Case Closed #2, page 7
Zest
Jest
Lest
Vest
Fest
Rest
“Is that all of them?” I ask.
“You’re missing ME!” Frank says.
“Huh?”
“PEST!” Frank boasts, grinning wildly.
Pest, Eliza writes.
“And you’re missing Carlos!” Frank says. “BEST!”
“Aww! Thanks, buddy!” That’s the nicest thing I think he’s ever said to me. Which he punctuates with one enormous fart. That’s the Frank I know.
Best
“We’re missing a few. I’ll leave you some clues. Want to fill in the blanks?”
“Sure,” I say.
A bird’s _ _ _ _
North, South, East, _ _ _ _ .
A timed exam: not a quiz but a _ _ _ _ .
“I think that’s all of them,” Eliza says. “Count ’em up!”
* * *
COUNT UP ALL POSSIBLE FOUR-LETTER E-S-T WORDS. ADD ONE HUNDRED.
IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 111, CLICK HERE.
IF YOU THINK THE ANSWER IS 115, CLICK HERE.
* * *
WE HAVE TO go in! Now that we know where Layla is—and that she’s safe—we can’t leave her.
Eliza, Frank, and I storm into the room, and I’m surprised at how small it is. Layla is tied to a wooden chair, and there are filing cabinets and a single desk. But otherwise, the room is plain and empty.
Layla looks at us with a mixture of surprise and relief—her eyes fill with tears. Just like when Brad’s character, Sebastian, saves her from the Witch Queen’s ice tower . . . it’s so strange to see Layla in front of me. Almost like I stepped into Teen Witch.
“Oh, bless you!” Layla cries.
“But I didn’t even sneeze!” Frank says, confused.
Tuggle is surprised to see us, but that surprise morphs into fear.
“What are you doing here?” she says.
“Saving Layla,” I say, braver than I feel. I move toward Layla to untie her, but Tuggle steps between us.
“Here’s the thing about sub-basements,” Tuggle says. “They’re so far below the ground that it’s impossible to hear you scream. But . . .” She presses a button on the wall, and the floor rumbles. A square piece drops out. I can’t tell what’s below. From here it looks like a black hole.
“Wh-what’s that?” I ask, trying to keep my voice from wobbling.
“Is it the sub-sub-basement?” Eliza whispers.
“Of course not. It’s the sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-basement. Might as well be the earth’s core. Goodbye, little detective.”
And she pushes me in.
CASE CLOSED.
WITH OUR ELEVEN different four-letter E-S-T words, it’s time to figure out which one is most likely to be Wolfgang’s password: zest, jest, lest, vest, fest, rest, pest, best, nest, west, test.
“Stop!” I shout. “This is it.”
I point to the spot in the notebook where Eliza wrote west.
“Why?” Frank says.
“Wolfgang Westover. It’s part of his name.”
Eliza presses her finger on the W.
Click. The top of the box opens, and we’re in!
I don’t know what I’m expecting to find: photos, a secret letter, gems, something juicy maybe. Instead, there’s only a scrolled-up blueprint of the studio.
“That’s it?” Frank asks, voicing my thoughts. “How boring!”
Eliza lays the blueprint flat, and under her breath, she mutters, “Interesting.”
“What?” I say, leaning over the document.
Eliza points to what looks like a different floor plan than the studio we’re standing in. But at the top of the blueprint map, it still says Stage Eight.
“Here’s where we are,” Eliza says, pointing to an area that looks like everything we’ve already explored. “And this is an area of the building that we haven’t seen yet. A basement, maybe.”
“But we’ve explored this whole studio. There is no basement.”
“Maybe not a basement, but there clearly is something,” Eliza says. “It’s in the blueprint of the building, and diagrams don’t lie. According to this map, there’s an entrance outside Brad’s dressing room. Funny, we walked by there today and didn’t see anyth—”
“Kids?” Maureen calls, her voice muffled. “Did you forget we’re playing hide-and-seek?”
“Quick! Run!”
