This Six-Year-Old Caught Her Neighbor Burying Something in the Dark — What She Discovered Changed Everything…

Three days earlier, Mabel Webb turned six and a half, which she felt was old enough to solve a crime. She watched Detective Biscuit every single afternoon. He was a cartoon beagle with a magnifying glass and a raincoat, and he always figured things out before the grown-up characters did, which Mabel thought was extremely fair, since grown-ups never listened to anyone smaller than them.

For her birthday, Mabel's grandma had sent a real magnifying glass, not a toy one, with a wooden handle that felt important in her hand. Her older brother Jamie said it was just for looking at bugs. Mabel disagreed. A detective, she informed him, used her tools for whatever mystery came along. She did not know it yet, but a mystery was about to move in two houses over from Mr. Higgins's crooked mailbox, right on schedule, like mysteries always seemed to do in the cartoons.

Mr. Higgins lived with Mrs. Higgins, who had a wheelchair with two big wheels that went very fast down her ramp, faster than Mabel's bike some days. Mrs. Higgins liked to sit on the porch in the evenings and wave, and Mr. Higgins liked to bring her lemonade in the tall glass, the one with stripes. That was just how things were at the Higgins house, same as Mabel's house had a squeaky back door, and Jamie's room smelled like old socks.