by Tony Abbott
“Well?” said Kelly. “What’s the case?”
“This man wants us to find something,” I said. “Or someone. I’m not exactly sure.”
“What did he say?” asked Brian. “Something or someone?”
“Actually, he said both,” I said, writing that in my cluebook, too.
“Sounds mysterious,” said Mara.
“And suspicious,” said Kelly, tugging on her curls. “The best mysteries are both.”
When I told my mom where the place was, her mouth dropped open and she sat at the table. “That’s the richest part of town, Jeff. I don’t know anyone who lives up there.”
I grinned. “Well, someone named Randall Crandall knows all about the Goofballs.”
My mother nodded. “Well, there was that newspaper article and the photo in the restaurant and all those flyers you put up around town. I guess you are pretty famous.”
“And also pretty famished,” said Mara, still staring at the griddle. “Can we eat before we go?”
We did eat. Grilled cheese. With pineapple slices on the side. Mara was happy.
Twenty minutes later, we were all belted into my mom’s SUV.
Brian sat next to Kelly but not next to me. I sat next to Mara but not next to Kelly. Mara sat next to Kelly but not next to Brian.
Mom didn’t sit next to any of us because she was driving.
Which was good because our legs were too short to reach the gas pedal.
And Mom needed the gas pedal to drive us to Woodview Avenue.
And the house of Randall Crandall!
Rich, Rich, Rich!
We drove past the big woods and into the hills above Badger Point.
My mom made a right turn at the sign for Woodview Avenue and drove onto a long, winding road.
“Is this still the United States?” asked Brian, sticking his head out the car window.
“Will we have to stop for gas soon?” Kelly asked.
I looked back. “What a view! You can see the whole town from up here.”
“I can see the library,” said Mara. “Mrs. Bookman is watering her tulips.”
“Sure, but take a look at that!” said Brian, sticking his head out the other window.
And there it was. A house bigger than any house I had ever seen.
My mom made a sound like, “Ohhhhhh!”
Two rows of tall trees lined the road leading up to the front door, which stood at the top of a long flight of steps.
My mom stopped the car and breathed sort of funny. “I’ll stay here. I feel faint.”
“Don’t worry, Mom,” I said. “We’ll try not to get lost.”
We walked to the foot of the staircase.
“Race you to the door!” said Mara.
“You’re on!” I cried.
We all ran up the stairs for the door. At the last second, Kelly’s arms went wild, Brian ducked sideways, Mara fell into me, and we all toppled into the front door.
At the exact moment it opened.
A super-tall man in a fancy black vest looked down at us.
“The Goofballs, I presume?” he said.
I tried to smile. “You presume correctly.”
“I am Picksniff, Mr. Randall Crandall’s butler,” the man said. “Please walk this way.”
But we couldn’t walk that way.
Picksniff had super-long legs, and we had to run to keep up with him.
First, there was an entrance hall, then some stairs, then another hall, then five doors, then even more stairs.
“This is like a tour of the White House!” Mara said in awe.
“Actually, the Crandall residence is bigger than the White House,” Picksniff said with a sniff as he hurried on.
“With more doors than a door store,” Kelly said, counting them as we passed. “I bet there’s something suspicious going on behind each one.”
“Or maybe something delicious going on,” whispered Mara.
Finally, after what seemed like half an hour, the butler stopped at a wide set of double doors.
“Wait in here,” he said. “Mr. Crandall will be with you shortly.”
He opened the doors for us, then hurried away on his long legs.
“Did that guy just call me ‘Shorty’?” whispered Brian.
“No,” said Mara, standing as tall as she could. “But I will. Shorty!”
Then we stepped inside the room.
And we all gasped with disbelief.
“Wow!” I said.
“It’s bigger than our school!” Kelly said.
“It’s bigger than Badger Point!” cried Mara.
“It’s bigger than the world!” Brian said.
“Wow!” I said again.
Large paintings in gold frames were hung all over the walls like in a museum. In the middle of the floor sat a rug that could cover my entire yard. Around it were a dozen large, soft chairs. Behind them stood a fireplace you could park a truck in. I fumbled for my cluebook and wrote some more notes.
Rich, rich, rich!
Wow, wow, $ $ wow!
I know. Not the greatest notes. But they were the best I could think of.
Along one whole wall were shelves of books crammed tighter than socks in a sock drawer.
“You can discover a lot about a person from his books,” said Kelly, power walking to the shelves. “And Randall Crandall has all the classics. Look. The Molar Express.”
“And Charlotte’s Website!” Brian said.
“Plus my favorite,” said Mara. “The Magic School Bug—”
“Welcome, Goofballs!”
We froze when we heard the voice. It was the deep voice I had heard on the phone. “Let me introduce myself. I am Randall Crandall.”
The moment we turned away from the bookshelves, one of the huge chairs slowly swiveled around to face us.
A person was sitting in it.
I blinked when I saw him.
One of the notes in my cluebook was completely wrong.
Randall Crandall wasn’t who I expected.
He wasn’t who I expected … at all!
