by Gary Paulsen
“I’ll give you punks exactly five seconds to clear out of here.”
“Hold off, Mange.” Roy and the band walked in from the stage door. “I invited them.”
The redheaded man glared at him. “Are you out of your mind? You of all people should know we can’t afford to trust anybody. You know what’s been happening lately.”
“These two are okay.” Roy picked up his guitar. “They can stay.”
Mange’s look turned ugly. His eyes narrowed. He spun around and stomped back toward the office door.
“Whew.” Amos sat on the stage steps. “That guy is scary.”
“Don’t let him bother you.” Roy winked at them. “He thinks because he’s our manager, and because he used to have his own band, that he’s in charge around here.”
The drummer, a thin guy with a long pointed nose, greasy hair, and beady eyes, sat down on his stool and picked up his sticks. “We gonna play or what?”
Roy frowned. “This charming fellow is Lizard. He’s a heck of a drummer but a little short on manners. The one that looks like a mountain plays bass. We call him Horse. The lead guitar is Hairball.”
The expressions on the band members’ faces didn’t change. They stared at the boys like stones.
Amos glanced from Horse to the one they called Hairball. He looked like a round puff of fuzz. It was hard to tell if there was even a body under all that hair unless he moved.
Dunc pulled Amos toward the first row of seats. “Why don’t we just sit over here, out of your way, so you can practice?”
Roy laughed. “Don’t mind these guys. They’ve been on the road so long, they’ve forgotten how to be normal.”
The drummer hit his sticks together four times and the band started playing. They were loud and the song they were working on was about either smashing things and hurting people or running over a cow with a locomotive—Dunc couldn’t quite tell which for sure.
When they were finished, Roy turned to the boys. “Well? What did you think?”
Dunc scratched his head. “To tell you the truth, Roy, I think it was—”
Amos elbowed him. “Interesting. He was about to say your music was definitely interesting.”
After a few more songs, Roy turned to the band. “That’s enough for today. You guys can go get some sleep. We’ll practice again tomorrow before showtime.” He sat down on the edge of the stage and hung his legs over the side. He looked at Dunc, who had a look on his face like he had just swallowed cod liver oil. “I can’t say I blame you for not liking it. I’m not too crazy about it myself.”
“Then why do you play it?” Dunc asked.
Roy shrugged. “Mange wrote it. He says it’s the kind of music the kids want nowadays. Mange says if you want to stay on top, you have to play what kids like.”
“Amos and I are kids, and we don’t like it.”
“Yes, we do,” Amos blurted. “Well … sort of.”
Roy looked up. “Maybe you have a point. If I had my way, I’d play my own stuff.” He reached back for his guitar. “Songs like this one.”
Roy started playing. The song had a rowdy beat, but the words were different from before. There were more of them—it actually had lyrics. It was a song about growing up in Roy’s hometown. Amos started playing air guitar again. He was really getting into it. He moved up on the stage and twirled around. He accidentally tripped over Roy’s guitar cord, pulling it out of the amp.
The music stopped short. Roy spun around to see what had happened just as a huge spotlight came hurtling down from the ceiling at him. Turning to look at Amos moved him sideways just enough to escape being hit as the spotlight smashed into the stage.
• 5
“Are you all right?” Dunc helped Roy to his feet.
“I think so.” Roy brushed pieces of glass out of his hair. “That was too close for comfort.”
“Sorry about unplugging your guitar cord,” Amos said. “I guess I got a little carried away.”
Roy looked at the heavy spotlight that was now lodged halfway through the stage floor. “I’m not sorry, Amos. If it hadn’t been for you, I’d be dead meat right now.”
Amos strained, trying to lift the spotlight. “I wonder what caused it to fall?”
Dunc examined the part that was sticking up. “Look at this. The bolts are gone, and the wires have all been cut. This was no accident, someone intended for it to fall.”
Roy scratched his head. “Why would anybody want to do a thing like that?”
Dunc whipped a small note pad out of his shirt pocket and flipped it open. “Amos tells me you’ve been having a lot of unusual things happen to you lately.”
“That’s true, but nothing like this. Unless you count the time in Los Angeles when the backdrop came loose and fell forward over the top of us.”
Dunc was writing furiously. “When did you first notice these strange occurrences?”
Roy rested his chin in his hand. “The first one was about a month ago, right before a concert. When our lead guitar player, Hairball, turned on his amp, we heard people talking on CB’s. Someone had rewired his amplifier to pick up radio waves. We had to delay the concert.”
Dunc looked up. “Do you always travel with the same band?”
Roy nodded. “Yup. These guys have been with me from the start. So has our manager, Mange. He’s the one who put us together and came up with the name.”
“Hmmm.”
Amos sat down beside Roy and sighed. “There he goes with that noise again.”
Roy raised one eyebrow. “Is that bad?”
“Depends on if you’re his best friend or not. If you happen to have the misfortune of being his best friend, then it means he’s about to get you in some serious trouble.”
Roy looked confused.
