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  For three peas in a pod: Julian, Sebastian, and Nicholas

  Chapter

  1

  Old Rusty

  “Wait up, Jigsaw!” Ralphie Jordan cried out. “My bike chain slipped off!”

  Oh, brother. Not again.

  The town library was five minutes from my house. Four minutes if the wind was right. But today it was taking forever—all because of Ralphie Jordan’s bicycle.

  Ralphie called it “Old Rusty.”

  I would have called it “Old Hunk of Junk.”

  Old Rusty could shake and rattle. But it couldn’t roll. Not very well, anyway. Its tires were bent. Spokes were missing. The handlebars were twisted. The seat was ripped. The fenders rattled. The brakes squeaked. And worst of all, the chain kept falling off the what-cha-ma-call-it. After every block, Ralphie had to stop. He got off, turned the bicycle upside down, and carefully slipped the chain back onto the round thingy.

  I turned and rode back to Ralphie. He was a mess. Grease from the chain covered his face, shirt, and hands. “Maybe we should go home,” I offered.

  “Hang on,” Ralphie said. “Old Rusty will get me there.” Ralphie patted Old Rusty on the, er, rust, and away we zoomed. At least, I zoomed. Old Rusty sort of crawled. Banging and clanging all the way.

  Our teacher, Ms. Gleason, had given us book reports for homework. We had to find a book in the library, read it, and write about it. The book had to be at least eighty pages long.

  Ralphie chained our bikes to the bike rack and we headed inside. I wandered into the mystery section. Ralphie seemed to wander all over. First, Ralphie stared into the fish tank, making goofy faces and glub-glub sounds. Then he walked along, picked up a book, turned to the last page, frowned, and put it back. Over and over again.

  “What are you doing, Ralphie?” I asked.

  “Just looking,” he said.

  “What kind of book are you looking for?”

  “A short one,” Ralphie replied. “And I just found it.” He held up a book. It was called Plastic: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.

  “You want to do a report on … plastic?” I asked.

  Ralphie opened the book to the last page. “Look, exactly eighty pages—and it has lots of pictures, too.”

  I sighed and kept searching in the mystery section. After all, I was a detective. For a dollar a day, I made problems go away. I loved everything about mysteries—the clues, the secret codes, the disguises, everything. I even loved mystery stories. I picked out an Encyclopedia Brown.

  We checked out our books and went outside.

  At the bike rack, Ralphie stopped suddenly. “My bike!” he exclaimed. “It’s g-g-gone!”

  Chapter

  2

  The Scene of the Crime

  Ralphie’s lower lip trembled. He blinked back tears. “Where’s Old Rusty?” he asked me.

  But Ralphie already knew the answer. He just couldn’t believe it. Somebody had stolen Ralphie’s bike.

  I was lucky. My bike was still there.

  I pulled my detective journal from my backpack. I wrote:

  THE CASE OF THE BICYCLE BANDIT

  “Wait here,” I told Ralphie. “Don’t touch anything. I’m going inside to call Mila. We’ll need her help.”

  I told Mila to get down to the library, fast.

  “How fast?” she asked.

  “Like, yesterday,” I replied.

  “I’ll be right there,” Mila answered.

  I went back outside. Ralphie was sitting on the ground, cross-legged. His chin was buried in his hands.

  While we waited for Mila, I drew a quick sketch. When you’re a detective, it’s important to study the scene of the crime. That’s how you find clues. There were five bicycles in the rack. Mine was brand-new, not a hand-me-down like Ralphie’s. I used to ride my brother Nicholas’s beat-up old bike. Then I helped pay for a new one with the money I earned from my detective business. It was a Cobra Daredevil with a banana-yellow frame.

  “That’s weird,” I said. “Isn’t this your lock, Ralphie?”

  Ralphie nodded. “Yeah.”

  “I thought you locked up both bikes.”

  “I did,” Ralphie answered.

  I didn’t argue. But facts were facts. Here was my bike, locked up with Ralphie’s chain. His bike was gone. Maybe Ralphie had locked up only my bike by mistake.

  Mila pulled up, slamming on the brakes. Her back wheel skidded on the cement. Ralphie barely noticed. He stared at the empty space in the bike rack, frowning.

  Mila is my partner. Together, we solve mysteries. We’ve found missing hamsters, stolen baseball cards, lost sleds. We’ve even tangled with phony lake monsters and runaway dogs. But a stolen bicycle—that was something new. “All right,” she said. “Tell me what happened.”

  I told Mila what we knew. She listened carefully, arms folded across her chest. “The bandit was lucky,” I said. “It looks like Ralphie forgot to lock his bicycle.”

  Mila nodded. “Looks that way.”

  Ralphie protested. “Don’t blame me. I locked up both bikes. I know I did. I know it.”

  Mila bit her lip. She put her hand on Ralphie’s shoulder. “No one is blaming you,” she soothed. “You’re right to feel mad. Stealing a bicycle—that’s like the worst thing on earth. Only a real creep would do something like that.”

  Ralphie sniffed and looked away. His eyes followed a bird circling in the sky. It circled once, twice, three times. Then it flew off.

