June Jam Read online

  June Jam

  “Dad loves the strawberry jam his mom used to make, right? So we’ll make some for him. He’ll love it!” Bradley pointed at the ripe strawberries in the garden. “And we’ll use our own berries!”

  “We don’t know how to make jam,” Brian said.

  “How hard can it be?” asked Bradley. “Besides, I know Dad kept his mom’s recipes in a box. There might be one for jam.”

  “Forget about making jam from these strawberries,” Lucy said. “Something is eating them. Look at this one—it’s bitten in half.”

  “This one is, too,” Nate said. “And that one! Something is biting all the berries!”

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2011 by Ron Roy

  Interior illustrations copyright © 2011 by John Steven Gurney

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks and A Stepping Stone Book and the colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Roy, Ron.

  June jam / by Ron Roy ; illustrated by John Steven Gurney.

  p. cm. — (Calendar mysteries)

  “A Stepping Stone book.”

  Summary: As a Father’s Day gift to the twins’ dad, Bradley, Brian, and their friends Lucy and Nate try to identify and stop whatever creature is biting fruits and vegetables in the garden.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89833-4

  [1. Mystery and detective stories. 2. Gardens—Fiction. 3. Pests—Fiction. 4. Father’s Day—Fiction. 5. Twins—Fiction. 6. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 7. Cousins—Fiction.] I. Gurney, John Steven, ill. II. Title.

  PZ7.R8139Jun 2011

  [Fic]—dc22

  2010028382

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  Dedicated to Chris

  —R.R.

  To Mark and Julia

  —J.S.G.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  1. Saturday Chores

  2. Garden Monster

  3. Lucy’s Great Idea

  4. Scary Scarecrow

  5. Grandma’s Recipe

  6. Bradley’s Monster Trap

  7. The Long Neck

  8. The Monster Is Smart, but Lucy Is Smarter

  9. Pal Is Pretty Smart, Too

  10. One More Job to Do

  1

  Saturday Chores

  Bradley Pinto and his twin brother, Brian, climbed into the backseat of the family car. Their older brother, Josh, got in front next to their dad.

  “How come you always get to sit up front?” Brian asked.

  “Because I’m older and wiser,” Josh said.

  Their father smiled.

  “Dad, thanks for taking us out for breakfast,” Bradley said.

  “You’re welcome, Bradley,” his father answered. “Did you three get enough to eat?”

  “I sure did!” Josh said. “I’ll never eat again.”

  “Yeah, right,” Brian said. “For at least an hour.”

  Bradley picked up the Junior Encyclopedia he’d been reading in the car. His teacher had asked each student to study one encyclopedia volume. Each kid had drawn a letter out of a bag. Bradley had gotten the letter J. So far, he had read about jaguars, Japanese fishing villages, javelin throwing, juggling, jungles, and a bunch of other stuff. He looked at a page about jam.

  “Why do you always have strawberry jam on your toast?” Bradley asked.

  His father grinned. “What else is there?”

  “Butter, marshmallow spread, peanut butter, grape jelly, lots of stuff!” Brian said.

  “Your grandmother Pinto, my mom, used to make strawberry jam when I was a kid,” their father said. “I had her jam sandwiches for a snack every day after school. Her jam was the best in the world. Now that she’s gone, I keep trying to find strawberry jam that tastes as good as hers. So far, I haven’t found it.”

  The car pulled into their driveway. “Don’t forget your Saturday chores,” Bradley’s father said.

  “Aw, Dad, I was gonna play softball,” Josh said.

  “Okay, but after you clean the barn,” his father said. “If you get cracking, you’ll be done in an hour.”

  “What’s our job?” Bradley asked.

  “You two can weed the garden,” his father said.

  “Do we get paid?” Brian asked.

  His father laughed. “Yes! You get to sleep in a bed, and you get to have three meals a day!”

  They all climbed out of the car. “Change your clothes first,” the boys’ father said.

  “Can Lucy and Nate come over and help?” Bradley asked.

  “Sure, if they want to,” his father said.

  “Okay, then I’m getting Dink and Ruth Rose to help me in the barn,” Josh announced.

  “Fine,” his father said. “Tell you what—if you kids do a great job, I’ll buy ice cream later for everyone.”

  The three boys tore up the stairs to their bedrooms. While Bradley and Brian were changing their clothes, their mother knocked and poked her head into the room. “How was breakfast?” she asked.

  “Awesome, Mom,” Bradley said.

  “Why didn’t you come, too?” Brian asked.

  “I wanted to stay home to think about a present for Daddy,” their mom said.

  “Why, is it his birthday?” Bradley asked.

  She shook her head. “No, Father’s Day is tomorrow.”

  After she left, the twins finished changing. “I’ll call Lucy and Nate,” Bradley said.

  “See you downstairs,” Brian said.

  Bradley called Lucy Armstrong. She was visiting her cousin Dink while her parents were in Arizona helping to build a school. Dink lived next door to Nate and Ruth Rose. Bradley, Brian, Lucy, and Nate were best friends.

