by Bruce Hale
I wiped my cheek. Dames. Even when they’re right, they’re too much.
Natalie smirked. “Didn’t look like you were struggling that hard.”
“Partner,” I said, “if that’s the case, I’m a better actor than you thought.”
We strolled out into the parking lot. The light of the afternoon sun had dipped everything in butterscotch. Mmm, butterscotch . . . I made plans for a pre-dinner treat.
Before climbing into our parents’ waiting cars, Natalie and I paused.
“So, acting in a play wasn’t too bad, was it?” she said.
“No worse than being nibbled to death by nematodes.”
Natalie’s eyes grew wide. “Ooh, what if they make a movie out of it? Who would you want to play you?”
“Sister,” I said, “there’s only one Chet Gecko. And I don’t think I could go through that case a second time.”
As we said good night, I reflected. Tomorrow would bring a new case. But that was all right. If my stint in show business had taught me anything, it was this: No matter what happens, the sleuth must go on.
1
Sneak and Ye Shall Find
Never take on a wacko as a client. It wastes your time, and it annoys the wacko.
Somehow I had forgotten this. And so, recess found me tailing a parakeet’s boyfriend to see if he’d been stepping out on her. (That’s detective talk for seeing another dame on the side. And a dame is a girl. And on the side is . . . on the side.)
I shadowed T-Bone LaLouche through the halls of Emerson Hicky Elementary. Like any good detective, I used kids, bushes, and the odd teacher as cover. (And believe me, we have plenty of odd teachers.)
T-Bone LaLouche was a lean and shifty ringtail. Ringtails have a cat’s body, a fox’s face, and a raccoon’s tail that’s been dipped in goo and slammed in a door.
Oh, and one other thing: If you startle them, they give an ear-piercing shriek and shoot this funky musk from their butts.
Don’t ask me how I know that.
I watched as T-Bone stopped near the library to chat with a simpering mole in a tutu. Heads together, they seemed awfully chummy. Could this be his extra-credit baby-cake?
When I leaned around a skreezitz bush for a better look, T-Bone suddenly glanced up. I dived for cover—kronch!—right into the bush.
Through the spiky leaves, I could see the ringtail frowning my way, but he went back to his confab. Soon, the mole waved toodle-oo and toddled into the library. T-Bone took to his heels.
I tagged along.
In the hall by the cafeteria, the ringtail approached a fluffy European rabbit. (I could tell she was European by her spiffy scarf and her world-weary ways.)
Miss Fluffy leaned against a pole and toyed with her whiskers. T-Bone cozied up. She passed him something—a love note?—and they giggled like a couple of teenage girls at a Brad Spitt movie.
Man, this guy wasn’t just two-timing my client; he was three-timing her.
Sensing something, T-Bone raised his head and started to turn.
Fa-zoop!
I scrambled up the wall, out of sight. In my racket, sometimes it pays to be a wall-crawling lizard.
I crept along quietly. Then my foot slipped. Strange. We geckos can scale almost anything, including glass. I shook the foot and crawled closer . . . just across from the cuddly pair.
A strange sight distracted me: squatty machines being wheeled into the cafeteria. And they were wearing what looked like . . . aprons? Was head chef Mrs. Bagoong getting some new cooking gizmos?
I shook my head. Better focus on the job at hand.
Miss Fluffy was saying, “. . . after you do me this favor, you and I can . . .”
Someone had taped a wet paint sign to the pole she was leaning on. Silly rabbit. Didn’t she know—
Fffffwwip!
Suddenly, everything slipped. I scrabbled desperately, clawing a paper sign from the wall. It read, WET PAINT.
Duh. The pole hadn’t been painted; the wall had. “Whoooah!” I cried, plummeting like a duck after a pond-scum sandwich.
SKREONCH! A shrub broke my fall.
“AAIIEEE!” T-Bone shrieked, like an air-raid siren singing opera. Under his scream, something went ffrappp!
The rabbit and I clapped our hands over our ears. A second later, we covered our noses instead.
