by Tony Abbott
Kelly stared at us, then took Mara’s flashlight and held it under her chin.
Spooky shadows moved over her face.
“Well,” she began, “I didn’t see all of Ghostville, of course.”
“You weren’t there very long,” said Mara.
“Right,” said Kelly. “But it’s like a very old and very big—how do I say it?—house.”
“Weird!” said Brian. “Jeff, totally write this down. We’ll make millions! Kelly, what else?”
“Well, it has these things on every side of you,” she said. “I guess you could say they’re like—what’s the word?—walls.”
“Holy cow!” said Brian. “Houses! Walls! This is amazing stuff. Jeff—”
“I’m writing!” I said. “Kelly, go on!”
“With every step I took,” Kelly said, “I put one foot in front of the other.…”
“And?” said Mara.
“I stepped on …”
“Tell us!” I cried.
“A floor!”
We were practically in shock, watching Kelly’s face seem to float in the darkness.
“Finally,” she said, “I reached out my hand. How do I say this …? I touched something!”
We were all shaking.
“It must have been sooo creepy!” said Brian. “What was it? Don’t tell us. No, tell us!”
Kelly swallowed once. Then again. She took a deep breath and finally spoke.
“A doorknob,” she said.
Mara practically fainted. “Holy cow!”
I wrote down the words …
Then I realized what Kelly was telling us. “Wait a second. Are you talking about—?”
“This doorknob,” Kelly said, tapping the knob behind her. “That’s right. There’s no Ghostville. I followed the blob through that door and couldn’t find my way back.”
Mara was shaking her head. “But we heard knocking. And the ghost even spoke to us. It said, ‘Is someone there?’ ”
“That was me,” said Kelly. “I said that. I banged on the walls, trying to find you. Which I finally did. And now I’m free!”
We all laughed, but my brain started to buzz when she said “free.”
“Goofballs, we’re getting close, very close. We keep coming back to this room. This parlor we’re standing in right now is the scene of the mystery. Let’s find clues!”
We did the famous Goofball search for clues. We each took a side of the room and looked and stared and studied everything.
Even Sparky went hunting.
But there weren’t any clues except lots of dust and the single piece of furniture in the room. The chair.
“I still don’t know why this chair is right next to the door,” said Kelly.
“Or why it’s the only furniture in the house that doesn’t have a sheet on it,” said Mara.
“Or why we didn’t find an extra sheet lying around,” said Brian.
That’s when Sparky began licking the chair.
“Um, don’t do that,” I said.
But all at once, Kelly got down on all fours like Sparky. She stuck her finger on the chair where Sparky was licking and put it in her mouth.
“That’s so gross,” said Brian. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Because you don’t like candy corn cupcakes like Sparky and I do,” Kelly said, licking her lips. “There’s cupcake frosting on this chair!”
“And now I’m hungry,” Mara said.
“Have an egg,” said Brian, offering her his hard-boiled egg, which she popped into her mouth.
Meanwhile, my brain sparkled like a sparkler. “Right next to a door, there’s a chair with no sheet on it but that’s smeared with cupcake frosting.… I wonder …”
Then came another piece of the puzzle.
Crunch!
No, it wasn’t another ghost catching up on news. It was Brian, trying to stuff the crumpled newspaper back into his top hat, when Mara stopped him.
“Hey,” she said, her mouth still filled with egg, “thish papah’s from eggzatly free yearsh ago, the day after Halloween.”
It hit me like a bolt of lightning.
“Free yearsh ago!” I cried. “Free? Let me see that paper!”
Suddenly my mystery radar crackled like a big crackly thing, because I had found exactly what I was looking for.
“Goofballs,” I said, “I have a hunch.”
“It goes away when you shtand up shtraight,” said Mara, swallowing.
I began to smile. “Goofballs, there isn’t a single ghost in this house. There are three!”
“I need more gear!” said Brian.
“Only they’re not really ghosts,” I said.
“I still need more gear,” said Brian.
“What do you mean?” asked Kelly.
“I mean only one kind of ghost needs a chair near a door or is a blobby floaty thing. The kind of ghost who’s not even a ghost!”
