The Kingdom of Orange Blossom

A Murder Mystery

LUCYBOOTH • AGE 12

WRITTEN IN A WRITE AWAY WORKSHOP

It was a bright and beautiful morning. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, and the midnight rain had washed away all of the crime and darkness of last night. Newly hired journalist, Olive Greene, had just sat down to work on the week's articles with a freshly brewed cup of coffee in hand when she remembered the cookie. Not just any cookie, but the last one from the summer bake sale her cousin had. In short: her aunt, Ophelia Greene, was a pastry chef, so her bake sales were always a hit. As lethargic as she was, Olive stumbled to the kitchen of her small house on Oakley Street to grab the cookie but, upon sticking her hand in the jar, realized it was gone. Well, not immediately. It took a couple seconds for her tired brain to put two and two together and realize that it was gone. She was puzzled by this, but assumed that she must have eaten it earlier and forgot that she had.

Of course, when cookies are missing, one doesn’t normally think of some elaborate plot that could be ruined by someone’s sweet tooth. But, we do know that pulling one stray thread can undo an entire piece of fabric. Olive just had to pull on that thread to see where it would lead. When she got up to get her lunch, Olive inspected the jar more carefully and saw the faintest fingerprints on the jar. The only reason she saw them was because, unlike most fingerprints, these were colored red. Thinking of a logical reason for this wasn’t

easy, considering that Olive was currently working on a solved murder account for this big time killer that lived in the city. They had finally locked him up. So, with the story fresh on her mind, the first red thing she thought of was blood. She reminded herself that it could be her fingerprints covered in ink from her work. But, just to set her mind at ease, she called the neighborhood police officer to look at them and see if they matched any records. It depended on how fast they found the match, and how much time they had to look for someone would affect how long it would take. Living in a small town, there weren’t a lot of officers to work on this case, nor people to be suspects, because there was rarely a need for them, and Olive was sure that she was overreacting about this.

The sounds in the street woke Olive from her reverie, lost as she was in her story. She walked outside to see the commotion and found out that Mr. Smith, a war veteran, had died in the night but his wife thought it was murder, considering his perfect health. A quick look at the body suggested she was right. A small slit through his heart made by a dagger was discovered, although it was not as noticeable because all the blood had been cleaned off, which set the town talking. Why was he killed? Whodunnit? And, the one question in Olive’s mind, could it possibly have anything to do with the red fingerprints on the cookie jar?

The next day, the police officer came back with the results. It hadn’t taken long due to the short list of possible culprits, but the problem was that the fingerprints didn’t match any of the prints that were on record at the station.

So, that meant that it was someone who didn’t live in town who had passed by with red hands in the middle of the night, and taken the cookie from Olive’s cookie jar. But who? And why? And did it have anything to do with the murder that happened on the same night, at the same time, two doors down from Olive’s house? She wanted to look further into whose print it could be, but the officers at the station, who happened to take care of forensics, also took care of everything else that needed to be done, and with a murder in their small town, the small number of officers had their hands full. People were scared, and rumors were flying. What if they came back? Who would be next? And there were many, many theories about why they targeted Mr. Smith, an old army veteran.

Olive wasn’t officially supposed to look into the murder case, but considering how few things happened in and around her town that she could write about, she decided just to see what she could find out about it anyways. Although she knew they wouldn’t be ready, she went to the station to check the prints and to see what files they had on Mr. Smith, to look for anything that could lead to his murder. She grabbed her coat, since the beautiful fall morning had turned into a cold, gray foggy day, as dark and mysterious as the goings-on in the town.

As she expected, when she got to the station, the prints weren’t anywhere close to done because of the ruckus about the murder. But she was able to look at Mr. Smith’s files, which were thicker than she expected. Apparently he had caused some trouble when he was younger and spent a lot of