by Tony Abbott
“Go on,” I said.
“So,” Brian continued, “if bad guys chase us tonight, I—excuse me, my superhero identity, Tommy—will scribble little notes on the papers. But here’s the brilliant part—”
“We’re waiting for that part,” said Kelly.
“Tommy Papers doesn’t scribble a whole message,” Brian said. “He only scribbles part of a message. Then he throws the paper behind him and runs.” He paused.
“And?” I asked.
“Tommy is glad you asked,” Brian said. “If, as he has already proved, the bad guys are smart, they’ll undoubtedly like to read.”
“Anyone who likes to read will have no choice but to gather up all the scraps of paper Tommy tosses behind him and try to piece them together to read his message. When they slow down to do that, it will be easy for the Goofballs to escape. Simple, right?”
We stared at Brian.
We couldn’t speak.
“Tommy Papers takes your silence as a yes,” he said. “And Tommy says, ‘Brilliant!’ ”
“Does Tommy only talk about himself in the third person?” asked Mara.
Brian smiled. “He does.”
“People, we need the ultimate disguises,” Kelly grumbled. “We need to catch the culprit, to snare the stealer, to trap the thief, to foil the foe!” She paused. “Foil? Foil! Excuse me!”
Kelly did an about-face and ran upstairs.
“Now I’m going to find my perfect superhero costume,” said Mara. Her hands flew from rack to rack and table to table. In no time, she was a rainbow of layers—shirts, pants, skirts, sweaters, shawls, scarves, and socks, from a pair of baby blue slippers to a bright pink beret with Mara’s head beneath it.
“Meet Blazey Blazington!” she said.
“I don’t want to,” I said, shielding my eyes.
“Maybe you’re Crazy Crazington,” said Brian. “Your clothes are nutty.”
“Which is totally the point,” said Mara. “Blazey Blazington is a fashion nightmare. Because I am normally so fashionable, it’s the perfect disguise. No one will recognize me.”
“Okay,” Brian said. “But if you’re going to be a superhero with Tommy Papers, you need to have incredible powers. What powers do you have just wearing crazy colors—?”
All at once, Mara twirled like a spinning color wheel. Brian’s eyes rolled like marbles until he lost his balance and fell to the floor.
“Whoa!” he cried. “That’s crazy!”
“No, that’s Blazey,” Mara said. “Blazey Blazington! Your turn, Kelly. Kelly? Where’s Kelly?”
“Here I am!” she said, running down the stairs and jumping in front of us. She was covered with aluminum foil from head to toe.
“Call me … InvisiGirl!”
“InvisiGirl?” said Brian. “But we see you right there.”
Kelly grinned. “Do you?”
“You’re a big shiny thing,” said Brian.
“Look,” said Kelly. “At a masquerade party, everyone wears great costumes, right?”
“Sometimes super-great costumes,” said Mara with a curtsey. “Like someone we know. Hint … hint … me!”
“Right,” said Kelly. “So when everyone wears a great costume, they can’t stop wondering what they look like. So here I come, covered with foil, and what happens?”
I frowned, then I got it. “People look at themselves in the reflection?”
“Exactly!” said Kelly. “With everyone checking themselves out, no one looks at me. And if no one looks at me, I must be …”
“Invisible!” I said.
Kelly grinned from ear to ear. “Logical.”
“Wow, you are smart,” said Brian.
“Also logical,” said Kelly. “Now, Jeff, it’s your turn.”
I was the last one. I had to have as great a costume as they had. But with so many clothes to choose from, I couldn’t decide.
Suddenly, I spotted a pair of old-man suspenders on the old-man table. Then I attached the suspenders to my pants and put my arms through them.
It came to me in a flash of brilliant brilliance. I hooked my thumbs under the shoulder straps and stuck my elbows out.
“Behold my flashing triangles of power!” I exclaimed, and I waved my bony elbows every which way at blurring speed. Everyone jumped back to avoid the terrible force of my angled weaponry!
“Call me … Elbow Johnny,” I said.
“And me … Blazey Blazington,” said Mara.
“And me … InvisiGirl,” said Kelly.
“And him … Tommy Papers,” Brian said, pointing to himself.
So we did. It actually took a long time to call each of us our brand-new superhero names, but we finally got it done.
And just in time, too, because the moment we finished—
Beep-ba-beep-beep!
“Goofballs,” I said, “our limousine is here!”
The Big House
andall Crandall’s super-long limousine was idling in front of Mara’s house.
“Splendid outfits,” Picksniff said as we approached. “But where is the fourth Goofgirl?”
“Goofball! And I’m right here!” said Kelly, jiggling her foiled hands in front of his face.
Picksniff gasped. “I didn’t see you there.”
“I know it,” said Kelly, then she vanished into the giant backseat.
As we drove to Randall’s house, I flipped through the pages of my cluebook. “Picksniff, sir,” I said, “I’ve been thinking.”
“What a relief,” said Brian. “I was starting to think I had to. Take it away, Elbows.”
“Picksniff,” I said, “you whispered to us this morning outside Pizza Palace. Do you think the Dutchman is nearby?”