The Sound of Thunder
I stared at him. “But you’re … you’re …”
“A kid?” Randall Crandall said. “You are a good detective!”
He was a kid. He even looked as if he was in the same grade as us. Except that he was dressed like a principal. A principal who wears short pants!
“Is that a bow tie?” Brian asked.
“Are those diamonds on your socks?” asked Mara.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “The phone call. Your voice just now.”
The boy stood and showed us a plastic cup with rubber bands stretched across the opening. He put it near his mouth.
“A simple trick,” he said. “You press your lips on the rubber bands, lower your voice, and talk into the plastic cup like this…. ”
The voice that came out next was raspy like an old man’s. “I have heard you are the best.”
“Except that you fooled me with a plastic cup!” I said.
“And it’s super hard to fool a Goofball,” Brian said, examining the cup closely.
Randall smiled. “That’s exactly why I asked you to come. Please sit.” He motioned to the big, soft chairs near the garage-size fireplace.
Before Randall could sit down, his butler rushed into the room and slid a chair under him.
Randall Crandall frowned. “Picksniff is always around. He’s been with me for—”
“—ages and ages,” said Picksniff.
“It’s Pick’s job to—”
“—help Master Randall with things,” the butler added.
Randall leaned closer to us. “Including helping me finish my—”
“—sentences,” said Picksniff.
“Watch this,” Randall whispered to us, a twinkle in his eye. He stuck his nose into a vase of daffodils on a nearby table.
Then he squinched up his face as if he were going to sneeze.
“Ah-Ah-Ah—”
> “—CHOO!” said Picksniff.
Randall’s butler even sneezed for him!
“Please remove the flowers, Pick,” Randall said, wiping his nose.
The butler frowned. “But they were delivered fresh this morning, sir.”
Randall nodded at Picksniff. “I know, but unless you want to be sneezing for me all day, you’d better take them. Suddenly, I seem to be allergic to daffodils.”
“Yes, sir.” Picksniff took the flowers away.
“So, what’s this case all about?” I asked.
Randall’s smile faded, and he looked out the window as if at something far away.
“Thunder,” he said quietly.
I looked out the window, too. The sky was blue and clear. “I don’t hear thunder outside.”
“No, I mean my pony,” Randall said.
“Your pony is outside?” Brian asked.
“No, I mean my pony’s name is Thunder,” Randall said. “And he’s … missing.”
“That’s terrible,” Mara said. “Jeff, your cluebook.”
“Got it,” I said.
Randall continued. “I always hear Thunder neighing this time of day. We would go riding, then we’d have lunch together. But now he’s gone.”
Thunder
Randall’s pet pony
Gone
When I wrote those words, I understood what Randall had meant on the phone. He had said that something or someone had disappeared.
You could say that a pony was a thing, but to Randall his pony was someone he cared about. I added another clue.
Thunder friend
Kelly twirled her curls slowly. “Can you describe Thunder to us?”
“I can do better than that,” Randall said, reaching for a picture of a short brown pony with furry ears and a long, wavy mane. “This is Thunder. He’s ten hands high. That’s forty inches.”
“He’s pretty small,” said Brian. “With a name like Thunder, I expected a huge, monster-size horse.”
Randall sighed. “That’s our little joke. Thunder’s shy and not like his name at all. He’s terrified of storms, and he doesn’t like to travel. In fact, I have to trick him to get him into his trailer. He’s rather a scaredy-cat.”
Which is what I wrote.
Thunder afraid of thunder
Tricked into his trailer
Scaredy-cat
“I think we’ll need some books about ponies,” said Mara.
Suddenly, I remembered the book that Joey Myers had dropped that morning at the library: All About Horses.
Could Joey possibly be a suspect?
Kelly jumped from her chair and stood up in the gigantic fireplace. She looked like an actress standing on a stage.
“One more question,” she said. “When exactly did you first notice Thunder was missing?”
“This morning,” said Randall softly. “His hoof prints just vanished behind the stable. How can we find him?”
I looked at my notes. “First, we take a look at the last place Thunder was. The stable.”
But when I tried to get up from the chair, I couldn’t. It was too squishy. Brian tried to get out and pull me up, but he was stuck, too.
“Kelly, help!” shouted Mara, reaching out for her but only managing to pull Kelly into her lap.
“Picksniff!” yelled Randall Crandall.
In two seconds, Picksniff was there, pulling us all safely to our feet.
“The butler did it!” Brian said.
“Butlers usually do,” said Picksniff. “But not this time. I do hope you find Randall’s pony.”
Twenty seconds later, we were in Randall Crandall’s personal elevator, heading down to Thunder’s personal stable.
Hay!
The stable was a long white building as large as an airplane hangar.
“This is where Thunder lives,” Randall said. “Or, it used to be.”
When he pulled open the doors, a strong smell came floating out.
But it wasn’t what you think.
The smell was sweet. Like a garden.
“Look,” said Kelly, pointing to the ground inside the stable.
It was covered with yellow and purple flower petals.
