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ISBN 9780593093528 (paperback)
ISBN 9780593093511 (library binding)
ISBN 9780593093535 (ebook)
pid_prh_5.6.1_c0_r0
For Fionn, again and always
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One: Missing Socks
Chapter Two: Data Analysis
Chapter Three: The Brain Trust
Chapter Four: School
Chapter Five: The Simplest Explanation
Chapter Six: The Trap
Chapter Seven: Toots McGraw
Chapter Eight: Gnomes
Chapter Nine: Radishes
Chapter Ten: The Thief
Chapter Eleven: It Was You!
About the Author
CHAPTER ONE
MISSING SOCKS
It was a lovely morning in Berp. The sun had just risen, birds flew from branch to branch, and the postman was on his morning rounds . . .
. . . when suddenly, a loud howl pierced the calm of the morning.
“Noooooo!!!”
It was Awesome Possum.
“Dino! My sock! My Butch Malone sock! It’s missing!”
Plant watched from the windowsill as Dino rushed to Possum’s side. “Another one?”
“This isn’t just another one, Dino! I saved cereal box tokens for five weeks to get these socks. I’ve worn them so much that one had a giant hole in it.”
Losing socks wasn’t normally a big thing—it happened every once in a while. But recently, the problem had been getting worse. At first it had been one or two a week. Now socks were disappearing so often that they couldn’t keep count.
For Dino, it wasn’t a big deal. If one sock was missing, she just mixed and matched. It was a great opportunity to try some fresh new looks.
For Possum, it was a different story. He wasn’t the kind of possum that walked around in odd socks. He liked his socks matching, thank you very much. The good thing was that, usually, pairing matching socks wasn’t a problem.
But now the worst had happened. The one pair that was different, his favorite Butch Malone socks . . . one was missing.
Possum had seen the commercials on TV. Special, limited edition Butch Malone socks, said to be worn by the great man himself.
“This is bad, Dino. Really bad.”
“We’ll find it, Possum. It can’t have gone far.”
They checked all over their bedroom. They checked under the beds and on top of wardrobes, in closets and in drawers. But they found only what Possum already knew:
Nothing. The sock was gone.
“Something is strange here, Dino,” said Possum. “I can smell it.”
“Oh,” said Dino, slightly embarrassed. “That might be my feet. I’ve been wearing these socks for four days in a row now.”
Never mind the smell, Possum thought. This sounds like a case for:
DINO DETECTIVER AND AWESOME POSSUM, PRIVATE EYES
CHAPTER TWO
DATA ANALYSIS
Dino and Possum searched for a pattern. The socks that were missing: Were they a particular color, material, or size? When had they gone missing? Was it on a particular day of the week, or at a certain time of day? Were other people’s socks missing, too?
It turned out that socks of every type and color were missing. There were left socks and right socks, short socks and long socks. They went missing on random days of the week, and from different places throughout the house.
Possum sighed and turned to his sister. “Is it just our socks? Or does this case go bigger?”
Possum had been on the lookout for the next Big Case for a while, the case that would finally put the agency on the map. They had been working a few small-time cases recently. The mystery of Samuel Crokus’s missing homework? Easy. Who framed Trogdor for unicycle theft? That was simple, too.
But now it seemed like a case was falling right into Possum’s lap like a giant pile of dirty socks. Their socks. Gone. Stolen in the night by some fiend, some criminal. Who knew what could be happening to them? Who knew the mind of the thief? Maybe they would get a ransom note soon. Maybe they would see their socks on TV on the feet of a masked villain. Possum’s eyes lit up as he realized that this had all the trappings of a Big Case . . .
. . . But the investigation was halted by Dad’s voice booming from downstairs. “Possum! Dino! You’re going to be late for school! Come down and have some breakfast!”
Unlike Dino, Possum thought that breakfast was an unnecessary distraction. But the list of people who knew about their socks was short. Perhaps they needed to speak to witnesses . . .
Possum and Dino headed downstairs with Plant. “Dad, have you been missing any socks recently?” asked Dino.
Dad didn’t look up from his paper. “Missing socks? Sure! Socks go missing all the time; it’s no great mystery.” He chuckled and continued reading.
“But more and more socks are missing!” said Possum. “If this continues, I—”
“If this continues, you’re going to be late for school,” said Dad. “Eat your breakfast and get ready for the bus.”
Next, Dino and Possum asked Mom. No dice. Just like Dad, she didn’t want to talk about missing socks, either. “They must be somewhere, Dino. Socks don’t grow legs and walk off. You need to be more careful with your things. Now get yourselves ready for school!”
