Dial M for Mongoose (5 page)

"The stink?" I snapped. "You think?"

"I think." Jerry Dooty gave an elaborate shrug. "But who cares what I think? I'm just the assistant janitor."

Could he be right? Could my mongoose pal have sunk so low? I shook my head. Never in a million lunchtimes.

Mr. Dooty shuffled past us, droning, "But I'll tell you one thing—"

Before he could finish his one thing, three things happened.

First, Natalie sneezed. "Ha-
CHOO!
"

Second, an eerie creaking, like the front doors to a thousand haunted houses, filled the air.

And third, with a loud
FOOMPF!
the one-story building next to us collapsed.

Natalie and I staggered, caught in a sudden whoosh of air like the breath of a giant. Blown sideways, we cried out. "Yaahhh!"

Our yells turned to coughs.

A huge cloud of dust billowed out, as if a million chalkboard erasers were being clapped by a half million teachers' pets. Bits of wall and roof rained down.

Natalie and I collapsed onto the grass, hacking like a couple of cats with major-league hairballs. Slowly, slowly, the dust settled.

I rose on my elbows and squinted through the fog.

Beside me, Natalie had gone all white, like a snow sculpture of a mockingbird. She lifted her head.

"That's one heckuva sneeze, partner," I said.

She spat dust. "Who
nose
what really caused it?" Natalie blinked. "Hey, where's Mr. Dooty?"

I scanned the scene but nobody showed through the cloud.

"Mr. Dooty!" I called.

"Are you all right?" shouted Natalie.

For a long moment, nothing stirred.

Then a shape slouched through the fog—an all-white gopher. "This is going to be
so
much work," groaned Jerry Dooty.

"Was anyone inside when it went down?" asked Natalie, getting up and shaking herself off.

The gopher removed his cap and whapped it against his leg, raising puffs of dust. "Why does the worst stuff always happen to me? I have awful luck."

"He's still in shock," I told Natalie. "Let's go check it out."

We edged closer to the pile of rubble, poking here and there. I thought I saw a lean animal, like a weasel or ferret, bound through the far side of the dust cloud. But when I blinked, it was gone.

"Hello?" said Natalie.

"Knock, knock," I said, rapping on a piece of lumber.

Her eyes twinkled. "Who's there?"

I gave her a look. "Me, birdie."

"Me, birdie who?"

"Natalie, not everything is a knock-knock joke."

Says you.

At that moment a crowd of kids came running from the playground. They gaped and chattered and pointed.

We rummaged some more. Luckily, the ruined building was deserted.

Principal Zero and Maureen DeBree arrived at the same time. Both of them converged on us, talking over each other.

"What happened here?" said the principal. "Gecko, were you involved?"

"Chet, Natalie, you okay?" said the janitor. "Who did this?"

"Was anybody hurt?" said Mr. Zero.

Brushing dust off my sleeves, I answered, "The building fell down, no, yes, I dunno, and no."

"Don't worry, chief," said Ms. DeBree. "I'll get to the bottom of this."

The big cat's fur stood up like nerds volunteering for computer duty. "You'd better. One more slipup around here, and I'm hiring a different head janitor. School safety comes first."

"That's not fair!" I said. "How could she be responsible for this?"

Mr. Zero planted one thick paw on his hip. "Fair? Fair is pony rides and first kisses and cotton candy."

"But—" Ms. DeBree began.

"
I'm
responsible for running a school here," said the principal. "You're responsible for buildings and grounds. And you two..."

"Yes?" Natalie asked.

"Should be getting an education and staying out of my way," said Mr. Zero. He stomped past us, tail twitching.

"Oh, well," I said to myself. "One out of two ain't bad."

Natalie grinned."
One?
Who says
you're
getting an education?"

Ms. DeBree and Mr. Dooty roped off the wreckage with
CAUTION
tape, called in a couple of badger contractors, and went to work. I love work. I could sit and watch other people do it all day. But just when they broke out the big tools, the class bell rang.

Back we trudged to face the humdrum drudgery of the only kind of work I don't care for: schoolwork.

After class ended, Natalie and I dropped by the rubble to get the scoop from our client. The two janitors were loading the last of the debris into the back of a truck. The badgers were hauling off a Dumpster. Two more Dumpsters stood nearby, stuffed with more junk than a greedy kindergartner after Halloween.

"So what's news, mongoose?" I said.

Ms. DeBree paused and wiped grime off her forehead with a spotless handkerchief. "It's one mystery, for sure," she said. "The wood is good, the floor seemed solid, but somehow it all collapsed into a hole."

"Weird," said Natalie.

The mongoose scratched her head. "Yeah. Almost
like we built the building over a hole and it finally fell in." She shook herself. "But that's cuckoo."

Natalie and I climbed down into the crater that used to be a classroom. Nothing to see but a hole. Hard to detect much from that.

We scrambled back out.

"Hey, that hole reminds me of something," I said.

"Your grades?" Natalie smirked.

"Nope, that digger." I went over to Ms. DeBree, who was loading a last chunk of wall into the truck. "Did you hire a bad-tempered mole in a hard hat to clean up around here?"

Her eyebrows drew together like two caterpillars crossing swords. "A mole? No..."

Mr. Dooty slapped his forehead. "Oh, I'm such a dum-dum. I forgot to tell you. Mr. Zero asked me to get someone to haul off the dirt piles, like I don't have enough to do around here. Was that okay?"

The mongoose nodded, but her face stayed as glum as the last kid to be picked for the softball team.

