The Mystery of the Mystery Meat (9 page)

“Tuberculosis and I will be there,” Raven assured him. The goths rarely ate outside—they avoided sunshine whenever possible—but Freekin had called the meeting, and Raven would do anything Freekin asked. Since Tuberculosis was his second in command, he would, too.

“Me too,” Steve promised.

The assembly concluded and the students resumed their regular school day. Freekin watched in dismay as the flyers got passed around and people whipped out their cell phones—illegal to use during school hours—and called the number.

At lunch, Steve, Raven, Tuberculosis, and Lilly
showed up at the quad for the meeting. Steve explained what happened when someone made the call.

“You get a recording telling you to call another number after four
P.M.
,” he said. “It’s like a rave.”

“That’s cool,” Tuberculosis announced, his coal-lined eyes glittering against his white face.

“It’s not cool,” Freekin insisted. “Don’t you remember, you guys? I got arrested for asking questions. People who are found guilty of Curiosity are thrown out of Snickering Willows and they can never come back.”

“You were found innocent,” Tuberculosis pointed out. “Times change. I have
never
heard of anyone else getting arrested for Curiosity.”

“Questions have never passed our lips until now,” Raven reminded him. He cocked a black eyebrow at Freekin, the sunlight glinting against the indigo highlights in his hair. “You encouraged us to do so, dark wanderer. And now…you seek to convince us to stop.”

“Because…” Freekin chewed his lower lip, debating how much to tell them. He wanted to keep them safe. “Listen, I think the Snickerings are up to something.”

“There are no ‘Snickerings,’” Tuberculosis shot back. “There’s only old Miss Henrietta, and no one has seen her for years.”

Freekin hesitated. “Please, trust me, guys. I—”

The hair prickled on the back of his neck. He had the sense that he was being watched.

“Go on,” Steve said.

Lilly understood. She carefully turned her head to the right; her lips parted and her cheeks went pale.

“Principal Lugosi is watching us,” she murmured under her breath. “Freekin’s laryngitis just kicked in again,” she said loudly. “Maybe you should go to the nurse, Freekin.”

“He doesn’t have—” Steve began. Then got it. “Right. His laryngitis.”

“Freekin, you’re holding back,” Tuberculosis whispered. “We’re your friends. You should tell us everything.”

“Later,” Freekin muttered.

He left the group and went straight home. What was he going to do? How much should he tell his friends?
Was
the flyer connected to the Snickerings?

While Freekin was in school, Pretty had been studying the picture of Lilly on his calendar, looking from the calendar to her face in the mirror on the closet door and back again. The poor little monster was truly baffled. She simply couldn’t understand why Freekin preferred Lilly to her.

Was it her makeup? Her clothes? Pretty didn’t know. She got out all her beauty supplies, which she had purchased at the mall, and applied a different color to each of her eyelids. Some were red, some were blue, some were black, tra la la.

When she heard Freekin’s familiar walk-lurch, walk-lurch coming down the hall, she took a breath and gave herself one last look.

“Gazeekiliki?”
she asked Scary, who nodded and blew her kisses.

Freekin opened the door and walk-lurched on in.

“Hi, Pretty, hey, Scary,” he said, unslinging his backpack and setting it on the floor. “Something’s going on at school. I think we should fly around town after dark, see if we can find any clues.”

“Okeydoke,” Pretty said, trundling up to him. She tugged on the sleeve of his sweater. “Knock knock, Freekin,” she said shyly, turning this way and that.

“Okay, good,” Freekin said, glancing at his computer monitor to see if he had any e-mail.

“Grrr,” Pretty fumed, but she wasn’t really angry. She was hurt.
How
would she ever get Freekin’s attention?

Four hours later, the trio lofted into the air. Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled as the Scary spy plane
zoomed over the town of Snickering Willows. Freekin had expected the factory to be pitch dark, but super-bright lights hung down from towers, beaming over bright yellow earthmovers as they crawled over the rubble like giant insects and three large crews in hard hats and vests sorting through piles of debris. Among the workers Freekin saw Coach Karloff, his football coach, and Mr. Moulder, who owned the Wilting Fungus Day Spa.

Then he spotted a sleek black Mercedes-Benz emerging from the factory’s underground parking lot.

