Case Closed #2, page 13
“And,” Mom says, “it’s a video ransom note, left on the green screen on set. Mr. Westover just told me the video was made with the show’s equipment too. Which means we may be able to discern more clues.”
Eliza puts on her shoes and is at the door in record time.
“Hurry up, hijo! Get dressed. Put your shoes on,” Mom says.
I throw off the covers to reveal my feet—with my shoes tied up and ready to go. “I never took mine off in the first place.”
At the studio, Wolfgang Westover is waiting for us outside, along with his niece Louise. At once, I remember the clue from Layla’s lockbox: Louise. Photos. November 16. We have to know what Layla’s note meant. She wouldn’t have left us this clue if it weren’t important. But before I can ask Louise about it, Wolfgang Westover runs to Mom and clasps her hands.
“Come quick!” he says. “The police are here dusting for fingerprints on our video editing equipment, but I think that will be useless. Lots of people handle our equipment. Not just one. I’m hoping you’ll find something, Detective. Since you’re quite familiar with the case by now.”
“Of course. Take me to the screen, Mr. Westover.”
He holds the studio door open for Mom, and she ducks under his arm.
“Wait just one second,” I say. “We have to talk to Louise—”
“No time!” Wolfgang cries. “Layla’s in danger!”
Mom quirks an eyebrow at us. “Are you kids coming, or did you want to stay out here and talk to Louise?”
* * *
TO STAY OUTSIDE AND TALK TO LOUISE, CLICK HERE.
TO FOLLOW MOM INSIDE AND LISTEN TO THE RANSOM NOTE, CLICK HERE.
* * *
I ENTER THE code 4395. The lock clicks, and the door pushes open.
“Go! Go! Go!” I whisper, as Frank and Eliza scurry in. The footsteps behind us get heavier and louder, but I get on my hands and knees to crawl.
Something grabs my shoe—and is pulling my leg like an octopus dragging me down into a dark sea.
“Help!” I cry. “Eliza! Frank! They’ve got me!”
They each grab one of my arms and pull.
“HEAVE HO!” Frank shouts, and they yank me so hard that I slip out of my shoe. I scamper inside and shut the door before the culprit has a chance to grab me again.
“Are you okay?” Eliza asks, panting.
“They got my shoe,” I say, wiggling my sock at her.
We are inside some sort of broom closet. There’s nothing here but cleaning supplies and an old tarp scrunched in the corner. There’s only one way in, which means there’s only one way out. Uh-oh.
“Do I get candy if I find Layla?” Frank says.
“Sure,” I say. “Hey, Eliza, how do we—”
“GIVE ME CANDY,” Frank shouts, pulling up the tarp in the corner. Underneath is Layla, unconscious but breathing.
Eliza and I lean over her.
“Hey! Where’s my candy?”
“Not now, Frank—it’s an emergency!” I look at Eliza. Even in the dark of the cupboard, I can see the concern in Eliza’s eyes.
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK.
The sound comes from the door behind us.
And now Eliza’s concern is full-on panic. She grips my arm, while I grip the walkie-talkie in my pocket.
“Who iiiiiis iiiit?” Frank sings.
There is no way I’m answering that door.
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK.
“Not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin!” Frank replies.
I feel sick. A million different thoughts are running through my head, and a couple of our suspects jump to the top of my head. But—as the knocking gets more violent, rattling the door on its hinges—my loudest thought of all is a nagging worry:
Are we in more trouble if we answer the door? Or if we don’t?
* * *
TO ANSWER THE DOOR, CLICK HERE.
TO IGNORE THE DOOR, CLICK HERE.
* * *
“OKAY,” I SAY very soothingly. “We’ll give you Layla. But first we need to know why you kidnapped her. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Doesn’t it?” Eliza says grimly. “Carlos, it actually makes perfect sense. Remember how Mr. Westover told us that Tuggle was causing all sorts of trouble on the set—instigating fights between Brad and Layla?”
This is all flooding back to me. “She always described Layla in the total opposite way than Mr. Westover and Miriam Jay.”
“And speaking of Miriam—the note in the cauldron she left? Who else would have access to Layla’s bank account but her agent?”
“You were working with Miriam Jay to steal money from Layla?” I say.
