CHAPTER ONE - NATHAN
I would like to apologize to the Metroburg Public Library for any damages that I may or may not have caused. My sister (who is evil) is the one who actually removed the last pages of your books and also cut up those pages to make a ransom note, but as I am unable to prove that at this time, I am forced to take the blame.
I would also like to apologize to the Pricey Pets pet store. I have received your bill for $1,618 dollars, which seems very high to me and is probably more money that I will ever make in my life. But I promise to start a newspaper route or lemonade stand in the very near future so I can pay you back for my exam. I do want to point out that the exam I received was for a guinea pig and not a human, so I don’t really think I should be given a bill at all, but as my parents are very mad at me and are refusing to let me play video games or go outside or pretty much do anything other than homework, I will try and pay you back just as soon as I can.
Next, I would like to say that I am sorry for anything I might have said about the band, “Crazy Big”. This includes insults about their crazy hair, big teeth, awful music, lack of talent, or the fact that the only people who like their music are my dumb sister, Zara, and her even dumber friends. I was not aware that Crazy Big has millions of dumb-girl fans or that the band also has lawyers who have threatened to sue me if I do not stop saying how awful Crazy Big is. So I will stop saying how awful they are and instead only say how opposite of awesome they are.
I would also mention that I feel terrible about throwing up on and in Mr. and Mrs. Beeson’s fireplace. To be fair it was their food that made me sick, but perhaps it was my fault for eating so much of it. Either way I’m sure their house will not smell like my throw-up forever. Hopefully.
I would also like to say to Gloria Gorilla (I don’t know her real last name so I usually just call her Gloria Gorilla, for which I would also like to say that I am sorry) that I apologize for stealing your bike. To be fair I did not know it was your bike, even though it had your name on it. As an FYI, next time you may want to try a lock with your name on it to keep people like me from using your bike in the first place. That would probably work better.
I would also like to express my disappointment in myself for ruining all of the art supplies at Metroburg Elementary School, even though I have not received an apology from the art supply cabinet that almost fell on me. I am lucky to be alive. For a fourth-grader I am actually slightly smaller than average so if someone my size was able to knock over a cabinet that big, I shudder to think of what other pieces of furniture might be so easily pushed or pulled on top of someone. You should really strap those things down or put on warning labels or something.
Sorry to the Anderson family for digging up their back yard and removing the grave of their family pet. In my defense, it was their pet that caused all of the problems in the first place so I’m not sure an apology is exactly in order. But if an apology means that I don’t have to fill in the giant hole I made in your yard then please know that I am very, very sorry. I would also like to apologize to my sister, Zara, for damaging her bedroom even though it was her fault for booby-trapping it.
I would also like to apologize to the Metroburg Parks Department for making their park unusable for the last week. Much like the Anderson’s fireplace, I’m sure the smell will go away on its own in the next few months.
I would like to apologize for all of these things but I won’t… because they are ALL Zara’s fault!
I promise, I can explain the whole thing.
CHAPTER TWO - SARA
Dear Metroburg Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,
I am sure you have heard about the recent events involving my brother, Nathan Goode, and my friend Abby Anderson’s guinea pig, Mr. Sprinkles. I am writing to let you know that everything that happened was my dumb brother’s fault and that it all could have been avoided if he was not such a horrible person.
I would never hurt any animal, especially cute, furry, tiny ones.
You may have heard about the sleepover party and the fact that Mr. Sprinkles may have eaten quite a bit of junk food, or listened to loud music, or wore makeup, or stayed up past his bedtime dancing, but he was having a great time. I could tell because you can see the white patches of hair at the edges of his tiny mouth puff up when he’s smiling!
You may have also heard about a pillow fight but I want you to rest assured that Mr. Sprinkles had his own tiny pillow that we had made for him and he was not injured in any way. We all love Mr. Sprinkles and would never let him come to any harm.
You may have also heard that Mr. Sprinkles died because of what happened at the sleepover. But what you have not heard is how everything that happened was my dumb brother’s fault. Everything.
I don’t like to call people names or insult them, but he really is dumb. He is two years older than I am but even though he’s in the fourth grade I’m not sure he knows how to read. He checks out books from the library but mostly he just looks at the pictures and then throws them around his room, using the books as ramps for his remote control cars. He took a test last week and did so bad that the school had to create a grade lower than an “F”.
How can he get lower than an F, you ask?
He got every answer wrong AND he spelled his name wrong.
In fact, to this day he calls me Zara instead of Sara because when I was born he couldn’t write the letter “S” correctly. It came out backwards like the letter “Z”. So instead of writing the letter S, he decided to just say my name wrong.
Dumb.
But don’t worry. He’s done a lot worse than that, which you will see for yourself as I explain what happened.
CHAPTER THREE - NATHAN
The whole thing started when I was at the library reading a book called, Famous Art Heists.
I should probably back up a step here and tell you that, not to brag or anything, but I’m pretty smart. Maybe not in a traditional school way, but I do lots of things that people have never done before.
I got an “H” on my math test last week, which is new in the history of schools. I know it’s lower than an “F” but if you think about it, it’s SO low that they skipped the letter G and THAT is pretty amazing.
Anyway, back to the library book.
There were these criminals who stole an expensive painting from a museum. I am just about to read the last page to find out how they did it when I hear someone sniffling behind me.
It was Abby, my sister’s best friend, and her eyes are all puffy and red like she’s either really tired or she’s been crying. I don’t usually hang out with girls since they talk so much and play video games so little. And when it comes to girls who have been crying, I try to make myself invisible. For real. I actually try and pretend that they can’t see me.
It doesn’t usually work.
But Abby has already walked up behind me so even though I close my eyes and hold my breath and think invisible thoughts she just starts talking to me anyway. She tells me about the sleepover party she had the night before which explains the tired look, but not the sad look.
“Hi, Nathan. I’d like to hire you to solve a mystery,” she says, sniffing.
“By hire do you mean pay?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“And by pay, do you mean money?”
“Yes.”
“What kind of mystery?” I ask after I finally give up on being invisible.
“My guinea pig, Mr. Sprinkles, died last night at my slumber party. I want to find out why.”
“Shouldn’t you ask a vet?” I ask.
“Mr. Sprinkles had just visited the veterinarian and he was fine.”
“Was he old?” I ask.
“No.”
“Was he easily scared?” I ask.
“No.”
“Food allergies?” I ask.
“No. He was alive when we all went to bed. In the morning, when we woke up… he wasn’t.” Abby then blows her nose loudly, which I think is super-gross but the alternative is for her to keep sniffling and possibly have something drip out of her nose and THAT would be even grosser.
As any good detective will tell you there are two things you need to solve a crime, clues and a list of suspects. And so far there weren’t many clues.
“How many people were at your slumber party?” I ask.
“Eight,” Abby tells me. “Bess, Claire, Daisy, Emily, Fiona, Gloria, Hillary, and your sister Zara, of course.”
“Of course,” I say.
I say this because if my sister Zara is involved, it’s probably something bad.
The first thing you should know about my sister, Zara, is that even though she is only seven years old she is the smartest person in the world.
Seriously.
She was given a test a few years ago and got the highest score out of everyone on the planet.
You know those tests you take in school? Well if you score high enough they make you stay during recess to take another test with the one or two other super-smart kids. Then if you score high enough on that test, they make you stay after school and take another, even harder test. Then if you pass THAT test they bring out doctors and scientists and other super-duper smart people to find out just how smart you are. You probably don’t know any of this because you were never asked to stay and take the super-smart test. Don’t worry about it. Neither was I.
But Zara was.
Her brain was looked at by really smart doctors. They looked through an X-Ray machine and not, you know, by taking her brain out of her head or anything, even though that would have been awesome and I would have paid a lot of money to see that. I told her that the doctors accidentally left her brain in a jar and forgot to put it back in her head but she’s way too smart and didn’t fall for it.
These smart scientists gave her lots of tests to see how smart she was. Not only did she get every answer right, she also got extra credit when she found a spelling mistake on one of the tests. Most of the scientists were mad that Zara was smarter than they were. Some were just mad because she wrote all of her answers in glitter pen. A few were mad that she finished the tests so fast which gave her enough time to draw little hearts and flowers and animal doodles on the edges of the paper.
The second thing you should know about Zara is that she is evil. Seriously. It actually said so on her test!
She uses her super smarts to do really mean things. Especially to me! Like the time she put thumb tacks in the back pockets of my pants so that when I sat down for breakfast the tacks poked through. My mom said it was my fault because I was wearing the same pants as yesterday and that I was always leaving things in my pockets. But I know it was Zara.
And then there was the time she took the last page out of each of the books on my bookshelf so that I wouldn’t know how any of the stories ended. My dad said that it had something to do with the glue holding the pages and that I was too rough on the books. But how could it only be the last page of each book, and where did those pages go? I know where they went.
Zara’s evil secret lair.
I tried to go into her room once to find the missing pages but she keeps her door locked most of the time. So I got a book at the library on how to pick locks but the last page was missing so I never really got the hang of it. I looked under her door and saw a page lying right there, just out of reach. But when I tried to reach under the door to grab the piece of paper something hard came down and whacked my fingers, which really hurt. Zara had booby-trapped her room!
The worst thing about Zara is that because she’s so much smarter than everyone else she never gets caught. Until now.
I’ve read every book there is on how to solve crimes (except for the last pages) and now Abby is right here asking me to solve a mystery. A mystery involving my sister, a sleepover party, and a dead guinea pig named Mr. Sprinkles.
And I have a list of suspects that includes my evil sister Zara.
“I’ll find out what happened to Mr. Sprinkles,” I say. “If it’s the last thing I do.”
When someone says the phrase, if it’s the last thing I do, it is usually a finger of speech meaning, I will do what I just promised to do even if it kills me. But no one means it literally. It just means that you’ll try really hard.
But what I didn’t know at the time was that when it comes to solving a crime involving my evil genius sister, it almost was the last thing I ever did.
CHAPTER FOUR - SARA
If I am guilty of anything, it is of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don’t mean the sleepover. That was a lot of fun and everyone had a great time, especially Mr. Sprinkles.
I mean the library the next morning, after the sleepover. That was when all of this started.
My friends and I love to read, and we were at the library because the latest book in the Dancing Detectives series had just come in and we were all going to read it together. It’s a series about a dance troupe who travel the world dancing and solving crimes and in each book the dancers catch the bad guys using different dance moves.