Eliza, Frank, and I dash toward Brad Bradley’s dressing room, away from Maureen. Now that we know there’s a secret underground basement around here, we have to find it. It might have important clues . . . or even Layla.
The dressing-room hallway has all the stars’ dressing rooms on the right-hand side, while the left wall has pictures of the cast and crew at award shows, autographed headshots, and framed promotional posters.
I start taking the pictures off the wall, very carefully.
“What are you doing?” Eliza asks.
“Seeing if the secret entrance is behind any of these pictures. Come help.”
Eliza goes to the opposite end of the hall and starts removing the pictures. Meanwhile, Frank waves us on like he’s a conductor, probably because he’s too short to reach the pictures.
“Strawberry shortcake, banana split! Carlos makes Eliza look like . . . shiiiiiiiift to the left, shiiiiiiiiift to the right, stand up, sit down, FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT!”
“Can you stop that?” Eliza gripes. “This is extremely heavy, and your cheering is making it hard to concen—”
“GO, ELIZA! YOU CAN DO IT! PUT A LITTLE POWER TO IT!”
“Ughhhh,” she groans. “Carlos, can you help with this one? It feels fused to the wall.”
I ditch my promotional poster from season two and head to Eliza’s photo, which—I’ve just noticed—is the only poster in the hallway that’s not about Teen Witch.
“On the count of three, we pull,” I say. “One, two . . .”
Frank knocks into me, and I trip forward. I pull down on the picture frame, the painting swivels, and the wall clicks open, revealing some rickety wooden steps that lead downward.
“COOL!” Frank says. It’s kind of annoying how Frank has a talent for discovering all sorts of important clues when he’s not even trying. Like the blueprint with the basement on it—and even this secret entrance. I’m glad he’s on my team and all, but I feel like I’m the one with something to prove to Mom.
“Let’s go,” I say, hopping down the first three steps.
Eliza has concern written all over her face. She reaches into her backpack, pulls out a flashlight, and says, “I came prepared.”
She goes in; Frank follows and closes the wall behind us.
This basement looks nothing like the set upstairs. The set is high tech, with that giant mechanical dragon and green screens and lights and cameras. Down here, it’s dingy and old. We keep getting hit in the face with cobwebs.
“It seems like no one’s been here for years,” Eliza says.
I have the feeling she wants to turn back, but neither one of us suggests it. So we press on. But quickly we get to a fork in the basement, where our path divides. There’s one road that leads to the left, and the other veers to the right.
“Now what?” Eliza says.
“We split up!” Frank says. “Banana splitsies!”
“Um, no way,” I say. I know Frank is only six and way too young to have seen any horror movies, but the second people split up is the second everyone dies. So . . . we are sticking together, no matter what.
“We’re not splitting up,” Eliza says, shining her flashlight at the wall dividing the two hallways. There’s something written on the wood, carved with a knife.
TO STAY IN STAGE EIGHT: WITHOUT PICKING UP YOUR PEN, CONNECT ALL NINE DOTS WITH ONLY FOUR STRAIGHT LINES. YOU CAN GO OVER THE SAME DOT TWICE. WHEN DONE CORRECTLY, THE ANSWER WILL POINT YOU TO THE ROAD YOU WANT TO BE ON.
“It looks like someone else started it for us,” Eliza says, running her finger on the marks between the first three dots. “At least partially.”
“We want to stay in Stage Eight, right?” I ask.
Eliza nods. “You know . . . I’m starting to think this is some sort of underground tunnel that connects all the different stages. So that people can walk across the studio lot in inclement weather.”
“What inclement weather? It’s Los Angeles.”
“Come on,” Eliza says. “Let’s figure out which route to take.”
* * *
TO CHOOSE THE LEFT PATH, CLICK HERE.
TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT PATH, CLICK HERE.
TO ASK ELIZA FOR A HINT, CLICK HERE.
* * *
WE HAVE TO follow Guillotine. The only way he could look more suspicious is if he had a sign above him that read LOOK AT ME, I’M GUILTY!
