Hauntings and Heists

by Dan Poblocki

  “Mint—chocolate chip, please,” said Sylvester with his eyes wide.

  14

  THE MAGNIFICENT CASE OF THE McKENZIE COMIC

  (A ??? MYSTERY)

  “How was your trip to New York?” Rosie asked Woodrow.

  “It was fun,” he said. “But Sylvester ran into a little bit of trouble at the comic book show.”

  Sylvester cleared his throat, as if preparing to perform. “I wouldn’t say I ran into trouble…. I would say I thwarted it. My favorite comic book is called McKenzie the Magnificent. It’s about a parlor magician who also happens to have secret superpowers. The story takes place during the Great Depression. McKenzie travels around the Dust Bowl with a medicine show, impressing and entertaining the poor people, and every now and again, vanquishing an evildoer or dastardly villain.

  “Since the series started, two different people have written and drawn the books. Jerry Jones, Senior, began the series in the forties, and recently his son, Jerry Jones, Junior, took over. I like both of them equally, but the older comics are much rarer. That makes them more popular at these kinds of shows, especially if they’re signed.

  “My mom and dad gave me a little bit of extra money to pay for food while I was staying with Mr. Knox, but Woodrow’s dad insisted on treating us to everything. So I ended up with some cash to spend at the comic show on Sunday. I was excited to look for one of the older McKenzie books. I thought it would be a really cool souvenir.

  “The convention hall was enormous. Every aisle was packed with people. It was hard to even see what everyone was waiting in line for. But we did end up seeing some amazing stuff. Like the Marvel preview table and the DC giveaways. We saw tons of costumed avengers. Someone had even dressed up like Jabba the Hut!

  “Finally, I found a vendor who was selling McKenzie issues. One copy was prominently displayed. It was super old and a little bit worn out, but I looked closer and saw a signature scrawled across the cover. It read, ‘Jerry Jones, Senior. September 25, 1950.’ I checked the price and realized I could just afford it. I had to get it, even if it was beat up—the signature made it worthwhile. I asked Woodrow and his dad, and they both agreed it was totally cool.

  “But just in time, I realized that I was about to waste my money. Do you know why buying the comic would be a waste?”

  “I looked closer at the signature and realized it was a forgery. I’d never seen Jerry Jones’s autograph before, so I wasn’t sure what it was supposed to look like. But something else about it tipped me off. What was it?”

  “The fact that the autograph read ‘Jerry Jones, Senior,’ and was also dated nineteen fifty proved to me that the signature was a fake. Why?”

  “Jerry Jones, Senior, would not have signed his name as ‘Senior’ back then because he wouldn’t have had to distinguish himself from his son, who hadn’t even been born yet.

  “All of a sudden, the situation just seemed really sketchy, so I put the comic book back and returned my parents’ money to my pocket.

  “I left the comic book show empty-handed, but I still had a great time. I know that one day I’ll be able to find a real signed copy of McKenzie the Magnificent, and it will be totally awesome.”

  “Wow,” said Viola. “You should have reported the vendor for trying to sell you fake merchandise.”

  “Yeah, I thought about it,” Sylvester replied. “But I don’t know for sure if the guy who was trying to sell the book even knew it was junk. He might have been just as clueless as I’d been when I took out my money.”

  “Hmm,” said Rosie. “You never know when people might be trying to trick you. Someone in my own family tried to put one over on me just last night!”

  15

  THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING ASPARAGUS

  (A ??? MYSTERY)

  “Sunday dinners are a big deal at my house,” Rosie continued. “It’s the only time of the week that my parents make all my brothers and sisters and me sit down at the table for a meal together. Everyone has a job to do, whether it’s grocery shopping, or cooking, or setting the table, or doing the dishes. We usually switch off each chore.

  “Yesterday, Greg and Keira did the shopping. My mom gave them a list and they went to the store in the afternoon. Mom and Stephen did most of the cooking, even though I helped chop the onions because I like to see how long I can last before the fumes make me start to cry. At the last minute, Dad came in from his office and set the table. After dinner, Grace and I planned on cleaning up.

