* * *
“Green? Why green?” wondered Claudia aloud.
We were in the cafeteria. I had just told everybody about the flooded bathroom incident and the newest green “MK” signature. “I mean, why did they switch to green? Did all their red markers run out?” Claud went on.
“If Dawn were here, she’d say green doesn’t fit their aura,” put in Mary Anne with a little smile. “Maybe someone is trying to frame the Mischief Knights.”
“Or at least use them for cover,” Stacey added.
Abby said, “Well, for your information, I was in another bathroom right before lunch. By myself. Until the door opened.”
The dramatic way she said it got everybody’s attention.
“Go on! Go on!” urged Claudia.
“Someone opened the door,” Abby said, and stopped.
“GO ON!” we all said at the same time.
Abby shrugged. “Nothing major. A guy’s voice said, ‘Anybody in here?’ I said, ‘Yes,’ but before I could ask why a boy would want to know whether anybody was in the girls’ bathroom, I heard beeping noises, and the door closed again.”
“He was going to flood your bathroom, but you foiled him!” cried Claudia, in her best Nancy Drew manner.
“Maybe,” said Abby. “I’m not sure, but it sounded as if whoever it was was trying to disguise his voice.”
“You mean, it might not even have been a guy?” asked Stacey.
“No, it was a guy who didn’t want to be recognized. The words were … accented, or something.”
“Mr. Milhaus,” I guessed, remembering my encounter with him.
“Maybe,” said Abby again.
Stacey said, “Well, switching from Mischief Knights to Mystery Wars, I checked out the library.”
“I hope you had more luck than I did,” said Mary Anne. She had hunted all over the cafeteria (earning some weird looks) before she picked up her lunch. Nothing. Nada.
Stacey beamed. “I looked up A Theory of Man and Woman in the card catalogue. The library definitely has it, so I went to see if I could find the book on the shelf.”
“The clue!” I interrupted.
“Wait.” Stacey held up her hand. “No envelope. This, naturally, was a disappointment. So I stood there, holding the book, thinking about the equation — the whole clue. And that’s when I saw the answer, right in front of me. It’s a numerical clue.”
“Uh-oh,” said Claudia.
“What are you talking about?” Mary Anne asked.
“You know — the number on a library book’s spine — the call number. This book’s call number is three-zero-five. Each of the other clues has a number, too. We just have to figure out which number fits each clue, then do the equation.”
“A cafeteria hamburger has no number,” said Abby. “No number. No value. In fact, at a dollar sixty-nine, it is a total ripoff. It’s disgusting …” She stopped, and a big grin broke out on her face. “It’s number is one sixty-nine.”
Mary Anne had whipped out her notebook and was writing everything down. “Does anybody know the school’s street address?” she asked.
“Street address of the school: three fifty-eight Elm Street,” said Abby. We looked at her in surprise.
“How did you know that?” I demanded.
“I filled out a million forms when I came to this school,” said Abby. “I remembered.”
Mary Anne read aloud: “One sixty-nine plus three-oh-five minus three fifty-eight equals …”
“One sixteen,” answered Stacy without hesitating.
“Room one sixteen!” I cried. “A fly on the wall of room one sixteen.”
Abby leaped to her feet. “We have to check this out right now.”
In no time we’d secured permission to leave the cafeteria, signed out (new policy there, too), and were on our way to room 116, which is a biology classroom. Sure enough, hanging on one of the walls was a big blown-up picture of a fly.
“Ugh,” said Stacey. “I don’t like flies.”
Claudia, giving it the artistic once-over, said, “It’s kind of amazing, you know?”
I beat Abby by half a step to the picture, lifted it, and found an envelope labeled “A true clue 4U” taped to the back of it.
Inside, the message was:
“Nothing personal!” said Claudia. “Ha. How personal can you get?”
“Do you have a spelling book? Some kind of workbook? A special dictionary?” Abby asked Claudia.
“I’ll check my locker,” said Claudia, still looking indignant. “But if Cary Retlin has broken into it to leave the next clue, he is going to be made into a very messy collage!”
