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polka dot hat on tight, though.
    She began to sing. “Frosty the la-la. Had a very la-la nose.”
    She wished she knew the words.
    Across the street she saw Chris and his friend Donny.
    They were looking for something.
    “Is that your sister?” Donny asked. “The one with the thing on her head?”
    “That crazy-looking kid?” Chris said. “Don’t be silly.”
    Dawn put her hands on her hips. “I am so, Christopher Bosco.”
    Chris started to make a snowball. Dawn pulled her box around the corner. She went as fast as she could.
    Jason was outside his house. He was making a snowman.
    It had stone ears and a rock nose.
    “Give me your scarf,” he told Dawn.
    “We can’t play snowman,” she said. “We have a mystery.”
    “Yahoo,” Jason said. He rubbed his mittens together.
    “Why are you wearing one red mitten and one green one?” she asked.
    “Simple,” Jason said. “I lost one red one and one green one.”
    “Look what I found.” Dawn took the red purse out of her pocket.
    They went into Jason’s house.
    Jason had a terrible playroom.
    It had an ironing board in the middle.
    It had a TV, a black-and-white one.
    It had two old orange chairs.
    Jason sat in one.
    Dawn sat in the other.

    “Open it up,” Jason said.
    “Wait till you see,” said Dawn.
    She snapped open the purse.
    Jason bent over to look.
    He fell off the orange chair.
    “There’s a paper with writing,” Dawn told him. “And money too.”
    She scooped everything out.
    There was gritty stuff on the bottom. Sand or something.
    It got under her fingernails.
    “Yucks,” she said.
    Jason held up the paper. “It’s a list for the stores.”
A&P
WUFF WUFF’S PET STORE
MILK
FOOD FOR ANGEL
BRED
 
CHEESE
 
    “Double yucks,” Dawn said. “I hate cheese.”
    “Look at the money,” Jason said.
    Dawn put the money on the ironing board. One dime. One nickel. Two pennies.
    “Sixteen cents,” she said.
    Jason rolled the dime across the board. “Seventeen.”
    He looked at her. “We could buy Gummy Bears.”
    Dawn shook her head. “We’re detectives.”
    Jason’s mother came to the door.
    “We have a mystery to solve,” Jason told her.
    “I hope it’s the mystery of the missing mittens,” she said. “How about some cookies?”
    “Great,” Dawn said. She hoped they were chocolate chips.
    Jason took the magnifying glass out of the box.
    He looked at the gritty stuff in the purse.
    “Looks like crackers,” he said. “The vanilla kind.”
    Mrs. Bazyk came back with the cookies.
    They were the fig kind.
    They had things that got caught in your teeth.
    Dawn shivered.
    Jason put two in his mouth. “It’s the riddle of the red purse,” he said. Cookie crumbs flew all over.
    “What’s a riddle?” Dawn asked.
    “It’s like a mystery.” He looked up. “What can we do?”
    Dawn took a cookie.
    She was starving to death.
    “I have an idea,” she said.

CHAPTER 4
    M S. R OONEY CALLED the roll.
    Today three people were out. Sherri, Linda, and Jill.
    Dawn had a little cold too. Noni had given her cough drops. The brown kind.
    Dawn put them in the back of her desk. Then she went up to Ms. Rooney. “Can Jason and I put up some signs?”
    “May I,” Ms. Rooney said. She looked at the signs.
    POLKA DOT PRIVATE EYE FOUND
    RED PURSE
    17 cents
    See Dawn. See Jason.
    Room 113.
    “Nice,” said Ms. Rooney. “Go ahead.”
    Dawn put one in the front of the room.
    Then they went out to the hall.
    Jason stuck a sign on the bulletin board.
    Dawn put one on the art teacher’s door.
    They put one in the gym.
    “Now what?” Jason asked.
    “Now nothing,” Dawn said. “We have to go back. We have to do math and stuff.”
    “Yucks,” said Jason.
    “Double yucks,” said Dawn.
    She tried to think.
    What else could they do?
    “Wait a minute,” said Jason. “I thought of something.”
    Too bad, Dawn thought.
    She was the real detective.
    She should have thought of something.
    “We could ask the principal,” Jason said. “We