The Ghostwriter Secret (6 page)

Most gratefully,


MacArthur Bart


Steve grabbed his notebook, magnifying glass, flashlight, and the rest of his detective kit and tossed them all in his backpack. He ran downstairs and wrote a note telling his mom he had gone to Dana's. (Steve figured she wouldn't like it if he was going off to meet some stranger. Of course, this was no stranger—this was MacArthur Bart.)

Steve slammed the front door, ran to the side of his house, and hopped on his bike. He was going to meet his hero.

T
HE
S
EA
S
PRAY
W
ATERFRONT
H
OTEL
overlooked a quiet beach. Its roof was red and its walls were so white that Steve squinted as he walked up to the entrance. Far away, seabirds whined, and somewhere nearby a leaf blower droned.

What did MacArthur Bart look like? Steve had never seen a picture of him. Would he have glasses? Would he be funny, or very serious? Maybe his hair would be blond, like Steve's. No, it would have to be white, or gray—MacArthur Bart must be pretty old. The Bailey Brothers books were written back in the fifties.

A bored and burly doorman saw Steve hurrying up the path and opened the big glass door. His old-fashioned suit was deep maroon and at least three sizes too small, so it made him look like the rhesus monkey that danced for tourists down on the boardwalk. When the doorman's arm was outstretched, his sleeve rode up and revealed a string of tiny letters tattooed on his forearm. Steve's eyes snapped on the marking—it was his detective's instinct—and made out the words “rage will always be my last refuge” before the doorman quickly pulled down his sleeve. “Have a good afternoon, Mr. Brixton,” he said, raising his little hat.

“How did you—,” Steve started, but then caught himself. A good sleuth is never caught by surprise. Steve made a deduction instead. “Let me guess. You've seen my picture in the papers.”

“No—I saw it on your backpack.”

Right. His name was indeed written in permanent marker, in his mom's handwriting, on his backpack's green fabric. At the beginning of the year she'd written his name on all his stuff—on his water bottle, on his binder, on the tags of all his clothes—so he wouldn't lose them. Steve exhaled through his nose and turned the corner into the lobby.

The dark wood of the lobby floor had a waxy
shine. It was the kind of floor that would be fun to slide across in socks. A huge window looked out on a deck with white wicker furniture, and past that, the Pacific Ocean. The place was quiet—Ocean Park's hotels didn't get busy till summer. Smooth jazz played softly from speakers you couldn't see, but Steve was so excited as he walked up to the reception desk that he was only a little irritated by the music.

“Rage will always be my last refuge.”

The man behind the counter had a wispy mustache and glazed eyes. Steve knew from his name tag that his name was Lewis.

“Can I help you?” he asked after Steve had been standing there for a few seconds.

“Yes. I'm here to see A. C. Snuffley. Can you tell me his room number?”

“No,” said the man behind the counter. Steve had seen something flash in his eyes when he'd said Snuffley's name.

“Why not?” Steve asked.

“We don't give out guests' room numbers.”

“Well, could you call him and let him know Steve Brixton is in the lobby?”

“No,” said the man behind the counter.

“Why not?” asked Steve, clenching his teeth and baring them a little, too.

“Who do you think you are? Do you really think
I'm just going to give out private information to some kid off the street?”

“I'm not just some kid.” Steve held the clerk's gaze while he removed his detective's license from his wallet and slid it across the table. The man picked it up like it was an old sardine and gave it a cursory glance. Then his eyes widened.

“A detective …,” he murmured.

“That's right,” said Steve. “Steve Brixton, of the Brixton Brothers Detective Agency.”

“The Brixton Brothers Detective Agency,” Lewis repeated quietly. Then his eyes snapped back to Steve's. “Where's your brother?”

Steve sighed. “I don't have one.”

“What?”

“I'm an only child.”

“Then why are you called—”

“You know, it's like the Bailey Brothers.”

“The Bailey Brothers?”

“Look, the point is I'm a detective, okay?”

The clerk looked surprised by Steve's ferocity.

“Okay.” He flung Steve's card back across the counter. Then he said, almost to himself, “I knew that guy was trouble.”

“What guy?”

“The guy you asked for, Snuffley.”

“What about him?” Steve asked.

“He's had a
DO NOT DISTURB
sign hung on his door ever since he got here. Weird, but, hey, a lot of these rich folks are strange. But apparently he told room service to bring him the same thing—a bowl of caviar, a plate of smoked salmon, and a cheese platter—three times a day as long as he was staying here, and to leave it outside the door.”

