The Mystery of Mr. Nice (8 page)

I leaped off the wall and onto the stage. Dodging behind chairs, I dashed for the fake principal, with Guido in hot pursuit. If only I could rip off that mask...

I hopped onto Knuckles's back like a flea on an elephant.

"He's a fake!" I cried. "Look!"

I tugged with both hands at the mask. Knuckles's big paws clamped down on my wrists.

"Somebody get this gecko off me," he snarled.

Guido plucked me off like a piece of belly-button lint. I looked for Natalie, but Mr. Squint had her cornered.

It looked like our luck had run out.

Bye-bye, detectives, hello crime school.

Popper burst through the back door. "It's a raid, it's a raid!" she cried.

Blue uniforms poured into the auditorium from all sides. Parents screamed. Teachers shouted. I bit Guido's paw.

"Yow!" He dropped me like a bad habit.

The crooks made a break for the door by the stage. Too late! Cops surrounded them.

Fweeeet!

Principal Zero's whistle cut through the pandemonium like a belch through a church service. Everyone fell silent. He waddled up the aisle toward me.

"Took you long enough," I said.

"Principals don't run," he said. Mr. Zero turned to the cops. "Officers, arrest these evildoers."

The police looked from the fake principal to the real one. They hesitated.

"Arrest this man for disrupting our meeting!" said Knuckles.

Principal Zero advanced on him, eyes narrowed and neck fur bristling.

"It's not just that you're guilty of kidnapping, assault, and plotting to do very bad things...," he said. In one quick move, our principal reached out and tore off the mask. "But you're impersonating a principal, mister, and I won't stand for that!"

The parents and teachers gasped at the unmasked Knuckles McGee. I didn't blame them. If ugliness were art, he'd have been the Moan-a Lisa.

Principal Zero wound up like King Kong pitching for the World Series. His punch connected with a
whump
that made me wince. The criminal went down like a concrete submarine.

"Enjoy your knuckle sandwich ... Knuckles," purred Mr. Zero. He smoothed his whiskers and turned to the cops. "Take them away."

I heard a heavy sigh. There, just behind me, slumped a dejected Rocky Rhode, horned toad and juvenile delinquent.

"Oh, man, this is the pits," she said. "I knew it was too good to be true—a principal who really understood me."

"Don't worry," I said. "I think the real Principal Zero understands you, too."

Rocky grumped. "I know. That's the problem."

The police loaded the four crooks into a paddy wagon outside, while Principal Zero told the crowd what had happened. Popper watched everything, wide-eyed and twitching.

"Wowie, wow, wow!" she said. "This is the best, the best cops-and-robbers game ever!"

Natalie joined me by the door. She groomed her feathers as we watched the police van pull away.

"Just think," I said. "We never would have uncovered this plot if I wasn't such a great artist."

"Yeah, right," she said. "Chet, you can barely draw a bath."

I told you: Great artists are never appreciated.

Principal Zero spotted us and stepped away from the crowd. His heavy paw landed on my shoulder. He squeezed. I flinched.

"You kids have done great work on this case," he said. "Take some time off. You deserve it."

"Gee, thanks," I said.

He smiled. "Let's see ... today is Friday. Don't come back to school until Monday."

He wasn't funny. But he was our principal.

As Natalie and I walked away, I began planning my next cartoon.

I'd start with a big, fat Principal Zero. And for the sake of Art, I'd make his stomach bigger than a Thanksgiving Day parade float....

Mmm, Thanksgiving
... That reminded me of dinner. Art could wait. I'd find my next masterpiece at home on a plate.

Mrs. Bagoong is a hundred pounds of tough, leathery iguana. Her eyes are like chocolate drops, her cheeks soft as AstroTurf, and about the same color. Her thick, powerful body is wrapped in a blue apron that says
KISS THE COOK.

Yuck. Nobody in his right mind would try to smooch Mrs. Bagoong.

"What's up, brown eyes?" I said. "If your face were any longer, you'd have to rent an extra chin."

Mrs. Bagoong sighed. "Chet, honey," she said, "we've got problems."

My heart raced faster. "You're not running out of mothloaf, are you?"

"Not yet."

I relaxed. "So it's not serious, then."

"Serious enough," she said. "someone's stealing our food."

Mrs. Bagoong sunk her face in her hands. she looked sadder than a wilted bowl of broccoli on a muggy day.

One thick, iguanoid tear slithered down her cheek. "If I can't stop this, I don't know what will happen. They might close the cafeteria, or even fire me."

The tear did it. I can't stand to see a reptile cry.

"All right, enough of that," I said. "Chet Gecko is on the case. Food thieves, beware!"

She cracked a tiny smile and sniffled. I swaggered to the door and flung it open. I saluted her.

"See ya
mañana,
iguana."

Ba-whonk!

I walked into a stack of cans.

"Uh, Chet, honey? That's the pantry."

Another great exit, ruined.

Case #1
The Chameleon Wore Chartreuse

Some cases start rough, some cases start easy. This one started with a dame. (That's what we private eyes call a girl.) She was cute and green and scaly. She looked like trouble and smelled like ... grasshoppers.

Shirley Chameleon came to me when her little brother, Billy, turned up missing. (I suspect she also came to spread cooties, but that's another story.) She turned on the tears. She promised me some stinkbug pie. I said I'd find the brat.

But when his trail led to a certain stinky-breathed, bad-tempered, jumbo-sized Gila monster, I thought I'd bitten off more than I could chew. Worse, I had to chew fast: If I didn't find Billy in time, it would be bye-bye, stinkbug pie.

Case #4
The Big Nap

My grades were lower than a salamander's slippers, and my bank account was trying to crawl under a duck's belly. So why did I take a case that didn't pay anything?

Put it this way: Would
you
stand by and watch some evil power turn
your
classmates into hypnotized zombies? (If that wasn't just what normally happened to them in math class, I mean.)

My investigations revealed a plot meaner than a roomful of rhinos with diaper rash.

Someone at Emerson Hicky was using a sinister video game to put more and more students into la-la-land. And it was up to me to stop it, pronto—before that someone caught up with me, and I found myself taking the Big Nap.

Case #5
The Hamster of the Baskervilles

Elementary school is a wild place. But this was ridiculous.

Someone—or some
thing
—was tearing up Emerson Hicky. Classrooms were trashed. Walls were gnawed. Mysterious tunnels riddled the playground like worm chunks in a pan of earthworm lasagna.

But nobody could spot the culprit, let alone catch him.

I don't believe in the supernatural. My idea of voodoo is my mom's cockroach ripple ice cream.

Then a teacher reported seeing a monster on fullmoon night, and I got the call.

At the end of a twisted trail of clues, I had to answer the burning question: Was it a vicious, supernatural were-hamster on the loose, or just another Science Fair project gone wrong?

Case #6
This Gum for Hire

Never thought I'd see the day when one of my worst enemies would hire me for a case. Herman the Gila Monster was a sixth-grade hoodlum with a first-rate left hook. He told me someone was disappearing the football team, and he had to put a stop to it. Big whoop.

He told me he was being blamed for the kidnappings, and he had to clear his name. Boo hoo.

Then he said that I could either take the case and earn a nice reward, or have my face rearranged like a bargain-basement Picasso painted by a spastic chimp.

I took the case.

But before I could find the kidnapper, I had to go undercover. And that meant facing something that scared me worse than a chorus line of criminals in steeltoed boots: P.E. class.