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other names on my list for team one. “Did they all go through the whole treasure hunt with you?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “When you left the Platts’, were all four of you in the car?”
    “Yes. Two in the back, two in the front.”
    “Where was Mr. Platt lying when you got to his house?”
    “On the grass. He was, like, on his stomach and the knife was sticking out of his back.”
    “Did you see his cane?”
    “Uh …”
    I waited. “Ronnie?”
    “I don’t remember.”
    “Where did you park when you got to his house?”
    “In the driveway. We all got out and ran over to him and Steve pulled the knife out. It wasn’t a real knife, you know.”
    “It was a prop.”
    “Yeah.”
    The cane had been near his right hand and the driveway was to the right of the lawn where he was lying. If you ran from the driveway to his “body,” you would almost trip over the cane. “You don’t remember seeing it.”
    “No. It could have been there. I just don’t remember it.”
    “And the other three team members definitely got in the car with you.”
    “Definitely.”
    “Thanks, Ronnie.”
    I put a check mark next to her name and wrote absent next to Rob McPhail’s name. Eddie was playing contentedly so I called the number for Missie Carter.
    She answered the phone a little breathlessly and said she remembered the visit to the Platts’ house very well.
    “Did you see the knife sticking out of his back?” I asked.
    “Oh, yes. It looked so real it was kind of creepy.”
    “What about his cane?”
    “What cane?”
    “Mr. Platt always used a cane.”
    “But he was lying down.”
    “Did you see the cane anywhere near him?”
    “I’m not sure.”
    “Who pulled the knife out of Mr. Platt’s back?”
    “Steve did.” She was sure of that.
    “Did you drive back in Ronnie’s car?”
    “Sure. We all did.”
    “Have you seen Robby McPhail since Saturday?”
    “Uh, no. I don’t know if he was in school today.”
    “Thank you, Missie.”
    I called Steve Wolfson and went through much thesame questions. He wasn’t sure about the cane either but he had pulled the knife out of Mr. Platt and then they had taken off. “It’s a speed thing,” he volunteered. “You can’t wait around because another team’ll get to the finish first.”
    “So you were running all the way.”
    “Oh, yeah. We still had a couple of places to go and we’d had a problem before that, which cost us some time. We were really in a hurry.”
    “Where on the driveway did Ronnie park the car?”
    “I don’t know what you mean.”
    “Did she pull all the way up to the garage or park near the road?”
    “I don’t think she pulled all the way up. Like I said, we were racing against time.”
    That could explain why they hadn’t seen the cane. The cane was out of reach of his right hand, closer to the house. If they had approached from where his legs were, grabbed the knife and dashed back to the car, they might not even have glanced over to where the cane lay.
    I called Karen Harding, the last member of the team, and asked her the same questions and got the same answers. She just wasn’t sure about the cane but she agreed they had turned into the driveway, stopped, emptied out of the car, run across the lawn, grabbed the knife, and made their getaway.
    I knew I would have to call the other ten students who had taken part in the treasure hunt and ask them too, but first I called Mrs. Platt and asked whether she had the cane her husband had had with him on Saturday.
    “No,” she said cautiously. “Why do you ask?”
    “I just wondered where it was.”
    “Does it matter?”
    “Probably not,” I said. “It just seemed a loose end.”
    But she was sure it had not been left behind when her husband’s body was taken away. I then called Jack.
    “Before you ask,” he said, “the autopsy was this morning and I have a preliminary report, by which I mean some stuff was read to me over the phone.”
    “Good. Let’s talk about it when you