From Russia with Lunch

by Bruce Hale

  “Unh,” grunted Al. I took that for a yes.

  Natalie asked, “So, like, when did the Munchmeister 2000 start up?”

  “Yesterday,” he rumbled.

  “And you were fired today?” I asked.

  Just then, a horsefly buzzed between us. We both locked eyes on the treat.

  Tha-zzzip! My tongue shot out and snagged the fly.

  That’s me, Quick-Draw McGecko.

  Al scowled at me. He scowled at the grass. Then he picked up a hedge trimmer and turned it on with a deafening blaaaahht.

  Oh, great. A sore loser.

  Natalie shot me a look that said, What did you do that for?

  I sent her a look that said, Because I was hungry. Duh.

  The bullfrog butchered some shrubbery. Natalie plastered on a smile and broke out the girlish charm, resting her wing tip on his forearm.

  Al turned off his gizmo. My hearing returned.

  “We, like, weren’t totally finished,” said Natalie.

  “So you got laid off?” I said. “Where were you just before lunch?”

  “Home,” he grunted. Mr. Dentay reached for the starter button.

  Natalie leaned in, batting her eyes. “That’s totally gnarly, your being laid off,” she said. “Like, share how that makes you feel.”

  The bullfrog’s frown deepened. “Bad,” he croaked.

  Man, this guy was a regular Mr. Chatty. I wondered what it would take to squeeze a whole sentence out of him.

  I decided to try. “Is it true you’d do almost anything to get your job back?”

  The ex-chef’s jaws clamped down hard. His finger jabbed the hedge trimmer’s starter button.

  Blah-blaaaaahhht roared the tool.

  Mr. Dentay bent and massacred something green at the edge of his immaculate lawn.

  I leaned closer, shouting, “Did you put something funny into the school lunch?”

  The bullfrog’s head came up. His pop eyes blazed.

  “No!” he bellowed.

  Natalie shouted, “Just one more que—” Bra-BRAHHHHT! Mr. Dentay shifted the trimmer into high gear and swung it at us like a samurai sword.

  “No”—swipe!—“more”—swipe!—“questions!”

  We jumped backward, dodging the deadly blades.

  Al Dentay hopped after us, repeating his war cry. “No! More! Questions!”

  Natalie and I turned and fled down the street. Freaky frog gave up at the corner, but we didn’t slow down for another half block.

  At last we stopped to catch our breath. I looked over at Natalie.

  “It takes a lot for him to open up,” I said. “But boy, once you get him talking, that Al is a real blabbermouth.”

  After a close call, nothing calms the nerves like some katydid crisp bars and a cool glass of mantis milk. Natalie and I carried our snack to my backyard office, cleverly disguised as a refrigerator box.

  Neither of us said a thing until the last crisp was crunched.

  Then I belched and patted my gut.

  Natalie put her wing tips together and frowned.

  “What do you—?” we both began.

  I held out a hand. “Lady birds first.”

  “What do you think about our suspects?” she said.

  “Beats me. The witches might have the know-how to turn kids loco. But what’s their motive?”

  Natalie nodded. “And Al Dentay had motive but no access.”

  “At least not today.” I stifled another belch.

  “Dr. Lightov also had the chance to fiddle with that food,” Natalie said.

  “If the food is what’s making kids flip. But from what I overheard, she seems to want to control students, not make ’em go wild.”

  “Hmm,” she said.

  “Hmm,” I agreed.

  The breeze sighed outside our box. The faint chatter of the TV drifted from my house.

  “Brain break?” I said.

  “It’s the wise move,” Natalie said.

  I led the way back inside. “As a smart detective once said, he who hits a dead end should regroup and watch cartoons.”

  “‘Smart detective’?” she squawked. “Chet, you said that.”

  “What, I’m not a smart detective?”

  She grinned. “Smart aleck, maybe.”

  9

  Nobody Does It Badger

  The next day dawned cloudy with a chance of mystery. My thoughts weren’t any clearer than the night before, but I hit school early anyhow. Maybe a little snooping would turn up something.

