Finally, Something Mysterious

by Doug Cornett

  I was already speeding toward the door. “Sorry,” I called back, “but I just remembered a…joke…that I have to tell Peephole and Shanks!” It was a lame reason to leave so quickly, but I wasn’t about to tell them why I actually needed to go: to set up surveillance on Darrel Sullivan, our new prime suspect for the storage shed break-in. “Um…can I go out for a little while?”

  “That lawn isn’t going to mow itself,” my dad said sternly.

  “Oh, go ahead, Paul,” my mom interjected. “Just be home for supper. We’re having bratwurst!”

  Peephole looked through the binoculars anxiously. “So when Darrel Sullivan comes out of his house, do we run over and tackle him? Because I’m not a great tackler.”

  The One and Onlys were in a strategic-surveillance position behind a big tree across the street from Darrel Sullivan’s house. The binoculars weren’t really necessary—we were close enough to see everything just fine without them. But they made the mission feel more official.

  Darrel Sullivan’s place wasn’t hard to find: my dad had mentioned that he lived on Radford Street, near Honest Hardware, and his was the most conspicuous house on the block. The front lawn looked like a hurricane had collided with a yard sale. A rusty bicycle had been lying in the grass near the sidewalk long enough for weeds to sprout up through the spokes of the front wheel. Two semi-deflated basketballs were almost entirely buried by the overgrown grass, and a headless mannequin lounged against the front stoop. In the middle of the lawn was a kiddie pool filled with Ping-Pong balls next to a flock of plastic flamingos wearing tinfoil hats. One flamingo was leaning up against a hand-painted sign that read ALIENS! TAKE ME HOME! There were other signs, too. One read PRIVATE TENNIS LESSONS: INQUIRE WITHIN, with a spray-painted slash through it. Another said CHEAP LEGAL ADVICE FROM AN ATTORNEY-AT-LAW. The last line of the sign had been crossed out, too, and replaced with LAW ENTHUSIAST.

  Finally, the dead giveaway: a green beaten-down old pickup truck with a duct-taped right rear taillight was parked at an odd angle in the driveway. A canvas cloth was draped over the bed of the truck, hiding whatever was below it from view.

  “No, we don’t just tackle him,” Shanks whispered through a mouthful of cheese puffs. She had insisted that we bring “surveillance snacks,” especially if it might turn into a lengthy stakeout, but she had dug into the cheese puffs as soon as we arrived. “We have to watch him first to make sure he’s our guy. Once we get evidence, then we tackle him.”

  “We have evidence,” Peephole argued, pointing at the pickup. “That’s the same green color as the paint at the storage shed, and he’s got a broken taillight! What else do we need? He’s our guy! Maybe Darrel and Babbage have a history. What if he’s always been jealous of Babbage’s talent for cooking bratwurst?”

  “Isn’t everybody in Bellwood jealous of Babbage’s bratwurst?” Shanks asked earnestly.

  “Maybe we should hold off on the tackling,” I suggested. “This case is getting more complicated by the hour. I just found out that Bella Tuff and Babbage dated in high school. I saw a picture of them together in my parents’ old yearbook.”

  “Bella and Babbage?” Peephole made a face like he’d just taken a bite of chili-dog ice cream. “Is that even possible?”

  “Of course it’s possible,” I said. “They’re two human beings. They can date whoever they want.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “but they’re so…different.”

  “Well, they’re obviously not dating anymore,” Shanks said. “So maybe that’s an important detail. But how does your old babysitter, Janice, fit into all of this?”

  “Cahoots,” Peephole muttered.

  “Huh?”

  “They’re in cahoots,” he said again. “Janice, Bella, Darrel Sullivan.” He threw up his hands. “And probably Pocus, too!”

  “Great,” I said. “Now we’re getting into conspiracy-theory territory. Let’s scope out Darrel’s place for a while. Maybe we’ll see something that gives him away.”

  The minutes piled up. Helicopters flew by overhead. The occasional car drove by—and we’d squeeze out of view behind the tree. Surveillance could be pretty boring.

