Super Puzzletastic Mysteries

by Chris Grabenstein

  “Oh my,” said the mystery triplet. “I’m interrupting something important, aren’t I?” He sat down at the table with a smile.

  No, a smirk.

  “Drake,” Aunt Bea said. “Why don’t you go help your brothers in the kitchen?”

  “Oh, you’ve made it very clear that I am no help at all, Mother.” Drake folded his arms and plopped into a chair. “No, I think I’ll stay right here.”

  Aunt Bea looked at Bubbie, and Bubbie looked back at her, and they seemed to say something with their eyes. Something that was clear to the two of them . . . and absolute gibberish to Hannah.

  The spell was broken when Happy Blake and Plain Jake brought in the trays of food and drinks. Dreadful Drake sat across from Hannah, scowling at his brothers.

  What a weird family, Hannah thought. When at last the serving plates were laid out, Aunt Bea raised her cup, a unique silver goblet with a grapevine pattern.

  Bubbie squinted. “Is that our pop-pop’s kiddush cup? The necklace wasn’t enough for you? You took the cup, too?”

  Aunt Bea sniffed. “To . . . reunions,” she said, staring at her sister.

  To Hannah, a toast was an invitation to start eating. She reached for food.

  “No, mamaleh,” Bubbie whispered, putting her arm across Hannah. “Wait a second.”

  Isaac’s stomach growled. “But we’re hungry.”

  Jake, meanwhile, was piling his plate high and digging in with neither a smile nor a frown on his nonexpressive face. He was a quick and messy eater. Chewing with his mouth open, licking his fingers, he dived in for seconds before anyone else had firsts.

  Drake was watching Bubbie very carefully as she pulled a pen out of her purse and began to scribble on a paper napkin. When Bubbie was done, she folded the napkin and held it in her palm.

  “Eat, Drake!” Aunt Bea demanded. “Eat, Blake!”

  “I’m not very hungry,” Blake said with a smile. “And I want to make sure our guests have enough food. It’s discourteous to eat and drink before they do.”

  Aunt Bea gestured at the well-prepared food. A platter of juicy steaks glistened at Hannah, and the smell of mashed potatoes was making her mouth water. Isaac put his chin down on the table and started having a staring contest with a piece of homemade challah. Hannah knew that face; they only had about ten seconds before Isaac attacked the food in sheer hunger.

  Aunt Bea stood up, red in the face. “You’re all being very impolite! All except my Jake!”

  Bubbie stood up, too. Eye to eye with her sister, she slipped Aunt Bea the napkin note. “Snake,” she spat.

  Aunt Bea’s face scrunched into an angry ball. But her expression changed completely as she stared at the napkin. Her eyes bulged, and her mouth parted in surprise. The napkin began to tremble in her hands.

  “B-But how do you know?” Aunt Bea said, her voice quivery.

  “I got a letter from one of your sons with your symptoms,” Bubbie said. “I knew right away, from my work. But I’m not sure if your boys knew I was a forensic scientist.”

  Aunt Bea’s complexion turned almost greenish. She put down her fork. “Excuse me,” she said, standing shakily to her feet. “I must go make a phone call.”

  All eyes followed her as she exited the room—except for Hannah, who was watching her brother steal the napkin from Aunt Bea’s place setting.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” Isaac said.

  “I’ll go, too!” Hannah said quickly. “To make sure he doesn’t get lost.”

  The two of them scurried out of the room and shut themselves inside the kitchen pantry. Isaac unfolded the letter.

  “P trust no one a is?” Isaac said. “What in the world does that mean?”

  Hannah squinted at the letter. Bubbie had said snake as she handed Aunt Bea the letter. At first, it seemed like Bubbie was calling Aunt Bea a snake. But now Hannah was not so sure. It was either a word that meant something to them or instructions on how to read the letter.

  “There must be a message hidden inside the message!” Hannah said thoughtfully. She traced her fingers in a snakelike shape through the letters. Then she started laughing.

  “Well? What is it?” Isaac demanded.

  “Start with the letter R in the word trust,” Hannah said. “And if you read in a snake shape, instead of left to right, you’ll see it, too.”

  “Rat poison! But what does that mean?” He scrunched his eyebrows together.

