(Normally, I do not encourage spying on people’s texts, but I think we can agree that this was an exceptional circumstance.)
From the texts, Teenie learned how to operate all the TVs in the house, but that wasn’t much help in their investigation.
As she passed the lifeguard stand, the lifeguard dropped his phone onto a towel and walked over to the edge of the pool to shout at a swimmer. Teenie judged she had two minutes to examine his phone. She grabbed it before the screen locked.
The lifeguard’s phone was full of selfies. She didn’t think he looked too great in any of them. Then again, maybe she wasn’t a very good judge, she admitted to herself.
The only other picture was one of Oliver in a magic store, wearing his top hat. An odd coincidence, yes. But again, not very helpful.
Most of the other partygoers didn’t have phones. Except Maddox, who’d left his on a rock when he went swimming. He must have been playing a game on the phone, because as soon as Teenie turned it on the screen was swarming with zombies.
“AAAAAAH!” Startled, she dropped the phone into a puddle.
Quickly, she wiped it off. Hopefully, there wouldn’t be lasting damage.
Feeling a little discouraged, Teenie went back to the Candycano to look for her sister, but Bea was gone. A lot of candy was gone too. Fortunately, a lot more was still there. An entire mountain of candy, in fact.
After all that hard work, Teenie figured she deserved a short break and a sweet or two. A sour gummy. Some Skittles. She loved Skittles. Maybe a few cookies. According to the countdown clock she still had five minutes. Plenty of time to solve the case.
The Investigation, Part Two
OLIVER: THE WHERE, PART TWO
Holding his map open, Oliver walked around the house, toward the Refuse and Recycling area. Holding the top hat over his head, Benny followed as discreetly as he could.
As soon as they rounded the corner, they saw the trash bins. And there was Joe, up to his shoulders in the trash, looking for something. Oliver nudged Benny. “Hey, there he is!”
Benny looked up from under the brim of the hat and glanced nervously at their surroundings. “Keep it down!”
He nodded to the nearest trash bin. They ducked behind it and watched Joe, still digging in the trash.
“All right, we found him,” said Benny. “Now it’s time I hit the road.”
Oliver looked down at his rabbit friend in distress. “Please don’t go yet! What about the encore performance?”
“Sorry. It ain’t only the cops, kid. I got dreams.” The bunny reached into the top hat and pulled out a small piece of cardboard. It had a picture of the sun setting over a green farm. “See this—Kern County. That’s where I’m headed. Time to settle down. Get a warren of my own. Someplace I can raise a small family of forty or fifty . . .”
Oliver examined the picture. “You know that’s a cereal box top, right?”
Irritated, Benny snatched the cardboard back. “That don’t mean the farm ain’t real!”
Their argument was interrupted by a loud “MEOW!”
The robo-cat! Oliver thought, but just then, a large possum scurried from behind the bins.
Oliver frowned. “Benny, do possums meow?”
“Benny?” Oliver repeated.
Benny might not have heard the question, but Joe did. He spotted Oliver spying on him. The big bully grabbed a wad of trash and tossed it at his smaller classmate.
“Trying to steal the trash too, huh?” Joe sneered.
“Sorry, I was looking for the stolen robo-cat,” said Oliver bravely. “Thought I heard a meow.”
“No you didn’t,” Joe insisted. “You heard this!”
He dumped the remaining trash over Oliver’s head, and walked away, having made his point.
Oliver wiped the garbage and a few tears from his eyes.
He knew what he had heard. Joe was hiding something. Something that walked and talked like a cat.
“I think we have our suspect, Benny,” said Oliver in an excited whisper, while wiping off milky cereal. “The cat burglar is Joe!”
“Except a cat burglar is actually a nighttime burglar, huh?” continued Oliver. “Not somebody who steals cats. But you know what I mean. Well, anyway . . . Why do you think he did it? You think he was jealous of Maddox maybe?”
Oliver glanced around, but he didn’t see the rabbit. Or even the hat.
“Benny?”
He didn’t get an answer because Benny was gone.
Still sticky and dripping cereal, Oliver checked all the obvious rabbit spots, like the vegetable garden and the salad bar, but he saw no furry white animals or even any roving top hats.
Three minutes left on the countdown clock, and still no sign of Benny.
Beginning to despair, Oliver glanced under the lifeguard tower, only to jump back in alarm when the lifeguard blew his whistle. Oliver looked up to see his cousin Spencer, who had traded in his magic store uniform for orange trunks and a life preserver.
Oliver was not especially surprised. Spencer was trying to buy a car, so he took any job he was qualified for—and any job that he was unqualified for.
“Spencer, have you seen a rabbit anywhere?”
“I’m on lifeguard duty,” said Spencer with more than a trace of self-importance. “My eyes have been locked like laser beams on this pool. So unless your rabbit is a plastic flotation device . . . What happened to you, Oliver? You smell horrible. You should jump in the pool and clean up.”
“But I don’t have a swimsuit.”
“Dude, this is a pool party!”
“That’s what he said.”
“Who?”
