Key Lardo

by Bruce Hale

  Natalie whooshed backward on the swing. “Does this mean you’re becoming a nerd?”

  “Fat chance. But Grandma Gecko always said, before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes.”

  Her eyebrows lifted. “So you’ll know how they feel inside?”

  “No,” I said. “So that when you criticize them, you’ll be a mile away and you’ll have their shoes.”

  Natalie shook her head in admiration. “Well, the nerd spray may have worn off, but you’ve hung on to a certain kind of smarts.”

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “The Chet Gecko kind: smart-aleck smarts.”

  I saluted her as the swing whooshed me forward. “And that’s the best kind, birdie.”

  1

  Sub Sandwich

  You could attend Emerson Hicky Elementary for a long time without knowing its substitute teachers. And you could know its subs for a long time without meeting Barbara Dwyer.

  And that would be just swell.

  Barb Dwyer was a sourpuss porcupine with a face like a bucket of mud. From the tips of her many quills to the shapeless hat on her head, she was a surly sub, and she didn’t care who knew it.

  I could have gone my whole life without meeting her. But because Mr. Ratnose called in sick one gray Wednesday, we were stuck with the dame.

  Through math and English classes she had ridden us hard, like a rhino going piggyback on a house cat. We were taking a breather, doing some silent reading. Most of the kids favored Winnie the Poobah, our assignment.

  I had slipped the latest Amazing Mantis-Man comic book inside old Winnie.

  Private eyes like to live dangerously.

  A gentle whisper broke my concentration.

  “Chet?” It was Shirley Chameleon, leaning across the aisle.

  I gave her a look. She was worth looking at. Shirley had big green peepers, a curly tail, and a laugh like the pitter-pat of raindrops on daisies.

  Not that I cared about any of that. She was also a major cootie factory.

  “Mm?” I said, glancing back at my comic book.

  “Do you, um . . . are you going to the fair on Friday?” Shirley toyed with her scarf, one eye on me, one eye on the substitute teacher. (Literally. Chameleons have some gross habits.)

  I leaned over. “Depends. Will they have clowns?”

  “Why?” she said.

  “Because I hate clowns.”

  “Who’s whispering?” a voice snapped. Ms. Dwyer scanned the room.

  We clammed up. A minute later, Shirley bent back across the aisle.

  She batted her eyelashes. “I don’t know about clowns,” she whispered, “but I do know that they’re having a dance.”

  I knew it, too—the Hen’s Choice Hoedown, where girls ask boys.

  “I was trying to forget about that,” I said.

  Ms. Dwyer thundered, “No more whispering. Eyes on your books!”

  Shirley gave it a rest for another minute. Then she murmured, “If you’re, um, going to the fair, maybe you’d come to the dance with me? As my date?”

  “Your date?!” I spluttered, shattering the quiet.

  “That’s it!” cried Ms. Dwyer. She waddled up the aisle toward me, quills bristling. “You! What’s your name?”

  Although I wanted to say Seymour Butts, I stuck with the truth. “Chet Gecko.”

  “You’ve disrupted my class enough for one morning.”

  I let my book drop. “But she—”

  Ms. Dwyer noticed my Amazing Mantis-Man. “And you’re reading this . . . this trash? A comic book?”

  “It’s research,” I said. “For my science report.”

  “I don’t care if it’s War and frikkety Peace,” she growled. The porcupine held her hand out for the comic. I gave it to her. “You, mister, will sit outside until you learn some manners.”

  Bo Newt chuckled. “Guess I’ll see ya next year, Chet.”

  The substitute wheeled on my friend. “Would you like to join him?”

  “Uh, no sir,” said Bo.

  “Ma’am!”

  “No sir, ma’am,” said the newt.

  Ms. Dwyer gritted her teeth, then glared at me. “Well, what are you waiting for? Go and reflect on your bad behavior.”

  It’s no use arguing with a walking pincushion. Followed by Shirley’s mournful gaze, I rose and ambled out the door.

  Five minutes of sitting on the hard cement was enough reflection for any gecko. My tuckus was going to sleep. But the sub let me stew.

