Dungeons & Detectives Read online

  * * *

  Joe may have been right about us living together and sharing a bathroom, but I still managed to keep my costume a secret. He was waiting for me right outside my bedroom when I opened the door, but I kept the rest of my costume hidden under the caped houndstooth overcoat I was wearing and in the large canvas tote bag I was carrying.

  “Really?!” Joe asked, shooting me the stink eye.

  “Really,” I said.

  Joe hadn’t made good on his threat to keep his costume a surprise. I think he was too excited. He was dressed like one of the Keystone Cops, the bumbling old-school policemen from the classic black-and-white slapstick movies. He had on a long blue coat and a goofy domed hat, and he was carrying a billy club, just like the characters always did. That wasn’t the part of the costume that had him giddy, though. It was the Bayport PD shield on the helmet and the sheriff’s star on his chest with the name CHIEF OLAF written on it.

  “What do you think?” he asked, grinning.

  “I think the chief might throw in you jail,” I said, laughing. “But I’ll definitely bail you out, because your costume is awesome. Now let’s get over to the castle. I have to get Lucky in costume before we go into the party.”

  * * *

  Castle McGalliard looked both spookier and safer than the last time we’d been there. It was definitely scary-looking at night, especially with all the plastic skeletons dangling from the gates and the jack-o’-lanterns flickering in the castle’s windows. Thankfully, all the cars lining the drive leading up to the drawbridge and the happy costumed partygoers piling inside made it feel less like we were walking into an actual haunted house.

  “Robert really pulled it off,” Joe said admiringly. “We got here early and it looks like half the town already beat us.”

  I scoped out the guests around us, looking for any of the folks on our Persons of Interest list. Xephyr and Charlene both made the list. We were also going to be keeping a close eye on Robert, looking for an opportunity to have another chat with Angus (if we could find a good opening without getting shot at), and watching to see if Don Inkpen crashed his comic shop rival’s party. I’d hoped to enlist Murph’s help casing the crowd, but I think I’d hurt his feelings when I wouldn’t share confidential details about the investigation with him earlier that day at school, and he wasn’t texting me back. He could be a little sensitive like that, and one of the reasons I wanted to find him was to apologize and explain that it wasn’t personal. Unlike Lucky and Robert, I did like to follow protocol, and controlling the flow of information on a case was always a smart move. My apology would have to wait, though. I didn’t see Murph or anyone else on the list. They were either hidden behind masks or they weren’t among the crowd making their way inside.

  “I’m going around to the kitchen to rendezvous with Lucky,” I said to Joe. “Keep an eye out for our people of interest and I’ll meet up with you inside.”

  I found Lucky at the side door, waiting to slobber on me. Robert wasn’t there, but there was a leash with a note taped to the doorknob.

  Thanks for watching the stubborn beast for me. If he breaks anything, you pay for it.

  “Figures,” I said out loud to Lucky. “Now let’s get you into costume!”

  He barked agreeably as I removed his cone of shame and replaced it with the one I’d picked up and painted with green glow-in-the-dark paint.

  “The perfect spectral hound!” I complimented him. I couldn’t tell, but it looked like he was smiling. “Usually the mysterious monster doesn’t help the detective crack the case, but we can make an exception this time.”

  I pulled out my magnifying glass along with an old-fashioned prop pipe, and put on my classic houndstooth deerstalker cap: a wool hat with tied-up ear flaps and bills in both the front and the back.

  “It’s elementary, my dear Lucky,” I said in a bad British accent. “Let’s go!”

  I would say I walked Lucky around to the castle’s front door, but it was more like him walking me! He practically dragged me behind him as he made a beeline for the party. I was starting to rethink the wisdom of borrowing the big bloodhound as he bowled his way through a trio of witches and snatched a candy apple out of the hand of Thor.

  “Sorry!” I called to the god of thunder as I tried to rein Lucky in. He was happy to take a break and plop down now that he had something to munch on.