We burst out of the prop room and run after him, just in time to see him turn another corner. It’s a tricky balance: we have to hurry, so we don’t lose him. But we also have to be quiet, so he doesn’t detect us.
The quiet part is particularly hard for Frank, who stomps down each hallway like he’s Godzilla.
“Frank! Shhhhh!” Eliza hisses.
“Shhhhhhhhh!” Frank repeats. He starts to tiptoe, but he’s still as quiet as a lumbering hippo.
Luckily, Guillotine is too far ahead to hear. In the distance, I can see him fiddling with a lock. And as I get closer, I can see he’s headed into his office, a door marked:
DOUGLAS CHEN
DIRECTOR
He opens the door, then pauses.
“Stop!” I whisper. I pull Frank and Eliza back by their shirts, and we crouch behind a potted plant in the hall.
Guillotine answers his phone. “What? Hello? I can’t hear you!” he snaps. “Ugh, the service in this building stinks—hold on, I’m going outside!” He walks away, and the door is one of those heavy ones that starts to close on its own. I’m almost positive that once it closes, it will lock automatically too.
We could make a run for it, to try to catch the door before it closes and locks us out. But it’s a risk: Guillotine could catch us. Or we could change course and do what Eliza originally wanted: snoop through Brad Bradley’s dressing room before he’s done with my mom.
* * *
TO CATCH THE DOOR TO GUILLOTINE’S OFFICE, CLICK HERE.
TO GO INVESTIGATE BRAD BRADLEY’S ROOM, CLICK HERE.
* * *
I HAVE TO follow the shadow. I pull Eliza into the velvet red hall with all of the executive offices. “This way, quickly!”
I chase after the shadow. Every time I think I’m catching up, it whips around another corner.
“Tuggle?” I call. “Is that you?”
We weave through the potion table, the lockers, the classroom, the green screen area, the robot dragon. We pass the director’s chair and the writer’s room.
“Where do you think she went?” I whisper to Eliza.
We look around, but all is quiet.
Too quiet.
“THERE!” Frank shouts, pointing to the door of the sound booth, which slams shut. We run toward it, faster than I’ve ever run in my life.
I yank the door open, expecting to see Tuggle or Layla inside, but it’s just a big padded room with soundproof walls—empty except for a standing microphone and a door that leads to a tiny control room.
“Maybe they’re in there,” I say.
We go into the control room, but there’s nothing.
SLAM.
We turn around, and through the glass we see Tuggle waving at us. I shove past Eliza to the door, but it’s locked. Tuggle must have hidden behind the door and waited until we were inside to lock us in here. We’ve been tricked!
“Hey!” I bang on the door. “HEY!”
But Tuggle walks out of the sound booth.
“Don’t ditch us!” I cry. “You can’t just leave us in here!”
“She can, and she did,” Frank says.
“Uh . . . Carlos?” Eliza says, her voice an octave higher than usual. “Not to make you panic, but . . .”
She gestures to something box-shaped underneath the sound table. Something connected to a timer, set to go off in three minutes.
“Is that what I think it is?” I gulp.
“I don’t want to explode!” Frank says, tugging on my sleeve.
“So how do we disarm it?”
Eliza pops open a control panel to reveal a bunch of wires. They have color labels on them on the top, but all the wires are black.
Eliza and I gasp at the same time.
“Season three, episode seven!” we both shout.
“The one where Aurelia’s brother dies!” Eliza says. She turns to Frank to quickly explain. “This character on Teen Witch was supposed to disarm the device, but he didn’t do it in time.”
“You think this is the same prop from the show?”
“It looks like it! I’m trying to remember how to disarm it. . . .”
“No pressure,” I say, “but we have two minutes left on the clock. Actually, I take that back, yes pressure.”
Frank moves his hands wildly around Eliza’s head. “Okay, I just fastened your thinking cap!” he says very seriously.
“Thanks, Frank. From what I remember, I think we have to figure out which order they’re plugged in at the bottom and cut the wires in that order. Am I missing anything, Carlos?”
“Sounds right to me! Now, Frank, find scissors!”