The specific book was, “Dancing Detectives #9: Ginny’s Grand Battemant”. In case you are unfamiliar, a Grand Battemant is a dance move involving a large, swift leg kick with the knee extended and the foot pointed. Anyway…
Maybe it was because we were reading a book about detectives.
Maybe it was because Abby and my other friends didn’t get much sleep.
Maybe it was because my brother is a goober and nobody likes him.
All I know for sure is that Abby asked me a question and I answered it.
“What can we do to get Nathan back for being so mean to us?” She asked.
My answer, of course, you already know since that is why I am writing this letter, apologizing for everything my brother did.
We asked him to solve a crime.
CHAPTER FIVE - NATHAN
With my list of suspects in hand I now needed to find some clues. The first place to start was at the scene of the crime. In this case the scene of the crime was Mr. Sprinkle’s cage.
Abby showed me around her room.
“This is where we had the slumber party last night.”
“And you fit all eight girls into this one room?” I asked. The room wasn’t small but eight girls were a lot of girls even if you liked being around girls, which I usually didn’t.
“We had sleeping bags and pillows spread out all over the floor.”
The room was clean now but I could imagine the way the room had looked. Pink pillows and purple sleeping bags and yellow girl things everywhere. A cage sat on top of the dresser.
“This is where Mr. Sprinkles lived?”
“Yes,” Abby said. She sniffed once, then started shaking and making a kind of blubbering noise.
Looking back now I think that she was probably fake crying, but I didn’t know that at the time. Even if she was fake crying, or regular crying, I don’t like crying of any kind so what happened next isn’t really my fault.
“I need you to leave the room so I can look for clues,” I told her.
I was surprised when she nodded and closed the bedroom door behind her. Most girls don’t let boys into their rooms at all, much less let them stay in there by themselves.
Looking around the room I started making a list of clues in my detective notebook.
1. There were chips and pretzels in a big bowl on a bookshelf.
2. There were small speakers attached to Mr. Sprinkles’ cage.
3. The carpet looked very trampled down.
4. There were little plastic containers of makeup all over the place.
5. Princess dresses and tiaras were heaped up in the corner of Abby’s closet.
6. Beads and strings were mixed in with the shredded paper in Mr. Sprinkles’ cage.
7. There were feathers on the window sill and on top of the ceiling fan.
8. On the wall hung lots of paintings of Mr. Sprinkles.
I ate the chips and pretzels in the bowl, looking for clues. I didn’t find any, but they were delicious anyway. I’m not a huge fan of pretzels but I do love potato chips. All kinds. Especially when they are free.
I left the bedroom and found Abby looking out the window, her eyes still puffy and red. I went through the list of things I had found.
“Each person at the party was in charge of a different part of the sleepover,” she explained.
“Hmmm,” I said, shuddering slightly at the thought of how lame this sleepover must have been with no Nerf gun battles or video games or pizza.
“I saw the bowl of chips and pretzels…” I started to say, trying to think of an excuse for why I ate them all.
“I was in charge of the snacks,” Abby said. “I guess I must have left some in the room from the slumber party.”
“What’s the deal with the speakers on the cage?” I asked.
“Oh, we love music. We played songs and danced for hours. Bess was in charge of the music and Claire was in charge of the dancing.”
“What’s with the makeup containers?”
“Delilah was in charge of putting makeup on everyone, like glitter and fingernail polish and stuff.”
“And the princess outfits?”
“Emily was in charge of dressing us all up.”
“What about the string and beads I found?”
“Fiona was in charge of jewelry. Each of us made a bracelet with our names on it.”
“And all of the pictures of Mr. Sprinkles?”
“Gloria was in charge of the art projects. We all painted Mr. Sprinkles doing fun things at the party.”
“There were feathers on the window sill and ceiling fan.”
“Hillary was in charge of the pillow fight. I guess we got carried away.”
I was about to ask how they did so much stuff in one night but then I remembered. They were girls. Girls who were all giggly and excited and eating snacks. They must have been up a long time, which meant there was a lot of time for something bad to happen to Mr. Sprinkles.
“So now what?” Abby asked.
“I have my list of clues. And I have my list of suspects. Now it’s time to get to know Mr. Sprinkles. To get into the mind of the victim.”
I left Abby at the window and returned to the room one more time. If I was going to get to know Mr. Sprinkles I had to learn to think like Mr. Sprinkles… to be Mr. Sprinkles. So I did what any good detective would do, and I climbed up on top of the dresser and squished myself into Mr. Sprinkle’s cage.
It was not comfortable.
It did not smell very clean.
The water bottle was poking my butt.
The wire cage had little sharp bits that I didn’t see when I was climbing in and they ripped out chunks of my hair when I tried to turn around. Small, hard objects on the bottom of the cage were pressing into my leg.
I would like it noted that I was in the process of trying to get out when Abby opened her bedroom door. She looked pretty shocked.
“What are you doing?!?” she shouted.
I was halfway out of the cage when I tried to turn around to explain when the whole thing tipped over and crashed to the floor. Dried food, little plastic beads and paper shavings flew everywhere.
The cage flew apart so I stood up and told Abby I would get to the bottom of this mystery right away.
I left before she could ask me to help clean up the mess.
CHAPTER SIX - NATHAN
My next stop was Pricey Pets.
Pricey Pets is a pet store that also has a pet hotel, a pet food court, pet hair cutting, pet gym, and a pet movie theater that only shows movies featuring dogs, or cats or fish or birds. Today they were playing Mittens on Mars, a movie about a cat named Mittens who is blasted off to Mars to see if it’s safe for humans.
It isn’t.
Aliens show up and of course the aliens look like dogs and all Mittens has to fight back with are a rolled up newspaper and a spray bottle. I watched the whole thing before I remembered why I was there. They were just starting Rover’s Revenge, about a dog who was sent to the pound for a crime he didn’t commit, when I noticed the time. The Pricey Pets Pet Hospital would be closing soon and I needed some answers.
“Can I help you?” asked the woman in the white lab coat. The name sewn into the coat said Doctor Penny Poundcake. I thought that was a pretty funny name. I made a note in my crime notebook.
It isn’t really a crime notebook. It is actually a math notebook that I hardly ever used so it had lots of room in it. I had crossed the word Math out and wrote Crime on it instead, which makes a lot of sense since I really think math IS a crime.
“Yes,” I said. “I am working on a case for a friend. A case involving Mr. Sprinkles the guinea pig. I understand that he had a check-up recently?”
“Yes,” the doctor said, but I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything about it.”
“Why not?”
“A doctor is not allowed to discuss anything about her patient’s medical stuff and stuff.”
That’s not actually what she said, but she was using some pretty big words so I just saved you a bunch of time looking them up since you’ll probably never use words that big, ever.
So the doctor wouldn’t give me any answers why Mr. Sprinkles could have a great check-up one day and be dead the next. There was only one possible thing left to do.
“If you can’t tell me about Mr. Sprinkles’ check-up, can you give me the same check-up so I know what it’s like?”
“Sure,” Doctor Poundcake said, which was kind of shocking because I expected her to say “No”, which is what people usually say to me. A lot. Especially my sister who, as I have already mentioned, is evil.
The next thing I knew I was standing in my underwear and having my temperature taken. It was pretty high for a guinea pig but she thought it seemed about right for a human.
She then had me run on a big metal wheel as fast as I could. I only fell down four or five times so I guess I did pretty good.
The doctor inspected my fingernails, toenails and teeth and they seemed to be in good working order, although I might be getting a cavity.
“But I only ate potato chips and pretzels,” I explained.
“You don’t get cavities from chips. You get them from sugar.”
“Well I hardly ever eat sugar,” I told her. “Mostly just chips… and candy and soda.”
“There’s lots and lots of sugar in candy and sodas. In fact, blah blah and more stuff and stuff.”
Again, I just saved you a bunch of time because whatever she said after the part about sugar being in candy and soda made, literally, no sense. Something about decay and something else that sounded like, “Hi, Jean,” although there wasn’t anyone else in the room. It was like she was speaking some crazy moon language.
“What are those bumps on your legs?” Doctor Poundcake asked.
I looked down and saw the marks from the hard plastic bits that had pressed into my leg when I was crammed into Mr. Sprinkle’s cage. Doctor Poundcake took out a magnifying glass and inspected them.
“It looks like little letters,” the doctor said, reading them off one at a time. “S…A…D…E…A…R…G…O…O…”
She looked at me confused. “Sad Ear Goo? What does that mean?”
I shrugged my shoulders. I had no idea.
The doctor continued her exam.
She weighed me on a scale and was very concerned about how heavy I was. I had to remind her that I was actually very skinny for my age but that I was pretty heavy when compared to a small rodent. She agreed, but still made some notes in my file.
The whole exam took about an hour and at the end I still was no closer to figuring out what might have happened to Mr. Sprinkles.
On the plus side, I did make it back in time to finish Rover’s Revenge, although somebody had eaten all of my pet popcorn.
CHAPTER SEVEN - SARA
Since I am explaining my side of the story I am assuming that Nathan is also explaining his side, which means that he has most likely told you that I am evil.
He mentions it a lot, to a lot of people.
Like:
Cashiers at the grocery store.
Bank tellers.
Random people walking down the street.
Crosswalk guards.
And now… you.
The reason Nathan thinks that I am evil is because at the start of the second grade our class was given tests to determine our reading, writing, and math levels. I love school and learning and I did really well on the tests.
I did so good that they recommended I move ahead two grades.
But that would have meant that I’d be in the same class as Nathan and there was no way THAT was going to happen.
So I stayed in my regular class with my friends and I thought that was that.
But my parents were so proud of me that they stuck the test results on the fridge.
And then Nathan saw them.
He didn’t even bother looking at the 100%, but instead focused on the word at the top of the test.
EVALUATION
I watched him try to sound out the word at least a dozen times with no luck. I told him to try and break the word into syllables to make it easier to manage.
“Eval…” he said. “Eval…”
And then it happened.
“This thing says you’re 100% evil!”
Before I could correct him he ran off to tell everyone in town that I was a witch.
CHAPTER EIGHT - NATHAN
I decided to work down my list of suspects to see if anyone knew anything. I went back to Abby’s house since Mr. Sprinkles was her pet, the slumber party was at her house, and her name started with the letter A.
“You said you were in charge of snacks?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“What kind of snacks?”
“All kinds. Chips, pizza bites, popcorn, candy. Stuff like that.”
“Huh,” I said, making a note in my crime notebook.
