The Case of the Plagued Play

by David Lewman

  Wham. Ricky had slammed the door.

  The next day at school Ben was hurrying to his next class when he noticed Ricky in the hallway. He was talking to Zack and his pals, laughing and joking around. Ben certainly didn’t want to give away the fact that Ricky was helping Club CSI, so he steered clear of the group, avoiding eye contact with Ricky.

  At lunch Ben told Corey and Hannah what he’d seen.

  “That’s a good sign,” Hannah said. “It sounds as though Ricky was getting information from them.”

  “Or figuring out a way they could all be bigger bullies together,” Corey said.

  “Aw, Ricky’s not so bad,” Hannah said.

  “I’m not? Thanks!” Ricky said, grinning. He’d come up behind them in the noisy cafeteria without them noticing.

  Hannah blushed. To cover her embarrassment, Ben quickly asked, “What’d you find out?”

  Ricky looked around. “We should meet somewhere else. I don’t want to be seen talking to you nerds. Bad for my reputation.”

  Corey, Ben, and Hannah looked offended. Ricky laughed. “I’m kidding! But Zack’s right over there, and I don’t want him to accidentally overhear us.”

  “You know the old trophy cases?” Corey asked. “Near the gym?”

  Ricky nodded.

  “Meet us there for the last ten minutes of lunch period,” Ben said.

  “The last five minutes,” Ricky said. “I want to enjoy my lunch. And it won’t take long to tell you what I found out.”

  The trophy cases at the end of the hall were dusty, with glass smeared by kids’ fingers. Inside were old sports trophies with names of long-forgotten student athletes engraved on them.

  Corey sat on the floor, tossing his tennis ball against the wall and catching it. Ben paced around, while Hannah peered into one of the trophy cases. Lunch period was almost over.

  “He’s not coming,” Corey said. “He was messing with us.”

  “I don’t think he’d do that,” Hannah said.

  “He said he likes to kid around,” Corey countered. “Since when are you such a big fan of Ricky Collins, anyway?”

  Before Hannah could answer, Ricky came sauntering down the hallway.

  “So, what did you find out?” Ben asked immediately.

  “They didn’t do it,” Ricky said. “End of story.”

  “How do you know?” Corey said. “You didn’t ask them directly, did you? ’Cause I’m sure the blackmailer would lie.”

  Ricky looked annoyed. “Of course I didn’t ask them directly. That’d be really dumb.”

  “Then what makes you so sure none of them blackmailed Courtney?” Hannah asked.

  Ricky looked up at the ceiling as though he were trying to pick the perfect words. He always enjoyed having an audience.

  “It’s just not their style,” he said.

  “ ‘Not their style’?” Corey repeated. This didn’t seem very convincing.

  “Dude, those guys aren’t blackmailers,” Ricky explained. “That’d take way too much effort and . . . imagination. It just wouldn’t occur to them. Trip you in the hall? Yeah. Make fun of your hair? Sure. But blackmail you? No way.”

  “Did you talk to them about what’s been going on with the play?” Ben asked.

  Ricky laughed. “Yeah, I did. Those guys have no idea there even is a school play. ‘What school play?’ Those were their exact words. And I believe them.”

  Hannah, Ben, and Corey exchanged a look. They each knew what the other two were thinking. If Zack and his friends knew nothing about Nobody’s Home, they certainly had no motive to blackmail Courtney into sabotaging the production.

  Ricky turned and walked away. Without turning around he said, “Sorry, guys. Looks like you hit a dead end.”

  As they watched Ricky strut down the empty hallway, all three investigators thought the same thing: He’s right.

  Chapter 20

  After school that day, Ben, Corey, and Hannah walked together to Ben’s house. Usually when they were together, they talked nonstop.

  But not today.

  All three of them were thinking about what to do next.

  “We could talk to Courtney ourselves,” Corey suggested, but without much enthusiasm. “All we know is what Mrs. Gordon told us she said.”

  “We could, I guess,” Hannah said. “But I doubt she wants to talk about it. She’s probably ashamed of what she did. She told a teacher because she had to, but she might not want to talk to us at all.”

  They walked on for half a block in silence.

  Then Ben said, “Let’s go back to the evidence.”

  “What evidence?” Corey asked.

  “The two pieces of evidence Mrs. Gordon gave us,” he said. “Courtney’s copy of the script and the first note the blackmailer sent her.”

  “Sounds good,” Hannah said. “Your house?”

  “My house,” Ben said, nodding.

  Anyone who had looked in Ben’s room that afternoon would have seen a strange sight.

  Three seventh graders were sitting on Ben’s floor, staring at a script. Every once in a while, all three would look up, one by one. Then they’d nod, and Ben would turn the page.

  They’d decided to read through the whole script. Together.

  “Maybe there’ll be some kind of clue in the play itself,” Hannah suggested.

  “Do we all have to read the same copy?” Corey asked. “Can’t we get a couple more copies?” He was actually a little nervous about reading something at the same time as Ben and Hannah. He was afraid they’d read a lot faster than him.

  “We all need to read Courtney’s copy,” Ben said. “She might have written something important in it. And any one of us might catch it.”

  As it turned out, Ben and Hannah were reading the play so carefully that they didn’t read it any faster than Corey did.

  Finally, they read the last page. “So Millicent did it,” Corey said.

  “We already knew that,” Ben pointed out.

  Hannah sighed. “I was hoping the play might give us some clue, but I didn’t pick up on anything.”

  “It’s weird, but the dialogue at the end sounded familiar to me,” Ben said. “Like I’d heard it somewhere before.”