  “We sat down, ready to eat my mom’s famous meat loaf when she shouted out, ‘Wait! We’re missing a dish! Where’s the roasted asparagus?’ Looking confused, my father said, ‘I set the table, but I didn’t see any asparagus dish.’

  “I rushed to the kitchen to grab the extra plate, but the counter was empty. I called back to the dining room to let everyone know there was nothing else to serve. I started to wonder if we might have our own mystery on our hands.

  “'I’m sure we put the asparagus on the ceramic blue serving tray,’ Mom said. Stephen agreed.

  “I decided to stay in the kitchen to look for clues. First, I checked the oven, to see if the veggies were still in there. When I opened the door, a waft of warm air blew against my face, but the oven was empty. It had been on, but that didn’t prove anything, because the meat loaf had been baked.

  “Next, I checked the refrigerator to make sure someone hadn’t accidentally put the tray in there to chill. But the asparagus were nowhere to be found. In the dishwasher, I noticed my mother’s ceramic blue serving tray, rinsed clean and tucked away at the rear. If the tray was now clean, I suddenly had a hunch where I’d find the asparagus.

  “Where do you think I looked next?”

  “I checked the garbage can. When I lifted the lid, I found a pile of steaming greens, freshly seasoned and looking completely unappetizing. I called to my mom, and when she came and saw the bin, she screamed.

  “Mom went back into the dining room and claimed that one of my brothers or sisters must have sabotaged the dish because they never like to eat their vegetables. She went around the table asking each of us why we would do such a thing, but no one took responsibility. She said that if the guilty party didn’t fess up, she wouldn’t serve us dessert ever again. A most extreme threat, but still, no one said a word.

  “My mother sat back down, shaken up by our betrayal. My dad, who hates any sort of drama, spoke up. He said, ‘It’s a real shame that someone would think to do such a thing, since the asparagus sauce looked so delicious and your mother worked so hard.’

  I looked around the table, trying to see if I could figure out which of my siblings had done it simply by reading their expressions. But they all looked the same: annoyed.

  “I glanced around the table one last time, and slowly, the answer came to me. I knew the culprit. Do you?”

  “Trying not to sound sheepish, I spoke up. ‘Dad, if you thought the sauce looked so delicious, then why did you toss the asparagus in the garbage?’ His mouth dropped open, along with everyone else’s. I didn’t mean to sound disrespectful, but the way my dad looked at me proved to me that I was right. How had I known?”

  “Dad had first claimed that he hadn’t seen any asparagus dish when he was setting the table. Then, after my mom had finished scolding us, he added that it was a shame someone had tossed it, since the sauce looked so good. He wasn’t around when Mom was cooking dinner, and he hadn’t gotten up from the table to look in the garbage. Therefore, he never should have seen the sauce … unless he was the one who had dumped it out to begin with. Confronted, he had to admit what he’d done. His excuse? He hates asparagus.

  “My mother was furious with him, but my siblings were even angrier that he tried to blame us. He knew he would have to do some serious damage control if he were to escape the dining room alive. So he announced that after dinner, he’d drive us all out to the ice cream parlor at the mini-golf course for hot fudge sundaes. Also, he promised to eat all his vegetables next time, or at least let us kn
ow if he didn’t feel like it. It was funny to realize that my parents aren’t perfect.

  “When we got back home from the golf course, my brothers and sisters all congratulated me for catching him in the act. So many times, I feel like I’m invisible in that house. It felt good to actually be recognized. My oldest sister, Grace, even let me brush my teeth first before bed.”

  16

  THE BEAST IN THE RIVER

  (A ?? MYSTERY)

  A few weeks into September, the summer warmth returned. One Saturday morning, from her bedroom window, Viola watched a number of boaters reveling on the river. The buzzing of the engines sounded like cicadas. It made her think of another sound. She hadn’t heard the tapping from the basement in a while and wondered if it had stopped for good.

