Acorns!

Thanks again to everyone who participated in the Sherlock Holmes Mystery Writing Contest! The essays were wonderful, and we hope to see all of these budding authors in print someday. And just to get the ball rolling, we decided to feature the winning stories here on the blog. So this week, here is the prize winning story from Katelyn M.\n\nEnjoy!\n

     Acorns!

\n     It was about 7:30 P.M. when Detective Katelyn was playing with her assistant Jessie when she got a call from her good friend Pastor Eric saying that someone had stolen his family’s painted acorns which were very beautiful.  But at the same time I was thinking who would steal some acorns?  Then I said I’ll be there in a minute, and I hung up and told my assistant to grab her detective bag and wait for me by the door.  She did as I said while I went and got mine.  After I got my bag we dashed out the door and headed to his house.\n\nWhen we got there we put our bags on a chair that hadn’t been touched and got out our gloves.  Everything in the living room was messy!  There was dirt on the piano, nativity scenes had been knocked over, and Christmas presents lying down.  After we got our gloves on we took out our magnifying glasses and did not touch a thing because we didn’t want to change anything.  We just looked.  We noticed that a paper was lying on the ground.  After we looked around we took notes about the clues we found and about the suspects.\n\nI thought about the people who were in the house at the time of the robbery and who could have gotten in the house.  I talked to Mrs. Shannon and to her daughter to see if they knew anything about the missing acorns.  Mrs. Shannon said that she was in the kitchen fixing light bulbs when she heard a crash, but she didn’t go see what the noise was.\n\nI asked if I could take a look outside, and they said “yes”.  At first I didn’t see anything so we went back inside and checked the doors and windows and still didn’t see anything. Then I went back outside and looked at the sliding glass door and saw two footprints, but they were not human footprints.  They were animal footprints!  Then I remembered I’d seen the same tracks on the paper that was on the ground!  So we went back inside.  While Pastor Eric check the Internet. I went to find the paper with the tracks on it.  Pastor Eric searched for dog tracks, cat tracks, chipmunk tracks and squirrel tracks.  We compared the tracks on the paper to the ones on the Internet.  Finally we identified the tracks on the paper.  They were squirrel tracks!  Then I remembered my thought about who would steal some acorns?  And there was the answer: a squirrel!\n\nA few minutes later we got a text saying that the security camera had taken some pictures of a squirrel.  After we saw the pictures on the iPad, we brought our flashlights and iPad outside and checked the places the camera showed the squirrel burying Pastor Eric’s acorns. So we went digging for them.  Finally detective Katelyn found all the missing acorns and returned them to Pastor Eric. And so detective Katelyn has done it again!\n\nBy Katelyn M.\nAge: 8