by Dave Keane
“You’re scaring the baby,” she says.
“Maybe she just has an air bubble,” I grumble. I run my fingers through my hair. “Remind me to have my head examined once this is over. I think my brain has been removed, too, considering I invited you along to solve a mystery.”
“I think you might be right,” she says, although I’m not really listening anymore. I’m too busy staggering past the final two houses before I turn into Mr. Klopper’s driveway.
“I’m up here!” Mr. Klopper hisses. I turn and see his beard in an upstairs window. “I’ll be right down. Don’t say anything to Lorraine.” The beard vanishes.
“Who the heck is Lorraine?” I ask, turning to Hailey. “Is there another glove I haven’t met yet?”
“Lorraine is Mrs. Klopper’s first name,” Hailey says. “She’s a librarian and a good friend of mine. You’d better watch out, Sherlock; she doesn’t suffer fools lightly.”
“What’s that supposed—” Before I can finish, the Kloppers’ door swings open and my eyes take in the figure of Lorraine Klopper. Thankfully she doesn’t have a massive beard. But she is holding the ugliest, scariest hairless monkey that I have ever seen.
Chapter Six
The Naked Truth
“So you must be Sherlock, the kid detective,” Mrs. Klopper says with a hint of amusement in her eyes. “I’ve heard about you.”
“What is that?” I squawk, unable to peel my eyes off the creature she’s holding.
“Oh, Doreen, let’s say hello to Fluffy!” Hailey squeals, and runs up to the bug-eyed beast.
“Fluffy?” I croak.
Hailey even touches it. Gross! For a moment, I think the animal may be a weasel that someone has cruelly attacked with an electric shaver.
“This is our cat,” Mrs. Klopper chuckles, probably noticing my lip curling up in disgust. “She’s a Sphynx. It’s a hairless breed.”
“I thought so,” I manage to blurt out.
Hands down, Fluffy the nude cat is the freakiest, most unnatural-looking pet on planet Earth. It doesn’t even have whiskers, for pete’s sake! Who ever heard of a hairless cat? Why not get a toothless beaver? Or a three-legged snake? Or a goldfish that doesn’t know how to swim?
I’m feeling sweaty again.
“The Sphynx is a recent breed of cat,” Hailey says, rubbing the unfluffy Fluffy behind her hairless ears. “The first was born in Canada about forty years ago. They’re very special cats.”
‘That’s my girl,” Mrs. Klopper says to Hailey, like she couldn’t be prouder. I think she even winks at her.
I figure that Mrs. Klopper must know Hailey from Minds of Tomorrow, a group of nerds that Hailey belongs to. Basically, Minds of Tomorrow is a small collection of overly smart kids who meet at the Baskerville main library on Saturday mornings. As far as I can tell, they just sit around flipping through books while complaining about how hard life is when your brain is as big as a watermelon.
I can see that Mr. Klopper is now nervously fidgeting with his beard behind Mrs. Klopper and the hairless wonder. I’m struck by the fact that Mr. Klopper and Fluffy are at opposite ends of the hair spectrum.
“Sherlock Sherlock,” Mr. Klopper says urgently from behind his wife. “Why don’t I show you that scarab I was telling you about?”
Scarab? What in the world is he talking about?
“Would you like to pet her before you see the scarab?” Mrs. Klopper says with a twinkle in her eye.
Trying not to seem like I’m about to yark the entire contents of my digestive system down Fluffy’s enormous ears, I run my fingers over the beast’s back. It purrs like a hairless motor. I can feel its delicate bones. It feels like a leather hot-water bottle. I may as well have scraped my fingernails across a chalkboard! I have the willies so bad that, for an instant, I seriously consider pulling a finger off Doreen so I can wash my hands.
“Why don’t we go have some tea in the garden?” Mrs. Klopper says to Hailey.
I can’t get away from Lorraine and the naked cat fast enough. I hurry after Mr. Klopper and follow his bouncing beard down the stairs to his basement. Could this case get any weirder? From sheep-sized beards and water-filled gloves to brainless skulls and cats plucked as smooth as chickens, the strangeness just keeps coming.
