Goofballs 4: The Mysterious Talent Show Mystery (3 page)

Mrs. Rinkle held up the sign we saw outside. “I’m sorry. I thought the show was
both
Friday and Saturday nights. So I started to spell them both. Then I found out that the high school needs the theater next Saturday night. So our show will be only on Friday.”

She changed the spelling on the sign.

But little did we know that when Mrs. Tabitha Rinkle took the “tur” out of
Friturday
, the Mysterious Talent Show Mystery was about to begin!

W
hen we arrived on Tuesday afternoon, we found Mrs. Rinkle stamping her foot over and over on the stage.

“Are you trying to learn Tiffany’s dance?” asked Mara.

“Or stomping Billy’s wild snake?” asked Kelly.

Mrs. Rinkle laughed. “Neither. My foot fell asleep!”

“That’s because it’s dark inside your shoe, and your foot thought it was bedtime,” said Brian.

“That’s it!” Mrs. Rinkle said. “Now, gather around. Today we’ll rehearse the act two play. It’s called
Mr. Bat’s Birthday Rescue
. Each of you has a role based on his or her talent. Violet, would you please pass out the scripts so everyone can see his or her part?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Violet said, and she passed out the scripts so we could read our names.

“Now, let’s get measured for costumes,” Mrs. Rinkle said as she led us all into the costume room. “Tiffany has agreed to make all your animal suits for the show,” she said.

Tiffany beamed. “I have my own sewing machine and everything.”

She passed around a tape measure and took down the measurements on a piece of yellow paper on a clipboard.

We measured our arms and legs.

We measured our hands and feet.

We measured our waists and heads.

“I win!” said Brian. “My head is the biggest.”

“I could have told you that,” I said.

“Unless you count my hair,” said Kelly, fluffing her big curls.

“That would take too long,” said Mara. “Did you know the human head contains an average of 120,000 hairs?”

“Maybe that’s true,” said Kelly, “but there’s nothing average about Goofballs, so I probably have more.”

When we finished measuring, Mrs. Rinkle said, “Tiffany, can you sew all the costumes by the end of the week?”

“Of course I can,” Tiffany said.

“Good,” Mrs. Rinkle said. “We’ll try on our costumes this Friday and have our dress rehearsal next Thursday.”

“
Dress
rehearsal?” said Brian. “Boys don’t wear dresses. Is there a pants rehearsal, too?”

Mrs. Rinkle shook with laughter as she led us back to the stage. “A dress rehearsal is what we call our first rehearsal when we dress up in our costumes. Now let’s read our play!”

But the instant we opened our scripts, Billy started to blink, then groan, then wobble.

“I can’t go on!” he said.

“The show
always
goes on,” said Mrs. Rinkle. “Billy, what’s the matter?”

“I’m Mr. Monkey, and Mr. Monkey has too many words!” Billy said. “Listen to them all.”

Joey frowned. “What a great part,” he said.

“It’s too many words all at once,” Billy said.

“You don’t say them all at once,” said Kelly. “You say them one at a time.”

Mrs. Rinkle patted Billy’s shoulder. “We’ll be rehearsing for nearly two weeks. You’ll have plenty of time to learn your part.”

“Maybe,” said Billy. He started wobbling again, but Joey kept him from falling.

Mrs. Rinkle took a deep breath. “Now, who would like to read the beginning of our play?”

“I would,” said Mara.

And she read aloud from her script.

“ ‘
Mr. Bat’s Birthday Rescue
. Scene one. A jungle at dawn. The air is filled with the gentle calls of birds waking up.’ ”

“That’s a cue for Violet,” said Mrs. Rinkle.

Brian laughed. “A
Q
for Violet? Shouldn’t it be a
V
for Violet?”

“No,
Brain
,” said Kelly. “A
cue
is a signal for an actor to begin a speech.”

“Or in this case,” said Mrs. Rinkle, “a signal to begin our jungle music—the gentle birdcalls that open the play. Violet? Your tuba?”

That’s when a
cue
turned into a
clue
!

Because instead of
bwaap
ing her pink tuba, Violet screamed at the top of her lungs.

