As the boys worked their way along the home side of the stadium, Carter turned to Nick. He ran his fingers through his short hair. After school he’d dyed it half light blue and half orange—PHHS’s school colors—and it looked like someone had attacked the back of it with a pair of hedge trimmers. “What do you say, Nick? Lend me a dollar and a half. Can’t you smell that meat grilling at the snack shack? I’m dying here.”
“I thought hamburgers were a dollar.”
“They are.” Carter bounced from one foot to the other. “And I have fifty cents. So if you give me a buck fifty, I can buy two.”
“You just ate dinner,” Angelo said.
Carter, who was a good foot shorter than Angelo and as skinny as a post despite eating almost nonstop, rolled his eyes. “That was almost an hour ago. I’m starving!”
“I think you must have been bitten by a mosquito when you were a baby,” Nick said. “Did you know they can eat four times their own weight in blood?”
Carter’s eyes lit up. “Rob Wells says if you tense your muscles once a mosquito starts sucking, you can make it blow up.”
“Whatever.” Nick chuckled. Rob Wells was the biggest liar in sixth grade. He once claimed for over a month that he would be leaving soon because he’d been invited to attend wizard school.
“No. Totally serious!” Carter drew an X over his heart with one finger. “Rob says he did it at camp. The mosquito couldn’t get loose from his arm, so it kept sucking and sucking, swelling up until it was the size of a baby sparrow. Then, bam! Blood and mosquito guts everywhere!”
Angelo clicked his tongue. “That’s an urban legend. Mosquitoes draw blood from capillaries on the outer layer of the skin. They don’t get anywhere near muscles.”
Nick pointed to an open bench. “This looks good.”
The boys were just sitting down when a bossy voice called out, “Hey, if it isn’t the Three Mouseketeers.” Nick turned to see Angie Hollingsworth and her friends Tiffany Staheli and Dana Lyon sitting right behind them.
“That’s Monsterteers,” Carter said. “But I can understand the mistake since the three of you are probably terrified of mice.”
Angie, a short girl with flaming red hair and a take-charge expression in her bright green eyes, was one of the most annoying people Nick knew. She and her friends were in the same sixth-grade class as the boys and were constantly trying to prove they were smarter, stronger, and better. That would have been obnoxious enough, but what made the girls almost unbearable was their belief that they were even bigger monster fanatics than Nick and his friends.
“Let’s move,” Nick said. “I’d rather sit in the nosebleed seats than listen to them all night.”
“Probably a good idea,” Dana said. “I’d hate to spend the whole game explaining everything to you.”
That was exactly the problem. Dana was a sports nut. Tiffany was a fashion expert and a gossip. Angie was just a know-it-all in general. And they were always bragging about how smart they were.
“I’m not going anywhere.” Carter scrunched up his face, as if in pain. “In fact, I’m thinking about taking off my shoes, so you girls might want to move.”
“That’s so gross,” Tiffany said, peering over the tops of the sunglasses she was wearing despite the fact that it was night. Unlike most of the kids at the game, who were dressed in jeans and sweatshirts or sweaters, Tiffany looked like she’d just stepped out of a fashion magazine. “What’s wrong with your hair? Do you have mange or something?”
Carter’s face went red. “It’s a ram, for the game. Maybe you should try taking off those shades so you can actually see.”
The three girls burst into giggles. Nick had to admit that whatever Carter had tried to shave into the back of his head didn’t look anything like a ram. And he had no idea how they were going to work it into the movie.
“I’m surprised you three are even here, with all the big news,” Tiffany said.
“Nick’s mom made us,” Angelo said, flipping through his notebook. “We have to watch the entire game and report back before we see the mummy marathon. But I’m sure you wouldn’t care about something like that.”
“We’re recording it,” Dana said with a smug look.
Nick hadn’t wanted to come to the game. And it would be that much worse if he had to spend it sitting in front of Angie. But he couldn’t help asking, “What news?”
