And then he walks away, leaving us alone in the dark, dark closet.
* * *
CLICK HERE.
* * *
“THE DEATH THREAT last night,” I ask Smythe. “What did it say?”
“I don’t know,” Smythe says.
“Can we look at it?” Eliza adds.
“No, you cannot.”
“What!” I shout. “Come on, you said you’d help us.”
Smythe walks over to the desk in the middle of the room and sits down in the chair.
“You can’t see it because Mrs. LeCavalier took it with her. There was a letter on her pillow—with a box of chocolates.”
“Box of chocolates?”
“Well, that’s what we thought until we opened it.” For the first time ever, Smythe looks a little nervous. He pulls at the collar of his butler uniform and clears his throat. “Instead of chocolates, there were all sorts of dead roaches. Belly up. Their little legs up high in the air.”
“COOL!” Frank says. “BUGS ARE AWESOME.”
“That’s a nightmare!” says Eliza.
“Mrs. LeCavalier screamed her head off, and I had to clean up the bugs. But she never showed me the letter. She was holding it very tight to her chest as she and Ivy left for a hotel. I’ve never seen her so rattled.” Smythe’s mouth puckers, and his droopy eyes look serious. “If you don’t hurry up and find the culprit, we might all be in trouble. So what are you waiting for?”
* * *
TO ASK SMYTHE WHERE TO INVESTIGATE NEXT, CLICK HERE.
* * *
IF WE WANT to be treated like professionals, we must act like professionals—and that means reasoning with Smythe. With our words. Like grown-ups. Sigh.
Smythe frowns at us. “What’s it going to take to get you kids off this property?”
“We can’t leave. We have to keep investigating! This case depends on it!” I insist, keeping my eye on Frank as he starts picking the leaves off a nearby bush.
Eliza nods next to me. “We’ll never solve the case if you cut us off from our clues.”
“Be good little kids, and go play on a playground.”
I want to growl at Smythe. Just because we’re kids doesn’t mean we can’t also be good detectives. I’m so sick of people like Maddock and Smythe treating us like we’re babies. There’s no way I’m going to abandon this case! Not when Mom needs me!
But before I can open my mouth to yell at him, Eliza grabs my arm and steps forward.
“Isn’t it a little suspicious that you’re here all by yourself?” Eliza says.
Smythe looks confused for a moment. But his expression quickly morphs into a menacing stare. “Suspicious how?”
Eliza grins, and I know she has him. “Let me see . . .” She hums. “First, you planted a threat somewhere in the house. Then when Guinevere found it, you probably convinced her to go to a hotel. For her own safety, of course. Now that the house is completely empty, you can search for the treasure all by yourself! You don’t have to worry about either of the LeCavaliers figuring it out—and you don’t have to let the detectives in.”
My mouth drops open. I didn’t even think of that, but Eliza’s right! This could have been Smythe’s secret evil plan all along!
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Smythe says. “I care about the LeCavaliers. I’m a loyal employee—”
“Elizaaaaaaa! This flower tastes weird!” Frank whines, and I inhale sharply because with all the fighting with Smythe, I forgot to watch Frank, and he started eating things!
Smythe grins wickedly. “Ahhh, yes, a poisonous oleander plant. I told Mr. LeCavalier not to plant those, but thank goodness he ignored my advice. You better get him to a doctor before he gets sick. Those plants are known to cause vomiting, nausea, dizziness, and fainting.”
As if on cue, Frank throws up all over the grass.
“FRANK!” Eliza says. “What in the world were you thinking, eating a strange flower?”
“It looked like cotton candy!” he groans. “But it tasted like POOP.”
Eliza looks at me, concerned. Her eyes are pooling with tears.
As much as I want to save my mom’s agency, staying alive and unpoisoned is more important. We need to get Frank to a doctor. I call 911.