“We cannot be certain, sir,” the butler said as we turned up Randall’s driveway, which is as long as a road. “The Dutchman reportedly has a vast network of evil helpers.
“Some of them might be listening.”
I wrote that down:
“One has to be very careful,” Picksniff said. “Master Randall’s collection is simply too valuable to take chances with.”
“You’d be a good Goofbutler,” said Kelly.
“Thank you, miss,” said Picksniff.
Minutes later we pulled up at Randall’s giant home and got out of the extra-long car.
“This is the second biggest house I’ve ever seen,” Brian said, looking up at the mansion.
“What’s the first biggest house?” I asked.
“This one,” he said. “The first time I saw it I was younger, which means I was smaller, which means the house was bigger then.”
Kelly, Mara, and I just looked at one another.
“This way to the party,” said Picksniff.
We followed the butler up the wide steps to the big front door and into a room twice as huge as the Cafeteri-Audi-Nasium, the giantest room at Badger Point School.
A chandelier as big as a hot-air balloon hung from the ceiling and sparkled over a humongous room filled with odd people.
“Wow!” said Mara. “What a party!”
She could say that again, but it would take too much time, so I kept quiet.
“I know why they call it a ballroom,” said Kelly. “You can play a ballgame in it.”
“But instead of catching a ball, we’ll be catching a thief,” I said.
The problem with that was that you could barely see to the far end of the crowded room it was so filled up with people.
“Who are those crusty guys?” asked Brian, pointing to a bunch of paintings of old folks.
“Master Randall’s great-grandfathers and great-aunts,” said Picksniff, turning to leave.
“By the way, the derder collection is stored on the second floor, behind the grand staircase.”
I looked up. There must have been fifty steps to the second floor. “Got it,” I said. “Where’s Randall?”
“Somewhere in this room,” said Picksniff. “Even I don’t know what his costume is. Now, please excuse me. I mu
st attend to the guests. Perhaps the Goof Squad should mingle.”
Goof Squad isn’t our normal name.
But mingle is a normal word that means to mix with the crowd. It’s also a detective word, meaning to pretend to be normal but knowing you’re not. You need to have your eyes and ears open to discover bad guys.
We waded into the party just as a lady dressed like a striped cat and a man in a robot suit danced across the floor in front of us.
A wild laugh came from the food table, where two caped guys in yellow construction helmets told jokes. Not far away from them was a trio of skinny women, all lifting purple face masks to eat slices of cheese.
I was getting super-hungry, but we had a job to do, so I opened my cluebook to the sketch of the Dutchman and looked around.
“He doesn’t seem to be here yet,” I said.
“Cheese!” said a voice. We turned to a young man holding a silver tray of little foods. “Would the three of you like cheese?”
“What about me?” said Kelly, rustling her foil right in front of him.
The young man jumped back. “Where did you come from?” he asked.
“Nowhere,” said Kelly. “And everywhere!”
Then she swiped a handful of cheese bits and vanished before I could congratulate her on her great line. But I wrote it down:
“Hot dogs in puffy dough!” gasped Mara at a passing tray. “See you heroes later!”
“But what about mingling?” I said.
“I’m mingling with that tray!” said Mara.
After she hustled away, Brian nudged my elbow. “That leaves Tommy Papers and Elbow Johnny. Ready, E.J.?” he asked.
“Ready,” I said. “Now … mingle!”
We mingled like professional minglers who had won mingling awards from mingle societies. From group to group we went. We smiled. We hovered. We listened. We nodded. We mingled some more.
And we saw lots of strange people.
A man dressed like a bird with a name badge that read DOGMAN.
Three tiny boys dressed as babies with long gray beards who said they were twins.
Then we mingled with a short old man dressed in a green cape and a green mask and green gloves and green boots.
“Call me …,” he said in an old man’s voice.
“Green Man?” Brian said.
“Red Boy,” said the old man, hobbling away and shaking his head. “No one gets it. No one.”
I wrote them all down in one word:
“Hey, E.J.,” said Brian, “either we’re going in circles or we’ve passed four different people in the same outfit.”
I looked. I saw four ninja commandos, all in black jumpsuits, all wearing black masks and hoods. They were in different parts of the room and didn’t look as if they were together.
“Let’s keep an eye on them,” I said.
“I feel as if someone has an eye on us,” said Brian. “And by us, I mean you and Tommy Papers.”
He was right. No matter where we mingled in the big room, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being watched.
“Maybe those old crusty paintings are looking at us,” I said, pointing to the wall.
Brian shivered. “That reminds me of a movie I saw once. It really scared me until … until …” He stopped.
I shivered. “Until what?” I asked.
“Until the movie ended, of course,” Brian said. “I wasn’t scared after that.”
“But are you hungry?” I asked.
“More and more,” he said.
My theory was working out. I wrote everything in my cluebook:
“Nobody’s made a move up the grand staircase,” he whispered.
I felt the tingle of mystery.
“Until now. Look!” I said as a glimpse of green flashed up the stairs to the second floor.
“It’s Green Man!” I said.
“Or is it Red Boy?” asked Brian.
“Or is it … the Dutchman?” I said. “InvisiGirl! Blazey Blazington! After him!”
