Sinister Substitute (8 page)

“It’s not guacamole, that’s for sure,” Dave grumbled, still looking at his shoe.

“No,” Sticky said, pointing straight ahead,
“that.”

Sticky was pointing to one of the mansion’s jutting walls.

It was expanding.

Pushing outward.

Growing, like a great black balloon.

And inside the balloon something was moving.

Something
alive
.

What came through the wall was not some agent of evil, or heat-seeking sleep darts, or boy-hunting hounds.

It was a burro.

A fuzzy-wuzzy bucktoothed burro.

One that immediately became preoccupied with the flittery-fluttering of a little yellow butterfly and did not notice Dave and Sticky standing a mere fifteen yards away.

“That’s Rosie,” Sticky whispered. “Which means those
bobos
banditos are still living here!”

“Wait,” Dave said. “He let them put in a
donkey
door?”

Sticky shook his little gecko head. “It’s
loco
-berry burritos, man.”

They stared at the donkey door a moment longer, then looked at each other.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Dave asked.

“Sí, señor,”
Sticky said with a grin. “No alarm, no creaky hinges, no catapults or bloody fangs. …” He nodded. “Even if those beany-brained boys are in there, it should be easy-sneezy to sneak inside.”

Now, at this point, Tito was already on his way up to the prisoner tower. So when Dave and Sticky sneaky-toed up to the donkey door and peeked inside, the only Brothers left were Angelo and Pablo.

Dave and Sticky couldn’t see them (as the donkey door had been installed in an old servants’ entry off the side of the kitchen), but they could certainly hear them bickering. And after eavesdropping for a few minutes, Dave whispered, “They’re fighting about
weeds
?”

“You name it,
señor
, they will find some way to fight about it. Now
ándale!
That evil Mr. Black will be home soon!”

This was, in fact, an accurate (and appropriately ominous) statement, as at that very moment Damien Black was roaring up the winding road to Raven Ridge at hazardous speed, holding the wheel of his 1959 Cadillac Eldorado with one hand while ripping off the latex face of Ms. Dede Bartholomew with the other.

He was, to put it mildly, in a ferociously foul mood. He’d spent the day wearing a sweaty latex face, an itchy wig, a cheery pin, and nylons.

Nylons!

Itchy, pinchy, hair-pulling nylons!

And he’d gotten nowhere.

Nowhere!

Those sneaky-eyed, cagey kids were a nightmare!

A headache-inducing, stomach-churning, gut-gurgling nightmare!

Ah, poor Damien. He could handle thugs and thieves and devious businessmen.

Backstabbers and double-crossers (and even politicians!).

But children?

They were simply too much for him.

And so it was that Damien had made a mad, belly-jiggling dash for the exit when the dismissal bell rang at Geronimo Middle School. “Out of my way! Out of my way!” he’d shouted (in a curiously masculine voice), shoving through the teeming crowds of teens. And after continuing his mad dash over to his car (which was parked a cautious four blocks from school), he’d fired up his trio of ultra-bad Rochester carburetors and put the pedal to the Eldorado’s metal (which, in this case, meant just that).

So, as you can see, Sticky’s order to
“Ándale!”
was a wise one, indeed. Dave had, after all, stopped at the thrift store, pedaled up to Raven
Ridge (which, even for an experienced biker like Dave, was quite a trek), and been harassed and waylaid by bwaa-ha-cawing ravens.

Can you say tick-tock?

So without further delay, Dave eeeeeased through the donkey door, tiiiiippy-toed across the worn black-and-white flooring tiles, and sneeeeeaky-peeked a look around the pantry shelving into the kitchen.

There was no sign of Ms. Veronica Krockle.

Only Pablo and Angelo dousing each other with maple syrup.

“Stop that!” Pablo cried.

“You stop first!” Angelo shouted back.

“What are they
doing
?” Dave whispered, for even in his most heated fights with Evie, he had never, not ever, poured syrup on her head.

Pablo doused Angelo with another glug of syrup as he yelled, “I’m not taking her food up, you hairy dog!”

“Yes, you are, you chintzy cheater!” Angelo shouted, glugging back.

“I think they’re fighting about that scary
señorita!”
Sticky whispered.

Pablo suddenly lowered his syrup jug and looked around. “Hey … where’s Tito?”

Angelo looked around, too. “I don’t know, but the tray’s gone.”

Pablo snorted through his little ratty nose. “Well, good. He needs the exercise.”

Angelo laughed. “Yeah. Ninety-nine steps. It’ll take him all day.”

Pablo plopped down in a tattered vinyl kitchen-table chair. “I hate those creepy masks in that tunnel. The eyes.” He shuddered. “Do you think they’re really alive?”

Angelo plopped down across from him and started wiping the syrup off his face and arms. “Don’t be stupid. How could they be alive, huh?”

“Hey!” Pablo said, sitting up straighter. “I’m not stupid, you’re stupid!”

“Shut up! You’re stupider than the stupidest stupid ever!”

And so they were off again, outdoing each other’s insult, oblivious to the fact that they’d just given away Ms. Veronica Krockle’s location.

“She’s in the tower!” Sticky whispered into Dave’s ear.

“How do we get there?” Dave whispered back.

