Suddenly a voice behind Sean whispered in his ear. “Back off trying to find me, or I’ll give you more trouble than you can handle.”
“Yikes!” Sean screeched.
Someone brushed against him, but he couldn’t see anything in the dark. Monster faces flashed and disappeared, but Sean’s knees wobbled and his hands shook. He was much too scared to move.
“Bri!” he managed to squeak, but he knew Brian couldn’t hear him and wouldn’t come.
“I’ve got to get out of here!” Sean cried out. He ran forward and bounced into a wall. He turned and hit another wall. Close to panic he struggled into the last tunnel.
When he finally saw a thin line of light under the exit doorway, he let out a yelp and ran for it. Slamming through the swinging exit door, Sean ran out into the mall.
“Bri?” he called. But Brian was nowhere in sight.
Sean yelled to the ticket taker, “Where’s my brother?”
“I sent him into the maze when you were halfway through,” the ticket taker said. He reached for Sean’s super lightray and laughed. “What happened to you? You only got a score of twenty-five. Did you freak out?”
“Someone was in there with me,” Sean grumbled.
“Sure. I told you. Your brother.” The ticket taker pointed to an electronic scoreboard. “There’s his score up there. You can see he’s started out pretty well.”
Inside Monstermadness, Brian racked up lots of points, because he carefully watched for monsters. Alert, he caught a slight motion off to one side and called out, “Sean? Are you still in here?”
No one answered, so Brian swung his lightray to the right and caught a glimpse of a figure dressed in black.
The figure ducked his head, dove out of the beam of the lightray, and disappeared.
For a few moments Brian tried to find the mysterious person, but whoever had been there had left.
Disgusted at all the points he’d missed, Brian exited the tunnel.
Sean ran up to him. “Someone was in the tunnel with me, Bri!” he said.
The ticket taker glanced at the scoreboard and smiled at Brian. “You started out well,” he said. “What happened? Did you get scared, too?”
“Somebody was in there,” Brian complained.
“Look, like I told your brother, I don’t let anyone in except the people playing the game. Okay? If you don’t like your scores and want to play again, then you have to pay.”
“Let’s go, Bri,” Sean said. “I’ve got something important to tell you.”
As they climbed on their bikes Sean told Brian what the person in black had said.
“Who knew we were coming here?” Brian asked. “I only told Neal and Dennis. Oh, yeah, Sam, too.”
“Uh-oh,” Sean said. “Mrs. Jackson was bragging about your being Top Student of the Month, and I told my whole class that we were going to Monstermadness after school.”
“The kids in your class wouldn’t know enough about computers to write an anonymous mailer or make the school’s bells ring.”
“But they could have told someone else,” Sean insisted. His bike wobbled as he drove along the edge of a pothole, but he balanced it and caught up to Brian. “Why do you think the mystery person has to be a member of the computer club?”
“Detectives deal in facts, so let’s look at the facts,” Brian answered. “There are three things we know about the person who sends the mysterious messages. They’re good with computers, they know what’s going on at your school, and they blame the Quinns for getting them into trouble.”
As they arrived home, Brian and Sean dropped their bikes and helmets on the grass. Sean pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket. “Sam Miyako’s out as a suspect. He’s never been in trouble,” Sean said. “Dennis Taylor and Neal York we don’t know about. So that leaves Valerie Kincaid, whose uncle got in trouble on account of Dad’s investigation.”
A loud shout made Sean jump. He turned to see Charlie leap off his front porch and run toward him.
“Sean!” Charlie yelled. “The magic computer gave me the first wish! Now the second is coming true! Mom and Dad decided to get me a bigger bike!”
“Cool,” Sean said.
“What’s your third wish?” Brian asked Charlie.
“I can’t tell my wishes until after they come true,” Charlie answered. “You can’t talk about secrets.”
Charlie ran home, and Brian asked Sean, “Does Charlie’s magic computer and all that three wishes stuff have anything to do with you and Matt and your computer tricks?”
“Bri,” Sean said slowly. “I think Charlie just gave us the answer. There’s a suspect we haven’t talked about, and I think we can catch him if we set a trap.”
11
IMPATIENTLY, SEAN WAITED UNTIL Sunday. Then he telephoned Larry—supposedly to check on a homework assignment. “My dad’s coming home today,” Sean said. “That means I won’t have the chance to use the computer for a while. I’ll have to check my account at school to see if I get any E-mail.”
After Sean and Larry ended their conversation, Sean asked Brian, “Will it work?”
“I hope so,” Brian said.
Sean sighed. “If it doesn’t, I’ll be in a lot more trouble at school than I am now.”
Like one of Charlie’s secrets, Sean tried not to think about the plan he and Brian had worked out. So it wasn’t until Monday, after school, that Sean checked for E-mail under his school account in the Redoaks Elementary media center.
Exactly as he had expected, there was an anonymous mailer, taunting him for not being able to use his computer at home. Mr. Burns and Mrs. Harrison, who had been told about the plan, stood behind Sean and Brian, reading the message on the screen.
“You were right, Sean,” Brian said. “The person causing the computer problems is Frank. He got the information about you from his brother Larry.”
“I’m sorry for doubting you, Sean,” Mrs. Harrison said, “but after the tricks you and Matt played … well, you can see why I was suspicious, can’t you?”
Mr. Burns said, “I’ll make a phone call to Frank Grier’s parents. We’ll soon have this problem taken care of.” He cleared his throat and added, “Thank you, Sean and Brian, for solving the case.”
“The Casebusters did it again,” Brian said, “with nothing to work on but bare facts.”
“Bare facts?” Sean said. “Hmmm. That gives me another idea.”
That evening Sean and Matt struggled to put the finishing touches on a gruesome thing made out of a stuffed shirt and pants. At the end of its arms were pinned the bear paw slippers, and its pillowcase head was covered with a weird Halloween mask and wig.
“This is hard work,” Matt complained.
“Don’t blame me,” Sean said. “You were the magic computer handing out three wishes. When we’re ready, Brian’s going to keep Sam and Charlie out of the way, and Mrs. Miyako is going to let us in the back door so we can put this under Sam’s bed.”
“What if Sam doesn’t look under his bed? He might never find it.”
Sean grinned. “I’m going to tie a thread from one of the bear paws to the corner of Sam’s blanket. When he throws back the covers to get into bed, the paw will reach out and hit his leg.”
Within a half hour, the monster was in place.
Sean went to bed at his regular bedtime, but couldn’t get to sleep. Would the monster work? Would it really scare Sam? Would Charlie be happy that his third wish had come true?
Still awake at 10:30, Sean heard a horrible yell coming from the Miyakos’ house. Their lights flipped on, and he could hear Charlie shrieking with laughter.
Sean rolled over and contentedly closed his eyes. You can always count on the Casebusters, he thought. When we take a case, we never fail to tie up all the loose ends.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this eb
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1997 by Joan Lowery Nixon
cover design by Omar Olivera, Andrea C. Uva
978-1-4532-8283-0
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