Jazz shook her head. “I realized last night—the timing doesn’t work.”
“What do you mean?” Milo asked.
“Well, the first day of filming was Friday. That’s when Ursula saw the Power Picks and decided she wanted one, right?”
“Yeah. So?”
“Don’t you see?” Jazz said. “Kyle said his letter came the day before that. So Ursula’s father can’t be the scammer. The letter was written before Ursula even said she wanted a Power Pick.”
Hmm. She had a point.
“Then who was the mystery man?” Milo asked.
“I don’t know,” Jazz said. “But I’m not sure he was the scammer anyway. After all, he didn’t take the Power Pick.”
“He might have if Danny hadn’t jumped out at him and scared him off,” Milo said.
“I don’t think so. He was already heading away.”
“Well, if it wasn’t the mystery man, then how come the real scammer never showed up to nab Ana’s Power Pick? The phony Power Pick, I mean.”
Jazz’s eyes widened. Slowly, she said, “Maybe that’s it.”
“What’s what?”
“Maybe the scammer knew that Ana wasn’t really leaving her Power Pick,” Jazz said. “That would be a good reason not to come.”
“You mean, somebody tipped the scammer off about our stakeout?” Milo asked. “But who would do that? No one knew about it.”
“No one except the Woofs,” Jazz said.
Milo stared at her. “You don’t think it could have been one of them!”
“They really love those Power Picks,” she pointed out. “Maybe somebody wasn’t satisfied with only having one. Maybe that person wanted a full set with all the different-colored stars.”
Milo shook his head. “I can’t believe one of the Woofs would do that. They’re your brother’s friends!”
“Not his regular friends,” Jazz said. “He only started hanging out with them because of Super Starr.”
Milo had to admit that it made sense. Who would want a complete set of Power Picks? A Super Starr fan. And a fan would know best how to trick other fans out of their Power Picks.
“The Woofs aren’t the only Super Starr fans in Westview, though,” he said. “Practically every kid in town showed up to watch the filming.”
“But the scammer also has to be someone who knew about the stakeout,” Jazz reminded him.
Milo buried his face in his hands. “I’m so confused.”
Then he remembered Dash’s lesson. Could a Venn diagram help them sort out the suspects?
He picked up Jazz’s detective notebook and sparkly purple pen. Flipping the notebook open to an empty page, he drew the double bubbles.
Holy cow.
“You’re right!” Milo said. “It’s got to be one of the Woofs. But who?”
Jazz took the notebook and made a list of the Woofs.
“It can’t be anyone who got a letter,” she said.
“Yeah,” Milo agreed. “They wouldn’t scam themselves out of their own picks.”
Jazz crossed off the names:
She said, “That only leaves …”
“Danny and Paige,” Milo finished. “So which one is the scammer?”
“I don’t know,” Jazz said. “But you and I are going to find out.”
At Paige’s house, Milo and Jazz found Paige and Ana struggling out the front door with a giant stuffed panda.
“Let me guess,” Jazz said. “Starr cares about endangered species? Starr always wanted to see China?”
Ana looked puzzled. “No. She just likes big stuffed animals. Right, Paige?”
Wedged into the doorframe, Paige wheezed, “Totally.” With a final heave, she and the panda both popped out.
“We need to talk to you,” Jazz said to Paige.
“What’s up?” Ana asked.
Jazz pulled out the double bubble chart. As she explained what it meant, Milo thought Paige looked a little sick. Ana just looked confused.
Finally Ana said, “Are you saying you think the scammer is one of us?”
“Not you, obviously,” Jazz said. “Because you got a letter. And not Chris or Kyle.”
“But that only leaves Paige and Danny!” Ana said. “And Paige would never do a thing like that! Would you?” Before Paige could respond, Ana rushed on. “It must have been Danny. He’s the one who wrecked the stakeout. Right, Paige? And he didn’t get a letter, either.”
“I got a letter,” Paige said suddenly.
Everyone stared at her.
“You did?” Milo said.
