Nick and Tesla's Secret Agent Gadget Battle

by Bob Pflugfelder

  AP DVTA TD TY FYNWP YPHE’D CZZX

  “Mmm mmmm,” Silas grunted.

  “Almost done,” Nick said.

  “Mmm mmmm!”

  “I said I’m almost done.”

  “MMM MMMM!”

  “Geez, Silas!” Nick pulled out his head and shoulders from under the sink. “I said I’m—oh.”

  Not one but two people were looking down at him from the doorway now.

  One was Silas.

  The other was Skip.

  “You were right,” Nick said to Silas. “The pendants are not under the sink. Hi, Skip. What’s up?”

  Skip was tilting his head to get a better look at the pad of paper in Nick’s hand—and the coded message that was plainly visible on it.

  “ ‘Ap divta tud tie fyunwip yupheed cizzix’?” he said. “What does that mean?”

  “Oh. Well. That. It’s a … a …”

  Skip untilted his head.

  He was staring straight into Nick’s eyes now.

  “A word jumble,” Nick said. “You know—one of those daily puzzles from the newspaper? This one’s had me stumped all day. I can’t stop thinking about it. I just love anagrams and riddles.”

  “So what is it today?” Skip asked.

  “What is what?”

  Skip pointed at the coded message.

  “Today’s riddle. Isn’t that how word jumbles usually work? There’s a riddle, and that’s the answer.”

  “Why, yes. Yes, that is how it works. Today’s riddle is … uhh … uhhhh …”

  Nick actually hated riddles. He couldn’t think of even one.

  He looked at Silas, eyes wide with panic.

  Silas put a finger to his sealed lips and shrugged.

  Sorry, he was saying. I’m not supposed to talk, remember?

  Nick vowed to make him say something very soon. Something along the lines of “Ouch!”

  “Oh! Now I remember!” Nick said. “What’s black and white and red all over?”

  Skip scowled.

  “That’s had you stumped all day?” he said. “Everybody knows that one. It’s a newspaper.” Skip drummed his fingers on his chin. “Or a zebra with a sunburn.”

  “A zebra with a sunburn!” Nick cried. “That’s it! It fits perfectly!”

  “It does?”

  Nick stuffed the paper into his backpack before Skip could look at it again.

  “Yes! Excellent! Come on, Silas. Let’s go tell Tesla and DeMarco we solved it.”

  As Nick and Silas hurried down the hallway toward the stairs, Skip stepped into the bathroom and closed the door.

  Good. Let him take his time.

  The man had come to the house supposedly looking for spiders. But now he was about to be caught in his own web.

  Nick edited his secret message for Tesla as the two of them stuck their heads in the refrigerator talking loudly about the leftover pizza they were pretending to look for.

  “I don’t think Uncle Newt would’ve eaten the last piece. You know how he hates mushrooms,” Nick said as “AP DVTA TD TY FYNWP YPHE’D CZZX” became “AP DVTA TD TY FYNWP YPHE’D CZZX ESP FADELTCD MLESCZZX.”

  Tesla used her code wheel to decipher the message, but she didn’t write it down. For all she knew, there was a hidden camera in the mayonnaise. If she and Nick were being watched, the bad guys would know they were up to something, but at least she could make it hard for them to know what.

  Slowly, silently, AP DVTA TD TY FYNWP YPHE’D CZZX ESP FADELTCD MLESCZZX took form in Tesla’s mind.

  SKIP IS IN UNCLE NEWT’S ROOM THE UPSTAIRS BATHROOM.

  Perfect. It was time to act.

  “Oh, well. It wasn’t very good pizza anyway,” Tesla said.

  She backed out of the refrigerator, turned toward DeMarco, and blinked both eyes at him twice.

  He was standing by the window that looked out onto the backyard. When he saw Tesla’s signal—the one they’d agreed on when making their plans at Silas’s house—he pretended to notice something outside.

  “Hey,” he said. “Isn’t that a Nuttall’s woodpecker in that tree?”

  Nick and Tesla hurried to the window and stared out in wonderment at absolutely nothing.

  “Yes! It is!” Tesla said.

