Murder, My Tweet Page 7

  Natalie gaped.

  Ms. Shrewer looked as if two particularly nasty bugs had just crawled up her nostrils. She shuddered and turned to go, but Mr. Zero shook his head.

  “And as the real blackmailers have been apprehended, thanks in part to you,” she said, “I’m suspending your suspension. Be back at school on Monday.”

  I clapped Natalie on the back. “Way to go, partner.”

  “Th-thank you, ma’am,” she stammered to the vice principal.

  “Say, Ms. Shrewer,” I said, “I was wondering.”

  The shrew eyed me. “Yes?”

  “What exactly did Oliver have on you, anyway?”

  “I, er, used to be a dancer.”

  “A cancan dancer,” said Mr. Zero, “by the name of Fifi L’Amour.”

  Her glare could’ve melted a cement vest. “Tell anyone, and you die.”

  “Mum’s the word,” I said, “Fifi.”

  With a mighty effort, Natalie and I smothered our smiles. We rose and shuffled out the door, leaving the scowling shrew behind.

  The late-afternoon sun turned the treetops golden, and kids were piling into cars, headed home. Behind us, Maureen DeBree was removing batteries and piling robots into a recycling bin.

  We moseyed across the parking lot.

  “What do you think will happen to Oliver?” said Natalie.

  “Ah, they’ll probably send him to a school for the criminally gifted—the kind with bars on the windows and recess in a concrete courtyard.”

  She grinned. “I’d much rather be at Emerson Hicky. Thanks, Chet.”

  “Aw, forget it,” I said. “After all, what are friends for?”

  “To eat the last of your Katydid Chunk bars?” I smiled.

  “Now that you mention it, birdie, snacks at your house?”

  As we headed down the street, Natalie cocked her head. “Say, Chet, have you heard the one about the two friends and the missing nostril tweezers?”

  “As a matter of fact, birdie,” I said, “I have. But tell it again anyway.”

  1

  The Boy Who Cried Wolverine

  Let’s face it: Elementary school is a jungle. Want to survive? Know your beasts. The herds of nerds, the packs of bullies, the rich kids, the jocks—each creature in this jungle has its own identifying marks.

  Take Ben Dova, wolverine.

  One look told the tale. Dagger claws, check. Furry boulders that passed for shoulders, check. B.O. strong enough to make a stinkbug cry, check.

  Ben Dova might just as well have had bully stamped across his forehead.

  He was big.

  He was bad.

  And he’d been hogging the tetherball for ten minutes.

  Wolverine or no wolverine, I wanted to play.

  “’Scuse me, bub,” I said. “You almost finished?”

  “Grrr,” he replied.

  Did I mention that Ben was also a brilliant conversationalist?

  He planted a pair of hamlike fists on his hips, snorkeled some air through his nose, and scanned the scene.

  “Pee-yew,” he said. “What stinks?”

  I gazed up at Ben. “Your armpits come to mind,” I said. “As does your breath, your sister, and your grades. Pick one.”

  Ben’s lip curled, flashing fangs that a great white shark would’ve envied.

  I reached for the tetherball. “Hey, if you’re not going to play . . .”

  The wolverine hoisted the ball out of my reach. “Smells like barf,” he said. “Smells like a pukey little lizard.”

  This brought some girlish giggles. A weasel and a rabbit stood nearby watching.

  Sheesh. It’s always worse with an audience.

  My jaw tightened. “Look, pal. Why don’t you give someone else a turn, and get back to practicing your tough-guy talk?”

  Ben’s bullet-hole eyes burned yellow. “You gonna make me, punk?”

  Normally, I try to deal with bullies the Rodney Rodent way. (You know, the star of Rodney Rodent’s House of Cartoons?) Rodney always says: Don’t show fear; speak firmly but politely; and just walk away.

  I didn’t show fear. Speaking firmly, I said, “I don’t make beanheads, I bake them.”

  I’ve always had problems with the polite part.

  Turning to go, I nodded to the girls. A paw like a catcher’s mitt swung at my head.

  I ducked.