Angie smirked. “They haven’t heard.”
Carter, who had been practically drooling as he watched a man two seats over finish a huge chili-cheese dog, wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “Heard what? That your face was voted most likely to cause small children to run screaming?”
Tiffany adjusted her silk scarf. “That’s very amusing. If you’re a second-grader. As it happens, the police are—”
“Quiet,” Angie shushed her. “They aren’t interested in corpses anyway.”
Angelo looked up from his pages as though Angie had just slapped him. “Did you say something about corpses?” He, Nick, and Carter looked at one another. The three of them had recently gotten some firsthand experience with the dead and undead. This couldn’t have anything to do with that. Could it?
“I’m sure it wouldn’t interest you,” Angie said. She looked around. “Maybe I’ll head down to the snack shack. I think I could use a burger right about now.”
Carter moaned.
“Fine,” Nick said, admitting defeat. “Tell us about the corpses.”
Angie looked at her friends and the three of them grinned conspiratorially. “Why don’t we play twenty questions? If you guess the right answer in twenty questions or less, we’ll tell you.”
“And if we don’t?” Nick asked, sensing a trap.
Angie tapped her chin, appearing deep in thought. “If you don’t guess the answer correctly, you have to answer one question of ours.”
Angelo shook his head ever so slightly. Nick knew what he was thinking. A few weeks earlier, the boys had survived a close call with a group of zombies. They’d barely managed to get things fixed before Angie and her friends could discover the truth, but it was close. No doubt that’s what Angie was planning on asking about.
“It’s a deal!” Carter said before Nick could respond. “But you have to throw in a burger.”
“Done.” Angie’s eyes gleamed, and Nick knew they had been suckered. But it was too late to back out now without looking like a bunch of chickens.
Nick thought carefully before asking his first question. He needed to find out if there were zombies in town, without giving away what had happened to him and his friends before. “Have any of you seen these corpses?”
“Right, we spend all day hanging out with dead bodies.” Tiffany wrinkled her nose.
“No,” Dana said. “We have not seen the corpses.”
Well that was good.
“Has anyone seen the corpses?” Carter asked, clearly anxious to win the game. “Like, have the bodies been on TV?”
Angie gave Carter a strange look before answering, “Yes. And no. Those are questions two and three.”
“Three?” Carter sputtered. “What kind of—”
Angelo slapped a hand across Carter’s mouth before he could waste another one of their questions. “Of course someone has seen the corpses,” he whispered. “That was a waste of a question. But at least we know the corpses haven’t been on TV and the girls haven’t seen them.”
If no one had seen the corpses that meant they probably hadn’t turned into zombies. Down on the field, the players were lining up for the coin toss that would decide who would get the ball first.
Angelo leafed through his book as if hoping some kind of clue were inside. “You already said something about the news, so we know it’s important. The question is, did something happen to the bodies before or after their deaths?”
“Yes or no questions only,” Angie said at once.
Angelo huffed. “Fine. Did something unusual happen to the people before they died?”
“No.” Tiffany shook back her dark hair. “Ready to admit defeat?”
“Not even close,” Nick said. Angelo was on the right track. They just needed to figure out what made the bodies newsworthy. “Did something happen to them in the hospital after their deaths?”
Dana narrowed her eyes. “That’s two questions.”
“Two qualifiers, but only one question,” Angelo corrected. “Yes or no?”
“No,” Angie said. Nick started to sweat. They were already a quarter of the way through their questions and they didn’t seem to be much closer than when they’d started.
“Huddle up,” he said. As the Three Monsterteers put their heads together to figure out a strategy, Angie and her friends grinned with cocky self-assurance. By the time they came up with their next question, the whistle had blown and the game had started.
Nick couldn’t care less about what was happening on the field. Even if he had been a football fan, Sumina Prep was a tiny school made up completely of kids born outside the country. Most of them probably hadn’t even touched a football before coming to the United States. It wasn’t going to be much of a game.