  When she went downstairs for breakfast, her mother was sitting at the table, writing in a notebook and drinking from a steaming coffee mug. Noticing her daughter, Mrs. Hart lit up. “Honey,” she said, “I’ve got some exciting news.”

  Moments later, after quick phone calls to the others, Viola met Rosie, Sylvester, and Woodrow outside. Before any of them could ask her what this was all about, Viola blurted out, “There’s a beast in the river.”

  “A beast?” said Sylvester, wearing an expression of horror.

  “What kind of beast?” Rosie asked, looking more skeptical than frightened.

  “A huge serpent,” said Viola, with a dramatic flourish of her arms. “Mom said that people have been calling in sightings to the newspaper for decades. Some say it’s long and green with flaming red eyes, and it twists its body as it hunts along the shore. Others claim that they’ve seen it farther out in the middle of the river, poking its narrow head just above the waves, spewing water from its nostrils. And one person says the thing knocked up against his boat, nearly capsizing it. This year is the fortieth anniversary of the first sighting.”

  “I’ve heard about this before,” said Woodrow. “My mom gets all kinds of monster-sighting calls at the park service in the mountains. It’s pretty common. The monster always turns out to be an upturned tree root or a rock or something completely normal.”

  “Well,” said Viola, “my mom told me that the Herald is holding a contest for the anniversary. They made the announcement in this morning’s paper. Whoever can provide the best photographic proof that this beast actually exists will get a cash prize — and they’ll also be allowed to name the creature! The Herald plans on printing the picture of the winner and the beast side by side, right on the front page.”

  “We have to win!” said Sylvester. “This is what we do!”

  “Does anyone have a camera?” asked Rosie.

  Woodrow nodded. “My dad got me a great one for my birthday last year. It has a megazoom lens.”

  “Cool,” said Viola. “What are you guys doing this afternoon?”

  After lunch, the group followed the road down the hill, past the train tracks, and to the edge of the Hudson River, armed with Woodrow’s camera and Viola’s notebook. Rosie had brought several empty glass vials with cork stoppers in case she needed to collect water specimens. And Sylvester carried a leftover loaf of bread from his family’s diner for bait.

  They spent the day watching the waves and complaining to one another how unfair it was that they didn’t have a boat. Rosie reasoned that all of the activity in the water would frighten any animal away—especially an ultra-secretive, mysterious beast-type thing. Still, Sylvester continued to break off pieces of bread and toss them toward the shoals at the water’s edge, while Woodrow sat with his camera, ever-ready, snapping pictures of everything that moved. Most of the shots turned out to be of garbage floating by in the current—paper cups, a soda can, a bag of chips—all blown off the boats by the wind.

  By the time the sun began to set, their disappointment had grown. Before they said good-bye for the night, Viola reminded them that they still had another day before returning to school. But Sunday went even quicker than Saturday, and they were just as unsuccessful.

  On Monday after school, Viola learned from her mom that the newspaper had awarded someone the prize. Dr. Helmut Blunt, a professor of biology and a colleague of her father’s at Moon Hollow College, was fishing off the Grand Street Dock when he hooked what he thought was a large pike. The fish was so heavy, the old man claimed, that his reel had bent at a sharp angle. He struggled for a short time, when suddenly the line broke and he flew backward, landing next to his gear. He heard splashing sounds under the dock, and when he peeked over the edge, he saw something he’d never imagined seeing. Aware of the contest, he’d brought his camera, so he quickly snapped several pictures. When Mrs. Hart showed them to Viola, she gasped in horror.

  “Whoa,” said Rosie, passing the paper to Woodrow. “That is a really bizarre-looking creature. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “He’s so ugly!” Woodrow said, squinting at the grainy image. In the photograph, a reptilian snout with a gaping mouth came up out of the water toward the camera, its teeth filled with the flesh of its stolen prey, its wide eyes seeming to glow.

  “Who?” answered Sylvester. “Dr. Blunt or the beast?”

  “Don’t be mean,” said Viola, taking back her copy of the newspaper. “The man won fair and square.”