  “We did go to a lot of rehearsals,” Hannah remarked.

  “Yeah, but we never saw them rehearse the end of the play,” Ben countered. He turned to his computer and started typing.

  “Wait a minute,” Corey said. “Look at this.”

  He was pointing to the bottom of the last page, where it read: THE END.

  “Someone handwrote ‘The End,’ ” he said. “And then the page was photocopied. So Courtney didn’t write it. Plus, the handwriting is different from hers.”

  “You’re right,” Hannah said, examining the page.

  At the same time, Ben had discovered something of his own. “Aha!” Ben said. “Look at this!” He turned his computer monitor, so the other two could see it.

  It showed a page full of search results. Ben had typed in a line of dialogue from the end of the play. Every search result mentioned an old movie called Ghost Mansion.

  “I knew I’d heard that dialogue from somewhere before!” Ben said. “Friday night, when I should have been at the opening night of the play, I was watching a late-night rerun of Professor When on the sci-fi channel and I fell asleep. . . .”

  “Anyone would fall asleep watching that show,” Hannah said, teasing.

  “Hey, it’s one of my favorites!” Ben protested. “Anyway, when I woke up I saw the last few minutes of this old movie. I didn’t catch the title, but it must have been Ghost Mansion!”

  Hannah suddenly understood. “So you’re saying that the guy who wrote Nobody’s Home”—she looked at the cover of the script—“Theo—”

  “Stole his play from an old movie!” Ben announced, nodding excitedly. “He just changed the title!”

  Corey picked up the blackmailer’s original note to Courtney and put it beside the last page of the script. �
�And look!” he said. “The handwriting for ‘The End’ looks a lot like the handwriting on this note. Which means . . .”

  “Theo’s the blackmailer!” Ben and Hannah said at the same time.

  The next day at school, Ben, Hannah, and Corey crowded into Mrs. Gordon’s small office.

  Theo sat in a chair, looking miserable.

  Mrs. Gordon was looking at the dialogue from Ghost Mansion that Ben had printed out for her to see. She also had the original blackmail note and Courtney’s copy of the script on her desk. She looked up from the pages, took off her reading glasses, and sighed.

  “This is serious, Theo,” Mrs. Gordon said. “You plagiarized for a homework assignment, and then you threatened another student to try to keep it secret.”

  “I’m really sorry,” Theo mumbled. “But I never thought you’d turn my script into the school play. If you performed it, someone was sure to recognize it as an old movie. I had to stop the show.”

  “How’d you know about Courtney’s cheating in gym class?” Ben asked.

  Theo shrugged. “We have the same gym teacher, Mr. O’Connor. He left the sixth graders’ physical fitness test scores on a chair in the gym. While he was fixing a volleyball net, I was kind of looking at them.”

  He shot a quick look at Mrs. Gordon, but she was just listening to him, encouraging him to go on. She really was a nice, fair teacher. She made you want to tell the truth.

  “I know Courtney from my neighborhood, and she’s, you know, small and not very athletic,” Theo said. “I thought it’d be funny to see her scores. But when I found them, they were good. Amazingly good. Push-ups, pull-ups—everything. So I looked closer and I could see, like, eraser marks. She’d changed her scores. I couldn’t believe Mr. O’Connor hadn’t noticed.”

  “But you didn’t tell him?” Hannah asked.

  Theo shook his head. “I really wasn’t supposed to be looking at them, you know? And then I remembered Courtney had been chosen as the stage manager for Nobody’s Home. I was so happy. I had finally figured out a way to stop the play from happening without anyone knowing I had plagiarized it, so I sent her the first note.”

  He looked at them sincerely. “I wouldn’t have told on her. No way. I just wanted to keep the play from going on before I got into trouble.”

  Mrs. Gordon sighed again. “Well, Theo, I’m afraid you’re in trouble now. We’re going to have a talk with Principal Inverno.”

  That Friday night Hannah, Corey, and Ben settled into their seats in the auditorium. It looked as though it was going to be completely full.

  “I’m glad they decided to do the play, anyway,” Hannah said. “I know Kelly would have been really disappointed after all those rehearsals. And she’s really funny in the show.”

  “But don’t they need to have permission from the studio that owns Ghost Mansion?” Ben asked.

  “They got it,” Hannah said. “Kelly said the company that owns the old movie was thrilled that a school was going to perform the script. They’re hoping it catches on with other schools. See? It says so right in the program.”

  Ben found a statement at the front of the program from the company that owned Ghost Mansion, wishing the cast lots of good luck with their run of the show. Theo’s name was nowhere to be found.

  “Hey, that’s not all it says in the program!” Corey said. “Look at this!”

  He pointed to the back page. At the bottom, in bold print, they read, “The director, cast, and stage manager of the play would like to extend special thanks to Club CSI, without whom this production would not have been possible.”

  “We’re famous!” Corey said, grinning.

  David Lewman played the title role in Oliver! at the University of Illinois when he was twelve years old. He was also in several school plays and musicals, and even performed in professional shows as an adult. None of them were ever sabotaged. David has written more than sixty-five books starring SpongeBob SquarePants, Jimmy Neutron, the Fairly OddParents, G.I. JOE, the Wild Thornberrys, and other popular characters. He has also written scripts for many acclaimed television shows. David lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Donna, and their dog, Pirkle.

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  ISBN 978-1-4424-7260-0 (pbk)

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  ISBN 978-1-4424-7262-4 (eBook)

  Library of Congress Control Number 2013931104