  The gleam in Ben’s eyes went from yellow to red. That was my cue.

  “Yaaah!”

  I pelted across the blacktop, straight for the nearest portable classroom. Mere steps ahead of the wolverine, I reached it.

  Fa-zzup! I scuttled up the wall.

  Whether you’re a PI like me or just a fourth grader trapped in a sixth-grade world, it pays to have serious climbing skills. In three shakes, I made the roof.

  “Come back here, Gecko!” yelled Ben Dova.

  I laughed. “If you think I’m coming down to get creamed, you’re so dumb you put lipstick on your forehead to make up your mind.”

  A snarl below told me the joke had found its mark. I savored the moment.

  “Verrry funny,” came an oily voice from behind me. “You should try stand-up.”

  A huge brown bat hovered in midair.

  “I did,” I said, “but I kept falling down.”

  “Too bad you didn’t fall farther,” she crooned.

  Swell. Another bully. Even for Emerson Hicky, this was excessive.

  “What is this, Let’s Pick on a PI Week?”

  The bat wore a dorky pink hair ribbon and a savage sneer. Her smooshed-in nostrils twitched as if she smelled something stenchy.

  As if that something was me.

  She opened her mouth to speak.

  I held up a hand. “I know, I know,” I said. “I’m a smelly little lizard and blah-blah-blah.”

  “Verrry perceptive,” said the bat.

  “Look, Flappy, can we just skip to the part where I run away? It takes me a while to come up with new insults.”

  The bat smiled, baring fangs as yellow as a stale harvest moon.

  “But of course,” she said. Miss Flappy flexed her wings.

  I sprinted for the nearest treetop.

  Flump-flump-flump! The thrumming of bat wings grew louder.

  My leafy sanctuary was only steps away.

  Some instinct said duck! The bat’s swoop trickled chills down my spine.

  I stumbled headlong—off the roof and into a tree.

  “Unh—

  Ooh—

  Ach!”

  Plummeting downward, I bounced from limb to limb like a deranged pinball. Finally I landed—ka-whump!—in a heap on the grass.

  Dizzier than a carload of cheerleaders, I struggled to my knees. Then a large brown shape landed nearby. A massive black-and-tan figure rounded the corner.

  Bullies to the left, bullies to the right.

  I was doomed.

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  Look for more mysteries

  from the Tattered Casebook of Chet Gecko

  Case #1 The Chameleon Wore Chartreuse

  Some cases start rough, some cases start easy. This one started with a dame. (That’s what we private eyes call a girl.) She was cute and green and scaly. She looked like trouble and smelled like . . . grasshoppers.

  Shirley Chameleon came to me when her little brother, Billy, turned up missing. (I suspect she also came to spread cooties, but that’s another story.) She turned on the tears. She promised me some stinkbug pie. I said I’d find the brat.

  But when his trail led to a certain stinky-breathed, bad-tempered, jumbo-sized Gila monster, I thought I’d bitten off more than I could chew. Worse, I had to chew fast: If I didn’t find Billy in time, it would be bye-bye, stinkbug pie.

  Case #2 The Mystery of Mr. Nice

  How would you know if some criminal mastermind tried to impersonate your principal? My first clue: He was nice to me.


  This fiend tried everything—flattery, friendship, food—but he still couldn’t keep me off the case. Natalie and I followed a trail of clues as thin as the cheese on a cafeteria hamburger. And we found a ring of corruption that went from the janitor right up to Mr. Big.

  In the nick of time, we rescued Principal Zero and busted up the PTA meeting, putting a stop to the evil genius. And what thanks did we get? Just the usual. A cold handshake and a warm soda.

  But that’s all in a day’s work for a private eye.

  Case #3 Farewell, My Lunchbag

  If danger is my business, then dinner is my passion. I’ll take any case if the pay is right. And what pay could be better than Mothloaf Surprise?

  At least that’s what I thought. But in this particular case, I almost paid the ultimate price for good grub.

  Cafeteria lady Mrs. Bagoong hired me to track down whoever was stealing her food supplies. The long, slimy trail led too close to my own backyard for comfort.