  Peephole cleared his throat. “What I want to know is, do you think there are deer ticks in Bellwood?” He was crouching so that his butt wasn’t actually touching the ground at the base of the tree we were using for cover.

  “Entomophobia.” Shanks drew out each syllable.

  “Ento-what-now?” I said before popping a couple of cheese puffs into my mouth.

  “It’s the technical term for an irrational fear of bugs,” Shanks explained. “And to answer your question: probably.”

  “My fear is not irrational,” Peephole said. “You want me to name some tick-borne diseases? I could probably list ten off the top of my head.”

  “I wonder if your little sister is going to be like you,” Shanks said.

  “You mean, tall and smart and handsome?”

  “No.” Shanks kept squinting through the binoculars. “That is not what I mean.”

  Another few minutes of uneventful surveillance passed, accompanied by the constant crunch of Shanks’s snacking.

  “Maybe I should sign up to be a Junior Firefighter,” Peephole said out of the blue.

  “Really?” Shanks replied, turning to him in surprise. “You hate running, you’re afraid of fire, and hoses remind you of enormous snakes.”

  “True,” Peephole admitted. “But I like the shirts.”

  “You know,” I said, “I have the strangest feeling that we missed something about the break-in at the shed.”

  “Like a clue?” Shanks asked.

  I nodded. “Or a question, maybe. That we should have asked Portnoy. Or Byron.”

  “I have a question or two I’d like to ask your friend Janice,” Peephole said.

  “She’s not my friend,” I snapped, a little too defensively. I tried to make my tone more even. “I mean, she was my babysitter a long time ago. But I don’t think she knew anything about the duckies. Last night she seemed as surprised by them as I was.”

  “Still,” Peephole said. “Playing the tuba at midnight in the middle of the Bell Woods in front of a bunch of stolen ducks is…kooky.”

  He wasn’t wrong, but I didn’t like what he was suggesting. “Kooky doesn’t mean guilty,” I said.

  “Hey, Peephole, how about you go back in your memory and recite our conversations with Janice, Byron, and Portnoy at the storage shed,” Shanks suggested.

  “I remember everything I see, not everything I hear,” Peephole said. “Which is lucky, because we have a lot of dumb conversations. Speaking of Byron, he seems like a pretty cool guy, don’t you think?”

  “You just like him because he’s tall,” Shanks said.

  “You got something against tall people?” Peephole asked.

  “Yeah,” Shanks snapped, “they’re too tall.”

  “Guys, let’s focus on the mission,” I said.

  But Shanks kept egging Peephole on. “Hey, I forgot to tell you. I saw this old horror movie the other night where a lady gives birth to a half-baby, half-squirrel mutant. Maybe your sister will be like that.”

  “That’s stupid,” Peephole scoffed.

  “No, actually, that was the plot twist. The mutant squirrel baby was a genius. She ended up saving the world from a nuclear war.”

  “Good for squirrel baby.”

  “Guys! The mission!” I said.

  “What mission?” Shanks said with frustration in her voice. “We’re just twiddling our thumbs here. Let’s go take a look at the truck. Maybe there are more duckies under the cover.”

  Peephole and I looked at each other. Even he couldn’t deny that we needed to take some kind of action. “All right,” I said. “Here’s the plan: I’ll approach the eastern perimeter of Darrel Sullivan’s house and creep
along the driveway until I’m at the pickup. Shanks, you climb this tree to get a bird’s-eye view of the neighborhood. If you see Darrel Sullivan coming back to his house, cry like a wounded crow. Peephole, you swing around the western perimeter of the house and make sure the backyard is clear while also checking for any clues. When you reach the driveway, I’ll give you the hand signal to approach the truck. Okay?”

  Shanks and Peephole looked at each other. “How about we just walk across the street and lift up the cover on his truck? I’m pretty sure he’s not home,” Peephole said.

  Shanks bobbed her head in agreement.

  “That works, too,” I conceded. I guess my plan may have been a tad too complicated.

  We sauntered across Radford Street as casually as we could and then walked straight up Darrel Sullivan’s driveway toward his truck. Peephole and I swiveled our heads around wildly, making sure nobody was watching us, but Shanks kept her vision locked on to the cloth that was draped over the back of the pickup.

