Dungeons & Detectives Read online

  “A hundred thousand dollars?!” Joe and I both blurted at the same time. Joe added a whistle for good measure.

  “That’s what I said,” Robert said wistfully. “Leadbetter told me he thought they could get $125,000 at least for a complete copy based on how much the last one with a missing page went for. He’d heard I’d refused to sell and wanted to make it worth my while. Said he knew he couldn’t guarantee what a buyer might pay at auction, so the auction house would take the risk and make the guarantee instead. All I had to do was sign the contract and hand both it and the comic over at the party. Whether it sold for one dollar or a million, they’d pay me a minimum of a hundred K as soon as it sold. The only guarantee I had to make was that it was authentic.”

  “So I’m guessing you definitely didn’t stage the theft so you could collect the insurance money, then,” Joe surmised.

  “Certainly not! I would have been throwing away my own golden goose. That comic was worth ten times more to me than to whoever stole it!” he protested.

  I gave Robert a hard look and he didn’t flinch. I believed him.

  “So you signed the contract?” I asked.

  “Of course I signed! I was going to make a killing on a comic I knew was worth only a fraction of what they were offering me. It was worth a lot of marketing dollars behind glass, but not that many.”

  “What were you going to do when you actually had to open it up at the party? Everyone in the world would know you were blowing smoke,” said Joe.

  “I’d have a hundred-thousand-dollar last laugh! I fancy my reputation, but I fancy a whole heaping grip of greenbacks a lot more. Aye, it might even have boosted my reputation in certain circles. A hustle like that would have been legendary. And it was entirely legal. Unlike some of my hustles back in Scotland, if I’m entirely honest.”

  I raised a skeptical eyebrow. Was Robert McGalliard ever entirely honest?

  “Only we found out Leadbetter was too good to be true and the joke was on you,” Joe reminded him.

  “Yeah, that,” he agreed sadly.

  “Which is why you were even more distraught when we told you about Leadbetter than you were when the comic was stolen,” I said. “Even if we got it back, you knew you couldn’t get more than ten thousand for it.”

  “So what was in it for the phony Leadbetter?” Joe wondered. “Is the auction scam somehow linked to the theft? Or was he angling to steal the comic from you on Halloween and someone beat him to the punch?”

  “If the phony Leadbetter was planning to steal the comic and then got wind of the theft, that would certainly explain why he ghosted,” I said.

  “You’re the detectives,” Robert replied. “All I know is I want to punch whoever’s behind it, not that it would do me much good. That comic’s only worth ten thousand dollars to me whether I have it or not.”

  “No wonder you tried to call us off the investigation after we discovered the appraiser was a fake!” I exclaimed, the pieces of Robert’s opportunistic puzzle starting to click together. “You didn’t want the comic found! If it stays stolen, you can at least collect the insurance money and still pretend you know what’s on the missing page to make yourself look good and promote the shop.”

  When Robert looked down at his feet, I knew I had it right.

  “You couldn’t sell it for more if we found it anyway, and as long as it didn’t turn up, no one would have to know you lied,” I concluded.

  “Or at least they wouldn’t have if we hadn’t figured out you were pulling a fast one,” Joe pointed out.

  “You can’t tell! Please! I’ve cooperated! I told you everything I know!” Robert implored us desperately. “The bad publicity could kill my business, and I need Comic Kingdom. And my loyal subjects need me. That shop is my life.”

  “You should have thought about that before you tangled your own web with all the lies you’ve been weaving,” Joe replied.

  “Frank, please! Have mercy on a poor sinner,” he begged, turning away from Joe and grabbing hold of my arm with both hands. “Not just for me, but for my aged, meek, decrepit, helpless, sad, sad, sad old uncle Angus. He’s depending on me to pay the bills. He’ll freeze during the winter without the income from the shop to keep the fires burning. You have no idea how expensive it is to heat a house the size of a, well, castle.”

