Fairies in the Garden Read online

said. Mary and Patty agreed, so, we would start with June Morgan who was just coming out of her house. June lived in the house on the corner which is about eight houses down the street from Mrs. Dexter.

  “Hi June”, I said, “to bad about missing the game Friday”.

  “Yeah”, June said, “I guess it was my own dumb fault. I stayed up too late yakking on the phone and just forgot all about the homework assignment.”

  “I hope you didn’t forget the assignment for Monday”, Mary said.

  “Actually, I watched the movie and I even finished my composition”, June said, “next Friday’s game is really important and I don’t want to miss it. And besides, my Mom said that if she got one more phone call from school I would be grounded until I was thirty.”

  “By the way, have you seen Peter or Peggy”, I asked.

  “I haven’t seen Peggy since Friday, June said, “we talked a little while after school; she told me that if she couldn’t be a part of the game she didn’t even want to see it. I did see Peter earlier this morning he was headed to Frankford Avenue with his new girlfriend”.

  “See you in school on Monday”, I said as she walked away.

  “Well if she really did watch the whole movie and wrote her composition I don’t think she would have had time to dig up Mrs. Dexter’s garden”, Mary said.

  “Of course we only have her word that she watched the movie and wrote the composition”, Patty said.

  “She only lives a few houses down from Mrs. Dexter so she could have easily ran down the street dug up the bulbs and got back to her house and only missed a few minutes of the movie”, I said.

  We walked down to Frankford Avenue and saw Peter Dodson sitting at a table in Moe’s Bistro. We went in and sat at his table. He looked real nervous and kept looking around the restaurant as if he was looking for someone, “Well what do you three want”, he asked.

  I tapped his hand to get his attention, “Did you get the English assignment done Peter.”

  “What English assignment”, He asked.

  “You were supposed to watch the movie…

  Peter jumped to his feet, “Oh no, I forgot all about that stupid movie”, he said, “My dad is going to kill me if I miss the game next Friday”. What was the name of that movie, He asked”.

  “Fairy Tale: A True Story”, Patty said.

  He looked at Mary, “What was it about”, He asked.

  “Are you kidding”, Mary said, “It was almost two hours long.”

  “Well if you weren’t watching the movie”, I asked, “Were where you all morning?” Before he could answer a girl walked over to the table,

  “Who are your friends”, she asked?”

  Peter introduced us to his new girlfriend, “Barbara Wilson, this is Marlow, Patty and Mary”, he said, “They are just friends. Peter sat back down, “We’ve been here since about ten o’clock, isn’t that right Babs?”

  “Yes”, Barbara said, “Petey came over to my house at about 9:30 we took a walk down Frankford Avenue, did some window shopping and then we came here. We’ve been here ever since.”

  “Well we have got to get going”, I said.

  “You had better get to the video store Petey and see if they have that movie or you’ll be on the bench next Friday”, Mary told him.

  “Your right”, Peter said, “We have got to get to the video store and see if they have a movie called… What was it again?”

  “Fairy Tale: A True Story.” We all sang together.

  Peter jumped up, grabbed Barbara’s hand and ran out of the restaurant dragging her along behind him.

  “Well I guess Petey and Babs have given each other good alibies for the time this crime was committed”, I said.

  “They could be doing just that “Mary said, “Giving each other good alibies.”

  “Petey might have done it by himself”, Patty said, “But I doubt that Babs every got her hands dirty, did you see those finger nails?”

  “Only one person left to check with”, I said

  Peggy Lewis was the other cheerleader that got benched for last Friday’s football game. She lived around the corner from Mr. and Mrs. Dexter.

  Peggy opened the door and invited us in as she finished drying her hands with a paper towel. She snatched the TV remote from the arm of the sofa and was fumbling with it as she walked back toward the living room; she pressed a button and turned off the TV and video recorder.

  “Make sure you wipe you feet”, she said as we walked into the living room, “My Mom just had the rug cleaned”.

  “There doesn’t seem to be a clean spot left on this mat”, Mary said, “It’s covered with black mud”.

  “Did you get the English assignment finished”, I asked.

  “No not yet”, Peggy said, “I mean I watched the movie, but I still have to write the composition. I figured I do that after lunch.”