“Is that important?” Abby asked, trying to look at what I was writing. I closed the book quickly before she could see my notes. I can tell you, though. It was the word HUNGRY!
“It might be important,” I told her. “I’ll need you to make all of the exact same snacks as you did the night of the slumber party.”
“But, Nathan —” she started to say.
“No buts,” I said, writing that down in my crime notebook too. No Buts means something like No Excuses, but it sounds a lot like No Butts, which means… you know… No Butts. And that’s pretty funny.
“Do you just want one of each snack?” Abby asked me.
“Sorry, but it needs to be exactly the same kind and quantity of snacks that you put out the night of the slumber party.”
Abby set out big bowls of chips which, as I have already mentioned here and in my notebook, I love. She also put out popcorn and candy and a large tray of pizza bites.
I ate a handful of chips. I wrote in my crime notebook, “Crunchy and salty. Delicious.”
I took a bite of the popcorn. I wrote, “Fluffy and warm. Delicious.”
I nibbled on some candy. I wrote, “Chocolate. Delicious.”
I tossed a pizza bite into my mouth. I wrote, “Pepperoni and cheesy with a hint of pizza sauce. Delicious.”
I took a picture of the snacks and then asked Abby to leave the kitchen.
“Why do I have to leave? she asked.
“Because,” I told her using my detective voice, which is a lot like my regular voice only more detective-like. “I need to check and make sure the food isn’t poisoned, in case that’s what killed Mr. Sprinkles.”
“You don’t think that I would poison my own guinea pig, do you?” she asked, shocked.
“At this point I don’t know what to think. But you asked me to solve your mystery and I’m going to solve it if it’s the last thing that I do.”
Abby seemed to be good with that and left the room.
One by one I ate all of the snacks, jamming them into my face as fast as I could before she got back. I didn’t really think any of the food was poisoned but I was hungry and everything tasted so good.
I was halfway through the tray of pizza bites when it occurred to me that if Abby had poisoned Mr. Sprinkles that I would be poisoned now, too!
But like I said, I was really hungry and the pizza bites were super tasty so I figured that if I was going to die, this was a pretty good way to go.
The good news is that I did not die, which meant that I could cross Abby off my list of suspects. The bad news was that when I ate all of that junk food as fast as I did, I started feeling pretty sick. By the time Abby came back into the room I was curled up on the floor, holding my stomach, sweating and shaking.
“Oh my goodness, are you okay?” Abby asked, running to my side.
“I’ll live,” I told her. “Barely.”
“What happened? Where is all the food?”
“I told you. I was testing it for poison.”
Abby stood up and looked around the kitchen.
“What did you test it with?” she asked, sounding a lot less concerned about my health.
“A detective is not allowed to discuss anything about a case and stuff,” I explained. “By the way, do you know what ‘Sad Ear Goo’ means?”
Abby ignored the question.
“But I hired you,” Abby said, looking for an answer. “And my parents are going to want to know where all their food went.”
“Sorry. I can only solve one mystery at a time,” I said in my detective voice as I walked quickly out of the house.
It was time to get out of there before she got angry at me for eating all of her snacks. It was also time for me to go to the bathroom because I ate too many pizza bites and they were making my stomach all grumbly.
It was also time to talk to the next suspect on my list.
CHAPTER NINE - SARA
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Anderson,
I want to apologize for my brother Nathan and for the large amount of your food that he ate while at your house.
I also want to apologize for the large amount of food that he took from your house.
It was only later that we found, crammed into his backpack, an empty 2-liter bottle of soda, a thawed box of frozen mini corn dogs, a large bag of leftover Halloween candy wrappers, and an empty bag of sugar.
My parents, under the advice of several doctors, stopped giving Nathan any foods with sugar in them earlier this year so I am sure you are as relieved as we are that now, days after the events at your house, Mr. and Mrs. Carlson’s house (and all the others), that Nathan seems to be fine.
Or if not “fine”, at least he’s back to normal.
Or as normal as he ever gets, which isn’t really all that normal.
Anyway, I gave Abby some money that I had received both for doing a full month of chores and for receiving straight A’s on my report card. Please use it to help pay for the groceries that my brother ate. I hope it is enough.
If it is not enough money please let me know. I am hoping to have some of my birthday money left over after I pay for the cleaners to go to Bess Beeson’s house for the third time. We’re not sure, exactly, where the smell is coming from now, but Nathan has also promised to get a job to help pay for the chimney sweepers and landscapers to repair the damage he has done.
Sincerely,
Sara Goode.
CHAPTER TEN - NATHAN
As I explain what happened and how none of this was my fault, I should probably also explain that I should be given credit for all of the things that I had to put up with.
Specifically, Bess Beeson, the next suspect on my list.
I wasn’t looking forward to talking with her all that much. You see, Bess is not a nice girl. Bess is not a kind girl. In fact, I think there is something wrong with Bess that makes her angry all the time. I made a note in my crime notebook that Doctor Poundcake should take a look at Bess to see if she could figure out why she was so mad at me.
“What do you want, Norman Bad?” she asked as she opened her front door. That was the nickname she gave me in second grade. She took my last name, Goode, and reversed it. It wasn’t very clever but it still sometimes hurt my feelings. In fact, it made me glad of all the times I had called her “Bess Bee-Sting”, instead of Bess Beeson. THAT was clever, because bee stings are a pain… just like Bess.
“I need to talk to you about Mr. Sprinkles. Abby hired me to find out what happened to him on the night of your slumber party.”
“Am I a suspect?” she asked. She looked pretty shocked by the question.
“I… uh… well…” I started to say, but Bess looked really angry and her stare took all of my words away.
“How dare you make me a suspect!” she shouted.
Actually she shouted it over and over and swung her fists at me at the same time, too. It didn’t hurt too badly at first since she hits like a girl. But even small hits over and over and over and over can start to hurt pretty bad.
I threw my hands up to protect my face and dropped my crime notebook. Bess stopped hitting and shouting long enough to pick it up. It was open to the “List of Suspects” page with the names of all the girls who were at the slumber party.
“Oh,” she said, putting her fists away. “It’s terrible what happened to Mr. Sprinkles. He had such a great time at the party.”
“You were in charge of music,” I said.
Bess nodded.
“What kind of music?”
“There’s only one kind,” she said, getting a dreamy look in her eyes.
I didn’t know what she meant until she took me to her room, which didn’t have walls like a regular room. It had posters.
Seriously. Dozens of them.
Every single piece of wall was covered in posters for a band called Crazy Big. It was a band with five boys in it and each of them had crazy hair and big teeth, so the band’s name made a lot of sense. Each poster showed one or more of the band members wearing colorful clothes and doing something goofy.
“You like these guys?” I asked. Bess looked at the posters with a happy, smiling look, which I liked a lot more than the angry, mean looks she always gave me.
“No,” Bess said. “I LOVE them! Seriously, I’m going to marry them some day.”
“Which one?”
“ALL of them!”
“I don’t think you can be married to five people at the same time,” I explained.
“Not at the same time, goofus. One at a time, in a row.”
Her nice look turned mean again for a second, before turning back to nice as she gazed up at the posters. I am not one for name-calling, so I let the ‘goofus’ comment slide.
“What Crazy Big songs did you play on the night of the slumber party?” I asked.
“All of them!”
She handed me her iPod. There were hundreds of songs on it, all by Crazy Big. I had heard one or two of their songs on the radio so I knew who they were, but I had no idea they were this popular.
“How many songs are on here?”
“Two hundred and thirty-two,” Bess said, proudly.
“I thought they only had one CD? How can they have that many songs?”
Bess explained how their album had ten songs on it, but she also had every recording from every television show and live concert they had ever done, so the two hundred and thirty-two songs were just the same ten songs over and over and over sung in different ways.
I scrolled down the list of songs from their original CD. It read:
TRACK 1: “I Love You, Girl.”
TRACK 2: “Be My Girl.”
TRACK 3: “My Girl is my World”
TRACK 4: “Where Have You Gone, Girl?”
TRACK 5: “Girl, Girl, Girl”
TRACK 6: “She’s My Girl”
TRACK 7: “I Really Love You, Girl”
TRACK 8: “G–I–R–L Spells Girl”
TRACK 9: “All About My Girl”
TRACK 10: “Girl, Girl, Girl” (remix)
I read the word “girl” so many times that it didn’t even look like a word anymore.
“Mr. Sprinkles LOVED Crazy Big,” Bess explained. “I even attached the speakers right next to his cage so he could hear them better.”
I couldn’t believe I was about to do this, but a detective needs to investigate every clue.
“I’ll need to listen to your iPod, to hear what Mr. Sprinkles heard at the slumber party.”
“Do you think the music killed him?” Bess asked, shocked.
“Right now I don’t know what to think,” I said. “I’m just putting together the pieces of a puzzle.”
Bess looked confused.
“I don’t mean that I’m actually putting together a puzzle. I mean I’m trying to figure out what happened.”
“Oh,” Bess said, handing me her music player.
“I’ll need to be alone for a while,” I explained. “I need to listed to every song, every note, to put myself in Mr. Sprinkles’ shoes. And by that I don’t mean actual shoes. I mean – ”
“I got it,” Bess said, leaving the room.
I sat down on the floor and got comfortable. Two hundred and thirty-two songs were over…um…like five hundred hours of music that I had to listen to. But I was determined. I was committed. I was going to solve this crime if it was the last thing I did!
I made it half way through “I Love You, Girl” before ripping the headphones off of my ears and running out of the room.
“What happened?” Bess asked as I ran to the front door.
“I don’t think your music killed Mr. Sprinkles. But I think it might be killing me!”
I was about to leave when I thought of something else. I wrote a quick note on a piece of crime notebook paper and handed it to Bess.
“Doctor Poundcake. Pricey Pets Pet Hospital,” she read out loud. “What’s this for?”
“The doctor might be able to help with… you know… you being angry all the time.”
Bess looked shocked and, if possible, more angry than I’d ever seen her before.
“I don’t need a doctor, Nathan. I am almost never angry. Ever. The only time I get angry is when you are around.”
That made sense, since every time I saw her she was angry, and usually at me. What didn’t make sense was why.
“Why?” I asked.
“Don’t you remember?” she asked, looking at me like I was an idiot.
“Of course… not?”
“Second grade? Playground? Lunch money?” she asked.
It sounded familiar.
“Danny Dobson? He stole my lunch money and I asked you to get it. So you got my lunch money back from him and then used it to buy YOUR lunch!”
“I did?”