Unfortunately, the warning bell rang before we could do any more brainstorming.
“Think about it in class,” urged Abby. “You’ll figure it out.”
That won a reluctant grin from Claudia. “Yeah, and it’ll beat thinking about classwork.”
Claudia took Abby’s advice. And Abby was right. I had just stepped out of my last class when Claudia grabbed my arm and pulled me into the crowd. “Come on! We don’t have much time. I hope they haven’t closed.”
“Who haven’t, ah, hasn’t?” I asked. “Does this mean you figured it out? The clue?”
“I think so. I think Cary must be talking about my old Personals column in the school newspaper. I used to use a computer to spell-check the column. Spellcheck is awesome, except when you have two words that sound the same.”
We were in luck. Emily Bernstein, the editor of the SMS Express, was sitting at a desk, going over copy with a pencil.
“Hey!” said Claudia.
“Hi, Claudia,” said Emily, glancing up, then back down at the page of type with an intent, don’t-interrupt-me look.
“Could I use that computer over there? Just for a moment?” asked Claudia.
“Sure,” replied Emily, without looking up again. “You know the drill. Just be sure to turn it off when you are done. The Express’s computers are dinosaurs. They have new programs, though, for editing …” Her voice trailed off as she made another mark with her blue pencil.
Claudia booted up the computer, typed in her name — and jumped back when the computer said, “Welcome, Claudia.”
“Ah, Emily? When did you teach the dinosaur to speak?”
Emily laughed. “That comes with the new software. It’s a voice chip.”
The screen flashed. Then two sentences appeared:
CLAUDIA, CHECK YOUR SPELLING! YOU HAVE THREE MINUTES!
“Eek,” said Claudia.
“Good grief,” I said.
“Spell ‘potato,’ ” said the computer.
Claudia typed in P-O-E-T-A-T-O-E.
“Wrong,” said the computerized voice. “Spell ‘potato.’ ”
Claud, red-faced, glanced toward Emily. Emily was so intent on what she was doing that she hadn’t heard a thing.
“Uh, Claudia? Just leave out the e’s,” I said quickly.
Claudia typed in the correct spelling.
The computer made her spell six more words, all of them tricky, like “tomato” and “peculiar” and “embarrass.”
“I think you should be able to spell peculiar any way you want to,” said Claudia. “It goes with the definition.”
I missed a couple, but between us we got them all.
Emily never even looked up.
Claudia grumbled through the whole thing. She kept talking back to the computer as if it were alive. It was pretty funny. But of course, I didn’t laugh.
After the quiz was over, the screen flashed “WAIT A SECOND.”
Then the next clue appeared.
Claudia pressed “print,” and we had the clue in hard copy.
Just then, Emily finished what she’d been doing. She put aside the copy and walked over to us.
“Did I hear a spelling test just now?” she asked. (Which proves that Emily always pays attention. That’s probably how she got to be editor of the Express.)
“Yup,” said Claudia.
“I bet you didn’t know the computer was programmed to do that, did you?”
“Cary Retlin,” said Emily. “He’s behind it.”
We both must have looked surprised, because Emily explained, “He came in yesterday. Asked a lot of questions about you …”
She paused and grinned, giving Claudia a searching look. “Are you and Cary about to become news, Claudia?”
Claud shook her head, blushing slightly. “Forget it, Em,” she said. “I don’t like Cary Retlin. Not even a little bit. And he doesn’t like me.”
“Hmmm,” said Emily, sounding just like Watson at breakfast. Then she said, “He said he’d heard you’d written a personals column for a while. He wanted to know about that. Then he offered to give me a few tips on some of our computer programs. He found so many glitches that I let him use one of our computers to work them out.”
She looked over at the computer, then sat down and clicked away for a few moments. “Good,” she said, after watching to see what happened. “He didn’t mess up any of our programs.” She pushed back her chair and said thoughtfully, “If he’s smart enough to stick a spelling program in for you, Claudia, maybe he should be working for the Express.”
