Sea Life Secrets Read online

  Frank glanced down at his watch and his eyes went wide. “Ms. Klinger, it’s almost ten o’clock. Can we follow the penguins and go see feeding time?”

  “I don’t trust those penguins.” She gave a doubtful look at the parade waddling out of Tide Town. “But I did say you could, so just be careful. Those birds are as poorly behaved as some of my students!”

  Frank and Joe marched behind the penguins all the way through another wing of the aquarium to an outdoor exhibit called the Penguin Palace. It had a rocky beach with a cave and a huge tank where the penguins could go swimming. It looked just like a real beach where penguins might live, only this one had balls and squeaky toys scattered all around. There were stairs leading down to a lower level, where a huge glass wall gave visitors a fish-eye view of the penguins swimming underwater. None of the birds were in the water at the moment, though.

  They were all eagerly following Benjamin onto the beach, where another employee was waiting with overflowing buckets of fresh fish.

  “Hey, no shoving!” Benjamin scolded Lee as the rambunctious penguin pushed his way to the front of the line.

  Kids gathered around to watch the second employee feed the penguins a variety of small fish and squid.

  “Hmm, kind of makes me hungry for sushi,” Joe said to Frank.

  Benjamin picked up a beach ball and tossed it to himself. “They’re a little distracted by lunch, but as some of you saw firsthand, penguins are super curious and playful animals. It’s kind of like taking care of a colony of bird-shaped puppies and kittens! They even play with toys.”

  “And bumblebees!” Joe called out. Kids who’d been in Tide Town during the commotion started giggling.

  “Thanks for reminding me.” Benjamin chuckled, turning a little pink.

  The boys watched the penguins eat and play for a while longer before Frank suddenly turned to Joe.

  “I was so distracted by the penguin pandemonium at Tide Town, I forgot to write down all the creatures in the touch pool for extra credit! I can’t let Brady be the only one to get a Junior Marine Biologist badge!”

  “Let’s get you that badge, bro,” Joe said, turning and marching back toward the door leading inside. “See ya later, penguins!”

  Frank and Joe were halfway back to Tide Town when Brady ran up behind them.

  “Hey, Frank. Did you see the kaleidoscope jaguar shrimp hiding under the coral in the touch pool?”

  “The who-what shrimp?” Joe asked.

  Frank looked confused too. He knew a lot about marine biology, but he hadn’t heard of the shrimp either.

  “The kaleidoscope jaguar shrimp,” Brady said. “It’s a super-rare relative of the peacock mantis shrimp. Bayport Aquarium is one of the only aquariums in the world to have one. It’s really colorful, like the inside of a kaleidoscope, and it can also change colors to look like its environment. Maybe that’s why you didn’t see it. I guess I just have really good eyes when it comes to spotting sea life.” He tapped his blue-framed glasses.

  “I have good eyes too,” Frank grumbled. “I was just distracted.”

  Brady shrugged. “I’m going to check out Shark Row. See you guys later.”

  “I wish I’d seen that kaleidoscope jaguar shrimp for myself the first time,” Frank said after Brady had left. “At least now I know it’s there so I can add it to the extra-credit list. Ms. Klinger said we had to write down every creature in Tide Town. If Brady hadn’t told me about it, I might have missed out on seeing a cool shrimp and getting that badge!”

  When they made it back to Tide Town, the exhibit was entirely empty except for Mayor Mouna and her aquatic citizens.

  “It must be between tour times,” Joe said. “Maybe you can ask Mayor Mouna if there are any other hidden creatures, so you don’t miss anything.”

  “Hi, Mayor Mouna!” Frank called.

  Mouna didn’t seem to hear him. She was too busy staring into the touch pool, scanning the rocks as she chewed on her fingernails.

  “What’s wrong?” Joe asked as he and his brother came to her side.

  Mouna didn’t answer right away. She ran to the other side of the touch pool, clearly searching for something. Finally she looked up at Frank and Joe.

  “He’s gone!”

  “Who’s gone?” Frank stared down into the pool. He definitely didn’t see the kaleidoscope jaguar shrimp, but there was another creature that he didn’t see either.