“No way!” Ana said. “How come you didn’t tell me? I can’t believe you got a letter and you didn’t say a—”
“Let her talk!” Jazz turned to Paige. “When did it come?”
“This morning, I guess. Or late last night.” Paige pointed at the mail slot in the door. “When I came down, I saw the envelope lying on the floor.”
She ran off to get the letter.
Ana sat down on the steps, her arm around the panda. Milo and Jazz waited. At last Paige came running back, waving a piece of paper.
Breathlessly, she said, “Here. See?”
Ana pulled her own letter from her jacket and held it next to Paige’s letter. “It’s exactly the same.”
Milo examined the new letter. It was just like Ana’s, down to the little star.
“I guess that settles it,” Jazz said. “The scammer must be Danny.”
Milo’s stomach sank. He knew it made sense. The clues pointed to Danny. But Danny didn’t seem like a scammer.
Milo could have seen Mr. Lollipop Head as the culprit. Or that grouchy young guy with the tiny beard. Or even The Sneer.
But Danny? He seemed like the kind of boy who took his friends’pictures—not their belongings.
As they walked toward the film lot, Paige and Ana carrying the panda bear, Milo kept glancing down at the letter in his hand. Something was bugging him. But what?
Turning the corner, Milo saw Danny standing with Chris and Kyle.
Dropping her side of the panda, Ana rushed toward them. Paige stumbled and fell. Milo and Jazz stopped to help her. By the time they joined the others, Ana and Danny were shouting at the top of their lungs.
“That’s ridiculous!” Danny yelled. “I’ve already got a Power Pick of my own! Why would I try to scam you out of yours?”
Out of the corner of his eye, Milo saw crew members turning to stare at them. The young man with the little beard was pointing in their direction. He didn’t look happy.
“You wanted ALL the color stars!” Ana accused. “You had green, so you got Kyle’s blue, and Chris’s gold, and you tried to get my magenta, and then you sent Paige—” She broke off.
Danny stabbed a finger toward Paige. “HA! Hers is green, the same as mine! What would I want another green one for? Huh?”
Ana looked confused, then angry. “But you’re the only one who didn’t get a letter! It HAS to be you!” She waved her folded letter in Danny’s face.
Milo looked at the letter. Then he looked at the letter in his own hand—Paige’s letter. All at once, he knew.
“Danny didn’t do it!” he announced. “And I can prove it!”
Everyone turned to him.
“How?” Jazz asked.
Milo took Ana’s letter and held it up next to Paige’s. “See? The letters aren’t the same.”
Ana said, “Yes, they are! I read every single word!”
“The words are all the same,” he said. “But something else is different. Something important.”
Jazz stepped forward and peered at the letters. Suddenly, her face cleared. “Oh!”
“What? I don’t get it!” Kyle said.
“Paige’s letter doesn’t have creases,” Milo explained. “It’s never been folded.”
Chris frowned. “So?”
“So, she said it came in an envelope, like Ana’s. But it didn’t. It came straight out of the printer—her printer.”
“Paige kn
ew we suspected her and Danny because they didn’t get letters,” Jazz broke in. “So she ran upstairs and printed one out—the same way she did for Kyle, Chris, and Ana.”
Everyone looked at Paige, who stood silently clutching the stuffed panda.
“Paige, how could you?” Ana cried. “I thought you were my friend!”
Paige stared at the circle of faces. “You all talk so much about being fans!” she burst out. “But nobody loves Super Starr as much as I do.”
“So you thought it was okay to steal our Power Picks?” Chris demanded.
“I had to do it!” Paige insisted. “I needed a whole set of Power Picks so I could show Starr I’m her biggest fan. That’s all that matters.”
“WRONG,” a voice said.
They all looked up.
“Starr!” Paige exclaimed.
Starr faced them, fists on her hips, feet planted wide. She looked the same way she did on TV when she was about to flatten a bunch of bad guys.
“A real Super Starr fan would never steal,” she said. “Because a real fan always remembers the Super Starr motto—”
She paused, and everyone chimed in.
