Goofballs 4: The Mysterious Talent Show Mystery (6 page)

“This is clue central!” I said. I wrote it all down in my cluebook.

“Should we bring everything upstairs so the show can go on?” Mara asked.

I wondered for a second, then shook my head. “Not yet. Let’s think about this.”

“Our specialty,” said Kelly. “Ready …”

“And think!” said Mara.

Brump-bump-bump-bump!

Brump-bump-bump-bump!

While Brian supplied music, we paced, ducking so we didn’t bump our heads on the beams. Sparky paced, too, but didn’t have to duck. His legs are shorter than Brian’s swords.

Suddenly, we heard Principal Higgins above us. “Cast, let me assure you that we’re looking everywhere for Mrs. Rinkle. Meanwhile, you can buy your family tickets for the show. Goofballs, if you hear me down there, meet us at the ticket booth in the lobby!”

We heard lots of footsteps move outside the theater, to the lobby.

“Tickets?” whispered Mara. “With Mrs. Rinkle still missing? With so many mysteries still to solve?”

“And so many crimes?” said Kelly.

“And so many no suspects?” said Brian.

“How can we have five mysteries and not one guilty party?” said Kelly.

“Don’t look at me,” said Brian. “I may be guilty of some stuff, but I’m not a whole party. I’m only me.”

Normally, Brian says goofy stuff.

But this time he said smart stuff.

In fact, he gave me an idea.

In
fact
, he gave me
the
idea!

My Goofball brain sparked and sizzled like a weekend barbecue.

“Goofballs,” I said, “we need to get out to that ticket booth. We need one final clue. And we need it now!”

W
e scurried up the stairs and into the lobby, where we ducked behind an empty table. No one saw us because the table was covered with a floppy tablecloth that hung all the way to the floor.

We peered over the top, and Sparky peered around the side. Principal Higgins sat in the ticket booth next to the auditorium doors.

Billy, Violet, Joey, and Tiffany stood nearby.

“We have to get over there without the rest of the cast seeing us,” I whispered.

“What we need is a disguise,” whispered Mara, adjusting her big green glasses.

Kelly nodded. “One of the first rules of the Goofball System for Effective Disguises is to disguise yourself as someone or something that no one looks at.”

“I never look at ballet dancers,” said Brian. “Should we dress up as ballet dancers? Not that I want to. I’m just saying.”

“No,” Mara said. “Ballerinas would attract attention. There
must
be another way.…”

She suddenly began to tap her chin, then
—whoosh
!—she disappeared beneath the table.

“Get under here,” she whispered.

We did get under there. Sparky did, too. It was as cozy as a tent.

“What’s the great disguise?” Kelly asked.

“You’re under it,” Mara said.

“This table?” I asked.

“This table,” Mara said.

Brian frowned, then felt Mara’s forehead. “No fever. And yet your idea is as nutty as a bag of trail mix.”

“Please don’t make me hungry,” said Kelly. “I haven’t eaten in an hour.”

“The Goofballs have never disguised ourselves as furniture before,” I said.

Mara grinned. “There’s a first time for everything.

“What about eternity?” asked Brian.

Mara sighed. “There’s a first time for everything
except
for eternity.”

Brian nodded. “In that case, you’re right!”

On her instructions, everyone except Sparky arched his or her back, and the table lifted up from the floor.

“One step,” Mara whispered.

We all took one step.

“And down,” Mara said.

We crouched, and the table lowered to the floor. We peeked out. No one noticed the table moving.

“It’s working,” I whispered.

We did it again. And again. And again.

Up. Step. Down. Up. Step. Down.

It probably looked pretty goofy. But most Goofball things do. The main thing was that it worked. We made our way slowly across the open space. When we finally stopped, we were a few feet away from the ticket booth.

“Good job,” Kelly whispered. “The old moving-table disguise is a brand-new classic.”

I peeked out and saw Principal Higgins hold up the seating chart.

“Who would like to buy tickets for Friday’s show?” he asked.

That’s when my brain tingled.

Because Joey, Billy, Violet, and Tiffany
all
said exactly the same thing.

“Friday night? Not Saturday night? Then, no. No, thank you.”

Principal Higgins was speechless.

But I knew then what I had only suspected.

“Goofballs,” I whispered. “I believe the whole big mystery really goes all the way back to the first little mystery we discovered. The sign that said ‘Friturday Night.’ ”

“Are you saying
Friturday
was a clue?” asked Brian.

“Sort of,” I said. “In fact, all the clues so far have been sort-of clues.”