  On the far-off playground, little kids squealed with joy and freedom.

  I sighed. Idly, I twirled the tip of my tail. No case to solve, no comic to read. It would be a long, boring timeout.

  I couldn’t have been more wrong.

  Footsteps slapped down the hall. “Chet! Chet!”

  The last thing I expected was my little sister. And yet, there she stood, big as life—Pinky Gecko, first grader and first-rate pain in the tushie.

  “Little blister,” I said. “What brings you here?”

  She frowned. “My feet. But, but . . . how come you’re sitting in the hall?”

  “I’m on guard duty—watching out for cocka-poos.”

  “Cocka-whose?” she said.

  “Never mind.”

  Pinky turned her woeful eyes on me. “Help me, big brother.”

  I pointed. “Okay, the loony bin is that way.”

  “Not funny,” she said, pouting. “Mom’s pearls, they’re missing!”

  I scratched my head. “Run that by me again?”

  “The pearls.” Pinky shuffled her feet. “I, um, borrowed ’em for show-and-tell.”

  “Smooth move, moth-brain,” I said. “And what, you accidentally flushed them down the john?”

  “I’m not a moth-brain,” she said. “I showed ’em before recess. An’, an’ when I came back from recess, they . . . disdappeared from my desk!”

  I stood. “Have you told your teacher, Miss uh . . .”

  “Miss Flemm? I can’t.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  Pinky’s lip quivered. “She’ll tell Mom.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Mom doesn’t know I borrowed ’em.”

  My eyebrows rose. “Ah.”

  “An’, an’, an’. . .” Her eyes misted up like dawn over Mosquito Lake.

  Before the waterworks began, I gently placed my hands on her shoulders.

  “And you want me to find the pearls, is that it?”

  She nodded. “Mm-hmm.”

  I chewed my lip. We’d had plenty of crime at Emerson Hicky Elementary—cheating, blackmail, vandalism, kids trying to take over the world. But no crook had made it this personal. No crook had ever picked on my family before.

  My fists clenched. This punk was going down hard, like a skydiving brontosaurus. Why, I’d even tackle the case for free.

  But I’d never let Pinky know that.

  “You realize if I do this, you’re gonna owe me big-time?” I said. “We’re talking breakfast in bed, sharing desserts, no hassling me for two—no, three weeks . . .”

  “A-anything you say.” Pinky sniffed. “Just find the pearls.”

  I hate to see a reptile cry—even if she’s my own flesh and blood.

  “Stop your sobbing, sister,” I said. “I’m on the case.”

  Buy the Book

  Visit www.hmhco.com or your favorite retailer to purchase the book in its entirety.

  Look for more mysteries

  from the Tattered Casebook of Chet Gecko

  Case #1 The Chameleon Wore Chartreuse

  Some cases start rough, some cases start easy. This one started with a dame. (That’s what we private eyes call a girl.) She was cute and green and scaly. She looked like trouble and smelled like . . . grasshoppers.

  Shirley Chameleon came to me when her little brother, Billy, turned up missing. (I suspect she also came to spread cooties, but that’s another story.) She turned on the tears. She promised me some stinkbug pie. I sai
d I’d find the brat.

  But when his trail led to a certain stinky-breathed, bad-tempered, jumbo-sized Gila monster, I thought I’d bitten off more than I could chew. Worse, I had to chew fast: If I didn’t find Billy in time, it would be bye-bye, stinkbug pie.

  Case #2 The Mystery of Mr. Nice

  How would you know if some criminal mastermind tried to impersonate your principal? My first clue: He was nice to me.

  This fiend tried everything—flattery, friendship, food—but he still couldn’t keep me off the case. Natalie and I followed a trail of clues as thin as the cheese on a cafeteria hamburger. And we found a ring of corruption that went from the janitor right up to Mr. Big.

  In the nick of time, we rescued Principal Zero and busted up the PTA meeting, putting a stop to the evil genius. And what thanks did we get? Just the usual. A cold handshake and a warm soda.

