The Startling Story of the Stolen Statue (3 page)

W
hile solving our last few mysteries, the Goofballs have developed a system for finding clues. It’s called T
HE
G
OOFBALL
S
YSTEM
FOR
F
INDING
C
LUES
.

Mara took the north wall of the room. Kelly took the south wall. I took the east wall. Brian took the west wall. Sparky took the middle.

“Ready?” I said. “Begin!”

It must have looked like a really silly dance, but it’s how Goofballs solve cases.

Mara was down on her hands and knees, staring through her greenrimmed glasses.

Kelly power walked in super-slow motion over every inch of her part of the room, her eyes as wide as a couple of searchlights.

Brian zigzagged along his wall, three steps away, three steps back, scanning the floor through his laser helmet like an alien detective.

I was bent in half, creeping along with baby steps, my nose grazing the floor, my cluebook ready for any clue I could find.

If
some
private eyes know something about everything, and
other
private eyes know everything about something, the
Goofballs
know a few things about a few things.

But it totally worked, because after a few minutes of The Goofball System for Finding Clues, we found our first clue.

To be exact,
I
found the first clue. By accident. The kind of accident where somebody gets hurt. Me!

I was turning away from my first corner when suddenly—
sloop! wham!
— my feet were in the air and my back was on the floor!

“Hey! Who tripped me?” I cried.

“Your feet did,” Brian said through his scuba mask.

“No, they didn’t,” I said. “
That
did!”

As everyone ran over, I picked up a very short stub of a broken pencil. It was the pointed end and only three inches long. Besides that, it was gold and looked brand-new.

“Wait. A pencil?” asked Brian. “
That’s
what tripped you?”

“A
broken
pencil,” I said, sniffing the broken end. “And judging by the fresh smell of the wood, this pencil was broken very recently.”

Mara blinked through her glasses. “What’s so important about a broken pencil?”

I grinned, knowing what I would say. “Maybe nothing … maybe everything.”

“Good line,” said Kelly. “Write it, Jeff.”

I like good lines, so I did.

Kelly frowned. “But how do we solve the mystery if all we have is a pencil stub?”

“We think,” said Mara. “So I’ll play some thinking music.” She sat down at the piano.

“I didn’t know you played piano,” said Brian.

“I don’t,” Mara said. “Ready?”

Before we could say “No,” Mara raised her fingers and dropped them hard on the keys.

BLOINKKKK! Blinkety-plonkety
-
thung!

Mara blinked. “I know I can’t play, but no one’s
this
bad.” She flipped up the top of the piano and looked in. “Well, of all the goofy things… . Kelly, hold my feet. I’m going in!”

Mara disappeared into the top of the piano while Kelly held her feet.

“I did that once,” said Brian.

“Went into a piano?” I asked.

“No. Held someone’s feet,” he said.

“Whose?” I asked.

“Mine,” he said. “I was a baby at the time.”

“On this planet?” I asked.

“I’m pretty sure.”

“Hoist me up, Kelly!” cried Mara.

Kelly pulled and pulled, and when Mara came up, she wasn’t emptyhanded. Clasped in her hands was a purple board with wheels on it.

“Clue number two,” Mara said. “A skateboard hidden in the piano.”

“Not the usual place to hide a skateboard,” said Brian. “But good to know.”

“Clue three!” cried Kelly, spotting something and running across the stage to it.

“It’s a torn slip of paper,” she said, sniffing it. “It smells strange, for one thing, and it’s damp and ripped, but you can still read it.”

We all looked and made out some letters.

Brian gasped. “
Hees grate?
Why would the thief write about me? What could it possibly mean?”

“That you spell as bad as the thief does,” I said. “Let’s look for clues in the hall.”

“I don’t have my clue from here yet,” said Brian. “I’ll keep looking. You go on ahead.”

“Go on a head? We’re not hats,” said Kelly.

Brian laughed. “Good joke.”

Kelly frowned. “Who’s joking? We’re
not
hats.” Which is another thing about Kelly. Sometimes she only sees what’s there and doesn’t get the joke. But not getting the joke is sometimes the goofiest thing there is!

We left Brian and Sparky sniffing around the Cafeteri-Audi-Nasium. Well, Sparky was sniffing. Brian was staring up at the climbing ropes hanging from the ceiling.

“Goofballs,” I said when we stepped into the hallway, “so far, we have a broken pencil, a skateboard, and a smelly slip of paper with letters on it. What do these clues tell us?”

“That we need more clues?” said Mara.

“Or we need to know more about the clues we
do
have,” said Kelly, sniffing the paper. “This paper smells like something—”

Suddenly, there came a loud cry from the Cafeteri-Audi-Nasium. “Help!”

Mara, Kelly, and I stared at one another.

“That’s Brian!” I cried. “He’s in trouble!”

W
e raced back into the Cafeteri-Audi-Nasium, expecting to find Brian held prisoner by the statue thief. Instead, we found Brian held prisoner by the climbing ropes.

He was hanging halfway up and was as tangled as Kelly’s extra-curly blond hair when it’s windy.

Plus he had no pants on.

“Brian, get down from there!” said Mara.