“Were the bodies of anyone famous?” Nick asked.
“No,” Angie said. “That’s six.”
Over the next forty-five minutes, Nick and his friends worked slowly through the rest of their twenty questions. By the time they reached their last one, Nick knew they were in trouble. “Okay,” he whispered to Carter and Angelo. “Two people recently died here in town. They aren’t famous but they made the news after they died. They weren’t murdered and their bodies don’t appear to have come back to life. Whatever happened took place in the cemetery by my house. They weren’t mutilated, sacrificed, or drained of their blood. And,” he added, glaring at Carter, “they didn’t climb out of their graves and dance the hokeypokey.”
“What?” Carter said, his eyes big and round. “It could happen.”
As Nick pondered what their last question should be, the crowd on their side of the field gave out a huge groan, and Nick looked down to see a player from the other team smash two Pleasant Hill players out of the way to go in for a touchdown. Nick was amazed to see it was nearly halftime and Sumina Prep was up 42 to 3. He looked down at the players on their team and rubbed his eyes. They were all huge—like the professional teams his dad watched on TV.
“Do you give up?” Tiffany asked, batting her long eyelashes. “Or are you just trying to stall until the end of the game?”
“We don’t give up and we’re not stalling.” He looked at Angelo and nodded. This last question was their only hope.
Angelo coughed into his hand and looked down at his notes before slowly asking, “Are the bodies still in the cemetery?”
Angie’s face tightened. Her eyes narrowed.
That was it! They’d nailed it with their last question.
“No,” Dana said, finally. “They aren’t.”
Nick smiled with satisfaction. It all made sense now. The bodies weren’t news because of who they were. They were news because someone had taken them. Body snatchers. The thought sent thrills down his spine. But first he had to give his answer and win the game.
He sneered at Angie, relishing the look of defeat on her face. She knew he had it and there was nothing she could do about it.
But before he could answer, the whistle blew, signaling the end of the first half, and the band marched onto the field. People began getting out of their seats to buy snacks. Carter looked around anxiously. “Can I have my hamburger now?”
“No,” Angie snapped.
Dana’s face lit up. “And that’s your twenty-first question. You lose.”
“What?” Nick looked around. “That wasn’t a question. I mean it was, but it doesn’t count.”
“Dana’s right.” Tiffany lifted her hands in the air like she was doing the wave. “No one said anything about what kind of questions count.”
Nick looked to his friends, searching for a way to get out of this. Clearly Carter’s question hadn’t been part of the contest. But they hadn’t set up any kind of rules. Angelo shrugged and scribbled in his notebook. Carter stared at his feet.
“For what it’s worth,” Angie said, “two bodies were dug up from the Garden of Hope Cemetery last night. The police think it might have been some kind of prank. But they have no clues. Too bad. You were so-o-o-o close.” She laced her fingers and flexed her hands. “Now it’s our turn. Are you ready for your question, Mouseketeers?”
Angelo looked quickly up from his notes with a smile so wide he looked like a denture commercial. What was he so happy about? “Monster-teers,” he said. “And the answer is yes. We are ready. Unfortunately for you, that was your question and you only get one.”
Angie fumed, but there was no way around it. If Carter’s question counted, hers did too.
“Imagine how awesome it would be to add shots of freshly robbed graves to our movie,” Angelo said, closing his notebook. “If we hurry, we can get to the cemetery by ten.”
“You’re going now?” asked Dana. She seemed impressed.
“That, uh, might not be the best idea,” Carter said. He pointed his thumb toward Nick. “Remember what happened last time we went to the cemetery?”
Nick was aching to go see the location where real modern-day body snatchers had dug up actual corpses. He was already thinking about ways he could add them into the script. But he found himself agreeing with Carter. The last time the boys had been to the cemetery, some pretty crazy stuff had happened—including discovering that as a result of being undead for a time, Nick could actually see and talk to ghosts.