“Yes.”
“What did I get?”
“Nachos.”
“Oh yeah!” I said, remembering the nachos. They were actually Beefy Nachos and they were really good… and really beefy. I couldn’t see my own face but I was pretty sure I had the same dreamy look in my eyes that Bess had when thinking of her boy band.
She took an angry step towards me so I left before she hit me again.
CHAPTER ELEVEN - NATHAN
The next suspect on the list was Claire.
I wasn’t looking forward to talking with her all that much.
Claire was one of those girls who loved dancing. I don’t mean that she liked it a lot. I mean that she was, literally, in love with dancing. She never stood still. Ever. She was always twirling or spinning or twisting and bending. I couldn’t remember a time when she ever stood still for more than a few seconds and it always made me tired just looking at her move so much.
When I knocked on her door guess what she was doing. That’s right. Dancing.
And not just regular dancing… but crazy boy band dancing. She was listening to a Crazy Big song and her feet and arms were going everywhere all at once.
“Hello, Nathan Goode. What brings you to my dance studio?” she asked, twirling into her house.
I followed her in and explained how I was looking for clues into Mr. Sprinkles’ death.
She stopped dancing… more or less.
She stood in front of me but kept trying out different little dance moves.
“I loved Mr. Sprinkles. I can’t believe he’s gone,” she said, starting to cry. I quickly changed the subject. The worst part about girls, besides the giggling and the dancing and the hair and all of that… is the crying. I don’t know how to handle it. So I quickly changed the subject and turned it around to Claire’s favorite thing in the world.
“You were in charge of dancing the night of the slumber party?” I asked.
“That’s right,” she said, twirling again, right in front of me. A bow flew out of her hair and hit me in the face.
“What kind of dancing?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean was it fast dancing or slow dancing or… I don’t know… some other kind?”
Claire stopped dancing and looked at me for a few long seconds.
“Why?” she asked.
“I have to find out of Mr. Sprinkles was accidentally stepped on in all the dancing, or twirled too hard, or something like that.”
Claire just stared at me. It was going on ten seconds of her not dancing and just staring and it was making me nervous.
“I’ll need to show you,” she said, spinning around again.
“No you don’t. Really. You can just explain it to me.”
“I can’t. I have to show you.”
Claire pushed the coffee table back so that there was a big open space in the living room. There was a fire going in the fireplace so the room was really hot.
She stood in front of me, a few inches away. I generally try to stay in different rooms from girls, or at least a couple of feet apart, so this was a bit weird. And then it got weirder.
Claire picked up a remote control and put on another song. The room filled with the sounds of Crazy Big. Luckily it was the Girl, Girl, Girl remix song, which didn’t have any words.
“Let me see your hands,” she said.
“No.”
“Come on, silly.”
I think Claire knew I was going to say “No” again because she didn’t ask this time, and just took my hands.
“I’ll pretend I’m me… because I am. And I’ll pretend that you are Mr. Sprinkles. This is how we danced.”
Claire grabbed my hand and spun me so hard that I actually twirled. Then she grabbed my other hand and spun me the other way.
Then she picked me up and flopped me around so that my feet swung back and forth in the air. Claire is two years younger than I am but she is very tall… and very strong… for her age.
Plus, as I have mentioned, I am fairly small for my age. The doctors said it had something to do with my diet, which doesn’t make any sense because I never diet. I just eat whatever I want, although lately my parents have been giving me less sugar. It doesn’t seem to be helping, though, as I have not gotten any taller.
I tried to get her to put me back down but she just kept dancing and swinging me.
“I don’t think that this is a good idea,” I said.
“It’s a great idea! Dancing is really good for you.”
“No I mean—”
“And it’s great for balance and coordination.”
“No I mean—”
“And Mr. Sprinkles loved it! He was squealing and laughing the whole entire time!”
“And how long was that, exactly?” I asked.
“At least a couple of hours. That’s why WE’RE going to dance for a couple of hours, too. So you can see the exact dance moves I used with Mr. Sprinkles.”
Maybe it was the spinning and the twirling.
Maybe it was the awful music.
Maybe it was the heat from the fireplace.
Maybe it was the thought of dancing for a couple more hours.
Or maybe it was the fact that I had eaten a LOT of junk food over at Bess’s house just a few minutes ago.
Whatever it was, I didn’t feel very well.
I was able to pry Claire’s fingers off of me as I flew across the room and landed on the floor.
And then it happened. I threw up.
Right before the chips and pizza bites and other junk food started coming out of my mouth I looked around for the least messy place to make a mess. I was kneeling on an expensive-looking rug so that was out. There was some nice furniture nearby so that wouldn’t work.
The only other spot was the fireplace.
I know you’re reading this right now saying to yourself, “A fireplace is a terrible place to throw up in, especially when there is a fire in it!” And I could not agree more.
But it got worse than that.
I turned my head at the last moment and threw up all over the fire. The fire went out and turned to steam.
Throw-up steam.
From upstairs I heard Claire’s parents and brothers and sisters shouting. It was hard to make out exactly what they were saying but I heard “What is that smell?” a lot. And then I heard the sound of people gagging and throwing up.
I thanked Claire for her time and ran out of the house.
Out on the sidewalk I looked back at the house. Steam was coming out of the chimney and out over the street.
An old man was out walking his little dog when he passed by.
“What is that smell?” he asked. I shrugged my shoulders pretending I didn’t know.
“I think it’s coming from that house,” I said, pointing.
His little dog threw up in the bushes.
CHAPTER TWELVE - SARA
Dear Carl of Carl’s Chimney Cleaning Company,
I received the bill for the work you did at Claire Carlson’s house.
I also received the pictures you sent.
And your seven-page letter.
I agree with you, I had never seen, or smelled, anything like that in my life before either. I know that your services normally involve cleaning soot and ash out of fireplaces, so perhaps my request to clean up my brother’s “mess” was not something you were prepared for.
On the plus side, the chimney looks great in the pictures, although the stain on the tile is still pretty noticeable.
I know you cleaned the fireplace out three times including hand scrubbing and pressure washing. I think that your last try with sandblasting was a great idea even though, unfortunately, it was not able to get the stain or smell out. But you tried your best and I suppose that’s all anyone can ask for out of a company.
Speaking of which, I was surprised to find that Carl’s Carpet Cleaning Company was also your company. You must be a pretty busy guy!
I was glad to hear that you were able to get the stains and smells out of the upstairs carpeting from when the Carlson family threw up because of my brother’s incident. They have a big family and that must have been a pretty big mess.
I also received an invoice from Lumley’s Landscaping for the shrubbery cleaning in front of the Carlson’s house because of a passing dog who got sick because of the smell my brother caused. I was surprised to learn that the owner of the dog also threw up in the same bushes, along with a nearby squirrel who had been hiding in the bushes from the dog and/or owner, as well as some birds in a tree above the bushes who also got sick.
I can see now why the bill is so high. I would have dug up and thrown away the old bush as well. I never noticed before how expensive new bushes are, but now I know for next time.
The reason I bring up the landscaping bill is that it lists the owner as “Carl Lumley” which, I see, is the same “Carl” from Carl’s Chimney Cleaning Company and Carl’s Carpet Cleaning Company.
So rather than sending three separate amounts of money, I am putting all three amounts into one envelope. This is both easier and it saves me postage, which is important as I had to use all of the money in my savings account to pay you and I, literally, have fifty cents left in my piggy bank.
I don’t mention this to make you feel bad, but rather to let you know that if the postage to mail you the payment is more than fifty cents, it might take me a bit longer to get the envelope to you.
Sincerely,
Sara Goode
CHAPTER THIRTEEN - NATHAN
I hardly ever brush my teeth so if I do, or if I try to, you know it’s important.
I just wanted to give you some background before I explain what Zara did to the bathroom.
After throwing up I went home to brush my teeth because the inside of my mouth smelled like a dead cat had curled up inside of it and died. I tried using Zara’s toothbrush since I didn’t want to get mine all gross, but she had booby-trapped it.
I told you, she’s an evil genius.
Here’s what happened.
Zara and I share a bathroom that has two sinks in it. Hers is on the left and mine is on the right. We each have our own cups with our own toothbrushes in them, and we share a tube of toothpaste that we leave between the two sinks.
I checked her bedroom door and it was locked, like always.
I quietly went into the bathroom and gently took her toothbrush out of the cup on her side of the counter.
I was looking at the door, making sure no one was coming, which is how I missed the string attached to the bottom of the toothbrush.
I also missed the fact that Zara had taken apart the sink faucet and turned it upside down, so instead of water flowing into the sink the faucet was pointed up into the air.
When I pulled the toothbrush out of the cup it pulled on the string which turned on the water which sprayed me in the face and got me soaking wet!
I barely made it out of the bathroom alive!
I had never been so scared in all my--
CHAPTER FOURTEEN - SARA
Nathan is lying!
He’s telling the truth about never brushing his teeth. And he’s definitely telling the truth about his bad breath. But I NEVER booby-trapped anything.
I will admit that I might have left a string of dental floss on the counter and that is my fault and I take full responsibility for it.
But Nathan should not have been using my toothbrush. And since he never brushes his teeth or washes his hands he does not have a lot of practice using the sink. So I’m pretty sure he got his hand tangled up in the dental floss and then tried turning on the water by twisting the faucet head instead of the water part. This caused the faucet to turn upside down and spray him in the face.
I had nothing to do with it!
CHAPTER FIFTEEN - NATHAN
I am lucky to be alive. I could have drowned!
I turned the water off in the bathroom sink and I could hear Zara giggling in her room. I made a note in my wet crime notebook to get her back for that one.
Flipping back a few pages to my list of suspects, I saw that Daisy was next on the list.
I stuck a note under Zara’s door that said, I’m telling Mom, and then left for Daisy’s house. I wasn’t looking forward to talking with her all that much.
Daisy is weird.
“What do you want?” Daisy asked when she opened her front door.
“I wanted to talk to you about Mr. Sprinkles.”
“What do you want to talk about?” she asked.
“Abby told me that you were in charge of makeup on the night of the sleepover.”
“That’s right.”
“Can you tell me about the makeup you used?”
“Why?” Daisy asked.
“Because Abby asked me to find out what killed her pet. And because some makeups are tested on animals like rabbits and guinea pigs to see if they are bad for you. Maybe some of the makeup you used killed Mr. Sprinkles.”
Daisy looked at me for a minute.
“I can’t tell you about the makeup,” she said.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because I have to show you.”
