The Red Coat - Sophie Collins Mystery, #1

Sophie Collins is not just another sappy, teenage sleuth. Raw and gutsy, this street-wise, self-determined gal depends on no one. Left to her own devices at fourteen when her mother disappears and believing she has no family, she tries to make things work. But her math teacher, nosey old lady Crabtree, at her school, turns Sophie's life upside down when she reports her to Family Services. Escaping the foster home in Trenton, Sophie takes out on her own, and slowly makes her way to her mother's hometown of Tuck Point Falls, Minnesota.
After months on the road, Sophie finally arrives in Tuck Point Falls where she is befriended by old man Johnson of Johnson's Department Store when she sets up house in a discarded, cardboard refrigerator box behind his store. Sophie finds a red coat in Johnson's dumpster and soon finds herself drawn into a murder investigation. Can she solve the murder and the mystery of her past before it's too late?