by Dan Poblocki
“North, South, East, and West,” said Sylvester. “All present and accounted for.”
This time, it was Woodrow’s turn to tell a story.
“This one is more of a puzzle than a mystery, but I still think it fits our game.
“In my gym class this morning, Coach Winslow divided us all up into teams of six and gave each team a Ping-Pong ball. He told us that whichever team could pass the ball to every member of the group fastest would win the contest. We were allowed to toss the ball to each other any way we chose—rolling, bouncing, flicking…. The only rules were that everyone had to touch the ball at least once, and the ball had to move — we couldn’t just hold it in place.
“It seemed simple enough to me. I convinced my team that if we stood in a tight circle with our hands really close, our time would be the fastest.
“When Coach Winslow came over to us with his stopwatch, our time was ten seconds, the fastest in the class. We’d won, I figured, which was awesome, because you all know I love to win. But then Coach Winslow shook his head. He told us that last year, a team accomplished the exercise in less than a second.
“We all went back to the drawing board, trying to figure out how that speed was possible. No matter how many times we passed the ball around our circle, we couldn’t get it through each of our hands in less than a second. Then, I had an idea that I knew couldn’t fail. What was it?”
“Since we were all standing so close together, I suggested that we stack our right hands on top of each other, curling our fingers to form a wide tube, as if we were gripping an invisible baseball bat.” The group looked at him with interest. “So what did we do next?”
“All I had to do to get the ball to pass through all our hands was drop it into the top of the tube. The ball fell to the floor in less than a second.
“And the best part was: We won!”
7
THE PILFERED POOCH
(A ??? MYSTERY)
“That was great, Woodrow,” said Viola. “I’ve got one too. This happened last night after dinner, and I’ve been saving it up all day just to tell you guys.
“My mom started work at the Herald a couple days ago, but she’s already off and running with assignments. One of the pieces she was editing had to do with a missing dog. She knows how much I love trying to figure this stuff out. I used to do it all the time when she wrote for the Crime Beat section of the Philadelphia paper. It’s how I fell in love with mysteries in the first place. Anyway, my mom let me read the new article. This is the gist of it.
“A husband and wife came home from the movies one night to find their Lhasa apso, Foofy, had been stolen. On their kitchen table, someone had left a note. The letters had been cut out of a magazine.”
“That’s so disturbing,” whispered Rosie.
Viola opened her notebook and pulled out a photocopied page. The mishmash of letters formed the note. She passed it to the group, and they read through it carefully.
“Obviously, the husband and wife were upset. They called the police. The cops came to their home, but found no evidence of forced entry. In fact, the dognappers were thoughtful enough to steal all the dog food, Foofy’s water bowl, her leash, and her doggie bed. The couple said that they hadn’t noticed anyone strange hanging around the house, but that Foofy did get plenty of attention at the groomer’s on Main Street and whenever they brought her to the vet. The police said they would try to track Foofy down, but they really didn’t have much to go on.
“Devastated, the wife contacted the newspaper, asking if they would print her husband’s written response, pleading for help from the community and possibly even the dognappers themselves. This is the husband’s statement.” Viola pulled another folded photocopy from her notebook to show the group. This one was handwritten.
PLEASE RETURN FOOFY SAFELY TO HER TRUE HOME. SHE FRIGHTENS EASILY AND LOVES MY WIFE ESPECIALLY. OUR DOG IS QUITE EXTRORDINARY, AND WE MISS HER. WE WILL EVEN GIVE A SUBSTANTIAL REWARD IF SOMEONE HELPS FIND HER.
“I told my mom I’d have to give it some thought. When I woke up this morning, I read the finished article in the paper. I was instantly certain who had written the ransom note. Who was it?”
“It was the husband! I told my mother that he was the dognapper and that she should contact the police immediately. Of course, she raised her eyebrows at me, insisting that I couldn’t just go around accusing victims of committing their own crimes. My mom asked me, ‘How can you be so sure?’”