  I paused to take in the enormous hall past the castle’s front door. The rooms we’d been in before were big, but this one took the oversize cake. It really was the perfect place for a Halloween party. Robert barely even had to decorate. The crowd’s costumed vampires, executioners, and knights all looked like they were already at home amid the castle’s damp, medieval-artifact-adorned stone walls. There was even a live band with a flute, a lute, and a fiddle all dressed up as recently murdered medieval bards. I deduced the recently murdered part by all the fake blood and prop knives and arrows sticking out of them.

  The place was already filled with Bayport residents of all ages in all kinds of costumes, and more were streaming in by the minute. It wouldn’t be surprising if half the town showed up. I mean, how often do you get to go to a masquerade ball in a real castle?!

  People had really stepped up their costume game for the event. I didn’t know if Robert planned to give out any awards for best costume, but I already had a couple of front-runners (I mean, besides myself, of course!). It was impossible not to grin at the little kid dressed up as a vampire hot dog, replete with full-body wiener suit, bloody fangs, and a Dracula cape. And the fantasy fan in me got a kick out of a comedic wizard who looked like a cartoon version of Merlin or Gandalf. They had a mane of long white hair, a bulbous nose poking out of an absurdly huge white beard, and a peaked wizard’s cap pulled all the way down over their forehead to their comically bushy fake eyebrows.

  The crowd’s costumes were top notch, but I still didn’t see any of the people we were looking for. I recognized a couple of kids from our LARPs and the shop, including Percy and Max dressed as magician Kiel and cyborg Charm from the Story Thieves books, but there was no sign of Robert, Xephyr, or anyone else on our list. With all the elaborate costumes and masks, it was going to be hard to pick anyone out. I did see Joe, though.

  “Sherlock Holmes!” he yelled as he strode over carrying a half-eaten corn dog. “I should have guessed from the coat. But what’s Lucky supposed to be?”

  Joe gave my canine sidekick a scratch behind the ears.

  “You’re a better detective than that,” I chided him. “I’m Sherlock from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s third Holmes novel, The—”

  “Hound of the Baskervilles,” I heard Charlene declare curtly.

  I turned to see her standing behind me in a strawberry-blond wig and a well-tailored pink plaid coat with a large magnifying glass gripped in one hand and a vintage flashlight sticking out of her coat pocket. Lucky woofed and ran over to her for a jowl scratch. It was obvious they were already acquainted.

  “Hey, Luck,” she said a lot less curtly. “The spectral green paint for the supernatural hound is a nice touch.”

  In the book, Sherlock Holmes is on the case of a supposedly supernatural, murderous hound. Lucky obviously fell short on the murderous part, but I was impressed Charlene had gotten it right away.

  “Clever,” she added begrudgingly.

  “Thanks, Charlene!” I said, impressed with myself for impressing her.

  “But not clever enough to crack this case before I do,” she said, the gruffness returning to her voice. Boy, she really was good at bursting my bubbles.

  Her costume rang a bell, but I couldn’t quite place it until I saw the HELLO MY NAME IS… sticker she was wearing, with the name Nancy written beneath it.

  “Nancy Drew!” I said. Nancy was another real-life teen detective, and her master sleuthing had made national headlines a few times. We’d actually teamed up with her to solve a big case last Christmas and became friends—well, I mean, after she got over thinking we were suspec
ts!

  “Hey, we’re all dressed as investigators!” Joe said. “It’s like life imitating art. Or, um, art imitating life. Or Halloween imitating life imitating art?”

  While Joe was busy mixing metaphors, I grabbed the opening to try to thaw the ice with Charlene over the investigation. “Since our costumes all share a theme, maybe we can still team up to crack the case together. If we shared information, we could—”

  “Nice try, Sherlock, but I almost have it cracked already, and there’s no way I’m letting anyone else beat me to the scoop on this story,” she said, pivoting around and marching in the other direction.

  “But we both have magnifying glasses!” I protested uselessly, feeling my stomach drop as I turned to Joe. “She’s pretty determined, huh?”

  “The question is how determined?” he asked pointedly. “Sounds to me like she’d do just about anything to stop us from solving it first.”

  It made my stomach drop even more to admit it, but Charlene clearly had a motive to deflate our investigation, possibly along with our tires. Until we could rule her out, she was still a suspect as our caltrop saboteur.