  “Seymour the chocolate chip sea star!” Mouna cried. “He’s missing from the tank!”

  TIDAL TURMOIL

  “Are you sure he’s not there?” Joe saw plenty of rays, some urchins, a few shrimp, and even some other sea stars, but none of them were white with chocolate-chip-shaped lumps on their arms. It looked like Mayor Mouna was right. Seymour the sea star was gone!

  Frank examined a mound of coral in the middle of the touch pool. “Could he just be hiding under something?”

  “I’ve looked everywhere!” Mouna cried. “I checked all his favorite hiding spots, but Seymour is one of our most outgoing residents. He’s almost always out and about, crawling around the tank.”

  Joe gave his brother a knowing look. “I think this calls for the clue book.”

  “The what book?” asked Mouna.

  Joe held up his notebook so she could see. “The clue book! Frank and I are the top kid detectives in Bayport, and this book is where we write down the five Ws at the start of every mystery.”

  “And a missing chocolate chip sea star sure sounds like a mystery to me,” Frank said.

  Mouna glanced from Joe’s notebook back to Frank. “What are the five Ws?”

  “Who, what, where, when, and why. As in, who did it? What did they do? Where did it happen? When did they do it? And why did they do it? Those are the five questions we need to answer to crack any case.”

  “What and where are easy.” Joe pulled out a pen and started writing. “Seymour at Tide Town.”

  “When isn’t too hard either,” said Frank. “Seymour was here during our tour, so we know he had to have gone missing sometime between then and now. Do you remember when you last saw him and when you first realized he wasn’t there anymore?”

  “Well, he was right there on the side of the pool when the Penguin Parade showed up.” Mayor Mouna pointed to the spot where they’d all seen Seymour during their first visit. “I’m not sure after that. I always check on all our residents after a tour, just to make sure everyone’s okay after the kids leave. Your tour ran late because of the penguins, so I didn’t get a chance until the next tour was over. That was about ten minutes ago, and I realized he was gone right before you got here.”

  “The penguins arrived at about nine forty-five, right before we left for penguin feeding time at ten, and it’s ten thirty-five now, so he had to have gone missing between nine forty-five and ten twenty-five.” Joe jotted the times down in the clue book.

  Frank gave a quick look around at the rest of the exhibit. “Could he have climbed out of the touch pool and wandered off on his own?”

  Mouna shook her head. “None of the creatures have before. They don’t have any reason to. Sea stars can stay out of water for short periods of time, but they only do it when they really have to, like when the tide gets too low.”

  “I guess that brings us to who,” Frank said.

  Mouna gasped. “You think he was star-napped?!”

  Joe glanced into the water and gulped. “Is it, um, possible one of the other Tide Town residents ate Seymour?”

  “No way,” Mouna replied. “We make sure all the animals in the same tank are friends with one another. Someone must have taken him!”

  “Did you notice anyone acting suspiciously during either of your tours?” Frank asked.

  “No one could have taken him while I was watching! I pay close attention to all the kids to make sure everyone is being nice to the animals. If someone tried to take one of them out of the pool, I’d notice it for sure.”

  Joe snapped his fingers. “It must hav
e happened while you weren’t watching!”

  “But I always watch—” Mouna’s mouth dropped open. “Oh! You mean the Penguin Parade!”

  “Yup. You were helping Benjamin chase the penguins around while Lee ran after the bumblebee.”

  Joe crossed out Between 9:45 and 10:25 and wrote Between 9:45 and 9:55. “The crime had to have been committed during the ten minutes when everyone was distracted by the runaway penguins.”

  “Now it’s back to who.” Frank stared down at the clue book page. “Everyone who was here during our tour could be a suspect. There were tons of kids, along with a bunch of teachers and parents too. How do we narrow it down?”

  “Why in the world would anyone want to take an innocent sea star?” Mouna asked.

  “Good question.” Joe circled the word Why in his clue book. “In the detective biz, why is what we call motive.”

  Mouna thought for a minute. “Well, it doesn’t happen very often, but guests have been caught trying to steal fish from other exhibits for their home aquariums.”

