Smashie McPerter and the Mystery of the Missing Goop

by N. Griffin

  Smashie’s jaw hung open. Ms. Early must be being tactful. But as she looked around the class, no one looked shocked. Or mean. Or any of the ways she had worried about this morning coming to school with Stott-cut hair.

  She turned to Dontel.

  He raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “It doesn’t look that different.”

  “What?” Smashie squawked. “You guys,” she addressed Room 11, “don’t you see how my hair is? I got one of Mrs. Stott’s haircuts! I look nuts!”

  “Hey!” said Charlene.

  “No more nuts than that time you cut your own bangs when we were in preschool,” said Dontel.

  Smashie felt betrayed.

  “Dontel!”

  “Calm down, everyone,” said Ms. Early. “Smashie, I am sorry we didn’t notice your hairdo.” She hesitated. “But under the circumstances, I think that is a positive thing.”

  “It looks great!” said Charlene. “See, you guys? I told you my mom can cut hair!”

  “Well, Smashie’s hair is always pretty messy,” said Siggie.

  “Hey!” Now Smashie’s feelings were the ones that were hurt. “I comb it every day! I just have sticky-outy hair!”

  “Siggie Higgins,” said Ms. Early, “we do not make personal comments about others.”

  “Siggie does,” Smashie muttered.

  “Smashie,” said Ms. Early.

  “Sorry,” said Smashie.

  “Smashie, my mom said she gave you a jar of goop to bring to school. Do you have it?” asked Charlene.

  “Yes, I do,” said Smashie. And she passed the little bag over to Charlene.

  “Yay!” cried Room 11.

  “That brings us back up to two jars!”

  “Will that be enough, Charlene?” asked Ms. Early.

  “I’ll have to use it very sparingly. And it might not last. But we might just squeak by.”

  “Ms. Early, can Charlene help Smashie style her hair now?” asked Dontel. “I know we don’t want to waste any goop, but Smashie has . . . a complicated head of hair. And after all, we are talking about what we are wearing for the musicale.”

  “All right.” Ms. Early gave her permission. Dontel and Smashie exchanged looks.

  “Great!” said Charlene, and the two girls went to the back of the classroom. Smashie’s heart pounded. Alone with one of the perps!

  “I’ll make it look super, Smashie. Remember, it lengthens as well as molds,” Charlene promised. “Even if I have to use it sparingly.”

  Tchah! thought Smashie. We could be crawling with plenty of goop if you were honest and quit giving the jars to Carlos!

  But “Thanks” was all she said. She watched carefully to see if Charlene looked at the code, but Charlene barely glanced at the jar before she swiveled off its lid and scooped up a bit of the lovely lavender-and-lilac-scented goop and went to work.

  “Check you out!” said Charlene, giving her one of the symmetry mirrors.

  Looking in the mirror, Smashie saw that this time her hair had been turned into rippling ocean waves, perfect for the Swim dance.

  Charlene beamed. “You love it, don’t you? Our goop is the best!”

  Smashie couldn’t help but beam back. She did look terrific. And Charlene was so happy. Could anyone be that happy when they were involved in code-based intrigue?

  But she only said, “Thank you, Charlene! Your styling is as good as the goop. I’ll just stick the jar here in my backpack so we have it ready when we need it.”

  She looked hard at Charlene. But Charlene only said, “Great,” and went to the sink next to Patches’s cage to wash the goop off her hands.

  Sure enough, though, by the time lunch rolled around, the jar was gone.

  “We’re onto something,” Smashie said to Dontel. “But I’m not going to make a big fuss about the jar being missing. I don’t want anyone else investigating or for our class to be even more on edge.”

  “It’s terrible when our class is on edge,” agreed Dontel. “Fine. We’ll proceed as if nothing has happened.”

  The class filed to art for the last period of the day. Mr. Flange stood before the art supplies, his mustache hanging down in glorious ringlets over his mouth.

  “Mr. Bloom did lend him his goop after all!” whispered Dontel.

  “Did he ever,” said Smashie. “Hello, Mr. Flange. You . . . look very nice today.”

  Mr. Flange gave a nod. Between his mustache and Smashie’s hair, the air was filled with the scent of lavender and lilac.