“No,” Tuggle says, “I was transferring money from a minor to her legal guardian.”
“Without Layla’s permission, though. You were doing it behind her back!” I say. “No wonder Layla was upset with Miriam—and had that fight with you.”
“A fight big enough to fire you as her agent?” Eliza says, looking at Tuggle, who nods once. Eliza groans. “We should have known. All the signs were there! I mean, she faked a phone call to get out of talking to us.”
“She was a liar liar pants on fire,” Frank says.
“You might want to hang up your detective hat, kid,” Tuggle says. “Your mom got there first. She was trying to radio. If only you had listened.”
“Where. Is. She?”
“None of your concern,” Tuggle says, and I slump down to my knees. Eliza bends down and whispers in my ear, “I’m sure she’s okay, Carlos. I’m sure of it. Come on. The only way we help her is to get out of this.” I wipe my watery eyes on my sleeve and stand up again, still sick and shaky.
“Why lure me down here?” Wolfgang asks.
“Because you had all the puzzle pieces. I couldn’t tell if you suspected me or not.”
“I can confirm: I did not.”
“Well now, I guess that’s just rotten luck for you, then. Because now you know too much . . . and I can’t have that. I just need a clean start with my client.”
“So you’re going to murder five people?” Eliza scoffs. “That’s your clean start?”
Her nostrils flare. “If this gets out, I’m ruined.”
“I think that ship has sailed,” I mutter.
“And sunk!” Frank adds.
“Enough,” Tuggle says. “You hand me my client. Now.”
Obviously, that’s the one thing we can’t do. There’s nothing in the room we can use . . . there’s just the tarp, Layla, and all of us. And none of us are carrying weapons . . . unless you count the gaseous stench Frank sometimes uses to assault my nose.
I perk up. Could a fart really save us? Or should I go with something more reliable—like tackling Tuggle and wrestling the remote out of her hands?
“Well?” she says sharply. “I’m waiting!”
* * *
TO USE FRANK AS A STINK BOMB, CLICK HERE.
TO TACKLE AND WRESTLE AWAY THE REMOTE, CLICK HERE.
* * *
TUGGLE IS PROVING to be a bit trickier than I thought, considering we already asked her why she and Layla were fighting, and she didn’t answer! Time to try again.
“Why were you fighting with Layla?”
Tuggle coughs. “Excuse me?”
“We need you to answer the question,” I say. “We have a witness that claims you and Layla were having some pretty loud, pretty public arguments.”
Tuggle shifts uncomfortably. “That, well . . . really, it’s nothing. You don’t understand what it’s like to work with actors. You give and you give and you give, and sometimes they just take and take—”
“Excuse me,” Eliza interrupts. Polite but firm. “But it’s not like you’re working for Layla out of the goodness of your heart. As a talent agent, you have a commission—a ten percent cut from everything Layla makes, right?”
Tuggle smiles tightly. “Someone’s done her research.”
“Don’t change the subject,” I say, tapping my pointer on the table, like I’ve seen interrogators do in movies. “What were you and Layla fighting about?”
“Nothing,” Tuggle says, her glasses flashing. “Absolutely nothing at all.” She’s closing up on us. But I haven’t gotten enough out of her. I have to keep the conversation going.
* * *
TO ASK ABOUT LAYLA’S RELATIONSHIP WITH THE CAST AND CREW, CLICK HERE.
TO ASK WHERE LAYLA MIGHT BE, CLICK HERE.
* * *
“WHAT’S YOUR PROBLEM with Layla?”
“Me?” Guillotine says. “I have no problem!”
“You just said—”
“I said we were peachy.”
“Sarcastically!” Eliza says.
“That’s a matter of opinion!” Guillotine says, scowling.
“We know what we heard,” I say. “We heard it with our own ears.”
Frank perks up. “I heard it with my own ears! I saw it with my own eyes! I smelled it with my own nose! I touched it with my own hands! I tasted it with my own tongue!”
Guillotine’s lips curl into a mean-looking smirk. His eyes dart to his right. “You know, it seems like you three hear what you want to hear. So hear this!” And he cranks up the speaker in the prop room.
The theme song to Teen Witch plays so loudly that I cover my ears. I even close my eyes, just to escape the piercing sound.