  “Uncle Newt is going to be so excited!” said Nick. “He might not mention it very often or have any books about it around the house, but we all know how much he loves bird-watching, and the Nuttall’s woodpecker is exactly the bird he’s been hoping to see all summer, though he’s rarely talked about it or—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Tesla cut in, annoyed. She started toward the stairs to the basement laboratory. “The point is we need to get Uncle Newt up here before that bird flies away, right?”

  “Right,” said Nick.

  He and Tesla went down to the lab while DeMarco and Silas stood stiffly by the window trying to act awed by the sight of a nonexistent woodpecker.

  “Ah! The children!” Oli said when he saw Nick and Tesla coming down the stairs. He wasn’t mashing rotten fruit with his feet any longer. Now he was scooping the glistening yellow-brown muck out of the tub and stuffing it into plastic bags. “It is evening, and you hunger and wonder what is for the dinner, yes? Well, you are in luck. Oli will make for you his famous Australian borscht!”

  “Australian borscht?” said Nick.

  “Later, Oli,” said Tesla. “Uncle Newt, could you come upstairs, please? There’s something we need to show you.”

  Uncle Newt looked up from the engine he’d been tinkering with.

  “Can’t it wait till after the borscht? Oh, and by the way—none for me, Oli. I’ll just nuke myself a Hot Pocket.”

  Oli furrowed his heavy brow.

  “You will do what to your pockets?”

  “Please, Uncle Newt,” Nick said. “It’ll just take a minute.”

  Uncle Newt eyed the backpacks the kids were wearing.

  “This isn’t going to involve hiking, is it?”

  “No,” said Tesla. “No hiking.”

  “Fine. Oli, you keep bagging up that new batch of compost. I’ll begin exothermic reaction tests after dinner.”

  “What kind of tests?” Oli said.

  Tesla pointed at the muck in his hand.

  “He’s gonna set that on fire and see if it explodes.”

  “Oh.”

  “Boy, oh, boy,” Uncle Newt chuckled as he went up the stairs. “For a guy who wants to be a M.A.D. Scientist, that Oli sure has a lot to learn. So, what is it you want to show me?”

  “It’s in the backyard,” Nick said. “Though I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s moved, forcing us to chase after it.”

  “It’s moved,” DeMarco said when Nick and Tesla and Uncle Newt stepped into the kitchen. “We’ll have to chase after it.”

  “Told ya,” Nick said.

  “Come on!” said Tesla.

  She grabbed her uncle by one hand, Nick grabbed the other, and Silas and DeMarco swooped in from behind.

  After some tugging and shoving and feigned excitement, they had Uncle Newt in the middle of his backyard.

  “This far enough?” Nick asked.

  Tesla looked around. The sun was setting, giving the yard a gray, gloomy look. Yet there was still enough light to see that there was nothing nearby but grass and weeds and big, black streaks of scorched earth where one experiment or another had gone awry.

  Most important, there was nothing that could hide a mic or camera.

  Tesla let go of Uncle Newt, and Nick did the same.

  “You’re not about to blow something up, are you?” someone called out.

  Everyone turned to find Julie Casserly stepping out her back door, phone in hand.

  “Don’t worry, Julie!” Uncle Newt reassured her with a smile. “That won’t be till later!”

  Julie didn’t look reassured. She was punching numbers into her phone as she went back inside.

  “For once, I hope she’s calling the police,” Nick said.

  Tesla nodded. />
  “Couldn’t hurt to have Sergeant Feiffer around.”

  “Nick, Tesla—what is going on?” Uncle Newt asked.

  “We’ll tell you,” Nick said, “if you’ll just turn your back to the house and try to look like you’re watching a Nuttall’s woodpecker.”

  Uncle Newt thought it over for a moment.

  “Fair enough,” he said.

  He turned and opened his eyes wide.

  “Ooo … what brilliant plumage!” he cooed. “Good enough?”

  Nick and Tesla were already digging around in their backpacks.

  “You remember that message from our mom about the spy?” Nick said. “The one that was mysteriously deleted?”

  “Of course,” said Uncle Newt.

  “We know who Mom was warning us about,” said Tesla.

  She held up a small bowl she’d taken from her backpack. She’d drained the water, but a black and red residue remained—as did a little brown body with eight curled, hairy legs.