Kelly smiled. “Even a sort-of clue is better than no clue at all.”

Which I wrote down in my cluebook, because it’s so true.

Then the most amazing thing happened.

“Look at that!” I whispered.

We watched Violet, Tiffany, Billy, and Joey walk away from the ticket booth and whisper to one another. Then they all put their fingers to their lips.

“The international symbol of secrecy!” hissed Kelly. “They’re all in this together!”

“Either that, or they’re all chewing their nails at the same time,” said Brian. “But your thing works, too.”

All of a sudden, my brain sizzled like a superfast computer. It was as if the last invisible piece of the puzzle of the Talent Show Mystery snapped right into place.

“Guys,” I said, “instead of looking for the person
wrecking
the show for
Friday
night, we should have been looking for the
people
who
want
the show to run on
Saturday
night!”

“And it seems like everyone does,” said Mara.

“Exactly,” I said. “The guilty party is exactly that. A party. Of several people.”

“But why do they want the show on Saturday?” asked Brian. “And what about Mrs. Rinkle? If she’s not a witch, then what happened to her?”

I thought about that. “Maybe we don’t know
why
yet. Or what happened to Mrs. Rinkle. But something tells me we’ll find out soon.”

“Sooner than soon,” said Kelly with a big Goofball grin. “There’s only one place and time to catch the show wreckers.”

“Where?” asked Mara.

“And when?” asked Brian.

“Onstage,” Kelly said. “Friday night.”

Everyone looked at me to finish it off.

So I did.

“Showtime!”

A
s soon as the other kids left, we explained what we knew to Principal Higgins. We told him that we could show the show even if Mrs. Rinkle wasn’t there. We told him that he shouldn’t worry. He told us he would help us to unmask the guilty party.

Every single one of them.

“We are going to save this show,” I told the Goofballs when we snuck backstage.

“But one thing I don’t get,” said Brian.

“Only one?” asked Mara.

“I’m in the dark about lots,” said Kelly.

I gave them all a big Goofball grin. Then I told them everything I had figured out.

“Oh!” said Kelly.

“Oh!” said Mara.

“Wait. What?” said Brian.

So I told them all again. Then we crawled under the stage. We grabbed the original scripts, the yellow measurement sheet, and Violet’s tuba and brought them back upstairs.

I snuck Violet’s tuba back into her tuba case in the music room and snapped it closed.

Kelly and Sparky made sure that the curtain would open and close freely and that all of the scenery was in place.

Then we took the costumes and the
correct
measurements home to Mara’s mom, who was great at sewing stuff.

Then Kelly and Brian wrote Billy’s lines on the palms of his monkey gloves, so all he had to do was look at his hands and read them.

Mrs. Rinkle still hadn’t shown up, so the rehearsal was cancelled on Thursday.

Finally, it was Friday night and time for the big show.

Principal Higgins was waiting for the cast backstage. “Children, Mrs. Rinkle has not reappeared,” he said.

“So I will direct the show. I used to be in shows here, you know.”

We did know.

“And now,” he said, “it’s showtime!”

When the curtain went up, we all bowed in front of a thousand seats filled with people.

The time to expose the whole guilty party was now or never. So I ran to center stage and shouted, “Stop the show!”

“It hasn’t started yet!” someone called out.

“And it won’t start,” I said, “until we solve the Mysterious Talent Show Mystery!”

Mouths dropped open. People stared.

“First, let’s turn back the clock nearly two weeks to our first rehearsal, last Monday afternoon,” Brian said.

“To the moment Mrs. Rinkle said that the show would be performed tonight and not tomorrow night,” I said. “That’s when things began to happen.”

“Strange things,” said Mara.

“Suspicious things,” said Brian.

“Criminal things!” said Kelly.

The audience gasped.

“Who did these things, you ask?” I said.

“Someone certainly was guilty,” Kelly said.

“But it’s not who you think,” said Brian.

“It’s
everyone
who you think!” Mara said as I held my cluebook high.

“This is a good show!” someone yelled out, and the audience buzzed like a beehive.

“First, Violet’s tuba went missing,” said Kelly.

“A dastardly crime,” said Mara.

“Until you remember that Violet herself led the search for it,” said Kelly. “She took us everywhere
except
under the stage, where the tuba actually was. Why? Because she
knew
it was there.”

The audience gasped again.

Violet bowed her head. “I
did
hide my own tuba,” she said. “I didn’t want the show to go on tonight. The grand opening of Pinkworld is happening right now. I came only because my friends are in the audience. But I’m missing all that pink!”