by Dave Keane
Chapter Ten
The Closet Detective
I can’t think of a single movie in which Sherlock Holmes was shoved into a broom closet. It’s so dark in here, I can’t hear myself think.
Even worse, I need to pee.
But as my Uncle Mycroft liked to say, it could be worse.
Now that I think about it, this was my uncle’s most favorite thing to say. For example, if you just stubbed your pinky toe on the leg of a table, my Uncle Mycroft would say, “Hey, it could be worse.” Then he’d give you an example: “You could have had your lung popped with the business end of a fondue fork.” This was never helpful, but it did cut down on the complaining.
Getting shoved into a dark closet is surely a low point for any detective who takes his craft seriously. To make matters worse, it stinks of cleaning stuff, old mops, and stale vomit. And my bladder is starting to feel a lot like Doreen.
I guess I could start feeling my way around in the dark with my hands, but that barf smell has me spooked.
Then I remember the cell phone Hailey handed me outside.
I snatch it from my pocket and flip it open. The tiny, glowing screen lights up the room nicely. Yes, I’m in a broom closet.
But who should I call? I consider calling my mom, but she’d freak out. I think of calling a police officer I know named Lestrade, but I don’t want to get the cops involved yet. So I call the next best thing.
“Lance?” I exclaim in surprise when my best friend in the world answers the phone on the first ring—his grandma always picks up!
“Hiya, Sherlock,” he says with a glum sigh.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“It’s been a tough day,” he says.
“Can you help me on a case? Hailey just—”
“I can’t leave the house, Sherlock,” he says grimly. “My grandma had to be rushed to the phrenologist.”
“She’s sick?” I instantly feel bad for calling. “Is that some sort of special doctor?”
“No,” he says. “Her phrenologist is a lady who feels the lumps and bumps on my grandma’s head to predict her future and give her advice.”
“Dang it, Lance!” I exclaim louder than I should. “I thought she caught some disease. What happened to her palm reader?”
“They’re not speaking,” he says, his voice tightening. “I’ve never seen her this freaked out before.”
I consider telling him that it could be worse but don’t. “What happened?” I ask.
“She was in the kitchen this morning making me pancakes when all of a sudden she started screaming,” he explains.
“Mouse?” I ask.
“I wish,” he whispers. He’s silent for a moment, working the words out in his head. “On the overcooked side of the second-to-last pancake…she can see the face of Don Chimpy.”
“Who?” I ask, not believing what I’m hearing.
“Don Chimpy!” he scoffs, like I’m some kind of idiot. “He’s the host of Bug Chompers, the most popular TV show in the country. Just imagine seeing your favorite TV host staring at you from the back of a pancake.
She wrapped the pancake in foil and put it in the freezer and—”
“Lance!” I snap. “That’s an amazing story, but I’m on a case right now, and I need help desperately! I’ve lost my sister. Mr. Klopper’s lost his head. And I’m in a dark closet about to pee my pants. Are you saying I should call someone else?”
“I pulled it out of the freezer, and I just don’t see Don Chimpy. To me it looks more like a seahorse with a wig on. Although if I hold it up to the light it—”
I snap the phone closed right in the middle of his sentence and return to complete darkness. I growl in frustration. Why do I ever call him? I should have called—
I hear footsteps coming down the hall. I hold my breath. The person out in the hallway has a flashlight that’s sending light through the crack under the door. I can see my shoes.
The footsteps sound too quick to be Mr. Klopper’s. They increase in speed as they pass the door in front of me. They stop. They shuffle around a bit. Whoever is out there must be near the back door that I came through. “What on earth!” a strange voice says sharply. Then I hear the back door snap shut with a bang. The footsteps hesitate and then go running past the door in front of me and down the hallway.
The poop beetle! I was using it to prop open the back door for Hailey, and now it’s been taken. Dang it. This whole case is blowing up in my face—a lot like my last science project.
