The Ragged Suitcase: A Cricket Kelly Mystery

By Lee Ann Hager

Ages 8-12--Cricket Kelly is no ordinary twelve year-old. Shes super smart and very observant, and she has one week until her birthday to prove it. Crickets life transforms when she begins receiving strange clues that require her to solve the mystery of where she will spend her first summer vacation away from home. Enter kookie Aunt Lila, the orchestrator of a complex plot to take Cricket to Lighthouse Cove on Nantucket Island. Lilas work for the travel magazine, The Ragged Suitcase, prompts Crickets investigation into some scary island mysteries.
Following the clues to a long-ago disappearance, one of the first people Cricket encounters on Nantucket is Nate Tucker, a scary old man who holds a very old grudge. In an effort to escape Tucker, she meets Michael Adams, a dreamy fourteen year-old boy with sandy-blonde hair. Michael accompanies her on her mission to solve the infamous missing persons case of Hattie Mae Bellarose, a childrens mystery writer from Savannah, Georgia. Armed with nothing but her courage, her smarts, and some old notebooks left to one of Hattie Maes relatives, Cricket manages to turn this hundred year-old cold case into one that will go down in the record books. Cricket figures out the clues and just in time. More importantly though, she discovers that you shouldnt judge people before you get to know them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781463425357

Lee Ann Hager

Lee Ann Hager is the author of The Road Trip Mysteries series, recently publishing The Ragged Suitcase, the first book in the series. She works as an instructional literacy coach and high school English teacher specializing in literacy and writing instruction. She is a National Board Certified Teacher and a fellow of the Eastern Kentucky University Writing Project and the Bread Loaf Teacher Network. She lives in Nicholasville, Kentucky. Savannah Belle is the second novel in The Road Trip Mysteries series.

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© 2011 Lee Ann Hager. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 8/30/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4634-2535-7 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4634-2536-4 (dj)

ISBN: 978-1-4634-2537-1 (sc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011911298

Printed in the United States of America

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Prologue:

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Chapter One:

Special Delivery

Chapter Two:

A Whale of a Good Time

Chapter Three:

The Ragged Suitcase

Chapter Four:

A Faraway Land

Chapter Five:

The Lighthouse and the Rock

Chapter Six:

Happy Twelfth Birthday

Chapter Seven:

Nantucket or Bust

Chapter Eight:

The Island

Chapter Nine:

Meeting Molly

Chapter Ten:

The Lighthouse Design

Chapter Eleven:

Sandcastles and a Cute Boy

Chapter Twelve:

The Summer People

Chapter Thirteen:

Summer School

Chapter Fourteen:

Hattie Mae Bellarose

Chapter Fifteen:

July 1907

Chapter Sixteen:

Nate Tucker

Chapter Seventeen:

The Trunk in the Attic

Chapter Eighteen:

The Gatlin Girls and Sankaty Lighthouse

Chapter Nineteen:

Hattie Mae’s Journals

Chapter Twenty:

July 21, 1909

Chapter Twenty-One:

Occam’s Razor

Chapter Twenty-Two:

Cricket’s Dream

Chapter Twenty-Three:

Mystery Solved

Chapter Twenty-Four:

Lila’s Date

Chapter Twenty-Five:

The Plan

Chapter Twenty-Six:

Goodbye, Nate

Epilogue:

Home Again

Things to Think About

Think About It!

Fact vs. Fiction

To my family, for their continuing love, support, and encouragement

Road Trip rōd · trĭp (n): a long drive to a new destination. Road trips usually involve lots of driving time, good food, motels, rest stops, postcards, souvenirs, and new adventures. People often take road trips to get away from their everyday routine, to see new places, and to meet new people.

Hey all you fellow travelers,

If you could leave home and visit anywhere in the world, where would it be? Texas? Your grandma’s house? The backyard treehouse? Wherever you want to go, that’s great! It’s fun to get away from home every now and then, isn’t it? Cricket Kelly also wants to travel, and her lovable but completely kookie Aunt Lila thinks it’s about time Cricket gets to go on her very first road trip away from home without her parents.

This story is the first in the Road Trip Mysteries series featuring Cricket Kelly, a super smart, very observant amateur detective. She loves mysteries, and as the story opens, Cricket receives an anonymous letter that will catapult her into an exciting adventure. It may get kind of scary though, as she will have to muster her courage and rack her brains to solve a one hundred year-old mystery or risk losing a great friendship.

Settle in as you travel with Cricket to a small island off the coast of the northeastern United States. Be on the lookout for clues along the way to help Cricket solve the mystery. Are you ready? Put on your seatbelts. Have I got a story for you!

Happy travels,

L.H.

Prologue:

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Cricket knew what would happen next. The munchkins would sing, the winged monkeys would fly, and the great wizard behind the curtain would turn out to be a regular man with no special powers at all. She knew what would happen from minute to minute, from black and white to color, from Kansas to Oz and back again. However, eleven year-old Cricket Kelly stared at the television as though she had never seen the familiar movie before.

Dorothy repeated her famous lines. There’s no place like home, her red shoes glowing with the possibility that with three clicks she would soon find her way back to Kansas. But Cricket wanted to go to Oz, to walk down the yellow-brick road all the way to the Emerald City.

Secretly, Cricket looked around the family room to see who might be watching. Granny Sis was still in the kitchen washing the dinner dishes, and Grandpa Teenie was asleep snoring on the couch. No one would see her. Cricket clicked her heels three times quietly. Her white Sketchers weren’t quite the ruby slippers, but she thought it wouldn’t hurt to try. Cricket closed her eyes and focused her concentration hoping to be magically whisked away in the middle of an exciting adventure.

