Game for a Mystery

Barrett Jones is so absorbed in his portable Verminoids game that he avoids trimming the family hedge. He hides beneath a tree to play while his father mows the lawn. When Emily and Matthew invite him to see a nest of baby raccoons in the woods, Barrett conceals the game under leaves and joins them briefly.

When Barrett returns, the game is gone. Emily treats the disappearance as her first investigation. A shoe print with a star on its tread points toward Nelson Swanson, who wears that brand. Barrett immediately accuses Nelson after finding him playing Verminoids, but Matthew checks the game's registered identification and proves it belongs to Nelson. Barrett has mistaken a clue for proof and humiliated an innocent friend.

Back at the tree, Emily notices that the leaves and an ant hill have been disturbed. She first considers whether the lawn mower picked up the hidden game. The mower bag contains chewed trash and a crushed energy-bar wrapper, but not the game. The tiny tooth marks on the trash solve another mystery: a mother raccoon, not the neighbor's dog, has been raiding the family's garbage.

The damaged ant hill gives Emily a better idea. Crows eat ants, and one may have noticed the chocolate Barrett left on the game after eating his energy bar. Looking up, the group spots a crow's nest and sees the bird carrying the missing device.

Crows sometimes crack hard objects by dropping them from a height. The crow flies over the street and releases Barrett's game just as his mother drives past. Her car crushes it. Barrett is devastated, but his father points out that the game's importance has led him to stall, lie, neglect his work, and falsely accuse Nelson. He will not receive a replacement.

Barrett finally begins trimming the hedge. His father praises Emily and Matthew for their detective work, and Emily marks the solved case as the beginning of the Jones and Parker Detective Agency - even if she and Matthew cannot quite agree on its motto.