The ringtail had blasted a paint-peeling musky stench, fouler than a roadkill casserole. It spread down the hall, clearing kids and teachers with its potent funk. Miss Fluffy fled.
Eyes watering, I coughed and hacked and staggered to my feet.
With as much dignity as he could muster, T-Bone stood tall and glared at me. “It’s your own fault,” he said. “Maybe you shouldn’t startle kids like that.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have had the cabbage-and-cheese breakfast burrito.”
The ringtail snorted. “Oh yeah? Maybe you shouldn’t sass someone bigger than you.” He loomed over me.
“Oh, really? Maybe you shouldn’t be two-timing your girlfriend,” I said.
“My girlfriend?” he asked.
“Yeah, your bubby-cakes, your doll-face, your smoochie-poo. Anne Gwish?”
His face froze. “Anne what?” said T-Bone. “Who’s she?” He stalked away.
Still holding my nose, I stumbled in the opposite direction.
From above, a clap-clap-clap reached my ears. I glanced up.
It was Natalie Attired, my spiffy mockingbird partner. An ace investigator, she thought she was quite the joker (but she was really just a card). Perching on the roof’s edge, Natalie looked me up and down, from my paint-smeared feet to the twigs in my hat.
I held up a hand. “I know, I know. I’m scratched and filthy, and I smell like a ringtail’s butt.”
“So, other than that,” she said, “how was your day, dear?”
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Look for more mysteries
from the Tattered Casebook of Chet Gecko
Case #1 The Chameleon Wore Chartreuse
Some cases start rough, some cases start easy. This one started with a dame. (That’s what we private eyes call a girl.) She was cute and green and scaly. She looked like trouble and smelled like . . . grasshoppers.
Shirley Chameleon came to me when her little brother, Billy, turned up missing. (I suspect she also came to spread cooties, but that’s another story.) She turned on the tears. She promised me some stinkbug pie. I said I’d find the brat.
But when his trail led to a certain stinky-breathed, bad-tempered, jumbo-sized Gila monster, I thought I’d bitten off more than I could chew. Worse, I had to chew fast: If I didn’t find Billy in time, it would be bye-bye, stinkbug pie.
Case #2 The Mystery of Mr. Nice
How would you know if some criminal mastermind tried to impersonate your principal? My first clue: He was nice to me.
This fiend tried everything—flattery, friendship, food—but he still couldn’t keep me off the case. Natalie and I followed a trail of clues as thin as the cheese on a cafeteria hamburger. And we found a ring of corruption that went from the janitor right up to Mr. Big.
In the nick of time, we rescued Principal Zero and busted up the PTA meeting, putting a stop to the evil genius. And what thanks did we get? Just the usual. A cold handshake and a warm soda.
But that’s all in a day’s work for a private eye.
Case #3 Farewell, My Lunchbag
If danger is my business, then dinner is my passion. I’ll take any case if the pay is right. And what pay could be better than Mothloaf Surprise?
At least that’s what I thought. But in this particular case, I almost paid the ultimate price for good grub.
Cafeteria lady Mrs. Bagoong hired me to track down whoever was stealing her food supplies. The long, slimy trail led too close to my own backyard for comfort.
And much, much too close to the very scary Jimmy “King” Cobra. Without the help
of Natalie Attired and our school janitor, Maureen DeBree, I would’ve been gecko sushi.
Case #4 The Big Nap
My grades were lower than a salamander’s slippers, and my bank account was trying to crawl under a duck’s belly. So why did I take a case that didn’t pay anything?
Put it this way: Would you stand by and watch some evil power turn your classmates into hypnotized zombies? (If that wasn’t just what normally happened to them in math class, I mean.)
My investigations revealed a plot meaner than a roomful of rhinos with diaper rash.
Someone at Emerson Hicky was using a sinister video game to put more and more students into la-la-land. And it was up to me to stop it, pronto—before that someone caught up with me, and I found myself taking the Big Nap.
