Dungeons & Detectives Read online

  I cringed at my brother’s poor diplomacy skills as Angus’s grip on the blunderbuss tightened. Not that I didn’t share Joe’s shock at the audacity of the bill of goods Angus had sold his nephew. Robert’s knack for spinning tall tales apparently ran in the family, and the one that Angus used to lure his nephew to America was a doozy. No wonder Robert felt entitled to keep the comic for himself, and it wasn’t part of the ancient estate either, which meant it could legally be sold if he wanted, unlike the rest of the stuff in the castle. But as outrageous as Angus’s admission was, I had to question Joe’s judgment antagonizing a notorious misanthrope who also happens to be pointing a gun at us.

  “That’s one way to put it,” Angus said indignantly.

  “What’s the other?” Joe asked.

  “I gently persuaded me only living relative to come to the aid of his helpless, lonely old uncle Angus in his hour of need,” he said in a surprisingly meek voice.

  “Um, no offense, sir, but I definitely wouldn’t call you helpless,” I said, eyeing the muzzle of his blunderbuss.

  “What difference does it make? Not like he’s any worse off for it,” Angus snapped defensively. “My deadbeat of a nephew was broke there, an’ now he’s broke here. Owed money all over Scotland, he did. Had everyone from the law to the leg breakers after him to collect on debts. He should be singing me praises for getting him out of there in one piece.”

  Joe and I shared a glance. It explained a lot if it was true—and that was a big “if,” based on how flexibly the McGalliards seemed to treat the truth. It certainly did explain Robert’s nervousness around police, though. The revelation that he was hurting for money also meant something even bigger. Don Inkpen might be right: Robert had a motive to turn his copy of Sabers & Serpents #1 into quick cash. And to threaten us off the case if he had.

  Stealing from himself definitely still seemed like an extreme measure. On the other hand, setting himself up to look like a dupe by announcing an appraisal in front of the world right before it went missing would be an unexpectedly devious way to deflect suspicion.

  Angus tossed the empty peppermint patty bag away in disdain and started rummaging angrily through the shopping bag for more candy that pleased him. There wasn’t any dark chocolate, and I figured this was a good time to change the topic before the blunderbuss-toting curmudgeon found another reason to be unreasonably grumpy.

  “I meant to mention this earlier, sir, but I’m a huge fan of the Sabers and Serpents game,” I said sincerely.

  He eyed me suspiciously. “You’ve played me game?”

  “A bunch! We’ve been playing every week since Comic Kingdom opened. The game design is brilliant. It’s as much fun to play as any fantasy role-playing game I’ve seen! Did you really base it all on things you found here in the castle?”

  “Aye, this old albatross of a manor used to be good for something,” he confirmed nostalgically. “It hadn’t been lived in for generations when I arrived. Old Paulie Magnus hadn’t counted on the family’s fortunes fading the way they did over the years. Upkeep got too costly once hard times hit, so the McGalliard clan upped an’ left Bayport, leaving the castle for Old Paulie’s ghost to steward on his own. None of me American cousins wanted the headache once the inheritance reached our generation, so I claimed it. I’d been enchanted by tales of castles and quests ever since I was a wee lad and wanted to go on a quest of me own. Suppose it was that same misguided sense of adventure that led me to create Sabers and Serpents.”

  “I was wondering about some of the Gaelic words you used in the game and the comic, too. Those kinds of details really bring the whole S and S world to life!” I said, trying to steer the conversation toward another part of the investigation.

  Angus’s perpetual scowl had softened for the first time since he’d discovered the peppermint patties. He pointed the blunderbuss at Joe and nodded in my direction. “This one has taste. You shoulda let him pick the chocolate.”

  I saw Joe’s brain preparing to crack a joke at my expense, and I elbowed him in the ribs before he could sour Angus’s mood again.

  “Ow,” Joe grumbled.

  “Did you come up with all the Gaelic words on your own?” I asked Angus, ignoring my brother. “My friends and I were trying to figure out what they mean.”