  Leaving behind an empty sky.

  “A real creep,” Ralphie muttered in agreement.

  Chapter

  3

  Witnesses

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  Ralphie glanced at his bare wrist. “Half past my freckle,” he gloomily replied.

  I couldn’t help but smile. And Ralphie couldn’t help but say funny things. With him, it was like breathing. Ralphie even made jokes when nobody felt like laughing.

  “Let’s see if there were any witnesses,” Mila suggested. She gestured toward the grassy lawn beyond the bike racks. There was a lady walking a small dog with shaggy white fur. That is, the dog had shaggy white fur. The lady’s hair was shaggy and black. There was a freckle-faced teenager with red hair leaning against a tree. I caught him looking in our direction. He quickly turned away to watch some girls playing Frisbee. Behind us, a man on a bench sat reading a newspaper. A round hat sat beside him, like an old friend.

  I turned to Ralphie. “You better leave the detective work to us,” I said. “Do you want to borrow my bike to get home?”

  Ralphie shook his head. “No, I’ll walk. Might as well get used to it.” Ralphie’s eyes suddenly widened. “Hey, there’s David Chang. He’s on my brother Justin’s basketball team. Maybe I can walk home with him.”

  Ralphie ran up to David, who was leaving the library. I watched Ralphie gesture and point to t
he bike rack. He was telling David the whole sad story. I walked over. Ralphie introduced us. “Jigsaw is a detective,” Ralphie bragged. “He’ll get my bike back.”

  David looked about fourteen years old. He had a helmet in one hand and a skateboard under the other arm. David shifted uncomfortably under the weight of his backpack. I asked him if he had noticed anyone strange inside the library. “Nah, I just dropped off a few books and scrammed,” he answered. “It’s too nice to hang inside.”

  I watched them walk away. Actually, only Ralphie walked. David cruised alongside him on his skateboard. He stopped, handed Ralphie his backpack, and got back on the skateboard. What a guy, I thought. David made Ralphie carry his heavy backpack!

  Across the field, Mila was standing with the lady and her dog. Mila bent down and tried to pet the dog. But it was one of those tiny, nervous dogs. It yapped at Mila and snapped its sharp little teeth. Mila pulled her hand away and growled back.

  The man on the bench was nice enough. He said he’d been reading and hadn’t seen anything. He laughed. “Once I start reading, we could have an earthquake and I wouldn’t notice.”

  I thanked him anyway. I wrote his name in my journal, just in case: MAX KORNSTEIN. When I turned around, Mila was talking to the Frisbee players. They seemed to be shaking their heads. The red-haired boy stood up to leave on his skateboard. “Wait up!” I called. “I need to talk to you!”

  The boy glanced over his shoulder. He put a hand to his ear and shook his head. Like he couldn’t hear me. Then he pushed off hard with his right foot. Zoom.

  He left me in the dust.

  Go figure.

  Chapter

  4

  Suspect on Wheels

  I awoke Sunday morning to find a note on my doorstep.

  I started reading it: tree house the case message the at of …

  It didn’t make any sense. That could only mean one thing. It was a message from Mila. She always wrote her notes in code.

  I searched my brain for all the codes I knew. Believe me, it was crowded in there. Secret codes are a part of the business. You can’t be a detective without them. I knew mirror codes and color codes, space codes and list codes. Suddenly it hit me. This was an up-and-down code. Instead of reading from left to right, you had to start at the bottom of the first column, read up, then go over to the next column and read down, then over, then up again.

  I figured out the message. Then it was time to destroy the note. That’s where my trusty dog, Rags, came in. He’d eat anything. I spread peanut butter on it. Rags was happy to help.

  There was a full glass of grape juice waiting for Mila later that morning when she climbed the tree house ladder. She was singing “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” from Mary Poppins. As usual, she changed the words around:

  “Let’s go ride a bike

  Up to the highest height!

  Let’s go ride a bike

  And send it…”

  Mila stopped singing and scratched her nose. “Hey, Jigsaw. What rhymes with soaring?”

  “Pouring?” I offered. “Snoring?”

  Mila sang again:

  “Let’s go ride a bike

  It sure … beats … snoring!”

  “You’re nuts,” I observed.

  Mila shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Let’s get down to business,” I said. “Any luck with the witnesses?”

  “Not really,” Mila said. “And I almost got bit, too,” she added.

  I smiled. “Yeah, that little dog seemed angry.”

  “Actually, the lady said the dog, Mr. Pickles, was scared.”

  “Scared of you?” I laughed.

  “Not me,” Mila said. “Mr. Pickles almost got run over by a skateboarder.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. The lady was upset about it. She said three kids came racing down the sidewalk and almost flattened Mr. Pickles.”

  “Three kids?” I asked. “On skateboards?”

  Mila opened her little memo pad. She read out loud: “‘Three teenagers on skateboards…’”

  “I saw two kids with skateboards at the library,” I recalled. “I wonder if it was them? And if it was, who was the third kid? And where was he?”