After Frank spends a few nerve-racking hours vomiting into a hospital trash can, the doctors say he’s going to be fine. Phew! But when I call Guinevere LeCavalier to see if we can resume the case, she fires us for abandoning her in her time of need. Boo!
CASE CLOSED.
WE HAVE TO tell Guinevere what we know about Ivy. It’s only right.
We run downstairs and find Guinevere lying on a couch in the family room, with Smythe massaging her feet. Gross!
“Mrs. LeCavalier!” Eliza pants.
“It’s Ivy,” I jump in.
“What about my Ivy?”
“We think she’s the one who’s been sending the threats. She wants the treasure because she needs the mon—” I stop at the look on Guinevere’s face. She looks stunned, and not in a good way.
“I . . . what? You come into my house and you—you say this? How dare you accuse Ivy of this horrible crime! I think you should leave now! And you are never, NEVER invited back in this house again. I’ll be calling the agency to tell them how dissatisfied I am with your service.” She claps her hands. “Smythe! Get Las Pistas Detective Agency on the line!”
Smythe grins like he’s being asked to eat a tray of cookies or something.
He brings a telephone on a silver platter into the room.
“Hello? Detective Serrano? I have three representatives from your agency, all of whom are highly unprofessional.”
Fifteen minutes later, I wince as Mom storms up to us, leaving a trail of snotty tissues in her wake. Otto trails behind her, picking the litter off his precious landscaped lawn.
“Carwos!” Mom shouts. “You are gwounded fowever!”
Mom is so mad that she signs me up for highway trash cleanup for the rest of the summer. And because of me, Mom’s agency goes bankrupt due to bad press, and she has to get a job as an elephant pooper-scooper at the zoo.
I really messed up bad.
CASE CLOSED.
ONCE I FINISH coloring the squares, I hold up the paper. “Forty-nine? What’s forty-nine?”
When I say forty-nine out loud, the ground under me starts to shake and rumble and crumble and—“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!”
We all scream as we fall, fall, F
A
L
L
!
BOING! We land in a net that hovers above a pit of three snapping alligators. One to eat each of us. And boy, do they look hungry!
Eliza is ghostly white. Frank, on the other hand, keeps wiggling his fingers through the net, baiting the alligators to take a nibble.
“Frank!” I shout. “Don’t!”
Suddenly, with a creak, the net lowers an inch toward the alligator pit. I look around frantically. There! Behind Eliza, I see six alligator-shaped candle sconces, illuminating a message that’s scratched deeply into the stone wall.
CHOMP CHOMP, SNAP SNAP! ALLIGATORS BITE!
SOLVE THIS PUZZLE QUICKLY, AND BE SURE TO GET IT RIGHT.
* * *
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.
TO ASK ELIZA FOR A HINT, CLICK HERE.
* * *
“THE ANSWER IS beard!” I say aloud. “It’s beard!”
Suddenly something mushy and sticky starts leaking out of the rungs of the ladder. . . .
“Ugh!” Eliza says. “It’s superglue!”
“I’M STUCK!” Frank cries.
I try to wrench my hands away from the ladder, but I can’t move them either.
We stay cemented to the ladder for hours and hours—until finally the police find us. It takes them five hours to chip the glue off our hands and feet.
&nb
sp; No wonder they have warning labels about superglue.
Only this was super super super SUPERglue.
If only I could use it to glue my mom’s eyes shut, so she doesn’t see what a horrible mess I’ve made of her career.
CASE CLOSED.
I HAVE TO set the tapestry on fire. The fire will distract Otto, and that’s when we’ll make our break.
I take the lantern in my hands and smash it against the tapestry on the wall. The glass breaks, and within seconds, the cloth is ablaze.
Otto looks at the burning tapestry, and his grip goes slack on Guinevere. And that’s when Eliza, Frank, and I run forward to rescue her.
Only . . . the fire roars and rages. It grows and grows and grows like a hideous monster. It blocks our exit, and the only way to escape it is to go deeper into the tunnels.