  “If it’s more duckies,” I whispered as we reached the back bumper, “we call Portnoy immediately.”

  “Here goes nothing,” Shanks said, reaching up to grasp the cloth.

  “Car!” Peephole squawked as a green minivan glided past us down Radford. Shanks pulled her hand back, I looked at the sky, and Peephole actually shoved his hands in his pockets and started whistling.

  When the van was safely out of view, Shanks took a deep breath and yanked the corner of the cloth up.

  At the sight, Peephole emitted a terrified yawp, Shanks gasped, and I went still.

  It was not the duckies that were under that cloth. It was a human foot. Attached to a hairy human leg. Presumably attached to a hairy human body.

  “Oh my God,” I eeked. “Darrel Sullivan is a murderer!”

  “Let’s get out of here!” Peephole cried, turning to run, but Shanks put a vicelike grip on his shoulder.

  “We can’t just run away! We have to see whose foot this is. Come on!” In one fluid motion, she hoisted herself onto the bed of the truck and stood over the cloaked body. Peephole and I reluctantly did the same.

  “Maybe he killed Babbage,” I said, wincing as I looked down at the shape under the cloth. “We should call Portnoy.”

  “Maybe this is Portnoy,” Shanks said ominously.

  “Whoever it is,” Peephole whimpered, “I’m not touching him.”

  Shanks clenched her jaw, bent down, and ripped the cloth away.

  A fully clothed body of a man lay on the pickup bed, eyes closed, and head tilted slightly to the side. A spiky shag of black hair shot like a fountain from the man’s scalp, and a bleached white goatee jutted from his chin.

  It was Darrel Sullivan himself!

  “Is he dead?” Peephole whispered.

  “Hard to tell,” Shanks answered.

  “Uh…Mr. Sullivan?” I said tentatively.

  No response.

  “Somebody poke him,” Shanks said, followed immediately by “Not it!”

  “Not it!” I spat.

  Peephole started to protest, but he knew he couldn’t argue with the rules. He was it.

  He took a deep breath to gather his courage, then bent over and stuck a finger directly into Darrel Sullivan’s left eye.

  “GAHHH!” Darrel Sullivan cried, sitting bolt upright and grasping at his face with both hands.

  “Peephole!” Shanks said. “I meant poke him in the tummy, not the eyeball!”

  “At least we know he’s not dead!” Peephole shot back defensively.

  “We wanted to test if he was dead, not kill him ourselves!”

  “Well, I was it, and I could choose how I wanted to poke him.”

  “Guys! Quit arguing!” I barked.

  “Who the heck are you?” Darrel Sullivan was looking up at us through his one good eye. “And what the heck are you doing on my pickup? And why the heck did you just poke me in the eye?”

  These were all reasonable questions. We hadn’t come up with a plan for actually talking to Darrel Sullivan.

  “What are you doing on your pickup?” Shanks said in a tough voice, but then she eased up a little. “And, uh, sorry about your eyeball.”

  “I was trying to sleep,” he growled, tentatively removing his hand from his eye, which was a little red but didn’t look too bad.

  “Strange place for a nap,” Peephole said.

  Darrel Sullivan swung his gaze across all three of us. He still looked annoyed, but he also looked curious. “I’m sure there’s a good reason why you kids are on my truck….”

  We didn’t know what to say. So we didn’t say anything.

  “What did you say your names were?” he asked, probably concluding that he needed to start with an easier question.

  “I’m Shanks,” Shanks said boldly.

  Peephole pointed to his chest. “Peephole.”

  “And I’m…Paul,” I said.

  “That’s it?” Darrel Sullivan asked, clearly unimpressed by my answer.

  “I just don’t have a nickname. Yet,” I added defiantly. “So…how come you’re sleeping in your pickup truck?”

  “If you must know, I’ve got a lobster problem inside my house,” he said.

  “A what?”

  “A lobster problem. As in: several vengeful lobsters that are really good at hiding. I was working on a dish for the Bratwurst Bonanza and things went awry, and now I can’t go to sleep without getting pinched by a crustacean who resents being considered part of lunch. For the last couple of days the truck has been more comfortable. That is, until you three showed up.”