“Give me my cargo shorts first!” Brian yelled.

“Why didn’t you keep them with you?” asked Kelly.

“They’re so heavy with invention stuff, they slipped off,” he said.

Sparky was dragging Brian’s cargo shorts around the room. I cornered him and got them back, then tossed them up to Brian. It was amazing how he put them on with one hand. Then he reached up and unhooked the rope next to his and slid to the floor.

“Why were you up there?” asked Kelly.

Brian held the second climbing rope loosely in his hand. “I saw something up there.”

“We saw something up there, too,” Mara told him. “And we wish we didn’t.”

“But this rope was hooked to the ceiling differently from the others,” Brian said. “And because of it, I know without a shadow of a doubt that our thief is a very rich man with bushy red hair and a tiny pet monkey!”

We stared at Brian.

“How do you figure all that?” Kelly asked. “And so quickly?”

Brian smiled. “Simple logic. Clues, please.”

We gave them to him.

“First of all,” he said, “only a rich man would have golden pencils. He used one to keep the Cafeteri-Audi-Nasium door open while he did his stealing… .”

I nodded slowly. “The pencil in the door makes sense, but the pencil’s not real gold, you know.”

“Let me finish,” Brian said. “Second, everyone knows that rich men drive fancy cars. But you can’t drive cars in school, so naturally he would bring a skateboard.”

“Wait. Is that logical?” asked Mara.

“But there’s more!” Brian said.

“Because the thief didn’t want his fancy clothes messed up, he must have had a pet monkey, which he sent up one of the climbing ropes to unhook the one next to it. Just like I did.”

“But—” Kelly said.

“There’s even more!” said Brian. “Sparky, you be the statue.”

Sparky ran up onstage and stood very still.

Brian smiled. “Our thief lifted the statue from the stage onto the skateboard.” Brian lifted Sparky onto the skateboard. “Then the monkey used his tiny little fingers to tie the climbing rope to the skateboard. Together, they rolled the statue from the Cafeteri-Audi-Nasium stage, down the Cafeteri-Audi-Nasium ramp, and out the Cafeteri-Audi-Nasium door, which closed behind the thieves, breaking the gold pencil and sending it spinning across the Cafeteri-Audi-Nasium—”

“Stop!” cried Kelly. “Cafeteri-Audi-Nasium takes too long to say!”

“And takes up too much space in my head,” said Mara.

“And in my cluebook,” I said. “How about just … Caf?”

“Agreed!” everyone said.

“But how in the world do you know the thief has bushy red hair?” Mara asked.

Brian grinned. “For the simple reason that I don’t know anyone with bushy red hair. I
also
don’t know any very rich men. It follows logically that a very rich man
must
have bushy red hair.” I was about to object when Kelly stomped her feet. “But what about
my
clue? What about the smelly paper?”

“That’s easy,” said Brian. “The paper says HEES GRATE. And now I’ll prove that I am. Because here comes my best idea. Since Mara found the skateboard
in
the piano, I believe our rich thief is coming back for it. And I know the perfect way to catch him!”

Without a word, Brian went behind the curtain and came back with two buckets.

“What’s in those buckets?” asked Kelly.

Brian placed one bucket next to each of the two doors into the Caf, then turned and smiled.

“Golf balls!” he said. “The plastic ones they use for lessons. When our thief returns to the scene of the crime, he’ll knock over the buckets, fall on the golf balls, and we’ll catch him!”

“Brian,” I said, “I don’t know if your solution to the mystery really works—”

All at once, Kelly gasped. She waved the crinkled paper in the air. “I know what this paper smells like! It smells like chlorine!”

“Chlorine?” said Mara. “The blond girl in homeroom? She does have a strange smell.”

“No,” said Brian, “Chlorine is the girl with pink hair in the first row of math class.”

“I think that’s violet,” I said.

“I thought Violet sat behind Chlorine,” said Mara.

“I mean Chlorine’s hair is violet,” I said.

“Then who’s the blonde?” asked Brian.

“Cut—it—out!” shouted Kelly, looking ready to explode. “What I mean is, this paper smells like the
chemical
called
chlorine
in the swimming pool.”

Brian shook his head. “She shouldn’t be in the pool when school is closed—”

“
Which means
,” Kelly continued, glaring at Brian, “that this paper has been
in or near the pool
. Which means that the thief may have left clues there. We need to go there right now!”

“Goof! Goof!” Sparky barked.

Kelly power walked around a bucket of golf balls and straight out of the Caf, her arms flying like a couple of propellers. We followed her down the hall. But our arms were regular.

On our way to the pool, Brian nudged me. “Next time I lose my pants, I’m going in there.”

I looked across at the boys’ locker room. “Are you
planning
to lose your pants again?”

He shrugged. “You never know. But they have lots of extra clothes in the locker room.”

I blinked. “That’s the second time you’ve made sense today, Brian.”

He grinned. “It’s kind of my limit.”

Suddenly, we heard a splash coming from the swimming pool:
Splash!

Then another:
Splash!

And another:
Splash!

Kelly screeched to a stop, her crazy arms frozen in midair.

“The statue stealer!” she whispered. “He’s in the swimming pool!”