He wasn’t sure whether the ability had worn off or not, but he decided he’d rather test that in the light of day. Also, he was pretty sure if they went to the cemetery now, the girls would follow. That was the last thing he wanted.
“We promised my mom we’d stay till the end of the game,” he said.
“Scared of the dark?” Angie flapped her arms and made chicken noises. “Brawk, brawk, brawwwk.”
“I don’t see you three going,” Nick said.
Tiffany held up her cell phone, which was red and white with shiny pink rhinestones. “We’ve already been and I’ve got the pictures to prove it.”
“You took photographs?” Angelo rubbed his glasses on the front of his shirt. “Could I, maybe, see them?”
Angie nodded grudgingly. “Go ahead. Even if you are all a bunch of cheaters.”
“We didn’t cheat any more than you did,” Nick said. But he leaned over the cell phone just as eagerly as everyone else.
The first picture showed a mound of dirt surrounded by yellow police tape. “The police wouldn’t let us enter their crime scene,” Tiffany explained. “But this one shows the actual hole.” She slid the screen to the next picture with the tip of her finger.
“Look,” Angelo said, gasping with excitement. He pointed out a small pile near the edge of the grave. “They took the body but left the clothes.”
Dana nodded. “Just like they did in the early 1800s. Back then, technically, a body didn’t belong to anyone. As long as you left any clothing or jewelry, it was only a misdemeanor to steal a body. And doctors paid a lot of money for a corpse.”
“Wow, that’s right.” Angelo looked amazed that someone knew as much as he did about anything—especially something like body snatching.
Nick couldn’t help smiling. He’d never seen his friend speechless before. “Hang on,” he said. “You’re saying doctors paid money for dead bodies?” He’d heard of body snatchers, but he always figured they dug up the corpses for secret ceremonies or something.
“Lots,” Dana said. “Medical students and surgeons. They needed bodies to dissect and they couldn’t get enough legally. The body snatchers sold the teeth, too, to be made into dentures.”
“They stuck dead people’s teeth into their mouths?” Carter’s face went white. For once he appeared to have heard something that grossed out even him.
&
nbsp; Down on the field, halftime was over and the Sumina Prep players were demolishing the Rams. Nick had no idea how a tiny private school had fielded enough good players to beat a top contender for state champion. And they weren’t just beating them, they were knocking them around like rag dolls. Still, Nick was far more interested in what Dana was saying.
“How do you know all this?” he asked.
“Dana’s totally into creepy old stuff,” Tiffany said. “She’s like a fangirl for body snatchers.”
“Grave robbers,” Dana said.
“Resurrectionists,” Angelo added, recovering his wits.
“Sack-’em-up men,” Dana countered. She was good.
“Wait a minute,” Angie said, holding out her hands. “Are you saying you think whoever took these bodies is selling them to doctors?” Nick remembered that Angie’s mom worked at the hospital. He couldn’t recall for sure whether she was a nurse, a doctor, or did paperwork. But whatever it was, Angie was clearly upset.
“No,” Dana and Angelo both said at the same time. The two of them looked at each other for a moment.
“Doctors don’t buy corpses from grave robbers anymore,” Angelo said. “Stealing bodies is a crime now.”
“Besides,” Dana said, “there are plenty of legal ways to obtain corpses. Lots of people donate their bodies to science.”
Nick was impressed. He’d always thought of Dana as a dumb jock. But listening to her talk, he had to admit she was pretty smart too.
Around the stadium, people began heading toward the exits even though there was still almost a full quarter to go in the game. Surprisingly, the visitors’ side of the stadium was nearly empty. “So if it wasn’t for money, you think some guy dug up the bodies for a joke?”
“Not some guy,” Dana said. “Some guys. It would take at least two strong men to dig up a coffin and pull out the body.”
Case File 13 #2 Page 2