  Mr. Flange gestured silently toward the paints and the rolls of mural paper.

  “You want us to make the signs and banners for the musicale?” Joyce said.

  Mr. Flange nodded.

  “Then we better get going.”

  The children put on the big shirts they used to protect their clothes and got to work.

  Dontel and Smashie went to cut several lengths of mural paper. They planned to paint on them the names of each of the sixties go-go dances the class was to perform, and tape the signs up on the wall of the stage behind the dancers.

  “Scissors, please,” said Smashie.

  “Smash,” said Dontel firmly, “we don’t have time for you to go to the nurse today. You are going to have to let me do the cutting.”

  Smashie opened her mouth to squawk, but then shut it. Dontel had a point.

  “Oh, fine,” she said.

  Dontel went to work.

  “Let’s make the letters in the Pony sign look like ponies!” said Smashie.

  “Great idea!” said Dontel. “We can use the horse on the front of your Investigation Notebook as inspiration.”

  Smashie fished it out. She lowered her voice. “And we can update our Suspect List again,” she said. “Should we put Mr. Bloom on and then cross him out? Just as a record of our mistake?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Dontel. “We really didn’t suspect him. And then it all turned so awful.”

  As if on cue, Joyce appeared over their shoulders. Her hair was in two braids. Now that her roller-skate wheels had been washed out, she only had her regular hair until the night of the musicale. The braids did a lot to hide the terrible haircut.

  “Did you give Mr. Bloom the apology brownies yet?” Joyce demanded.

  “No!” said Smashie. “He’s still at his conference!”

  “Oh,” said Joyce. “Well, don’t forget to do it when he comes back. The kids are only forgiving you because you said about the brownies.”

  “Jeepers,” said Dontel. “It’s a lot harder to get forgiven in our class lately.”

  Joyce sighed. “We’ve been through a lot,” she said. “I mean, the whole Patches thing . . .” She shook her head. “I’ll remind the kids how you helped with that.” Her face grew a bit hard. “Even if the taxing part didn’t go so well.”

  “Thanks, Joyce,” said Dontel. “We better get back to work on our signs.”

  “Me, too,” said Joyce. “I’m doing John’s ‘Come On Over to My Place’ sign, and I don’t even know what to do for it. Do I do all the food the person in the song lyrics offers? Or do I do a lot of dwellings?” She wandered back into the main section of the art room, still muttering.

  Smashie tapped her horse notebook. “I’ll sketch,” she said. “You add Charlene to the Suspect List.”

  Dontel did.

  “Her motive probably is boring old like-like,” said Smashie. “But she is shorter-tempered than usual these days, too. Is that what people are like when they write like-like notes?”

  “Well, remember that she’s pretty worried about her mom’s business getting off the ground, too,” Dontel pointed out. He looked thoughtful. “We’ll know more when we see what she has taped to the car sign. Let’s look at the Opportunity List and make sure that Charlene fits all those, just to be thorough.” And they flipped to that page in their respective notebooks.

  “Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, and yep,” said Dontel, thwapping the page. “Charlene fits them all. Plus, she has plenty of motive.”


  “She does,” agreed Smashie. Then she looked up sharply. “Dontel!” Her voice was distressed.

  “Smash? What’s wrong?”

  Smashie looked at him, horrified. “Was at the planning meeting? Access to the basketball bin? Learning about the tens and ones? WAS IN CHARLENE’S HOUSE? SMELLS LIKE THE GOOP? AND HAS A MOTIVE, TOO?” She aimed her styled head at Dontel. Her eyes were anguished. “Dontel, we can’t shy away from facts! Someone else fits those criteria!”

  “Who?” said Dontel.

  And underneath Charlene on the Suspect List, Smashie carefully wrote:

  “Smashie,” said Dontel, “you are getting carried away. Again!”

  “I am not!” Smashie made as if to tear at her hair. She encountered goop and stopped, mindful of not messing up her ocean-wave hairdo even in this terrible moment. “Don’t go easy on questioning me! I could be a hardened criminal!”

  Dontel pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head. “Smashie, you suspected yourself in the Patches investigation, too.”