“A ghost who’s not even a ghost?” said Mara. “That’s the scariest kind! Wait. No. But who’s a ghost who’s not a ghost?”
“We’ll find out,” I said, “as soon as we go through this door.”
“Should I bring a net?” asked Brian.
“Sure,” I said. “And tell her to be ready to sing.”
“Sing what?” asked Kelly.
“You’ll see,” I said. “But I think we need Joey for this. Sparky?”
“Goof!” Sparky ran through the rooms. Five minutes later, he returned with Joey Myers.
“If I see a blobby ghost, I’m out of here,” Joey said.
“You might see a blob,” I said. “But no ghost. It’s time to go on the offensive.”
“I try never to be offensive,” said Joey.
“Into Ghostville!” I said.
“Into Ghostville?” asked Mara.
“Into Ghostville!” said Brian.
“What’s Ghostville?” asked Joey.
“A hallway,” said Kelly.
And in we went.
8
The Goofy Ending
Errrk! Errrk!
Behind the door we found a few more doors, but mostly we found a set of stairs.
I knew where they went.
Straight up to the crooked tower.
Every step creaked and groaned. The air got colder as we went upward.
I nudged Brian. “I know now that there aren’t any ghosts,” I whispered, “but I’m still sort of scared of creepy old houses.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” Brian whispered back. “I saw a movie once where a lizard was attacking a village, except that the captain of a boat had red shoes and two dogs but only one of them had spots.”
I looked at him. “And the point of that is?”
“That the other dog didn’t,” he said.
And that’s the thing about Goofballs.
I completely understood what Brian was saying. Not the part about the red shoes or the lizard or the captain or the dogs.
He was talking goofy so I would forget to be scared. And it worked.
There was one more door at the top of the stairs. “Here we are,” I said.
It was time to enter the crooked tower.
“Now I’m scared,” Brian said as we stood on the landing. “So scared I could throw up.”
I decided to be extra goofy for him.
“Once,” I said, “I woke up in the morning and I saw a thing moving around at the end of my bed. I jumped out, but it followed me wherever I went. I finally captured it. I still have it. Wanna see?”
Brian gulped. “Okay.”
I picked up my foot. “It was this!”
Brian stared at my foot. Then at me. Then at my foot again. Then at his feet. Then he laughed. “That’s a goofy story.”
“I know, right?”
“We should go in together,” said Kelly.
So together, we opened the final door.
And saw the ghost of Lavinia Hyde.
Except that the lady standing in front of us wasn’t a ghost at all. Her s
now-white hair was bunched up on her head. She had rosy cheeks and kind eyes and she smiled like a grandma.
Which is exactly what she was.
“You’re not a blob at all,” said Joey.
“Thank you,” she said. “I try to keep fit.”
“I’m having a fit right now,” said Mara. “What? Who? Where? Why?”
“I’m Lavinia Hyde,” the woman said. “I grew up in this house.”
“I nearly threw up in this house,” said Brian.
“But if you’re not a ghost,” said Kelly, “why are you haunting your own house?”
Lavinia Hyde smiled kindly. “My grandfather built the house with far too many doors. Since I left almost fifty years ago, I’d forgotten which door leads to which room. I wasn’t haunting the house. I was lost in it.”
“So was I for a while,” Kelly said.
“You see,” said Lavinia Hyde, “after we moved away from Badger Point, I never came back until my daughter’s family moved here last year.”
That’s when the last pieces of the puzzle fell into place.
Or rather walked into place.
Because a door opened, and a little red-haired girl bounced in with her mother.
“We saw you in the library!” said Mara. “But you had to leave.”
The girl’s mother nodded. “My mom—Lavinia—called from the house and asked us to help her find something. Hello, I’m—”
“Julie Baker,” I said. “Pleased to meet you.”
She looked startled. “How did you know my name?”
I turned to Brian. “For that, I have to thank Brian’s head.”
“Most people do,” he said. “Wait. Why?”
