Mystery in the Mansion

by Lauren Magaziner

  We walk outside with Patty, and on the lawn, Otto looks at us and gives us a small wave from the toolshed. He starts to walk over to us, but I gesture no. This is not a good time.

  “You kids saved me back there. Thank you,” Patty says.

  She starts to walk down Guinevere’s driveway, but we run in front of her and block her way. “We were serious about questioning you,” Eliza says.

  “Who are you kids? Her relatives?” Her eyes narrow.

  “We’re detectives,” I say.

  “Detectives! W-what in the world is going on in that house?”

  “Guinevere LeCavalier has been getting a series of death threats,” I explain.

  Patty’s eyes bulge out, and she starts to choke on her own spit. “Death . . . death what? Are you serious?”

  “You just saw one,” I say. “What do you think?”

  “Hehehehehe!” Patty chortles. “Serves her right, the wicked witch! But it has nothing to do with me! I was just here to play a harmless prank on her, not kill her!”

  “YEAH, RIGHT!” Frank shouts.

  “It’s true . . . I just want to make her mad. It’s like poking a bear with a stick. It’s fun.”

  “Poke poke poke!” Frank says, taking his finger and poking Patty in the side.

  She frowns at him. “Stop that, now.”

  “Poke!” Frank says one last time.

  “What prank were you trying to pull, Patty?” I ask.

  She lowers her voice and looks around. Her eyes are wild, and when she smiles, there’s lipstick on her teeth. “I was about to replace all the milk in her milk cartons with cottage cheese. Hehehehehe!” She giggles. “But then I heard a loud noise and ran to it—and you three arrived seconds later.”

  “Have you pulled any pranks on her before?” Eliza asks. “Maybe one involving a library and a note in red paint?”

  Patty scrunches her eyebrows. “No. The only other prank I played on her was at the last charity ball, when I replaced her fork and knife with a spork! Hehehehehe! She looked like a fool, trying to eat with that!”

  “Spork!” Frank giggles. “I like that word! Sporkie spork spork!”

  Is the definition of prank different for old people? Because that sounds like the most unfun prank ever.

  “But why were you pranking Guinevere in the first place?” Eliza asks.

  “Because she ruined my life!” Patty cries, throwing her arms in the air. “A long, long time ago, we were supposed to plan a benefit ball together—to raise money for the repopulation of dodo birds. But I ended up doing all the work while Mrs. LeCava-Lazybones sat in a lawn chair, Smythe popping grapes into her mouth.”

  “I’m hungry!” Frank says. “I want grapes!” Eliza digs into her backpack and hands him a bag of raisins. “Eliza, those aren’t grapes! Those are raisins!”

  “Shhhhhh! No, no, no, Frank, these are magic grapes,” she says. “These are grapes that have been kissed by the sun.”

  Frank stares at the bag of raisins for a moment. . . .

  “OKAY!” he announces, taking the raisins. I breathe a sigh of relief.

  “Anyway,” I say with an apologetic look at Patty Schnozzleton. “Please continue.”

  Patty sniffs. “After the ball, I got recognized for my work, and Guinevere got none of the credit. She was jealous and started spreading rumors about me. Very! Untrue! Rumors! And she turned all our friends against me, and ever since then, I’ve been cut off from everyone! Alone!” Patty bangs her fist on her chest like a passionate gorilla.

  And speaking of monkeys, she seems completely bananas.

  “Let me get this straight,” Eliza says. “You want to embarrass Guinevere, not hurt her. So you watch her house to see if there’s an opening for one of your pranks.”

  Patty nods.

  “Well, in all that spying, have you seen anything that can be useful to us?” I ask. “Anything suspicious?”

  Patty scrunches her face up tight. She’s thinking real hard. “Come to think of it,” she says, lowering her voice, “Otto, her landscaper, was acting strange.”

  Eliza and I both make sure Otto isn’t anywhere near us.

  “Strange how?” Eliza prods.