Suddenly something cold wraps around my ankle. . . . I look down, and they’re the golden handcuffs used on the Witch Queen in season one—the ones that are supposed to be unbreakable with magic. Guillotine has buckled me to the leg of a prop shelf so heavy it’d probably take an elephant to move it.
He’s gotten Eliza and Frank too, with two spare pairs of the same prop. We’re stuck! Even though my ears are bleeding from the Teen Witch theme song, I hear Guillotine loud and clear now: “Don’t push too far, or this case will end on a bad note!”
CASE CLOSED.
WE DECIDE TO snoop through Layla’s dressing room. If we want to know what happened to Layla, then we have to get inside her head.
Only . . . when I open the door to her dressing room, I realize it’s going to be much harder than I thought. Because it’s an absolute mess. A complete and total pigsty. Mom would kill me if I ever let my room get this messy.
“Yay, dirt!” Frank says, diving headfirst into a pile of discarded costumes.
Eliza—who likes everything clean and organized—is twitching.
“This is hurting you, isn’t it?” I say.
“It’s really not that hard to keep things sanitary,” she says, throwing a blackened banana peel into Layla’s trash can.
Layla’s dressing counter has two drawers: one has nothing but a book inside, and the other is locked. On top of the counter, there are open tubes of lipstick, eye shadows with powder everywhere, and fake eyelashes just lying on the table like caterpillars. Her closet is open, with no clothes on the hangers. I guess they’re all on the floor. And there’s a purse hanging off the back of Layla’s makeup chair.
I unzip the purse and reach my hand in.
“You thief!” Frank shouts at me. “You burglar! You robber! You . . . if you find a quarter in there, I CALL DIBS!”
But her purse is empty. No wallet. No phone. No scrap of paper with an address. Nothing. I’m about to throw the purse aside when I notice a little rip in the lining at the bottom of it.
I reach my fingers down into the hole in the lining and feel something cold, hard, and metal against my fingertips. I coax it out of the rip in the purse, and into my palm.
It’s a key.
My hands are practically shaking as I take the key and put it in the keyhole of the locked dressing-room drawer. The lock clicks—we’re in.
“What are you doing?” Eliza asks.
“I found a key,” I say. I pull the drawer open and find . . . a single sheet of paper. I try not to be too disappointed. But then my heart beats fast when I see it’s a hand-lettered note.
“Eliza!” I say. “Come look!”
Frank sings from his costume pile on the floor, “I see London, I see France! I see Eliza’s underpants!”
Eliza and I glare at him, then turn to the note. It’s in secret code—and we have to decipher it. There’s no reason Layla would go through the trouble of coding a message and hiding the key unless this was super important.
Ru blf ziv ivzwrmt gsrh, gsvm R nfhg szev yvvm prwmzkkvw. Blf droo mvvw gsv kzhhxlwv gl nb xsvhg: gdl urev hrc. R’n rm tizev wzmtvi.
KOVZHV SVOK.
* * *
IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 256, CLICK HERE.
IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 278, CLICK HERE.
OR TO ASK ELIZA FOR A HINT, CLICK HERE.
* * *
“SO HOW EXACTLY do we tackle this?” I ask Eliza. “It looks like gibberish.”
Eliza hums. “I think I remember something about Layla—I mean, Aurelia—using the chart to decode the message.” She walks up to the wall and traces her fingers along the chart as she thinks out loud. “We can use the rows and columns to make all the letters of the alphabet. So if we look at the first part of the message, it says B1. If we go to the B row and the one column, we see the first letter is F.”
“Oh!” I say. “So the second part of the message is C4. So we look where C and four meet, we get the letter O, right?”
“And the next one is purple!” Frank shouts.
“What? No, Frank,” Eliza says. “There are no colors in this passcode!”
“Well, there should be,” Frank pouts.
Eliza turns back to me. “The third letter is D2, which is R. The first three letters of the first word of this puzzle are F-O-R.”
“I think we’re getting the hang of this decoding thing!” I say.