“My tuba is gone! Someone took it! Someone hid it! The show can’t possibly go on!”

We all ran into the music room and stared at the empty tuba case.

I wrote it down instantly.

“But Violet, dear, are you sure you didn’t just misplace it?” asked Mrs. Rinkle.

Violet blinked. “How do you misplace a gigantic pink tuba? It’s bigger than me!”

Tiffany took the tape measure from around her neck and measured first the tuba case, then Violet. “She’s right. It
is
bigger than her!”

Then I remembered how Tiffany said the tuba playing hurt her mind.

Was that a clue?

Mara nodded firmly. “As an official Goofball, I say we need to search for Violet’s tuba.”

“I’ll help the search,” Billy said to us. “I’ll search the theater office.”

“I’ll search backstage, high and low,” said Joey.

“I’ll search every inch of the costume room,” said Tiffany.

“I’ll come with the Goofballs,” said Violet.

“Because you know the Goofballs will find your tuba?” I asked.

“Uh … sure,” said Violet. “Follow me!”

Violet dashed out of the auditorium and down the hall.

We had to rush to keep up with her.

“This is
not
the way we search for clues! Or tubas!” Mara said. “It’s
highly
not normal!”

But Violet rushed down the halls, first one way, then another.

We ran after her. We went through classrooms and into gyms and cafeterias and kitchens and closets.

I wrote down everything we found.

“Violet, when did you first see that the tuba was gone?” Kelly asked.

“When my eyes told me it wasn’t there,” said Violet.

“Your eyes tell you stuff?” said Brian. “Now,
that’s
a talent.”

Violet grabbed the handle of a narrow black door and snorted. “Locked. Keep searching.”

Like Brian, Violet would get an A+ for what she learned. She zigzagged all over the school until she learned every inch of it.

We didn’t find her pink tuba.

But we
did
discover something else.

When we finally made it back to the auditorium, I tried to open the door to get back in. But I couldn’t. The door was locked.

Kelly knocked on the door, and Billy answered it, a pile of copy paper in his hands. “Did you have any luck?”

“The Goofballs don’t need luck,” Mara said. “We are detective experts.”

“Oh,” said Billy. “Did you have any luck being detective experts?”

We all shook our heads.

“This is a disaster!” said Violet, storming onto the stage. “We have to delay the show. I can’t play my tuba without my tuba!”

While Violet talked with Mrs. Rinkle, I turned to the Goofballs.

“Something is bothering me,” I said.

“We’ll find another balancing stick,” said Brian.

“Not that,” I said. “What’s bothering me is that the auditorium door was locked. What does that tell you?”

“That it wasn’t
un
locked?” said Mara.

“That this school has good security?” asked Kelly.

“That the cast didn’t want us back inside the theater?” asked Brian.

“Yes, yes, and I hope not,” I said. “But what the locked door
really
tells us is that the only people in the auditorium when the tuba went missing were Mrs. Rinkle and … the cast.”

“Aha!” said Brian. “I knew it! Wait. I don’t know it. What do you mean?”

Suddenly, Kelly gasped. “Jeff means … that someone in our show hid Violet’s tuba.”

Then Mara gasped. “Jeff means … that someone in this talent show really
does
have talent.”

Finally, I gasped. “A talent … for crime!”

A
fter we told Mrs. Rinkle what we discovered, she agreed to let the Goofballs solve the mystery of the missing tuba.

In the meantime, Violet hummed the tuba parts. It went pretty well until she started drooling, and Tuesday’s rehearsal ended.

Wednesday’s rehearsal was cancelled because most of the cast—Brian, Mara, Kelly, Joey, Violet, and I—had a soccer game.

We lost the game, mainly because I couldn’t stop thinking about Violet’s tuba and accidentally let the other team score.

Ten times.

I decided that we needed my dog Sparky’s help to solve the Mysterious Talent Show Mystery. Sparky is my red-and-white corgi and the official Goofdog.

“Can Sparky watch our rehearsal?” I asked Mrs. Rinkle when we arrived on Thursday.

“He’ll be our audience,” she said.

“Goof!” Sparky barked; then he jumped into a front-row seat and curled up.