And so we run farther into the caverns, leaving Otto in the chamber behind us.
But little did we know that it’s an actual labyrinth down here, and we get lost wandering the tunnels. So lost, in fact, that we can’t figure out how to get out, and no one—not Ivy or Smythe or the police or Mom—ever figures out how to find us.
Eliza, Frank, Guinevere, and I survive by eating the bugs crawling along the cave walls, telling stories of the good old days before we decided to take this case.
CASE CLOSED.
WE DECIDE TO see if the red paint we found at Patty’s matches the paint from the second death threat. If it matches, it makes Patty look really guilty. Which means we’re that much closer to saving my mom’s job!
The can is a little heavy, so I help Eliza carry it across the lawn. I pray that Patty doesn’t drive up as we’re stealing this paint can from her house. And luckily, she doesn’t.
When we reach Guinevere LeCavalier’s lawn, we pause for a moment to rest. I am panting. It’s so hot that it feels like being inside an oven.
“Hey, kids,” says a familiar voice from the garden. It’s Otto, Mrs. LeCavalier’s landscaper. “Where are you coming from . . .” His eyes narrow on the paint can as he approaches us. “What’s that?”
“Paint,” Frank says. “Duh.”
He smiles. “Where did you find that? And where are you going with it? Is it a clue? Want to run any theories by me?”
So many questions! Is that suspicious?
“Mind your own BEESWAX!” Frank yells, stomping on Otto’s toe.
“Owwwwwwwww!”
“Frank!” Eliza shouts. “That was very rude! Apologize! Now!”
“I’m sorry you’re a NOSY NELLY,” Frank says.
“Frank!”
“I’m sorry you’re a SNOOPING SNOOPY,” Frank says.
“Frank!”
I shake my head. “You’re making it worse, Frank!”
“I’m sorry I’m NOT SORRY.”
“Kids,” Otto says. “Don’t you think you should get an adult’s opinion on your case?”
“We don’t need adult supervision,” Eliza says. “We are very capable of handling this case by ourselves.”
“HARUMPH!” Frank finishes.
When we arrive at the crime scene, it is just as bad as I remembered. There are books everywhere. Pages torn out and ripped all over the floor. There’s a toppled wooden bookshelf, and broken splinters are poking out dangerously. And on the far wall, a message is dripping in bloodred paint:
You are running out of time.
Find that treasure, or meet your doom.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
I gulp.
“Carlos, help me open this paint can!”
I bend down beside Eliza, and together we pry off the top. Then I dip my finger into the paint can and begin to write on the wall underneath the message, so we can compare the colors.
When I step away, we all look at my message: IT MATCHES.
“No doubt about it,” Eliza says. “It’s the exact same paint. But wh—”
CRASH!
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” comes the sound of a bloodcurdling shriek from the other room.
* * *
RUN TO THE SCREAM! CLICK HERE.
* * *
“I’LL TAKE THE office and bedroom!” I say, running through the hall of the creepy Patty portraits. I start opening random doors. I discover a room with nothing but a pool table in the middle, then a room with a hundred dog beds on the floor, then—Patty’s office!
The room is tidy, tidy, tidy. She must be one of those people who talks about proper places for everything and everything in proper places . . . or something like that.
I open her filing cabinet, and there are folders for everything. Some even date back forty years! The files all have boring names, like taxes and Fancy Club and receipts. Nothing that says Guinevere LeCavalier.
I open the middle drawer and riffle around inside.
“Hey, wait!” I say, closing the drawer. Then I open it again. Then I close it. Then open.
Hmmm . . .
It’s weird. From the outside, the drawer seems deep. But when I pull the drawer open, it’s shallow inside.
I knock on the bottom of the drawer, and it sounds hollow to me. I think the drawer might have a false bottom. My heart skips a beat as I pull everything—tape, stapler, stamps, paper clips, pens—out of the drawer.
Now that the drawer is empty, it’s easier to see the words carved into the bottom.