  “I don’t know how to describe it. But it seems like he’s always looking around. He likes to make sure no one’s nearby. Maybe you should ask him.”

  “We will,” I assure her. With this new lead, I’m wondering if we should search the garage. We know Otto keeps tools in the garage—if he’s guilty, I wonder what else we might find in there. Or maybe we should finish interviewing Patty before we run off. . . .

  * * *

  TO SEARCH GUINEVERE’S GARAGE, CLICK HERE.

  TO FINISH INTERVIEWING PATTY, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  WE WANDER AROUND the maze, but every way is a dead end, and we can’t find Exit Two. We walk back and forth a gazillion times, but we’re like lab rats that just can’t find the cheese.

  After hours of walking around, we are hungry and thirsty and my feet are aching. I lean against the wall, panting. Eliza is quietly watching me. She knows what I’m thinking . . . that we have to give up. It’s been hours since Otto locked us in that closet . . . and he had such a head start on us that there’s no way we’ll ever catch up.

  “I hate to say this,” Eliza says, putting her hand on my arm, “but I think we made a wrong turn. We may have to call it quits—or we’ll starve down here.”

  “I want to go hoooooome,” Frank whines.

  “We blew it,” I say, on the verge of tears.

  As you can guess: once we flop the case, Mom’s career explodes . . . and not in a good way. Just to pay the bills, Mom has to take a job as an envelope licker at—weirdly enough—a company that sends out bills to other people. Poor Mom licks so many envelopes that her mouth is permanently puckered into a sour position, and her mouth is so dry from all the licking that she can’t even talk to me when she gets home from work.

  Or maybe she just doesn’t want to talk to me. (Not that I blame her for that.)

  CASE CLOSED.

  WE SEARCH THE halls for Smythe. He’s not in the destroyed library with the threat on the wall, or the living room, or the study, or the kitchen, or the dining room, or the theater room, or the ballroom, or the foyer.

  Where could he be?

  “I have an idea,” Eliza says with a wicked grin. “Let’s search his room. We might be able to find out a lot more peeking through his stuff than we’d be able to find out by talking to him. He isn’t exactly the most agreeable person.”

  “Or,” I suggest, “we could search Ivy’s room. After all, she pointed a lot of fingers at everyone else. Very suspicious, right?”

  * * *

  TO SEARCH SMYTHE’S ROOM, CLICK HERE.

  TO SEARCH IVY’S ROOM, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  “CAN YOU TELL us more about the treasure?”

  She laughs softly. “My father loved talking about that treasure! He was an engineer whose first love was mathematics, and he always told me about the puzzles he set up for me. Told anyone who would listen.”

  “What do you think the treasure is?” Eliza says.

  “Who knows? I don’t know anything about it!” she says quickly.

  Too quickly.

  “Where do you think the treasure is?” Eliza asks.

  Ivy folds her arms. “I don’t know that either. In fact, you can save yourselves a whole lot of time by just assuming I know as much about the treasure as you do.”

  “But you have to know something!” I say.

  “YEAH!” Frank says. “Do you even know your name?”

  “Ivy,” she says, looking unamused with Frank. “Listen, I haven’t thought of my dad’s treasure in years. And I haven’t even tried to find it since long before I ran awa—” She cuts off, looking sheepish and mad at herself.

  “Ran away?” I prod.

  “Er . . . my mom and I had a fight.”

  I perk up. Could this be relevant to our case?<
br />
  “Don’t look so eager,” Ivy says, pressing her lips together tightly. “My mom fights with everyone. There isn’t a person alive who wouldn’t want to threaten her.”

  * * *

  TO ASK IVY WHO SHE THINKS IS THREATENING HER MOM, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  “WHAT IN THE world is this?” I ask Eliza. “It looks like nonsense to me!”

  “It’s not nonsense!” Eliza grins. “It’s called a cipher.”

  “A what-er?”

  “Cipher. SY-FER. A secret message written in code!”

  “We can solve this,” Eliza mumbles, coaching herself through the puzzle. “We just have to pay attention to the lines around the letters. That’s the key to the cipher.”