“Let’s follow that car,” he told Pretty and Scary.

They sped high above it as it glided like a shark through the rainy town. Freekin’s intuition paid off—the car drove straight to the Snickering mansion and pulled up to the entrance of the spooky old house.

Henrietta Snickering stood waiting in the doorway with Mortadella in her arms. The last living Snickering was wrapped in a black fur coat and a matching turban.

Two men and a woman dressed in business suits climbed out of the Mercedes. One man was tall and large; the other was short and trim. The woman had light blond hair that fell to her shoulders.

At Henrietta’s urging, the trio hurried into the mansion. Scary landed, and the three tiptoed over to the skylight. Luckily, Freekin could see the two men and the
two women seating themselves at the table adorned with the crystal ball.

He listened carefully.

“Welcome, Mr. Flatterwonder, Mr. Spew, and the lovely Ms. Balonee,” Henrietta said, seated in the chair in front of the statue of Horatio Snickering smoking a cigar. “I’m pleased you arrived so promptly,” Henrietta continued.

“Of course we came as soon as you summoned us,” Ms. Balonee assured Henrietta. Her voice shook. “Nothing could have kept us away. These are dark days for Mystery Meat.”

The two men nodded soberly. “Dark days indeed,” said the tall man.

“Have no fear,” Henrietta soothed them. “I have emerged from seclusion to lead you with a brilliant plan to save our beloved company!”

“Grrrr-oof!” Mortadella barked as the three gazed at Henrietta with stricken but falsely eager expressions on their faces. It was obvious to Freekin that they were terrified of her.

“You three are Snickering Willows Mystery Meat’s top executives, privileged to share in the secrets of our company,” Henrietta continued. “Secrets that you must keep on pain of death. As you know.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the shorter, rounder man.

“Good. Now I will reveal one more potentially fatal secret to you.”

“Oh, how wonderful,” the taller man said weakly, as if he already knew more potentially fatal secrets than he cared to.

“Yes, Mr. Flatterwonder, it is wonderful,” Henrietta said. She cleared her throat. “Viggo, the screen.”

As Pretty, Freekin, and Scary looked on, Henrietta Snickering’s hunchbacked servant limped into the room with a remote control device in his hand. He pointed it at the fireplace; with a whir, a screen descended from the top of the fireplace.

Then the crystal ball in the center of the table made a half turn as its two halves opened, revealing a DVD player
and a gray folder with the words
SECRET PLOT
written on the front in plain sight, dispelling any doubt that these people were up to no good. Freekin felt chills go up and down his spine.

Henrietta clicked on the DVD player with a flick ofa long, sharp fingernail.

“The lights, Viggo,” she said.

“Yes, madam.” Viggo limped to the wall beside the curtain with the bellpull. He flicked off the lights, and the room went dark.

An image appeared on the screen. It was Horatio Snickering as a very young man, with his brown hair parted in the middle and pressed on either side of his head and a thick brown handlebar mustache.

“When my dear great-great-great-great-uncleHoratio Snickering first began creating MysteryMeat, he had an assistant named Elias Byproduct. A treacherous man.”

The image of Horatio Snickering was replaced by a ratlike little man in overalls and a denim work shirt. He was standing in front of a little wooden building topped with a sign. It read,
HORATIO SNICKERING MEATWORKS
.

“After one taste of my uncle’s first batch of Mystery Meat, Elias Byproduct knew my uncle was about to revolutionize the world of processed food. It was the
most delicious thing he had ever tasted in his life. But he was a terrible, greedy little man, and he made a secret deal with my uncle’s rival, Frau Sausage von Meatschrapps, to steal the recipe and sell it to her.”

The next picture was of a chubby woman with thick red curls all over her head, wearing a high-buttoned white blouse decorated with an oval locket. She smiled prettily at the camera and held a large German sausage.

“My uncle had never quite trusted Elias, which is why he hadn’t shared the recipe with him. And so, one rainy night much like this one, he set a trap. He sent Elias to distant shores to buy more fermented fat. Which, as you know, is a very important ingredient in Mystery Meat. It is so important that a year later he built an entire factory, in the wilds of the Snarkshires, devoted solely to the fermentation of fat.”