  “This is what Bubbie came here to say . . .” Things were beginning to click for Hannah. “Bubbie got a letter from Jake saying Aunt Bea was sick. He listed her symptoms. And because Bubbie is a forensic scientist, she knew right away that Aunt Bea was being slowly poisoned by one of the two sons that was caring for her.”

  “Blake or Jake?” Isaac said. “Blake is so happy. It must be Jake.”

  “But Jake wrote Bubbie the letter. Why write her if he were the one doing the poisoning?”

  “Maybe Jake made a mistake.”

  “Give me a break.”

  Isaac shook his head. “Not this again! Too much rhyming!”

  Hannah sighed. “Look—Bubbie had to come here, to Aunt Bea’s house, to deliver the message in person. If she wrote a letter about the rat poison, it’s possible the wrong brother would have intercepted her warning and thrown it out.”

  The doorknob to the pantry turned, and Isaac quickly grabbed Bubbie’s note, stuffed it in his mouth, and swallowed it.

  “Isaac! That’s disgusting!”

  “I’m hiding the evidence,” he said. “Plus, I’m starving.”

  The door opened and one of the triplets towered above them.

  “Which one are you?” Hannah asked.

  “Which one do you think?” he said nastily.

  It had to be Dreadful Drake.

  “What do you want?” Hannah said, as Isaac cleaned bits of napkin out of his teeth.

  “My mother is finished with her phone call, and she requests everyone’s presence in the dining room . . . now.”

  They followed Drake back into the dining room. And if Hannah had any doubts that it was actually Drake, she knew for sure when Aunt Bea said, “Thank you for fetching them, Drake.”

  He nodded at his mother, then sat down in his chair across from Hannah.

  “Boys,” Aunt Bea said, raising her silver goblet. “Let’s make a toast.”

  “What are we toasting?” Blake said, raising his glass.

  “My new will.”

  Blake’s smile slid off his face. Jake dropped his fork. Drake looked at their mother curiously.

  Aunt Bea continued, “As of right now, my will states that after my death, Blake will receive my mother’s green emerald pendant, our family’s most precious heirloom, worth three million dollars. And Jake would be getting the house, worth one million dollars. And Drake, who abandoned me in my old age and did not care for his poor, ailing mother, would get nothing.”

  Drake frowned.

  “But I have just called my lawyer. At midnight, he is coming over to change the will.”

  The room was still and oh-so-hushed. It was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. So quiet you could hear a spider scuttle. So quiet you could hear the silent-but-deadly release of three nervous farts from all three identical brothers.

  “Drake,” Aunt Bea says, “will now receive everything. Every last item, every last penny I own.”

  Drake looked both dumbfounded and gleeful. He grinned widely, looking happier than Hannah ever thought the grumpy triplet could look.

  “WHAT?” Jake and Blake fumed, and they both slammed their palms on the table.

  “Why?” Jake demanded.

  “Because I can’t trust either of you! Someone has been making me sick . . . on purpose,” Aunt Bea said.

  Rat poison, Hannah thought, but she didn’t dare say it aloud.

  “Not me! I’ve done nothing but care for you!” Blake said. “If anyone’s untrustworthy, it’s Jake!”

  Jake pursed his lips. “Blake is lying
! Let me prove that I’m the trustworthy one.”

  “That’s an excellent idea,” Blake agreed. “If I can definitively prove that I’m telling the truth, can you keep me in your will?”

  Aunt Bea considered. “Okay,” she finally answered. “If you can prove yourself innocent by midnight, I’ll give the inheritance to the one who has been taking care of me . . . and not making me ill. And we will save this toast until then.” She placed the cup back on the table.

  Jake and Blake got up from their chairs and ran from the room; Hannah could hear them arguing, even from across the house.

  Drake looked nervous. “Mother, if you’ll excuse me.” And he left as well.

  Aunt Bea looked sharply at Bubbie. “You don’t have to be here anymore. You delivered your message. Consider me thoroughly warned.”

  Bubbie frowned. “We’ll stay until midnight. I have to make sure you’re safe.”

  “More like you want me to give the inheritance to you!” Aunt Bea snarled, and then she, too, excused herself.