I recall something Sherlock Holmes tells his assistant, Dr. Watson, in one of his movies: Facts are like the mud that you make bricks out of. And you can’t solve a case without any bricks. So someone better start slinging mud fast!
Sadly, this nugget of wisdom doesn’t give me any comfort, because when I step into Mr. Klopper’s basement, I feel like I’ve been hit with a ton of bricks.
Chapter Seven
Unseen Crime Scene
My eyes sweep over Mr. Klopper’s basement and soak up every detail like two tiny sponge cakes. But two words tumble around inside my head like a pair of acrobatic hippos: “Dead End.”
Dang! I know The Great Detective would never jump to this conclusion. But sometimes my ability to solve mysteries relies more on instinct than logic.
In case you don’t already know, instincts are the things we do without actually needing to think about them. Blinking, yawning, and picking our noses are simple examples that everyone can understand. But sometimes they’re more complicated. And while I can never say exactly where my instincts come from, they’re usually right on target. I’ve learned to listen to them.
My hero, Sherlock Holmes, almost never uses instincts to solve his mysteries. Instead, he relies on pure logic and an amazing ability to tell you some guy’s complete life story from the way his boot left a scuff mark on a windowsill.
“Jeepers” is all I can think to say as I take in Mr. Klopper’s basement. I had been expecting a dark, moist dungeon with stacks of books, messy piles of research papers, discarded mummy parts, and half-eaten apples lying all over the place—a place where it would be easy to lose your head. But this basement is more like a museum. It’s spotless, organized, and bright.
“Where did you keep the head while it was here?” I ask, creeping myself out just asking the question.
“I photographed the artifact here,” Mr. Klopper says, indicating a small digital camera on a stand.
“Then where’d it go?” I ask.
“I left it here on my worktable until the next morning,” he says.
I’m struck by something that doesn’t make sense. “How does Lorraine—I mean, Mrs. Klopper—feel about you plopping old guys’ heads down all over the place?”
“Honestly, she can’t even stand to hear me talk about my museum work anymore,” he says glumly, slumping onto a stool near the camera. “She says I’ve become obsessed with Egyptian artifacts. She tells me I’ve become distant, a shadow of my former self. But even so, I’d never leave a four-thousand-year-old treasure just lying around.”
“So it was in some kind of airtight artifact case or something like that?” I ask, trying to move things along.
“No, it was in a Taste Safari animal crackers box.”
“Are you kidding me?” I gasp. “Why on earth would you carry something so valuable around in a box that was designed for little vanilla lions, tigers, and bears? Oh, my!”
“It was actually one of the assorted flavor boxes, with chocolate, cherry, boysenberry, and—”
“Mr. Klopper!” I interrupt. “I need facts if I’m going to get you out of this. But some facts don’t help me make bricks, they just get my wheels stuck in the mud. So please stick to the point.”
“I used the animal crackers box to sneak out the head,” he says, nervously shooting out another spray of beard pollution. “It was the only way I could get it out without anybody noticing.”
The gears in my head have become gummed up with the desperation of this situation. I let out a heavy sigh of exasperation. I have the sinking feeling that Mr. Klopper’s turkey is cooked.
“I was down here most of the night, photographing it,” Mr. Klopper starts up again all on his own. “In the morning, I
came down here, snatched the box off my worktable, and left for work. At work, it sat on my desk all morning. I thought I’d have a chance to get the head back to its proper place when everyone was out for lunch. But when I opened the box, it had turned into a head of butter lettuce.”
“What a mess,” I say with a shake of my head. “Could the head have rolled out of the box somewhere in the car?” I ask hopefully.
“No, I could feel it in the box when I carried it into work, past Benito. He’s our museum’s security guard.”
The head of butter lettuce is the thing that doesn’t make sense. It simply doesn’t fit. Then I have an idea. “Was the animal crackers box ever alone on your desk? Did you ever leave it unattended this morning?”
