Smashie McPerter and the Mystery of the Missing Goop

by N. Griffin

  “There is only one sure way to do that,” said Smashie.

  Dontel’s eyes widened. “Tax Charlene?” he said incredulously.

  “No,” said Smashie. “Well, I mean, maybe we can tax her a little bit. I am kind of scared about taxing since the Mr. Bloom fiasco.” Which reminded her that she still had the apology brownies going stale in her cubby at school. Ugh. “But what I mean is that” — she gulped — “I think I am going to have to get a haircut.”

  “Smashie.” Dontel looked at her hard. “Are you sure? Your hair is already pretty —” He stopped.

  “What?” asked Smashie.

  “Nothing,” said Dontel hastily. “I think it’s really noble of you. You are sacrificing your head for the investigation.”

  “Well, someone has to. There may be important clues in that salon at Charlene’s house!”

  Dontel looked at her with deep respect.

  Smashie cleared her throat. “Mom?” she asked loudly over the guitar riffs coming from the front seat. “May I please go get a haircut?”

  “Right now?” asked her mother, startled.

  “I just think I really need one. I feel a little shaggy.”

  “But you always —” Dontel started.

  Smashie glared at him. “Plus, Charlene Stott’s mom is trying to start up her own salon, so it would be good to bring her business.”

  “Okay, I guess,” said Mrs. McPerter. “I can call Charlene’s mom.” She pulled the car over and got out her cell phone. “Hello? Mrs. Stott? Oh, Charlene! How are you, honey?”

  Dontel and Smashie exchanged significant looks.

  “This is Smashie’s mom, and she’d like to come for a haircut. Now? Great! I’ll bring her right over.” She disconnected her earbud as Smashie’s heart began to pound. “Okay, kid. Off we go. Charlene was very happy you were coming to her mother’s business. Dontel, I’ll drop you home first.”

  “Smashie,” said Dontel fervently, “thank you.”

  Smashie nodded.

  Do I have time to make a Like-Like Note Detecting Suit? she wondered wildly. But she knew she didn’t. She would have to imagine herself in one instead. And, closing her eyes, she pictured herself with Joyce’s hair heart and her mother’s other satin jacket. That one was red. But she also gave herself a badge that said INVESTIGATOR on it. If she couldn’t wear one in real life without giving herself and Dontel away, in a mind suit, she certainly could. It gave her quite a boost of confidence.

  “I won’t see you over the weekend,” said Dontel. “We are going to visit my other grandma. But don’t worry. I’ll be thinking about the case the whole time. And your head.”

  “Smashie McPerter! I haven’t seen you in ages!” Mrs. Stott was wearing a cheerful pink smock decorated with different kinds of hairdos. Updo, beehive, side swept, ponytail — the four hairstyles danced in rows across the smock.

  “It’s nice to see you, too, Mrs. Stott,” said Smashie. Her heart was pounding. How terrible would she look after this haircut? Would the other members of Room 11 make rude remarks about her hair the way they had the other day when it was especially sticky-outy? Or would they forgive her the rest of the way about Mr. Bloom because she had made this sacrifice to save the musicale?

  “I’m set up in the basement,” said Mrs. Stott. “Come on down. And let me get a smock on you, too.”

  Smashie’s smock turned out to be black with cupcakes of different flavors marching across. Perfect, thought Smashie. Sneaky black like the Thief Suit, and delicious because of cupcakes.

  “Sit down in the chair and lean back, Smashie,” Mrs. Stott instructed her. And she upended Smashie in the chair and began to wash her hair.

  “Yow!”

  “Too cold?”

  “Too hot!”

  “Sorry about that!” Mrs. Stott adjusted the water.

  “Is Charlene home?” Smashie asked as Mrs. Stott tipped the chair back up and readied her scissors. Be brave, she said to herself. Remember, it’s only hair and hair grows back.

  “Nope,” said Mrs. Stott. “She went to the park with her little sister and aunt and cousins. But maybe she’ll be back by the time we’re done.”

  Smashie was a little ashamed to find herself relieved that she wasn’t going to have to tax Charlene. Especially all by herself. And in front of Charlene’s own mother, no less.