  “Ah, ye give me too much credit, lad. They’re just pretty gibberish copied from worthless old papers I found lying around the castle. No meaning to them.”

  I could feel Joe starting to buzz with excitement beside me. Angus may have denied the symbols had meaning, but their origins fit with Murph’s theory that the Gaelic words were code that had come from Paul Magnus McGalliard’s ancient smuggler’s ledger.

  “Was one of the papers a map?” Joe asked eagerly.

  Angus’s scowl returned instantly. “That accursed map! I wish I’d never laid eyes on it!”

  “Is that what’s on the missing page from the other copies of the Sabers and Serpents comic?” I asked, struggling to contain my own excitement.

  “Argh, all it ever led to was the end of me dreams,” he snarled without answering directly. “My life’s work and all me savings up in flames, leaving me with nothing but a crumbling castle full of useless trinkets!”

  “Um, you’re talking about the warehouse fire,” Joe ventured hesitantly. “And Filmore?”

  “Curse that name! And the map that drove him out of his mind!” He stood up abruptly, his elderly knees creaking loudly from the effort as the chair nearly toppled over and he began pacing. “And what for? A mythical isle that doesn’t even exist?”

  “Filmore…” I hesitated and quickly backtracked as Angus swung his blunderbuss toward me. “I mean, er, your partner started the, um, all the trouble with the warehouse because of an island from the map?”

  My brain was racing, trying to put the fragmented pieces Angus had told us together without accidentally saying anything that might get us shot.

  “A map to nowhere on an isle that doesn’t exist!” Angus erupted. “Filmore always had an irksome fondness for geography,” he added bitterly. “He wasted hours studying maps of the Scottish isles after we happened on that map tucked away in an old journal, but it wasn’t there to be found. The drawing was two hundred and fifty years old, and the isle mighta sunk into the sea if it had ever been there to begin with. Wasn’t any more real a place than Treasure Island from me countryman Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous book. ’Twas a beautifully hand-drawn map, though. Filmore and I came up with the idea to incorporate it into the story, and he drew an exact replica for the first issue. It was perfect fit for the Lost Isle we was to introduce in the comic. Had there been one!”

  Angus was pacing back and forth in agitation, lost in his own thoughts. Joe opened his mouth to say something, and I put my hand on his arm, signaling him to be quiet. Angus was on a roll, and sometimes the best way to interrogate a person is to let them do their own interrogating. As much of a hermit as Angus McGalliard was, he probably didn’t get many chances to even talk to people, and he’d never given so much as a single interview about what had happened with Filmore. Now that he’d started, I hoped the floodgates would stay open.

  “Filmore seemed to forget about the map for a while, and if only he had!” Angus continued. “But he began acting more and more squirrelly, he did, saying he wanted to make changes to the comic, but publication was nigh and we couldn’t afford to delay printing. Nay, every penny the both of us had was riding on the comic’s release.” Angus shook his head violently, as if trying in vain to reject the memory of it. “We was two nights from going to press when the printer called to say he’d caught Filmore breaking into his warehouse, trying to steal the printer plates and tearing the page with the map from all the proofs. The printer ran him off and changed the locks, but I was a fool and told him not to call the coppers because Filmore were my chum, or so I thought. He’d always been eccentric, he had, aye, it were part of his genius as an artist. I thought it were just jitters about the release and everyt
hing would be fine once we went to press. Only he came back to the warehouse a day later, in the dead of night, and found it locked up tight.”

  Angus paused and lowered his voice, a glazed look in his eyes, as if he wasn’t just staring past us, but into the past itself.

  “So he burned it all down instead.”

  “Whoa,” Joe whispered in a hushed tone. “That’s intense.”

  Angus collapsed back into the chair, exhausted from reliving the tale.

  “And you never saw him again?” I asked gently.

  “We’d have had some words for him if we had,” he said, brandishing the blunderbuss. “Vanished like a ghost. Took the old map and all his sketches with him when he left, in case ye’re wondering, as ye seem so keen on it. What is it ye want, anyway? Or did ye come to me castle just to watch a sad old man have a good chin wag?”