“What happened?” I asked. “Why are there flowers all over the stable?”
“Thunder likes flowers,” Randall said. “He likes their smell and even likes to eat them. He’ll travel only if I fill his trailer full of flowers. He’s still scared and won’t move an inch once he’s in the trailer, but the flowers comfort him when we travel. These flowers were delivered first thing this morning.”
I wrote that down in my cluebook.
“In fact, there’s only one food Thunder loves more than flowers,” Randall said, “and it’s one of the reasons I called you—”
“I see footsteps!” Brian interrupted.
He sank to his knees, dug into a pocket, and took out a bendy straw, a folding toothbrush, and three quarters. He brushed and fiddled and rolled them on the ground for a minute, then he looked up. “Just as I thought. Recent footsteps!”
“They’re called footprints,” said Mara, staring at them through her big green glasses. “And they’re definitely not grown-up prints. They’re kid footprints!”
Randall blinked. “A lady was driving the flower truck this morning. The flower shop is called Petals and Buds. There were a couple of boys with her.”
I frowned. “Petals and Buds? A couple of—”
Mara gasped. “Joey Myers’s mother owns that flower shop!”
“And those weren’t boys,” Kelly said. “They were Joey and Billy! I knew it was them! Who are the pirate eyeballs now, I wonder?”
“Randall, when did you say Thunder vanished?” I asked, opening my cluebook.
“First thing this morning,” Randall said.
“The same time the boys delivered the flowers!” Kelly said, twisting her curls into a knot.
I jotted it all in my cluebook and snapped it shut. “Next stop, the flower shop.”
“Hey, that’s a rhyme,” said Brian.
“I do it all the time,” I said.
“You’re a poet,” Mara said.
“I know it,” I said.
Randall Crandall laughed. Then he frowned. “Please bring Thunder back safe and sound. I miss him.”
I knew what he meant.
Just after we had moved to Badger Point, my dog, Sparky, had gotten lost.
I was afraid I’d never see his scruffy face again. When he had finally found his way home, I didn’t stop hugging him for a long time.
Randall missed Thunder as much as I had missed Sparky.
“We’ll find Thunder,” I said. “There’s no case we can’t solve.”
“There are plenty of math problems we can’t solve,” said Mara.
“And some mysteries of the universe,” Kelly added.
“But no case,” said Brian.
“I believe you,” Randall said. “Thanks.”
We all waved good-bye as the rich boy slowly walked back to his gigantic house.
“I bet he wants to come with us,” Mara said.
Brian nodded. “I wonder if he wants to be a Goofball.”
“I’m pretty sure everybody does,” I said. “But first things first. Joey likes horses. He helped deliver flowers to Thunder this morning. Maybe he’s graduated from hamster hider to horse rustler.”
“Goofballs,” said Mara, “it sounds like we have our first real suspect.”
Kelly grinned. “My favorite word!”
Keep Your Plants On!
Five minutes later, my mom dropped us at the library. We rushed in to take out books about horses, but Mrs. Bookman said most of them were already checked out.
“By guess who?” said Kelly, staring straight across the street at Petals and Buds.
“Joey’s not going to tell us much,” I said when we gathered on the sidewalk. “He thinks we’re gooballs.”
“And he’s probably still hungry because we didn’t let him finis
h that carrot stick three years ago,” Brian said. “That would make anyone mad.”
“There’s only one way to find out what we need to find out,” Kelly said. “Our specialty.”
Mara winked through her glasses. “Disguises!”
Carefully, the four of us snuck into the alley behind the shop. We found a big garbage can overflowing with leafy branches and broken blossoms.
“It smells good for garbage,” Mara said.
“Just like Thunder’s stable,” Brian said.
“Joey is so guilty,” said Kelly. “Come on.”
Kelly and Mara began stuffing leaves and flowers into their belts and socks and sleeves.
Brian and I joined them. A minute later, there were four Goofball plants in the alley.
“I want to be a hedge when I grow up,” Brian said with a chuckle.
“We’ll have to stick close,” said Mara.
“Just keep your tulips closed and let’s go inside,” Kelly said.
“Okay, but don’t leaf me here!” I said.
On my signal, all four Goofball plants shuffled into the back of the shop as quietly as we could. We saw Joey and Billy watering plants with a garden hose.
Brian nudged my branch. “Joey’s mom has a customer. Let’s listen.”
At the counter there was a woman holding a bunch of thin green stems without flowers.
I recognized her as our neighbor Mrs. Wilson.
“I ordered three dozen red tulips to be delivered this morning,” Mrs. Wilson said. “But instead, look what I got!”
Joey’s mother studied the stems without flowers. “I can’t explain it. I’m very sorry.”
Then she turned to Joey and Billy. “When you boys dropped off the flowers from the truck this morning, were they like this?”
“No,” said Joey. “They were nice.”
“Really nice,” said Billy. “All flowery.”
Mrs. Myers shook her head. “Well, did you notice anything strange?”
Joey looked at Billy.
Billy looked at Joey.
“He left the truck door open!” they both said, pointing at each other.