  All around the room were pictures of people with beautiful hair sculptures.

  “Did you style all of those, Mrs. Stott?” asked Smashie.

  “I sure did!”

  Snip, snip, snip.

  Smashie’s eyes widened in alarm. Quite a lot of hair was falling on the floor.

  “You love it already, don’t you?” Mrs. Stott was smiling proudly.

  “I . . . I really like those sculptures,” said Smashie lamely. It was too hard to tell a white lie in this instance. What was going on with her bangs? And what was happening at the back of her head? How did Joyce bear this, and why would anyone even want to?

  Because I am trying to be an ace investigator is why, Smashie told herself firmly. But her reflection in the mirror was worried.

  “I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that you kids like our Herr Goop so much,” said Mrs. Stott, snipping away.

  “We love it,” said Smashie.

  “Well, we had just enough ingredients left that I made you kids another jar last night. It’s not quite full, but it ought to be enough to get most of the kids’ heads done. Charlene bagged it up to take in to school on Monday.” Mrs. Stott nodded at a little bag on the countertop.

  Smashie couldn’t help wiggling in her chair. A jar of goop prepared by Charlene! It was sure to have the next code on it. But could she get ahold of it without Mrs. Stott noticing? If she could, she and Dontel would be able to intercept the message before Carlos! Although, intercepting some like-like note wouldn’t be all that fun, Smashie thought. Still, though. They had to be sure that was all it was.

  “Did you make that jar from ingredients left over from the ones you bought with the money from your mysterious benefactor?” she asked, hoping Mrs. Stott would talk about what it was like to receive a check on a salver from a trained monkey.

  “My mysterious benefactor?” Mrs. Stott laughed. “I wish. No, this is from the very last of what I had left anyway. Last I’ll ever make, I guess, at least for a while.” She sighed. “I have to admit, Charlene and I are pretty proud of that goop.”

  “You should be,” said Smashie. “Those hair sculptures in the pictures are beautiful. And Charlene is great at using it to turn our hair into shapes, too.”

  “I agree,” said Mrs. Stott. “She has a real gift.” She sighed. “I hope this business picks up enough that she can style hair here if she wants to when she’s older. It’s hard work striking out on your own, believe me.”

  “Yes,” said Smashie, who, even though her brain was churning to figure out how to get her hands on the Herr Goop on the counter, was feeling very much alone in that haircutting chair, watching brown hanks of hair fall all around her.

  “But it was the right thing to do,” said Mrs. Stott. “I had to leave Mr. Garcia’s salon.”

  “Mr. Garcia?”

  “You know. Carlos’s dad. Oh, right, I forgot. He’s in the other third-grade class. Nice kid. But his dad —” Mrs. Stott shook her head. “He was not happy at all about my hair goop. I overheard him say that he believed he had the rights to it because I must have made it in his salon with his ingredients! ‘There’s no way she made this in her own kitchen,’ I heard him tell one of the other stylists. ‘That woman doesn’t know thing one about what ingredients work well together.’ Well, let me tell you something — I do make our goop in my own kitchen with my own ingredients, and I do, too, know what ingredients work well together on human hair!” Mrs. Stott was getting quite worked up.

  But so was Smashie. “You mean, you left that salon because Carlos’s dad was unfair to you?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  Smashie was unused to a grow
n-up talking to her about things like this. But her mind was whirling. “Would you say that you and Charlene are . . . mad at Mr. Garcia?”

  “We sure are,” said Mrs. Stott. “But I’ll show him! I’ve got haircutting skills, too, not just sculpting! I’ll make a success for myself and market our goop on my own! You mark my words!”

  “I am,” said Smashie. “I am marking them.”

  What the heck was going on? If Charlene was as mad at Carlos’s dad as her mother was, there was no way she was sending Carlos like-like notes. Charlene loved her mom and was really trying to help her start this business. But then why was she sending Carlos notes? Nothing made any sense anymore. Smashie needed to talk to Dontel.

  “Hey,” said Mrs. Stott unexpectedly. “Why don’t you take this jar of Herr Goop with you and bring it to school on Monday? It’ll save Charlene a trip down here to the basement.”