  “So what do you think”, Mary asked, “did they fake the pictures or are there really fairies”.

  “I haven’t decided yet”, Peggy said, “They could have faked all of the pictures, I guess. After all the camera belonged to Elsie’s father, so she probably knew how to use it”.

  “Yes”, I said, “But they took over fifty pictures of fairies, do you really think two young girls could have faked fifty pictures?”

  “Sure”, Peggy said, “I mean they had the camera so they took turns taking the pictures”.

  “That would use up a lot of film”, Mary said.

  “Sure”, Peggy said, “but wasn’t her father a picture taker?”

  “Photographer”, Mary said.

  “Yeah, that’s what I meant, a photographer”, Peggy said.

  “Well if they faked all those pictures they fooled some really smart people”, I said, “There was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and that famous magician. What was his name?

  I stopped for a minute as though I was trying to think of the magician’s name.

  Wasn’t it Cooper or Copper something”, Patty said.

  “Oh, right it was Copperfield, David Copperfield. Do you really think two young girls could have fooled those two very well educated men”, I asked Peggy.

  At first, Mary had a puzzled look on her face, she knew very well that the famous magician in the movie was Harry Houdini but she got the idea quickly and didn’t try to correct my mistake.

  “Well if they did fake the pictures,” Peggy said, “they sure would make those two guys look like dopes”.

  “What were you watching when we came in”, Mary asked.

  Oh, I didn’t go to the game on Friday”, Peggy said, “I just couldn’t sit there on the sidelines and watch the rest of the Cheer Squad perform so a friend took her video camera and filmed the cheers that the girls did during the halftime show”.

  “We were wondering what you were doing at about ten o’clock this morning”, I asked.

  “I was here watching the movie”, Peggy said, “I just told you that”. Peggy seemed a bit nervous and when she gets that way she bites her nails.

  She put her finger to her mouth, looked at her fingernails and changed her mind. Her fingernails were still a bit dirty; she hadn’t done a very good job washing them.

  We talked a little longer and then said good-bye.

  “I think Peggy is the one who dug up Mrs. Dexter’s flowers”, I said.

  “I think so too”, Mary said, “There was a beer commercial on the TV when we came in. I don’t think the school football team is good enough to have a big beer company as a sponsor.”

  We went back to Mrs. Dexter’s house to explain my theory to her.

  I’m sure you know who committed this little crime.

  Nowhere in the movie did anyone say the girls took fifty pictures; in fact, there were only five pictures of fairies. Also, the girls each had their own cameras in the second half of the movie and of course the famous magician in the movie was Harry Houdini.

  I don’t think Peggy watched the whole movie if she did she has a really bad mem
ory.

  I think that Peggy taped the movie, just like Mrs. Dexter did and hadn’t finished watching it when we came over to her house. It just seems odd that she could remember the first half of the movie so well but not the second half.

  Don’t forget the mat in the doorway was muddy with nice black dirt as if someone wiped off their muddy shoes after being in a garden with nice rich black soil. According to Mrs. Dexter most of the lawns are made up of soil with a lot of rocks and clay.

  We went back to see Mrs. Dexter and told her what we had figured out. Mrs. Dexter told Peggy’s mother what had happened. When the two of them confronted Peggy with the evidence, she broke down and the tears began to flow.

  Peggy told Mrs. Dexter that she was angry about missing the game and the more she thought about it the angrier she became.

  So, when everyone was watching the movies about fairies she waited until she saw Mr. and Mrs. Dexter go into their house and that is when she dug up the flower bulbs.

  The ground was so soft and lose from the compost that Mr. Dexter added to the soil that it was easy to get to the bulbs with her bare hands.

  Mrs. Lewis, Peggy’s mom told her that she was grounded for the next two weeks and that she would help Mrs. Dexter all this next week and next weekend with any gardening work she had left to do.

  Mrs. Lewis said that she would leave it to Mrs. Dexter to decide if Peggy would be allowed to go to the game next Friday.

  Mrs. Dexter is a really nice person and she thought that Peggy had suffered enough so when Friday came around Peggy was out there cheering the team on to victory. Well not exactly, we lost, 21 to 7.

  I don’t think that Peggy will be doing any more gardening for a long time especially