  Or not. But a gecko’s got to try.

  It was one of those gray mornings where everything seems to move in slow motion. A crossing guard leaned on a lamppost, waiting for crossers to show up. A handful of kids dawdled by the office.

  I turned my toes toward the cafeteria. An alert detective might pick up some clues there (or at least a stray sow-bug muffin).

  But just as I rounded the corner of the building, a great chunk of the wall stepped into my path.

  “Hold it right there,” said the wall.

  I noticed it was covered with bristly gray-and-black fur. Odd, for a wall. Tilting my head back, I looked up, up, up . . . into the inky eyes of a badger.

  “Right there?” I said. “But I’d rather hold it over here.” Quick as a scalded monkey, I feinted left and dodged right—right into the badger’s massive paw.

  “I want you should listen,” growled the badger, grinding my shoulder into raw flyburger.

  “Ow!” I squinted up at her.

  The badger’s snout was trained on me like a booger cannon. One white fang twinkled in the corner of her mouth. How did I know this monster was a she? The pink headband and golden heart locket were dead giveaways.

  “I listen better when my shoulder isn’t being mangled,” I said.

  “Who doesn’t,” said Goldie Locket, giving my shoulder another friendly squeeze—friendly like a python’s hug. “You’re investigating a case, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  She leaned down, nose to nose. I turned my head against the assault of her onion-and-liverwurst breath.

  “Don’t,” she said.

  “Don’t what?” I asked.

  “Don’t investigate.”

  I tried a chuckle. “It’s what I do. Fish gotta swim, detectives gotta detect.”

  Goldie Locket growled. The paw tightened on my shoulder until I could almost feel the claws meet.

  “Ow, ow, ow!”

  “This isn’t career counseling, shamus. It’s health advice.”

  “Health advice?” I said.

  “Yeah. You wanna go on living, yes?” Goldie asked.

  I cocked my head. “Depends on my other choices.”

  The badger turned uglier than a plate of broccoli at breakfast. “My friend, he doesn’t like your snooping. You keep it up, you’re gonna find out.”

  Goldie straightened, effortlessly lifting me. “It’s a small school, Gecko,” she said. “But there’s a hundred places a PI could get lost and never be seen again.”

  In a swift move, the badger cocked me over her shoulder and hurled me onto the roof of the cafeteria.

  I crawled to the edge and looked down at her. “You know, the football team could use a good man like you,” I said. Just to show her that being tossed around doesn’t throw me.

  In a voice as sincere as an undertaker’s get-well card, Goldie said, “You take care, shamus.” Then she lumbered off down the hall.

  After a start like that, my day had nowhere to go but up.

  But strangely enough, it didn’t.

  Mrs. Bagoong was busy turning hot dogs into Munchmeister gloop. No muffins in sight. Reminding her to watch out for conspirators, I moved on.

  I stopped by the scrofulous tree, on the chance Natalie might turn up.

  She didn’t.

  When the five-minute bell rang, I strolled to my room, thinking deep, detective-y thoughts. Like, who was the badger’s mysterious friend? And why didn’t he want me on the case? I passed
a small knot of girls.

  A field mouse giggled. “And here you are again. Following us?”

  Her friends giggled, too.

  I shook my head. “Not if you were an ice-cream truck with the last chocolate-coated banana slug in the world. Where was I before?”

  “Over by the library, silly,” said the mouse. The whine of a nearby machine almost drowned her out.

  “Ooh, Gecko’s got it bad!” said her friend, a spiky-haired shrew.

  Was I that distracted? I didn’t even remember passing the library or seeing these little cootie monsters before.

  I would have mulled it further, but my train of thought was suddenly derailed by a loud greee-aanngh!

  The Yard Czar rumbled past, sucking up leaves. Maureen DeBree waved from the driver’s seat. She seemed to be in much better control of the equipment now.

  Or not.

  With a crunch like a giant snacking on moose antlers, the machine shook and shimmied. And suddenly—pftahhh!—it burped out leaves and grass clippings in a fountain of green.