  “I know! But this time is worse! I fit all those criteria and the motive, too! I’ve been very angry that I haven’t been allowed to sing a song! We thought that was Billy’s motive, but —”

  “Smashie.” Dontel’s voice was very firm. “I will ask you straight out. Did you make up that code and put them on the jars and then leave some kind of notes all over town?”

  Smashie looked at her lap.

  “No,” she said. “I guess I didn’t do that.”

  “Exactly,” said Dontel. “I didn’t think we had to put all that on the list of things that are true about the perp, but I suppose with you we —”

  “Dontel,” said Smashie, “I am sorry. You know how I get carried away.”

  “Yes,” said Dontel patiently. “I do. Now, let’s just get this day hurried up and done with so we can get over to Hulls’ Auto Body and get that note before Carlos does!”

  Signs painted, materials cleaned, bus ride taken, and permission to ride bikes secured, Smashie and Dontel were now riding pell-mell down the street to Hulls’ Auto Body. It didn’t take long at all before they saw the familiar sign hanging from the side of the building, its cheerful blue cartoon automobile with goggly eyes beaming at potential customers.

  “I’m glad it’s on the side of the building,” said Smashie, slowing her bike. “We’d be awful visible around it on the front with no adults with us as an excuse.”

  “True,” said Dontel. “Come on! We have to hustle to get to that message before Carlos comes to get it, whatever it is.”

  And they leaped from their bikes and sidled over to the sign.

  “Hey, you two!” It was Cyrus. Smashie jumped a mile. “What the heck brings you guys here?”

  Smashie’s mind went blank. She looked helplessly at Dontel.

  “Smashie here was remembering about how you were confused about that one step in the T-t-t-emptation Walk,” Dontel stuttered. “And so we biked over, hoping you might be here so she . . . so she could help you.”

  “Really?” Cyrus was pleased. “I’d like that! Let’s go around back and practice. I’ll feel dumb doing it out here in the open.”

  “Sure thing,” said Smashie, and she and Dontel exchanged meaningful looks. Dontel nodded, and Smashie headed around the back of the building to help Cyrus.

  “It’s scoop, scoop with your arms, then turn and scoop, scoop. Scoop, scoop,” directed Smashie, trying to see over Cyrus’s scooping arms to the side of the building where Dontel was, she hoped, busy with the sign.

  “Like this?” Cyrus scooped and turned.

  “Two scoops,” said Smashie. “That’s it!”

  “Scoop, scoop, turn, scoop, scoop, turn! Smashie, I think I have it!”

  “I do, too,” said Smashie warmly. She was pleased with his progress, but what was Dontel up to? Did he get the message? Was he having a clash of wills with Carlos even as she spoke?

  The answer came quickly. “Smashie.” Dontel was breathless from his run from the side of the building. “We, uh, better get home before our grandmothers think we went past our parameters.”

  “That’s too bad,” said Cyrus. “I’d really like some more help with these dances.”

  “Come over after supper,” Smashie invited him. “I can help you then. Tomorrow’s dress rehearsal, after all, and we want you to feel confident!”

  “Yes,” said Dontel, his voice full of meaning. “Like I feel right now. Very confident.”

  Smashie looked at him, her heart pounding. Dontel nodded quickly, once.

  “Great,” said Cyrus. “I’ll ask my mom. See you later!”

  “See you later!” And the two investigators hopped on their bikes and began to race home.

  They were just in time. For behind them, a black-clad child appeared in the distance, making its stealthy way toward the sign with the cheerful blue automobile with the goggly eyes.

  “Do you have it?” Smashie asked breathlessly. “I thought I’d never be done helping Cyrus with that dance!”

  “Nope,” said Dontel.

  “Nope?” cried Smashie. “Dontel! It wasn’t there?”

  “It was there, all right.” Dontel puffed as he rode. “But I couldn’t take the paper. Otherwise Charlene and Carlos would know someone was onto them. But I’ll tell you what,” he said as they turned into the Marquise driveway. “I copied down the message into my Investigation Notebook. And it is no like-like note.”

  Smashie squeaked. “What is it?”