  “What’s that?” Uncle Newt asked.

  “That’s the black widow you and Hiroko found,” Nick told him. “Only it’s not a black widow.”

  “Black widow spiders don’t have hairy legs,” Tesla said.

  “They don’t?”

  “Would National Geographic for Kids lie?” Tesla said. “And anyway, even if black widows did have hairy legs, they definitely wouldn’t lose their color when you soak them in water.”

  “You’re saying that’s a fake?”

  “Exactly,” said Nick. “The only thing we can’t figure out is how it got into the house. I mean, someone must have planted it …”

  Nick didn’t want to come right out and suggest that it had been his uncle’s special lady-friend, Hiroko. So he just let the idea hang there in the hope that his uncle would reach for it himself.

  “Hmmm,” Uncle Newt said. “I suppose Skip could have left it when he came in to do his sales pitch yesterday afternoon.”

  “Wait,” said Tesla. “What?”

  “Skip was here yesterday?” said Nick.

  Uncle Newt nodded.

  “He was going door to door talking about Verminator Pest Control.”

  “And it didn’t seem suspicious when you found a black widow spider on your dining room table, like, an hour later?” DeMarco asked.

  “Nope,” said Uncle Newt. “It seemed like great timing!”

  The kids blinked at one another in disbelief. Even Silas looked taken aback by Uncle Newt’s obtuseness.

  “Well, it certainly makes sense that it was Skip,” Nick said. “Because look at this.”

  He handed his uncle the picture of Skip stealing his pendant.

  “That was taken by a hidden camera in our room,” Tesla explained. “And we found this on my bike.”

  She held out what was left of the mini-mic they’d shown to Hiroko. Despite what Nick’s stomp had done to it, Uncle Newt recognized it for what it was.

  “So Skip’s spying on us. Stealing from us,” he said. “Leaving spiders with bad dye jobs lying on the furniture.” He pounded a fist into his palm. “Not cool!”

  “You believe us, then?” Tesla asked.

  “Of course! Don’t I always?”

  “Not really,” Nick grumbled.

  “Mm mmmm mm mm mm mmm?” Silas said to Uncle Newt.

  “You can talk now,” Tesla told him.

  “So what do we do now?” Silas said again, this time with his mouth open.

  “Are you going to call the police?” DeMarco asked Uncle Newt.

  “I’m not sure they’d believe me,” he said. “I think I lost a lot of my credibility after I called about Bigfoot.”

  “Oh, great,” Tesla groaned.

  “I don’t think the UFO sighting helped any, either,” Uncle Newt went on. “According to Sergeant Feiffer, the police department’s policy on me is ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you.’ ”

  “Just our luck,” Silas said. “We finally get a grownup on our side, but he can’t help us because the police think he’s crazy.”

  Uncle Newt put his hands on his hips.

  “Who says I can’t help? Maybe I can’t call the police, but that doesn’t mean I’m useless. Just try this on for size: have any of you seen a Verminator truck parked in front of the house?”

  The kids exchanged puzzled glances, then turned back toward Uncle Newt and shook their heads.

  “There isn’t one, is there?” said Tesla.

  “Nope. There’s not.”

  “You noticed that and still you weren’t suspicious of Skip?” Nick said.

  Uncle Newt shrugged.

  “I thought maybe his truck was getting a tune-up,” he said. “Anyway, my point is this. It’s getting dark, so Skip’ll be wrapping up soon. When he goes, we need to follow him. He’s obviously working for somebody. That’ll be the quickest way to find out who.”

  “I like how you think!” Tesla declared, looking a little surprised by the words coming out of her own mouth. “We had to follow someone in the dark a couple weeks ago and we came up with a totally cool way to do it. All we’ll need are a bunch of highlighter markers, a plastic bag, some water, a pin, and about half an hour to put it all together.”

  “Hey!” a gruff voice barked.

  Everyone looked back at the house.

  Skip was leaning out the back door.

  “You’re spider-free,” he said. “I’m leaving.”

  “Great! Wonderful! I’ll be right there! I have some questions for you!” Uncle Newt called to him. “Thank you, children. That really was one impressive … uhh …”

  “Woodpecker,” Nick murmured.