  We let that question wander past like a lonely cloud. I suddenly remembered David Chang. His backpack was large and bulky. I told Mila about it.

  “It must have been filled with books,” Mila concluded.

  “Nope,” I said. “He told me he dropped off a few books and scrammed.”

  Mila twisted the ends of her long black hair. “Are you sure his backpack was full?”

  “I think so,” I said. “He made Ralphie carry it. We can check with him.”

  I wrote in my journal:

  What was in David Chang’s backpack?

  Mila looked over my shoulder as I wrote. “David couldn’t have stolen the bike. You saw him leave the library.”

  “Yes,” I said. “But the lady saw three kids ride skateboards to the library. Only two left on skateboards. What happened to the other kid?”

  Mila stared at me, blinking. “Do you think…?”

  I nodded. It was exactly what I thought. “Maybe he’s the one who took Ralphie’s bicycle.”

  “But what about his skateboard?” Mila asked. “You can’t ride a bike and carry a skateboard at the same time.”

  I gulped down the last of my grape juice. “I think David Chang may know the answer.”

  Chapter

  5

  Justin

  We found Ralphie Jordan in his driveway. He was shooting hoops with his older brother, Justin.

  Just as Ralphie went to shoot, Justin soared high into the air. WHAP! He blocked the shot and sent the ball flying into the bushes. Then Justin sank three long bombs—swish, swish, swish—and the game was over.

  “I’m gonna beat you one day,” Ralphie promised. “Just you wait.”

  Justin just laughed and gave Ralphie a playful shove. Of course, we attacked. Ralphie pounced on Justin’s legs. Mila jumped on his back, driving Justin to the ground. I twisted his fingers into pretzels.

  “Need a hand?” a voice asked.

  We stopped. It was David Chang.

  “I’ve got it under control,” Justin replied. Wham, bam. He stacked us up like pancakes and pinned us to the ground. It felt like he was a steamroller—and we were the road.

  Ouch.

  Justin stood up, puffing slightly. “You guys are getting tough,” he said. “But not tough enough. I’d love to hang around, but I’ve got things to do.”

  He got his skateboard out of the garage. “Hey, Ralphie,” he called out. “You can borrow my bike if you want.”

  “Maybe, sure, thanks,” Ralphie mumbled.

  “Hey, little brother,” Justin said. “Don’t stress about your bike. I’m sure it will turn up in a few days.”

  Ralphie frowned. “Old Rusty is gone forever,” he sighed.

  “No way,” Justin said, jerking a thumb toward Mila and me. “You’ll get Old Rusty back. You’ve got top detectives on the case.” He gave us a wink.

  “Where are you guys going, anyway?” Ralphie asked Justin and David.

  “Out,” Justin said. He strapped on his helmet.

  I spoke up. “Do you guys know a kid with bright red hair? He’s about your age, maybe older. He’s got a lot of freckles.”

  David glanced at Justin.

  “Lots of kids have freckles,” Justin answered.

  David wheeled around on his skateboard and raced down the driveway. Justin had fancier moves. He zigged and zagged, leaning hard to his left then right. His arms were stretched out to his sides. Very cool.

  “Your brother’s nice,” Mila observed.

  “Yeah, most of the time,” Ralphie agreed. “He likes to kid around a lot.”

  I laughed. “Remember the phony ghost? Justin had us fooled for a while.”

  We sat under a tree and laughed about it. A while back Justin pretended he was a ghost. He had Ralphie nearly scared out of
his boxer shorts. Fortunately, Mila and I solved the mystery.

  Teenagers. Yeesh.

  Ralphie wanted to pay us for our work. But there was one problem. He didn’t get his allowance until the end of the week.

  “This one’s a freebie,” I said. “But remember us if you win the lottery.”

  “Do you have any suspects?” Ralphie asked.

  “Maybe,” I answered. “There’s one kid on a skateboard I’d like to track down. Unfortunately, the best witness is a dog named Mr. Pickles.”

  “Huh?”

  “Don’t worry about it, Ralphie,” I said. “We’ll get your bike back. I promise.”

  “One last thing, Ralphie,” Mila said. “About David’s backpack. Do you know what was in it?”

  Ralphie tilted his head, thinking. “Oh, yeah. It was a skateboard.”

  “He had two skateboards?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Ralphie said. “Weird, huh. He said he was holding it for a friend.”

  Mila and I exchanged looks.

  “Weird, huh,” she repeated.

  I scratched the back of my neck. I had an itch to learn more about David Chang.

  Chapter

  6

  Art Class

  All the kids in room 201 were mad about Ralphie’s bike.

  “It’s horrible!”

  “It’s terrible!”

  “It’s horribly terrible!”

  “It’s terribly horrible!”

  They all promised to help. Everyone crowded around Ralphie, trying to cheer him up.

  “Um, like, maybe your father will, like, buy you a new one,” Lucy Hiller said.

  “Don’t want a new one,” Ralphie flatly stated. “I like Old Rusty just fine. It was a hand-me-down from Justin. Besides, my dad says I can’t get a new bike until my birthday.”

  “When’s that?” Mila asked.