  In a way we had—getting Angus to talk (and I figured that’s what he meant about wagging his chin) was the biggest break we’d had in the case yet—but I wasn’t about to tell him that. I pulled out the rusty old caltrops and cautiously walked closer so he could get a good look. “We were actually wondering if you recognized these.”

  “What are they, children’s toys?” he asked, picking one of the rusty, four-pronged spikes from my hand. “What’s the game? If you win, you get tetanus?”

  “Good one, Mr. McG,” Joe chuckled.

  “They’re medieval antipersonnel weapons called caltrops. Someone used them to spike our tires to try to stop us from investigating the theft, and we thought they might have gotten them from your castle,” I told him, gesturing to the suits of armor guarding the doorway behind us.

  “Suppose it’s possible there could be some lying around somewhere, but I ain’t bothered to look through most of the junk here in ages,” he said, handing the caltrop back to me. “Wherever they come from, you probably deserved it, nosing about in other people’s business the way you do.”

  “Do you know who else might have had access to the castle?” I asked, ignoring the barb.

  “Ask me nephew. You and he are the only ones I know been snooping around me castle.”

  “Well, we didn’t spike our own tires, and Robert was in the comic shop when it happened,” Joe retorted.

  “You ain’t accusing me, are ya?” Angus snarled.

  “No, sir!” I insisted, eager to change the topic before Angus decided to give his blunderbuss the last word. “We’re just trying to get to the bottom of who might have taken your comic, er, I mean besides Robert. You don’t know anything about the person who contacted Robert to appraise the comic for Butterby’s Auctioneers, do you? We think it may be connected.”

  “Figures that ingrate would be trying to sell something don’t belong to him,” Angus said in disgust. “Me own flesh ’n’ blood trying to take advantage of his closest kin. Ain’t nothing sacred these days?”

  I bit my tongue at the irony of Angus griping about another family member trying to take advantage of him after the con he’d pulled on Robert to get him to move to Bayport.

  “Well, you don’t have to worry about that for now at least,” Joe said. “Looks like the so-called appraiser was a scam, but we can’t figure out why.”

  “Ain’t surprised,” Angus said matter-of-factly. “People been spinning yarns trying to weasel information out of me about that comic for years. Figures Robert would fall for one of them. I must be going soft in me old age too. Excepting my no-good nephew, you’re the first two I’ve deigned to let into the castle to talk to me in near on forty years.” Angus paused to think about it. “Well, other than that reporter lassie who stopped by to chat yesterday.”

  “Charlene was here?!” I blurted.

  “Aye, she’s got gumption, that one,” Angus confirmed. “And better taste in chocolate than you two cheapskates.”

  10 ALL CHEWED UP

  JOE

  SHE WASN’T PLAYING AROUND AT trying to beat us to the scoop,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Frank replied forlornly.

  I knew he was feeling dejected that she hadn’t wanted to team up to solve the case together, and from the looks of it, we could have used her help. There was something else that occurred to me about Charlene getting to Angus first. It meant she was the only other person we knew about besides Angus, us, and Robert who had access to the castle. And possibly the caltrops.

  Could our school paper’s most committed investigative journalist—aka my brother’s current crush—want to beat us to the story so badly she’d threaten us off the case?

  Charlene may not have been the warmest and fuzziest friend we had, and she clearly saw us as competition, but we’d known her for a long time, and I didn’t want to think she’d do something like that. There was no way around it, though. She had a motive, and swiping the caltrops from the castle would have given her the means.

  Frank was standing there looking pained, and I was debating whether to add to his dejection by sharing my theory about Charlene when an old clock chimed from somewhere inside the castle.

  “Argh, you’re gonna make miss my telly programs,” Angus barked. “Now out with ya! I ain’t got much hospitality in me, and you done used it all.”

  “Yes, sir!” Frank squeaked. “Thank you for talking to us!”

  “If you step foot in my castle again without an invitation, it’s me blunderbuss you’ll be talking to,” he shot back, waving the old gun threateningly.

  “No, sir, Mr. McG!” I said, grabbing Frank by the arm and dragging him back toward the dining hall. “We can show ourselves out. Thanks for the chat!”

