ANSWER:

Dear Detective,

Did you figure out whodunit? Or, more precisely, who did what…

The way Sammy figures it, there are two culprits here. Shy, quiet Ryan Gillot was responsible for William Rose Jr. High’s most creative campaign in years. But another candidate thought his campaign was a little bit too clever—and decided to sabotage the competition. The school vandal—the serial sock flusher—was Jessica St. James.

Here’s how Sammy puzzled it out: The anonymous campaign is so different from the others—there must be a fourth candidate out there who hasn’t registered with Coach Vince yet. The Coach tells Officer Borsch that Ryan has been in his room three times that week, but he couldn’t even imagine that Ryan might run for president, so he assumed Ryan was lost. Pretty discouraging for Ryan—no wonder he’s been running anonymously.

But Sammy doesn’t peg Ryan as the vandal. Why would he undermine his own campaign? And Ryan’s lipstick messages appeared on Friday morning. Why would he wait until Friday afternoon to cause a flood when he’d be so much more likely to be caught?

Sammy then notices that Jessica makes several key slips in her interview with Officer Borsch. Jessica claims that she was in the library during fifth period. When Officer Borsch mentions that Tenille saw her in the girl’s room way over by the cafeteria, she explains that she needed to get something from her locker. But we know from Dan’s interview that Jessica’s locker is right across from the library. So…what was Jessica really doing in that area of school?

Also, Sammy was alert to the girl who seemed to know too much. Jessica was able to describe the scene of destruction in the bathroom a little too well. She said that all the toilets were clogged, all the sinks overflowing, and that socks on the floor spelled out “sock it to me.” But when anyone else described the scene they saw a jumble of soggy socks floating around. So, either Jessica arrived on the scene before the water washed away this sock message, or it was Jessica herself who left the message. Sammy is pretty sure it’s the latter since Jessica also said that there was water everywhere. If there was water everywhere, would Jessica really have stuck around long enough to see that each toilet was clogged?

One final thought convinces Sammy that Jessica must be the sneaky sock stuffer: Jessica said she was upset by finding the bathroom awash and that, hoping to be of help, she ran to find the custodian. But if Jessica had really wanted to help stop the flooding, she would have done one simple thing—turn off the taps.

So, frustrated by another candidate getting more attention than her, and seeing that an exciting campaign stunt could turn into a bad scene when the balloon blast triggered a fire alarm, Jessica awaited her chance to make the anonymous candidate’s next message turn grim. And all day long, people kept singing, “sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me”

So, how did you do? Did you catch all the clues Sammy did? You’ll have a chance to match wits with Sammy again in her latest scrape: Sammy Keyes and the Dead Giveaway. Happy sleuthing!