I clench my teeth. I need to take matters into my own hands or I’ll never get this case solved. I take a deep breath, lower my chin, and grip the doorknob with a new determination to tackle this case head on, no matter what obstacles are thrown in my way.
The door is locked.
I shake, pound, and kick the door, but it will not open.
Holy corn dogs! What if Mr. Klopper gets arrested and forgets that I’m in here!
I can imagine the front page of next week’s Baskerville Daily News.
Even my Uncle Mycroft would agree that things probably couldn’t get any worse.
Chapter Eleven
Escape Plan
Sometimes you have to pee so bad, it becomes impossible to think about anything else.
But I try: Sailboats. French toast. Archery. Hairless cats and whether they cough up fur balls. Nothing works.
I use the glowing screen on my mom’s cell phone to locate the nearest mop bucket in this closet in case I’m forced to take drastic measures.
The darkness gives me a moment to turn things over in my mind. I still hold on to the hope that I can crack this case before it’s discovered that the mummy’s head is missing and Mr. Klopper gets into serious legal trouble. My mystery-solving abilities rarely let me down.
I may not be in Minds of Tomorrow, but I’m smart in ways that are much harder to define. Sure, Hailey can rattle off pointless information, like the many uses of nitrogen gas and how to save someone who’s choking on a fish bone. But all that book learning doesn’t help her solve mysteries like I can.
And I’d do much better in school, too, if I wasn’t so easily bored. In fact, my powers of concentration are similar to those of a small bird—just the sight of a shiny piece of foil or a twisted bit of kite string can wreck my entire train of thought. But I’ve never met a mystery I couldn’t solve, which isn’t a big help when your teacher is yelping at you to name the capital of Delaware.
Just then, without warning, the broom closet door opens with a click.
My eyes can make out Hailey standing in the hallway in front of me with Doreen in one hand and her Girl Chat Sleepover pen-size flashlight in the other. She blinds me with the tiny beam.
“Why are you hiding in here like a dust broom?” she whispers.
“I’m not hiding,” I hiss. “I was locked in here. In complete darkness.”
“Why didn’t you turn on the light?” she asks, casually leaning into the closet and flicking a light switch. The closet explodes with light.
I’m speechless.
“C’mon,” Hailey says, moving off down the hall. “Mr. Klopper says we have less than forty minutes before the gig is up.”
“Wait!” I call out after her with some desperation. I snap off the light, shut the closet door, and stagger down the hall to catch up to her. “How did you get in? I propped the back door open with the scarab beetle Mr. Klopper gave me, but it was discovered.”
“I know,” she says. “I heard everybody talking about it. It’s caused a big commotion. Everyone wants to know how it got taken out of storage and wedged into an emergency exit.”
“Mr. Klopper stole that, too?” I gasp.
“I didn’t think of that,” she says. We stand silently for a minute. Doreen doesn’t look worried.
“Mr. Klopper’s been taking things home that he shouldn’t have,” I conclude with some certainty. “But I don’t think he meant to steal any of this stuff. He doesn’t seem like a bad guy, just someone who�
��s used bad judgment.”
“Well, that’s your area of expertise,” Hailey adds quietly.
I believe there’s still a thin slice of hope remaining in the case’s pie. “Well, at least the scarab mystery has probably bought us a little bit of time.”
“Your diversion worked like a charm,” she says with a snort, but I can’t see the expression on her face in the dim light.
I hear excited voices somewhere in the building. “Hey, how did you get in here if the back door was closed?”
“Well, they’re busy getting ready for a party with over three hundred guests,” she says simply. “And someone’s been swiping scarabs out of the storage space. It’s nuts around here. So I just told the grumpy guard that I was the daughter of the lady bringing in all the trays of food. She’s been carrying stuff in from a catering van parked outside the front entrance.”
I have to admit, Hailey can sometimes be impressive.
“Why are you dancing?” Hailey asks in a near whisper.
