The Case of the Old Man in the Mailbox Read online

  Chapter 13

  The Enigma Squad Begins

  The next day was a buzz of excitement.

  “So did either of you get any sleep last night?” Scooter asked as we found our seats on the morning bus. “I just lay there staring at the ceiling all night and thinking about the shelter in my backyard.”

  “Me too!” AJ exclaimed. “Our own secret hideout with our very own fridge! We can stock it with all the soda and snacks we want! Next time we have an epic game of neighborhood paintball, we can use the shelter as our base to reload and regroup!”

  “I don’t know, AJ,” I argued. “I think if we do that, we run the risk of someone eventually seeing us going in or out of the hole. I sort of wanted to keep the shelter as a secret just between the three of us. What do you guys think? Is this going to be our little secret?”

  Scooter and AJ nodded their agreement.

  “I think we should make the shelter our secret headquarters,” Scooter said with that knowing grin of his.

  “Headquarters? For what?” AJ asked.

  “For our detective business,” Scooter answered excitedly.

  “Our what?” AJ asked, confused.

  “Well, I don’t know about you guys,” Scooter said, “but I thought this last week was a blast. Finding the bomb shelter was obviously cool, but didn’t you get a rush when we were trying to track down where and why Mr. Mathisen was hiding out in the woods? I think the three of us should open up shop and solve mysteries.”

  “That sounds like fun, Scoot!” said AJ.

  “Yeah, I think it could be fun, and we could even make a little spending money,” I chimed in. “But we have to have a catchy name… like, uh, Youth Sleuths or something like that.”

  “That’s sort of a tongue-twister, don’t you think?” Scooter asked. “After all, if one of us can’t even pronounce it—cough, AJ—then I am not sure it’s a good name.”

  “What are you talking about? I can say it! Youth Soot… Yout Sloot… Looth Soot… OK, yeah, let’s not use that one.”

  “How about the something Detective Trio?” I suggested.

  AJ made his own suggestion before even considering mine. “How about the Underground Detectives?”

  Scooter and me both rolled our eyes. AJ saw us and got defensive. “What? What’s not to like? We’re detectives, and we’re underground!”

  Scooter answered him. “So, Aidge, what are you going to say to the first person who asks why we are called the ‘Underground Detectives’?”

  “Well, because our headquarters is undergrou… oh, I see. Yeah, that won’t work.”

  “Now that I think about it, I don’t really like the word ‘detectives,’” I said. “I don’t know why; I guess I just want a name that says ‘no matter the puzzle, mystery, riddle, or whatever, we’ll help you solve it!’”

  Scooter and AJ nodded, and then we sat in silence for a few moments. Finally, Scooter spoke up. “What about enigma?”

  “Eni-what?” AJ and me asked in near unison.

  “Enigma. It means ‘a puzzling occurrence.’ That’s sort of what our first case was, right? A puzzling occurrence.”

  “Enigma,” I said, thinking out loud. “It has a nice ring to it. And it definitely will make someone curious to know what exactly we do. I don’t know, though; can AJ pronounce ‘enigma’?”

  “Ha, ha, ha, very funny. Enigma, enigma, enigma,” he repeated.

  “Well, it really can’t be just ‘Enigma,’” Scooter added. “It needs to be Enigma and then something.”

  “How about Enigma Squad?” AJ pulled out of thin air.

  “Enigma Squad!” I said, nodding with an approving smile.

  “There it is! The Enigma Squad,” Scooter said with glee as he clapped his hands together and then raised a fist in the air.

  “OK, we have our name; we have our headquarters; now what?” AJ asked.

  “We get to work,” Scooter said. “And I know what our first case is going to be.”

  “I thought we just solved one!” AJ argued.

  “Well, we did, but we didn’t have an official name yet. This will be our first case as the Enigma Squad.”

  “So what is this grand mystery we’re going to solve, then?” I asked.

  “Well, I don’t know about you guys, but something just smells really fishy about that recall notice Mathisen got for his furniture,” Scooter said. “It just doesn’t sit right with me. Most recall notices give very specific instructions on why a product is being recalled. That way you can avoid choking on it, letting it catch fire, or whatever else the recall is for. I say we take Super Third Period and do some research.”

  The three of us did not have any classes together, which was a real bummer, but we did have what we dubbed Super Third Period.

  You see, I had English for third period, and every other Friday we went to the library to research our next writing assignment. Meanwhile, Scooter was taking some joke of a computer class that met in the “Computer Lab” on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. The Computer Lab just so happened to be a corner of the library filled with computers and separated from the rest of the library by a four-foot wall. AJ spent his third period getting an easy credit as a Librarian’s Assistant.

  So this meant that every other Friday, all three of us would be in the library at the same time, which meant, of course, we got nothing that was school-related done. And that is what made it all the more “Super.” So we agreed to meet during third period in the library at the front desk where AJ worked.