The Very First Case

by Walker Styles

  Rider scratched his whiskers. “Actually it’s not cool, Ziggy. The Lunchtime Bandit is onto us! Everyone looks the same.”

  The lunch bell rang and students in banana costumes flooded into the cafeteria. It was almost impossible to tell them apart. In the middle of the room was a giant banana split. All the students surrounded it and held their spoons in the air.

  “One of these bananas must be the Bandit,” Rora said. “Look for anything out of the ordinary.”

  “You mean like a room full of kids in banana costumes?” asked Westie.

  “Over there!” cried Ziggy, pointing to the tallest banana costume in the crowd. “We know the Lunchtime Bandit is tall . . . tall like that banana!”

  “Good call,” said Rider. “Pup detectives, it’s time to play fetch!”

  The pups raced across the room, but the Bandit spotted them right away. He grabbed the banana split first and ran for the exit.

  “Hey, that’s our dessert!” the students shouted.

  The four pups kept up the chase and were almost to the Bandit when the panda slipped out of his banana costume and threw it at them. Rider, Rora, Westie, and Ziggy became tangled in the giant banana peel. Luckily Ziggy was on the case. He ate the costume.

  “Kid, that was not a real banana,” said Rora.

  “Yeah, but I was real hungry,” said Ziggy.

  Suddenly, a lunch lady walked in front of the pups carrying a tray of banana cream pies.

  “I need to borrow these,” Rora said. She grabbed the tray and hurled the pies at the Bandit.

  Splat! Splat! Splat!

  “Hey! You’re not hitting him at all!” Ziggy cried. “Quit wasting yummy pies!”

  Rora smiled. “Don’t worry. I have excellent aim. I’m missing him on purpose and forcing the Bandit into the gym.”

  “The gym?” wondered Westie. “Well, I suppose he’s going to need to work out after eating that entire banana split.”

  “Wrong, Westie,” said Rider. “The front door is the only way in or out of the gym! Great thinking, Rora!”

  The pups marched onto the basketball court. The Lunchtime Bandit was trapped!

  “There’s nowhere to go!” Rider shouted. “Get ready to do time for skipping the lunch line.”

  Rora added, “You found these bananas too appealing. We knew you would try to take the banana split, so we turned it into a banana splat!”

  Westie pulled out a remote control. “Oh, you’re going to go bananas over my new invention.” He pressed the red button and the banana split burst into a flurry of chocolate fudge, whipped cream, and cherry sauce.

  But the sauce explosion was bigger than Westie intended. The pup detectives were covered in ooey-gooey sweet stuff. By the time they shook off the sugary trap, the Bandit was gone.

  One gym rope dangled down from the ceiling next to an open skylight.

  “See?” Rora pointed upward. “I told you bad guys love skylights.”

  Hoodwinked

  The grown-up Rider Woofson gave a long, heavy sigh. “That was our first case as a team.”

  The reporter was scribbling down notes frantically. “What about the Lunchtime Bandit?”

  “We didn’t get him,” said Rider. “But that unsolved case brought us together as the P.I. Pack.”

  “Still . . . we’d love to solve that case,” said Rora. She opened the old file and pulled out a piece of the gym rope with a chocolate and cherry paw print on it. “This is all the evidence we have from that day. The Bandit climbed up the rope in the gym to escape, but he was sloppy. He left his paw print. One day we’ll find him.”

  “That’s quite a story,” the reporter said as he held up his camera. “Why don’t you put the evidence down and get together so I can take a group picture for the paper?”

  “Sure,” said Rider.

  The other P.I. Pack members crowded together. Ziggy stepped on Westie’s foot, Westie fell into Rora, and Rora’s hair went up Rider’s nose, making him sneeze. The reporter took a picture of the gang falling over one another.

  The reporter laughed. “Hmm, maybe we should try that again.”

  Once the pack was settled, Scoops took another photo. This time he used a very bright flash that blinded the detectives.

  As they rubbed their eyes, Scoops yelped, “Thanks a lot! Gotta SPLIT!”

  “Well, that was rude,” said Ziggy with his eyes closed tight. “His flash was way too powerful for such a sunny day.”