  This might have been funny. If the fountain wasn’t spewing at me.

  “Eeee!” squealed the girls, scattering.

  I raised my arms for protection. Too late. Grass flew in my eyes, my nose, my mouth, and down my shirt. “Pt-thpt-pft!” I backed off, spitting shredded greens.

  The girls giggled. Big surprise there.

  “Sorry, eh!” Ms. DeBree turned a key. The leaf-spitting brute gave a few last gasps and shut off. “Confunit!” she cried, hitting the steering wheel. “This contraption is nothing but trouble!”

  “You’re telling me,” I said.

  “First, I gotta fire my assistant. Then they stick me with this junk thing!”

  My detective radar went off. “You fired your assistant?”

  Ms. DeBree shook her furry noggin. “Emmanuel Laber,” she said. “Shoots, and I just trained the guy. The machine took his place.”

  “Was he sore?”

  “Hoo! Like some Tanzanian dribble.”

  I hid a smile. “You mean, Tasmanian devil?”

  And with that the class bell rang. Much as I wanted to pursue that promising lead, it was time to go pretend to learn something until I was free to investigate again.

  School, schmool. This was one heck of a way to run a detective agency.

  10

  Between a Doc and a Hard Place

  I puzzled through Mr. Ratnose’s lesson, trying to make the pieces fit. No, not the pieces of his lesson—the pieces of my case. It struck me that the fired staff might have good reason for sabotaging Dr. Lightov’s inventions.

  But how were they doing it? Both Mr. Dentay and Mr. Laber had been booted off the school grounds. Did they have an accomplice on the inside?

  The sound of my name broke into my thoughts.

  “Chet Gecko, what do we get when we total these numbers on the board?”

  I glanced up at my teacher. “Mr. Ratnose, there are three types of mathematicians: those who can add, and those who can’t.”

  He clenched his jaw and shook his head. I actually felt a little sorry for the guy. But he should know better than to interrupt me when I’m working.

  I pondered on.

  My classmates seemed no goofier than usual this morning. In fact, Bitty Chu and Igor Beaver were back to being apple-polishing teacher’s pets.

  Fat lot of good it did them. As Igor told me just before breaktime, they’d both been kicked off the math team.

  He passed me a quarter. “That’s for all your hard work,” he said. “But I guess I don’t, um, need you anymore.”

  I pocketed the coin.

  Recess came, and with it a surge of new energy. A smile twisted my lips. I would get to the bottom of this mystery.

  No matter that I had no client. No matter that I had more suspects than fingers. I would prevail.

  Natalie and I met up in the hallway as kids streamed past.

  “Hey, I’ve been thinking,” I said.

  “Careful,” she said, “it’s tricky your first time out.”

  I took her wing and steered her out of the traffic flow. “What if all this fuss was some revenge scheme cooked up by the staff who got fired?”

  Natalie cocked her head. “You think they might have it in for Dr. Lightov?”

  “One way to find out. Let’s talk to the good doctor herself.”

  Natalie smiled. “I’m your bird.”

  We caught up with the inventor in the library. Tanya Lightov stood on a chair by the Bibliomalgamator. Its top was off, her sleeves were rolled up, and she was poking about inside with a wrench. Black oil smudged her furry cheeks.

  “What’s up, doc?” I said as we approached.

  “Oh, zhis machine,” she said, waving the wrench. “Grrr!” She followed this with a few choice phrases in Russian.

  I could only assume they were phrases not meant for a kid’s ears.

  At his desk, Cool Beans looked up from scanning books and shushed her. She sneered back.

  “Got a minute?” I asked.

  The woodchuck’s icy gaze dismissed us. “I am busy scientist. No time to vaste vith children.”

  “We’re, uh, from the yearbook,” said Natalie. She gave me the eye.

  “Uh, that’s right,” I said. “Want to say something for the record?”

  You could tell the groundhog was impressed by our bogus credentials. She puffed up like a bouncy castle at a birthday party.

  “For history? Da, I have two minutes. Speak.”

  Natalie cleared her throat. “Well, your project is, um, very impressive.”