* * *
TO CUT YELLOW, RED, BLUE, GREEN, CLICK HERE.
TO CUT GREEN, BLUE, RED, YELLOW, CLICK HERE.
TO CUT BLUE, YELLOW, GREEN, RED, CLICK HERE.
* * *
WE CAN’T GIVE up on Layla—we have to stay with her and search for a way in.
We ignore the fire alarm and continue knocking on the wall. But so far, nothing is working. I wish we had a sledgehammer to knock down the wall.
“NO!” we hear Layla suddenly scream. “GET AWAY FROM ME! NO—”
She cuts off suddenly, and we don’t hear anything more from her.
“Layla?” I say. I pull my shirt above my mouth. The air is getting very thick and smoky. This is no false alarm! “Layla—answer us!”
Eliza has her hand over her mouth, and my eyes sting.
“Carlos, we have to get out of here!” Eliza coughs.
I grab Frank’s hand and push forward—but the basement is filling up with dense black smoke, so heavy I can barely breathe. I taste it on my tongue. My eyes are streaming tears now. All three of us huddle together. And then we drop like flies: first Eliza falls to the floor. Then Frank passes out. Then my vision swims. Everything darkens. . . .
I wake up in the hospital with an oxygen mask over my face.
“Carlos!” Mom grabs my hand. “Eliza and Frank are okay. They’re with their parents in the next room.”
“Fire?” I manage.
Mom nods sadly. “Are you asking about the fire, or whether I was fired?”
I hold up two fingers.
“Yes to both. There was a fire, and I was fired. After the firefighters rescued you three, I went with you to the hospital and refused to leave your side . . . it’s been three days. Wolfgang dismissed me in this very room, two days ago. I guess you can say my case went up in smoke.”
CASE CLOSED.
I HAVE TO find out why Agatha Tuggle and Layla were fighting.
We corner Tuggle by the table of snacks for the crew. She is small, but she radiates confidence and power. It might be the pantsuit . . . or the tightly wrapped bun. But the effect is dulled by the way she has three pens sticking out of her bun, making her head look a bit like a pincushion.
“We’re, er, detectives from Las Pistas Detective Agency, and we need to talk with you.”
She blinks. Her owlish glasses make her eyes look twice their normal size. “What about?”
“Layla Jay,” I say. “And why you’ve been fighting with her.”
Instantly, Tuggle looks greenish. She glances nervously at a few of the crew members nearby. And I understand what she’s saying: she doesn’t want anyone to overhear. It could be dangerous to have rumors flying around.
“Let’s go somewhere private,” I suggest.
She nods and follows us as we take her somewhere away from the prying ears of the cast and crew. The writers’ room is perfect for this. It gives us privacy and quiet, around an oval table.
“So . . . let’s talk about you and Layla. What were you fighting about?”
“Who even told you we were fighting?” Tuggle replies.
“That’s confidential,” I say, right as Eliza says, “Wolfgang Westover.”
“Oops,” Eliza adds.
Tuggle snorts. “I would not trust any information that comes from Wolfgang Westover,” she says, casually examining her nails. “He is positively giddy that Layla is missing. Giddy. His show has never been as popular as it has been in the past five days. Maybe he kidnapped her to boost the show’s ratings.”
“So you think Layla’s been kidnapped?” I ask.
Tuggle chokes for a second, then quickly recovers. “Who said kidnap?”
“You just did,” Eliza says.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did!” Frank says, pointing at her.
“No, I didn’t.”
“YES, YOU DID!” Frank shouts.
“I think you misheard me,” Tuggle says sweetly. “I was just piggybacking on what you were suggesting. I don’t know what happened to my client. For all I know, she thought of this publicity stunt herself.”
I frown. Tuggle is trying so hard to rewrite our conversation as we’re having it. Is that suspicious behavior? Or is that just what agents are used to doing—spinning conversations to put themselves and their clients in the best light?
* * *
TO ASK TUGGLE WHY SHE WAS FIGHTING WITH LAYLA, CLICK HERE.