  And much, much too close to the very scary Jimmy “King” Cobra. Without the help of Natalie Attired and our school janitor, Maureen DeBree, I would’ve been gecko sushi.

  Case #4 The Big Nap

  My grades were lower than a salamander’s slippers, and my bank account was trying to crawl under a duck’s belly. So why did I take a case that didn’t pay anything?

  Put it this way: Would you stand by and watch some evil power turn your classmates into hypnotized zombies? (If that wasn’t just what normally happened to them in math class, I mean.)

  My investigations revealed a plot meaner than a roomful of rhinos with diaper rash.

  Someone at Emerson Hicky was using a sinister video game to put more and more students into la-la-land. And it was up to me to stop it, pronto—before that someone caught up with me, and I found myself taking the Big Nap.

  Case #5 The Hamster of the Baskervilles

  Elementary school is a wild place. But this was ridiculous.

  Someone—or something—was tearing up Emerson Hicky. Classrooms were trashed. Walls were gnawed. Mysterious tunnels riddled the playground like worm chunks in a pan of earthworm lasagna.

  But nobody could spot the culprit, let alone catch him.

  I don’t believe in the supernatural. My idea of voodoo is my mom’s cockroach-ripple ice cream.

  Then, a teacher reported seeing a monster on full-moon night, and I got the call.

  At the end of a twisted trail of clues, I had to answer the burning question: Was it a vicious, supernatural were-hamster on the loose, or just another Science Fair project gone wrong?

  Case #6 This Gum for Hire

  Never thought I’d see the day when one of my worst enemies would hire me for a case. Herman the Gila Monster was a sixth-grade hoodlum with a first-rate left hook. He told me someone was disappearing the football team, and he had to put a stop to it. Big whoop.

  He told me he was being blamed for the kidnappings, and he had to clear his name. Boo hoo.

  Then he said that I could either take the case and earn a nice reward, or have my face rearranged like a bargain-basement Picasso painted by a spastic chimp.

  I took the case.

  But before I could find the kidnapper, I had to go undercover. And that meant facing something that scared me worse than a chorus line of criminals in steel-toed boots: P.E. class.

  Case #7 The Malted Falcon

  It was tall, dark, and chocolatey—the stuff dreams are made of. It was a treat so titanic that nobody had been able to finish one single-handedly (or even single-mouthedly). It was the Malted Falcon.

  How far would you go for the ultimate dessert? Somebody went too far, and that’s where I came in.

  The local sweets shop held a contest. The prize: a year’s supply of free Malted Falcons. Some lucky kid scored the winning ticket. She brought it to school for show-and-tell.

  But after she showed it, somebody swiped it. And no one would tell where it went.

  Following a strong hunch and an even stronger sweet tooth, I tracked the ticket through a web of lies more tangled than a rattlesnake doing the rumba. But the time to claim the prize was fast approaching. Would the villain get the sweet treat—or his just desserts?

  Case #8 Trouble Is My Beeswax

  Okay, I confess. When test time rolls around, I’m as tempted as the next lizard to let my eyeballs do the walking . . . to my neighbor’s paper.

  But Mrs. Gecko didn’t raise no cheaters. (Some language manglers, perhaps.) So when a routine investigation uncovered a test-cheating ring at Emerson Hicky, I gave myself a new case: Put the cheaters out of business.

  Easier said than done. Those double-dealers were slicker than a frog’s fanny and twice as slimy.

  Oh, and there was one other small problem: All the evidence pointed to two dames. The ringleader was either the glamorous Lacey Vail, or my own classmate Shirley Chameleon.

  Sheesh. The only thing I hate worse than an empty Pillbug Crunch wrapper is a case full of dizzy dames.

  Case #9 Give My Regrets to Broadway

  Some things you can’t escape, however hard you try—like dentist appointments, visits with strange-smelling relatives, and being in the fourth-grade play. I had always left the acting to my smart-aleck pal, Natalie, but now it was my turn in the spotlight.