  “Naturally,” said the woodchuck. “Is my project.”

  “Why did you choose it?” asked Natalie.

  “Vhy? Zhis school is run by morons, losing money. I can help.”

  I produced a pencil and paper, to look more writerly. Doodling a dinosaur, I said, “And what about the students? How do you feel about them?”

  She brushed her whiskers with the back of a paw. “Pffft, children,” she said. “If I run zhis place, children vould behave much better—like nice little robots.”

  Natalie and I exchanged a glance.

  “I bet not everyone appreciates your brilliance,” said Natalie.

  She was laying it on a bit thick. But the woodchuck smiled.

  “Precisely,” she said. “Ze administration resists my best ideas, like putting ze microchips in students. Staff are jealous.”

  “Your machines put some guys out of work,” I said. “Do you think they might try sabotage?”

  Dr. Lightov’s eyebrows drew together like two caterpillars dancing the tango. “You think sabotage?” she said.

  “Could be,” said Natalie. “Anyone in particular come to mind?”

  The inventor’s blue laser gaze rested on Cool Beans for a long moment.

  “I cannot say,” she said. “Now leave me. I must vork.”

  We said our good-byes and beat feet. As we left, the groundhog was muttering to herself, tinkering with her invention, and shooting evil looks at the librarian.

  As we stepped outside, I said, “Do you really believe Cool Beans would . . . ?”

  “Never in a million years,” Natalie said.

  We stood on the top step and blinked in the bright sunshine. The jolly cries of kids at play echoed around us. It all seemed so normal.

  It was anything but.

  “You know,” said Natalie, “what if Dr. Lightov herself did the sabotage?”

  I looked over at her. “That again? Come on.”

  Natalie hopped down the steps. “Hear me out. She said she wanted to put microchips into kids to control us.”

  “Yeah, so?” I followed her onto the walkway.

  “What better way to kick off that plan than with students going crazy?”

  “Hmm,” I said, seeing her point. “Create the problem . . .”

  “And then offer the solution.”

  I clapped her on the shoulder. “Partner, you might be onto something.�
��

  She grinned. “So what now, Mr. PI?”

  I scratched my head and looked out at the playground. Too many choices.

  “Um . . .,” I began.

  Natalie smirked. “What say we stake out the cafeteria at lunch and try to catch the culprit in the act?”

  “Now why didn’t I think of that?”

  “Because I thought of it first?” she said.

  Taking Natalie by the wing, I made a beeline for the snack machine in the hallway. “This calls for a treat,” I said.

  “How generous,” said Natalie.

  I stopped in front of it. “Yes, you are. So why don’t you treat me to a Pillbug Crunch bar?”

  11

  Till Death Do Us Partner

  Back in class the minutes limped by like a millipede with blisters. Our lessons seemed to take forever, but at last, history class was history.

  It was time to detect.

  Wading into the happy chaos of kids bound for lunch, I picked up the pace. Natalie and I had planned to meet by the cafeteria door. We had to move fast if we wanted to catch our culprit. (So fast, I would have to eat lunch later. Nobody appreciates the sacrifices we private eyes make.)

  But before I got halfway to the lunchroom, a high-pitched shrilling like the buzz of giant mosquitoes distracted me. I turned, searching the skies.

  The sound swelled.

  Wham! Something slammed into me at waist level.

  I went down hard, like a steel-belted birthday cake. Little bodies swarmed. Little feet trampled over me. Little voices shouted, “Yaaahh! We rule!”

  I tucked and rolled to the side. Rising carefully into a crouch, I turned to see what evil force had attacked me.

  Kindergartners?

  A whole class of them swept by, just finished with early lunch.

  I shook my head.

  This made no sense. In the school pecking order, kindergartners occupied the bottom rung. They were supposed to be cute. They were supposed to be shy. But savage? Never.

  The little thugs shoved past fourth and fifth graders with no regard for life and limb. And then, in a twitch of a rat’s tail, they were gone.

  Standing upright, I dusted myself off. Here was a mystery. Could it be linked to my case?