  Bubbie sighed and turned to Hannah and Isaac. “That’s what our fight was about. All those years ago. Bea got my mother’s precious necklace. She was always the favorite, and she lorded it over me. I was hoping that if she saw you two, she would consider gifting me my mother’s necklace—letting it pass to our side of the family.”

  Hannah frowned. Given what little she knew about Aunt Bea, that seemed highly unlikely.

  Bubbie sighed. “I’m sorry for dragging you kids out here. I should have delivered the warning by myself. We’ll leave at midnight, don’t worry. But until then . . .” Bubbie dug into her purse. “Here’s a few granola bars. I know you kids are hungry.”

  “No kidding,” Isaac said, “I ate your napkin. Informative but not filling!”

  As they waited,

  and waited,

  and waited,

  and waited,

  night ensnared the lakeside cottage. It was dark, and it was quiet. Yes, the cottage itself made noise—there was the ticking of a grandfather clock, the creaking of the house’s old bones, and the hiss of the radiator in the corner. But the triplets and Aunt Bea were nowhere to be heard. The still inside the house wasn’t peaceful—it was tense.

  Hannah couldn’t stop thinking about Blake and Jake. One of them was poisoning their own mother, and both of them were accusing the other brother. So one was telling the truth, and one was lying—but how was Aunt Bea supposed to know which one was which? And would they be able to prove their innocence—or the other one’s guilt—before midnight? Or would Drake swoop in and take the inheritance?

  It sure seemed like Drake had a lot to gain.

  And Blake and Jake had a lot to lose.

  Eventually, Bubbie fell asleep on the couch, and Isaac dug in her bag for more food to eat. It was an unsuccessful mission, turning up only three lemon drops, a stick of gum, and denture toothpaste, which he actually tried (and spit out into one of Aunt Bea’s decorative bowls).

  Clang! Bang!

  The noise was coming from the kitchen—pots and pans being moved around. At first Hannah thought that her ears were playing tricks on her, but Isaac looked at her eagerly. “We should check it out,” he said.

  Hannah glanced at Bubbie, who was snoring slightly. Bubbie could sleep through an earthquake. In fact, she had slept through earthquakes in her lifetime.

  Clink! Clang!

  “Let’s go,” Hannah said. She and her brother tiptoed to the door, opened it a crack, and peered into the kitchen.

  There was a bottle with a rat on its label sitting on the counter, next to Aunt Bea’s silver goblet. And beside the goblet was a triplet—

  But which one?

  Curse these identical triplets!

  Hannah frowned. Their uncle—whichever uncle it was—was grinning. Not smirking, but actually smiling. He seemed to be very happy. Glowing, even. The dimple in his left cheek danced. He held the poison in his hand . . . and then he burped quite loudly and patted his stomach. “Ugh, I am so full,” he groaned.

  Then the triplet turned the vial of poison over and tipped it into the cup.

  “He’s poisoning her cup—right now!” Hannah whispered.

  Isaac took a deep breath and shouted, “HELP! HE’S THE CULPRIT!”

  The triplet bolted out the other kitchen exit—so fast that Hannah and Isaac couldn’t catch up. They chased after him, but he disappeared around the corner. He had the advantage of knowing the cottage well. Unlike Hannah and Isaac, who had no idea where they were going.

  “POISON!” Isaac shouted again.

  Moments later, all three triplets dashed into the kitchen. Aunt Bea also came running. And Bubbie got up from the couch.

  “What is it? What do you want?” Aunt Bea demanded, looking at Hannah and Isaac like she’d regretted letting children into her home. “I was having a lie-down!”

  “This cup is poisoned,” Hannah said. “And we saw one of them pour it in!” She pointed at Blake, Jake, and Drake.

  “I’m innocent! I’ve been alone in my room this whole time,” said Blake.

  “It wasn’t me! I’ve been alone in my room this whole time,” said Jake.

  “How dare you! I’ve been alone in my room this whole time,” said Drake.

  “Well, which one did the poisoning?” Aunt Bea asked.

  Hannah looked between her identical uncles. Which one did do the poisoning? Cheerful Blake? Emotionless Jake? Miserable Drake?

  “I . . . I don’t know,” Hannah admitted. “Maybe you shouldn’t trust any of them.”

  This, of course, caused the triplets to erupt into angry shouts. Bubbie, quiet from the corner, walked over to the countertop. Toward the poisoned goblet and the bottle of rat poison.