“But, Mom, we’re on a Big Case! This is a serious investi—”
“Well, you can take your Serious Investigation to SCHOOL!”
The only other person who might know something about their socks was Grandma Thunderclaps, but she had just left for a knitting conference that morning.
With no other witnesses to speak to, Dino and Possum trudged out the door as the school bus pulled up.
“No one is taking this problem seriously, Dino,” said Possum. “You know what that means?”
“That they are all in on it, and trying to throw us off the scent?”
“What? No! It means that we’re on our own. But what do we do? We have no clues, no witnesses, no leads.”
“We need more information,” sighed Dino. “I’ll talk to kids at school, find out just how big this laundry load is. Someone out there must know something. What about you?”
“Me?” said Possum. “I’m going to the Brain Trust.”
Dino rolled her eyes as she headed to the back seat of the bus.
CHAPTER THREE
THE BRAIN TRUST
The Brain Trust. A crack team of (amateur) private investigators. Possum looked around at the other members of the group
: Roland and Olivia. Every day they met up at HQ (the monkey bars) to swap notes and talk about their lives as (amateur) private detectives.
Everyone had their own cases they were working. Olivia had just wrapped up a big Halloween candy bust.
Roland was just finishing up his presentation on the McCluskey case. “. . . So it turns out that the team of international pasta assassins really was in his head the whole time. It was just his brother eating his dinner!”
“What about you, Possum? You still waiting for that Big Case?” asked Olivia.
Possum’s turn. “Anyone notice anything unusual about their socks?”
Roland and Olivia both looked down at their feet, then blankly at Possum.
“You still got all your socks?” asked Possum.
“Where would our socks have gone?” asked Roland.
“I don’t know, Roland. That’s the point. But are you missing any?”
“Well, of course. Everyone’s missing socks,” said Roland.
“Everyone is missing socks?” The problem was bigger than Possum had first thought. “How many socks have you lost?”
“Oh, I don’t really keep track,” Roland replied.
“Because you’ve lost so many?”
“What? No. It only happens sometimes. I could count on the toes of one hoof the number of socks I’m missing.”
But Possum wasn’t going to give up so easily. “Don’t you think that’s strange? That socks go missing and there has been no investigation? No police reports? No sock hunt?”
“Well, it’s not that strange. Happens all the time, so I suppose people just get used to it. No one cares why. Socks just vanish.”
So it’s a mystery, thought Possum. A mystery that their agency could solve. But he needed some leads. “You got any ideas about where the socks go?”
“Butch Malone always says that usually the simplest explanation is the most likely,” said Olivia. “It’s a part of his code. This one time, he was investigating a case where a guy thought that his wallet had been stolen by his brother’s butler’s friend’s nephew’s old teacher, who stole it to grow his French wallet collection that had been left to him by his old aunt. Turned out he had left it in his car.”
“Socks just get blown off the clothesline,” said Roland. “Simple.”
“What about people who put their socks in the dryer?” asked Possum.
“Sucked into the pipes.”
There was a pause. Possum had to admit that Olivia and Roland made a lot of sense, but it didn’t explain why he and Dino were missing so many of their socks. If it was something that happened during washing, why wouldn’t Mom’s and Dad’s socks be missing, too?
Possum needed more information.
CHAPTER FOUR
SCHOOL
Dino loved school, but today, it was hard to focus. Everywhere she looked brought her mind back to the Big Case.
Math.
English.
Even science.
Dino had to find out just how big this crime wave was: Were they really the only ones being targeted? She considered setting up a shuttered office, a spotlight, and a lie detector, but thought that might send the wrong message.
Better to keep things light.
No one was missing any more socks than usual, but everyone had the odd sock vanish from time to time. And they all had a theory of what had happened to them.
Like Roland, most people thought that socks either blew off the clothesline or were eaten every now and then by the washing machine or the dryer (usually the dryer). No one could explain how or why a machine would eat a piece of clothing, but people seemed to believe it, anyway.
There were lots of other ideas.
Despite what Dino’s mother had told her, Staunton was sure that socks actually DO grow legs and walk off.
Clifford thought they were beamed up by aliens.
Melanie thought that socks actually were aliens, and that every now and then they had to return home.
Toots McGraw muttered something about gnomes, the Maxford twins thought that mice stole them to make sleeping bags, and Harold thought that Bigfoot used them to make fingers for his gloves.