Mr. Klopper looks up and blinks a few times, quietly recalling the dreadful events of this morning. “Of course I did. I had several staff meetings about preparations for tonight’s event. But nobody knew it was there! Besides, who would do such—”
“I must get inside your museum right away!” I announce, my heart galloping into high gear. “I need to see your desk. Your office. Where you work. Mr. Klopper, I think this is an inside job.”
“It will be difficult to—”
“It will not be as difficult as going to jail,” I say, instantly feeling bad about my outburst. I can actually see Mr. Klopper’s beard lose some of its puffiness. “There’s no time to discuss it. We must leave immediately.”
“I must warn you,” Mr. Klopper says with a slight tremble in his voice. “Our museum is extremely private about its operations. I will have to sneak you in. And if you’re caught by Benito or the museum director, I may not be able to protect you.”
“I eat risk for breakfast,” I peep, thinking instantly that it’s a dumb thing to say, especially considering my ultrasensitive stomach.
Chapter Eight
Some Other Time
“Could someone please explain to me how this old guy’s head got detached from the rest of him in the first place?”
Hailey, Doreen, and I are holding on for dear life in the backseat of Mr. Klopper’s car. Mr. Klopper is driving his car like he just robbed a bank. It’s funny, but you never think of people with giant beards as fast drivers.
“Back in the eighteenth century,” Mr. Klopper says, “visitors to Egypt liked to bring home souvenirs of their vacation down the Nile River. So they often snapped off hands, toes, and heads of mummies as keepsakes.”
As if the crazy driving isn’t enough to make my stomach feel like it’s about to blow peach cobbler all over the back of Mr. Klopper’s getaway car, the thought of cracking off some guy’s toe and stuffing it in my pocket is speeding the process along nicely.
Thankfully, Mr. Klopper stomps on the brakes as he decides at the last moment that running through a red light is not worth it.
My stomach breathes a momentary sigh of relief.
Of course, Hailey just has to add her two cents. “Mummy hands were the most popular thing to take, because they often had fine jewelry and valuable amulets wrapped inside.”
“Very good,” Mr. Klopper says, looking admiringly at Hailey in the rearview mirror.
“Mr. Klopper, do you always drive this fast?” I ask.
“I’ve taken much too long for lunch,” he says tightly. “I don’t want to raise any more suspicion. Benito, our security guard, doesn’t seem to like me too much.”
I think for a moment about what he means by that last sentence but decide to let it go. Instead, I look down at the clay scarab Mr. Klopper gave me back at the house—so I wouldn’t look like an idiot if Mrs. Klopper asked me about it.
“Scarab,” I have just learned, is the name for a chubby black beetle that the Egyptians just went nuts over. They made lots of these little beetles because they saw this bug as a magical symbol of new life.
“The scarab is a dung beetle,” Hailey says, noticing me studying the beetle.
“‘Dung’?”
“That means poop,” she says, enjoying showing off. “Scarabs lay their eggs in animal droppings. When the eggs hatch, dozens of baby beetles come bursting out of each poop ball. It was seen as magical.”
I quickly roll down my window.
Between Mr. Klopper’s driving and stories of magical poop bugs, it’s a miracle I haven’t already launched a stomach rocket.
Thankfully, we hit another red light.
I study the scarab while we wait. Apparently it was once used as some sort of stamp because it has lots of Egyptian writing on the back—which brings to mind Mr. Klopper’s original note to me.
“Mr. Klopper, you haven’t said anything about the symbols you wrote on your note to me,” I say, just as the tires squeal in protest when Mr. Klopper hits the gas again. “What do they mean?”
“They don’t mean anything,” he says, looking back at me longer than I think he should, considering he’s driving so fast we might actually travel in time. “Those were the same symbols scratched onto a slip of paper pinned to the head of lettuce. Very puzzling. It’s just garbled nonsense.”
“Weird,” Hailey says.
“Weird,” I murmur.