  When Rider opened his eyes, he didn’t like what he saw. The P.I. Pack’s very first case file was not where he’d left it. In fact, it was gone!

  Suddenly, there was a knock at the office door. Rider opened it and a ferret held out her paw. “Rider Woofson? I’m Farrah Ferret from the Pawston Paw Print. I’m here to interview you.”

  “Wait a minute!” Ziggy was confused. “We just had our interview.”

  Rora shook her head. “No, we didn’t. That kangaroo wasn’t a reporter. I’ll bet anything that he was the Lunchtime Bandit, and he’s just struck again!”

  Case Chase

  The detectives searched through the office. “Our very first case file is definitely missing,” Rora said. “That fake reporter stole it! He got it all . . . the rope, the case file, everything!”

  Rider faced the real reporter. “Miss Ferret, if you want a story, then follow us!”

  The detectives ran outside, with Farrah Ferret following close behind.

  Ziggy found their first clue right away. It was a kangaroo costume thrown into the bushes. “Our fake reporter was a fake kangaroo, too? That makes me hopping mad!”

  Just then Westie spotted someone at the end of the block. The animal was holding a case file as he jumped into a getaway car. “Look, the Bandit is totally getting away . . . again!”

  Quickly, the P.I. Pack, along with Farrah Ferret, climbed into their van. Rora revved the engine, hit the gas, and sped after the bad guy.

  As they pulled closer, Rora noticed another clue. “P.I. Pack! Look at the getaway driver. It’s Rotten Ruffhouse!”

  “Well, that’s just rotten luck,” said Rider.

  Meanwhile, in the Bandit’s getaway car, Rotten Ruffhouse looked in his rearview mirror. “Those detectives will never catch us.”

  “Well, make sure they don’t,” said the Bandit in the seat behind him. The bunny was busy reading through the case file.

  “Did you get what you wanted?” asked Rotten.

  “Oh yes,” the bunny said with a sneer. “Those P.I. fools thought I was a reporter, and they spilled the beans of their very first case: the unsolved mystery of the Pawston Elementary Lunchtime Bandit!”

  The words “spilled the beans” echoed inside Rotten’s head as he drove. He thought back to the one horrible moment in elementary school that changed young Ronald Ruffhouse’s life forever. “Wait. YOU were the Lunchtime Bandit?”

  “I was, and I was never caught! I had so many disguises and stole so many lunches from under their noses, and they never sniffed me out,” the bunny snarled.

  “But . . . why?” Rotten asked.

  “Because those selfish lunch ladies never gave me enough to eat, and I wanted more!” the bunny screamed. “I became the Lunchtime Bandit. That way, I could feast on whatever I wanted: kibble burgers, tuna tacos, even grass-flavored ice cream. Sure, it made me sick to my stomach, but the crime kept me full! I stole everyone’s food so they could feel as hungry as I once did!”

  Rotten began to growl. He remembered what it felt like to be covered in rotten beans. Ever since that day, he could still hear all the other students chanting his awful, new name: “ROTTEN RUFFHOUSE! ROTTEN RUFFHOUSE!” Rotten suddenly turned the steering wheel to the left. The whole car swerved around.

  “Hey!” screamed the bunny. “This isn’t the way to my hideout! What are you doing?”

  Rotten gave the bunny a cool smile. “I’m about to spill the beans.”

  The First and Final Case

  “What is going on?” the bunny asked. “Mr. M
eow said that you were the best getaway driver he knows. That’s why I hired you. Don’t you know how to drive a getaway car? You use it to get away, not drive right back toward the scene of the crime!”

  Rotten let out a rotten laugh. “Don’t worry. We’re going to a new crime scene. I promise, you’ll like it. But I hope you’re hungry.”

  Now the bunny stared at the rottweiler in the front seat. “Hey, wait a minute. You look familiar. Have we met before?”

  Rotten gave him a growling smile. “You could say we’ve bean around the block a few times.”

  The getaway car rocketed right past the P.I. Pack.

  Ziggy yelped. “What’s Rotten up to now?”

  “There’s only one way to find out,” Rora said. She slammed on the brakes and made a sharp turn to spin the van around. Then she peeled out and chased after the bad guys.

  “Where are they going?” asked Westie.

  “They are going to jail!” Rider answered.