“The ransom note and the husband’s statement both misspelled the same word. Do you know which word?”
“In both letters, the word ‘extraordinary’ was spelled incorrectly. The first ‘a’ was missing. I only noticed the difference when I compared the handwritten photocopy of the statement to the corrected version of it in the newspaper. The handwritten misspelling leapt out at me. The same person had written both letters. I knew the husband wrote the second letter, so he must have written the first one too.
“When I got home from school today, my mom called me from her office and gave me the scoop. She said she’d contacted the police. They questioned the husband, confronting him with the proof I’d discovered in the ransom note. And he confessed! He said that Foofy had chewed up his slippers one time too many. He’d secretly arranged for the dog to live with another family several towns away. He couldn’t bring himself to tell his wife what he’d done, so he pretended the dog was dognapped.”
“Wow, Viola,” said Rosie, stunned. “That was a full-on, capital-D Detective move!”
“But what’s going to happen to Foofy?” asked Woodrow.
“I’m not sure,” said Viola. “But I think she’s probably going to stay with her new family, at least until the husband and wife can work out their differences.”
Rosie leaned forward, looking nervous. “Does the husband know who told on him? What if he’s mad at you, Viola?”
“He wouldn’t try anything,” Viola said. “Besides, the police wouldn’t have told him anything about me or my mom helping them out.”
At least, she hoped not….
The sun had set. Evening shadows had silently crept across the neighborhood. Frogs still chirped in the trees, but the air had a new chill.
Bang!
Something exploded nearby, and the entire group leapt from the ground. The sound of an old engine raced up the street. Viola remembered her first afternoon in the new house, when she’d heard the noise before. “Just a bad muffler,” she explained. “Whoever that old car belongs to really needs to get it fixed.”
“You can say that again,” answered Woodrow, as they inched away, north, south, east, and west, toward the comfort of their houses. “Good night!”
8
SMALL TOWN SECRETS
Later, Woodrow sat in bed. He’d laid his paused portable video-game player on the mattress and pushed back the curtain from his bedroom window. The lights were on in his friends’ houses, and he glanced at the spot on the lawn where the mystery club met. The sky above the town was glowing with great clusters of constellations. Up here, north of the city, the stars were a marvel to behold. It was amazing how many of them hid behind the light pollution down in New York.
Tonight’s gathering had been a little embarrassing. The story he had brought was nowhere near as exciting as Viola’s. She’d managed to solve a crime — or a sort-of crime. At the very least, she’d solved a real, true mystery.
He listened to the sounds of the local news coming from the downstairs television. His mom had come home late from work again. He hadn’t spoken to his dad in a couple days. Maybe if he went down to visit him soon, they’d have a dangerous encounter that Woodrow could bring back and share with the group. Usually, though, his dad would just make frozen pizza and they’d go to an action movie. Boring stuff.
Just then, a great blue streak broke away from a cluster of stars and raced across the darkness. A shooting star! A few seconds later, he watched another one fall. Then another. So cool. This must be a meteor
shower. More importantly, Woodrow knew it was a sign. He decided that he needed to do something to impress everyone.
In Sylvester’s house, Gwen was crying again. His parents were trying to feed her, but she was being fussy. He wished she could talk so she could tell his mom exactly what she wanted or what was wrong. He wondered how long it would be before she was able.
Sylvester sat at his desk, flipping a large silver dollar between his fingers. Over, under, over, under. He stared at a page in a book called Secrets of Magic Tricks. It was amazing how much work magic took. Solving mysteries was similar. Viola was really good at it. He was happy she had moved into the house across the yard from his. The Question Marks Mystery Club was fun. Having to pay attention—to remember little details, to think about their significance—made having to work at the diner less dreary. Recently, people in town had become so much more … mysterious.