  “Woodpecker! Yeah, wow! Gosh oh golly, could he ever peck!”

  Uncle Newt patted Nick and Tesla on the head, then dropped his voice low.

  “There’s no time for totally cool. We’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way. Be ready.”

  Then he turned and walked off toward the back door.

  “What’s the old-fashioned way and how do we get ready for it?” DeMarco whispered to Nick and Tesla.

  They looked at each other blankly.

  They had no idea.

  Skip and Uncle Newt went inside, leaving the kids alone in the backyard. The sun was fully set now, and the sky had gone from dusky gray to nighttime black.

  “I can only think of one old- fashioned way to follow somebody,” said Nick.

  “On horses?” Silas guessed, clearly excited by the idea despite that there were no stables nearby.

  “No,” Nick said. “You just … follow them.”

  Tesla nodded.

  “No gadgets, no tricks. I think you’re right. That’s what Uncle Newt meant. Come on.”

  She led the boys toward the back patio, then skirted around it, slipping into the blackness that ran along the side of the house.

  “When Skip comes out the front door, we’ll trail him to his car,” she said.

  “And then what?” DeMarco asked. “We hitchhike after him?”

  “Well—”

  Tesla was spared the indignity of finishing the sentence (which was going to end with “I don’t have a clue”) by the large, dark shape that suddenly separated itself from the shadows to cut them off.

  “Eeee!” Nick screeched, jumping a foot straight into the air.

  “Aaaa!” the shape howled back, equally startled. “Is there bear behind me?”

  The shape was Oli.

  He peered over his broad shoulder.

  “Oh. It is Oli who scares you,” he said when he saw that a bear wasn’t sneaking up on him. “I am sorry.”

  “Why would you be scared of bears?” DeMarco asked him. “I thought you were supposed to be from Australia.”

  “I am! It’s just that … uhh … have you not heard of the ferocious koala bears that roam my homeland?”

  “Koalas aren’t ferocious,” said Nick.

  “They’re not even really bears,” said Tesla.

  Oli swiped a hand at them.

&
nbsp; “Koala propaganda,” he said. “Anyhoo, as I think is said in your country, I did not come find you to discuss the man-eating mini-bears of Australia. I come on more important matter.”

  “Yes?” Nick said, leaning to look around Oli.

  He could just barely make out the path that led from Uncle Newt’s front door to the street. Skip wasn’t walking along it, but he might at any second.

  They had to wrap it up fast.

  “I hoped to make for your dinner the Australian borscht,” Oli said. “But I am finding no beets or potatoes. Even of the sour cream I see nothing. The closest I come is this Miracle Whip in your refrigerator, but I do not trust it. It sounds more like weapon than food!”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Tesla, also peering impatiently at the front yard. “So?”

  “So …”

  Oli lifted something squat and cylindrical he’d been holding in his left hand.

  A jar of pickles.

  “This is closest I come to fresh vegetable,” he said. “What do you think of refreshing pickle salad?”

  “Ew,” Tesla said.

  The sound of voices and a door opening came from around the corner, at the front of the house.

  “I mean, sounds delicious!” Tesla said.

  “Yeah! Yum!” said Nick.

  They took Oli by the arms and began tugging him toward the backyard.

  “Why don’t you start on the salad right now?” said Nick.

  “You’ll get to the kitchen quicker if you go this way,” said Tesla.

  “Oh, I see you are hungry!” Oli enthused. “I promise, you will not be disappointed with what I prepare! Oli’s pickle salad will make the Froot Hoops and Popping Tarts in your uncle’s pantry look like filth scraped from hoof of diseased cow!”

  “Wonderful, great,” said Nick.

  “Fantastic, excellent,” said Tesla.

  They gave Oli a little push that sent him on his way toward the backyard. Then they spun around and hurried back to Silas and DeMarco, who were peeking cautiously around the side of the house.

  “Did Skip hear us?” Tesla whispered.

  “No,” DeMarco said. “I think your uncle’s been stalling him to give us time to get in position.”

  Tesla and Nick leaned out just far enough to see the front porch.

  “So it’s your expert opinion as an exterminator,” Uncle Newt was saying to Skip, “that if I were bitten by a radioactive spider, I wouldn’t develop the ability to crawl up walls?”