Selby's Shemozzle (2 page)

‘Oh woe woe woe,' Selby groaned as a jogger, blinded by his own tears, ran off the side of a bridge and straight into Bogusville Creek. ‘What a shemozzle! And poor Gary is going to get the blame. I'll never ever think up another joke as long as I live. Oh, this is the saddest day of my life.'

Fortunately, no one died because of Selby's killer joke. A few people tumbled out of bed or off toilets, and Melanie Mildew fell out of a tree while she was picking apples. Postie Paterson laughed so much that he cried and for days he delivered the wrong mail to the wrong houses. Mrs Trifle laughed so hard that she started hiccupping and couldn't stop. And Aunt Jetty swallowed her false teeth. But no one was badly hurt — which was lucky, because the doctors
and nurses at the hospital were laughing too hard to help anyone.

A month later, when Selby was still feeling guilty, he heard Mrs Trifle say to Dr Trifle, ‘Good news — they've decided not to close Bogusville Hospital after all.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because it was suddenly very busy. Do you realise that three thousand patients went to hospital last month?'

‘Really? Oh yes,' Dr Trifle said with a laugh, ‘the joke injuries.'

‘So they're keeping the hospital open, after all!' Selby thought. ‘That's great! And to think it's all because of me. I'm a hero!'

‘And to think,' said Mrs Trifle, ‘it's all because of Gary. When he gets back he'll be a hero.'

‘Did you see that?' Dr Trifle said. ‘Selby was lying there as quiet as a mouse and suddenly his ears went up. It was almost as if he was listening to us.'

‘Did you say
a mouse?'
Mrs Trifle asked, a smile spreading across her face. ‘That reminds me of the elephant and mouse joke.'

‘Me too!' Dr Trifle hooted with laughter. ‘Oh, the elephant and the mouse! Oh, that's so funny!'

‘I'm getting out of here before I start laughing too,' Selby thought. ‘This has gone beyond a joke!'

‘This is very strange,' Mrs Trifle said to Dr Trifle. ‘I thought I'd spent all my money, but I just found a new twenty-dollar note in my wallet. It's the third time this week it's happened. Have you been putting money in there?'

‘No. Come to think of it, yesterday I was sure I'd spent my last ten dollars, but today I saw that I still have twenty dollars left.'

‘Well, either we're getting very forgetful,' Mrs Trifle said, ‘or we have a guardian angel who's giving us money.'

‘You do,' Selby thought, ‘and I'm him — guardian angel Selby. It's so nice to be able to
give the Trifles a little back in return for all their kindness to me.'

Suddenly there was music and wavy lines in the air as Selby thought back to how all this had started, that moment when the money had magically appeared …

It was a happy dog who strolled along the banks of Bogusville Creek when suddenly — 'Ouch!' — he stubbed his toe on a half-buried biscuit tin.

‘A half-buried biscuit tin,' he thought as he dug it out of the ground. ‘That can mean only one thing — biscuits! And not those horrible Dry-Mouth Dog Biscuits, but scrummy people biscuits!'

Selby prised off the lid and his heart sank.

‘No biscuits. Just a bit of money.'

For one terrible second Selby thought of burying the tin again.

‘Hang on. Did I say
money
? Yes, I think I did. Money! It's a pile of twenty-dollar notes! A stack of smackeroos! A dollop of dough! A lovely mass of moolah!
Yippppeeeee!
I'm rich!'

Selby started to throw the money up in the
air, the way people do in movies, but then thought better of it.

‘Well, it isn't that much,' he thought, thumbing through it. ‘I wonder who could have hidden it here? Oh well, finders keepers.'

Selby lay on his mat that night wondering what to buy.

‘I can't think of anything I need,' he thought. ‘A new bowl? A new mat? The Trifles give me everything I need. Hey! That's it! I'll give it to the Trifles. They're always short of cash.'

And so it was that Selby got the idea to secretly slip a little bit of money into the Trifles' wallets every night when they were sleeping.

‘I'll stash the rest of the cash in that mess in the corner of Dr Trifle's workroom. That would be the last place anyone would look for anything.'

The wavy lines came and went away, leaving a slightly smiling guardian angel dog lying happily in the Trifles' lounge room once again.

