them.”

  Vic eyed Audrika. “Are we sure she didn’t do it and just sabotage herself so you wouldn’t suspect her? She was super jealous of my clearly superior garden.”

  “Ha! My garden is clearly the superior one. It’s too bad you can’t admit it,” Audrika shot back.

  Joe cleared his throat loudly and opened the clue book. “I want to cross Audrika’s name off the who list for good—” His cheeks turned red as he glanced up at her. “But you were acting really suspicious before when we asked you about it.”

  “Um, yeah, about that—” Audrika fiddled with her hands. “I do have a confession to make. I’m sorry I lied to you about why I snuck out of the house during the storm.”

  “I knew it!” Vic shouted.

  “It wasn’t to mess with your overgrown weed patch! I was going to Violet’s house to buy an edible pickle arrangement for my brother’s birthday.”

  Vic thrust a finger up in the air. “I knew—Wait, you what?”

  “I would have told Frank and Joe when they asked me, but Amir was standing there, and I didn’t want to ruin the surprise,” she explained. “He really loves pickles, and I knew he’d be super excited when he got it.”

  Audrika pointed to her dining
room window. Through it, the boys could see Amir happily chowing down on a huge plate of pickles arranged in the shape of a giant flower.

  “I’d call that a credible edible alibi,” Frank said.

  “I know lying is wrong, though. I feel really bad about not being honest with you guys.”

  Vic shuffled from foot to foot. “Um, I think I’m the one who needs to say sorry. It was wrong to accuse you of framing the woodchucks and sabotaging our gardens.”

  “It’s okay, Vic.” Audrika gave him a small smile. “I think we both just love our gardens and were really upset. Still friends?”

  Vic nodded shyly.

  “Friends, and definitely not suspects,” Joe said, crossing Audrika’s and Vic’s names off his clue book list.

  Frank was still watching Amir eating his pickles. “Crew, I think we left a suspect off our list.”

  Audrika took a step backward. “You mean my brother?!”

  “No,” Frank said. “His pickle supplier.”

  “Violet!” Joe quickly wrote her name below Audrika’s crossed-out one. “The Pickle Princess definitely has a motive.”

  “She needs cucumbers to make her pickles,” said Vic.

  “And peppers for her pickled peppers, and cabbage for her kimchi and kraut!” Audrika added.

  Frank returned his focus to his friends. “When we rode by Violet’s garden yesterday, there weren’t any vegetables growing. Just herbs.”

  “And didn’t she say how tasty pickles made from Vic’s cukes would be?” asked Joe.

  “It has to be her!” Vic and Audrika said at the same time.

  “Audrika!” Mrs. Khaleel called from the front door. “Time to come in!”

  “Gotta go, guys,” Audrika said, running inside. “Coming, Ma!”

  Vic sighed. “I have to go too. It’s almost dinnertime, and then I’ve got to get my rest. I’m getting up extra early to put the final touches on my garden before the block party starts. I still haven’t given up, even without my cucumbers.”

  “I think I can smell our dinner cooking too,” Joe said. “And we’ll also be getting up extra early, but not to garden.”