Steve felt a twinge of disappointment. There was one difference between him and MacArthur Bart. Steve hated fish—the way they tasted, the way they smelled, and the cold, accusing way they looked at you, even when they were dead and on a bed of ice in the supermarket.

“So here's where things get really odd. Yesterday he didn't eat his lunch. It was just sitting in the hallway, untouched. Same with his dinner. And today his breakfast and lunch just sat there, too. I've been calling his room, but nobody's answering. I don't know if the guy's died in there or what.”

Steve clenched his teeth.

“This Snuffley was very clear that nobody was to bother him about anything while he was staying at the hotel. But if this keeps up tomorrow, the manager says she's opening that door,
DO NOT DISTURB
sign or no. She wants to find out what's going on in that
room. We don't want any trouble here. But now I've got a detective playing twenty questions. And where there's detectives, there's trouble.”

Steve could hear his own heartbeat. The letter from MacArthur Bart was dated yesterday. Bart had gone to mail it and never come back.

Steve was too late.

“Where's the nearest mailbox?” Steve asked.

“Around the corner, on Sunset Court. Why?”

Steve didn't reply. He was running for the door.

S
TEVE PUSHED THROUGH
the glass door himself—the doorman was gone now—and it swung open fast and banged against a metal doorstop. He sprinted down the driveway and turned the corner onto Sunset Court, then paused and surveyed the street. Brightly colored houses lined the quiet alley, which ran one block and ended at the beach. There, next to a dented sign about beach safety, was a blue mailbox.

Steve organized the events in his head. MacArthur Bart had left his hotel room, put Steve's letter in that
mailbox, and never come back. Which meant that whoever was following Bart must have kidnapped him on this very street. Which meant that Steve was looking at a crime scene. And this time Rick wasn't around to screw everything up.

The Bailey Brothers' Detective Handbook
has some useful tips regarding evidence collection:

“Leaping leapfrogs! I've found a clue!” is Shawn and Kevin Bailey's favorite thing to say. That's because clues are Shawn and Kevin Bailey's favorite things to find! When you get to a crime scene, it's super important to walk carefully from one end to another, searching for anything out of the ordinary. You know, clues! Here are common clues that can crack a case:

—Guns or knives

—Hats made in foreign countries

—Gorilla masks

—False beards, wigs, and other fake hair

—Arrowheads

—Anchors and other nautical paraphernalia

—Cryptic notes

—Exotic birds, such as parrots

—Broken swords

—Mesoamerican statues

—Fingerprints, fingerprints, fingerprints!

Steve, walking slowly along the road saw:

—Sand

—Leaves

—An orange peel, shrunken and stiff

—A dirty green visor that said
BEACH DUDE

It wasn't impossible that the visor was a clue, but it looked too gross to touch. Steve took out his notebook.

Steve sighed. His suspect list was pretty thin. Fingerprint time.

To know which objects to dust for fingerprints, you had to be able to visualize the crime. Steve saw it happening this way: MacArthur Bart deposited the letter in the mailbox. As soon as the swinging door creaked shut, a black car pulled up, and a thug—perhaps multiple thugs—tumbled out. They came up behind Bart and maybe even put a rag dipped in chloroform up to his face. But there was almost certainly a struggle—MacArthur Bart wouldn't give up without a fight—and it was possible that one of the kidnappers left his fingerprints on the mailbox, probably to steady himself after Bart had punched him in the solar plexus.

Steve crouched down in front of the mailbox and put on a pair of rubber dishwashing gloves. Then he took out a tin of hot chocolate mix and an old makeup brush, dipped the brush in the cocoa powder, and started dusting from the bottom up.

As Steve worked his way up the front of the mailbox, more and more fingerprints began to appear. He kneeled and dusted the handle and door of the mailbox, then pulled the door open so he could dust the other side.

Steve heard a noise from above.

He looked up just in time to see the net drop on him from the second-story window.

T
HE
B
AILEY
B
ROTHERS'
D
ETECTIVE
H
ANDBOOK
says, “When villains spring a trap on you, it's time to act fast! Don't wait around to see what happens next. Move, move, move!”

But Steve was finding it hard to move, because he was underneath a net. In fact Steve was so astonished to find himself under a net, when just two seconds ago he had been dusting a mailbox for fingerprints on an apparently net-free street near the beach, that he was having trouble doing much of anything.

The net was wet and slimy and smelled terrible. Steve knew that smell. He hated that smell. It was
the smell of fish. This was a fishing net. A horrible ripple started in his stomach and worked its way up his throat. Whenever Steve was nauseated, his mom told him to take deep breaths, but now every breath he took brought with it the foul smell of fish. It was terrible, and soon things got worse.