‘Goodness me, look at the time!' Mrs Trifle exclaimed. ‘Postie Paterson and Melanie Mildew are due at any minute to get some of my bread dough.'

‘Everyone loves your new recipe. You ought to open a bakery,' said Dr Trifle. ‘Did you just hear something?'

‘Yes, there's some sort of commotion in the street.'

Mrs Trifle opened the curtains to see a huge group of police running down the street. Behind them were police cars and police vans and police helicopters were circling overhead.

‘It's some kind of raid!' Dr Trifle exclaimed. ‘They must be after a gang of hardened criminals.'

‘Uh-oh,' Selby thought as the police turned into the Trifles' driveway. ‘They must have the wrong address! This is scary!'

‘Come out with your hands up, Mayor Trifle!' the police captain yelled. ‘We've got the house surrounded! And don't try any funny business.'

Dr and Mrs Trifle looked at each other.

‘What'll we do?' said Dr Trifle.

‘We'd better do as they say,' Mrs Trifle answered.

Mrs Trifle opened the door and stepped out with her hands in the air. Dr Trifle followed closely behind.

‘If it's about that overdue library book,' she said, ‘I can explain everything.'

‘It's not about overdue library books,' the police captain said. ‘I think you know what it's about — funny money.'

‘Funny money?' Mrs Trifle said. ‘What on earth do you mean?'

‘You know perfectly well what I mean, Mayor Trifle. You've been caught passing party paper. You know — crazy cash, laughing lucre.'

‘Crazy cash?' Mrs Trifle said.

‘Phoney money, Mrs Trifle. You made a big mistake when you spent a fake twenty-dollar note at the supermarket this morning.'

‘Fake twenty?' Mrs Trifle said.

‘Fake twenty?' Dr Trifle said, taking a twenty-dollar note out of his wallet and looking at it.

‘Aha! There's another one!' cried the captain, grabbing it out of Dr Trifle's hand. ‘So you're in this together.'

‘Gulp,' thought Selby. ‘It's from my stash! It's all fake money! What have I done?'

‘Surely you don't think that
we
are making phoney money,' Dr Trifle said. ‘Why, we're completely honest! We've never done anything wrong in our lives. Well, except my wife keeping that library book a bit longer than she should have.'

‘Don't try that innocence nonsense with me, Dr Trifle. I know you people who forge money. I know how you live. I know how you think. You're the sneakiest criminals in the world. You pretend to be nice people. You're good to your neighbours. You're polite. You give money to charities. You're the sort of people who
everyone
thinks
are honest. When you give one of your fake banknotes to someone in a shop, they don't hold it up to the light or look at it carefully, because they trust you.'

‘B-B-But we're not forgers,' Mrs Trifle said.

‘They're certainly not!' Selby thought.

‘Which is what you people always say,' said the captain. ‘You deny everything. That's why I know you're guilty.'

‘You know we're guilty because we say we're innocent?' Dr Trifle asked.

‘Exactly!'

‘Then we're crooks,' Dr Trifle said. ‘We're forgers. We're guilty. What do you say to that?'

‘Aha! So you admit it! I knew you'd crack. This is the quickest confession I've ever got.'

‘No, no, he was kidding!' Mrs Trifle said. ‘We have nothing to hide. Go ahead, search the house.'

‘Yeah,' Selby thought. ‘Go ahead and search the house. Wait — what am I saying? No!
Don't
search the house!'

‘Is this a trick?' the captain said. ‘Forgers never hide the money in their own houses. They bury it in biscuit tins so that if anyone finds it they don't know whose it is. But go
ahead, boys, you heard the mayor — search the house. Maybe you'll find the printing plates they use to print the money.'

‘Oh, woe woe,' Selby thought. ‘Why didn't I just leave that money where I found it?'

‘I've been watching this town for ten years, since you started spending your funny money,' said the captain. ‘You stopped last December, but you didn't fool me. I knew that sooner or later the Laughing Lady would show up again.'

‘The Laughing Lady?' asked Mrs Trifle.

‘Here's a proper twenty-dollar note and here's one of yours,' the captain said. ‘Yours is almost a perfect copy. But when you made your printing plates, you made one tiny mistake. Look at the lady in the picture — you made her mouth curve up a tiny bit. It looks like she's laughing.'

‘How interesting,' Dr Trifle said, studying the banknotes.