Case #5 The Hamster of the Baskervilles
Elementary school is a wild place. But this was ridiculous.
Someone—or something—was tearing up Emerson Hicky. Classrooms were trashed. Walls were gnawed. Mysterious tunnels riddled the playground like worm chunks in a pan of earthworm lasagna.
But nobody could spot the culprit, let alone catch him.
I don’t believe in the supernatural. My idea of voodoo is my mom’s cockroach-ripple ice cream.
Then, a teacher reported seeing a monster on full-moon night, and I got the call.
At the end of a twisted trail of clues, I had to answer the burning question: Was it a vicious, supernatural were-hamster on the loose, or just another Science Fair project gone wrong?
Case #6 This Gum for Hire
Never thought I’d see the day when one of my worst enemies would hire me for a case. Herman the Gila Monster was a sixth-grade hoodlum with a first-rate left hook. He told me someone was disappearing the football team, and he had to put a stop to it. Big whoop.
He told me he was being blamed for the kidnappings, and he had to clear his name. Boo hoo.
Then he said that I could either take the case and earn a nice reward, or have my face rearranged like a bargain-basement Picasso painted by a spastic chimp.
I took the case.
But before I could find the kidnapper, I had to go undercover. And that meant facing something that scared me worse than a chorus line of criminals in steel-toed boots: P.E. class.
Case #7 The Malted Falcon
It was tall, dark, and chocolatey—the stuff dreams are made of. It was a treat so titanic that nobody had been able to finish one single-handedly (or even single-mouthedly). It was the Malted Falcon.
How far would you go for the ultimate dessert? Somebody went too far, and that’s where I came in.
The local sweets shop held a contest. The prize: a year’s supply of free Malted Falcons. Some lucky kid scored the winning ticket. She brought it to school for show-and-tell.
But after she showed it, somebody swiped it. And no one would tell where it went.
Following a strong hunch and an even stronger sweet tooth, I tracked the ticket through a web of lies more tangled than a rattlesnake doing the rumba. But the time to claim the prize was fast approaching. Would the villain get the sweet treat—or his just desserts?
Case #8 Trouble Is My Beeswax
Okay, I confess. When test time rolls around, I’m as tempted as the next lizard to let my eyeballs do the walking . . . to my neighbor’s paper.
But Mrs. Gecko didn’t raise no cheaters. (Some language manglers, perhaps.) So when a routine investigation uncovered a test-cheating ring at Emerson Hicky, I gave myself a new case: Put the cheaters out of business.
Easier said than done. Those double-dealers were slicker than a frog’s fanny and twice as slimy.
Oh, and there was one other small problem: All the evidence pointed to two dames. The ringleader was either the glamorous Lacey Vail, or my own classmate Shirley Chameleon.
Sheesh. The only thing I hate worse than an empty Pillbug Crunch wrapper is a case full of dizzy dames.
Case #9 Give My Regrets to Broadway
Some things you can’t escape, however hard you try—like dentist appointments, visits with strange-smelling relatives, and being in the fourth-grade play. I had always left the acting to my smart-aleck pal, Natalie, but now it was my turn in the spotlight.
Stage fright? Me? You’re talking about a gecko who has laughed at danger, chuckled at catastrophe, and sneezed at sinister plots.
I was terrified.
Not because of the acting, mind you. The script called for me to share a major lip-lock with Shirley Chameleon—Cootie Queen of the Universe!
And while I was trying to avoid that trap, a simple missing persons case took a turn for the worse—right into the middle of my play. Would opening night spell curtains for my client? And, more important, would someone invent a cure for cooties? But no matter—whatever happens, the sleuth must go on.
Case #10 Murder, My Tweet
Some things at school you can count on. Pop quizzes always pop up just after you’ve spent your study time studying comics. Chef’s Surprise is always a surprise, but never a good one. And no matter how much you learn today, they always make you come back tomorrow.
But sometimes, Emerson Hicky amazes you. And just like finding a killer bee in a box of Earwig Puffs, you’re left shocked, stung, and discombobulated.