  “Don’t forget, we’ve met your uncle. ‘Meek’ and ‘helpless’ definitely isn’t the way I’d describe him,” I said. “But…”

  I looked at Joe and could tell we were on the same page.

  “His lies were pretty scuzzy, but not exactly illegal,” Joe admitted, then turned back to Robert. “Unless you lied to the police, but we can leave that to your new buddy Chief Olaf to untangle for himself.”

  “There is also the question of whether the comic really belongs to you or your uncle, since he says you took it without his permission,” I said as Robert continued to plead with his eyes. “But given what Angus also told us about how he tricked you into coming to America to pay his bills for him, we’ll leave that between the two of you to figure out as well.”

  “You know, it may also work to our advantage to keep the thief and the phony auction appraiser in the dark that we know the comic’s real condition,” Joe reflected. “The thief has got to know, but the fake Leadbetter may not, and we may be able to catch someone else in a lie about it as well.”

  I fixed Robert with another hard stare. “We’re not going to stop investigating, though, so I can’t promise you the truth won’t eventually come out when we find the thief. But we will consider keeping it a secret for now on two conditions.”

  He looked at me expectantly. “Anything.”

  “First, stop lying,” I said. “That means no more telling people you know what’s on that missing page. You don’t have to confess the whole thing, but if anybody else wants you to talk about Sabers and Serpents #1, just say it’s part of an ongoing investigation and you can’t discuss it. And that includes at the party.”

  “Meaning no live webcast with made-up chilling secrets about what’s inside the comic, either,” Joe added.

  “I… I’ll try,” he said with pained resignation. “What’s the second condition?”

  Joe turned to look at me. “Yeah, I was kind of wondering that myself.”

  I grinned. “Robert agrees to lend me Lucky for my Halloween costume.”

  12 SWORD IN THE FOAM

  JOE

  WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU won’t tell me what your costume is?” I protested.

  “It’s a chilling secret,” said Frank, still grinning.

  “But I’m your own brother!”

  “I want it to be a surprise,” Frank said resolutely.

  “Fine, then I won’t tell you what I’m going as either,” I huffed.

  “Funny, I don’t think I asked,” said Frank annoyingly. I love my brother, but he can also be one of the most infuriating people I know.

  “Whatever. It doesn’t matter anyway. We live in the same house and share a bathroom,” I said. “We’re going to see each other’s costumes before anyone else anyway.”

  Frank shrugged. “Still not gonna tell you before we get ready.”

  “As intriguing as the mystery of Frank’s costume is, do you think it’s all right if I get back to my shop now?” Robert said. “I can’t say I’m totally confident that young Percy was up to the managerial task with which I entrusted him, and I do still have a business to run.” He paused and bowed toward us. “Thanks to you kind and generous souls, of course. Now if you boys don’t mind…” He gestured to the door.

  “Lead the way,” I said, opening the back door and scowling at my brother and that smug secret-keeping grin of his.

  “How did you convince Angus to let you have a Halloween party at the castle anyway?” Frank asked as we walked inside. “Your uncle struck me as a lot of things, but a gracious host wasn’t one of them.”

  “Aye, it was easy,” Robert replied, stepping from the back room into the shop. “I threatene
d to stop paying the electric bill and head home to Scotland.”

  I shook my head in amusement. “You two sure do make for interesting roommates.”

  “He did threaten that anyone who goes near his tower will get shot in the bum, though, so I’ll be advising my guests to steer clear lest they want to leave the castle with a trouser-load of buckshot as a party favor,” Robert said, not seeming all that concerned.

  “Seems like a sound plan,” I said, with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek. I couldn’t imagine what could possibly go wrong with a misanthropic, trigger-happy, blunderbuss-toting hermit playing cohost to a party full of people.

  “The old recluse usually doesn’t roam much beyond his tower or the kitchen, so I figure I’ll just rope that wing off,” he said. “I’ll have enough fake blood to clean up, don’t want to add any of the real stuff to the chore list.”