“Nobody.”
Oliver wanted to keep searching for Benny, but Spencer blew his whistle a second time, causing Oliver to trip over a long red candy rope and fall right into the pool.
What would he do without Benny, Oliver wondered as he plunged deep underwater. A second ago, he was a triumphant detective. Now he was just another failed, sopping wet magician. There was no way he could perform without his rabbit partner.
BEA: THE WHO, PART TWO
Bea didn’t notice that she’d caused her friend to trip. She figured Oliver must have dived into the pool in search of clues.
Having followed the licorice rope as it snaked away from the Candycano, and wound around the pool and under the lifeguard tower, she now found herself nearing the end of her long red trail: the craft table.
At the craft table, Memphis sat alone, talking on a walkie-talkie.
Memphis had never seemed to be the crafty type. What was she doing there? And who was she talking to?
In front of Memphis was an elaborate castle that she was building from brightly colored plastic blocks. All over the table, she had spread diagrams and plans. None of which seemed to relate to the box that the blocks came in.
“That doesn’t look like the castle on the box,” said Bea, walking up.
Memphis put down a block. “This is more of a challenge.”
“What is?” Bea asked. “What are you building?”
“Stop bothering me!” Memphis sneered. “Don’t you and your sister have more presents to steal? And where’s your dumb friend, the ‘magician’?”
Bea eyed the block structure. Not only was Memphis not building the castle on the box, she wasn’t building a castle at all. She was building a model of a large suburban house. Maddox’s house.
As for the papers on the table, they included a map of Maddox’s home, and the instructions for the RK-D2!
“Aha!” Bea exclaimed to herself, and made a note in her book.
“Bye, Memphis!” she said cheerfully.
Then she trotted off to tell Teenie and Oliver about her discovery, eating the remaining licorice rope all the way back to the Candycano.
TEENIE: THE
WHAT, PART TWO
Back at the Candycano, Teenie was still eating sweets. She ate:
Gummy bears
Gummy worm
Chocolate
Candy-coated chocolate
Candy-coated peanut butter
Peanut butter and celery with raisins (which had no business on the Candycano, but she ate it anyway)
Yogurt raisins (which she hated, but still had seven just to be sure)
All that candy had made her a little jumpy.
Actually, it had made her very jumpy. She leaped away from the table onto the diving board and straight over the deepest part of the pool and onto the other side.
With a loud whistle, the lifeguard shouted, “No jumping! Although I admit that was really cool!”
“Thanks!”
Teenie kept going past the Jacuzzi and DJ booth. She cartwheeled through the tennis court and hopped on one leg under the regulation basketball hoop. She walked on her hands through the cactus garden and scaled the climbing wall with her eyes closed. Finally, she arrived at the enormous bouncy castle.
Never had she felt a stronger urge to bounce.
Kicking her shoes off, she jumped right over the Slip ’N Slide moat and into the center of the castle. Jayden, Joe, and Maddox were already there, trying and failing to do flips. Teenie could do a double flip, backward and forward. She decided this was a perfect chance to show off.
“Hey, get out of here!” Maddox shouted. “You thief! I told your friend if you don’t give back the cat, Joe will beat you up.”
This was the first Teenie had heard about getting beaten up. Until now she’d thought the worse the day could get would be a call to her dads.
Joe didn’t know about the planned assault either, but he took it in stride. “Yeah, get out of here before I beat you up.”
“Besides, this bouncy castle is only regulated for . . .” Jayden calculated on his watch to be sure. “Three people.”
“Yeah!” Joe agreed like always.
Teenie didn’t think this was true. A massive inflatable birthday attraction like this one could easily hold a dozen more children. It had two floors, parapets, and even a dungeon.
Teenie started to protest, but Maddox stopped her. “Joe, get her out of here.”
With that, Joe picked up Teenie and tossed her straight into the moat. She slid all around the castle and back to the entrance, where the other children had left their shoes.
Teenie counted five sets of sneakers, including her own. While she was being tossed out they’d let Memphis in without any questions. Teenie was furious.
She decided that the most sensible response was to tie their shoes together.
She started with Maddox’s and Memphis’s limited edition Air Mikes. Then moved on to Joe’s rip-off version of the same shoes. Jayden’s shoes didn’t even have laces, but instead tightened with a mobile app. She’d have to use his phone, which was conveniently stuck inside his left shoe.
Teenie gasped as she picked up Jayden’s phone. The screen lit up with the RK-D2 app.
“Aha!” she exclaimed.
Still shoeless, Teenie ran to tell Bea and Oliver how she’d cracked the case.
Rabbit, Run
Benny was feeling jittery. He didn’t like possums, for the obvious reason that possums are made out of nightmares and teeth. He didn’t like cats either, to be honest, not even robotic ones. Never mind those big cats onstage in Vegas.
And then there were the cops and who knew how many bounty hunters after him by this point. All because of one lousy bet. Could he be blamed for betting all his money on a horse named Turnip Thunder? Turnip was his favorite root vegetable!