  But that’s all in a day’s work for a private eye.

  Case #3 Farewell, My Lunchbag

  If danger is my business, then dinner is my passion. I’ll take any case if the pay is right. And what pay could be better than Mothloaf Surprise?

  At least that’s what I thought. But in this particular case, I almost paid the ultimate price for good grub.

  Cafeteria lady Mrs. Bagoong hired me to track down whoever was stealing her food supplies. The long, slimy trail led too close to my own backyard for comfort.

  And much, much too close to the very scary Jimmy “King” Cobra. Without the help of Natalie Attired and our school janitor, Maureen DeBree, I would’ve been gecko sushi.

  Case #4 The Big Nap

  My grades were lower than a salamander’s slippers, and my bank account was trying to crawl under a duck’s belly. So why did I take a case that didn’t pay anything?

  Put it this way: Would you stand by and watch some evil power turn your classmates into hypnotized zombies? (If that wasn’t just what normally happened to them in math class, I mean.)

  My investigations revealed a plot meaner than a roomful of rhinos with diaper rash.

  Someone at Emerson Hicky was using a sinister video game to put more and more students into la-la-land. And it was up to me to stop it, pronto—before that someone caught up with me, and I found myself taking the Big Nap.

  Case #5 The Hamster of the Baskervilles

  Elementary school is a wild place. But this was ridiculous.

  Someone—or something—was tearing up Emerson Hicky. Classrooms were trashed. Walls were gnawed. Mysterious tunnels riddled the playground like worm chunks in a pan of earthworm lasagna.

  But nobody could spot the culprit, let alone catch him.

  I don’t believe in the supernatural. My idea of voodoo is my mom’s cockroach-ripple ice cream.

  Then, a teacher reported seeing a monster on full-moon night, and I got the call.

  At the end of a twisted trail of clues, I had to answer the burning question: Was it a vicious, supernatural were-hamster on the loose, or just another Science Fair project gone wrong?

  Case #6 This Gum for Hire

  Never thought I’d see the day when one of my worst enemies would hire me for a case. Herman the Gila Monster was a sixth-grade hoodlum with a first-rate left hook. He told me someone was disappearing the football team, and he had to put a stop to it. Big whoop.

  He told me he was being blamed for the kidnappings, and he had to clear his name. Boo hoo.

  Then he said that I could either take the case and earn a nice reward, or have my face rearranged like a bargain-basement Picasso painted by a spastic chimp.

  I took the case.

  But before I could find the kidnapper, I had to go undercover. And that meant facing something that scared me worse than a chorus line of criminals in steel-toed boots: P.E. class.

  Case #7 The Malted Falcon

  It was tall, dark, and chocolatey—the stuff dreams are made of. It was a treat so titanic that nobody had been able to finish one single-handedly (or even single-mouthedly). It was the Malted Falcon.

  How far would you go for the ultimate dessert? Somebody went too far, and that’s where I came in.

  The local sweets shop held a contest. The prize: a year’s supply of free Malted Falcons. Some lucky kid scored the winning ticket. She brought it to school for show-and-tell.

  But after she showed it, somebody swiped it. And no one would tell where it went.

  Following a strong hunch and an even stronger sweet tooth, I tracked the ticket through a web of lies more tangled than a rattlesnake doing the rumba. But the time to claim the prize was fast approaching. Would the villain get the sweet treat—or his just desserts?

  Case #8 Trouble Is My Beeswax

  Okay, I confess. When test time rolls around, I’m as tempted as the next lizard to let my eyeballs do the walking . . . to my neighbor’s paper.

  But Mrs. Gecko didn’t raise no cheaters. (Some language manglers, perhaps.) So when a routine investigation uncovered a test-cheating ring at Emerson Hicky, I gave myself a new case: Put the cheaters out of business.

  Easier said than done. Those double-dealers were slicker than a frog’s fanny and twice as slimy.

  Oh, and there was one other small problem: All the evidence pointed to two dames. The ringleader was either the glamorous Lacey Vail, or my own classmate Shirley Chameleon.