Daisy opened her front door and let me in.
She had me sit in the dining room at a big table that was covered in little, plastic makeup containers. She picked up a white container that looked like a sea shell.
“This is the kind of makeup you put on to make your skin look smooth,” she said, using a small, soft brush to wipe my cheeks.
“What are you doing?” I asked, pulling away.
“I told you. I have to show you how this stuff works.”
Daisy picked up a tube that looked like a pen with a big cap. When she pulled off the cap there was a curved, black brush underneath.
“This is mascara,” she said. “It makes your eyelashes look darker and longer.”
I couldn’t see what she was doing, but I have to admit that it felt sort of nice. Think about it. Some people brush their hair and some people brush their teeth but how often does anyone brush their eyelashes?
“This,” Daisy said, pulling out another tube, “is lipstick.”
“You’re not putting that on me,” I said, trying to stand up. Daisy pushed on my shoulder, sitting me back in the chair.
“This is the exact same lipstick I used on Mr. Sprinkles the night of the party. Do you want to know what happened to him or not?”
“I guess.”
I asked Daisy if she knew what Sad Ear Goo was, since some of the makeups looked like goo. She had no idea.
Daisy put on lipstick and eye shadow and hair gel and pink glitter fingernail polish and all sorts of other stuff until I looked like a circus clown, which is awesome because I love circuses AND clowns. To finish it off she sprayed me with some perfume which, I had to admit, smelled pretty nice.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“Well, I don’t think your makeup killed Mr. Sprinkles.”
“Good,” she said.
“But I still think you’re weird.”
“What?” Daisy asked. “You think I’m weird? Why?”
“Remember when you were little and you used to come over to my house to play with Zara? You were always trying to hug me. You would chase me around the house until my parents would make me hold still.”
Maybe it was her makeup, but her face looked really angry.
“And that makes me weird? I was four years old. That’s what four year old kids do. And you used to play with Zara and me too. But then you got older and turned into a boy and you got all stinky and stupid.”
“I’m not stinky,” I said, although with her perfume sprayed all over me I did smell a bit.
“And stupid,” Daisy said.
“How stupid could I be if Abby asked me to figure out how Mr. Sprinkles died?”
“Super stupid. Have you ever solved a crime before, Nathan?” She used my name like my mom uses my name when I do something wrong.
“No.” I said, like I say it when I’ve done something wrong. “But I’m going to solve this one, if it’s the last thing that I do!”
I stomped out of the house and was half way down the street before I realized that I had forgotten to wipe the makeup off my face. An old man walking his dog pointed to me and said, “I didn’t know that the circus was in town!” and a bunch of people who were nearby looked at me and pointed and laughed.
I ran up to the nearest house and turned on the hose, spraying my face hard with water. I rubbed as much makeup off as I could with my shirt. When I was done I was a soaking, wet mess with a stained shirt. And then the front door opened.
“What are you doing with my hose, Nathan Bad,” a girl’s voice said.
I looked up and saw Zara’s friend Emily standing on the porch looking down at me.
“Goode,” I said. “My last name is Goode. And I was just coming to see you.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN - NATHAN
It was Emily’s mother who actually came to my rescue.
“That poor boy is all wet,” Emily’s mother said. “And he looks like he’s been crying.”
“I wasn’t crying,” I said. “I was trying to get my makeup off and I rubbed my face too hard and got some of the perfume in my eyes and it stings.”
Emily’s mother looked confused as she helped me up the steps and into the house since I was basically blind from Daisy’s makeup.
“Well either way, Emily, please get him a clean, dry shirt to wear.”
“Okay,” Emily said with a little too much enthusiasm. She returned a few minutes later with a white T-shirt. I put it on and saw that it was not all white. There were actually five faces on it. Crazy Big faces.
“Don’t you have any other shirts?” I asked.
“Sure. Lots. I also have dresses and shorts and scarves and bows and--”
And then the doorbell rang.
A few seconds later another girl from the sleepover, Fiona, walked in to the living room carrying a large plastic case with lots and lots of little compartments.
“What is Nathan Bad doing here?” Fiona asked Emily.
“He was crying outside and washing himself off with our hose so my mom let him in.”
“That’s not true!” I shouted. “None of that is true! Abby wants to find out why Mr. Sprinkles died so I’m here to ask you some questions. And since you’re both on my list of suspects I can question you both at the same time.”
“What kind of questions?” Emily asked.
“You were in charge of clothes and dressing up and stuff at the sleepover?”
“Yes,” Emily said.
“And you were in charge of making jewelry at the sleepover?”
“Yes,” Fiona said.
“Then I need to see every outfit and every piece of jewelry you all wore that night to see if maybe Mr. Sprinkles was smothered to death by your clothes or choked on some little plastic jewelry beads or anything.”
Emily and Fiona looked at each other and smiled.
“We can’t,” they said at the same time.
“Why not?”
“Because it won’t be the same if you just see it. You have to wear it.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because if you really want to know what killed Mr. Sprinkles, you have to think like Mr. Sprinkles, act like Mr. Sprinkles. BE Mr. Sprinkles,” Emily said.
It actually made a lot of sense… sort of.
“I’ll do it,” I said. “For Mr. Sprinkles.”
Emily had me try on at least a dozen different outfits. I had to put on princess dresses with tiaras. I had to wear fancy shoes with ankle straps. I had to try on hats and bows and ribbons and little hair things that you clipped to your regular hair. Emily lined out a runway in the living room with two long pieces of tape that she had me walk down for some reason.
Once that was over, Fiona sat down at the dining room table with Emily and I and we made the same kinds of necklaces and bracelets that the girls made at the party.
I was trying to put a plastic string through the holes in some tiny beads but it wasn’t easy. The beads I chose were all blue with little white letters that spelled out my name.
“Did Mr. Sprinkles wear any of the outfits?” I asked Emily.
“Sure. He had tiny little hats and I made him a Crazy Big T-shirt of his own using a sock that I cut arm holes into.”
“And he liked that?” I asked.
“He loves it,” Emily said, all excited.
Fiona kicked Emily under the table and gave her a mean look.
“Loved it,” Emily said. “He loved it, back when he was alive.”
Fiona went back to smiling and Emily pretended to look sad.
I was going to make a note of their weirdness in my crime notebook but my hands were busy trying to get the letters of my name in the right order on the string.
“And did you make him any jewelry, like earrings or anything?” I asked Fiona.
“His ears were too small to put earrings on, Nathan,” she said. “But I did make him a necklace of his own that had his name on it. He wore it most of the night.”
“Did it happen to say, ‘SAD EAR GOO’?” I asked.
They both looked at me like I was stupid.
“Why would I make him a necklace that said, ‘Sad Ear Goo?” Fiona asked.
“There were some beads in his cage…” I said, but before I could finish what I was saying I accidentally turned my hand and the beads all came off of the string I was working on, scattering all over the table. I scooped them back up in front of me but they were all out of order.
Instead of reading “NATHAN GOODE” they now read, “A NEON DOG HAT”.
“Look at that!” I said, pointing at the letters. “The letters of my name spell something different if you move them around.”
Emily and Fiona looked at each other again. They were two years younger than I was but they always acted like they were so much smarter than me.
“It’s called an Anagram,” they both said, laughing.
“Why are you guys so mean?” I said, taking off the party dress, scarf, earrings, and party hat I was wearing. “I never did anything to you.”
“Are you kidding?” Emily asked. “You are always so mean to us!”
“Like when?” I asked.
“Like last week,” Fiona said, “When there was only one seat left on the school bus and you wouldn’t let me sit in it because you said your backpack needed its own seat.”
“I have a lot of books—” I started to explain when Emily cut in, which was great timing because right as I was saying it I realized that I almost never bring books home from school. Usually I just have a baseball glove in my backpack.
“And two weeks ago when you jumped in a mud puddle right in front of me and splashed dirty water all over me.”
“I was trying to get the water out of the puddle so that you wouldn’t get your shoes wet,” I lied. Actually I had been trying to splash her but it was a joke. I guess she didn’t think it was funny.
“Or last month,” Fiona said, “When we all went on that school trip to the zoo and you ate my lunch, even though it had my name on it!”
“Actually, I fed most of your lunch to the horses. I just ate the sugary stuff.”
Emily and Fiona were staring at me in a not nice way, their hands on their hips.
“The horses looked really hungry!” I said, because they did. “Their ribs were all sticking out from hunger.”
“That’s because they were zebras. Those were stripes, not ribs,” both of them said.
The two girls looked really mad so I decided it was time to leave. I had two suspects left on the list in my crime notebook and I wasn’t any closer to figuring out who or what had killed Mr. Sprinkles.
I scooped up the bead letters to put them back into Fiona’s jewelry case when I noticed that they spelled another anagram. “NEAT HAND GOO.”
“Hmmm…” I said. “That’s interesting.”
I wrote the words “Neat Hand Goo” next to “Sad Ear Goo” in my crime notebook so I could try and figure
out the connection later… if it was the last thing that I did.
It was Emily’s mother who actually came to my rescue.
“That poor boy is all wet,” Emily’s mother said. “And he looks like he’s been crying.”
“I wasn’t crying,” I said. “I was trying to get my makeup off and I rubbed my face too hard and got some of the perfume in my eyes and it stings.”
Emily’s mother looked confused as she helped me up the steps and into the house since I was basically blind from Daisy’s makeup.
“Well either way, Emily, please get him a clean, dry shirt to wear.”
“Okay,” Emily said with a little too much enthusiasm. She returned a few minutes later with a white T-shirt. I put it on and saw that it was not all white. There were actually five faces on it. Crazy Big faces.
“Don’t you have any other shirts?” I asked.
“Sure. Lots. I also have dresses and shorts and scarves and bows and--”
And then the doorbell rang.
A few seconds later another girl from the sleepover, Fiona, walked in to the living room carrying a large plastic case with lots and lots of little compartments.
“What is Nathan Bad doing here?” Fiona asked Emily.
“He was crying outside and washing himself off with our hose so my mom let him in.”
“That’s not true!” I shouted. “None of that is true! Abby wants to find out why Mr. Sprinkles died so I’m here to ask you some questions. And since you’re both on my list of suspects I can question you both at the same time.”
“What kind of questions?” Emily asked.
“You were in charge of clothes and dressing up and stuff at the sleepover?”
“Yes,” Emily said.
“And you were in charge of making jewelry at the sleepover?”
“Yes,” Fiona said.
