by Tony Abbott
All at once—zzzzzt!—we heard a strange buzzing sound from the ballroom below.
One of the ninja commandos looked up from his plate of little hot dogs. At the same moment, two other heads went up across the room. They were the heads of two other ninja commandos!
“It’s a signal!” I whispered.
The three commandos rushed to the grand staircase and ran up.
“Where’s the fourth ninja commando?” Mara asked.
All at once, click! The ceiling opened directly above us, and the fourth ninja commando slid down right in front of us!
The Dutchman’s Henchmen!
efore we could move, the ninja henchman darted down the hallway toward the maze of rooms leading to the derders.
“Oh no!” said Randall. “After him!”
As we turned to chase the ninja commando, the three other ninja henchmen bounded up the other end of the hall and started chasing us.
“Now what?” asked Mara.
“Tommy knows!” said Brian. “It’s paper time!” He quickly scribbled notes.
One said, “… the treasure is …”
Another said, “… in the …”
Tommy Papers scattered the notes behind him in little bits. Here, there, everywhere.
The plan worked perfectly, because as we chased the first henchman, the other three followed the fluttering papers.
“Now we go after the first guy!” said Kelly.
We zigzagged through the maze after the first henchman. “If I can get in front of him, I’ll Blazey him!”
Suddenly, the ninja ducked into the ice-cream parlor. Maybe the guy was lucky, maybe he knew the way, but once we followed him into the parlor, he leaped over the counter as if it were nothing at all.
“Jumping is a good power!” said Brian.
As we leaped over the counter, the henchman dived through the nearest door and right into the Ping-Pong room!
“Uh-oh,” said Randall. “He knows!”
But maybe he didn’t.
In the Ping-Pong room, the bad guy darted this way and that, as if he couldn’t decide which door to choose.
“You’re trapped!” said Kelly popping up out of nowhere right behind him.
“And now I blaze!” said Mara.
The henchman’s head spun from side to side when Mara twirled.
While he was dizzy, I raised my elbows and leaped at him, but the robber ducked the terrible wrath of my elbows and tumbled under the table and back across the room.
All at once—wham!—the door behind him opened and the three other henchmen followed him in. They were an army of four.
“We must stop them!” said Randall.
“We will!” said Kelly. “Arm yourselves!”
We each scooped up a Ping-Pong paddle and shot balls at the bad guys as if we were human machine guns.
It was a madhouse. While we pelted the henchmen, the one from the ceiling jumped from door to door, trying to choose the right one. There was only one way to catch him.
“Time for … Elbow Johnny!”
My elbows began swinging. I didn’t know if it would work, but it sure looked deadly.
And weird. I caught a reflection of myself in InvisiGirl’s costume. Those crazy elbows!
Suddenly, one of the bad guys hit the light switch, and the room went dark.
Squeak … whoosh!
Randall flicked the lights on as soon as he could, but every henchman was gone! The door to the movie theater was wide open!
“They slipped through my elbows,” I said.
“Most things do,” said Brian.
We slid into the movie theater. It was pitch black in there. We tiptoed down the aisle.
“This is the third room,” Mara whispered. “One more, and they’ll find the—”
Thump! Thump!
Three henchmen rushed at us from different parts of the theater. We each ran into a different row of seats.
“We have them on the run,” said Kelly.
“I think they have us on the run,” I said.
“Either way, there’s a lot of running going on,” said Mara.
“Except watch this!” whispered Brian. “Goofballs, into the shadows!”
We dived into the shadows along the walls.
Tommy Papers scattered notes all along one row. They were visible to all three robbers. Then Tommy ducked into the shadows with us.
One robber picked up one note, read it, and ran toward us. The robber in the next row picked up his note and ran toward us. The third one did the same. They all reached for the last note, which was just outside the shadows. All of a sudden, Brian snatched it away, and all three slammed into one another.
WHAMMM!
“Aha!” Randall cheered. “Got you!”
Except all at once, their buzzers went off.
“I have the derders!” called the fourth henchman, rushing into the theater with a big sack over his shoulder.
“Noooo!” cried Randall. “My collection!”
“How did he get in there?” I asked.
The four henchmen rushed at us, and in a single leap, they jumped over our heads and ran out of the theater.
We chased them, first through the Ping-Pong room, then through the ice-cream parlor, and finally down the hallway to the stairs leading to the ballroom.
As if nothing could stop them, the four henchmen tumbled down the giant stairs, leaped to their feet, and bolted out the far end of the room to the patio.
“Stop them!” cried Randall Crandall. “They’re escaping across the lawn!”
The Lure of the Lawn
ecause it was a warm night, the party had spilled outside. The back lawn was crowded with hundreds of weird superheroes, eating, chatting, and dancing under the lights strung from tree to tree all around the yard.
“Wow, a fairyland!” said Mara when we slid out to the patio.
“You can say that … once,” I said.
“It looks like a city park,” said Kelly.
“It’s actually bigger,” said Randall.
“Which is great, except the four henchmen disappeared into the crowd,” I said.
“Tommy doesn’t see them anywhere!” said Brian.