  “All right,” said Smashie dimly, scarcely believing her luck as Mrs. Stott dropped the little bag of Herr Goop in Smashie’s lap.

  Mrs. Stott finished blow-drying Smashie’s hair and stepped back. “What do you think?”

  Smashie’s jaw dropped.

  Never mind Charlene and her reaction to finding out that Smashie had the goop. How was Smashie going to face Room 11 with her hair looking like this?

  “Red satin?” asked Dontel on the bus on Monday morning. The two friends were very happy to see each other after a weekend apart. “Smashie, have you changed up your Investigator Suit jacket?”

  “Yes,” said Smashie firmly. “The kids might be on to me in that blue one, but this one will throw them off!”

  Dontel hesitated. “Will it, though?”

  “It will. I am not doing the tool belt part. I think that would give it away, if I wore both together again.”

  “Hmm.” Dontel looked at Smashie’s head. “Are you going to take that hat off?” he asked. Smashie was wearing her winter knit cap. It was awfully hot, but the alternative was worse.

  “Never. Dontel,” she said, “the sacrifice might have been Almost Too Much.”

  Dontel shook his head sorrowfully. “I really appreciate what you did, Smashie. I thought of you all weekend. You are a . . . a noble investigator.”

  “Maybe noble for no good reason, though,” said Smashie. “Dontel, I think we were wrong about most everything!” And she told him all about what Mrs. Stott had said about why she left Carlos’s dad’s salon. “She and Charlene do not like the Garcias at all! So dollars to doughnuts, this is not a matter of like-like notes at all. I have no idea what’s going on! Are you positive it was Carlos who was running away in the black sneaky Thief Suit?”

  “Yes,” said Dontel firmly. “It was his exact build, and you know what a good runner he is.”

  “Well, could we be wrong about the Charlene part? Is there anyone else who fits all those things you said about having access to the jars and knowing who is coming?”

  “I can’t think of a soul,” said Dontel. “At least, not a kid soul, and we know it’s a kid.” As he did every day, he took his sandwich out of his lunch bag and began to eat it. “Plus, Mrs. Stott would have to be a little nutty to leave notes for a kid all over town.”

  “Yes,” said Smashie. “And I’m sure we’re right about Charlene for another reason, too.” She paused significantly. Dontel stopped chewing. “Mrs. Stott told me she had just enough ingredients left to make us a close-to-full jar. Which was on the counter. Bagged by Charlene. And guess who Mrs. Stott gave it to, to bring to school!”

  “You?” Dontel said incredulously.

  Smashie nodded.

  “Well, there it is, then!” said Dontel. “High five, even if we don’t get what the heck is going on!” They slapped each other’s hands with their hands. “Smashie,” said Dontel, swallowing a bite of sandwich, “there is a code on the jar, isn’t there?”

  “There sure is!” said Smashie, and with the air of a magician pulling a bunny from a hat, she pulled the jar out of its little bag for Dontel to see. “I checked! But don’t worry. I resisted temptation and saved it to work on together.”

  “Thanks, Smash,” said Dontel.

  “Sure thing. You’d do the same for me.”

  “I would,” said Dontel.

  Then, carefully, just in case other third-graders on the bus were looking, Smashie turned the jar around so the label was visible. And sure enough, there was a code, written in Charlene’s hand.

  “Let’s get to work!” And the two friends busied themselves on the code page of their notebooks.

  “That makes it 1 ten and 6 ones,” said Dontel. “Then 21 tens and 1 one.”

  “Then 20 tens and 3 ones,” Smashie finished. “And 15 tens and 5 ones!”

  “You know, I just realized that you can just look at the first two numbers of the three-digit numbers, and then the last one, and solve the code the same way,” Dontel pointed out.

  Smashie gave him a level look.

  “I like it the math way better,” she said. “More complicated.”

  “More thinky,” Dontel agreed.

  Smashie turned to her own notebook.

  “And that makes . . .” Smashie translated busily with the help of her numbered alphabet page.

  “Which makes . . .” Dontel wrote it vertically.

  “AUTO FACE!” they said together. But Smashie remembered to whisper this time. This was no time for her to shout again and tip their hand.