Well, no more turnip for him. The only thing turned ip—or up—these days was the heat. And it was turned way, way up. If he ever wanted to get to Kern County, he’d have to start hopping. Fast.
First, he had to bust out of this party. But how? Half the backyard was taken up by the giant swimming pool. Rabbits don’t swim. Period. And everywhere you looked, there were children. Screaming. Splashing. Whipping towels. It was a zoo.
He hopped a low fence and found himself in some sort of enclosed garden. Here it was unexpectedly peaceful. Only one kid. The girl with cat ears. She sat talking to what appeared to be a toad. They both seemed harmless enough. Unless the toad was about to turn into a prince, but that seemed unlikely.
Perhaps he should hunker down here for a bit? At least until the heat was off him? There was even some food and torn newspaper spread around the ground.
I could get used to this, Benny thought, piecing together a sports page. (Even as a touring magician’s rabbit, Benny had insisted that his bedding be changed daily, always with the latest sports page, for cleanliness—and for betting on horses.)
But something was wrong, he realized, looking at the ground more closely. The food wasn’t for rabbits. Rabbits eat vegetables. Here it was all bugs. Crickets, worms, even ants.
This was no rabbit warren, that was certain.
A field mouse darted by.
“Say, buddy,” Benny said. “Watch where you’re going!”
The mouse, running at top speed, turned only to yell:
Sheesh, Benny thought. Mice are so rude.
Benny had never much cared for mice, who were terrible magicians and worse comics. He’d take a dove over a mouse any day, and don’t even get him started on doves.
He decided to investigate a little further.
Hat on his head, he hopped over a hollow log and a wobbly stack of stones, only to confront a plastic baby pool. Why a baby pool with such a large in-ground pool nearby?
Nothing made any sense until he saw an unwelcome sign:
Terrified, Benny landed in the baby pool, splashing the shallow water.
He was momentarily safe from the snake, but then a monitor lizard snuck out from behind a rock. The lizard’s long tongue flicked in the air as the lizard clawed its way into the pool and approached our dear rabbit.
Benny scampered up the slide on the side of the pool and made a leap for a nearby rock. The rock was sloped and bumpy, and his feet slipped as he tried to catch hold. Just as he’d steadied himself, the rock rose in the air.
Because it wasn’t a rock. It was a tortoise. A very old, very unhappy tortoise.
“Slow down, stranger,” said the tortoise. “You think you can just hop a ride?”
“Ack!” Benny yelped. “You can talk?!”
“I’m 125 years old,” the tortoise said, insulted. “I’ve learned a trick or two.”
“125 and still performing for children’s birthday parties,” said Benny, sliding off. “Tough gig.”
“Maybe so,” said the tortoise, eyeing Benny’s top hat. “That’s one funny-looking shell you got there.”
“Ha! That’s a good one,” said Benny, not meaning it. “You don’t by chance know the way out of here, do you, old man?”
“Sure I do,” said the tortoise.
The bunny waited, but the tortoise didn’t say anything more.
“Well?” prompted Benny. “Where’s the exit?”
“Far away.”
“Where far away?”
The tortoise looked Benny up and down. He seemed to be weighing his desire not to help the rabbit against his desire for the rabbit to leave.
“A half day’s journey to the north,” he said finally, nodding across the small enclosure. “But a young hare like you should make it in half that time. Wanna race?”
“The Tortoise and the Hare, huh?” said Benny, already hopping away. “You’re a real comedian.”
He was home free. He would run out the back gate, down the alley, and over to a bus stop before the cops could even catch wise. In no time at all, he’d be on the five o’clock “Sunsetter” train to Kern County.
But just as he was about
to make his final escape, the Candycano clock caught his eye. Two minutes until explosion. Meaning two minutes until showtime.
Showtime. The word flashed in his head like a Vegas marquee.
He’d never missed a show in his life. Even in the days when they were throwing tomatoes at him—and no, those tomatoes weren’t for him to eat.
Could he really leave Oliver in the lurch? The boy’s classmates were worse than a pack of wolves. They would eat Oliver alive.
The rabbit looked into the deep dark recesses of his hat and he knew what he had to do. The country life would have to wait a little longer. He was still a magician’s rabbit, and a magician’s rabbit never abandons his magician.
But how to get back to Oliver in time? There were snakes and swimming pools and a ridiculously large suburban backyard between them.
Just then he saw the girl with the cat ears petting a lizard. That girl had sucker written all over her. Swallowing his pride, Benny put on his best sad bunny face, and hopped on over.
He knew it was risky, catching a ride with a girl like Rose. No doubt she would pet his head, and talk to him as if he were her “wittle baby bunny.” She might even—oh please no!—nuzzle his nose. It would be humiliating. But it was time to take one for the team.
He lived by one credo, and one credo only: The show must go on.
Alibis, Alibis, Alibis
Out of breath, Teenie ran back to the Candycano, only to find Oliver pacing back and forth, still soaking wet from the pool, and chomping through cake pops. Above him the countdown continued.
The Unbelievable Oliver and the Four Jokers Page 4