Dial M for Mongoose (6 page)

Oh, boy.

Disobeying my every instinct, I thrust my arms and head into the burning room. I gripped the top of the cabinet, anchored my feet against the outside wall, and pushed.

It didn't budge.

"Kick your—
koff!
—leg, peewee!" I said."One ... two...
koff koff koff !
"

She kicked, I shoved, and at last the tall cabinet tilted back enough for Popper to snatch her leg out from under.

Whump!
The cupboard thunked back against the wall. Flames licked up its side, dancing nearer.

Yikes.

Popper dove out the window.

Time for this detective to make like a grocery checker and bag it.

I tried to squirm backwards, but I felt weaker than a kitten's threat.

"Unh! Aargh!" I thrashed around. My head was spinning. Too much smoke.

A deafening wail tore at my ears. Were my classmates mourning the end of Chet Gecko?

Then, suddenly...

"Oof!" Something yanked on my feet and lifted me out. And...

Sprisssssh!
Jets of water blasted like rap music in a rain barrel. A burly bobcat in a yellow firefighter's jacket hauled Popper and me away from the flames and across the grass.

She propped us against a wall by the crowd of onlookers and headed back to work the hoses. A team of firefighters was drenching every building in sight.

Golden flames sizzled out. Everything reeked of smoke.

"Too bad I—
koff!
—didn't bring ingredients for s'mores," I said.

"
Kaff!
M-m-marshmallowy goodness, said Popper.

For some reason, this struck me funny. My lip twitched. A chuckle erupted, and soon Popper and I were giggling together like fools.

Must have been the smoke inhalation.

Natalie landed beside us in a flurry. "Chet! Are you all right?"

"I
—hee, hee, hee!
I
—ha!
" Laughs kept bursting out of me like cricket popcorn in a skillet.

She scowled. "It's not funny! You could've been fricasseed. What were you doing in there?"

I waved my hand at Popper and the building. "
Ha
,
ha
—rescue—
hee
—mission."

The tree frog recovered first. "I went in to get my coo-caw-cousin's—
ha
—bracelet. She forgidetty-got it."

"And then?" asked Natalie.

Popper hopped to her feet, vibrating like a paint mixer. "The classroom burn-baby-burned!"

Natalie leaned closer. "Did you see anyone suspicious? Someone who might have set the fire?"

"Yep, yup, uh-huh," said Popper, wiping a smear of soot from her forehead.

I jumped up, shocked sober. "Well? Who was it?"

Popper's mouth dropped open. She pointed across the grass. "Her-her-her."

"Who, her?" I said.

"Maureen De-bubba-Bree!"

I gasped like a trout tourist in the Painted Desert. "Ms. DeBree?!"

"Are you
sure?
" asked Natalie.

The little tree frog shrugged and nodded and blinked. "Yup, yeah, yo! At least I think, I think so."

"Reeeally?" rumbled a deep voice.

I looked up.

Principal Zero loomed over us. His whiskers bristled. His fangs flashed. He didn't look like a
nice kitty-kitty.

I gripped Popper's arms. "Are you
absolutely
dead certain?"

The frog shrugged again. "I only saw her from behee-behind the backside, but ... longity-long tail,
brown fur, and criss-cross-criss thingies." Popper pointed at Ms. DeBree's bandoliers full of cleaning products. "And she was bow-bow-bow-bounding away, lickety-split."

"That's all I need to know," said Mr. Zero."Come with me, Miss LaFrogg."

He plucked Popper from my grasp and steered her over to where Ms. DeBree was talking with the firefighters.

"Uh-oh," said Natalie.

"You can say that again."

"Uh-oh, squared."

"That'll do." I bit my lip and watched the heated conversation between principal and janitor.

By this time, the fire was mostly out. A few tendrils of smoke rose from the half-burned building. Kids and teachers looked on, waiting for the next disaster.

And I had a sinking feeling I knew what that would be.

"Come on," I told Natalie.