  Several days had passed since the Question Marks had learned that they’d lost the contest. That morning, the Herald released Dr. Blunt’s photo as well as the name he had invented for the creature: The Hudson River Oftrem Snake. After school, they’d met behind their houses once again, this time not as detectives, but merely as friends.

  “What kind of name is that?” said Sylvester.** “I would have called him Moonie the Monster or something that actually makes sense.”

  “Moonie the Monster makes sense?” Woodrow teased.

  “In the article,” Rosie interrupted, “Dr. Blunt explains that he developed the name from the genus and species names of some river snakes.”

  “Is the word oftrem Latin?” Viola asked.

  “Not that I could find,” said Rosie. “I searched for it on the Internet. In fact, I don’t even think the word oftrem exists. I’m pretty sure he made it up.” She paused, reaching for the newspaper once again. Glancing at it, she said, “Hmm, I wonder if that means he made up the photo too.”

  “But it looks so real,” said Woodrow.

  “Maybe we just want it to look real,” Viola suggested. “It’s exciting to believe in the beast, isn’t it?”

  “There was a famous picture of the Loch Ness Monster that looked real too,” Sylvester said, “but that one was a bunch of baloney. The guy who shot it said so…. Well, eventually.”

  “If there’s one thing we’ve learned as a mystery club,” said Viola, “it’s that we can’t go around accusing people of stuff they didn’t do. We need proof that Dr. Blunt made it up.”

  “But how?” said Rosie. “Isn’t the fact that he invented a nonsense name enough?”

  “Not really,” said Woodrow, thinking. “But maybe we’re wrong about the name. Maybe it isn’t nonsense.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Viola.

  “Maybe he chose those words for a reason.”

  “Like what?” said Sylvester. “You think he was trying to tell everyone something? Like by code?”

  “Not by code,” said Woodrow. “But something like it.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Rosie.

  “I think maybe Dr. Blunt’s name for the beast is an anagram,” said Woodrow.

  “What’s an anagram?” asked Sylvester.

  “We learned the term in class last year,” said Rosie. “Remember? An anagram is a word or words whose letters can be moved around to make other words.”

  “Like a puzzle,” Woodrow said, nodding.

  “I think you guys could be right,” said Viola, opening her notebook. “Brilliant.” She tore out several sheets of paper and handed them to the others. “If we’re going to figure this out, we’d better get started now. There are a lot of letters her
e. And this might be the only way to prove that Dr. Blunt is up to something.”

  A long while later, the group was frustrated.

  “I can’t make sense of this,” said Rosie, finally. “The Hudson River Oftrem Snake has too many letters!”

  “Hold on,” Woodrow answered. “You’re right, Rosie. There are too many letters. But what if we don’t use all of them?”

  “Isn’t the point to use all of the letters?” Sylvester asked.

  “Try using Oftrem Snake,” said Woodrow. After a few minutes, he gasped. “It worked! I got it. Did you?”

  Viola gasped too. “If you rearrange the letters of Oftrem Snake, it becomes Monster Fake!” she said.

  “Wow,” said Sylvester. “The Hudson River Monster Fake. Or Fake Monster. That’s actually kind of cool.”

  “I can’t believe someone would do this to us,” said Rosie, her mouth agape. “To the town.”

  “I can,” Viola said, crossing her arms. “Now the question is: What are we going to do about it?”

  “I don’t think we should go to the paper,” said Woodrow. “Dr. Blunt works with your father, right, Viola? We don’t want to cause any trouble.”

  “Oh, I want to cause trouble,” she said softly. “Or at least find out what the doctor was thinking.”

  “We could send him a letter,” Rosie suggested. “Tell him we figured out his trick.”

  “That sounds like a good plan,” said Viola.

  They decided Woodrow should write it, since he was the one who had decoded the anagram first. After looking up Dr. Blunt’s address online, he dropped the letter in the mail. Then, they waited.

  A few days later, Woodrow slipped notes into each of his friends’ lockers, asking them to meet him at lunch. He had something to tell them.