We left Emily bent over the keyboard like a pianist, and headed out with our newest clue.
The meeting place for the second leg of the great scavenger hunt was at Abby’s house. Hannie and Linny Papadakis were there, since they live across the street. Tiffany and Maria Kilbourne, Shannon’s younger sisters, also came. David Michael showed up, naturally. Also the Hsu brothers, Timmy and Scott, and Bill and Melody Korman, who live across the street from me and one house up from the Papadakises.
They’d already divided into teams by the time Abby and Jessi arrived. This was clear from the way they were lined up on either side of Abby’s front steps. Anna was there too, talking to the kids as they waited for Abby and Jessi to arrive.
“Thanks,” Abby said to her sister.
“No problem,” replied Anna. She went inside to practice her violin, and Jessi and Abby took over.
David Michael and Linny had wanted to be on the same team, since they are friends as well as neighbors. The other boys had also (surprise, surprise) taken a stand with them.
Sitting across from the boys’ team was the girls’ team: Tiffany and Maria Kilbourne, Melody Korman, and Hannie Papadakis.
“So it’s boys versus girls, eh?” said Jessi.
Hannie answered, “There are more people on the boys’ team because they need more help.”
“Ha!” scoffed David Michael.
“Double ha,” added Linny.
“We know all about the scavenger hunt,” continued Hannie.
“We’re ready to hunt for things the way buzzards do,” said Tiffany.
Hannie pointed at the boys’ team. “The Buzzard Boys,” she said.
“Ha, ha, ha!” said Bill Korman, clearly not displeased with his team’s new name.
“We are the Scavenger Queens,” said Melody. She added proudly, “Maria and I thought of the name today in school.”
Clearly word of the scavenger hunt had gotten around. As Jessi and Abby explained the details most of the kids could barely contain their excitement — or impatience.
“We know all that,” Timmy Hsu burst out. “Can we see the list?”
“Is it school stuff?” interrupted Hannie.
“No.” We’d decided against using the same themes, so that the kids couldn’t plan ahead. Abby held up the two copies of that day’s list. “Today our theme is sports.” (Guess who chose that idea?)
“Cool,” said the boys. “We’re gonna win.”
Tiffany fixed the Buzzard Boys with a steely eye. “You think you’re the only ones who know sports? Maria’s an athlete, guys.”
“Yeah,” said Hannie.
“Yeah,” said Jessi, trying to hide a smile.
Scott Hsu asked, “Can we start now? Please?”
Jessi read the first clue aloud: “You can bounce it, you can fling it, but with a racket you can’t hack it.”
“Easy, Scavenger Queens, you know what I mean?” Hannie said. She took off so fast that she almost left Jessi behind.
The Buzzard Boys took off, too. In no time at all, both groups had acquired balls, the boys an old basketball from the Papadakises’ house, the girls a soccer ball from Abby’s. They’d figured out quickly that tennis balls and Ping-Pong balls wouldn’t work.
The second clue was, “Even if you are a very good sport, this item stinks, on and off the court.”
The boys were mystified. “Nothing about sports stinks,” Scott Hsu said indignantly.
“A rotten referee or a crooked umpire,” his brother suggested.
To which David Michael replied, “Where are we going to find a rotten referee or a crooked umpire?”
The girls were puzzled, too, Jessi told me later, but they tried to be practical. “A court is basketball, right?” asked Tiffany Kilbourne.
“Or tennis,” said Hannie.
“My mom plays racquetball on a racquetball court,” Melody piped up.
Silence.
“Maybe it’s the player,” Timmy Hsu was suggesting, over in the boys’ camp. “A bad player stinks on and off the court.”
“How are we supposed to find someone who admits he’s a bad player?” demanded Linnie.
“And we couldn’t turn him in anyway,” added David Michael. “Not a human person.”
The girls figured it out first. Tiffany said, “What about something you wear?”
Maria shrieked, “Underwear!” and the girls all began to laugh.
“I’m not turning in underwear,” insisted Hannie.