  “Think we should tail her?” Joe asked.

  “No, she’ll be on the lookout for it. Let’s just keep an eye on her and focus on the others on our list,” I said. “If she really is that close to solving the case, we’ll find out soon enough. I don’t want her to think we really are trying to steal the scoop from her. We can crack this on our own.”

  “I thought I told you to stay away from the Comic Kingdom investigation,” Chief Olaf snapped from over Joe’s shoulder.

  “Oh, hey, Chief!” Joe said, wheeling around. “We weren’t talking about that case. We were talking about the pretend case our Halloween alter egos are working on.”

  Joe pointed to our costumes and tried to give Chief Olaf his most convincing innocent grin.

  The chief was wearing a fake bushy mustache, wire-rim pince-nez spectacles—the old-timey ones with a chain and no earpieces—and a vintage suit with a pocket-watch chain dangling from the vest, a toy sheriff’s star pinned to one lapel, and a small stuffed teddy bear pinned to the other.

  Chief Olaf caught sight of his name on Joe’s Keystone Cop badge and growled, “I should arrest you for impersonating an officer.”

  “Nice costume, Chief!” I said, hoping to deflect his wrath. “President Roosevelt, right?”

  The teddy bear—named after the twenty-sixth president of the Unites States, Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt—gave it away.

  Chief Olaf actually cracked a smile and preened his fake mustache. “Good guess, Frank. But you’re wrong.” He tapped the toy star. “Not President Roosevelt. Police Commissioner Roosevelt.”

  “Hey, your costume is almost as clever as mine!” I said, genuinely impressed with our police chief’s knowledge of law enforcement history. “I’d forgotten Teddy Roosevelt ran the New York City police department before he became president in 1901.”

  “And you gave yourself a promotion too, Commish!” Joe quipped.

  The chief sighed. “Just stay out of trouble, okay?”

  “Always!” Joe chirped.

  Chief Olaf just shook his head and walked away, mumbling to himself, “I’m going to regret not arresting those boys, I know it.”

  “Wow, Sherlock Holmes, Nancy Drew, Police Commissioner Roosevelt, and Chief Not-Exactly-Olaf all at the same masquerade party,” I commented to Joe. “Who knew ‘crime solver’ would be such a popular Halloween costume?”

  The party’s host still hadn’t made an appearance, so we didn’t know what Robert had decided to dress up as yet. Guests continued to arrive for another half hour or so before a trumpet blast filled the hall from somewhere above us.

  We looked up along with everyone else to see Percy standing at the top of the tall, twin staircases at the end of the hall.

  “That kid’s got a diverse skill set,” Joe remarked.

  “Hear ye! Hear ye! Gather round and behold your gracious host! Guardian of Scotland! Liege of Comic Kingdom! Lord of Castle McGalliard! And Thrower of Magnificent Parties!” Percy shouted, putting the trumpet back to his lips and giving another regal toot. “Sir Robert Braveheart!”

  The guy who marched out with a long claymore sword triumphantly raised over his flowing braided locks looked only vaguely like the Sir Robert we knew. He had Robert’s features and belly, for sure, but his face was streaked with blue war paint, and his formerly bald dome was hidden under the long brown wig. He wore a traditional Scottish kilt with a matching tartan plaid sash draped across his armored leather breastplate.

  “Hey, Robert’s dressed as that Scottish warrior dude from that famous old Braveheart movie, where all the guys in kilts fought that evil king,” said Joe. “Pretty spot-on costume, besides his head still being attached.”

  “William Wallace,” I said, filling in the historical blanks of Joe’s movie synopsis. “He led the revolt against the British in the First War of Scottish Independence at the end of the thirteenth century.”

  “I gotta admit, Robert looks pretty sharp in a kilt,” Joe noted.

  “Looks like Xephyr did a pretty expert job on his custom sword, too,” I said, thinking about the other sword she’d crafted. I gave another look around, hoping to see her among the costumed crowd, but a lot of people were wearing masks, and Xephyr was known to get pretty imaginative with her costumes, so who knew what she was dressed up as.