Amos waved his hand. “Don’t worry about it. Dunc thinks he’s some kind of junior private eye. He goes around digging up imaginary cases to solve.”
“This one doesn’t sound so imaginary.” Dunc closed his notebook. “Somebody wants to put a stop to Raunchy Roy and Road Kill. And today they almost put a stop to Roy—permanently.”
• 6
“How should I word this?” Amos was at his desk trying to compose a letter to Melissa. His plan was to drop the letter and the ticket in her mailbox later that afternoon, ring the doorbell, and run away.
Dunc was sitting on the floor concentrating on a formula for solving the case. He had chosen the floor because right now it was the safest place in Amos’s room. There were piles of stuff everywhere. Amos’s mom had told him to get his room organized or else plan on living at the YMCA. So he decided to put everything into piles according to size or possible use. He had a pile of paper wads for shooting at the trash, a pile of dirty socks, a pile of moldy food he was saving for Dunc’s experiment, and several other piles that fell into the category of miscellaneous junk.
Dunc had to move the dirty jean pile next to the soda can pile before he could sit down. “Why don’t you just tell Melissa that you have these tickets and ask her to go to the concert with you?”
Amos shook his head. “No style. I want this letter to really make an impression on her.”
“What do you have so far?”
Amos smoothed the piece of paper and cleared his throat. “ ‘Dear Melissa. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the—’ ”
“Hold it. I think that one’s been done.”
Amos scratched his head. “Are you sure?”
Dunc nodded. “Pretty sure.”
“Okay then, I’ll skip that part. How about this. ‘At enormous personal expense I have obtained this priceless ticket—’ ”
Dunc stopped him again. “Amos, you didn’t pay anything for that ticket. It was free.”
“Details.” Amos cleared his throat again. “Where was I? Oh yeah—‘to this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity—’ ”
“Amos, it’s not once in a lifetime. Road Kill is giving two concerts.”
“I know that.
Give me a break. I’m trying to be creative here.”
“Is that what you call it?”
Amos scanned the letter. “ ‘For the experience of a lifetime, meet me at the civic center at six-thirty on Friday, and together we’ll attend the social event of the year. I will be counting the seconds until we meet. Yours eternally. Signed, your adoring admirer.’ ” Amos looked up. “Well, what do you think?”
Dunc tried not to smile. “I don’t know. It may be too low-key.”
Amos studied the letter. “I didn’t want to come on too strong. It might scare her off.”
“Why didn’t you sign your name? How is she supposed to know who sent her the ticket?”
“Mystery.”
“I’m not following you.”
“I checked out this real informative book from the library called How to Attract Girls in One Easy Lesson. It said girls go nuts over stuff like this. They think it’s romantic. When I meet her in front of the civic center wearing my black tuxedo with tails and carrying an armful of red roses, she’ll know who sent the letter. Then we’ll get engaged and pick out a china pattern.”
Dunc erased some figures on his note pad. “I didn’t know you had a tuxedo. And where are you going to get the money for an armful of roses?”
“I’m not sure about the tux yet, but I’ve got the roses worked out. Mrs. McGillis down on First Street had a bumper crop of roses this year.”
“Amos, you can’t just go pick some poor old lady’s roses.”
“She gave me permission.”
“For a whole armful?”
“Not exactly. But she did say if I mowed her back yard, I could have a few.”
“I hope it works out for you.” Dunc turned his attention back to his notes. “Boy, this case has me baffled. So far I can’t figure out any reason for somebody to be sabotaging the Road Kill band. What we need is more clues.”
“What we need is to let them solve their own problems. I know you. You’re going to get us involved in some big deal and end up messing up my date with Melissa.”
Dunc put his hand over his heart. “Amos, would I put a case before my best friend’s happiness?”
“In a heartbeat.”
“Okay, just to show you how wrong you are about me, I’ll even go with you to put the letter in Melissa’s mailbox.”
“Why?”
“Like I said, you’re my best friend—and besides, Melissa’s house isn’t too far from the civic center. We can stop by there before we come home and see if we can dig up some more clues.”
• 7
“Do you think Melissa’s dad bought any of that?” Amos pedaled up beside Dunc.
“I think you had him right up until the part where you tried to convince him you were a dwarf working for the post office.” Dunc stood on his pedals. “Too bad he had to come out of the house just as you were going through his mail.”
“I wasn’t going through his mail. I was trying to put Melissa’s letter in the middle of the pile so it wouldn’t be so obvious.”
“It looked like you were going through his mail.”
Amos parked his bike next to Dunc’s in the rack behind the civic center. “At least he took my letter. Do you think he meant what he said about stuffing me into the mailbox if he ever saw me near their house again?”
“Probably.”
Amos sighed. “Something like that could definitely put a strain on our future relationship as in-laws.”
Dunc turned the key in the back door of the civic center and pushed it open. “Looks like everyone’s gone.”
Amos followed him through the door and down the steps to the stage. “That’s because they all know how dumb it would be to spend your afternoon in a big empty building.”
“You go backstage and see what you can find. I’ll look around out here.”