“We can’t go to someone’s house and ask for …” Tiffany’s voice trailed off. Her eyes lit up. “Socks. Old disgusting dirty …”
“… ucky, yucky, smelly, foot jelly,” sang Hannie.
“… Socks!” the girls all shrieked.
They went to Mrs. Porter’s house and asked for sweat socks. Dirty ones. No such luck.
But the teenager who answered the door at the next house grinned and handed over her socks. “Keep ’em,” she said.
“Thanks,” Maria replied, taking the socks carefully. She turned toward Jessi.
“You can carry the socks,” said Jessi quickly. “I trust you.”
The boys, too, had come up with underwear. Their next choice was gym shorts. Gym shorts were not as easy to come by as socks, and they had to make several stops before anyone could spare a pair. The shorts they finally secured were old ones, but unfortunately (or fortunately, thought Abby, since she was carrying them) clean ones.
The next clue, “Go catch a fish, and make it swish,” was of course a net.
Both teams met some resistance on this one. “A net? Certainly not,” said one woman who answered the door and found Abby and the Buzzard Boys standing on her doormat. “No one wears hair nets anymore.”
“Hair nets?” said David Michael indignantly. “Who said anything about hair nets!”
Someone finally gave the boys permission to cut down a piece of an old basketball net attached to a hoop at the back of the garage.
The girls tried to talk the owner of one huge house out of his tennis net, but he demurred. He ended up giving them the small fish net that he used to scoop out his fish tank, laughing as he did so.
“It’s clean,” he said.
A look of alarm passed over Melody’s face, but Maria said serenely, “Not like our socks!” and held them up for the man’s approval.
Jessi kept a straight face. Barely.
The girls beat the boys back by one minute. This resulted in some friendly taunts.
“The Scavenger Queens rule,” declared Hannie.
“It ain’t over till it’s over,” said Linny, folding his arms and trying to look like the famous baseball player Yogi Berra.
But hostilities ceased when Abby declared that there was just enough time for cookies and juice at her house. Then their taunts tur
ned to pleas — the Buzzard Boys and the Scavenger Queens wanted to meet again. And soon.
As experienced baby-sitters, Abby and Jessi knew better than to make promises they weren’t sure they could keep. But they did agree that it had been fun.
And when the rest of us saw the boxes of items collected by the two teams, we all had to agree that this had been one of the BSC’s more brilliant ideas.
By Friday, day four of the Mystery War, I was feeling pretty pleased. So far, the BSC had been able to solve each of Cary’s clues.
But although winning the Mystery War loomed large in my mind, it did not loom as large as the big, ugly black letters in the headline of the Stoneybrook News that morning at breakfast. Watson hadn’t even said, “Hmmm.” He’d just pushed it across the table for me to see.
TEACHERS TO STRIKE ON TUESDAY
“I can’t believe it,” Claudia moaned as we sat down to lunch that day. Naturally, this headline had not gone unnoticed by anyone’s parents, or their kids.
Mary Anne said, “Dawn’s supposed to come for a long visit this summer. But if we have to go to school …”
“It’s all the Mischief Knights’ fault,” I said grimly. “We have to stop them before they ruin summer for everybody.”
“They are so dumb,” said Claudia. “Don’t they see that they’ll have to go to summer school, too?”
Stacey said, “I’m still not convinced that they’re behind the vandalism, you guys. I mean, it’s serious stuff, not pranks. Remember what we talked about the other day — the idea that somebody’s trying to use them for cover? What about Brad Simon? Or Troy Parker? They’ve both been around a lot. I saw Brad coming out of the guidance office yesterday afternoon.”
Mary Anne nodded. “Troy came by when Logan was shooting baskets a couple of days ago. He was saying some pretty nasty things about SMS, according to Logan.”
“Anything about why SMS gave him a two-week boot?” asked Abby, getting straight to the point as usual.
“No.” Even kindhearted Mary Anne looked a little disappointed at not being able to tell Abby more about what kind of terrible trouble Troy might have been in.