We reached Principal Zero and Ms. DeBree just as the fire chief called out, "Hey!" He held up a buckled, blackened thing in his glove. "Think we found what started it. Cleaning solvent—highly flammable."

"That's it!" growled Mr. Zero at the mongoose. "You're fired! No, not just fired, you're under arrest!"
His tail bristled like an electrified pinecone.

"You can't fire me!" cried Ms. DeBree, eyes blazing. "I quit! It's plain as the noise on my face: You're trying for blame me for everything wrong at this school!"

"Take her away!" snapped the principal.

Two dogs in blue cop uniforms stepped forward and seized the mongoose. "Come along, you."

Ms. DeBree searched the faces of the crowd. "I'm innocent, I telling you. Innocent as a lamp."

"That's
lamb,
" I muttered.

"Chet!" The janitor reached out a paw. "Help me—prove I didn't do it!"

I swallowed hard. "Popper
saw
you. It doesn't look good."

Ms. DeBree's eyes widened. "What? I never was there! I was fixin' the girls' bathroom sink." As the cops hauled her off, her cries grew fainter. "Ask anybody! Chet! Natalie!"

Principal Zero turned to glare. "You will
not
try to prove she's innocent," he growled. "You will keep your nose to yourself, Gecko—something you desperately need to practice."

I gave him my Bambi-eyed "Who, me?" expression.

Mr. Zero snorted, pointed a claw at me, and then padded over to talk with the firefighters.

Natalie and I gazed at the distant Ms. DeBree. Could Popper and Mr. Dooty have been right?

"Could our janitor really be that sloppy?" I said.

"Or that evil?" said Natalie.

I looked at her; she looked at me. We shook our heads.

"But I see-saw her!" said Popper, bouncing up and down.

I'd forgotten all about the munchkin. (Hard to imagine, I know.) "Tell us everything again," I said. "Slowly."

"Okey-dokey-dokey," said the frog. "I was hippety-hopping down the—"

But just then, the all-clear bell rang.

"Back to class, students!" shouted Principal Zero. "Nothing to see here."

Popper shrugged three times. "Sorry, Chet and Nat, Nat and Chet. Gotta go, go, go! Thanks for saving my lee-lo-life!"

"Can you talk to us after school?" I asked.

The tree frog shook her head so fast, it blurred. "No, nope,
nyet.
I've got studity-student council. See ya tomorrow a.m. in the morning!" And she bounded off like a perpetual motion experiment gone screwy.

"You're not planning to keep investigating after Mr. Zero told you not to?" Natalie asked. "Are you?"

"Do I look like the kind of PI who would ignore a direct order from his principal?"

She cocked her head. "Yes, come to think of it, you do look a lot like Chet Gecko."

"Birdie, you know me too well."

Soaked and smoky, I joined the tide of kids heading back to class.

Mr. Zero was right. I did need practice minding my own beeswax. But then, what card-carrying detective doesn't?

After school, Natalie and I set about proving Ms. DeBree's alibi for the fire. I figured it shouldn't be too hard. I mean, how can you miss a bushy-tailed mongoose fixing a sink?

None of the teachers near the bathrooms remembered seeing her at recess. None of the bathrooms Natalie checked showed any signs of sink repair. But that didn't mean much. Our janitor
was
the queen of clean, after all.

We stopped by the custodian's office to talk with Mr. Dooty. The gopher was out.

"Nothing but dead ends," said Natalie.

"Like kids sitting through a four-hour assembly on a concrete floor," I said.

The school was emptying out. Soon there'd be no one around to investigate. We strode up the halls, hoping for a little blind luck.

What we got was a blind corner.

I rounded the edge of a building and ran straight into Mr. Dooty, hurrying along with his head down. We both staggered back.

"Excuse you, you didn't see me," I said.

"Sure, run me down," he said. "Everyone else does."The gopher brushed dirt from his paws.

"Do you have a minute?" I asked.

Mr. Dooty rolled his eyes. "Oh, right. I'm suddenly head janitor, and I've got to clean up the whole school by myself and hire an assistant, too. I've got nothing but time."