  His mouth dropped open as we approached the counter, where Percy was counting through a neatly stacked pile of cash and jotting notes on a notepad.

  “Hey, boss,” he said casually. “I couldn’t open the register to make change, so I rounded everything up except for the credit card purchases. For those, I wrote the numbers, expiration dates, and three-digit codes down for you to run later. I hand-wrote receipts in duplicate so both you and the customer would have transaction records. Nobody tried any funny business, except one guy in a Slytherin T-shirt tried to pocket a Dalek key chain, but Max caught him and tossed him out.”

  Percy nodded at a girl with red hair, who looked about twelve, standing guard next to the counter. She nodded back and cracked her knuckles.

  “Well, I’ll be. We’ll have to let Xephyr know she’s got some competition for her job,” Robert said.

  “We figure a ten percent commission for me running the bank and five for Max working security should cover our trouble,” Percy said.

  “But I already gave you five dollars!” Robert complained.

  “That was my signing bonus,” Percy replied. “And you still owe Max hers.”

  “And I thought the Hardys drove a tough shakedown,” Robert sighed, opening the register and counting out the cash. “The four of you could team up and give them Edinburgh loan-shark operations a run for their money.”

  Percy and Max exchanged a high five, pocketed their payout, and headed for the front door. Which reminded me of the shiny new lock I’d seen on the back door when we reentered the shop from the alley.

  “Did Chief Olaf’s investigation turn up any forensic evidence on the broken back-door lock or the wall where the glass case was?” I asked Robert.

  “Not much, unfortunately,” he replied. “They dusted for prints, but there weren’t any behind the counter or in the back that shouldn’t have already been there.”

  I nodded. Picking up useful prints in a business with a lot of foot traffic is a long shot.

  Robert continued, “A security camera in the restaurant on the corner caught footage of a person dressed in all black wheeling a suitcase the size of the display case out of the alley at 12:04 a.m. on Sunday, but it was too dark to pick up any identifying features.”

  “A person dressed in black, huh? I guess we know where the whopper you told those kids about you chasing a ninja came from,” I said.

  Robert shrugged, a little smile pulling at his lips. “What? It could have happened.”

  I chuckled. He had a vivid imagination, I had to give him that.

  “Well, at least now we have a time stamp on the crime,” Frank said. “Assuming the ninja’s our perp and wasn’t just out for a midnight stroll with their luggage, that would put the theft at shortly before midnight, depending on how long it took them to break the lock on the door.”

  “Apparently not long,” Robert begrudgingly admitted. “The police said the lock wasn’t very good to begin with, and the threading on the screws was already partially stripped. All they think it took was a hammer and a chisel.”

  I was going to remind him about that fancy security system he’d lied about hooking up but stopped myself. It isn’t cool to rub a person’s nose in it when they’re already down. He’d already lost his prized possession and what he thought was going to be a hundred-grand payday. I didn’t need to make him feel even worse.

  “Speaking of broken things, how did my Halloween canine companion get that stitched-up cut on his tush?” Frank asked, shifting the conversation back to Lucky and his infuriatingly mysterious Halloween costume. “Not that I can’t make good use of that collar of his on Friday.”

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Robert said. “That dog’s always getting into something he shouldn’t. It’s not the first time he’s had to wear one of those ridiculous collars. You can make it your next case if you want.”

  “I think this case is plenty for now, thanks,” I said. Frank and I had more pressing things to think about than Lucky’s rear end. Including the party.

  * * *

  Robert’s Halloween bash was just about the only thing anyone wanted to talk about at school the next day. Frank had started a trend with the rest of the Bayport Adventurers Guild, and almost everybody was keeping their costumes a secret until they unveiled them at the party that night, which was the most annoying thing ever. I was dying to talk about my costume, but I wasn’t about to cave when no one else would.

  Frank and I had a close ear to everyone’s conversations, but if anyone at school was involved in the Sabers & Serpents case, they weren’t letting on. I’d planned on keeping an eye on Charlene in particular, but that turned out to be pointless as well, because she wasn’t there. I checked with her editor at the newspaper, and they said she’d called in sick.