  Dontel looked at her hard. “Intrigue,” he said. “We are up to our necks in intrigue.”

  Smashie could scarcely wait for Dontel to pour them each a glass of milk and make a plate of cheese and crackers before he showed her what he had found.

  “You two settling in for homework?” called Dontel’s grandmother from the sitting room.

  “We are working hard!” Dontel called back. “And we better,” he said more quietly to Smashie. “This message is weird. It looks even more codey than the jars.”

  And he flipped open the page in his notebook, and there was his copy of the message he had found taped to the back side of the sign. “Right behind the goggly eyes,” he said.

  “What the heck?” said Smashie. “I know what olive oil is. But what’s lav? Isn’t that short for, like, lavatory? The bathroom? Maybe this is where she makes it! Maybe the bathroom is her secret lab, and Charlene is a rocket scientist working on making the jars turbocharged! Maybe —”

  “No!” cried Dontel. “Smashie, don’t you see? It’s short for lavender!”

  “Oh!” Smashie said. “You mean it’s —”

  “Yes!” cried Dontel. “It’s the recipe for the hair goop!”

  “But Dontel, I know there are way more ingredients in the hair goop,” said Smashie. “Mrs. Stott talked about having a ton of ingredients in her kitchen. Two is not a ton.”

  “But Smashie,” said Dontel, “this is the third note! Maybe the recipe is being broken up into pieces!”

  Smashie drew in her breath. “Dontel!” she said. “This is a like-like note!”

  “What do you mean?” said Dontel.

  “Well, I don’t know what all those kooky letters and shapes with the lines mean,” said Smashie. “But I do know that if Charlene is giving the recipe for her mother’s goop to Carlos —”

  “Whoa,” said Dontel. “You mean you think she like-likes him so much that she is betraying her own mother?”

  “Yes,” said Smashie firmly. “I think she is passing along the recipe for the goop because Carlos’s dad thinks he has the right to be the one making and selling it since she invented it when she worked for him!”

  “That is pretty low-down,” said Dontel. “Do you really think Charlene is doing that?”

  “Every bit of the evidence points that way so far!” cried Smashie. “She has opportunity and motive and all those things we talked about. And from what you all say, when people like-like people, they do weird stuff.”

  “But thi
s is terrible,” said Dontel.

  “Only the Charlene part,” said Smashie. “The rest is great!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, we can decode the place where it says Carlos will receive the ‘final note’ and intercept it! And protect Charlene’s mom!”

  “And hope it brings Charlene to her senses,” said Dontel. “I mean, if you like-like someone, can’t you just write them a note to that effect?”

  “Maybe that’s what the hexagons mean.”

  “Well, look at that!” Smashie and Dontel jumped. It was Dontel’s grandma, come into the kitchen, her thumb holding her place in her John le Carré spy novel. “Are you two doing chemistry in the third grade?”

  She was peering at the note.

  “Chemistry?” asked Smashie. “What is that?”

  “It’s a branch of science that tells us what things are made of. And how those things are connected. You see a lot of those lines and hexagons when you represent the chemical structure of something.”

  Dontel looked at Smashie. Smashie looked at Dontel.

  Mrs. Marquise smiled and shook her head. “That’s probably too old for you two,” she said. “But someday you’ll study all that, if you stick with your plan to be an astrophysicist, Dontel.”

  And she left with a glass of milk and plate of crackers of her own.

  “Science,” breathed Smashie.

  “Yes!” said Dontel. “I’m more convinced than ever that this is part of the formula for the hair goop! It’s being systematically stolen, and it’s up to us to stop it!”

  “Let’s get to work on that code,” said Smashie grimly. And they turned to the CODE-FIGURING-OUT PAGE in their notebooks and wrote:

  “I’ll do the tens; you do the ones,” said Dontel. And before they could shake a stick, they had it:

  “SPUDS,” said Dontel.

  “DICED,” said Smashie.

  “Spuds diced? SPUDS DICED?” Smashie cried. “What the heck does that even mean?”

  “Let me look in my little dictionary,” said Dontel, fishing it out of his pocket. He flipped to the letter S. “‘Spud,’” he read. “‘Another word for potato.’”