  “Welcome to my castle, boos and ghouls! Are you ready to party like your life depends on it?!” Robert shouted to exuberant cheers from the crowd. Lucky even howled right along.

  “Are you going to tell us what was on the missing page of Sabers and Serpents?” a voice that sounded a lot like Murph’s shouted from somewhere up front.

  Robert grinned, pointed his sword in their direction, and winked. “Patience, friends. The night is young, and full of dreadful secrets.”

  Okay, so Robert’s nonanswer wasn’t a fully honest disclosure of the facts, but at least he’d kept his word not to lie about knowing what was on the page, for now at least. He still didn’t miss a chance to promote the shop, though.

  “Post a picture of yourself at the party with the hashtags SirRobertsComicKingdom and SabersAndSerpents, and get ten percent off your next purchase!” he called. “Feel free to explore the castle grounds while you’re at it. Just stay away from the doorways marked with yellow caution tape, or the cranky old goblin who roams these ancient halls will steal your soul.”

  People laughed.

  “I’m, er, not really joking about that part,” he said nervously. “Seriously, don’t go past the yellow tape, please.”

  “Angus,” Frank and I both said at the same time.

  Robert cleared his throat and continued. “Now, before the festivities officially commence, I have just one more thing to say.” He raised his sword high, pausing for dramatic effect.

  “Freedom!” he cried, invoking Wallace’s famous last word before going off script to add, “And free candy!”

  And that’s when the screaming started.

  “Look out!” a girl in a pirate costume shouted, pointing up at the lifeless body free-falling from the rafters.

  14 HEADS WILL ROLL

  JOE

  IT TOOK ONLY A SPLIT second for real horror to grip the crowd.

  “Everybody back!” I heard the chief yell amid the intensifying screams as the figure plummeted past Robert and hit the floor below him with a horrible splat. Only it wasn’t guts ’n’ goo that came bursting out of the body.

  It was candy!

  The “body” exploded on impact, showering hundreds of fun-size candy bars and lollipops all over the floor. Shrieks and gasps instantly turned to nervous giggles and shouts of joy as people descended upon the candy corpse like a horde of sweet-toothed zombies.

  Frank picked up a piece of papier-mâché shrapnel. “A Halloween piñata. Didn’t see that one coming.”

  Neither did a handful of crying kids or Chief Teddy B
ear Olaf, who was glaring up at Robert. “Not funny, McGalliard,” he grumbled.

  Robert just winked. “Let the partying commence!”

  I watched as a greedy six-foot-tall ghost in a white sheet with holes for the eyes and mouth elbowed a little girl in a baseball uniform out of the way to grab a package of candy corn. The flash of a Chewbacca tattoo on the ghost’s forearm gave the ghost’s identity away.

  “Inkpen is here,” I said to Frank. “Robert stole all his customers. Guess he’s trying to steal all Robert’s candy.”

  “If Don’s here, his son Doug probably is too,” Frank observed, looking around. “It would be the first time a lot of his old friends have seen him in a while. He’s been pretty antisocial since all the gaming action moved from the Ink Pen to Comic Kingdom.”

  “We should keep an eye on Inkpen and son, for sure,” I replied. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the comic shop rivalry somehow plays into the stolen copy of S and S.”

  A little firefighter, a walking fruit basket, and a Sith Lord pushed past us, trying to get in on the candy action. Our four-legged, candy-loving friend wanted to join them. Frank pulled on Lucky’s leash to keep him from jamming his snout in a passing wizard’s flowing white robe, apparently trying to get at their candy stash.

  “I don’t know if it’s the Inkpens, but hopefully surveilling someone on our list will help us—” Frank was midsentence when Lucky yanked him forward, causing him to yelp out his final thought. “FIND IT! AIEEEE!” he cried as Lucky dragged him in the direction of the candy scrum, bowling people over as he went.

  One of his victims was the shocked wizard. At least I assumed they were shocked. The wizard’s wig and beard were so hairy, the ensemble nearly concealed their entire face except the prosthetic nose and their eyes. Not that you could really see their eyes. Super-cool-looking special effects contact lenses turned their eyeballs into miniature galaxies of swirling stars floating in space.