“They won’t get far,” said Randall. “The yard has a super-high wall around it.”
“How long would it take them to get to the wall?” Kelly asked.
Randall scratched his nose. “The yard extends to Canada, so it could be a few days.”
I gave him a look. “We need to speed this up. Goofballs, we must employ THE GOOFBALL SYSTEM FOR FINDING CLUES. Except that this time we’re looking for ninja robber henchmen commandos.”
“I think the proper order is ninja commando robber henchmen,” said Kelly.
“Them!” I said. “Let’s go!”
The four Goofballs split up. We each took one side of the big backyard. We didn’t put our noses to the ground. That would be messy. But we kept our eyes and ears open.
Randall came with me as we crept from group to group. No one had seen any ninjas or commandos or robbers or henchmen.
“This is terrible,” Randall said. “My derder collection is lost!”
I felt bad for him. I didn’t know what to say. We had failed him. We had failed to solve the mystery in time.
Then, as if he had heard his best friend, Randall’s pony, Thunder, trotted over from the crowd. Behind him, he drew a cart piled high with cheesy snacks for the guests.
“Thunder, what are we going to do?” said Randall, petting Thunder’s neck. “Grandma will be so sad.” He turned to me. “Grandma gave me both the collection and Thunder.”
I didn’t know that. But I understood what he was feeling. And I felt sad, too.
As Randall let Thunder continue his round of the backyard, Brian, Kelly, and Mara finished their sniffing and found us.
“We didn’t find them, either,” Mara said.
“It’s like they all just vanished,” I said.
“Without aluminum foi
l, too,” Kelly added.
We watched as some of the silly superheroes gathered around a troupe of jugglers in striped outfits doing tricks. The people clapped. When the jugglers stood on each other’s shoulders, the crowd cheered even more.
“The acrobats are standing pretty high up there,” said Brian. “Tommy wonders if they saw anything from up there.”
“I guess we can ask them,” said Randall with a sigh. “Wait a second. Acrobats? I didn’t invite any acrobats!”
I flipped through my cluebook. I saw one of my very earliest clues.
All of a sudden, I realized something.
“The ninjas must have changed into acrobat outfits. People, those acrobats are the henchmen commando robbers!” I cried.
Without waiting for the order of the words to be corrected, I raced over to them. Three acrobats were now doing cartwheels across the grass, jumping over one another, and getting farther and farther from the house.
“Where’s the fourth one?” asked Kelly.
“There!” said Brian, pointing to the fourth henchman, trying to sneak away from the crowd with a big sack over his shoulder.
“Go, Elbow Johnny, go!” cried Mara.
I rushed over, my elbows swinging wildly. The robber didn’t stand a chance. Even after he fell backward, I didn’t stop swinging.
“Cease the elbows!” the robber yelled. “You’re just plain nutty!”
“We caught you derder-handed,” said Kelly as Randall wrestled the sack of stolen derders from the henchman’s gloved hands.
He opened the sack and gasped.
“These derders aren’t from my collection. These derders are from … my bathroom!”
He emptied the sack of regular cardboard tubes onto the lawn.
Mara stood over the henchman, glaring down through her big green glasses at the masked face. “Prepare to be identified!”
Then she whipped off the ninja’s mask.
And long red hair poured down.
“What?” I gasped.
The other henchmen took off their masks. The henchmen weren’t henchmen at all. They weren’t even henchboys.
“They’re henchgirls!” said Kelly.
In fact, the lead henchgirl was Millie Carlson. The captain of the middle-school gymnastic team. She flipped her red hair to the other side of her head.
“Why are you so evil?” Randall asked.
Millie blinked. “I’m not evil. My teachers like me lots.”
“Then why are you trying to steal Randall Crandall’s derder collection?” I asked.
“Steal?” Millie said. “I’m not stealing. All we were supposed to do was run around the house doing tricks and then run away.”
“Who told you to do this?” I asked.
“The gymnastics team got a call, inviting us to the party,” Millie said.
“Not from me,” said Randall. Suddenly, he gasped. “The Dutchman! How perfectly diabolical! But why lure us all the way out here for a sack of fake derders?”
“To distract us?” said Kelly. “Because the real robbery is—”
“Master Randall and the Goofbabies!” came a yell from the house.
We turned to see Picksniff racing across the lawn to us. “The Dutchman is here!” he cried.
All at once, we heard the sound of a pony whinnying loudly.
“Thunder?” said Randall.
“Yee-haw!” shouted a voice.
Everyone turned.
Riding Thunder’s cart was a person wearing a big floppy hat who also had a big curly mustache flying in the wind.
“It’s the Dutchman!” we shouted.
The Opposite of Dutch
y grandmother told me about you, Dutchman!” Randall yelled. “You’ll never steal my treasure!”
We chased the Dutchman over the lawn, across the patio, and straight through the open doors into the ballroom.
We were a super-goofy team in action.
I swung my elbows swiftly to get us through the crowd.
“Oooh! Hey! Oww! Oh!”
“Tommy—will—get—the—Dutchman! Dutchman!” Brian cried, and Tommy Papers tossed crumpled notes all over the place.