  “Don’t take nothing!” he shouted after us.

  “Whew,” Frank sighed with relief, looking over his shoulder to make sure Angus wasn’t chasing after us with the blunderbuss.

  Someone else was following us, though. Lucky. And he had the discarded bag of milk chocolate Halloween candies gripped in his slobbery jowls.

  “Oh, no!” Frank cried. “Chocolate is toxic for dogs! It will make him sick! Come here, Lucky!”

  Lucky ignored him and trotted past us. I tried to grab the bag from him, but he must have thought it was a game because he took off running into the antechamber and down the hall we’d passed on the way out of the kitchen.

  “Here, boy!” I yelled, running after him with Frank close behind, as the ginormous dog looked back at us expectantly, then disappeared into an open doorway.

  “Woof!” he barked as we stepped into an old study with a mixture of antique furniture, old books, and modern office equipment, including a desktop computer, a printer, and a metal filing cabinet. A portrait hanging over an old desk gave the room away as Sir Rob’s home office, as it showed Robert looking absurdly pompus dressed up as an ancient Scottish royal.

  The room was also where Lucky apparently kept his stash. He was crouched playfully on top of a large dog bed filled with treasure. At least it must have seemed like treasure to the oversize hound. There were a variety of well-gnawed dog toys and bones, as well as assorted chewed-up household items, including a wooden spoon, a boot, what looked like a table leg, and a mess of shredded newspapers.

  “Woof!” Lucky barked again, then bent down to get the bag of chocolate. Luckily, the hound’s ridiculous plastic cone knocked into the floor instead. He whimpered, trying to finagle his face close enough to the floor to grab the deadly bag of miniature pumpkins and bats.

  I grabbed a decapitated stuffed lamb off the floor. “I’ll distract him while you get the candy.”

  A few seconds later we had the chocolate, and Lucky was happily mauling his lamby.

  “Whew!” Frank sighed for a second time. “I don’t know how we would have explained to Robert about sneaking into the castle behind his back and poisoning his dog. Let’s get out of here before anything else goes wrong. Rob could be home any minute, and I don’t think he’d be happy to find us snooping around his office.”

  “You’re a slob, Lucky,” I said to the dog as I picked up a soggy, half-chewed accordion folder f
ull of documents that didn’t look like something he should be munching on. I’d originally meant just to set it back on the desk, but then I saw the label: SRCK: Important Docs.

  SRCK wasn’t a hard code to crack. Sir Robert’s Comic Kingdom. I quickly started flipping through the crinkled papers inside.

  “Hold on, bro,” I told Frank. “There might be a copy of the phony Butterby contract in here. Robert said it was at home.”

  It wasn’t the Butterby contract that caught my eye, though. It was a letter, dated a couple of months ago, from the Well State Insurance Company with the subject line Rare Collectibles Policy Determination. The letter had tooth marks in it, and some of the ink had bled from Lucky’s slobber, but it was still legible. I scanned it quickly, my eyes widening as I did.

  “In your RPGs, is there such a thing as a truth check?” I asked Frank.

  “There’s a deception check. It’s kind of the same. It’s what you would use to try and hide the truth, like if you wanted to use a disguise or make up a story to talk your way past a guard. How come?”

  I handed Frank the torn page. “Does this count as a critical hit or a critical fail?”

  Frank took the letter and read it softly out loud.

  “Dear Mr. McGalliard,

  While our adjuster was able to confirm the authenticity of your copy of the comic book Sabers & Serpents #1, we regret to inform you that your request for our highest level Platinum Collector’s Policy for rare items worth upward of $75,000 has been denied due to the poor condition of the interior pages. As a result of the extensive staining and multiple missing pages that render the comic unreadable and inferior in condition to the specimens that have sold at auction previously, we are only able to extend a policy in the amount of $10,000 at this time.

  Thank you for choosing Well State for all your insurance needs. Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call our toll-free number.”

  Frank’s voice trailed off as he finished, his face looking like he’d just been sucker punched.