The Case of the Stolen Jewelry

By Charles E. Morgan, III

While collecting soda pop bottles, Jimmy Carson (Operative Three) makes a startling discovery. There are diamonds hidden inside a bottle! When he reports his find to Brains (X), the Benton and Carson International Detective Agency swings into high gear. Trying to find the jewel thieves leads them on a journey fraught with mystery and danger. Run ins with a gang of juvenile delinquents lead to some hair-raising trouble!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 31, 2011
• ISBN: 9781257298464

Book preview

The Case of the Stolen Jewelry

THE CASE OF THE STOLEN JEWELRY

A Brains Benton Mystery

By

Charles E. Morgan, III

Illustrated by

Shannon Stirnweis

Based on characters created by

Charles Spain Verral. (1904-1990)

Based on stories by

George Wyatt

Dedicated to Brains and Jimmy.

Thanks for the past 50 years.

Copyright © 2009 by Charles E. Morgan, III

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Two Cent Deposit

Chapter 1

It had been a while since our last adventure, and life was about as normal as it could be. School was out, and it was the start of summer vacation. After months of inactivity in the detective business, I was actually starting to wish for a little excitement. But you know what they say about wishing. Be careful for what you wish for, because you just might get it! And brother, was I about to get it!

Little did I know that one of the most dangerous cases in the history of the Benton and Carson International Detective Agency was just around the corner. I still get the willies when I think about confronting that gang of toughs, and how we narrowly escaped with our hides. I could live to be 100 years old and I’ll never forget our death-defying climb. Or my best friend nearly falling to certain death. These were just some of the troubles that lay ahead for my partner and me, in what turned out to be one of our most baffling mysteries ever.

But wait, I think I better slow down. I’m getting ahead of myself.

I guess if you haven’t read The Case of the Missing Message, or any of our other cases, I should take the time to explain a few things right here, right off the bat.

My name is Jimmy Carson. I’m just a normal kid, about the average height and weight for someone my age. I have brown hair and unfortunately, a few freckles on my nose that my mom thinks are cute. I love sports, especially baseball and football. I’m not great at them, but I’m good enough to play on our school’s teams.

I live in the town of Crestwood. It’s a nice place. Not too big, and not too small, at least for my tastes. I live at 43 Maple Street with my parents, and my older sister, Ann. She and I both attend Crestwood Junior-Senior High School. It’s located just a few blocks away from where we live. My best friend in the whole world, and the partner I mentioned above, is a guy named, Barclay Brains Benton. He also attends Crestwood High, and is in the same grade that I am.

Brains got his nickname exactly the way it sounds like he did. He’s smart, smarter than the latest Paris fashions. In fact, he is the smartest person I have ever known. Even though he’s an underclassman, it isn’t unusual for him to help tutor seniors at our school. Brains came by his gray matter quite naturally though, since both of his parents teach at Crestwood College. His dad is a professor of ancient history, and his mom is a painter who also happens to teach art.

Now Brains isn’t just some brain. He’s a regular guy too. He’s even the best baseball pitcher in our school’s history. Brains holds numerous state pitching records as proof.

It’s a good thing for me that Brains is my friend, and that he’s willing to help me out occasionally with certain school subjects when I just don’t quite get them. Otherwise, my dad would be breathing down my neck about my grades. You see, Brains has this way about him that makes any subject seem interesting and simple.

Where I’m sort of an ordinary looking kid, Brains is anything but that. He’s tall, skinny, and looks like the hands of the town’s clock in Liberty Square at 6 o’clock. He wears glasses, and has a bony nose that he thinks looks like Sherlock Holmes’. On top of his head is a fiery red bush of curly hair that reminds me of a brilliant autumn sunset. There is no doubt about it, once you’ve seen Brains Benton, you could never forget him.

As I mentioned earlier, Brains and I are private detectives. That’s right, real flesh and blood private eyes! Don’t let anyone ever tell you that a couple of kids can’t be real life investigators. They can! My mom’s got a scrapbook full of newspaper articles to prove it.

We’d met a few years ago, and quickly discovered that we both had an interest in detective work. We decided to form our detective agency and see how it would work out. We’ve done pretty well. Brains is the president of our firm and I’m the secretary-treasurer. I guess he gets to make most of the decisions because of his smarts, and I get to do most of the dirty work because of my inconspicuous looks.

Despite our interests, Brains and I are actually pretty different. He’s the type of kid who wants to be an astronaut when he grows up. I want to play centerfield for the Braves. Together, though, Brains and I make a great team!

The whole reason this new case started was because of my folks. You see, my parents’ 20th wedding anniversary was coming up and I wanted to buy them something special. Besides, I felt like I owed them. They had been very understanding about me hanging around with Brains, and our wild antics.

Even though last year Mr. Taylor had given both Brains and me a $1,000 reward for finding his family’s lost fortune, I was still short on funds. That’s because my folks had insisted that I take the reward money and stick it into the bank. They wanted it in a savings account so that it could earn interest. They said that way the money would be there for me when I needed it sometime in the future, like for college. Not exactly what I had in mind for the money, but what could I do?

I’m a paperboy for the town’s only newspaper, The Crestwood Daily Ledger. Despite that, I still needed more money than I had managed to save to buy the sterling silver serving tray and pay to have it engraved.