"Cheer up," said Natalie. "Look on the bright side."

"What bright side?" said the janitor, stepping into the truck cab.

Natalie waved a wing. "We've already had a stinkbomb, two thefts, and a classroom cave-in. What else could go wrong?"

What else? Only a foolhardy detective would ask
what else?
And unfortunately, that's exactly what we were.

The next morning, things at Emerson Hicky were quiet but tense, like a classroom where nobody's done the homework and the teacher's asking for volunteers.

No fresh thefts, no exploding Dumpsters. But the whole school seemed to be holding its breath. Word of the latest happenings had spread, and students and teachers were looking over their shoulders.

My old pal, Bo Newt, was absent. Nobody knew why. Was this something sinister, or just a day of playing hooky?

"Where's Bo?" I asked Bitty Chu."Is he sick? It's not like him to skip school for anything less than a circus or a skateboarding festival."

"Why should
I
care?" she said. "He's a smart aleck."

"Yeah, but he's
our
smart aleck."

I brooded about my missing pal. And the knowledge that Parents Night was coming the next day didn't help my mood any.

At recess, only the little kids carried on with the same gusto as usual. Natalie and I tried to rustle up some clues, but we were as luckless as the only chicken at a fox family reunion.

"Could the Stinkers have tunneled under that classroom?" I asked.

Natalie preened her shoulder feathers. "Not their style. And can you picture Erik Nidd trying to dig with all those legs?"

"Good point."

We eased along the edge of the grass.

"What about Jerry Dooty?" said Natalie.

"What about him?" I scanned the clumps of kids engaged in soccer, tetherball, and quiet conversations.

"He
is
a gopher," said Natalie. "Maybe
he
undermined the building."

"So he could clean up the mess he made?
Bzzzt
—I'm sorry, wrong answer."

Natalie touched my arm with a wing tip, stopping me. "Okay, hotshot, I know where we might get an idea who sunk the classroom."

"Where?"

She pointed to Mrs. Crow, who was waddling up the hallway. "
She
knows which teacher's classroom collapsed. Maybe that teacher can give us a lead."

"Mrs. Crow!" I called. "Can we talk?"

She narrowed her eyes. "What's in it for me?"

Before I could tell her, fate got in the way—again.

With a loud
ka-whompf!
flames burst from the next building down the hall.

The sprinklers above us exploded into action with all the enthusiasm of an un-housebroken puppy, soaking the three of us to the skin.

Ring-ah-ring-ah-ring-ah-ring!
The fire bell blared.

"This flippin' school," said Mrs. Crow, hunching her shoulders against the spray. "What's next? A rain of cockroaches?"

I took her wing. "This way!"

We squished out onto the grass.

"I'll go get Mr. Zero," said Natalie. She spread her wings and flapped off.

"I suppose I should tell the fire department which building is burning," grumbled Mrs. Crow. She pulled a cell phone from her fat red purse and waddled off, tapping buttons.

What did that leave for me? The dangerous stuff.

I edged closer to the blaze. Pure heat beat against my face and body, like I was stepping into an
oven (and one without fresh cookies, to boot).

"Hello!" I shouted at the two-story building. "Is anybody in there?"

No response.

"Hello? Anyone?"

Still no answer. Maybe all the students were safely out on the playground. For once, things would go the easy way.

I glanced behind me. Kids stood at a safe distance, gawking. Nothing like a blaze for break-time entertainment. Might as well waltz on over and join them.

I had almost reached the group. Then I heard a sound that chilled my blood.

"Helpity-help-help!" someone cried. It came from the building.

"Who's that?" I shouted.

"It's—
koff!
—mu, mi, mo, me!" It sounded like a dame. I knew of only one dame who talked like her sentences had gone through a blender set on
mixed-up.

"Popper?" I called. "Where are you?"

"Inside the—
koff koff!
—clickety-clockety-classroom!" cried Popper. "I'm stickety-stuck!"

Dang and double dang.

I scoped out the high windows of the burning building. They were open, and flames crackled from two of them. Smoke poured from a third. And
in between those billows, a yellow-green froggy face peeked out.

Popper.

"Hang on, short stuff!" I yelled. "I'm coming!"

I tugged off my soaking-wet trench coat and wrapped it around my shoulders and face. Then I beat feet, straight for the inferno.

Fire sirens screamed in the distance.

Funny what passes through your mind in an emergency. As I approached the building, running low and fast, I thought about Popper.

She was a pain-in-the-neck third grader who'd befriended us on a case, and we'd been paying for it ever since. She was a loudmouthed, overenthusiastic, triple-talking tree frog.

And she was in trouble.

I leaped directly onto the wall of the burning building.

Not a good idea.

"Whoa! Hot-hot-hot!" I cried, sounding more like Popper than I cared to admit. Scuttling up the wall as quickly as a grasshopper on a griddle, I made straight for the window.

"Here!" shouted Popper. "I'm—
kaffity kaff koff!—
here!"

I reached the windowsill and sucked in a great lungful of smoke. It felt like I'd stuck my head into an

active volcano. The heat swallowed me like a hungry python after a fast.

I hacked and coughed. My eyes watered.

"What—
koff!
—are you—
koff koff!
—stuck on?"

Popper grabbed my shoulder. "This caba-aba-abinet!"

Squinting through the smoke, I could just make out the problem. Popper's face and arms hung out the window, but one leg was pinned to the inside wall by a supply cupboard that had fallen against her.