I look down and realize that I am practically putting on a show. “Uh, I have to pee so bad I’m afraid to sneeze.”
“I told you to go before we left the house!” she hisses with irritation. “Your bladder must be the size of a chickpea. C’mon, the bathroom is this way.” Her light bounces down the walls of the hallway.
“I can’t walk that fast,” I whimper.
Suddenly, her light snaps off. And before I know what’s happening, I’m being pushed backward through a swinging door.
Chapter Twelve
Sudden Death
My first thought is that I’m covered in blood.
I can’t tell for sure because the room Hailey and I have just tumbled into is so dark that I can’t see the little sister right in front of my face.
“Could you get off me?” I wheeze.
“Gross!” she snarls quietly. “You’re soaked!”
“Sorry, but I might be bleeding to death,” I say, my throat closing up with emotion.
“Where’s my flashlight?” she asks, seemingly unconcerned with my life-threatening injury. I can hear her hands slapping around on the cold, hard floor.
Then I have a thought that’s even worse than my rapidly approaching death: “I may have just peed in my pants,” I say in a sad and shaky voice.
“Oh, that has got to be a new low, even for you,” she says, suddenly clicking on her flashlight and blinding me again. “Oh, no,” she says in a strangely heavy voice.
“What?” I gasp. “It’s blood? Hurry, go call an ambulance!”
“You’re not bleeding!” she snaps. “And you didn’t pee your pants! You popped Doreen!”
“Oh, what a relief,” I say, snapping Doreen’s remains out from under me.
“You killed our sister,” she whispers. “How could you?”
“Would you stop with all your sill—” I stop myself midword when I hear voices right outside the door. Hailey turns off her light.
“I didn’t want to say this in front of the staff,” says the same gruff voice I heard near the emergency exit when the scarab was discovered. “But Klopper’s been acting strange all day. I think he’s our man. I should put him in the conference room and grill him like a sausage link.”
“I was thinking the same thing, Benito,” a woman says in an official-sounding voice. “Put Thomas in the conference room, but keep in mind that we’ve got half a dozen visiting museum directors in this building at this very moment, and I don’t trust any of them as far as I can throw them.”
“Very good, ma’am,” says Benito. I don’t like the tone of his voice one bit. He sure sounds like he’s out to get Mr. Klopper.
The footsteps fade away down the hall.
“I didn’t even get to say good-bye,” Hailey says, flicking her light back on. She holds up what’s left of Doreen.
“It was a freak accident,” I say.
“No, you’re the freak!”
After overhearing the conversation in the hallway, I now know three things:
1. They haven’t discovered that their mummy head has gone missing.
2. Mr. Klopper is already in trouble and may spill his beans if cornered.
3. All the guests in the museum may cloud the issue of who’s responsible for using a delicate three-thousand-year-old scarab for a doorstop.
“Exploding under your big brother’s butt has got to be the worst way to leave this world,” Hailey says. “What a way to meet your end.”
I shake my head. “I’m sorry about Doreen, but our chances of helping Mr. Klopper are fading fast.”
“She was so young,” Hailey sighs. “So full of hopes and dreams.”
“Enough already!” I snap. “I’ll buy you a whole box of disposable gloves when we get out of here. But Hailey, I’m going to pop worse than Doreen if we don’t find a—”
“I’ll wait outside,” Hailey says quietly. She hits a switch before exiting through the swinging door, shedding light on the fact that I’m sitting on the floor of a bathroom.
With a mixture of disgust and horror, I realize that I’m in the girls’ bathroom.
“Maybe my whole life has fallen under the curse of an ancient and very evil Egyptian curse,” I say to nobody in particular.
Chapter Thirteen
The Mysterious “Butt”
“How do you know where Mr. Klopper’s office is?” I ask.