  “Yeah,” Peephole said. “Apologies for that. I figured you were dead.”

  “In the habit of poking dead people’s eyes out, are you? Now, what was it you kids wanted again? I hope it’s not tennis lessons, because I think a lobster pinched a hole in my racket.”

  The three of us looked at each other, unsure of where to begin. “We have some questions for you,” I started cautiously. “See, we’ve been sort of investigating this thing—”

  “Why did you steal the duckies from the police shed and dump them in a swamp in the Bell Woods?” Shanks blurted.

  Darrel Sullivan looked surprised by the question, even taken aback by it. “A swamp?” he said.

  “You heard me,” Shanks said. She could be stone-cold when she wanted to be.

  He scooted himself back up against the side of the truck bed, ran a hand through his hair, and gingerly rubbed his eye. He blinked a few times and silently studied us. “I don’t know anything about a swamp.”

  Of course he would deny it, but his reaction seemed kind of weird to me. It was the mention of a swamp that confused him, not the duckies or the theft. I decided to go out on a limb and ask him about it. “How come you said ‘a swamp’ instead of ‘the duckies’ or ‘the police shed’?”

  I thought I detected a moment of uncertainty in his face, but he composed himself. “The ducks from Lance Babbage’s yard, right? Everybody knows about them. It’s front-page weirdness. What kinds of questions are these, anyway?” He tilted his head at me. “Are you kids, like, playing detectives or something?”

  “We’re not playing,” Peephole replied, trying to hide the tremble in his voice. “We are detectives.”

  Darrel Sullivan gave a mocking chuckle and stroked the thick strands of his white goatee. “Okay, kiddos, if that was all you wanted to ask me about, I’ve got some things to do—”

  “We know you stole the ducks.” Shanks pressed on. “We’re on the Bellwood Police Junior Detective Force. We examined the crime scene and found evidence linking you to the break-in. Now spill the beans.”

  She may have been small, but, man, could she be fierce.

  Darrel Sullivan chuckled again, but this time it sounded hollow. “Evidence? Like what?”
>
  “Your tire tracks are all over the scene of the crime,” Shanks said. “And then there’s your busted taillight. And I bet if we examined your truck, we’d find a little bit of the green paint scratched away.”

  He swallowed hard and narrowed his eyes at us, as if trying to remember something. “That’s it? There are probably a hundred busted taillights in Bellwood. Not much to go on there.”

  “The jig is up, Sullivan!” Shanks was almost shouting. “You put the duckies in Babbage’s yard, and then you broke into the police shed so you could dump them in the Bell Woods….”

  Listening to her, I couldn’t help but think about how ridiculous the whole thing sounded. But she had a full head of steam.

  “…and let me tell you another thing, buster, no amount of crazy head games and murdered lobsters will help you beat Babbage at the Triple B, so just confess already!”

  Darrel Sullivan stared at her, his mouth slightly open. His eyebrows were perked up a little, as if he found us all mildly amusing but was already getting a little bored.

  “Okay, kids,” he said, rubbing his eye again. “Now, this has been a real blast, but I’m afraid it’s time for you to run along.”

  We were at a standstill. We’d slammed down our full suspicion in front of Darrel Sullivan, but he was stonewalling us. It wasn’t like we could make him confess.

  “B-b-but,” Shanks sputtered, not willing to end the interrogation without a full confession.

  Peephole, however, was already easing himself down off the truck bed. I, too, was about to turn and go, when I noticed a small patch on Darrel Sullivan’s shirt. I squinted to read the little red letters: DUNNING TOY COMPANY.

  That was the company that made the rubber duckies!

  “You work for Dunning Toy Company?” I asked, trying to sound as casual as possible.

  Darrel Sullivan’s face registered confusion and mild alarm, but then he looked down at the patch on his shirt and relaxed. “That’s right, kid. But don’t get excited—I’m just a delivery driver.”

  An idea came to me. “We know about Schuylerville Lake,” I said boldly.