  Josh, Dink, and Ruth Rose were all twelve and had been friends since kindergarten.

  Bradley ran out to the garden. “They’re coming,” he told his brother.

  “Good,” Brian said. He pointed at the ground. “It’ll only take a million years to pull all these weeds.”

  “No, it won’t,” Bradley said. “We can divide it up in sections. You take the tomatoes, Nate can do the lettuce, and Lucy will do around the zucchini.”

  “What part will you do?” Brian asked.

  “I’ll weed around the strawberries,” Bradley said. “Hey, there they are!”

  Lucy and Nate walked into the garden through the gate.

  “Thanks for coming over to help, guys,” Bradley said.

  “I think weeding is fun,” Lucy told him. “I weed our garden in California all the time.”

  “I hate weeding,” Nate said.

  “My dad is buying us ice cream when we finish,” Brian told Nate.

  “I love weeding!” Nate said.

  They all laughed.

  “Let’s start,” Bradley said. He told the other kids their sections.

  All four kids got down on their knees and started pulling weeds. They threw them into a pile in the corner of the gard
en. The sun warmed their backs.

  “How much ice cream do we get?” Nate asked.

  “Ten gallons each!” Brian said.

  “Brian, I just thought of what we can get Dad for Father’s Day,” Bradley said. “We’ll make him some strawberry jam!”

  Brian looked at his twin brother. “Jam?”

  “Not just any jam,” Bradley explained. “Dad loves the strawberry jam his mom used to make, right? So we’ll make some for him. He’ll love it!”

  Bradley pointed at the ripe strawberries in the garden. “And we’ll use our own berries!”

  “We don’t know how to make jam,” Brian said.

  “How hard can it be?” asked Bradley. “Besides, I know Dad kept his mom’s recipes in a box. There might be one for jam.”

  “Forget about making jam from these strawberries,” Lucy said. “Something is eating them. Look at this one—it’s bitten in half.”

  “This one is, too,” Nate said. “And that one! Something is biting all the berries!”

  The kids got down on their knees. They checked all the strawberry plants.

  “They’re all bitten!” Brian said.

  “This is horrible!” Bradley said.

  “There’s a strawberry monster in our garden!” Brian yelled.

  2

  Garden Monster

  Bradley flopped down on the ground. “Nearly every berry is bitten in half!” he cried. “There aren’t enough good ones left to make jam!”

  “You could make zucchini jam,” Nate suggested.

  “Funny, Nate,” Brian said.

  Lucy looked at some of the zucchini. “Guys, it’s not just the strawberries,” she said. “Something is chewing on the vegetables, too. See, the same kind of bites.”

  “Oh no!” Brian said. “Dad is gonna freak when he finds out!”

  “You’d better find whatever critter is doing this,” Lucy said. “Otherwise, it will eat everything!”

  Nate looked around nervously. “What if it’s a snake?”

  “Maybe it’s birds,” Brian said. “They could fly right in!”

  Lucy picked up one of the bitten strawberries. “No, this doesn’t look like a bird bite,” she said. “Or a rabbit or a snake.”

  “What kind of bite does it look like?” Bradley asked.

  Lucy turned the berry over and showed the boys. “It’s a big, round bite,” she said. “I think I’ve seen bites like this before.”

  She looked at the boys. “In the desert near where we live, there are lizards called Gila monsters. They eat birds’ eggs and small animals, but sometimes they come into people’s gardens,” she said. “And they’re poisonous.”

  “Great, we’ve got a poisonous monster in our garden!” Brian said.

  Lucy laughed. “No, you don’t,” she said. “Gila monsters only live in hot, dry places. They’d die in Connecticut because it gets too cold here. But we once had one in our garden, and the bite is the same. They make just one chomp, with no chewing or nibbling.”

  “I’m not staying here to weed,” Nate cried. “I want to keep all ten toes!”

  “What about the ice cream?” Brian asked.

  “I don’t need any ice cream!” Nate said.

  Bradley laughed. “Yes, you do,” he said.

  “I just thought of what we can give Dad for Father’s Day,” Brian said.

  “What?” Bradley asked.

  “Well, since we can’t make the jam because something’s eating the berries, we can find whatever is doing it,” Brian said. “We’ll save Dad’s garden, and that will be his present!”

  Bradley kicked a stone. “I still want to make the jam,” he muttered. “Did you see Dad’s face when he told us about Grandma Pinto’s jam that he used to eat?”

  “We still have to catch whatever is biting all this stuff,” Lucy said.

  “What if it’s a skunk?” Brian asked. He was grinning.

  “Or a monkey!” Nate said.

  “It could be a slug,” Brian said.

  “EEEEWWWWW!” Nate yelled. “I’m not touching any slug!”

  “Guys, get serious,” Bradley said. He looked at the fence his father had built around the garden. “Whatever is eating the stuff climbed over that!”

  Nate stood next to the fence and held his hand up. “This fence is three feet tall,” he said. “No little animal could get over it.”

  “Something might have dug under the fence,” Lucy said. “Let’s look for holes.”

  The kids checked every inch of the ground under the fence, all around the garden.