  But the two friends paused. “What the heck is an auto face?” Dontel wondered out loud.

  “Maybe that front part?” Smashie suggested. “The way the headlights can look like eyeballs sometimes?”

  “But that’s every car . . .” Dontel objected. “Maybe it’s a car someone decorated,” he offered. “You know, like people sometimes put antlers and a red nose on the grille at Christmas.”

  “Or those fake eyelashes,” Smashie agreed. “But, Dontel, if it’s an actual car, it’s hopeless! We’d have to walk all over town looking at every car until we found one with a face on it, and you know our grandmothers will never let us do that!”

  “True.” Dontel sighed. “That would take us way outside the parameters of where we are allowed to go alone.” Then he sat up straight. “Smashie. Charlene — if it’s her, and we are sure it is — has only hidden her papers on shop signs so far.”

  “You are right,” Smashie agreed. “That is another clue!” But before they could write that down on their CLUE page, Smashie sat bolt upright. “Dontel! I know what sign it is!”

  “Lower your voice!” said Dontel, and Smashie subsided. But there was no stopping the excitement in her voice, even as she dropped it to a whisper.

  “Cyrus’s parents’ mechanic shop!” she said. “Grammy brings her car there whenever she can’t fix it herself.” Grammy was very good at fixing things. Or, generally she was. Sometimes her fix-its had to be fixed. “And the Hulls’ shop has a sign with a cartoon car on it! With a face!”

  “You’re right!” Dontel slapped Smashie’s hand with his hand again. “That’s it! I love that sign. But how will we get there? We have to get to it before Carlos does.”

  “Yes,” said Smashie. “But, Dontel, we are in luck! Because you know where Hulls’ Auto Body is?”

  Dontel’s face broke into a beam. “At the end of our block!”

  “Within our parameters!” For the two friends were allowed by their grandmothers to bike to the end of their long block and back. Any farther than that and special permission was required but was rarely forthcoming.

  “Yay!” said Smashie. “And we live much closer to that auto shop than Carlos does. There’s no way we won’t beat him this time!”

  “Yes!” said Dontel. “And when we see whatever is on that message, maybe we’ll get some kind of clue about Charlene’s motive for leaving him these notes.”

  “I really do hope that this is not just like-like notes,” said Smashie. “And that Charlene isn’t just sneaking around to send them to Carlos because her mom is so mad a
t Carlos’s family, and this is all a silly waste of our time after all.”

  Dontel nodded slowly. “It could well be. It’s just . . . I feel like it must be something more. Why else would Carlos dress up in —”

  “A black sneaky Thief Suit?” finished Smashie. “I don’t know. Maybe Carlos knows her mom and his dad would feel betrayed if he and Charlene were friends, so he’s hiding it, too.” She sighed. “I guess we ought to tax them both.”

  “No,” said Dontel unexpectedly. “Because if it is Charlene, and it’s something more interesting —”

  “Or more full of intrigue —”

  Dontel nodded. “— than just stupid like-like notes, we don’t want to throw her off. We can’t let her know we’re onto her. We need her to plant that auto face note —”

  “Or we’ll never know!”

  Dontel squirmed in his seat. “This day better go fast!”

  The bus arrived at school. “Everybody out!” said Mr. Potter, and with a hiss, the bus doors opened and the children piled out.

  “They’re going to make me take off this hat, aren’t they?” said Smashie sadly as they went into the school yard.

  “I’m afraid so, Smash,” said Dontel sympathetically, swallowing the last of his sandwich. “Don’t worry. I’ll be there to stick up for you.”

  “Do any of you need help figuring out what to wear for your numbers in the musicale?” Ms. Early asked her class at the start of morning meeting. “Only two days until our performance!”

  “You know I’m wearing real roller skates for my song, right?” asked Tatiana.

  “I certainly do,” said Ms. Early, making a check mark on her clipboard. “Smashie and Dontel, do you need people to wear —” She broke off. “Smashie. Hat.”

  Smashie wilted.

  “Do I have to?”

  “You do.”

  Smashie tugged off her hat.

  “Thank you,” said Ms. Early. “As I was saying, do you and Dontel need the kids to wear anything in particular for the dances?”