“Minds of Tomorrow got a tour of this place,” Hailey huffs, giving me her mad-dog eyes. She’s still angry at me for popping our little sister. But I ignore her—right now we’ve got other fish to bake.
I must admit, now that I’ve used the bathroom I have a new bounce in my step, like I’m two gallons lighter. “I thought this place was top secret,” I whisper as we creep down a hallway. “I guess the kids in Nerds of Tomorrow get special privileges.”
She doesn’t answer. Unlike the dark hallway near the emergency exit, this part of the museum is brightly lit—perfect for catching two kids sneaking around. We turn left, run up some squeaky stairs, and turn right into an empty office with four desks.
I can tell which desk is my client’s long before I see the THOMAS KLOPPER nameplate.
Three of the desks look like they were thrown here during a tornado. Mr. Klopper’s desk, on the other hand, is shiny and spotless. Six finely sharpened pencils are lined up in perfectly straight lines. A pad of paper is positioned squarely underneath the pencils. In the middle of the desk stands a family-size box of Taste Safari animal crackers in assorted flavors.
Hoping for a miracle, I peek inside. No head. (Hey, you never know when your luck might change!) No head of lettuce, either. It’s empty except for a slip of paper inside the box. I pluck it out.
The symbols that Mr. Klopper wrote on his message to me are written in pencil on one side of the paper. This must be the original note pinned to the lettuce. It has a slick film or coating on it. Its rectangular shape is irregular and crooked, which tells me that someone sloppily cut it out of a larger piece of paper. On the back the word “butt” appears on the right side.
“‘Butt’?” I say.
“But what?” Hailey asks with a puzzled look on her face.
“No, not ‘but,’ but ‘butt,’” I say.
Hailey considers me. “You may have internal injuries we can’t see.”
“Never mind,” I say, and drop the note back in the box. Sure, it’s a clue, but I have no clue what it means! Besides, how am I supposed to figure things out when I feel like I’m on some kind of wild goose chase—and I’m the one being chased by the wild goose?
I blow out a gust of air. “I don’t get it,” I say. “Mr. Klopper is so organized and neat, it’s hard to imagine he could get himself into this mess.”
Hailey shrugs. “He may be tidy, but he’s been breaking museum rules—and maybe even several state and local laws—by sneaking stuff out of here.”
“That’s true,” I say. “But usually people who lose things are careless.”
“Mr. Kl
opper is careless,” Hailey points out. “You’ve seen the way he drives. His wife told me he forgot all about their wedding anniversary, and he made the mistake of giving you a three-thousand-year-old Egyptian artifact.”
“FOR THE LOVE OF RA!!!” booms an angry and bodiless voice.
I let out a sound you’d normally expect from a prairie dog. I assume a crouching fighting stance.
“I AM CURSED!” the voice thunders from nowhere and everywhere at once.
“The headless mummy’s spirit is here to get his brains back for his trip to the afterlife!” I blurt out.
Hailey remains motionless.
Staying in my best fighting stance, I walk sideways like a crab around Hailey to protect her from the angry Egyptian ghost. “Show yourself, great spirit of the headless mummy,” I bellow like an idiot. I have to pee again. Dang!
Suddenly Mr. Klopper’s desk chair rolls across the floor, as if being pulled by an invisible hand!
“The headless spirit wants to sit down and rest!” I peep, unable to take my eyes off the chair.
“I wish Doreen were here,” Hailey says in a tiny voice.
Chapter Fourteen
Wake-up Call
“It’s just me,” Mr. Klopper says, crawling out from under his desk on his hands and knees.
“Y-you c-could have—you almost scared us to death,” I stammer.
“What are you doing hiding under your desk?” Hailey asks.
“They’re looking for me,” he says, climbing to his feet and nervously flicking beard bits in our direction. “I’ve clearly made a mess of everything. My whole life has taken a turn for the worse. Maybe I am obsessed, as Lorraine is always telling me. I think they know about the missing head. I should never have asked you children—”
