The Adventures of Sweet Pickles McGillicuddy: The Mystery of the Disappearing Ruby Earring

By James C. Wright

Thirteen-year-old Jennifer Nicole McGillicuddy, nicknamed Sweet Pickles, lives in the small riverside town of Anglers Cove, North Carolina-a place where most folks would assume not much ever happens.

Or does it? With a natural curiosity and a talent for solving things, Sweet Pickles searches for mysteries in her sleepy little town. High on her list is the Beethoven Castle, an abandoned 1800s mansion rumored to be haunted, according to some of the townspeople who swear they've heard strange and eerie organ music coming from it around Halloween every year. She's determined to one day muster up the courage and find a way into the mansion to try and figure out who or what is behind the ghostly music.

Just when she thinks that that's the only mystery in town, she learns that Thomas, one of her best friends, is being suspected of a crime she is certain he didn't commit. Along with her other bestie Deardra and their canine sidekicks, Buster and Tuck, she sets out to solve the mystery behind the unusual crime and to clear Thomas's name.

Follow along with Sweet Pickles and her friends through the twists and turns as they unravel the clues in this fun-filled adventure in mystery solving.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9781645319917

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The Adventures of Sweet Pickles McGillicuddy

The Mystery of the Disappearing Ruby Earring

James C. Wright

Copyright © 2020 James C. Wright

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2020

ISBN 978-1-64531-990-0 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64531-991-7 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Spring Has Sprung

Something’s Fishy in Anglers Cove

I Scream, You Scream for Ice Cream

The Mystery Is Afoot

Chasing the Case

The Investigation Begins

Hot on the Culprit’s Trail

Meet Sam and Dusty

An Unexpected Reward

The Perfect End to a Mysterious Day

To my mom, June Bug, for your inspiration.

Chapter 1

Spring Has Sprung

In the small North Carolina town of Anglers Cove lives a girl named Jennifer Nicole McGillicuddy. Very curious by nature and with an inquisitive mind, she loves solving riddles, puzzles, and working on science projects that show why things in our world work the way they do. The reason she enjoys these so much is because each starts out as a mystery, which Jennifer adores most of all. In her bedroom, there’s a bookcase packed with detective novels and stacks of movies about all kinds of whodunits. An amateur sleuth, she can’t get enough of books about detectives and dreams of becoming a world-famous one herself when she grows up.

Her town got its name from the river that runs along the outskirts. It’s a place folks travel to from miles around in order to fish in the pristine creeks and rivers. Many years ago, the people who fished here also helped found the town and decided that Anglers Cove made a fitting name. Jennifer and her family live in one of the homes built here back in the earlier days. It’s easy to find because it’s perched on top of the highest hill, not far from the old water tower.

At eighty feet tall, spring fed, and made of brick, the tower dates to the late 1800s when the first caretaker, Thaddeus Bland, and his family moved in. Back then, aside from the town, the North Carolina Railroad Company engineers also accessed the water to use for the narrow-gauge steam trains that passed through on their journey westward. These locomotives ran on both coal and steam, so they needed the water to produce the steam for operating the powerful engines. These days the trains don’t stop at the water tower anymore because they use diesel fuel.

Sometimes at night, Pickles lay awake and listens for the whistle of a train off in the distance. As it draws nearer on its way up the hill, she hears the clickety clack of the wheels against the steel track. When it rumbles by, her house vibrates and makes rattling noises. This used to scare her when she was little, but now she finds it comforting.

As the sound of the train fades, she often wonders about the people on board and where they’re going. She’s ridden the train many times, taking trips to visit relatives or with her dad to another town for a fun outing. They could have driven the family car, but her dad loved the train as much as she did. It was more of an adventure, he would say. It was also one of the reasons he enjoyed living so close to the tracks.

Jennifer’s dad is Max, and her mother is Sophie. They moved to the area before Jennifer was born, and now she’s thirteen.

At that time, her parents were young newlyweds and didn’t have much money. They both started working as school teachers, having recently graduated from college. Her dad became the new science teacher, and her mom took over the music classes after Mrs. Ogburn retired. They bought this old house for cheap because no one had lived in it for a while and it needed a lot of repairs and sprucing up. They spent many nights and weekends fixing it up. They did most of the work themselves along with some help from family and friends.

After a lot of hard work, it finally felt like theirs. Jennifer was glad it worked out like that because she couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. She loved its big front porch, two stories, and spacious yard. She liked how the old wood floors and stairs creaked just a little when you stepped on them because you could always tell where someone was in the house. She also liked the way it smelled like polished wood inside.

She especially