"That's swell," I said, ignoring his sarcasm. "So, we were wondering, how do you guys get your jobs?"

Mr. Dooty scowled."The principal hires us. Don't you know diddly?"

The gopher pushed past us and trudged down the hall. We followed.

"Not your job," said Natalie, "your
jobs
. You know, the work assignments?"

"Either we do what we see needs doing, or somebody calls us," he said.

"They call?" I said.

"Yeah, this thing called a telephone. They pick it up and dial
M
"

"M?" said Natalie.

Mr. Dooty shrugged. "For
mongoose.
Kinda dumb, but that's Emerson Hicky for you. Full of little indignities. Like
she's
the only janitor."

He stopped a few steps from his office door. A slim brown weasel leaned on the wall, fiddling with a small gadget.

"Here for the, uh, job interview?" said Jerry Dooty.

The weasel nodded.

I held up a hand. "One last thing: Did someone call in a repair for a sink?"

The janitor turned the doorknob. "Nope. Just get it through your head, kid. The mongoose got sloppy, or worse, and now she's paying the price."

"But—" said Natalie.

"Heck," said Mr. Dooty, "
I'm
paying the price. All this work, and now I've got to interview this guy, too. Come on in," he told the weasel. "Waste some more of my time. Everyone else does."

His guest sauntered into the office after Mr. Dooty, flicking his long tail. The door swung shut, leaving us alone in the silent hall.

I scratched my head. "Is it just me, or does this case not make any sense at all?"

Natalie grinned."It's you. You
often
don't make any sense at all."

"When things get twisty and confusing, you know what
does
make sense?"

"Sugary snacks?" she said.

"At my house," I replied.

A half hour later, we had demolished most of a package of frosted earwig balls and were starting in on the lice-cream sandwiches. Natalie and I sat in my home office, cleverly disguised as a big refrigerator box. (The office was disguised, I mean. Not us.)

"It just doesn't fit together," I said. "Food thefts and fires?"

"Cave-ins and missing cash and big stinks?" said Natalie, grooming a tail feather. "You're right. Maybe it's five different troublemakers and five different cases."

"In that case," I bit into the lice-cream sandwich, "we're—
yum
—in trouble. We're not getting anywhere on any of them."

Natalie pecked at her treat. "But if they
are
connected, what do all these things have in common?"

I took another bite. "
Mmf
they make Emerson Hicky a dangerous place to spend the day?"

"Or they give someone money, food, and a school without Ms. DeBree," she said.

"But why single her out?" I said. "What's she ever done to anybody?"

Natalie shrugged. "Busted them for littering?"

"Slapped their wrists for leaving gum under the seat? No, there's something else going on here."

"What?" said Natalie.

"Beats me," I said. "Me detective. Me figure things out as me go along."

Natalie raised an eyebrow. "Detective also flunking grammar?"

"Grammar, shmammar," I said. "Pass me another lice-cream sandwich, and let's get down to some serious thinking."

The next morning dawned as fresh and sweet as a potato-bug pie right out of the oven. At least I think it did. I dawned grumpy and groggy, so I might not have been seeing straight.

Mornings are murder.

Natalie and I hadn't managed to crack open the case with our superior brainpower the night before. That meant we had to do things the old-fashioned way: running down leads and burning up shoe leather.

"Don't forget, tonight is Parents Night," said my mom as I shuffled out the door.

"Who, me?" I said.

"I can tell from your voice that you'd forgotten."

"You can't tell anything from my voice," I said. "I'm a detective."

I stumbled to school on the early side, hoping to get the lowdown from Popper. Natalie was already waiting by the flagpole, slurping up a worm like a fat spaghetti noodle.

She grinned at me. "You know what the early bird gets," she said.

"Yeah, and she can keep it," I said. "That's why I sleep in—usually."

I surveyed the school entrance. Parents were dropping off children on the front sidewalk, and the kids were rushing through the gate with all the zest and enthusiasm of garden slugs on a salt lick. In another ten minutes or so, class would start.