Writers are crafty people. Often they don’t tell you all the details. Instead, they want readers to “read between the lines” to discover a deeper meaning. This is called making an inference. The clues are there; the reader just has to put them together.

—Nancy Drew, the teenage detective, has another case on her hands and needs your team’s help. This time, it’s a race against the clock. She must solve this case in five minutes, or a thief will go free.

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—The crime: A very rare and expensive cockatiel was stolen from McTyre’s Pet Shop. The only thing that appears the least bit out of the ordinary are a few grains of sand found just inside the back door of the shop. Witness Mark Snell, a late-night jogger, says he saw a dark van in the area at about eleven o’clock at night. James Calloway, a local taxi driver, remembers seeing a light flick on and off in the shop around 9:30. Dean Sowell, the shop owner, locked up at 9pm, but returned an hour later to retrieve his cell phone, which he had forgotten. He saw nothing unusual at the time.

Hmm…so is there something fishy about their stories? You must help Nancy solve the case. Revisit the evidence and the testimony, then n