Amos climbed the stage steps and disappeared behind the curtain. In a few seconds he poked his head back through the curtain. “What am I looking for?”
“Something that might help us figure out what’s been going on around here.”
“Right.” Amos pulled his head back and looked around. The backstage area was sectioned off with partitions. In one corner the lighting and special effects were set up. In another corner the band’s costumes and face paint were set out, ready for Friday’s performance.
“This is so dumb.” Amos halfheartedly poked around in the lighting section. “What does he think we’re going to find? A note with a signed confession?”
He moved to the makeup table. There were two half-gallon tubs of green and black face paint. “Boy, when these guys paint their faces, they get serious.”
Amos dipped his finger in the green paint and held it up to his nose. “Yechh! How can they stand to wear this stuff? It smells worse than Dunc’s lab experiments.” He looked up at the mirror and noticed a tiny green spot where his finger had touched the end of his nose. He wiped at it but succeeded only in spreading it around a little. The harder he rubbed, the worse it got. In seconds his nose was completely bright green.
“Dunc!”
Dunc raced up the stairs and pulled the curtain back. “Did you find something?”
Amos turned around. He looked like he had a small watermelon stuck in the center of his face.
“What did you—”
“Never mind. Help me get it off.”
“You need makeup remover.” Dunc picked up some of the jars on the table. “I don’t see any. They must keep it on the bus.”
“A lot of good that does me. What am I supposed to do? Ride home like this?”
“We’ll go the back way through the woods. Nobody will see you. When we get to my house, we’ll use some of my mom’s stuff to get it off.”
Amos headed for the door.
“Wait.” Dunc caught up with him. “I found something. It might be a clue.”
“Who cares? I have to get home before someone sees me like this and it ruins my reputation.”
“What reputation?”
“The one I’m never going to have if I go around with a zucchini nose.”
“It’ll only take a minute.”
“Oh, all right. Where is it?”
“Right over here.” Dunc led the way to the edge of the stage. From the corner, tucked behind a speaker, he pulled a small toolchest with the name Mange Roper written across the top.
Amos made a face. “You call this a clue? Get serious.”
Dunc opened the box and took out a set of wrenches. “This is the clue.”
“So? One of the wrenches is missing. Big deal.”
“The one that’s missing would have fit the bolts on the spotlight perfectly.”
“So now you’re Mister Fix-it, who knows everything about wrenches and stuff.” Amos turned and made for the balcony door. “Did it ever occur to you that even if you’re right about the wrench, anybody could have taken it? It didn’t have to be Mange.”
Dunc stepped beside him. “I thought about that. But he’s still our number-one suspect.”
Amos unlocked his bike. “Why?”
“Because right now he’s our only suspect.”
Amos wasn’t listening. A group of girls was coming toward them from the library. Amos dropped his bicycle.
The one in the middle was Melissa.
A couple of the girls giggled when they saw Amos’s nose. Melissa didn’t seem to notice him at all. She waved at Dunc and walked on down the sidewalk.
• 8
Amos was sitting on the end of Dunc’s bed with an inch of cold cream on his nose. “I don’t get it. Why do these things always happen to me?”
Dunc rubbed his chin. “I’ve been giving that some thought. I’d say it has something to do with the amount of space per person multiplied by the number of points of time in a given year, minus the refractory equation—of course taking into account the probability of happenstance.”
“What does all that boil down to in plain English?”
“Luck.”
A
mos sagged. “Melissa will probably want to cancel our date now. She’ll be too embarrassed to be seen with me.”
“How is she going to cancel it? She doesn’t even know who it’s with. You didn’t sign your name to the letter, remember?”
Amos sat up. “That’s true. And when she sees the roses and candy, she’ll probably forget all about it.”
“Candy?”
“In case she’s allergic to the roses.”
“Oh.” Dunc turned on his computer and started entering information. “It doesn’t make sense.”
Amos lay back on the bed. “Sure it does. If Melissa starts sneezing, I can ditch the roses and bring out the candy. Either way, I’m covered.”
“Not that. The case. Why would Mange want to put a stop to the Road Kill concerts? He probably makes a bundle of money off of each one. If they were to stop, he’d be out of a job.”
Amos shrugged. “Maybe he has a personal problem with one of the guys in the band.”
“That’s a possibility. But would you give up all that money just because you have a problem with somebody?”
“Nope. Looks like you’re fresh out of a suspect.”
Dunc studied his computer screen. “Not necessarily. What we need is more evidence, something that will show us what Mange has to gain from all of this.”
“If you’re so sure it’s him, why don’t you go to the police? They’ll go down to his office with a warrant and find the evidence they need to arrest him.”
“That’s it.” Dunc snapped his fingers. “Why didn’t I think of it before?”
“Dunc, I was kidding. Nobody in their right mind would—”
“The office. Amos, we need to get inside Mange’s office. There’s probably all kinds of incriminating stuff in there. We’ll leave early tomorrow morning before anybody’s awake.”
Dunc leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. “We’ll have this case solved before lunch, and the Road Kill band can go on-stage tomorrow night as scheduled with nothing to worry about.”