“Then I need to see every outfit and every piece of jewelry you all wore that night to see if maybe Mr. Sprinkles was smothered to death by your clothes or choked on some little plastic jewelry beads or anything.”
Emily and Fiona looked at each other and smiled.
“We can’t,” they said at the same time.
“Why not?”
“Because it won’t be the same if you just see it. You have to wear it.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because if you really want to know what killed Mr. Sprinkles, you have to think like Mr. Sprinkles, act like Mr. Sprinkles. BE Mr. Sprinkles,” Emily said.
It actually made a lot of sense… sort of.
“I’ll do it,” I said. “For Mr. Sprinkles.”
Emily had me try on at least a dozen different outfits. I had to put on princess dresses with tiaras. I had to wear fancy shoes with ankle straps. I had to try on hats and bows and ribbons and little hair things that you clipped to your regular hair. Emily lined out a runway in the living room with two long pieces of tape that she had me walk down for some reason.
Once that was over, Fiona sat down at the dining room table with Emily and I and we made the same kinds of necklaces and bracelets that the girls made at the party.
I was trying to put a plastic string through the holes in some tiny beads but it wasn’t easy. The beads I chose were all blue with little white letters that spelled out my name.
“Did Mr. Sprinkles wear any of the outfits?” I asked Emily.
“Sure. He had tiny little hats and I made him a Crazy Big T-shirt of his own using a sock that I cut arm holes into.”
“And he liked that?” I asked.
“He loves it,” Emily said, all excited.
Fiona kicked Emily under the table and gave her a mean look.
“Loved it,” Emily said. “He loved it, back when he was alive.”
Fiona went back to smiling and Emily pretended to look sad.
I was going to make a note of their weirdness in my crime notebook but my hands were busy trying to get the letters of my name in the right order on the string.
“And did you make him any jewelry, like earrings or anything?” I asked Fiona.
“His ears were too small to put earrings on, Nathan,” she said. “But I did make him a necklace of his own that had his name on it. He wore it most of the night.”
“Did it happen to say, ‘SAD EAR GOO’?” I asked.
They both looked at me like I was stupid.
“Why would I make him a necklace that said, ‘Sad Ear Goo?” Fiona asked.
“There were some beads in his cage…” I said, but before I could finish what I was saying I accidentally turned my hand and the beads all came off of the string I was working on, scattering all over the table. I scooped them back up in front of me but they were all out of order.
Instead of reading “NATHAN GOODE” they now read, “A NEON DOG HAT”.
“Look at that!” I said, pointing at the letters. “The letters of my name spell something different if you move them around.”
Emily and Fiona looked at each other again. They were two years younger than I was but they always acted like they were so much smarter than me.
“It’s called an Anagram,” they both said, laughing.
“Why are you guys so mean?” I said, taking off the party dress, scarf, earrings, and party hat I was wearing. “I never did anything to you.”
“Are you kidding?” Emily asked. “You are always so mean to us!”
“Like when?” I asked.
“Like last week,” Fiona said, “When there was only one seat left on the school bus and you wouldn’t let me sit in it because you said your backpack needed its own seat.”
“I have a lot of books—” I started to explain when Emily cut in, which was great timing because right as I was saying it I realized that I almost never bring books home from school. Usually I just have a baseball glove in my backpack.
“And two weeks ago when you jumped in a mud puddle right in front of me and splashed dirty water all over me.”
“I was trying to get the water out of the puddle so that you wouldn’t get your shoes wet,” I lied. Actually I had been trying to splash her but it was a joke. I guess she didn’t think it was funny.
“Or last month,” Fiona said, “When we all went on that school trip to the zoo and you ate my lunch, even though it had my name on it!”
“Actually, I fed most of your lunch to the horses. I just ate the sugary stuff.”
Emily and Fiona were staring at me in a not nice way, their hands on their hips.
“The horses looked really hungry!” I said, because they did. “Their ribs were all sticking out from hunger.”
“That’s because they were zebras. Those were stripes, not ribs,” both of them said.
The two girls looked really mad so I decided it was time to leave. I had two suspects left on the list in my crime notebook and I wasn’t any closer to figuring out who or what had killed Mr. Sprinkles.
I scooped up the bead letters to put them back into Fiona’s jewelry case when I noticed that they spelled another anagram. “NEAT HAND GOO.”
“Hmmm…” I said. “That’s interesting.”
I wrote the words “Neat Hand Goo” next to “Sad Ear Goo” in my crime notebook so I could try and figure
out the connection later… if it was the last thing that I did.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - SARA
Dear Petunia Pillowcase Company,
I am writing to let you know that I was able to convince my brother, Nathan Goode, to drop the lawsuit he threatened to file against your company for one million-billion dollars.
First, as we all know, one million-billion dollars is not a real amount of money much less a real number.
One million is the number one, followed by six zeros.
One billion is the number one, followed by nine zeros.
As anyone other than my brother knows, six plus nine is fifteen.
So the real number is one followed by fifteen zeros, which is one quadrillion, which is more money than even exists on this planet!
That being said, I am filing my own lawsuit against your company on behalf of my friend Gloria, who ripped her pillowcase when she swung it at my brother’s head. As anyone knows, pillowcases are used for three main purposes.
The first is to cover pillows, of course.
The second is to use as candy bags on Halloween since they are large and can hold a lot of candy. The third, and perhaps most important use, is for grabbing onto when swinging pillows in a pillow fight.
The stitching on my friend Gloria’s pillowcase did not hold up to the repeated swinging and hitting one would expect from a pillow case and it ripped open when hitting my brother Nathan in the head, as you already know from his lawsuit.
I am happy to settle this out of court if your company would consider sending a new pillowcase to my friend Gloria. She likes the pillowcase with the yellow petunia on it.
I like the purple petunias.
An assortment of different colored petunia pillowcases for my friends would also be nice.
Best Regards,
Sara Goode
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - NATHAN
It was a really hard pillow hit to my head that helped knock loose an important clue.
I had gone to see Gloria, who was the next suspect on my list, to find out what she knew. Gloria had been in charge of pillow fighting at the sleepover party.
I asked her if the guinea pig was involved. She told me he wasn’t, but that if I wanted to know what the pillow fight at the party was like, she needed to hit me with her pillow. In fact, she needed to hit me with ALL of the pillows.
“Okay,” I said. And that’s probably something you should know about me. I take my job very seriously. If I do something, I give it my all. One hundred percent.
If I forget to do my homework, I’m not rushing around trying to get it done at the last minute. I follow through on not doing it.
If I don’t know the answer to a test question, I’m not even trying. I commit myself to NOT knowing that answer. Ever.
If I haven’t taken a shower or changed my underwear for a couple of days, you can be sure that I am going to go the entire week without taking a shower or changing my underwear.
My mom tried feeding me some kind of strained vegetables when I was a baby and I did not like them. I haven’t eaten a single vegetable since!
One hundred percent.
Anyway, back to the pillow fight.
Gloria started with a tiny pillow. The words, “Mr. Sprinkles” were glitter-painted on the fabric. It was actually kind of cute. I barely felt it when she hit me with it, although it did smell faintly of guinea pig.
The pillows the girls had used for their pillow fight, though, were much, much bigger. Like the one that had just hit me in the head. Gloria was swinging away, sometimes two pillows at a time.
“Did you hit people this hard at the party?” I asked.
“Nope. This is special, just for you,” Gloria said, whacking me in the stomach.
“Seems kind of mean, don’t you think?” I asked, flinching from the pillow as it hit my neck.
“YOU seem kind of mean,” Gloria said, hitting me again.
“Me? How am I mean? I’ve never even met you before today,” I explained.
Gloria stopped hitting me for a second and looked at me like I was crazy.
“I’ve been over to your house to play with Sara at least a dozen times. I’ve had dinner with your family twice in the last month.”
“Who’s Sara?” I asked.
“Your sister!”
“Oh, you mean Zara. Sorry. Her name is actually Zara.”
Gloria started hitting me with the pillow again, harder this time.
“Why do you say I’m mean?” I asked.
“You stole my bike!” Gloria shouted.
“No I didn’t. I’ve never stolen a bike in my life,” I said, raising my hands to protect my face.
“Last week you took my bike from school and rode it home.”
“Oh, that. I borrowed a bike because mine had a flat. I didn’t know it was yours.”
“It was pink and purple and it had a license plate on the back with my name on it!”
“Yeah… but… what’s the big deal? You live way closer to the school than I do.”
“I live next door to you! I had to walk all the way home carrying my science project!”
“See, I was right. You do live closer to the school. One house closer.”
“My science project was a volcano. I got fake lava all over myself!”
I could tell that Gloria was angry. Really angry. But I also knew that she was a girl which meant that she hit like a girl, which wasn’t really very hard.
I don’t know if it was a lucky shot, or if maybe she wasn’t a girl, or if she was a girl who actually hit like a boy, but Gloria put all of her might into one last pillow swing and hit me right in the middle of my head.
She hit me so hard I saw stars. And then I saw letters. And then the letters started swimming around, rearranging themselves… the same letters that Doctor Poundcake had read from the plastic beads that had been squished into my skin when I climbed into Mr. Sprinkles’ cage.
SAD EAR GOO …
A RAD GOOSE …
SARA GOODE…
Sara Goode…
Which was a name VERY similar to my sister’s…
The beads in the cage were from my sister’s necklace.
The only way her beads could have fallen off and into the cage was if she had been taking Mr. Sprinkles out of the cage. Which meant Zara was now my main suspect.
I was definitely going to have to talk to her about Mr. Sprinkles now.
CHAPTER NINETEEN - NATHAN
I was on my way home to talk to Zara when I walked past Hillary’s house. Hillary was the last girl on my crime notebook list who had been at the sleepover at Abigail’s house. But now that my sister Zara was my main suspect I figured I could just skip talking to Hillary. At least I hoped I could skip talking to her. She didn’t like me very much for some reason.
As I passed Hillary’s house I saw a tent and table set up on the front lawn near the sidewalk. It looked sort of like a lemonade stand only she wasn’t selling lemonade.
She was selling art.
She had paintings spread out over the tables and tied to the tent poles and hung on strings. There must have been hundreds of them. I almost walked past when I got a good look at the pictures. It took me a second to notice that my feet had stopped moving and that I was just standing there.
“Hello, Nathan Bad,” Hillary said in a really not-nice voice.
My mouth couldn’t seem to make words come out, which was okay since I didn’t know what words to say.
The paintings… were all of me!