  “Nothing crawled under,” Bradley said.

  The four kids looked at each other.

  “Well, if it can’t get over the fence,” Nate said, “and it didn’t go under the fence, it must have gone right through the fence!”

  “It’s a ghost!” Brian said.

  Bradley laughed at his brother. “I don’t think ghosts eat strawberries. But Lucy’s right. We have to catch whatever it is,” he said. “Otherwise Dad won’t have a garden, let alone strawberries.”

  3

  Lucy’s Great Idea

  “How do we catch something we can’t see?” Nate asked.

  Bradley thought about what he’d been reading in the encyclopedia about jungles. He remembered a section that showed people catching animals.

  “I have some ideas,” he said. “But first, let’s finish weeding the garden.”

  “If I see one thing with legs and a mouth, I’m out of here!” Nate said.

  “We all have legs and mouths,” Brian teased.

  Nate giggled. “You know what I mean,” he said.

  The four kids got busy. They yanked every weed they could find and threw them in the pile. Bradley removed every strawberry that had been bitten. There were some ripe red ones left, and a lot that would turn red soon.

  The kids were hot, dirty, and sweaty when they finished. The boys took off their T-shirts and hung them on the fence. Then they sprayed each other with the garden hose.

  “I just had an idea,” Lucy said. She pointed at the three T-shirts on the fence. “We could build a scarecrow and stand it in the garden. It might scare the mystery creature into staying away.”

  “How do you make a scarecrow?” asked Brian.

  “It’s easy,” Lucy said. “I helped my folks build one back home. We need wood, nails, and some old clothes to dress it in.”

  “There’s wood and nails in the barn,” Brian said.

  “I could get some of my dad’s old clothes,” Bradley said.

  “Why can’t we use our own?” Brian asked.

  “Too small,” Lucy said. “You want big, floppy shirts and pants.”

  “Cool,” Bradley said. “We’ll meet in the barn after I talk to my father.”

  The boys put their shirts back on.

  Brian, Nate, and Lucy ran into the barn. Bradley cut across the yard.

  “Dad, I need your clothes!” he yelled as he entered the kitchen.

  Bradley’s father was standing at the stove. He was humming and stirring something in a pot. The kitchen smelled like tomato sauce. Pal, the family’s basset hound, was under the table, snoring.

  “My clothes?” he asked. “You want me to cook in my underwear?”

  Bradley laughed. “Not what you’re wearing now,” he said. “Old clothes.”

  “Why do you want my old clothes?” his father asked.

  “Um, it’s a surprise!” Bradley said.

  “Well, okay. Go ask your mom. I think she’s upstairs.”

  “Thanks, Dad.” Bradley ran up the stairs. His parents’ bedroom door was closed. He knocked. “Mom? Are you awake?”

  “Come in,” his mother called.

  She was reading, but put down her book and smiled. “Why is your hair wet, Bradley?”

  “We’re weeding the garden and I got hot,” he said. Bradley told his mother about the creature that was eating the strawberries and vegetables. He left out the part about wanting to make jam for Father’s Day.
He still wanted to do it, but he wanted it to be a surprise. “We want to make a scarecrow,” he said.

  “What a good idea!” his mother said. She got up off the bed and opened the door to their big closet. “Okay, here’s a shirt I’ve been wanting to throw out for a year!” She handed Bradley an old blue flannel shirt. “And take these jeans. They have paint stains all over the knees.”

  Bradley’s mother winked. “Don’t tell Daddy,” she whispered.

  4

  Scary Scarecrow

  Bradley carried the shirt and jeans across the yard to the barn. Josh, Dink, and Ruth Rose were sweeping the floor. They had piled a lot of stuff on the workbench. Bradley noticed a tricycle he used to ride. He also saw an old basketball and a rolled-up fishing net.

  At the other end of the barn, Brian, Nate, and Lucy were looking through a pile of boards.

  “Mom let me have Dad’s old shirt and jeans,” he told the other kids.

  “They’ll be perfect,” Lucy said.

  “So what do we do?” Brian asked. “I got a hammer and nails.”

  Lucy pulled out some thin boards. “This tall one can be the body,” she said. “And these can be the arms and legs. We just nail them together.”

  “That’s supposed to scare animals away?” Nate said. “It’ll just be a big stick figure.”

  “No, it’ll look like a big human after we put the shirt and pants on and stuff it with straw,” Lucy explained.

  The kids knelt on the floor. Lucy arranged the boards. “See? Arms and legs. Who wants to hammer?” she asked.

  “I will,” Nate said.

  Brian handed Nate a nail. “Don’t hit your thumb,” he said.

  “I won’t,” Nate said. He held the nail in place, lifted the hammer, and hit his thumb.

  “Ouch!” he said.

  “Told you,” Brian said.

  “Let me try,” Bradley said, taking the hammer. “I helped my dad build a bird-house last year.”

  Soon the boards were nailed together.

  “Okay, now we dress him,” Lucy said.

  The kids tugged the shirt and jeans onto the wood frame.

  “He looks like he’s starving,” Nate said.