“And it was not the men in the orange jackets!”

François gave us the information as the rest of us listened in stunned silence. At length the hamster spoke up. “If it wasn’t them,” he began, “then who was it?” We were in Paris investigating the recent theft of the crown jewels from the Louvre, and we had thought we had narrowed the suspects down to the men in orange jackets. We hadn’t actually seen them this trip, but we had reason to believe they were in the area. “Who else would try to steal jewels from a famous museum in broad daylight and think they wouldn’t get caught?” Panda asked, incredulous. ‘Use your little gray cells, mon ami,” François replied. “Someone else must have had the same idea, for the suspects have been arrested.” Just then his cell phone went off. “C’est Adele!” he said, putting her on speaker. “We have found another clue,” Adele was saying breathlessly. “Where are you? We will tell you all about it when we get there.”

It wasn’t long before Jacques and Adele arrived at the cafe. We moved over to make room for them at the table. They were still out of breath from running so fast. “One of our informants gave us some important evidence,” Jacques began after they had rested for a minute. Panda and I looked at François curiously. “Wait, your informants have informants?” Panda asked. Our friend answered in the affirmative. “Oui, mes amis,” he said. “One can never have too much information. We have a large intelligence network here in Paris.”

“Little Alexandre was underneath a chair at an outdoor cafe,” Adele explained, “when he thought he stepped on something. When he looked down, he noticed that it was a pile of jewels! Then he heard some men talking at one of the tables.”

Adele continued her story, telling us that Alexandre had jumped up on the chair and listened, trying to be inconspicuous. He gasped when he saw the men in orange jackets! “Where did you put the rest of the jewels?” asked one of them gruffly. The other one looked nervous. “I think I dropped them at the orange cafe,” was his reply. “But when I went back for them, they were gone.”

Alexandre could tell that the first man was not happy to hear this. “You should have been more careful,” he was saying. “Let’s just hope whoever found them doesn’t figure out that we are the real jewel thieves.” Not wanting to stay much longer for fear of being discovered, Alexandre scooped up the jewels and hurried to tell Adele and Jacques.

After a brief discussion we decided to pick up Alexandre and go back to Louvre. We all jumped on the bus and started toward the museum. We knew the penguins had picked up the jewels at the orange cafe, and now we had the ones Alexandre had found, too. Hopefully our police officer friends would still be on duty.

When we got to the museum, we split up to search for the officers. Panda and I decided to look at some more paintings while we were at it. Imagine our surprise when we came across a familiar looking drawing! “Hey, that’s us!” Panda exclaimed.

It was the picture that the nice artist lady had drawn of us in front of the “Winter” statue the last time we’d been there! “Wow!” I replied. “She said it was a masterpiece, but who knew it would be displayed right here at the Louvre?” Panda looked at me, as if an idea had just occurred to him. “You know what this means,” he began. “If the men in orange jackets see that, they’ll know we’re here.”

We wandered through the hallways looking at the other paintings, and soon we found our friends from the police station. They listened intently as we told them how the penguins and Alexandre had found the missing jewels, and how Alexandre had overheard the men in orange jackets talking at the cafe.

“Good work, François,” one of them said. “The chief of police knew what he was doing when he hired you as an undercover agent.” François accepted the compliment gracefully, and just then the head penguin arrived with Alexandre and the jewels. The officers were glad to see that all the jewels were accounted for.

“Thanks, guys!” they said, gathering up the jewels. “We’ll take these to the station right now. Meanwhile, we’ll call you a taxi so you can follow us there and make a police report.”

After we filled out the police report, Jacques and Adele invited us to their house for dinner. “The little boy of our owners has a newspaper route,” Jacques told us when we got there, “and the evening papers have just arrived. Adele can read English, and she says the front-page story is about you!” We stared at the papers in amazement. We’d been in the newspapers before, like the time Panda won the gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics, and but this was the first time we’d seen so many copies with us on the front page.

When we got back to our hotel, we were able to read the entire article online. As we read through the story, we were happy to learn that the men in orange jackets had been arrested that afternoon at the outdoor cafe for the Louvre jewel heist. It turned out that the suspects who had been arrested previously were not involved after all and had been released. “It’s a good thing Alexandre was so observant and heard them admit to taking the jewels,” Panda remarked. “He’s the one who really solved the case.” I agreed. “Alexandre is pretty spunky for being so small,” I said. “Mom would like him.” Suddenly we looked at each other, our eyes wide. “Mom!” we exclaimed in unison. Then Panda said, “She’s probably wondering where we are right now. We’d better head home!”

“Actually,” I commented as our travel tunnel sailed over the Louvre on the way back to Fresno, “if she’s looking at the news on her phone, she knows right where we are.” Panda thought for a moment. “She’s more likely to be working on her blog,” he said, “or drawing pictures.”

When we came in for a landing in front of our house, it didn’t look like Mom was home. We put our travel tunnel in the garage and went inside.

“Maybe she went to the thrift store,” I mused, as I jumped up onto the table to see if she had left any cat treats out by mistake. It was then that I noticed her sketch book, open to a drawing I had never seen before. Or had I?

“Umm, Panda,” I said, “you’d better come look at this!”

Author’s Note: The background pictures in this story, as well as the photos of François, Adele, Jacques, and Alexandre, are from Unsplash.com, a royalty-free photo site. Mom really did draw the picture, although she claims she was never in Paris.