  Westie pulled out a map of Pawston. “Hmm, are you sure? Because it looks like they are driving to the burrito factory.”

  Ziggy stuck his head out the window and took a big sniff. “Bow-wowza! That’s not just a burrito factory. That’s the old, deserted bean burrito factory! And from the smell of things, those beans have gone rotten!”

  In the other car, the Lunchtime Bandit was freaking out. “Slow down, you fool! We’re going to crash!”

  But Rotten didn’t slow down. He sped up. The car burst through the factory gates. The awful stench of stinky beans surrounded them.

  The Lunchtime Bandit held his breath. “Stop!” he gasped. “Rotten! It smells so rotten!”

  “That’s my name—don’t wear it out!” Rotten cheered as he pulled out a grappling hook. The evil dog launched it out the window and escaped from the car.

  “Oh no!” yelled the Lunchtime Bandit as the car smashed right through the wall of the burrito factory. An avalanche of old, rotting, smelly beans washed all over the bad bunny.

  The Lunchtime Bandit swam to the top of bean pile. “Gross! Rotten bean juice! It’s awful! It’s stinky! And it’s in my ears! It’s in my nose!”

  Rotten stood safely on the roof of the building. He rubbed his paws together and looked down at the crusty criminal. Then he started to chant, “SMELLY BUNNY! SMELLY BUNNY!”

  The P.I. Pack pulled up in their van, and Westie grabbed one of his first inventions—the Super Soaker-Upper. “I knew I’d need this again!”

  The invention soaked up the rotten bean sludge that oozed everywhere.

  Rider pinched his nose and held up a pair of handcuffs. “All right, Scoops Hopper, or should I call you the Lunchtime Bandit? You are under arrest for crimes against school lunches.”

  The smelly bunny was green in the face. “Okay, you got me. Now please take me to jail. I need a bath!”

  Then Farrah Ferret snapped a picture for her article. “I’ll say. I’m going to call this the Case of the Not-Funny-Smelly-Bunny.”

  “I like the sound of that,” said Rider, “but not the smell.”

  Rora found the missing case file and held it up. “Well, gang, how does it feel? We finally solved the very first P.I. Pack case.”

  “Does that mean we’re done?” asked Ziggy. “No more cases?”

  Rider shook his head. “As long as Pawston needs protection, the P.I. Pack will be on the case.”

  About the Author and Illustrator

  WALKER STYLES grew up reading kids’ books, so it makes sense that he’s writing them now. And when he isn’t writing books, he’s out solving mysteries around the city of Manhattan, where he lives. Just the other day, he lost the book he was reading. Following all the clues, Walker deduced the couch ate it! (Well, the book was under the couch cushions. Still, mystery solved!)

  BEN WHITEHOUSE is an illustrator based in Birmingham, UK. He has previously worked in the animation industry as a character designer, animator, and stop-motion puppet maker before finding his feet within the world of illustration. You can visit him at stopmotionben.com.

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  LITTLE SIMON

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  First Little Simon paperback edition March 2018

  Copyright © 2018 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Also available in a Little Simon hardcover edition. All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. LITTLE SIMON is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc., and associated colophon is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  Designed by Laura Roode.

  Jacket illustrations by Ben Whitehouse

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Styles, Walker, author. | Whitehouse, Ben, illustrator.

  Title: The very first case / by Walker Styles ; illustrated by Ben Whitehouse.

  Description: First Little Simon paperback edition. | New York : Little Simon, 2018. | Series: Rider Woofson ; 10 | Summary: “When Rider is interviewed by the Pawston Paw Print, he shares the untold story of how the P.I. Pack first met. As he relives their very first case, Rider discovers that someone has stolen all the past evidence!”—Provided by publisher. | Identifiers: LCCN 2017038348 | ISBN 9781534412712 (paperback) | ISBN 9781534412729 (hc) | ISBN 9781534412736 (eBook) | Subjects: | CYAC: Mystery and detective stories. | Detectives—Fiction. | Dogs—Fiction. | Animals—Fiction. | Stealing—Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Action & Adventure / General. | JUVENILE FICTION / Animals / General. | JUVENILE FICTION / Readers / Chapter Books.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.S82 Ver 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017038348