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CHAPTER 1
    I T WAS T HURSDAY AFTERNOON .
    Dawn Bosco turned the page of her book. She wanted to get to the end before art.
    She had to find out about the secret in the old house.
    Ms. Rooney looked up. “Dawn, are you listening?”
    Dawn closed her book.
    “Today is Good Vegetable Day,” said Ms. Rooney.
    Dawn rolled her pencil down her desk.
    She hated vegetables.
    She thought about the girl in her book, Diane the Detective.
    Dawn wished she could be a detective, too.
    She wished she could solve a mystery. A scary one.
    “Who has a favorite vegetable?” asked Ms. Rooney.
    Jason Bazyk waved his hand. “Apples,” he said.
    “That’s not a vegetable,” said Timothy Barbiero.
    “How about spinach?” asked Ms. Rooney. “Or cabbage?”
    “Yuck,” Dawn said.
    Next to her, Emily Arrow said yuck, too.
    Dawn looked at Emily.
    Sometimes they were friends. Sometimes they weren’t.
    She had done something bad to Emily.
    She had taken her unicorn.
    That was weeks ago, though. She had given it back.
    Maybe Emily didn’t remember it anymore. Dawn hoped not.
    The bell rang. It was time for art.
    Dawn raced to the front of the line. She edged in ahead of Emily.
    Dawn loved to be first.
    Emily gave her a little push.
    Emily liked to be first, too.
    They marched into the art room.
    On every table were lumps of gray stuff. There were little bowls of water, too.
    Dawn wondered what they were for.
    Mrs. Kara, the art teacher, clapped her hands. “Today is Good Vegetable Day.”
    “I’m sick of vegetables,” said Jason.
    Dawn was sick of vegetables, too. She poked her finger into the gray stuff.
    It was soft. Gooey.
    It felt like chewing gum.
    Mrs. Kara held up a piece. “This is clay,” she said.
    Dawn wrinkled her nose. At home her clay was red and yellow and green. Not yuck gray.
    “We are going to make Good Vegetables,” said Mrs. Kara. “Watch. I’m going to make a head of lettuce.”
    Mrs. Kara rolled a fat ball. She made a curly top.
    She kept wetting her lettuce with her fingers. “The water makes it easier to shape,” she said.
    Dawn looked out the window. If only she could find a mystery!

    Mrs. Kara held up her gray lettuce.
    Jill Simon started to cry. “I don’t know how to do it.”
    “Of course you do,” said Mrs. Kara. “Now, everyone pick a vegetable.”
    Dawn pulled at her clay. She’d make a cucumber. That would be easy.
    Emily Arrow put up her hand. “I’m going to make a cucumber.”
    “Me, too,” said Dawn.
    Mrs. Kara frowned a little. “Make something else, Dawn.”
    Dawn crossed her eyes at Emily.
    She tried to think of something else to make.
    Beast was making a string bean. He mashed the clay against the table.
    He was making a big mess.
    Jill Simon was making an onion. It looked like fat gray ball with lines.
    Dawn dug into her own clay.
    She made a fat carrot.
    It was much better than Emily’s cucumber.
    Emily’s cucumber was too fat on one end. It was too skinny on the other. It looked like a mouse.
    “We’ll put the vegetables on the windowsill,” said Mrs. Kara. “Everyone will see them.”
    Dawn rushed to finish first. Her hands were gray. So were her nails.
    “Hurry,” said Mrs. Kara. “It’s almost time to go home.”
    Dawn went to the art room closet to wash.
    A minute later, Emily came in. So did Sherri Dent and Jill and Linda Lorca.
    The water in the sink was icy cold.
    They all put their hands in it.
    Everyone was laughing.
    Everyone but Dawn and Emily.

    Emily was taking up too much room, Dawn thought.
    She gave her a little push.
    Emily pushed back.
    A gold ring lay on the ledge of the sink.
    Dawn poked it back against the wall. She didn’t want it to go down the drain.
    “Move over,” she told Emily.
    “You move over, carrot legs,” Emily told her.
    Dawn sniffed. “You don’t know beans from grapes.” She took a piece of brown paper to dry her hands.
    She marched out of the closet.
    She wished she could find a crime right now.
    She’d solve it in two