Doreen doesn’t say anything, but I’ll bet she’s thinking the same thing.
Before I can ask a follow-up question, Mr. Klopper whips the car to the curb in front of what looks like a rarely used doorway at the rear of the museum. It doesn’t even have a doorknob.
“Quickly,” he says, “get out here and wait by this door. I will open it after I enter the building through the front entrance.”
Before I know it, Hailey and I are standing on the sidewalk, watching Mr. Klopper’s car roar away.
“Weird,” Hailey says again in the sudden stillness.
“I’m sure it’s about to get a whole lot weirder,” I mumble.
Chapter Nine
Calling All Cars
“Where’d you get the cell phone?”
Hailey is punching numbers into a cell phone that has somehow appeared in her hand. Speeding cars blow by us every few seconds. It seems like all of the drivers give us odd looks, as if they’ve never seen two suspicious-looking kids hanging around on the sidewalk outside a museum’s emergency exit door.
“It’s Mom’s phone,” Hailey explains, holding it to her ear. “She gave it to me before we left. I told her I’d let her know what’s going on.”
“Mom has you spying on me?” I ask in disbelief.
“Relax,” Hailey says, waving at me like I’m a pesky fly. “Mom should know where we are. She still thinks we’re at Mr. Klopper’s house.”
“Mom never lets me take her cell phone,” I protest.
“That’s because you’re always losing things,” she says. “And besides—Oh, hi, Mom!” she says cheerfully, and turns away from me.
Where the heck is Mr. Klopper? Why is it taking him so long to open this door? And why do my cases always feel like poorly run fire drills?
I keep thinking about this last point. In his movies, Sherlock Holmes spends his cases sitting by the fire for hours, reading the paper, sucking on a pipe, and bossing around his assistant. In the real world, things just don’t work that way. Not only does your assistant rarely do what you ask, but working a real case feels more like riding a bucking bronco that’s been covered with that artificial butter flavoring they squirt on movie popcorn.
I notice Hailey approaching me. She has closed the cell phone, but she looks terrible, as if she’s just received some horrible news. My stomach drops. “What is it?” I ask breathlessly. “Is Mom okay?”
“Where is Doreen?” she asks in a faraway voice.
“I have no idea!” I say in a rush of relief and irritation. “You don’t have it?”
“No, I don’t have her,” she whispers. She stares straight ahead and blinks a few times, then hands me the phone. “I left Doreen in the back of Mr. Klopper’s car. I must go find my baby!” Without another word, she runs past me in the direction that Mr. Klopper’s car was headed just minutes earlier.
She doesn’t stop. She doesn’t look back. She turns the corner and disappears.
My sister may be a member of Minds of Tomorrow, but she doesn’t have a lick of common sense.
Just as I’m about to sprint after her, the emergency exit door bursts open with a loud groan. Mr. Klopper pokes his head out. “Hurry! Inside quickly!” he says, looking around for Hailey. “Where is your sister?”
“Uh…uh…uh,” I blabber, frozen to the sidewalk like a guy whose brain has just turned into Chinese chicken salad.
“Please, before someone sees us!” Mr. Klopper urges.
In half of a split second, I decide that Hailey can handle herself for now. I jump through the door and into an unlit hallway. In the darkness, I can barely see Mr. Klopper leading the way down the gloomy hall in front of me. Before the emergency exit door clicks back into place, I pluck the scarab stamp from my pocket and use it to keep the door from closing. Thankfully, the heavy door doesn’t crush the scarab into dust. The beetle only props open the door an inch, but it’s big enough to keep the door from locking into place. Hailey can still get in!
As I wobble half blind down the hallway after Mr. Klopper’s hurried footsteps, I feel as if I’ve once again been thrown head over heels from the buttery bronco’s back.
Before I can take a half-dozen steps, I see Mr. Klopper’s beard emerging from the darkness—it looks like a floating ghost! He’s running. His breath sounds short and raspy. “You must hide!” he huffs urgently. “They’re coming this way!”