The Ghostwriter Secret (3 page)

Hit Man    

Corporate Crook    

Unfortunately, none of those tattoos matched what Rick had on his arm, which looked like this:

“What is it?” Steve asked.

“It's a dragon speaking the Chinese character for courage,” Rick said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Steve squinted at the tattoo. “It looks like the dragon is eating the Chinese character for courage.”

Rick frowned. “Well, it's not.”

“Okay.”

“Have a taco shell,” Carol said, and put two pieces of shell on Steve's plate.

“What were you reading in there, Steve?” Rick asked.

“Bailey Brothers.”

Rick chuckled, which meant that he was laughing at a joke he was about to make. “Shoulda known. Seems like you're reading more mysteries than you're solving there, detective.”

“Well, I've only had a detective agency for a couple of weeks, Rick,” Steve said.

“I can't believe you're letting him do this, Carol,” Rick said as he shook a spoonful of refried beans toward his taco shell, trying to dislodge the brown mash.

“Oh, come on, Rick,” Carol said. “It's just a little hobby.”

“It's not a hobby, Mom,” Steve said. “It's a profession.”

Rick rolled his eyes. “Profession. You think you can be a detective just because you got lucky on that one little job.” Rick was referring to Steve's first case,
The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity
, when Steve had saved the United States of America.

“But Steve,” Rick continued, “fighting crime is a job for grown-ups. Well-trained, efficient, intelligent grown-ups. People like me.” Rick was grabbing some shredded lettuce from the bowl in the middle of the table. He was using his hand, even though there was a pair of salad tongs right in the bowl. “If you ask me, these Bailey Brothers books are giving you funny ideas. Kid detectives! Ha!” He actually said “Ha!” instead of laughing. Steve clenched his fist and cracked the piece of taco shell in his hand.

“You know,” said Rick, stroking his mustache thoughtfully, then putting his hand back in the lettuce bowl. “I should write a book about solving mysteries. I could do a much better job than what's-his-name, Mark Borneo—”

“MacArthur Bart.”

“Yeah, him. My book, well, it would be about guys like me. Adult detectives. Police detectives. Guys who solve cases through research and diligence and elbow grease. There wouldn't be any of these ridiculous car chases and explosions.”

“That sounds like a really fun book, Rick,” said Steve with a straight face. His mom smiled a little.

“It would be fun!” said Rick. “Fun and educational. I'll betcha that Bart guy doesn't know anything about real-life crime.”

“You know there are salad tongs, right, Rick?” said Steve.

“Steve!” said Steve's mom. She wasn't smiling anymore.

For a minute the only sound was the crunching of taco shells.

“Alls I'm saying,” Rick said, “is that when I was Steve's age, I had normal hobbies, like football and chasing girls.” Carol frowned. Rick added, “And I was on the debate team.”

Steve found that hard to believe.

Carol took a sip of water. “Maybe you should join the debate team, Steve.”

“Great idea,” said Rick.

“Except our school doesn't have a debate team,” said Steve.

“Start one!” Rick and Carol said at the same time, and then started laughing together.

This was bad, even for a Sunday.

“When I—”

Rick's cell phone went off. His ring tone was a few bars of smooth jazz, repeated over and over again. Steve hated smooth jazz.

Rick let the phone ring for a bit, bobbing his head and grinning. Then he answered it. “Sergeant Elliot here.… Hi, Chief.… Really? … Oh, wow.… I'll be
there right away. Yeah, yeah, I'm on the case.”

He flipped the phone closed and stood up. “Sorry, guys. Gotta go. Big case. Huge. And Chief Clumber wants me to take the lead on it.”

“Do you really have to go now?” asked Carol.

“Duty calls,” said Rick. He looked at Steve and smiled. “Time to do some of that real detective work I was telling you about,” he said, tapping the side of his head. There was a piece of lettuce in his hair.

He gave Carol a kiss and Steve a nod and hurried out the door. Steve's mom was quiet. Now that Rick had left in the middle of dinner, she'd be in a bad mood. You didn't need to be a detective to figure that out.

For the rest of the meal Steve just let his mom vent about her boss at the hospital, and when they were finished eating, Steve cleared the table and did the dishes without his mom having to ask. As he scrubbed a skillet, he thought about Rick out on a big case. He looked down at the pan. Food was burned and stuck to the bottom, and it wasn't coming off. Sundays were awful.

He put the pan in the dish drainer and went upstairs to his crime lab.