  Bubbie began to chuckle. And that chuckle grew into a laugh. And that laugh grew into an all-out guffaw.

  “Why are you laughing?!” Aunt Bea shouted, stamping her foot.

  “Because you don’t have rat poison in your system! You actually had ethylene glycol poisoning.”

  “Ethel—what?”

  “It’s a type of antifreeze—it lowers the freezing point of water-based liquid in cold environments. It’s very lethal in large doses. But in small doses, it’s nearly impossible to detect in the body, since the symptoms can be confused for lots of other diseases and illnesses. In tiny doses, it can take months to poison someone to death.”

  “So why did you tell me it was rat poison?”

  “Somehow,” Bubbie said, “I didn’t think you’d know ethylene glycol. So I just wrote down rat poison. It is very curious that suddenly the poison would switch from ethylene glycol to rat poison when I show up. Which of your sons did you tell?”

  “None. I swear! I didn’t know who to trust.”

  All three brothers crossed their arms at the same time.

  “What is going on? Who is responsible for making me ill?”

  Blake pointed to Drake. Drake pointed to Jake. Jake pointed to Blake.

  Hannah suddenly stood up. “Aunt Bea,” she said breathlessly, “I know.”

  For the solution to this story, please turn here.

  The Haunted Typewriter

  by Gigi Pandian

  The day after eleven-year-old Tara Chandran founded her first detective agency, a magician moved in down the hall.

  Tara didn’t consider herself superstitious—she loved Friday the thirteenth, she walked under ladders, and Halloween was her favorite holiday—but she took this as a good omen. A magician was sure to bring mystery to the building. There wasn’t nearly enough mystery in her life that gloomy San Francisco summer, even after the burglary in their apartment building four days ago, which had prompted Tara and her best friend Kevin to form the Moon Raven Detective Agency.

  “Auspicious,” Kevin had said when he heard about the magician. Whatever. He was always using bigger words than he needed to. He could have simply said it was lucky.

  Of course, the magician wasn’t actually a wizard who could do magic. He was
a grown-up who got paid to do tricks on a stage. He didn’t have any kind of mystical powers that could help them figure out who’d stolen Kevin’s mother’s diamond earrings.

  So even with a magician in the building, the week after sixth grade ended wasn’t as magical as it could have been. People in the building were unhappy about the theft, of course, and Tara had heard a few of them yelling at Ms. Weber, the building manager. Security in the building was supposed to be good. It was an expensive building with a dozen apartments in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood, which stood for South of Market, the area south of the diagonal Market Street that stretched across the foggy city where she’d grown up.

  Tara gazed out the kitchen window as she stirred her soggy cereal, the milk turning brown. It was chocolate granola her mom had bought at the farmers’ market as a treat. She had summer camp and a visit with her grandparents coming up later that summer, but nothing besides the detective agency with Kevin planned for another two weeks. But they had no leads in the case of the purloined earrings! And no other cases, either. Their parents wouldn’t let them build a website, so nobody besides a few friends and people in the building knew Tara and Kevin were official detectives.

  Suddenly, there was a banging at the front door. It was so loud, Tara dropped her spoon.

  “Tara?” Kevin shouted on the other side of the door as he beat his fist against it again.

  “Manners, young man!” Tara’s father commented as he walked to the door, shaking his head.

  “Sorry, Mr. Chandran,” Kevin said as the door swung open. “Uh, it’s an emergency. Can Tara come over?”

  “An emergency?” said Tara’s dad.

  “Yeah,” said Kevin, trying to catch his breath. “We have our first lead in the case.”

  Tara’s dad chuckled and looked from Kevin’s uncombed hair to the Star Wars slippers on his feet. He turned back to his daughter. “Finish your breakfast. Then you can go.”

  “Mmm, hmmm,” Tara said through a mouthful of soggy granola. “All done.”

  Her dad laughed again. Tara knew her dad thought Kevin’s mom had simply forgotten where she put her diamond earrings—because both she and Kevin’s dad worked long hours at a start-up company called Technology for Change, and were tired at the end of the day—so he saw no harm in Tara and Kevin helping her find the earrings. But Tara? She knew in her heart there was more to it.