But she wasn’t. She found herself still at her grandparents’ home in Hazel Hollow.

It’s not that Cricket was unhappy at home. Hazel Hollow was a pretty good town to live in. But things always seemed the same to Cricket, and she wanted to do something different. She saw the same friends at the same school in the same town where she had lived all her life, all of her eleven, almost twelve years. Most of the time, her life was always—well—the same.

Her family was also part of the problem. Cricket found it difficult to stand out in a family of superheroes. At least they seemed like superheroes to her. Most of the time she was known as Margaret and Charles Kelly’s daughter or the granddaughter of the famous writer Sylvia Anderson or, among the kids at school, she was known as Will Kelly’s little sister.

Cricket’s mother was a curator at a small art museum in nearby Lexington and had her picture in all the papers last year because she discovered the whereabouts of a stolen painting. Talk about a hero. Newspaper reporters had camped out around their house for days. Mrs. Kelly hadn’t liked all the attention, but she had solved an important mystery and was recognized for it.

Her father was a popular professor of literature at the local university, and no doubt, he would discover something Very Important during his career, too. Even Will, Cricket’s older brother, was a soccer star at Hazel Hollow High School. She didn’t fit in anyplace with her family, she thought. She was just plain ol’ Cricket, and what she wanted was to be was Cricket Kelly, Very Important Person.

Cricket looked back to the movie fading from Technicolor to black and white and thought about the long summer that stretched out before her. It’s too bad, she thought, that she couldn’t buy a pair of ruby slippers at the mall. She clicked her heels again but found herself in the same place, her grandmother calling her to dry the dishes. One day, she thought. One day.

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Chapter One:

Special Delivery

Cricket Kelly raced to the mailbox at One Pennywhistle Lane trying to beat her old record of thirty-two seconds from her porch to the street and back. Ten, eleven, twelve, she counted under her breath as she ran. I think I can make it. She pulled the mail from the mailbox, and then stopped the race.

Cricket came across a letter addressed to her. What’s this? she wondered scrunching her face curiously and fanning herself with a stack of grocery sale ads. She placed the pink envelope on the top of the stack and examined it carefully. Expertly drawn on the back of the letter was a sketch of a map. Like a treasure map, a red X marked the spot where she lived and a blue circle identified the location of her school. Someone had drawn the courthouse in the center of town and had sketched a diamond shape for the baseball field in the right-hand corner where the ball park would be. Intrigued, Cricket suddenly realized that she didn’t know anyone who would send her a letter. Everyone she knew either called, texted, or emailed her on the computer. No one sent letters anymore. No one, that is, except for someone.

missing image file

She searched for a return address on the envelope, but there was none. Sure enough, however—she checked it again to make sure—the letter was addressed to her and her alone, Miss Cricket M. Kelly who lived at One Pennywhistle Lane, up the stairs and down the hallway in the big white house on the corner.

Cricket Kelly was eleven years old, soon to be twelve. She was a tall girl for her age, with shoulder-length brown hair and blue eyes that stayed mostly hidden behind her wire-rimmed glasses. She was a sixth grade student at Hazel Hollow Middle School and was among the smartest in her class. Cricket had the ability to look at something once and remember it forever, which certainly came in handy on quizzes and tests at school. Her best friend Lucy was also intelligent, but it was hard to beat Cricket who was good at just about everything she tried—from social studies and drawing to playing volleyball on the school team. Overall, Cricket lived a very happy life in Hazel Hollow. Before this evening, however—as the sun set in the sky and melted into the sidewalk like an orange Popsicle—nothing had ever happened in all her eleven years that would compare the events that were about to unfold.

Cricket considered how nothing exciting usually happens in Hazel Hollow unless you count the truly odd events. There was the time when Old Man Simpson got arrested for haunting his own house, or the time when Turner McQueen won a blue ribbon in the county fair for growing a twenty-two pound potato. Once, a fierce wind swept a traveling carnival ride called The Flying Admiral up in the air and onto the high school football field the night before the big game. Sometimes, exciting things did happen in Hazel Hollow, Cricket reconsidered, but mostly these things never happened to her.

Just the day before, Cricket sat on her front porch after school feeling bored and sorry for herself. Then, only one day later, she received in the mail a mysterious letter from an unknown sender with an oddly-drawn map on the back and a postmark too faint to read. Strangely, she felt like she was The Flying Admiral being swept away by whatever the envelope contained. Excited, Cricket spun around on one heel and ran back toward the house past the tire swing that hung from an old oak tree.

Mom! she yelled bounding up the porch steps, her poodle, William Shakespeare, right on her heels. Mom! she screamed even louder. I got a letter in today’s mail. It’s addressed to me! Accidentally, Cricket let the screen door slam behind her. Mother! Look what I got. She waved the letter around above her head trying to get her mother’s attention.

Cricket, scolded Mrs. Kelly sternly. What did I tell you about not slamming that door? Margaret Kelly turned from her dinner preparation to face her daughter and find out what all the commotion was about. What kind of letter? asked Mrs. Kelly, a little confused but interested nevertheless.

Cricket danced around the table waving the envelope above her head as though it contained a million dollars.

Maybe it’s a birthday card, her mother said. You know, your birthday is next week.

Cricket suddenly stopped smiling. She tried to catch her breath. It doesn’t look like a birthday card, and it certainly wasn’t the case that anyone she knew sent birthday cards with maps drawn on the back, she considered. She stared again at the envelope and let her imagination wander. What a very strange thing indeed.

Well? her mother said, finally breaking Cricket’s concentration. Open it and see who it’s from.

Cricket then realized she hadn’t yet opened her letter. Wanting