“NO TIME FOR CRIME!”
Milo yawned and rubbed his eyes as he hurried down Main Street. The letter said to meet outside Starr’s trailer at six a.m. sharp. It wasn’t signed, but he was sure it came from Jazz.
She was already waiting there.
“All right,” he said. “What’s up?”
Jazz looked confused. “What do you mean? You left a letter telling me to meet you here.”
“Huh? I thought you wrote—”
He broke off as Kyle, Chris, Ana, and Danny came up.
“What are you doing here?” Milo asked.
Jazz said, “Did you get letters too?”
The Woofs exchanged glances.
“We thought they came from you,” Chris said.
Danny looked around and groaned. “Oh, no. Not Paige again.”
“She already gave back our Power Picks,” Kyle said. “And she told us she was sorry.”
“Besides, she’s grounded,” Ana said. “Her parents won’t even let her come out to watch the filming.” She shook her head sadly. “Who would have guessed a Super Starr fan could go so wrong?”
A car pulled up. A blond man got out and started toward a trailer.
Milo stared. Hey! Wasn’t that—
“The mystery man!” he exclaimed.
The man turned. Seeing the camera hanging from Danny’s neck, he threw his arms over his face. “No pictures! Please!”
“Huh?” Danny said. “Why would I want to take your picture?”
“Who are you?” Jazz asked the man.
“I guess they don’t know you without the mask!” a new voice said.
They all turned.
A smiling teenage girl stood on the steps of Starr’s trailer. It was Starr. But there was something different about her.
“Your eyes!” Ana exclaimed. “They’re brown!”
Starr laughed. “Sure. The silver contact lenses are part of my costume.” She made a face. “Not my favorite part, either. The way they slip around, half the time I can’t see a thing!”
Now Milo understood why she hadn’t seen their sign asking to talk with her. That must be why she never stopped for autographs, either.
Starr gestured toward the blond man. “This is Jim. He plays The Sneer.”
Everyone stared at him.
“I know,” the man said gloomily. “Sometimes I hardly believe it myself.”
Starr came down from the steps and flung her arm around his shoulders. “Poor old Jim. He’d rather be in some wacky experimental play than on TV.”
“You kids just don’t appreciate art,” Jim said.
“Art!” Starr appealed to the others. “The last play he was in, he sat with his back to the audience and didn’t say a word! For three hours straight!”
“At first, it was five hours,” Jim said. “But we trimmed the script.”
“Did lots of Super Starr fans come to see your play?” Jazz asked.
Jim looked horrified. “Certainly not!”
“He keeps his role on Super Starr a secret,” Starr explained. “He’s afraid if people in the off-off-off-off-Broadway world knew that he played The Sneer, they wouldn’t take him seriously anymore.”
“But The Sneer rocks!” Kyle said. “Ask any kid in town.”
Jim winced. “My point exactly. Serious actors do not rock.”
So that was why they had seen him sneaking around the lot, Milo realized. And why Jim had run when Danny snapped his picture.
“But who sent the letters telling us to meet here?” Milo asked.
“I did, of course!” Starr said.
“What for?” Jazz asked.
Starr disappeared into her trailer. She returned carrying a pair of silver jackets. Each had Starr Power embroidered on the back. She handed one to Jazz and the other to Milo.
“Wow, thanks!” Jazz said.
“You deserve them!” Starr told them. “I fight crime on TV. But you two fight crime in real life!”
Milo put on his jacket. Awesome! He wondered if Dash Marlowe had ever gotten a present from a TV star.
“How come you wanted us here too?” Chris asked.
Starr smiled. “I felt bad that you’d all gotten those scam letters saying you could be on Super Starr. So I talked to my director, and she had the writers tweak the storyline for this episode. You’re going to be my band!”
“All four of us?” Danny asked.
Starr nodded, and they cheered.
“But I don’t play an instrument!” Kyle said.