  We went back by Comic Kingdom after school to see if she’d done any more snooping around the shop and to hit Robert with some follow-up questions. Sir Rob was in the middle of a transaction when we walked in, selling a customer a foam samurai sword from the rack of LARP weapons hanging next to the counter.

  “Hard to believe they aren’t real blades,” Frank commented as the customer left. “Every batch of weapons Xephyr makes gets even more impressive. Amazing that they’re made from foam and latex and not real steel.”

  “They’re some of our bestsellers,” Robert said proudly. “I had her make me a custom Scottish claymore for my costume, which I shan’t be revealing either, in case you were wondering.”

  “I don’t want to know anyway,” I grumbled, although I kinda really did.

  I picked up a long sword up from the rack. Frank wasn’t joking about the quality. Until you held it and felt the texture of the handle and the difference in weight, the arsenal looked like dead ringers for real medieval axes, swords, and assorted other weapons. There was even a fearsome-looking spiked ball-and-chain flail. They all had intricate designs and super-detailed paint jobs to make them look old and distressed.

  “Hold on a second,” Frank said, eyeing a sword with an extra-long handle and a wavy curved blade that looked a bit like a flattened slithering snake with stars and moons etched in it. “I just saw a flamberge sword like that.”

  “It does look familiar, doesn’t it?” Robert agreed.

  “Has Xephyr been to the castle?” Frank asked him.

  “Nope. I’ll be breaking my cranky old uncle’s no-visitors rule for the first time at the party this evening,” he said. “In grand scale, I might add.”

  “And you didn’t give her a picture or anything to make this from?” Frank asked seriously.

  “No. Except for my claymore, the designs are all Xephyr’s own,” Robert replied.

  “This one isn’t just hers,” Frank declared. “It’s an exact replica of a sword from the castle.”

  “Are you sure? I know I’ve seen it before, but I can’t quite place it,” Robert said.

  “Probably because it’s behind the locked gate blocking Angus’s tower,” Frank said. “If you look closely through the gate, you can see it right before the staircase curves out of sight.”

  “Which means Xephyr must have
been in that part of the castle to see it!” I exclaimed. No wonder the sword had Frank so agitated! He had taken a closer look through the bars of Angus’s gated tower entrance than I had, which was why I hadn’t recognized it. Xephyr definitely shouldn’t have been able to recognize it either. “Angus told us we were the only people except for Robert and Charlene he’d let into the castle to talk to him in years.”

  “Yup,” Frank confirmed. “So either Angus is lying about his guest list, or Xephyr’s been inside the castle on her own.”

  13 MASQUERADE MAYHEM

  FRANK

  I THINK WE KNOW WHO WE need to talk to next,” Joe said.

  “You think Xephyr is involved somehow?” Robert asked incredulously.

  “I don’t want to jump to conclusions,” I said. “There could be an innocent explanation, but it does seem suspicious that she would have been inside the castle to see that sword.”

  “Well, we know she was away all night at the LARP campout in Bayport Heights with Dennis when the shop was robbed, so she isn’t a suspect in the robbery at least,” Joe interjected.

  Robert looked relieved to hear it. We’d all seen the pictures of her on the camping trip in her werebear costume. Lots of players, including Xephyr, had posted live updates until well after midnight, which was the same time the surveillance camera on the corner captured our black-clad suspect rolling the suitcase away from Comic Kingdom.

  “We’ll know more once we talk to her. She’ll be our first priority tonight at the party,” I said. “And truth is, it’s not like we have a lot of other leads to go on at this point.”

  “I have faith in you, lads,” Robert said. “And speaking of parties, I’ve got to close up early and head back to the castle to finish getting ready.” He cupped his hands to his mouth and called out to the shop full of customers. “Last call, citizens! The Kingdom closes in fifteen minutes! I’ll see you all at the castle this evening for the Halloween party to end all Halloween parties!”