Rosie was brushing her teeth in the upstairs bathroom when her sister Grace swung the door open. With a mouthful of toothpaste, Rosie threw Grace a dirty look, but she couldn’t say anything if she didn’t want to spray the mirror.
“You were taking too long,” said Grace, who reached for her own toothbrush. “I have to get up early tomorrow for swim practice.”
Rosie quickly spit, rinsed, and got out of the way. That’s how it usually was in the Smitherses’ house: crowded and annoying. She snuck quietly into the corner bedroom that she shared with Keira, her other sister. Greg and Stephen, her brothers, had the room next door. Grace was the only one with her own room, but she was already in high school and would probably be going to college in a couple of years.
Rosie couldn’t imagine a time in which she would have her own room. She wondered what that might feel like. Peaceful? Or lonely?
She crawled into bed, thinking about the mysteries she and her friends had been playing with. Viola had upped the game tonight with the story she’d told about the missing dog. It was amazing, the secrets people kept. Why couldn’t that husband just tell his wife how he felt? Rosie’s family had always seemed able to do just that. Except … what if they hadn’t? Rosie sat up, listening to the sounds of her family settling in downstairs, playing music, chatting with one another. How many secrets were they all keeping?
Hours later, Viola woke to a familiar sound.
Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap.
She clutched her sheets to her chin, chills pouring on her like ice water. She didn’t know why this sound frightened her so much. Usually, she’d just figure out what was making it, and then everything would be okay. But it was hard to solve a mystery when the clues just weren’t there.
She couldn’t bring herself to throw back her covers and peek into the hallway. What if it was a ghost? Or worse … what if someone was there? Instead, she called to her parents.
Moments later, her father knocked on her bedroom door. Bleary-eyed, he peered in at her and said, “What’s wrong?”
Viola wanted him to listen to the tapping sound that had woken her … but it had stopped. She wondered if her shouting had scared it away.
“Sorry,” she said. “I thought I heard something.”
Her father smiled. “Go to sleep, honey. Everything is fine.” He closed her bedroom door.
But everything was not fine. There might be a ghost haunting her new house! If there was one thing Viola had learned recently, it was that when you needed an answer, you had to look for it. Rosie had mentioned that her mother was the town librarian. Maybe if Viola asked Rosie to help research the house’s history, they would be a bit closer to figuring out these creepy nighttime sounds.
The group didn’t meet for several days. Responsibility had finally caught up with them. Homework, sports, chores. Despite what they all wanted to believe, Moon Hollow was not All Mysteries, All the Time.
Still, Viola managed to convince Rosie to help her search the records at the library. With Mrs. Smithers’s help, the girls discovered that Viola’s house had not been owned by many people in the past century. The last owners, Mr. and Mrs. Denholm, had been a quiet couple from New York City who used the house mainly as a weekend escape. Before them, the house belonged to a woman named Fiona Hauptmann.
The girls gathered clues from the woman’s obituary in the Moon Hollow Herald. Fiona had lived in the house her entire life. She’d inherited it from her parents, the Bransons, an old Hudson Valley family, when she was in her early twenties. The girls discovered a record that Fiona married soon after. Viola was intrigued by all the information, but it didn’t seem to point toward anything supernatural or ghostly. She thanked Rosie and her mom for the help anyway.
When the whole group finally got together again, they’d managed to gather up a few mysteries. Rosie was excited to share hers first.
9
THE SNAPPED SNAKE
(A ???? MYSTERY)
“My mother’s sister lives in Ohio,” said Rosie. “Her family is like ours—huge. I have tons of cousins, but my favorite cousin is Bethany. She’s my age exactly, and we talk on the phone all the time. We both really like animals—the weirder, the better.
“I was really excited to hear that Bethany had gotten a pet snake for her birthday last week. She named him Harry. He’s light brown, about six inches long, and he lives in a terrarium in her bedroom. She told me that they blink at each other through the glass. She says she can tell what he’s thinking, which is mostly about food. Her friends think Harry is gross, but Bethany doesn’t think he’s gross at all. She knows he’s smart, and that’s important to her.