As I was going to visit St. Ives,
I passed by seven different wives.
Each wife had seven sacks,
Each sack had seven cats,
Each cat had seven kittens.
Kittens, cats, sacks, wives,
How many were going to visit St. Ives?
Beneath the words, I notice there are buttons like a calculator to punch in a number. So . . . I guess I’m supposed to figure out how many people are going to St. Ives, wherever that is.
* * *
ADD THREE HUNDRED TO THE ANSWER OF THE PUZZLE.
IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 301, CLICK HERE.
IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 328, CLICK HERE.
TO ASK ELIZA FOR HELP, CLICK HERE.
* * *
I DECIDE TO attack Otto. I have to try.
I scour the ground for something I can use. There are a few medium-sized rocks that could work. I pretend like I’m bending over to tie my shoelace, but what I’m really doing is palming a smooth rock.
Otto doesn’t even notice. He’s too busy fussing with the latch on the treasure chest. At last it clicks open and—for a moment—Otto’s head disappears behind the top lid.
And that’s the moment I need.
I run forward and clunk Otto’s head with a cave rock.
“Flibbertigibbet,” Otto babbles. Then he collapses on the ground.
“WE DID IT!” Frank squeals. “HOORAY FOR US!”
We leave Otto passed out and retrace our steps all the way to Ivy’s closet, where—to our surprise—there are six police officers trying to cram inside. Only they are too big and won’t fit.
“We have Otto,” I say. “You have to follow us!”
“Stand back,” an officer commands, and he takes an ax and hacks up the back wall of Ivy’s closet so that the adults can fit into the passageway.
With the police officers, we retrace our steps and reach the cave. The empty treasure chest is still open, but Otto is gone.
“Oh no!” I say, my stomach swooping. “But he was right here. . . . I hit him with a rock. . . . He was out cold!”
Guinevere bites her nails. “How will I be able to sleep? What about my safety?”
Eliza and I look at each other. “What can we do?” I say.
Guinevere grins widely. “Well, I’m glad you asked!” She drags us upstairs, hands us three dog costumes, and pats us on the head.
“You three are now my watchdogs. I need you to circle the perimeter and watch for Otto. And, of course, bark if something’s wrong.”
“Okayyyyy,” I say, stepping into the dog costume. “For how long?”
�
��For as long as it takes to catch Otto, of course!”
I start to protest. “But what about—”
“Shhhh shhhh shhhhh!” Guinevere says, patting me on the head. “Good dogs don’t speak. Now have a biscuit!” And she shoves a dog treat in my mouth.
It’s chalky and dry, and it makes me cough.
“Good doggie!” Guinevere says. “Now go outside and guard me!”
“ARF!” Frank says.
And that was the summer Frank, Eliza, and I became human dogs.
CASE CLOSED.
“THE BLUE DOOR!” I say. “It has to be!”
“Hold on . . . ,” Eliza says.
But I tap my foot. We don’t have time for Eliza’s waffling. She’s good at puzzles and everything, but sometimes she takes foreverrrrrr to solve things because she likes to check her work. It’s why she’s always the last one done on tests, even though she’s the smartest person in our class.
So I open the blue door, push Eliza and Frank inside, and hop in after them.
But there is no ground.
“AHHHHHHHHHHH!” I shout as we fall forward.
WHUMP.
We land in the alligator pit we just escaped from.
Three alligators slink toward us, and I can practically see them licking their chops, their black eyes hungry. And dinner has just been served.
Uh-oh.
CASE CLOSED.
I ENTER THE password light ball slice into the box, and an alarm starts blaring.
“INTRUDER! INTRUDER! INTRUDER!”
It’s coming from the box, but it is so loud that I cover my ears . . . so loud it makes me dizzy . . . so loud I have a headache . . . so loud I can’t move! I crawl up into a little ball and hold my ears tight; it’s the only thing I can do.
Case Closed #1 Page 9