I’d first gotten the idea for the gift while looking through the S&H Green Stamps catalogue. But I didn’t have enough stamps saved up to get the tray there, either. So I kept looking around and I had found exactly what I was looking for at Leitzingers, a department store located on Main Street in downtown Crestwood.

Anyway, the lack of funds was the reason that I found myself checking out deserted lots all over town early on that Saturday morning. I was picking up empty pop bottles and collecting them - so that I could turn them in and get the two cent deposits back on each. I had already been at it for well over an hour. I had ridden my bike to various places where I knew that people tossed their trash on the ground instead of using a garbage can. Once at these spots, I would get off my bicycle and scavenge the area on foot.

The morning sky had been gray and overcast, the remnants of the heavy rain from the night before. I was wearing a Crestwood Colts baseball cap on top of my head and my paperboy delivery bag over my shoulders. I was putting the pop bottles in the bag while side stepping mud puddles with all the grace of a dancer from the New York Ballet. My bag was getting pretty full and I was ready to call it quits.

My last stop was an empty lot near the County Parkway. The area was the normal hodgepodge of clumps of grass, weeds, and rocks. There wasn’t much trash around though, and I was just about ready to leave when I spotted a green 7Up bottle tossed alongside a building that belonged to Crestwood Jewelers. I hop-scotched over the mud and scooped the bottle off the ground. I put the bottle in the bag with a muffled clink, and then started walking towards the street on top of the high ground that ran along side of the jewelers. Once I made the sidewalk, I headed back over to my bike. With the side of my foot, I flipped the kick stand up. Then I tossed my right leg over the seat and stood on the pedal, all in one motion. And with my weight behind the push, I was off.

As I headed home, I tried to figure out how many bottles I had collected. I knew that I’d done pretty well. I would give it another week and then scavenge the town again for more empty pop bottles. The key to success was to get up and get out early on the weekend before anybody else did. That’s exactly what I had done, and in doing so I had shorted my beauty sleep.

Boy, I sure hoped my folks would like that tray.

I wasn’t looking forward to the next part of the task. It wasn’t like I didn’t have anything else to do. I still had to make the rounds for my weekly newspaper collections. Getting money from my customers would take at least a couple of hours. By the end of my route, I would be on the outskirts of Bleeker City, a town about three miles away from Crestwood. I would then pedal my bike over to Doc Saffron’s drugstore.

Today, that was where I was going to turn in my clinking collection of bottles and get some jingling cash in return. The problem though, was that Doc Saffron didn’t like people bringing in dirty bottles. You see, Doc pretty much ran the drug store by himself. He had once told me, after someone had made a small mess by bringing in a couple of muddy bottles, that he didn’t like, Wasting time sweeping up messes that people didn’t need to be bringing inside.

Now, don’t get me wrong; Doc, who was short, bald, and wore glasses that gave him the stern look of a school principal, was a really a good egg. Once you got to know him, you just knew he was your friend. I saw Doc every Saturday at the end of my collections. After pedaling all over creation, I liked to unwind and enjoy a nice cold bottle of Cherry-Fizz at his establishment. So, being that I wanted to stay on his good side, I knew that I was going to have to go home and wash any bottles that were dirty.

When I got home, I went into the laundry room. I hoisted the newspaper bag over my head and laid it on top of the washing machine. I then turned on the spigots, and started to fill the utility sink with warm water. I added a couple of squirts of soap, and bubbles started to form, multiplying into a mountain of suds. The first bottle I pulled out of the bag was clean enough, so I set it aside. The next bottle was the 7Up bottle. I examined it to see if it needed to be washed. It just needed a quick dunk in the water, and a wipe with a sponge. That’s when I noticed something else. There was a napkin crammed into the neck of bottle. I shrugged. I’d just go ahead and get that out while I was at it.

I couldn’t quite get my fingers into the opening to pull the paper out, so I dunked the bottle into the sink that was still filling with water. Once the bottle was full, I shook it to loosen the napkin. That’s when I heard it, a gentle tinkling sound.

Hmm, must be some rocks in there too.

I turned the pop bottle upside down and poured the warm water over my hand so that I could catch the pieces of napkin. Although I shook it like a stubborn catsup bottle, the paper wouldn’t come out. Instead, it just lodged itself and plugged up the neck of the bottle. I reached in and managed to pull out a little bit of the paper. I put the bottle underneath the faucet and let it refill again with water. When it was full, I swirled the liquid around inside the green bottle

I had to chuckle at the situation, and what I was doing. Chief cook and bottle washer, Jimmy Carson! But I stopped smiling a moment later. This time when I turned the 7Up bottle upside down, it emptied. But what fell into my outstretched fingers and hand shocked me as if I had just stepped on a live wire. I had to blink a few times to make sure that what I was seeing was indeed what I thought I saw. Not only had bits of paper napkin fallen into my hand, but shining up through the soapy foam was a gold bracelet and five single glistening diamonds

The Aardvark is Dancing!

Chapter 2

Creeps!

Tingles of excitement ran up and down my spine like a little man in spiked shoes was running laps. I couldn’t believe what I saw! There, in