  Frank narrowed his eyes. “I can think of one fishless home aquarium enthusiast who was here when the penguins were running everywhere.”

  Joe jabbed his pen in the air. “Brady! He even said he wanted a sea star of his own.”

  Frank nodded. “I think we have our first suspect.”

  Joe was writing Brady’s name next to Who when they heard shouting on the level below Tide Town. Joe, Frank, and Mouna all ran out of the exhibit and looked over the railing to see what was happening in the rain forest on the floor below.

  Two of the aquarium’s mascots were shaking their costume fins and arms and yelling at each other. The one yelling the loudest had five arms decorated with large, chocolate-chip-shaped lumps.

  “You can keep that silly suit on for the rest of your life for all I care! I’m going to take my breaks whenever I want to!” Seymour the Sea Star mascot shouted at Reggie the Ray.

  “Wow. He’s even more unhappy about wearing that costume now than he was when I stepped on his foot on the way in,” Joe said.

  Mouna buried her face in her hands. “Tide Town’s opening day is a total disaster. Our mascots are fighting in front of the kids, and I lost our star attraction!”

  “You know what? Having to wear the mascot costume wasn’t the only reason Big Seymour was so grouchy.” Frank looked from the fighting mascots back to Mayor Mouna. “He was complaining that you got to be Tide Town’s mayor instead of him.”

  “That’s right!” Joe quickly flipped the clue book back open. “Brady isn’t the only who with a why. There’s another shady character with a motive for taking Seymour—the other Seymour!”

  FISH FIGHT

  “We’d better go talk to him and see if he had anything do with Little Seymour’s disappearance,” Frank said to Mouna. He ran for the stairs leading down to the rain-forest exhibit, with Joe right on his heels.

  It was a lot warmer in the rain forest, and the air was sticky with moisture from all the jungle plants and the waterfall trickling down the wall. Joe could see tanks full of scary-looking piranhas, trees filled with colorful birds, and even a fake sloth dangling from one of the branches. What he didn’t see was a guy in a Seymour costume. “We must have just missed him.”

  “Reggie the Ray is still here.” Frank pointed at the mascot in the ray costume. “Maybe we can get some useful information from him.”

  Joe walked up to Reggie and tugged on one of the ray’s fins. “Excuse me, Mr. Ray. Is it okay if we ask you a few questions?”

  Reggie turned around and looked down at him and Frank. “Sure thing. I can tell you all about the different creatures in our aquarium.”

  Reggie’s voice sounded a little shaky, like the mascot was still angry from the fight and trying not to show it. Joe was surprised when he heard Reggie speak, because it sounded like a woman inside the costume.

  “Sorry, Miss Ray!”

  “You can just call me Reggie,” they said with a laugh. “What would you like to know about our residents?”

  “We were hoping you could tell us about the six-foot-tall one in the sea star costume you were just arguing with,” Frank said.

  Reggie looked down at their fins. “Oh no. I’m sorry you heard that. We’re supposed to be setting a good example for the guests.”

  “I think that ship already sailed,” Joe said. “He yelled at us earlier. But we think he might be up to something fishier than just grumbling about his fishy costume.”

  Reggie gasped. “Pat yelled at some of our guests? I’m going to have to report that. Ditching his shift is one thing, but we’re the aquarium’s mascots! The most important part of our job is to make sure kids like you are having a good time.”

  “ ‘Pat’ is Big Seymour’s real name?” Frank asked. “And that’s why you were arguing? Because he walked out on his shift?”

  Reggie nodded their giant ray head. “We were mobbed, and he just took off without saying anything, leaving me to entertain a whole lobby full of kids all by myself. That’s not fair to me or the guests. Just because he doesn’t like wearing his costume doesn’t give him permission not to do his job.”

  “He ran off suddenly, huh?” Joe shot a look at Frank. They both knew what their next question had to be. “What time did he leave?”

  Reggie thought for a second. “I think it was about nine thirty-five, maybe.”

  “That fits our timeline!” Frank looked back at Joe. “Pat would have had just enough time to slip out of his costume and make it from the lobby up to Tide Town!”

  “What happened at Tide Town?” Reggie asked.

