The Case of the Old Man in the Mailbox Read online

  Chapter 16

  Finders Keepers?

  Scooter walked past the officer who had just finished his inspection of the back door. AJ and me followed him. We all dropped our backpacks in the lawn chairs on the back porch and started across the lawn. In silence, Scooter walked over to the tree and got the key. (That reminds me: we really need to make a few copies of that thing.) After making sure no one was watching, he entered what was now our secret entrance. He made his way to the manhole cover, opened it, and descended the ladder.

  Not really sure what he was up to, AJ and me just followed him without saying a word. We went inside our new headquarters and shut the vault door, and still no one said a word. Scooter plopped down in the poufy chair next to the table, and I sat on the couch. AJ stood with his back to the sink and his hands stretched behind him, grabbing the counter. All eyes were on Scooter.

  After what seemed an eternity, Scooter’s frown turned into the hugest grin, and his eyes began to twinkle. I knew what that meant: Scooter was about to tell a story. He started talking quickly, as if he’d planned out what he was going to say.

  “OK, guys, hear me out. Here is my theory. This all begins with Mr. Snelling from the furniture company. He’s been working at Jungle Furniture for a while. Then, by some devious plot or criminals’ good luck, he comes across some item he is not supposed to have.”

  “Like what?” AJ asked anxiously.

  “I don’t know, but we are about to find out,” Scooter said.

  “Huh?”

  “Just let me finish my story first! So Snelling has this thing he is not supposed to have, and he is about to get caught with it, so he hides it in some furniture in his company’s warehouse. That’s where Mr. Mathisen comes into our story. He orders some furniture from the catalog, and the company unknowingly sends the furniture—” he patted the chair beneath him, “this very furniture—with the ‘thing’ still inside!

  “Snelling soon realizes the furniture has been shipped and has to get it back without raising suspicion, so he sends Mathisen a rather innocent-looking recall letter, hoping Mathisen will just send it back to the company and Snelling can retrieve his merchandise.

  “Tyler, that’s why Snelling called you Mathisen on the phone: he knew it could only be one person because he only sent one recall letter. That’s why he reacted the way he did when you asked about fixing it yourself, because the last thing he wanted was for you to go pull apart the furniture and find out what he was hiding.

  “So here’s the clincher. Now he is getting really desperate. Vancouver is, what, three hours from here?”

  “Plus time for the ferry,” I said.

  “Right. My point is that he can’t have gotten here fast enough to have trashed my house and gone before we got home from school. So he must have called a couple thugs he knows near here—maybe as far away as Seattle—and told them to go find his merchandise inside some furniture. He gives them my address, and so they show up and break in and start tearing the furniture apart. But they don’t find anything—because neither he nor they know about this shelter! When they come up empty at my house, they have to cover their tracks, so they trash the place, break a bunch of stuff to make it look like vandalism or a robbery gone bad.”

  “So what if you’re right?” AJ asked.

  “So if I am right, there should be something hidden in this furniture that Tyler and I are sitting on. My bet is this chair because that futon was bent and straightened every day by Mathisen when he transformed his bed into a couch and vice versa. I think he would have felt a lump if there were anything stuffed in his mattress.”

  Scooter stood up and looked at the cushion he was sitting on. He squeezed it a couple times in different places and, satisfied, moved to the cushion on the back of the chair. He picked it up and set it on the small table with the hard wood panel facing up. He knocked on the wood three times, “See, this hard panel keeps the cushion from losing its shape, but it might also keep anything inside from being discovered or ruined.”

  He set the cushion on end and inspected the seams, rotating the cushion until he discovered the zipper, which would normally be facing down and out of sight. I caught myself holding my breath as he unzipped the zipper and reached inside. He struggled briefly as he maneuvered around all the stuffing, but then he pulled his hand back. In it was a long, narrow, wooden box.

  “Hmm. Interesting,” Scooter said as he quickly moved the cushion to the floor and set the box on the table. The box was made of a dark, cherry-colored wood and was almost the exact same shape as the box of chocolates our family would get every Christmas from my Great Aunt Edith (the kind of chocolates a boy gets excited about until he bites into the first and discovers it’s filled with some unrecognizable fruit goo—yeah, sort of ruins it for you).

  The top of the box was engraved with the silver letters T-R-U-B-E. On one end was a bright silver hinge, and on the other end, an ornate silver clasp. Scooter looked up at us, took a deep breath, and undid the clasp. He lifted the lid to reveal blue felt. Resting on the felt was the most beautiful necklace I had ever seen.

  “Oh my…” AJ stopped in mid-sentence, completely awestruck by the necklace. It was made of what looked like a zillion diamonds and a handful of sapphires. I could not even begin to guess how much it was worth.

  We all stood silent and stunned until Scooter finally spoke up. “Well, I guess I was right.” He smiled big and continued, “I can see why Snelling was willing to do just about anything to get this back.”

  “You think he stole it?” AJ asked.

  “Of course he stole it, Idiot,” I snapped. “You think if it were his, he would have stuffed it in some stranger’s couch?”

  Embarrassed, AJ shrugged his shoulders. “Well, you never know… So what do we do now?”

  “Research,” Scooter replied as he shut the lid. He headed toward the vault door, leaving the box sitting on the table.

  “Aren’t you going to take the necklace with you?” I asked.

  “Are you kidding? If that’s real, I bet it’s worth like a million dollars!” Scooter exclaimed. “I don’t want something that valuable anywhere in my house. Those goons who trashed my house will be back for sure. Besides, don’t you think the safest place to keep this expensive jewelry is behind a bank vault door that no one knows exists?”

  “I think the safest place for that necklace is in the hands of your new Commander friend! If that necklace is really worth a million dollars, then this is huge!”

  “Exactly! This is huge!” Scooter said. “Do I know how to pick ’em or what? What a great first case for the Enigma Squad! Before we do anything, we need to find out who this really belongs to. Then, we go from there.”

  “Scooter, are you crazy?” I said. “Did you see what those guys did to your house?”

  “Tyler,” Scooter sputtered, “Let’s just hold off for one day. We could catch these guys and be heroes!”

  “Or we could just turn in the necklace and be rich! I bet there’s gotta be some huge reward for turning it in,” I argued.

  Scooter turned to AJ. He could see where this was headed, and he knew AJ would end up being the tie-breaker to this argument. “What do you think, Aidge? We could be heroes and rich!”

  “Well… I don’t see the harm in waiting a day,” AJ said, giving me an apologetic shrug. “I sort of like our new headquarters, and if we tell them about the necklace, we will have to tell them about this place. I say we wait a day and enjoy this place a little longer.”

  “I can’t believe you guys! This situation is a lot bigger than I think you two realize.”

  “Oh really, wise one?” Scooter said with uncharacteristic sarcasm. “Please enlighten us.”

  “Oh shut up! If you goons want to keep the police in the dark, then go right ahead and do your research. But you can do it without me!” I headed toward the door.

  “Where are you going?” AJ asked.

  “Oh, don’t worry. I won’t tell the police about yo
ur big secret, if that’s what you’re worried about.” I opened the door.

  “You’re really leaving?” Scooter asked in disbelief.

  “Yeah. I’m going home. You can solve our first case by yourselves! Hope it’s everything you dreamed it would be.”

  With that, I walked out and slammed the door behind me. Well, that’s what I wanted to do, but the door was so heavy, I had to put all my weight behind it, so it was more of slow thud. So much for my dramatic exit.