  Sheesh. The only thing I hate worse than an empty Pillbug Crunch wrapper is a case full of dizzy dames.

  Case #9 Give My Regrets to Broadway

  Some things you can’t escape, however hard you try—like dentist appointments, visits with strange-smelling relatives, and being in the fourth-grade play. I had always left the acting to my smart-aleck pal, Natalie, but now it was my turn in the spotlight.

  Stage fright? Me? You’re talking about a gecko who has laughed at danger, chuckled at catastrophe, and sneezed at sinister plots.

  I was terrified.

  Not because of the acting, mind you. The script called for me to share a major lip-lock with Shirley Chameleon—Cootie Queen of the Universe!

  And while I was trying to avoid that trap, a simple missing persons case took a turn for the worse—right into the middle of my play. Would opening night spell curtains for my client? And, more important, would someone invent a cure for cooties? But no matter—whatever happens, the sleuth must go on.

  Case #10 Murder, My Tweet

  Some things at school you can count on. Pop quizzes always pop up just after you’ve spent your study time studying comics. Chef’s Surprise is always a surprise, but never a good one. And no matter how much you learn today, they always make you come back tomorrow.

  But sometimes, Emerson Hicky amazes you. And just like finding a killer bee in a box of Earwig Puffs, you’re left shocked, stung, and discombobulated.

  Foul play struck at my school; that’s nothing new. But then the finger of suspicion pointed straight at my favorite fowl: Natalie Attired. Framed as a blackmailer, my partner was booted out of Emerson Hicky quicker than a hoptoad on a hot plate.

  I tackled the case for free. Mess with my partner, mess with me.

  Then things took a turn for the worse. Just when I thought I might clear her name, Natalie disappeared. And worse still, she left behind one clue: a reddish smear that looked kinda like the jelly from a beetle-jelly sandwich but raised an ugly question: Was it murder, or something serious?

  Case #11 The Possum Always Rings Twice

  In my time, I’ve tackled cases stickier than a spider’s handshake and harder than three-year-old boll weevil taffy. But nothing compares to the job that landed me knee-deep in school politics.

  What seemed like a straightforward case of extortion during Emerson Hicky’s student-council election ended up taking more twists and turns than an anaconda’s lunch. It became a battle royal for control of the school. (Not that I necessarily believe school is worth fighting for, but a gecko’s gotta do something with his days.)

  In the end, my politicking landed me in one of the tightest spots I’ve ever encountered.
Was I savvy enough to escape with my skin? Let me put it this way: Just like a politician, this is one private eye who always shoots from the lip.

  Case #12 Key Lardo

  Working this case, I nearly lost my detective mojo—and to a guy so dim, he’d probably play goalie for the darts team. True, he was only a cog in a larger conspiracy. But this big buttinsky made my life more uncomfortable than a porcupine’s underpants.

  Was he a cop? A truant officer? A gorilla with a grudge? Even worse: A rival detective. His name was Bland. James Bland. And he was cracking cases faster than a . . . well, much faster than I was.

  My reputation took a nosedive. And I nearly followed it—straight into the slammer. Fighting back with all my moxie, I bent the rules, blundered into blind alleys, and stepped on more than a few toes.

  Was I right? Was I wrong? I’ll tell you this: I made my share of mistakes. But I believe that if you can’t laugh at yourself . . . make fun of someone else.

  Case #13 Hiss Me Deadly

  When my sister got robbed, she turned to me for help. And like a dope, I jumped in with both feet.

  But a simple case of theft soon grew more challenging than playing Chinese checkers on a bucking bronco. Valuables started vanishing from school, and the top brass called me in. I followed the twisty trail of clues until I’d unearthed more suspects than a zombie membership drive.

  The heat was on. As I drew closer to uncovering the shadowy puppet master behind it all, I got myself in a spot tighter than a blue whale’s bikini. Would I make it out with my skin?

  Not to worry. As any detective will tell you, it’s always darkest before dawn. So if you’re going to steal your neighbor’s newspaper, that’s the time to do it.