I saw my face hundreds of times in hundreds of different poses and colors and styles.
In some paintings my face was green and my eyes were crossed.
In some other paintings my finger was stuck waaay up my nose and the words “Dumb-Head” were written with an arrow pointing to my face.
There was a whole series of paintings called, “At the Zoo” where I was standing or sitting or lying under zoo animals who were about to poop on me. There was a painting of me standing behind a giraffe who had his tail on my face. In another I was sitting in a chair and an elephant’s bum was right next to my face. In another a hippo and a rhinoceros were both backing up over my head.
“Why am I in all of your paintings?” I asked. Some adults were walking by the tent looking at the pictures, pointing at me and laughing.
“You’re not in all of them,” Hillary said. “Just most of them.”
A teenager riding by on a skateboard stopped in front of the tent.
“Cool. I’ll take that one,” he said, pointing to a painting of me standing in a field with planes flying overhead dropping missiles and bombs on me.
“Fifteen dollars, please,” Hillary said.
“Here’s a twenty. Keep the change!”
The teenager handed over the money and I watched as he skateboarded away with the painting.
“I plan on selling as many as I can, then burning the rest,” Hillary explained.
“But why? Why did you paint all of these? They seem really… angry.”
“Seriously?” she asked, shocked. “You have no idea why I might be mad at you?”
“Um...” I said, thinking hard but not coming up with anything.
“No idea at all?”
“Uh…” I said, thinking harder but still nothing.
“Two days ago? At school?”
I still had no idea.
A woman walking her dog came by and looked at the paintings, laughing.
“I’ll take that one, dear. How much is it?”
The large painting was of me with my hands and feet tied up. I was sitting on railroad tracks and a train was about to run me over. I was wearing a cowboy hat and a T-shirt with the word, “Stoopid” on it and my face was covered in big, red dots.
“That’s a hundred dollars.”
“Oh, that’s not nearly enough. Take two hundred,” the woman said, handing over a big stack of money. As she walked away her dog kept barking at the painting and trying to bite it.
“How much money have you made so far?” I asked.
“Almost a thousand dollars. And I’m going to use it to replace all of the school art supplies that you ruined.”
Two days ago? Art supplies?
And then I remembered.
Two days ago at school Mr. Art, the art teacher, asked me to get a paint brush out of the art supply cabinet. I pulled on the handle but it wouldn’t open. I pulled and pulled and twisted the handle and pulled again but it still wouldn’t open. I guess I pulled a little too hard because the next thing I knew the entire cabinet fell over and almost landed on me!
From inside of the cabinet paint started leaking out all over the floor.
When Mr. Art finally got the cabinet back up and opened the door (apparently I had been turning the handle the wrong way) the paper and pens and paint brushes and scissors and sponges and all of the other art and craft supplies were covered in paint.
“Those were ALL of the art supplies for the entire school!” Hillary shouted. “Because of you Mr. Fiske cancelled art classes for the rest of the year!”
“Who is Mr. Fiske?”
“The art teacher!”
“I thought his name was Mr. Art.”
“No, that’s just what YOU call him because you can’t be bothered to remember anyone’s name.”
“That’s not true,” I told her.
“What’s the name of your homeroom teacher?”
“Mrs. Homeroom.”
“And your math teacher?”
“Mrs. Math.”
“And the woman who makes the lunches in the cafeteria?”
“Old Lady Lunchmaker.”
Gloria stared at me with her googly eyes like I was supposed to understand what she was talking about. I had no idea.
“Do you really think that the woman who makes our lunches has the last name, ‘Lunchmaker’, or that your math teacher has the last name of ‘Math’?”
“It makes a lot more sense than if they had last names that had nothing to do with lunch-making or math,” I said.
Gloria, literally, started turning red in the face and her fists started shaking.
“Hey,” I said, “I was almost killed by that art cabinet.”
“I know,” Hillary said. “That’s why I painted this one.”
She pointed to a painting of an art cabinet lying on its side with red paint oozing onto the floor and two hands and two feet sticking out. The words, “Nathan Bad” had an arrow pointing down to the body underneath the cabinet.
“So I’m in all of these paintings?”
“Most of them,” Hillary said.
“Then you owe me some money.”
Hillary looked shocked.
“What!?!”
“If I’m in the paintings I should get some of the money.”
Hillary looked as if she was about to stab me with a paint brush.
“I’ll tell you what. I will give you these paintings instead.” Hillary gathered up some smaller paintings and handed them to me. “Now go away before I beat you with a paint bucket.”
I usually know when I’m not wanted, and I was getting that vibe now, so I took the paintings and turned to go. As I did a van pulled up. On the side of the van was written “Metroburg Museum of Art.”
The two men who got out ooohed and aaahed at the paintings.
One of the men shouted, “We would like to buy your entire collection to put on display in our museum!”
“Name your price!” the other man shouted as he pulled out his wallet.
I went to the back of the van as the men were loading all of the paintings.
“How much would you give me for these?” I asked, showing them my stack of paintings.
The men looked at the pictures for less than a second and then laughed.
“No one pays for paintings of guinea pigs! Hahahahaha!”
Then they closed the van doors and drove away. The tent and table, and Hillary, were gone.
I looked at the paintings she had given me.
They were all paintings of Mr. Sprinkles.
Each one looked different and each one was signed by a different person.
There was a painting of Mr. Sprinkles eating snacks that was signed, “Abby”.
There was a painting of Mr. Sprinkles wearing headphones signed, “Bess”.
There was a painting of Mr. Sprinkles dancing that was signed, “Claire”.
There was a painting of Mr. Sprinkles with makeup on signed, “Delilah”.
There was a painting of Mr. Sprinkles in a dress signed, “Emily”.
There was a painting of Mr. Sprinkles wearing fancy jewelry signed, “Fiona”.
There was a painting of Mr. Sprinkles having a pillow fight signed, “Gloria”.
There was a painting of Mr. Sprinkles painting a picture of Mr. Sprinkles painting a picture of Mr. Sprinkles that was signed, “Hillary.”
And then there was the last painting. It was signed, “Sara” whom I assumed was my sister. This picture was of Mr. Sprinkles eating cereal out of a bowl the morning after the slumber party with all of the girls at the party.
But that didn’t make any sense.
Abby had said Mr. Sprinkles’ was already dead when they woke up in the morning. So either this picture was wrong, or somebody was lying. Or somebody was lying about being wrong. Or… I don’t know.
Either way it looked like it was time to talk to my sister.
Right after I checked on one last thing…
CHAPTER TWENTY - SARA
I want to make something very clear.
I admit that I had a small part in what happened. Not all of it. Most of that was Nathan. But I do understand that my actions led to some of the events that took place that day. Especially at the park.
But what happened at Abby’s house… to be honest we never thought he’d go that far.
Literally.
We never thought he’d be clever enough to figure it out.
So when he did…
Let’s just say that I never thought he’d take things as far as they wound up going.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE - NATHAN
The hardest part about digging up a dead pet is that it’s super gross.
The second hardest part about digging up a dead pet is not getting caught. Especially when you are standing in some other family’s back yard holding a big shovel.
I had found a small patch of dirt by Abby’s back fence with a small sign stapled to a stick that read, “R.I.P Mr. Sprinkles”. The sign was out in the open so I was I was hiding about twenty feet away, behind some bushes.
I could have told Abby what I was doing but there were too many questions. Why had Mr. Sprinkles died? Why had Abby asked me to look into his death in the first place? Why were all of the girls at the sleepover party so mad at me (although I had most of the answers to that)? And why was there a painting of Mr. Sprinkles the morning after the party, when he should have been in a box, buried in the back yard?
The bushes I was hiding behind were not very tall so I had to squat down to keep from being seen. Abby and her family were having dinner in the house and I could see them through the window… which meant that they would also be able to see me.
Each time they lowered their heads to take a bite of food I ran across the open grass, scooped out a shovel full of dirt, threw the dirt over the fence, and ran back behind the bushes.
It took a long time but I was determined to solve this mystery if it was the last thing I did!
After thirty or forty trips back and forth I felt the shovel hit something, The next ten trips I spent running back and forth, scooping away dirt from the edges of the box.
On the last trip I sprinted and yanked the box out of the ground and took it with me behind the bushes. The box had the name “Mr. Sprinkles” on it, colored in markers and glitter paint and all along the edges were glued-on plastic gems. There were little pictures and stickers on the outside and across the lid.
I could feel something heavy rolling around inside the box, which made my stomach feel like it was going to throw up again. But I had made a promise to Abby and, more importantly, I had made a promise to myself to see this through to the end.
I set the box down on the grass.
I closed my eyes.
I took off the lid.
And there it was…
A rock.
It was a rock covered in brown and yellow paint, with stick-on googly eyes, in the same size and shape and weight as a guinea pig.
And there was something else in the box too.
A note.
But not just any note.
This was a Ransom Note.
I knew this because the note was written using a bunch of different letters cut out from a bunch of different pages and then glued onto the page. The letters were all put together like this…
“IF YOU EVER WANT TO SEE MR. SPRINKLES AGAIN YOU WILL BRING ALL OF THE MONEY IN YOUR PIGGY BANK TO METROBURG PARK, TONIGHT, AT 7 O’CLOCK! P.S. YOU MUST BE WEARING YOUR UNDERWEAR ON THE OUTSIDE OF YOUR CLOTHES! SIGNED… THE KIDNAPPERS”
So Mr. Sprinkles had been kidnapped and not killed after all.
But that didn’t make any sense.
Abby would have told me if Mr. Sprinkles had been kidnapped. Otherwise, why was she having me run around trying to solve his death?
And that was when I noticed something…
Ransom notes use letters cut out of books and magazines. The reason for this is so you can’t figure out who had written the note since there was no handwriting.
But I recognized the letters immediately.
They were from the last pages of all of my library books.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO - NATHAN
Back in my room I laid down on my bed, my mind spinning from all of the information I had taken in. I was tired from digging up Mr. Sprinkles’ box and was even more tired from running back and forth when I buried it again while Abby and her family were having dessert.
I held the ransom note in one hand while I flipped through the last pages of my books with the other. The last pages were missing, but the letters from each book matched the sizes and shapes of the letters on the ransom note.
This could only mean one thing.
Zara…
I checked the clock. It was the kind with the hands on it that my parents had got for me so I could learn to tell time, but I never could.
