The Case of the Vanishing Money

My career as the school detective began while I was simply teaching my normal English class. It was First Grade, and the students had just eaten lunch. They were sleepy. Scrapping my plan for a singing competition we began to draw parts of the face and color them in. While I was walking around the room adding eyelashes and trying to figure out how to draw a nose, one girl stealthily slipped out of her seat and crept up to me. We'll call her Charlene, she said nothing, but began tugging at my arm. I asked what the problem was, and she motioned me to move closer. Expecting a petition to drink water or go to the bathroom, I was a little confused by the secrecy. I bent at the waist and lowered my ears to her level, and she cupped her hand and whispered "someone stole all of my ice cream money". Then she scurried back to her seat. I had no idea what to do, so I carried on with the lesson, wondering behind which of these innocent little faces lurked the cold heart of a villain.
I already had my suspicions, a student who I'll call Ramon had been acting fishy all day. While the rest of the class could barely muster the energy to keep their heads up he had been bouncing off the walls. Every time I turned my back he was crawling on the floor to avoid detection, throwing marbles, or trying to grab colored pencils out the hands of the kids sitting behind him. This particular child is a huge discipline problem because whenever notes are sent home his mother complains that he is an angel, and that the teacher must be wrong. That kind of parental shield amounts to the children being entirely uncontrollable, since the only disciplinary measure available is a 'boleta' or note home. When home is unresponsive that is bad enough, but when a boleta can start the process of getting the teacher who writes it sent to a different district, it is a serious issue.
As the children began to emerge from their food comas we started singing 'Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes' and having competitions between the students in groups of three. First for pronunciation, then for speed. By the fifth round I was dripping with sweat. Meanwhile I had still not decided on a course of action, I had nearly decided not to act. It seemed far more probably that Charlene had simply lost the money. Then, when I was about to close the case forever a witness came forward. One of Charlene's friends (a first grader who had been held back for two years) came forward and said that Ramon had been digging through her backpack in the exact pocket where she had put the money. Now my steel-trap mind whirred into motion. The information was not trustworthy, nor was it enough to sufficiently suspect anyone, but it meant that I had to take the crime seriously. I began to formulate a plan, and so, just when the bell rang I had moved to the back of the room, and was able to slam the iron door shut with a satisfying clang.
A horde of students watched mouths agape as the delighted screams of 'Recess' were swallowed by surprise and silence. Everyone sat down again when I announced sternly that theft had been committed, and that there would be no recess until someone stepped forward and confessed. As I finished speaking I stared directly at Ramon, and he looked away quickly. Seconds ticked by as everyone sat silently, looking around for the culprit. Then, slowly, Ramon got up from his chair and shuffled forward. He whispered his guilt, I opened the gate and everyone ran to recess. His story was quite simple. He had heard Charlene talk about how she was going to buy an icecream cone from the cafeteria with her allowance, so when everyone left for the first 20 minute break, he took the money, ran to the corner store and bought all the candy the money would buy. He ate the goods on the spot, and came to back to school on quite the sugar high. That explained his greater than average excitability, and also fit with the witnesses story. It was good enough for the principal, who sentenced him to a soft reprimand and sent him off to play soccer with all the other students. There were a few holes in the story, since he claimed he had stolen 1,000 colones, and Charlene claimed she only brought 400, and I still don't know if she ever got money back.