I asked for his top hat and slipped the newspaper out of it. “This newspaper from three years ago has a tiny piece about the birth of a girl named Olivia. Her parents are John and Julie Baker, and her grandmother is—”
“Lavinia Hyde!” said Mara. “I get it now!”
“Then who was the blobby ghost I saw?” Joey asked.
“Not who, but what.” I turned. “Mrs. Hyde, we’re ready to sing now. Will you do the honors?”
She frowned for a second, then smiled. “Yes!” She opened the door behind her and the blobby ghost floated out and up to the ceiling. Joey almost fainted.
Then she tugged on the blobby ghost, and a white sheet fell off to reveal a bunch of pink balloons. “I covered the balloons with the sheet because I wanted them to be a secret until the very last moment. Happy birthday, honey!”
“Oh, Grammy!” said Olivia.
“That’s our cue!” said Kelly.
And we sang “Happy Birthday” to her.
Olivia’s blue eyes twinkled. “Thank you!”
“Someone explain this to me before I almost faint again,” said Joey.
“It all started with the first clues I wrote down this morning,” I said.
“The pink balloons told me it was a girl’s birthday,” I said. “I didn’t think about them again until we saw all the sheets in the house. Hiding balloons under a sheet would look pretty blobby. It took me a while, but I finally put two and two together.”
“Four, right?” asked Brian.
“Right,” I said. “The next big clue came from Kelly’s love of candy corn cupcakes.”
“The frosting on the chair,” she said.
“Also right,” I said.
“But, Mrs. Hyde,” said Mara, “why did you come back to Hyde House today?”
The woman smiled. “When I heard the house might be sold, I remembered that I had left behind some things I’d always wanted to give Olivia. My favorite books from when I was a child.”
“People want to open a bookstore in your old house so they can find favorite books, too,” said Kelly.
“A great idea,” Lavinia Hyde said. “But I searched and searched, and I can’t find my books. I’ve looked everywhere.”
Mara practically jumped through the tower ceiling. “I know where those books are!”
“The case is not over!” Brian cheered.
“The bookcase is not over!” said Mara.
We all followed Mara down the stairs and through a million doors, until we stopped.
Mara opened one more door.
And there was the bookcase we had seen earlier. Lavinia Hyde went right over to it.
“Here they are. My childhood books. Here’s Ghoul Night, Moon and Make Way for Darklings. And my favorite, Scary, Scary Night, by Vincent van Ghost! I love the pictures in that one.”
Olivia bounced up and down when her grammy gave her the books. Sparky bounced up and down, too. We all did.
“The scary mystery was pretty goofy, after all,” said Mara.
“My favorite kind,” I said.
One quick month later, with a little remodeling and a lot of dusting, Lavinia Hyde’s old house became Badger Point’s first bookstore!
“Goofballs,” I said when everyone gathered in the book-filled parlor, “sometimes we discover mysteries. Sometimes mysteries discover us. But sometimes—just sometimes—we discover mysteries that turn into bookstores!”
Brian nodded. “It’s all part of the Goofball theme song,” he said.
“What Goofball theme song?” I asked.
“The one Sparky and I have been working on since we sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to Olivia. It uses the same tune. Ready, Sparky?”
I wrote down every word.
Even Sparky’s part.
Which is pretty much the goofiest ending ever!
Meet the
GOOFBALLS!
Jeff Bunter is the #1 original Goofball. Jeff was born to solve mysteries. He is in charge of keeping track of clues in his ever-present cluebook. He says that a private eye has to notice everything—because you never know what might be a clue!
Brian Rooney is Jeff’s best friend. He’s an inventor who loves to build crazy things that don’t always work but that look really cool and help the Goofballs solve mysteries.
Mara Lubin is as tall as a fashion model, as skinny as a rake handle, and wears giant green glasses. She’s also a master of amazing disguises.
Kelly Smitts is as smart as a computer, but she doesn’t look like one. Unless a computer is really short, really suspicious, and has curly yellow hair.
Sparky is the official Goofdog. He’s Jeff’s scruffy Pembroke Welsh corgi, and he herds clues to help the Goofballs in every case. Goof! Goof!