Edgar Allan's Official Crime Investigation Notebook by Mary Amato Read Free Book Online Page B

crime has been committed!” Patrick said importantly. He was at the board, where another note was taped, measuring the distance from the floor to the note.
    Edgar kicked himself for not getting there earlier. Why couldn’t he have been the one to find the note?
    â€œWhat was stolen?” Destiny asked.
    â€œCome in and have a seat, everybody,” Ms. Herschel said. “The beautiful silk iris—the flower—that I had in my pencil cup is gone. Mr. Crew gave me that last Christmas.” She read the note again for all the newcomers.

    â€œTo pluck the bloom” was a clever way of saying “to steal the flower,” Edgar thought. The thief certainly waspoetic! Ms. Herschel had said it was an iris. Maybe that was important. He whipped out his notebook.
    An iris was stolen! I wasn’t expecting this. Why an iris? Think…think…think…
    â€œWhen did it happen, Ms. Herschel?” Maia asked.
    â€œThe flower was here when I first arrived. Then, it happened the same way . . . I left the room to get coffee, and when I came back it was gone,” Ms. Herschel said.
    Coffee again! When will this woman learn?
    Patrick put away his tape measure and turned to face the class triumphantly. “I’ve just verified my theory! The thief taped the note in approximately the same place he did last time.”
    â€œWhat does that mean?” Kip asked.
    â€œSee how I have to reach to touch it? Well, that means the thief is probably taller than average.”
    Everybody looked at Taz.
    Taz laughed. “What would I want with a flower?”
    â€œAnd look!” Patrick said, crouching down and pointing to the floor. “More shoe prints with an ‘O’.”
    â€œThat doesn’t mean anything,” Taz argued. “Your shoe prints are there, too, Patrick. I got here first, and when I saw the note, I went to find Ms. Herschel.”
    Edgar looked at the new message. “Like I said before, Taz couldn’t write that good if he tried!”
    Patrick smirked and handed Ms. Herschel her measuring tape. “Can I tell about the handwriting analysis I did?”
    â€œI already analyzed!” Edgar said. “Anybody could see it’s not his!”
    â€œI did some
real
handwriting analysis.” Patrick smiled. “Yesterday after school, I looked carefully at the first note the way a real forensic investigator would. I looked at connecting strokes, and line quality, and spacing of words and letters, and pen pressure on both downward and upward strokes. And I realized that the handwriting looked
extremely
regular and the pressure on each letter looked
exactly
the same. I hypothesized that the note was printed by a computer with a font that looks like handwriting instead of being real handwriting! I checked the fonts that we have on our computers here at school, and it is an exact match for the font called “Frost Special.”
    â€œWow! Great detective work, Patrick!” Ms. Herschel exclaimed.
    â€œThat’s just the beginning,” Patrick said. “I realized that I could use chromatography to determine exactly what brand of printer ink was used. You see, ink isn’t just one color. It looks black, but really it’s a mix of different colors. Each color has a different particle size. And if you dissolve the ink in a certain way you can see the particular spectrum of colors, which is sort of like the ink’s signature. So I dissolved the ink and made this. It’s called a chromatogram.”
    He held out the thief’s first note. The ink had bled into a kind of rainbow of yellow, blue, red, and purple.
    â€œThat’s chemistry, Patrick!” Ms. Herschel said.
    â€œI know.” Patrick smiled. “This morning before school, I did a chromatogram of the ink we use at this school, and it’s a perfect match.” He held up another chromatogram. “I checked with Mrs. Peabody and I found out that