  “So the letter A,” I interrupt. “The lines around it make a backward L shape. So I’ll mark down A whenever the symbol matches that?”

  “Exactly,” Eliza says with a nod. “Okay, so if I look at the first word in the coded message, it’s an upside-down V with a dot in it . . . so that first symbol stands for—”

  “Y!” Frank shouts. “I FOUND IT FIRST! I WIN!”

  “Good job, Frank,” Eliza says. “Now the second symbol in the first word is an open-box shape with a dot inside it. If we look back at the key, we can see that the symbol stands for . . . an O.”

  I run my hand through my hair. “I never thought I would say this about a puzzle, but this is actually pretty fun. I think I got the third one. It stands for the letter U, right?”

  Eliza hums. “And the last symbol—a box with a dot in the center—makes an R. So the first word is YOUR.”

  “Let’s keep going!” I say eagerly.

  * * *

  ADD THREE HUNDRED TO THE ANSWER OF THE PUZZLE.

  IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 346, CLICK HERE.

  IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 356, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  I DON’T WANT Frank or Eliza to get hurt. I mean, I must save Mom’s agency, but the most important thing is that we are all safe.

  I move out of Otto’s way.

  He sneers and walks past us, then veers toward a dark passageway I didn’t even notice.

  “Wait!” Eliza says. “I wouldn’t go that way if I were you.”

  Otto glares at her.

  “I can tell you’re lost,” she says quickly, “or you wouldn’t be in the back of this dead-end cave. Listen, the only reason we decided to get into the detective business is to save Carlos’s mom’s agency. They’re almost bankrupt.”

  I flush. That was something private I told her in confidence!

  “How about we strike a deal? We’ll help you get out of here if you give us half the money. That will help Carlos’s mom pay her bills. What do you say?”

  I almost choke. What is she doing? We don’t negotiate with criminals!

  Otto snorts. “I’m not giving you half of my fortune.”

  Eliza smiles sweetly. “Then name a fair price.”

  “Ten percent.”

  “Forty.”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Thirty-five.”

  “Twenty,” Otto says.

  “Deal.”

  And they shake on it. They actually shake on it.

  Detective agencies can’t make deals with criminals for money! And if Otto gets away with this scheme, my mom’s agency will never get another client again.

  “Follow me,” Eliza says, leading Otto back the way we just came.

  I could try to stop her. Or . . . maybe I should trust her. The wrong choice could ruin my mom’s case—and her life.

  * * *

  TO STOP ELIZA, CLICK HERE.

  TO FOLLOW ELIZA, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  WE RUN OUTSIDE, where Guinevere, Ivy, and Smythe are sitting in lawn chairs, snickering about Patty’s arrest.

  “Ooooo hooooo!” hoots Guinevere. “Did you see Patty’s face?”

  “Classic, ma’am,” says Smythe gruffly. As though he is forced to agree with his employer.

  I run up to Guinevere. “Where is Patty?”

  “Weren’t you watching? She just got carted off by the police! All thanks to you!”

  Eliza and I exchange a glance.

  “We were wrong,” Eliza says. “It wasn’t her after all. It was Otto!”

  “Otto?” Guinevere scratches her head. “Now, now, detectives, I know you’re probably feeling guilty at the sight of Patty’s uncouth wailing, but you did a good job—”

  “NO!” Frank says, and he stamps his foot. “LISTEN.”

  And so we explain about getting locked in the closet, what Otto had told us, and how we escaped. “We need to go after him,” I finish. “Now!”

  “We came to ask—do either of you know how to get to the treasure? Just a clue. Anything helps,” Eliza says.

  “I told you everything I know,” Guinevere says.

  “I know nothing,” Smythe grunts.

  Ivy blanches. She looks like she’s about to cough up a drumstick. “Okay, fine!” she says. “I can get you in . . . but I won’t be able to go with you.”

  Eliza turns to Guinevere with a very serious frown. “Can you and Smythe call the police while Ivy helps us out?”

