Benji and the Missing Trophy

The display case outside the principal’s office had held five trophies for eleven years.

They were not large trophies. Cliffside Primary was not a large school and it did not compete for large prizes. But there was the under-twelve football cup from three years ago, and the district spelling bee runner-up from last year, and the one in the middle — older, the silver slightly tarnished, the base solid — that was simply labelled CLIFFSIDE PRIMARY SPORTS DAY: OVERALL EXCELLENCE, and had been there since before most of the current students were born.

On the first Monday of January, when the new term began, there were four trophies.

Benji was at the case at seven-fifteen, before the office opened.

“One of them is gone,” Nadine said.

She had arrived early because she was helping Miss Henry with the returning books and she had passed the case and counted on instinct. Four. She had gone back and counted again. Four.

Benji was sitting in front of the case.

“Which one?” Omar said, when he arrived. He leaned close. The gap was on the left side. “There was one there. Small. Silver.”

“The district maths challenge trophy,” Nadine said. “From six years ago. There was a photo of the team in the hallway — I remember seeing the same trophy in the photo.”

“Small and not recent,” Clevie said. “Someone thought it wouldn’t be noticed quickly.”

“They were almost right,” Omar said. “It’s the first day back. Miss Henry hasn’t done her opening checks yet. We’re the first people to notice.”

Clevie looked at Benji. “He found it over the holidays,” he said. “The building was closed over Christmas. Did anyone come in?”

“Cleaning crew,” Nadine said. “Two days before New Year. Mrs. Clarke’s sister is on the crew — I know because she borrowed Miss Gloria’s step ladder.”

The cleaning crew had access. Three members, all known to the community, all trusted. But access meant opportunity, and opportunity did not mean guilt, and Nadine said this clearly when Clevie’s eyebrow suggested he was forming a conclusion.

“We don’t make assumptions,” she said.

“I know,” Clevie said.

“We find out what actually happened.”

“I know.”

Benji stood, walked to the left end of the corridor, and sat at the door of the storage room.

The storage room held: cleaning supplies, spare furniture, boxes of old school records, and the things that had been put somewhere to be dealt with later and had not yet been dealt with. It was unlocked during cleaning visits and locked otherwise.

Omar tried the handle.

Locked.

Benji looked at the door.

Looked at them.

Looked at the door.

“Something is in there,” Nadine said.

“The trophy?” Clevie said.

“Possibly. Or something related.” She looked at Benji. “He’s not directing us to a person. He’s directing us to a place. The thing is in the place and the place will tell us something about the person.”

“That’s very logical,” Omar said.

“That’s what he does,” she said. “He finds things in places and the places are the clue.”

Miss Henry, when told there was potentially a missing trophy and something of interest in the locked storage room, produced the key in thirty seconds and stood back while she opened it herself.

The storage room had, in addition to its usual contents, a cardboard box that had not been there before the holiday. The box was not labelled. It was pushed to the back, partially behind the old school records.

In the box was the maths challenge trophy. And three other items: two small ornamental objects and a framed certificate.

Miss Henry looked at the box for a long moment.

“These are not all from this school,” she said.

She was right. The trophy was from Cliffside Primary. The other items were not.

“Someone used this storage room,” Omar said carefully, “to hold things that came from different places.”

“Things that were not theirs,” Nadine said.

Miss Henry looked at the case outside her office. Looked at the storage room. Looked at Benji.

“The cleaning crew has the key,” she said.

“Yes,” Nadine said.

“This is not a determination I’m going to make without more information,” Miss Henry said. She was a school principal, and school principals knew when something exceeded their immediate authority. “I’m calling Sergeant Peart.”

Sergeant Peart, it turned out, had been looking for that box.

The specific items — the framed certificate and the two ornamental objects — had been reported missing by two households in the extended neighbourhood over December. The pattern was small thefts from accessible locations during legitimate maintenance visits. A cleaning crew member, it emerged — not one of the regular team, a temporary worker who had been added for the holiday period — had been running a small and misguided operation: taking items from various locations and using a central storage point to collect them before moving them on.

The wrong storage point, as it turned out. The school storage room had seemed empty and safe over the holiday period.

Benji had known from the first time he went past the door on patrol.

The trophy was back in the case by afternoon.

Miss Henry wrote a small card and put it in front of the maths challenge trophy: Cliffside Primary District Maths Challenge, 2018. This trophy recognises not only the winners, but the people who notice when things go missing.

She did not explain the card to anyone.

The students who passed it each day had different theories.

Omar knew what it meant and felt that Miss Henry was, in the way of the best teachers, giving credit without announcing who it was for.

Nadine told him he was reading into it.

“Am I wrong?” he said.

She thought about it. “No,” she said.

Benji received nothing official for his contribution. He was, at the end of the school day, seen sitting in the sun on the front step of the school building, which was his version of quietly satisfied.