It looked like crazy litter, but the Dutchman couldn’t help himself. He pulled the reins to slow Thunder, grabbed the notes, and read them.
“Tommy knew the Dutchman was a reader!” Brian said.
The Dutchman growled under his floppy hat. “But what does this mean? These papers make no sense!”
“Enough sense to stop you!” Tommy said with a laugh.
Then, unseen by everyone, InvisiGirl appeared on the cart next to the Dutchman and wrestled the reins away from him.
“Where did you come from?” shrieked the Dutchman.
“Nowhere … and everywhere!” Kelly exclaimed. “And now, Dutchman, your plans are foiled. Aluminum foiled!”
Kelly jiggled her foil mirrors, and the Dutchman tried to look away. But Blazey Blazington was there, spinning like a top.
The Dutchman, confused by the kaleidoscope of colors, got dizzy and tumbled off the cart into a big bouquet of flowers, which Thunder was munching.
Before the Dutchman could escape, I leaped over to him, pointed my elbows in different directions, and let them fly.
The Dutchman couldn’t decide which way to escape.
“Trapped!” we all said together.
The Dutchman climbed slowly to his feet and stood, wobbling. His face was hidden in the shadow of a big floppy hat. Just like in the photograph.
Just like in my cluebook sketch.
“You captured my henchmen,” he said.
“They were good,” I said. “But they weren’t Goofballs.”
“Alas, no,” said the Dutchman.
“Now, off with the disguise,” said Kelly.
The Dutchman sighed heavily.
Then the mustache came off.
The sunglasses came off.
The floppy hat came off.
Suddenly, Brian gasped. “You aren’t a Dutchman at all! In fact you’re the opposite.”
The Dutchman was … a woman, an older woman with white hair and a big smile.
Kelly blinked. “I know the opposite of a man is a woman. But what’s the opposite of Dutch?”
Randall Crandall came running over. “I’ll tell you,” he said. “It’s GRAMMY!”
Then he threw his arms around the smiling woman.
“Grammy, you’re the Dutchman?”
“I am,” said Grammy.
“You made me think my collection was going to be stolen,” said Randall.
“I did,” Grammy said.
“But why?”
The white-haired woman smiled. “Because I needed to know that your collection was safe. And it is. If you—and your friends—could foil—aluminum foil—someone as clever as a grandma, it was worth it.”
Randall scratched his nose. “Worth what? Why did you want to know if the collection was safe?”
“It needs to be safe,” Grammy said. “Because today you get … a new derder.”
Randall jumped. “A new one? Really?”
From under her Dutchman cloak, Randall’s grandmother produced a long shiny tube.
“It’s … beautiful,” whispered Randall.
It was beautiful. Long and tapered at one end, the derder was encrusted with jewels that glowed under the light of the chandelier.
“Behold, the legendary Maltese Derder,” she said. Then, holding it to her lips, she let out a long breath.
Derrr—der—eeee—rrrrrr!
It was the most amazing sound.
“It was said to belong to Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt,” Grammy said. “From there it surfaced in the court of King Arthur at Camelot.
“George Washington even had it for a short time. I finally tracked it down at a pancake house in Africa. And now it comes … to you.”
Randall Crandall closed his eyes. When he opened them again, they were wet with tears. “Thank you, Grammy. It’s the second most valuable d
erder in my collection,” he said.
“What’s the most valuable?” asked Brian.
Randall grinned, then walked to the far wall. Stepping on his tiptoes, he breathed into a tube there.
Everyone hushed to hear the low mellow sound. The whole room sounded like the inside of a trumpet.
“It’s the longest derder I’ve ever seen,” said Kelly.
“That’s because it’s the world’s longest derder in the world!” said Randall. “I made it by connecting wrapping-paper tubes end to end. And I keep adding to it year after year. After every party, after every holiday, I add more derders to it. It never stops growing!”
“What a Goofball,” I said to Randall.
He smiled. “I like to think so.”
“Mystery solved!” said Brian.
“Except there’s one more Goofball mystery to solve,” said Randall with a sly smile.
“There is?” said Kelly. “What mystery?”
Randall blew into the derder a second time, the front doors swung wide open, and in walked Luigi the baker, his arms filled with giant pizza boxes.
“The mystery topping!” Mara gasped.
We all raced over. We flipped open the top box. The Anniversary Goofball Pizza had five toppings.
Cheese.
Garlic.
Pineapple.
Peanut Butter. And …
“Mango!” I shouted, ripping off a slice.
“I love mango!” said Mara, taking another slice.
“You love every food!” said Kelly, taking a third slice.
“Me, too!” said Randall, taking a fourth slice.
“Me, three!” said Grammy, taking a fifth slice.
“Me, four!” said Millie, taking a sixth slice.
“Myself, as well,” said Picksniff, taking a seventh slice.
“Neigh!” said Thunder, taking the eighth slice.
“Mmmmrfffrrmmm!” said Brian, stuffing four more slices into his mouth.
Proving what I always suspected.
Goofballs are the goofiest when they’re hungry!