B1-C4-D2-A5-E1-A5-D2 E2-B4-C1-C1 E4-C4-D5
D3-D4-A1-E4 B3-A5-D2-A5,
E2-B4-D4-A3-B3,
B4-C3 A4-A1-D2-B5-C3-A5-D3-D3 C5-C1-A5-
C3-D4-E4, B4-C3
D3-B4-C1-A5-C3-D4 C5-B4-D4-A3-B3
D5-C3-C1-A5-D3-D3 E4-C4-D5 B3-A1-E1-A5
D4-B3-A5 D3-A5-A3-D2-A5-D4
B5-A5-E4,
D4-B3-A5 C4-C3-C1-E4 E2-A1-E4 D4-B3-A1-D4
E4-C4-D5 A3-A1-C3 B1-C1-A5-A5:
A1 C2-A1-B2-B4-A3-A1-C1 C3-D5-C2-A2-
A5-D2, D4-B3-A5
D3-D4-D2-C4-C3-B2-A5-D3-D4 C4-D5-D4
D4-B3-A5-D2-A5
D4-E2-B4-A3-A5 C2-C4-D2-A5 D4-B3-A1-C3
A1-C1-C4-C3-A5;
C4-C3-A3-A5 C2-C4-D2-A5 D4-B3-A1-C3 A1
C5-A1-B4-D2.
D1-D5-A1-D2-D4-A5-D2 A1 A4-C4-E5-A5-C3,
D4-D2-B4-C5-C1-A5 A1 C4-C3-A5,
D3-B3-C4-D5-D4 B4-D4 C4-D5-D4, A1-C3-A4
E4-C4-D5 A1-D2-A5 A4-C4-C3-A5.
* * *
ADD THREE HUNDRED TO THE SOLUTION OF THIS PUZZLE.
IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 303, CLICK HERE.
IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 313, CLICK HERE.
OR TO ASK ELIZA FOR ANOTHER HINT, CLICK HERE.
* * *
LOOKING AT BRAD’S emails, the first thing I see is one from Layla, dated just a few days before she went missing.
Brad,
Stop emailing, stop texting, stop calling, stop showing up at my house with a string quartet. I do NOT want to date you. I’d rather date a slug. I’m sick to death of telling you I’m not interested. For the millionth—and last—time, leave me alone!
L. Jay
“Maybe he’s holding a grudge about being rejected,” I say. “Maybe he kidnapped Layla for revenge.”
“Could be,” Eliza says, leaning in to look at the next email. This one was from Wolfgang Westover:
B.B.—
If you can’t get along with your costar, then maybe we should rethink your position on this show. I expect you to come back with an attitude adjustment. Remember that Layla is the star, and you have to make her happy.
W.W.
“Wow,” I say. “Do you think Brad was close to being fired? Wolfgang Westover seems pretty upset.”
“Mr. Westover definitely made it clear which of his lead actors is more important to him. . . .”
“Who? Who? Is it the robot dragon?” Frank asks.
“Uh . . . Frank,” I say gently, “you know the robot dragon isn’t real, right?”
“YOU AREN’T REAL.”
* * *
READ BRAD’S TEXTS. CLICK HERE.
* * *
I BET THE key to Guillotine’s filing cabinet is in his desk drawer. That’s where I’d put a key, anyway. I open the drawer and dig around.
Frank does too, idly chattering as he rifles. “Junk, junk, junk, secret box, gum, paper clip, junk.”
“Wait!” I say. “Go back!”
“Paper clip?”
“No, back again,” Eliza says.
“Gum!” Frank says. “You’re right, I’m keeping that!” He shoves four strips in his mouth.
“No, Frank—the secret box! What do you mean?”
“Oh, yeah,” Frank says, blowing a bubble. “Secret because it’s locked.”
“Again?” I groan. “So now we have two things to unlock!”
Eliza eases the lockbox out of the drawer. She tries to pry it open, but it won’t budge. It’s wood around the sides, but the top is smooth and glassy. “Interesting,” Eliza says. “It’s a touch screen on top. Let’s hope it doesn’t operate on fingerprints. . . .” She wakes up the touch screen and a single word stares us in the face:
STARTLING
“What’s that mean?” I say.
“No idea.”
Eliza touches the screen again, and a box pops up with two words now:
*PASSWORD HINT
“Click that!” I say. “Let’s see what the password hint is.”