Foul play struck at my school; that’s nothing new. But then the finger of suspicion pointed straight at my favorite fowl: Natalie Attired. Framed as a blackmailer, my partner was booted out of Emerson Hicky quicker than a hoptoad on a hot plate.
I tackled the case for free. Mess with my partner, mess with me.
Then things took a turn for the worse. Just when I thought I might clear her name, Natalie disappeared. And worse still, she left behind one clue: a reddish smear that looked kinda like the jelly from a beetle-jelly sandwich but raised an ugly question: Was it murder, or something serious?
Case #11 The Possum Always Rings Twice
In my time, I’ve tackled cases stickier than a spider’s handshake and harder than three-year-old boll weevil taffy. But nothing compares to the job that landed me knee-deep in school politics.
What seemed like a straightforward case of extortion during Emerson Hicky’s student-council election ended up taking more twists and turns than an anaconda’s lunch. It became a battle royal for control of the school. (Not that I necessarily believe school is worth fighting for, but a gecko’s gotta do something with his days.)
In the end, my politicking landed me in one of the tightest spots I’ve ever encountered. Was I savvy enough to escape with my skin? Let me put it this way: Just like a politician, this is one private eye who always shoots from the lip.
Case #12 Key Lardo
Working this case, I nearly lost my detective mojo—and to a guy so dim, he’d probably play goalie for the darts team. True, he was only a cog in a larger conspiracy. But this big buttinsky made my life more uncomfortable than a porcupine’s underpants.
Was he a cop? A truant officer? A gorilla with a grudge? Even worse: A rival detective. His name was Bland. James Bland. And he was cracking cases faster than a . . . well, much faster than I was.
My reputation took a nosedive. And I nearly followed it—straight into the slammer. Fighting back with all my moxie, I bent the rules, blundered into blind alleys, and stepped on more than a few toes.
Was I right? Was I wrong? I’ll tell you this: I made my share of mistakes. But I believe that if you can’t laugh at yourself . . . make fun of someone else.
Case #13 Hiss Me Deadly
When my sister got robbed, she turned to me for help. And like a dope, I jumped in with both feet.
But a simple case of theft soon grew more challenging than playing Chinese checkers on a bucking bronco. Valuables started vanishing from school, and the top brass called me in. I followed the twisty trail of clues until I’d unearthed more suspects than a zombie membership drive.
The heat was on. As I drew closer to uncovering the shadowy puppet master behind it all, I got myself in a spot
tighter than a blue whale’s bikini. Would I make it out with my skin?
Not to worry. As any detective will tell you, it’s always darkest before dawn. So if you’re going to steal your neighbor’s newspaper, that’s the time to do it.
Case #14 From Russia with Lunch
Whenever a mystery lands on my plate, I dig right in, like a hungry worm munching a dirt sandwich. But this time, I nearly choked on the clues.
The investigation began simply enough, with a teacher’s pet acting wacko. But then the supernatural and the high tech collided, and my case took a turn for the weird. Kindergartners started beating up sixth graders, and my faithful partner and best friend Natalie Attired abandoned me in my hour of need.
To say I landed in a tight spot is like calling the Ice Age a wee bit of cool weather. I found myself fighting for my life with my back to the wall.
Would I be able to win back Natalie and return Emerson Hicky to normal? One thing’s for certain: The crazy, mixed-up mastermind behind it all was the last creature anyone expected.
Case #15 Dial M for Mongoose
My investigations often show me the seamy underbelly of school life, but this case threw me for a loop.
A deadly stink bomb was unleashed, a school building fell to rubble, money went missing from the principal’s office, and that’s just a start! My endurance for trouble was tested, but so was my loyalty: Someone tried to get my mongoose janitor pal Maureen DeBree fired.
A true-blue P.I. doesn’t take that kind of monkey business lying down. Standing up, maybe. And stand up I did—to some very shifty school bullies. I kept digging for the truth like a mole after an earthworm sandwich. Oh, foolish detective.