One of the police officers came out of the house.

‘We found it,' he said. ‘A whole stack of Laughing Ladies hidden under some things in the workroom. It was the first place we looked.'

‘Okay, Dr and Mrs Trifle,' the captain said. ‘Now tell us where you've hidden the printing plates. Those won't be buried in the ground because they'd rust. But we know they're here somewhere.'

‘What's going on here?' cried Melanie Mildew, making her way through the police line, followed by Postie Paterson. ‘What are you doing to the Trifles?'

‘We're arresting them for making money.'

‘You can't arrest people for making money,' Melanie said. ‘They make plenty of money. So what? They've been doing it for years.'

‘Just as I thought.'

‘You don't understand,' Postie Paterson said. ‘The Trifles are the most honest people in the whole town.'

‘And what brings you two here?' the captain asked. ‘Are you part of their gang?'

‘Gang?!' Melanie exclaimed. ‘We're not part of any gang. Mrs Trifle said she'd give us some dough today.'

‘Some dough? So you were helping them pass off the Laughing Ladies.'

‘I don't know what you're talking about,' said Postie. ‘It was bread. Mrs Trifle makes lots of bread.'

‘I've heard enough,' the police captain said. ‘Take the Trifles away, guys. And take these two away for questioning as well.'

‘Oh, woe woe woe,' Selby said to himself. ‘I was only trying to help and I created a terrible shemozzle. I should have suspected there was something wrong with that money. It was all too easy.'

Selby watched as police officers searched the house from floor to ceiling, even cutting open mattresses and ripping pillows apart, trying to find the plates.

‘They won't find anything, because there's nothing to find,' Selby thought. ‘But the Trifles could go to jail for years and years and years just because they had my stash of cash.'

Selby blinked back a tear.

‘I know,' Selby thought. ‘I'll write a letter to the cops and tell them what really happened. But I won't sign it so they won't know who I am.'

Selby thought again.

‘That's silly. They won't believe it. I guess I'm just going to have to go to the police station and tell them. I'll be giving away my secret
(sniff)
and I may have to go to jail
(sniff sniff
) but at least they'll have to let the Trifles and Melanie and Postie go.'

‘Hey! Look what I found under the house!' one of the police officers said, holding up Selby's dog suit disguise. ‘These people are weird.'

Selby started out the door just as another police officer ran a metal detector up and down the walls.

‘Now hang on,' Selby thought. ‘Somewhere in Bogusville there must be the real forger. All I have to do is find him and then call the cops. Hmmm,' Selby hmmmed. ‘Where do I start? I'll make a list of the most honest, helpful and friendly people in Bogusville.'

It was a cunning dog that crept into the Trifles' study and opened the drawer marked ‘Bogusville Council'. In it was a file folder called ‘Awards'.

Selby read through the list of all the people who had been given awards for tidiness, cleanliness and all the other nesses that Bogusville gave awards for.

One name came up time after time — Mavis Deeds.

‘Oh, isn't that sweet that she got all those awards,' Selby thought. ‘She was so nice. I used to see her walking along Bogusville Creek. She always stopped to pat me. It couldn't be her. Hang on! What am I saying? Maybe it
was
her. I used to see her near where I found the biscuit tin. No, she was too nice. But hang on again! She's got to be my first suspect just
because
she was so nice. But wait — she can't be the one because she died last December.'

Selby looked down his list of names again.

‘She died last December!' he said out loud (and almost
too
out loud). ‘That's when the money stopped. It was her! It absolutely had to be her! I wonder if that old house of hers has been sold yet?'

‘Hey! Who nicked my metal detector?' a police officer cried. ‘Come on, guys, a joke's a joke! Give it back.'

It was a window-lifting dog that climbed into Mavis Deeds' empty house and scanned its walls with a borrowed metal detector. And it was a
very happy dog that heard the
beep beep beep
on his headphones.

Selby grabbed a (borrowed) hammer and with a
crash thump bang
made a hole in the wall.

‘The plates!' he yelled. ‘I've found them!'

‘Thank heavens someone found those money-printing plates and called the police,' Mrs Trifle said to Dr Trifle when they got home. ‘And to think that the forger was that sweet little old lady, Mavis Deeds. She was the very last person I would have suspected.'