  Guinevere nods fearfully. Her eyes are as big and watery as the glittering diamonds on her fingers.

  “This way!” Ivy says, and we follow as she leads us to her room. “Dad always said that there’s no better hiding spot than the back of your closet. It never really meant anything to me growing up, but when I was a teenager, I found a small door in the back, behind all the clothes. I think it’s a way in. I wanted to go myself, but by the time I found it, I was too big to fit.”

  We crawl to the door, open it, and peer inside. There’s a slide that twists all the way down like a bendy straw. But I can’t see where the slide ends.

  Here goes nothing . . . well, not nothing, since my mom’s whole life, her happiness, and her career are on the line. So I guess I should say: here goes everything.

  Before I chicken out, I jump in.

  “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” I shout.

  “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” Eliza yells.

  “MOMMYYYYYYYYYYY!” Frank cries.

  Faster and faster and faster and BOOM.

  We land in a ball pit. Me first. Then Eliza smacks into me. Then Frank topples onto both of us.

  “Yay!” he says. “Let’s do it again!”

  “Let’s not,” Eliza says, swimming over to the edge of the ball pit. The pit is surrounded by solid-earth walls on three sides, so there’s only one way out.

  I follow Eliza. We spill onto a dirt path that twists around like an S, leading right up to a thick wooden door. There’s no way around the door—and no way back unless we want to climb up the slide. To keep going, we have to go through.

  As I move closer to the door I notice doodles carved into the door.

  I stare at the pictures for a moment, then I open the door, just to see what’s inside.

  Inside, there’s a dimly lit hallway that branches off into two trails. The paths are both cobblestone and identical—just veering off in opposite directions. We can take the left path or the right path.

  I close the door and look at the clues again.

  * * *

  TO TAKE THE LEFT PATH, CLICK HERE.

  TO TAKE THE RIGHT PATH, CLICK HERE.

  TO GET A HINT FROM ELIZA, CLICK HERE.

  * * *

  THE SUN’S STARTING to set, and I know we should probably go home for the night, but I really want to spy on Smythe more, and I need my shoes. A few more minutes won’t hurt, right?

  “Come on,” I hiss. “Let’s go around back.”

  Eliza, Frank, and I crawl around the house and try all the doors. There’s the big wooden one with a rainbow unicorn carved into it. Then there’s a screen door. Beneath some bushes, there’s a cellar door. Last we try a sliding door.

  Unfortunately, they’re all locked.

  Maybe we can get in through a window. The first-floor windows are too high f
or any of us to reach on our own.

  “Frank,” I whisper. “I’m going to give you a boost. You have to open the window and pull yourself in. Then you can open a back door for us.”

  “Okay!” Frank says.

  I grab him around the waist and pick him up. He squirms like a wormy fidget bug, and he’s slipping from my grip—

  “Look out!” Eliza cries.

  Frank tumbles on top of me.

  “Are you hurt?” Eliza whispers, checking her brother for scrapes.

  “I’m SUPER FRANK!” he says, jumping to his feet. I lift him again, and he’s still as wiggly as a twisty straw, but he eventually grabs the windowsill.

  “Now you have to push up on my butt! Butt.” He snickers.

  I push up on his butt . . . then his legs . . . then his shoes until he’s half inside.

  “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKK!!!!!” comes a shriek from inside. “BURGLARS!!!! MURDERERS!!!!! SNEAKS IN THE NIGHT!!!!!!!! CALL THE POLICE, SMYTHE!!!”

  Then comes an enormous thump.

  Which—as we find out later when the ambulance arrives—is the sound of Guinevere LeCavalier having a heart attack and dropping dead on the dining-room floor.

  CASE CLOSED.

  THE SECOND I’M positive Otto is gone, I slump against the closet door and groan. “I ruined everything. Mom is going to kill me. We can’t aff—” I choke back the words. I still haven’t told Eliza about our money problems. I know I have to tell her the truth, but I can’t.