Unknown Victim by Kay Hadashi (classic books for 11 year olds .TXT) 📕

“Why?” he asked. “Not really your business, is it?”

“Because there’s more to him being on my front porch than just a place to sleep.”

“My suggestion is to stick to what you know best, and right now, that’s being a gardener.”

“I know. I will.”

“Did you hear what I said, Gina?”

“I heard.” That got her attention. It was more than a simple scolding. It was something he wouldn’t ordinarily say. There had to be more of a message to it than telling her to keep her nose out of the police investigation. It was important enough that she wrote the warning verbatim on her list. “You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

“I’m being yelled at to come eat lunch. Call your mother later. She needs to hear from you.”

Gina assumed the headache she had that morning was from the Tuyo she’d drank the night before, along with the cheap wine. She tried chasing it away with aspirin and coffee. While waiting for her head to stop pounding, she gave her conversation with her father some thought. One thing that was certain was the fact she was as interested in solving the man’s murder as she was in discovering his name, in spite of the little white lie she’d told her father.

“Why did he tell me to stick to being a gardener? He made a point of it. That was weird. Why’d he say that?”

She flipped to a new page on her yellow pad. She already had a list of facts and evidence, things she knew about the dead man, and things she still wanted to know. With a few small boxes and arrows that pointed here and there, she tried organizing it. That’s when she thought of Detective Kona’s use of a Venn diagram.

Gina drew three circles on a fresh page to make a simple but vacant Venn diagram. She began filling in each circle with what she’d learned in the last few days. When she got to the grass clipping circle, there was nothing new to add.

“What did Dad say to me? Stick to what I know best, and that’s being a gardener.”

Gina poured another cup of coffee and sat with the yellow pad in front of her. Trying to sort through her thoughts, and ignore the desire for a cigarette, she began to doodle. That led to a small drawing of a watch next to the Rolex circle, followed by a bottle cap, jacket, and cat near those circles. When she tried to think of how to doodle a lawn clipping other than a single line, she drew a side view of grass growing in dirt. She added a stickman pushing a mower across the top.

“Is it that simple? Did he mean I should focus on the grass clipping I got off the guy’s shoe? I know more about lawn grass than I do about Rolexes or beer. I still need to figure out why he wasn’t wearing the windbreaker on the day I found him, and decide if that means anything. And what a black cat with a dead rat might have to do with a dead man on my porch.”

It was time to cut into some of the fruit that had been sitting in the fridge all week. Cutting two in half that looked suspiciously similar, she found small black seeds that looked like fish eggs in one, and a hard pit in the other. Taking one half of each to the kitchen table with a fresh cup of coffee, she scanned her notes while she ate the fruit.

“What did Dad say about the Rolex? Something about whoever lost the Rolex never came back to look for it because it didn’t belong to them. They didn’t care if it was found again. But it was a Rolex. If I’d lost one, even one I’d stolen, I’d sure look for it. Somebody somewhere has got to want it back.”

After finishing half of one fruit, she started in on the other, allowing her tongue to decide which it liked better. While she ate, she drew lines to connect clues in the circles of her Venn diagram.

“Okay, that’s a big keyword, stolen. Why did I just say that? Because there’s no way a homeless guy should have an expensive Rolex? Or do I have some preconceived idea that all homeless people are somehow crooked?”

She ended up with too many circles, too many clues, and too many lines connecting them. Giving up on her diagram at least for a while, she collected her fruit peelings and took them outside to toss into the brush pile. The last thing she wanted to do was attract rats and flies into the house looking for something sweet to eat.

“Oh, you’re back,” she said to the black cat that seemed to be waiting for her on the porch. “Sorry. All I got is fruit. You’ll have to find your own rat for breakfast.”

The cat followed Gina to the brush pile that had been assembled during the week. When she tossed the rinds into the pile, something deep inside moved before darting out one side. It wasn’t a rat, but something else that looked like a squirrel. As the cat gave chase, the little critter ran faster until it got to some rocks near the stream. It ducked into a gap just before it became breakfast for the animal one notch higher in the food chain.

The cat seemed particularly enamored with Gina that morning and followed her around the estate grounds. Without anyone else around, Gina wanted to see what had been accomplished during her first week there. It was turning out that Felix was something of a politician, and that even though he spent most of his time working on the interior of the house, he was sure to point out the progress that had been made each day in the gardens to Gina. That was mostly a few branches had been pruned from the fruit