“That’s okay,” Starr said. “My guitar pick isn’t really magic, either. It’s TV. You can just pretend.”
An hour later, Milo and Jazz sat in directors’ chairs sipping steaming cocoa that the young man with the tiny beard had brought them from the food truck.
They were watching Starr lip-synch a song while her new band enthusiastically “played” for the camera. Chris tossed his drumsticks in the air and caught them. Ana did a duck walk with her bass.
Jazz leaned over to Milo. “So—the Case of the Superstar Scam is closed,” she said. “And I think this is our best ending for a case yet. Don’t you?”
Milo grinned.
“Totally!”
A few days after Milo and Jazz wrote to Dash Marlowe,
a letter arrived in the mail. …
Greetings, Milo and Jazz,
Congratulations on solving—yes!—your tenth case! I’m proud of you two. You’ve retrieved a lucky talisman (remember those stinky socks?), exposed a phony psychic, nabbed a thief, saved an election, unmasked a scammer. … I can’t help wondering what will be next!
Of course, you don’t want to slack off now. Stay in shape with these tricky puzzles and mini-mysteries!
Happy Sleuthing!
—Dash Marlowe
Warm Up!
Rev up your minds with these brain stretchers. (I won’t insult you by telling you where to find the answers. …)
1. How many numbers between one and one hundred have an a in their spelling?
2. How can a man go 10 days without sleep?
3. What two keys can’t open any lock? (Hint: Think animals.)
4. What happened in 1961 that won’t happen again until the year 6009?
Spot the Difference: An Observation Puzzle
This is the evil Dinoman, movie monster extraordinaire. The actor who plays him has a double who does some of his tough stunts. Naturally, the Dinoman costume and the stunt double’s costume should look exactly alike. But oops! The costume department got careless. See if you can spot the six differences!
Answer: Dinoman has curved horns, curved teeth, a ring on one claw, no heel on his right boot, no design on his shirt, and no spikes on his tail. The Dinoman double has straight horns, pointed teeth, no ring, heels on both boots, a design on his shirt, and three spikes on his tail.
> Scammed: A Logic Puzzle
Three ex-robbers knew a lot about crime, but they still got scammed! See if you can figure out what each guy was fooled into buying and what he did with what he bought.
Look at the clues and fill in the answer box where you can. Then read the clues again to find the answer.
Answer Box (see answers on next page)
Rocky Louie Sal
What he bought
What he did
1. One guy was scammed into thinking he’d bought the Brooklyn Bridge. When he found out, he tried to trade it for the Golden Gate.
2. Louie was not the one who bought a big diamond that was actually made of glass.
3. Sal paid a bundle for “beautiful waterside property!” (It turned out to be underwater.)
4. Rocky just kept what he bought, because it was so pretty.
5. One guy borrowed a boat.
Something Fishy: A Mini-Mystery
Every criminal lies. So naturally, every detective has to be ready to spot a lie. Read this, turn on your mental lie detector, and draw a conclusion!
I was strolling around the city aquarium when
I ran into a client, Myra Hode, who was about to inherit a lot of money. She was with a tall, thin, bearded man. With great excitement she said that he was her long-lost cousin, Ezra, who had suddenly appeared—just in time to share her inheritance! Ezra was a scientist who had disappeared 10 years earlier when he tried to cross the Pacific alone in a small sailboat. The man smiled and told me a dramatic story of being marooned on a tiny island, barely surviving until he was finally rescued. “For a scientist it had its upside,” he said. “Observing wildlife close up. Beautiful seabirds. Huge fish, like whales and dolphins. Sharks, of course …”
I turned to Myra and said, “This man is a fake. Don’t give him one dime.” How did I know?
Answer to Logic Puzzle: When Louie realized he’d been scammed, he tried to trade the Brooklyn Bridge for the Golden Gate. Rocky bought the fake diamond and held onto it because it was so pretty. Sal snapped up the waterfront property. When he found out it was underwater, he simply borrowed a boat!
The Case of the Superstar Scam Page 3