Beatrice argued that Bigfoot didn’t even wear gloves. Giant centipedes, on the other hand . . .
And on it went . . .
CHAPTER FIVE
THE SIMPLEST EXPLANATION
When Possum and Dino got home, they talked about what they had discovered during school. They had found more questions than answers.
Why were only their socks missing more than usual? Was there something special about them? Did they have some kind of magical property that allowed them to fly through windows? Perhaps they were fitted with a homing device that, when activated, sent them flying to some faraway land.
They made a list of the different theories Dino had heard at recess. Did any seem more likely than the others? Was there a pattern?
“I don’t know, Dino. There are a lot of ideas here, and some of them are pretty crazy. The Loch Ness monster’s uncle using them as sleeping bags for his pet fish?” Possum remembered what Olivia had said earlier. “Butch Malone always says that the simplest explanation is most likely the right one. These ideas all sound pretty far-fetched.”
Dino’s eyes darted from one idea to the next.
Aliens. Sasquatch. Mice.
“It seems most likely that it’s some kind of thief. That’s a pretty simple explanation,” Dino replied.
“Okay, but how does that help us? Even if it is a thief, which thief is it? What’s their motive? We still don’t know why they are taking our socks and not anyone else’s.”
Dino thought back to an old Butch Malone episode.
A cereal thief is on the loose in the Big City. People coming down to breakfast discover that their Sugar Pops, Coco Crumbles, and Corn Crackers are all gone, and nobody can catch the culprit.
“That’s it!” said Dino.
“That’s what?”
“We set a trap, and we catch them in the act. Rather than look for the thief, we let the thief come to us.”
CHAPTER SIX
THE TRAP
As the sun set, a hush fell over the house, and the hums of day were replaced by the squawks of night. Possum and Dino looked over at the giant pile in the yard. It held all of their remaining socks. Socks of every color, pattern, and size.
Dino shuffled nervously from foot to foot. “Possum, I think I’m getting cold feet.”
Possum looked down. “You should have saved a pair, Dino. We could be out here for a while.”
“No, I mean cold feet. I’m not sure this is a good idea.”
“This was your idea, Dino! We can’t back out now.”
“It was my idea to trap the thief. I didn’t say anything about risking every sock we own in the process! What if we lose them all? I can’t wear sandals in December!”
“It’s a risk we have to take. A big sock pile like that? We’ll have every sock thief from here to the Big City sniffing around.”
Dino didn’t like it, but Possum was right. This was the best chance they had at catching the thief.
Just as they had practiced, they recited their lines.
“Oh, I’m so tired,” called Possum loudly to the night. “I have to go to bed immediately. Too bad we have to leave this giant pile of SOCKS out in the open. But never mind.”
“What a shame! We’ll have to go inside and leave all these SOCKS ALL ALONE for a whole night!” shouted Dino.
“Quite,” Possum replied.
“Indeed,” Dino said.
Dino and Possum stomped loudly toward the back door of the house . . .
. . . then dived into the nearest bush to watch and wait.
The night was long, cold, and horribly lacking in snacks. Possum’s eyelids grew heavy as Dino fought
the loud rumbling of her stomach, which she worried would give them away.
Time ticked on as tired eyes watched over moonlit socks.
Watching.
And waiting.
Dino bit her lip. “So, uh, Possum . . . what’s the plan when the thief actually shows up?”
“We get a picture of them during the act. We take the photo to the police, who lock them up. We’ll have cracked the Big Case, so we’ll get our names in every detective paper in town. That’s the way it works in Butch Malone.”
“Can’t we just grab ’em? That would be a lot simpler.”
“No, Dino! We need evidence!”
“But why do you have that old thing? I thought you want us to be taken seriously.” She pointed at the camera in Possum’s hands.
“To get the photo, of course.” Finding a good camera had been a problem, and these were desperate times.
A rustle came from the bushes.
Dino and Possum watched as a fuzzy figure appeared, tiptoeing through the shadows. It barely made a sound as it moved from bush to bush. Possum was ready. Ready to take the photo that would crack this case wide open and send the (amateur) agency toward professional detective glory!
The figure paused in the darkness.
As it approached the socks, Possum held up the camera, and Dino prepared to spring.
The thief stepped into the moonlight.
“Stop right there!” shouted Possum.
Dino jumped into the yard, but quickly stopped dead in her tracks.
“Toots?” asked Dino. “What are you doing here?”
The Case of the Missing Socks Page 1