T
HE DOOR TO
S
TEVE'S CRIME LAB
, a.k.a. his bedroom, had a piece of Scotch tape that ran for a few inches along its bottom and connected to the jamb. The tape was a security system—if the tape was loose, someone had broken into Steve's room. (Villains were always breaking into the Bailey Brothers' crime lab to scare them off their cases.) Steve checked the tape to see if it was intact. It was.

Two weeks ago, when Steve had decided to open his own detective agency, he had used the hundred dollars his grandma had given him last Christmas and converted half his bedroom (which was not all that
large) into a crime lab. He'd modeled it on the Bailey Brothers' headquarters.

Steve Brixton was now the proud owner of the following sleuthing tools:

• One typewriter, missing the
T
key, which was unfortunately needed to type Steve's name. The Brixton family computer worked better, but his mom wouldn't let him keep it in his room. Plus the sound of the keys clacking was pretty ace.

• One metal detector, for finding buried treasure, bought secondhand at the Ocean Park Pawn Shop, which technically was “off-limits” to Steve but only because his mom didn't understand the art of detection.

• One ten-pound bag of plaster of Paris, for casting footprints and tire-tread marks.

• Assorted mustaches (handlebar, biker, one that looked like an old black-and-white movie star's, and another that looked like Mr. Mike's, his PE teacher.)

• A disguise chest containing one sailor suit, one milkman outfit, and one Soviet uniform that was a couple of sizes too big.

• Lots of rope, because you never know when you're going to need some rope.

He'd also budgeted for a Dictaphone, which was a machine that Shawn and Kevin used to record all their crime-solving theories for their mom to type out later. But apparently you couldn't buy a Dictaphone anymore, so Steve spent the rest of his money on Jolly Ranchers. Jolly Ranchers weren't really a detective tool per se, but they were his favorite candy. Well, really, the green Jolly Ranchers were his favorite candy. He'd eaten all those on the first day (his tongue had turned green and slick, and the depressions of his molars had filled to the top with hard apple-flavored sugar). Steve had thrown out all the grapes, because grape was a bad flavor of any candy, always. He'd gotten rid of the blue raspberries, too—they didn't taste that bad, but their neon color made Steve uncomfortable. Nothing in nature was that color. Maybe the water around an electric eel. Certainly not any fruit. Anyway, now Steve had a huge bag of red Jolly Ranchers. And this was a problem. Because his second favorite flavor, watermelon, was red, but so was the flavor he hated most: cherry, a.k.a. disgusting cough syrup. And since watermelon and cherry looked exactly the same, Steve was constantly putting the wrong one in his mouth and then spitting it out. (The name of the flavor was printed on the wrapper in such tiny writing that you pretty much
had to use a magnifying glass to read it, and who had one of those handy? Okay, Steve did, but it's not like he had time to launch an investigation every time he wanted a candy.)

And then, of course, in Steve's backpack were the three items indispensable to all detectives—a notebook, flashlight, and magnifying glass—plus his secret book-box, which Steve had made himself by hollowing out the middle of an old copy of the
Guinness Book of World Records
. Steve was all set to solve a mystery, as soon as one presented itself.

In the meantime Steve would do what he had done every Sunday for the last two years: write a letter to
MacArthur Bart, the author of the Bailey Brothers Mysteries. He mailed the letters care of Bart's publisher in New York, but MacArthur Bart never wrote back. The only mail Steve ever got was
Highlights
magazine, which as far as Steve could tell was read only by toddlers and dentists. His grandmother had bought a subscription years ago, and it wouldn't stop coming.

Anyway, Steve didn't hold MacArthur Bart's silence against him. Maybe MacArthur Bart was busy working on a new Bailey Brothers book (it seriously had been decades since the last book had come out). Or maybe the publishing company wasn't forwarding his mail (although Steve had written more than a hundred letters). Whatever the case, MacArthur Bart would definitely have a good reason for not writing back, so Steve had already forgiven him. Besides, how could you be mad at a guy who wrote top-notch stories like
The Strange Case of the Strangest Stranger
?

So Steve sat down at his desk and started typing, leaving spaces to write the
t
's in later:

Dear Mr. Bar,


I ‘s me again, S eve Brix on. I hope you received he clipping I mailed you las week from he Ocean Park Forum. I
was abou my new de ec ive agency, and I men ion you and your books. I don' have much to repor his week--no cases or any hing. I guess Ocean Park isn' as exci ing as Benson Bay--seems like he Bailey Bro hers always have a case o work on, even hough Benson Bay has 3 de ec ives: Shawn, Kevin, and heir dad. I guess i has only been a couple weeks since my firs case. Anyway, I know I always ask you his, bu are you ever going o wri e ano her Bailey Bro hers book?