  Frank dodged the question, not wanting to reveal too much about the case until he knew more. “What does Pat look like when he’s not dressed like a giant sea star?”

  “He’s got spiked hair and his eyebrows are kind of arched. How come?”

  “Spiky hair and pointy eyebrows?” Frank said. “That matches the description of the smirky guy we saw sneaking through Tide Town during the penguin stampede. He was there at the same time the real Seymour went missing. Pat could have been stealing away with a stolen sea star!”

  Joe held up the clue book. “He was where and when, and he has a why. I think we could have our who!” He added Pat’s name to the suspect list.

  “What?” Reggie asked. “You’re saying someone stole Seymour from Tide Town? And you think it was Pat?”

  “Someone sure did.” Frank nodded, a serious look on his face. “Pat even told us he wasn’t going to let the aquarium get away with passing him over for the Tide Town mayor job and making him wear the Seymour costume. Nabbing the real Seymour could have been his idea of revenge.”

  “Let’s track him down and see if we can get him to confess to—” A drop of liquid splatted down onto Joe’s shirt before he could finish. “Ack! What was that?”

  A second drop hit Reggie on the head, and a third left a wet splotch on Frank’s sneaker. All three looked up.

  Someone was peering over the railing of the level above. They were crouching down like they didn’t want to be noticed. The only things the boys could make out were the person’s eyes and the top of their head. That, and the leaky fish-tank-themed lunch box dangling over the rail.

  Frank scowled. “Brady.”

  Brady’s eyes went wide when he realized he’d been spotted. More liquid splattered down onto Frank and Joe as Brady yanked the leaking lunch box back over the rail and raced down the hall away from Tide Town.

  THE ELECTRIC SLIDE

  “When a suspect takes off running after a crime, it usually means one thing,” Joe said. “They’re guilty of something.”

  Frank stared at Brady’s back as he ran. “I bet I know what he’s guilty of. Brady told everyone he wanted a sea star of his own, and what better place to hide it than a lunch box decorated to look like a fish tank?”

  “He knew sea stars could be taken out of the water and the right water conditions to keep them in too,” Joe added. “He could have pla
nned the heist in advance and filled his lunch box with a plastic bag full of aquarium water to turn it into a portable starfish tank. That would explain the dripping!”

  Frank could still see Brady’s neon-green shirt moving along the rail of the level above. “Let’s go after him!”

  “There’s a shortcut to get upstairs at the other end of the rain forest!” Reggie pointed their fin down the hall. “Don’t let him get away with it!”

  Frank and Joe took off running. There was another stairway at the rain-forest exit, just like Reggie had said. Behind the stairs was a dark, roped-off corridor with a sign that said UNDER CONSTRUCTION—AQUARIUM STAFF ONLY. Luckily, the brothers weren’t going that way. Halfway up the stairs, Joe glanced down and saw Mira sneaking past the sign. She had a Bayport Aquarium gift bag in her hand and was looking around nervously, like she didn’t want anybody to see her. Joe thought about mentioning her strange behavior to Frank, but right then they had bigger fish to fry.

  “There he is!” Frank shouted when he reached the landing.

  Brady was one of the fastest kids in school, and if it hadn’t been for Reggie’s shortcut, the Hardy brothers would have lost him right away. Even with the shortcut, he had a big lead, sprinting through the door of an exhibit at the other end of the hall labeled WEIRD AND WONDERFUL WORLDS.

  Joe leaped over one of the little puddles Brady’s leaking lunch box had left behind. “Careful not to slip, bro!”

  “That poor sea star! The way that lunch box is bouncing up and down, it must be dizzy.” Frank’s eyes widened as they entered a long, curved hallway lined with displays full of fantastic creatures. “I wish we could stop to check out all these cool tanks.”

  Joe grabbed his brother’s arm to keep him from slowing down. “No time for sightseeing, dude. Brady’s getting away!”

  They ran past swirling rainbows of fish and alien-looking sea anemones, ancient-looking sturgeon the size of sharks, floating clouds of jellyfish that lit up with pink and blue bioluminescence, and all kinds of other weird and wonderful sights.