There was a big hand that moved every minute or so and short hand that hardly moved at all, and a long, thin hand that moved, like, once every second so it just made my brain hurt trying to figure it out. I knew it was getting close to 7 o’clock, though, when I was supposed to be at the park with my money and my underwear.
And if Zara wanted me to be at the park, that meant she wouldn’t be home.
I quietly snuck out of my room to listen at Zara’s door. I didn’t hear anything.
I laid flat on the floor and tried to peek under the space between the door and the carpet. The lights were off so I couldn’t see anything.
I jammed my nose into the space between the door and the carpet. I DID smell something. It smelled like wood shavings, dried guinea pig food and cut up apples.
Mr. Sprinkles must have been in Zara’s room the whole time!
But I had to be sure.
And that meant I had to break into Zara’s room.
And that meant booby traps.
Remember at the beginning of all this when I told you that my sister was a super genius?
And remember how I told you that I wasn’t?
And remember how I told you that I had never been in my sister’s room before because of all of the booby traps she had set?
Well, I want you to remember that when I tell you what happened next.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE - SARA
Okay…
So I should probably explain about the booby traps.
There’s a perfectly good explanation for that.
First, Nathan should never have been in my room!
Second… um…
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR - NATHAN
The thing about super geniuses is that they think they are smarter than everyone else, which is true. But Zara doesn’t just think that she is smarter than me. She thinks that I am dumber than her. And that’s a big difference. Or not. I’m not sure. But it sounds like a big difference.
Anyway, if I was going to sneak into her booby-trapped room I was going to need to be smart and clever and determined. Since I was none of those things I called to my dog, Jethro, who came running down the hall.
“Wait here!” I told him, which he did.
I went into the garage and got a crowbar, which is a long piece of metal that’s curved at one end and is used for prying things open like crates or large pieces of wood or, in this case, a door.
I stuck the crowbar between the door handle and door frame, where the lock would be, and I pulled hard. I guess I didn’t know my own strength because I was just trying to get the door open a little but the door actually came off its hinges and fell sideways onto her dresser.
“Go find the guinea pig, Jethro!” I shouted.
Without waiting, Jethro ran into the darkened room.
I heard a bark, then a yip, then what sounded like a dog scream. A bright flashing strobe light blinded me. Then I heard something clang, then another dog scream, then something clicking.
And then the flashing stopped.
And then… silence.
I pushed the door aside and turned on the light switch.
In the middle of the room my very large dog Jethro was stuck in a very small guinea pig cage, hanging from the ceiling, attached to a rope that was tied to the leg of Zara’s desk. A candle was burning on the desk, right underneath the rope.
“Jethro, jump!” I shouted.
Jethro opened the door flap with his nose but it was no use. The door was meant for a guinea pig to get in and out, not a Saint Bernard like Jethro. He barked to let me know he was stuck.
“Well if you got in the cage you can get out of the cage, Jethro.” I said, folding my arms. Jethro barked, as if trying to tell me something important.
“You don’t have much time, Jethro. The candle is going to burn through the rope and you’re going to crash to the ground!” Jethro barked again, twice, nodding towards the desk.
“Yes, I know,” I said, “The candle is going to burn through the rope and you’re going to crash to the floor! You’ve got to get out of that… oh.” I said, figuring out what Jethro was getting it.
I blew out the candle and the rope stopped burning.
On Zara’s desk a small box with a bright light attached to it was making a whirring noise. A few seconds later a strip of pictures came out like one of those photo booths at the county fair. The first picture was of Jethro entering the room. The second picture showed the cage landing on him. The third picture was of the rope hoisting the cage up into the air. The last picture was of Jethro hanging up by the ceiling looking silly and scared.
The pictures looked pretty funny, especially since it happened to Jethro and not to me.
And that’s when I realized that this booby trap had been meant for me.
And that’s also when I realized that the ransom note had been meant for me.
And that’s also when I realized that this whole adventure in finding out what had happened to Mr. Sprinkles had been meant for me.
I looked at the digital clock on Zara’s dresser.
6:51pm.
I had nine minutes to get to the park.
The park was five minutes away.
That meant that I had, like, seven minutes to figure out a way to outsmart my evil, super-genius sister and her friends.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE - NATHAN
Metroburg Park is a large park that has paths for jogging and riding bikes, a basketball court, baseball field, and playground. And it’s very close to our house, which is good because just like the ransom note said, I was wearing underwear on the outside of my pants and carrying my piggy bank. The fewer people who saw me looking this ridiculous the better.
I wasn’t sure where the “kidnappers” were hiding, but I figured that the playground would be the best place to start. Besides, I knew Zara would find me.
“Hey!” I heard my evil sister shout. “That’s MY underwear!”
Near the top of the play structure I saw Zara step out of the shadows. She was holding a camera in her hand. It was the kind of camera that had the video screen on the back so you could see the pictures.
“I see you brought the piggy bank,” she said. Zara stomped her foot on the floor of the play structure and out stepped Bess, Claire, Daisy, Emily, Fiona, Gloria and Hillary. Last came Abby, holding Mr. Sprinkles in her arms. He was alive and well and nibbling on an apple slice.
“Leave the piggy bank on the ground and walk away,” Zara commanded.
I laughed.
“Why would I do that?” I asked. “You already have Mr. Sprinkles. Why would I give you my money?”
“Because if you don’t, I’m going to show everyone at school these!”
Zara plugged a cord into her camera.
Behind me a sheet, hanging from a tree, lit up showing a picture of me. Then another. Then another. There I was, jamming snacks into my face, wearing makeup, dancing, throwing up in the fireplace, washing myself off with a garden hose, getting hit over and over in the face with a pillow, and digging up a box in a back yard.
Zara had been taking pictures of me the entire time!
Each picture by itself was embarrassing. Put together like this, though, I would never be able to live it down.
The girls were all laughing at me.
I looked down at the ground.
A tear fell from the corner of my eye and landed in the grass at my feet.
“You win,” I said.
“Of course we win!” Zara shouted. The other girls laughed louder. “You’re a big, dumb, mean brother who… take off my underwear! I can’t yell at you when you’re wearing my underwear. It’s weird.”
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly, sliding off her undies.
“What?” Zara asked, even though she heard me. “I couldn’t hear you. Speak louder.”
“I said I’m sorry,” I shouted. “I’m sorry to all of you for being unkind. I’m sorry for hurting your feelings. I’m sorry I made you hate me so much. I never mean to. I never did any of it on purpose. I guess that as smart as Zara is… I’m the opposite of that smart. I can see now that I hurt your feelings. I can see now how rotten I have been. So, I guess… thank you. Thank you for helping me see this in myself. I know I can’t make it up to you, but I’m going to try… if it’s the last thing that I do.”
Zara started to say something and then stopped. The girls weren’t laughing any more.
“Here,” I said, setting down the ceramic piggy and slowly shuffling away towards home.
I made it all the way to the edge of the park before I heard the screams.
The view wasn’t great but I could see what was happening clearly enough.
When I walked away pretending to be sad the girls ignored me, which I knew they would.
They came down from the play structure and stood around the piggy bank, which was just where I wanted them.
They didn’t notice the clear piece of tape I had placed over the coin slot.
And when they all got close and popped open the plastic cover on the bottom of the bank to see how much money was inside… it happened.
When I had first walked up to the park I hid behind a tree, just for a second. But it was long enough to light three stink bombs.
A stink bomb is a lot like a smoke bomb in that it gives off smoke; only the smoke in a stink bomb really, really stinks.
Three smoke bombs stuffed into a piggy bank will make your nose hair curl and you’ll smell really, really bad for at least a week.
With the smoke bombs in the piggy bank, I taped the coin slot so no air could get out. Next I lit the fuse on the three stink bombs and tossed them into the piggy bank and quickly replaced the plastic coin cover.
When the girls took off the cap all of the smoke and stink exploded out in a nasty cloud of purple gas. The cloud covered each and every one of the girls.
I saw Zara shake the bank hard to get the stink bombs out, then harder to get the money out.
But all that fell to the ground were little, tiny, plastic beads with letters on them that spelled out… SAD EAR GOO.
As the girls ran around screaming and shouting my name I scratched Jethro behind the ears, threw my crime notebook into the garbage can, and headed for home.
“This isn’t over, Nathan!” I heard Zara shout. “I am going to get you back if it’s the last thing I ever do!”
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX - SARA
If I am guilty of anything, and I am not saying that I am, but if I was, it would be picking Nathan to play a joke on. And that’s all this was.
A joke that my dumb brother Nathan took way, way too far.
At the sleepover party each person had something that they were in charge of, like music, snacks, and pictures. But I was in charge of something too. Getting revenge on Nathan for all the mean things he had ever done to my friends and to me.
We pretended Mr. Sprinkles was dead and then asked Nathan to solve a crime that never really happened.
And then we hid and took pictures of him as we made him do ridiculous things to solve the crime.
Perhaps it was immature of us, and perhaps we let things get out of hand, but I am not evil like Nathan says. And I don’t see why I have to write an apology to anyone, or why I have to use the money in my savings account to pay for any of the things that HE did. That’s just not fair!
If I have to pay for chimney cleanings and landscaping and pillowcases and park restorations, then I shouldn’t have to apologize, because I’m not sorry. Nathan is the one who should be sorry. And this is all his fault!
I would have gotten away with everything if Nathan wasn’t… Nathan.
But since I am being forced to explain myself I might as well explain this.
I am going to get Nathan back for all this, if it is the last thing that I do!
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN - NATHAN
So Mom and Dad, Mr. Mayor, parents of each and every one of my sister’s friends, Mr. Principal, and ladies and gentleman of the jury, as you can see, this entire thing has been a great, big misunderstanding.
The misunderstanding is that I did anything wrong at all.
It was all Zara’s fault.
You should probably put her in jail.
It’s been two weeks now since I stink-bombed my evil super-genius sister and her friends.
In that time she put the door back on her room, added a few more locks, set up new booby traps, and finally took enough showers to get rid of the stink bomb smell.
You should also know that I decided to get out of the detective business and start a lemonade stand. It’s good work, good money, and I get all the free lemonade I could possibly want.
But I think Zara is planning something.
Something big.
I think this because last night I made a batch of lemonade and this morning it was still in the refrigerator. This by itself isn’t weird, of course.
But I KNOW Zara is up to something.
So ten minutes ago I poured some of the lemonade into Jethro’s water dish.
Five minutes ago all of his hair fell out.
Zara is evil.
Zara is a super-genius.
Zara is going to get me back if it’s the last thing she does.
But not if I get her first…
THE END