I elbowed my way through the crowd.
“Ow!”
“Hey!”
“Watch those skinny elbow bones, fella!”
“Tommy Papers scatters papers behind him,” said Brian, scribbling like mad and tossing papers over his shoulders.
“No one’s following us,” I said. “We’re following the green guy!”
Kelly was the first one up the stairs. We followed her into a maze of hallways.
Without Picksniff or Randall there, we got incredibly lost in the second-floor hallways.
I last saw Kelly darting down the hall ahead of us, but the instant we turned the corner, we saw—
No one!
“Where did she go?” asked Blazey.
Brian gasped “She really is InvisiGirl!”
Kelly was … gone!
In the Secret Room
elly? Kelly! No!” said Mara. “She actually became invisible. I’ve lost my friend!”
We searched every inch of the hallway. There was no sign of anyone but us.
“Sure Kelly’s InvisiGirl,” I said. “But she’s also an A-plus Goofball. And Goofballs stick together … so where … did she … go?”
I leaned up against the wall at the end of the hall.
All at once, a panel shifted.
“What’s this?” I said. But before I knew it—slooooop!—the panel slid aside and I fell on my elbows.
Then Brian and Mara fell on me!
A second later, a pair of hands reached down to help us up. They were green hands attached to green arms attached to a green body, a green cape, a green hood, and a green mask.
“Green Man!” I cried.
“Red Boy!” said the voice. “Or, as I like to call myself … Randall Crandall!”
And the green mask slipped off to reveal none other than the goofy host of the party himself.
“Randall Crandall!” Brian said.
“None other,” he said with a big smile. “And you found my secret passage. And me.”
“And me!” said Kelly, who suddenly appeared on the far side of a room crammed with televisions and desks.
Brian blinked at all the equipment. “This is such a cool place. I could live here!”
“Sometimes I do,” said Randall. “And I have, ever since I heard the Dutchman might try to steal my collection. I’ve been watching everything from this room.”
“What do you call it?” I asked.
“My spy center,” Randall said, sitting in front of the screens and adjusting some knobs. We saw directly into the ballroom below.
“Hey,” said Mara. “The cameras are looking through the eyes of the paintings.”
Randall grinned. “I needed to see what was going on. I’m glad you’re here with me.”
“Where exactly is here?” Kelly asked.
“The very center of my house,” said Randall. “For anyone but a trained Goofball, it’s nearly impossible to find my secret room. Anyone else would have to discover the exact sequence of rooms in order to find us. If you don’t enter the rooms in the right order, you’ll never find the treasure. Come, let me show you my collection.”
He pressed a button on the desk, and the wall behind us shifted to reveal a bigger room, filled with display cases of derders.
“This is sooooo awesome,” said Kelly.
Smiling, Randall lifted a glass case and took out a pair of connected tubes and another that was only an inch long from end to end.
“Here is the legendary double derder of Samarkand,” he said. “While this is the collapsible derder favored by world travelers.”
Fwip! The short derder expanded to over a foot long. When he breathed into it, a high soft note filled the room.
Brian’s jaw hung open. His eyes glowed. “Ingenious!”
Randall smiled. “When my grandmother moved to Hawaii, she entrusted the entire collection to me. She warned me that the Dutchman might come one day to steal the world’s largest collection of world-class derders in th
e world from me!”
“You said words two and three times,” said Mara.
“The collection is that big,” said Randall. “Look.” He held up a tube covered in cloth, like a mummy.
“This early Egyptian model was discovered in the tomb of King Tut. The derder is fragile, of course, but it still works.”
He blew gently into it.
Whooooo …
It was hypnotic.
Then he stepped to a large display case and tipped up its lid. He drew out a pillow on which lay a crudely carved wooden derder.
Kelly frowned “That one looks like a hollowed-out log.”
“It looks like a hollowed-out log because it is a hollowed-out log,” Randall said. “This was made by a young Abraham Lincoln.”
“Holy cow!” said Brian. “I love that guy. And his hat.”
“Which is essentially a fat derder closed on one end with a brim on the other. This other one,” Randall said, pointing to a derder with an arrow through it, “is nearly as famous. It’s Custer’s Last Derder.”
“This is like a museum,” said Kelly.
Randall nodded at Kelly, then blinked at her outfit. “I bet after you used all that foil, you had quite a few derders yourself.”
Kelly smiled. “Thirteen,” she said.
Randall Crandall’s eyes took on a faraway look. “Wow …”
“You can say that again,” I said without thinking.
But we didn’t do Rock, Paper, Scissors. We just let Randall say it again.
“Wow …,” he said.
“We should get back to the party,” I said.
We left the hidden room through the maze of rooms that protected his collection.
First there was a personal bowling alley, then a private movie theater, then a Ping-Pong room, and lastly an ice-cream parlor.
Finally, we were on the balcony again, overlooking the crowded party.
“For a job this size,” Randall said, “it’s likely the Dutchman will have henchmen.”
“Henchmen is a detective word,” Kelly said to Brian. “It means evil bad guys who help a super-evil bad guy. I hope the Dutchman doesn’t have too many hench—”