  Stage fright? Me? You’re talking about a gecko who has laughed at danger, chuckled at catastrophe, and sneezed at sinister plots.

  I was terrified.

  Not because of the acting, mind you. The script called for me to share a major lip-lock with Shirley Chameleon—Cootie Queen of the Universe!

  And while I was trying to avoid that trap, a simple missing persons case took a turn for the worse—right into the middle of my play. Would opening night spell curtains for my client? And, more important, would someone invent a cure for cooties? But no matter—whatever happens, the sleuth must go on.

  Case #10 Murder, My Tweet

  Some things at school you can count on. Pop quizzes always pop up just after you’ve spent your study time studying comics. Chef’s Surprise is always a surprise, but never a good one. And no matter how much you learn today, they always make you come back tomorrow.

  But sometimes, Emerson Hicky amazes you. And just like finding a killer bee in a box of Earwig Puffs, you’re left shocked, stung, and discombobulated.

  Foul play struck at my school; that’s nothing new. But then the finger of suspicion pointed straight at my favorite fowl: Natalie Attired. Framed as a blackmailer, my partner was booted out of Emerson Hicky quicker than a hoptoad on a hot plate.

  I tackled the case for free. Mess with my partner, mess with me.

  Then things took a turn for the worse. Just when I thought I might clear her name, Natalie disappeared. And worse still, she left behind one clue: a reddish smear that looked kinda like the jelly from a beetle-jelly sandwich but raised an ugly question: Was it murder, or something serious?

  Case #11 The Possum Always Rings Twice

  In my time, I’ve tackled cases stickier than a spider’s handshake and harder than three-year-old boll weevil taffy. But nothing compares to the job that landed me knee-deep in school politics.

  What seemed like a straightforward case of extortion during Emerson Hicky’s student-council election ended up taking more twists and turns than an anaconda’s lunch. It became a battle royal for control of the school. (Not that I necessarily believe school is worth fighting for, but a gecko’s gotta do something with his days.)

  In the end, my politicking landed me in one of the tightest spots I’ve ever encountered. Was I savvy enough to escape with my skin? Let me put it this way: Just like a politician, this is one private eye who always shoots from the lip.

  Case #12 Key Lardo

  Working this case, I nearly lost my detective mojo—and to a guy so dim, he’d probably play goalie for the darts team. True, he was only a cog in a larger conspiracy. But this big buttinsky made my life more uncomfortable than a porcupine’s underpants.

 
Was he a cop? A truant officer? A gorilla with a grudge? Even worse: A rival detective. His name was Bland. James Bland. And he was cracking cases faster than a . . . well, much faster than I was.

  My reputation took a nosedive. And I nearly followed it—straight into the slammer. Fighting back with all my moxie, I bent the rules, blundered into blind alleys, and stepped on more than a few toes.

  Was I right? Was I wrong? I’ll tell you this: I made my share of mistakes. But I believe that if you can’t laugh at yourself . . . make fun of someone else.

  Case #13 Hiss Me Deadly

  When my sister got robbed, she turned to me for help. And like a dope, I jumped in with both feet.

  But a simple case of theft soon grew more challenging than playing Chinese checkers on a bucking bronco. Valuables started vanishing from school, and the top brass called me in. I followed the twisty trail of clues until I’d unearthed more suspects than a zombie membership drive.

  The heat was on. As I drew closer to uncovering the shadowy puppet master behind it all, I got myself in a spot tighter than a blue whale’s bikini. Would I make it out with my skin?

  Not to worry. As any detective will tell you, it’s always darkest before dawn. So if you’re going to steal your neighbor’s newspaper, that’s the time to do it.

  Case #14 From Russia with Lunch

  Whenever a mystery lands on my plate, I dig right in, like a hungry worm munching a dirt sandwich. But this time, I nearly choked on the clues.

  The investigation began simply enough, with a teacher’s pet acting wacko. But then the supernatural and the high tech collided, and my case took a turn for the weird. Kindergartners started beating up sixth graders, and my faithful partner and best friend Natalie Attired abandoned me in my hour of need.