“When Bethany called me yesterday afternoon, she was really upset. She said that something weird had just happened with Harry, and she wondered if I could help figure it out.
“What had happened was that Bethany’s brother, Jasper, and his high-school friends were in her room checking out Harry. Bethany was in the kitchen getting an after-school snack, or else she would have kicked them out immediately. Anyway, she heard the boys start screaming, so she ran and found them crowded around the terrarium. Inside, Harry lay in several pieces, the front part of his body squirming around.”
“Oh my gosh!” said Viola. “What happened to him?”
“You’ll figure it out,” said Rosie. “Terrified, Bethany demanded to know what they’d done to her snake. Jasper apologized, claiming that he and his friends had simply picked up Harry to play with him. But then the snake had begun to writhe around desperately. Before they knew what had happened, Harry had literally snapped!
“She examined Harry from behind the glass. He looked distraught and was trying to hide underneath a small piece of wood. But he was alive, despite the fact that his tail had shattered. Those pieces of him lay still.
“Bethany called me immediately, because her mom wasn’t home yet to take Harry to the vet. I told her not to worry, that I didn’t think Harry’s life was in any danger. But I also told her that Harry wasn’t exactly who she thought he was.”
“What do you mean?” asked Sylvester.
“I told her that Harry isn’t really a snake.”
“Then what is he?” Sylvester continued.
“He’s a lizard!”
“Really?” asked Sylvester. “A lizard that looks like a snake?”
Rosie nodded. “I’ve read that there is a kind of lizard called a glass snake. Despite their name, glass snakes aren’t snakes at all—they’re just lizards that don’t have legs or feet! And something that Bethany said about Harry’s behavior before the accident proved to me that he’s a lizard. What tipped me off?”
“Bethany had told me that she and Harry blinked at each other through the glass. That is how they ‘communicate.’ Now, everyone who knows anything about reptiles will tell you that snakes cannot blink.”
“Oh, sure,” said Sylvester. “Who doesn’t know that?”
“Don’t tell me you knew that,” said Woodrow, smirking.
“I might have known that,” Sylvester answered, looking offended.
“Yeah, but you might not have.”
“But he’s still in pieces!” said Sylvester. “How can Harry possibly be fine?”
“When some lizards are in danger, they shed their tails to distract predators and escape from becoming a meal. When Jasper and his friends picked up Harry, the lizard felt threatened, and he broke his tail off to get away from them. And I guess it worked! Harry will grow another tail, even though it won’t be as long as his first one. So ultimately, Harry will be fine … just a bit shorter than he was before. Bethany was a little weirded out, but totally relieved that her new friend is superpowered.”
“Whoa,” said Sylvester, “I wish I could regrow pieces of my body!”
“Why?” asked Viola, giving him a funny look. “Have you ever lost one?”
“No,” he answered with a silly smile, “but I could try.”
“Gross!” said Rosie. “Don’t you dare.”
After a moment, Woodrow spoke up. “Hey, you guys, I’ve got a good story too.”
“Okay,” said Viola, leaning forward. “Let’s hear it.”
10
THE CASE OF THE BIG BULLY
(A ???? MYSTERY)
“Kyle Krupnik is probably the shortest boy in our grade, and he’s really quiet, but he’s also really nice, so we’ve been friends ever since I moved here.
“Yesterday, after gym class, I saw Kyle in the locker room. I stopped to say hello and asked him why he’d sat out the game of kickball that period. He told me that he’d twisted his ankle during gym earlier in the week, but that the school nurse said he’d be okay if he rested for a few days. I asked him if he was ready for Mrs. Frankle’s math quiz, because I was so totally not. He bent down and picked up his notebook from the bottom of his locker, explaining that he’d studied all night. He also assured me that I’d be fine, since I pay attention in class and take good notes.