“Up ninety-nine rickety steps and through a creepy tunnel of masks.
Oooor”
—he tapped his
little gecko chin thoughtfully—“we could use the stinky socks chute.”

“The stinky socks chute?” Dave pulled a face. “I’ll take the ninety-nine steps.”

Sticky arched a hairless eyebrow. “I don’t think so,
señor.”

“Why?”

Sticky peeked around the corner at Pablo and Angelo (whose argument had ramped up to “Well, you’re stupider than the stupidest stupid sauce
inside
the dumbest dumb bomb ever, and every time you explode, stupid sauce splats all over the wall!”). He eyed Dave. “Because to get to the ninety-nine steps, you first have to get past those two. And what if Tito is on his way down?”

“Can’t we just go up the outside of the house?”

Sticky shook his head. “No windows in the tower.”

“So where’s the laundry chute?” Dave whispered
(for he’d figured out that’s what the stinky socks chute must be).

Sticky pointed to an open room located across a wide common area. “In there.”

It was clear that crossing over this wide common area would put them in full view of Pablo and Angelo. Even in the heat of their argument, the two Brothers would surely spot a boy in a yellow sweatshirt sneaking by.

But then Dave noticed that spanning the ceiling above the wide common area was a large wooden beam. One that would (at least partially) conceal them if they walked across the ceiling.

Sticky and Dave exchanged glances, and without a word, Dave (who still had the Wall-Walker ingot in the powerband) scampered up the wall and started across the ceiling.

Now, it’s frightening enough to be trespassing in a madman’s mansion, walking across the
ceiling like a giant yellow gecko while two angry men sporting bandoliers and bad attitudes (not to mention jugs of syrup) are within striking distance. But nothing, I promise you,
nothing
will make you lose your grip quicker than Damien Black’s voice booming through the room.

“Where are you buffoons?” the angry treasure hunter shouted from a distant chamber.

Pablo and Angelo frantically began wiping up syrup.

“Answer me!” bellowed Damien’s approaching voice.

“Ándale!”
Sticky whispered, because Dave had, quite simply, frozen in place.

“H-h-here, boss!” Angelo called, and with that Dave kicked into gear, geckoing across the rest of the ceiling to the safety of the adjacent service room.

Almost immediately, Damien entered the kitchen area. “Where’s your brother!” he bellowed,
not even noticing that there was icky-sticky syrup everywhere.

“H-h-he’s not our brother,” Angelo said.

“Do I CARE? Where is he?”

“Checking on the prisoner,” Pablo replied. “What happened, boss?”

“I’m done,” Damien snapped. “Come on. Let’s get rid of her.”

So as the two Brothers hurried to follow Damien up ninety-nine rickety steps, Dave worked his way through a pile of putrefying socks and zippy-toed straight up the laundry chute, racing to reach Ms. Veronica Krockle before Damien could kill her.

Up in the tower, Ms. Veronica Krockle had no idea that anyone (and certainly not one of her students) was on his way to rescue her from her windowless prison. How could she? She didn’t even know where she was, or why she’d been abducted and tortured. All she knew was that she wanted
out
.

I should point out that she had not been tortured in the traditional sense. Damien had not clamped her to any of his cranking, crunching, jabbing, jostling (or, for that matter, tickling) devices. He hadn’t hung her upside down by her ankles or trapped her inside his terrifying terrarium of tarantulas.

No, she had been tortured by something much worse. You see, to Ms. Veronica Krockle, there was no agony more excruciating, no torture more intolerable, no assault more savage than the raw, throbbing pain of stupidity.

“How could I have let those blockheads capture me?” she muttered (for the only people she had actually seen were the Bandito Brothers). “Who
are
they? What do they want?” (Secretly, she feared they were former students of hers, extracting a long-awaited revenge.)

Now, you may be wondering how Ms. Veronica Krockle could be muttering when the Bandito Brothers had, in fact, bound and gagged her with duct tape.

Lots and lots of duct tape.

Well, I’ll tell you how:

Ms. Veronica Krockle had slobbered her way out.

It wasn’t that her spit was acidic, or toxic, or
special in any way. It was (like all spit) simply wet (and, okay, maybe a little foamy). But the wetness of her spit eventually broke down the extreme stickiness of the tape across her mouth, and once her mouth was free, her
teeth
were free, and after that? Oh my—there was no stopping her. She ripped and tore (and, yes, slobbered) her way out of the tape’s sticky bondage until she was at last free from the wooden chair to which she’d been bound.

And now she was able to move about the room.

Able to lie in wait behind the door.

Able to clonk the next idiot to enter!

That idiot was, of course, Tito. And when she heard him begin to unlock the thick ironwood door, Ms. Veronica Krockle’s hardened heart skipped a ferocious beat.

When the heavy metal security latches outside the room went CLONK, CLONK, CLONK,
Ms. Veronica Krockle hefted the chair overhead.

When the door
squeeeee-eee-eeeaked
open, Ms. Veronica Krockle held her breath.

Her eyes grew steely.

And when Tito entered the room, CRAAAAAAAACK, CRUNCH, CLATTER-CLATTER-clatter-clatter, Ms. Veronica Krockle whacked him over his head with the chair.

Dazed and (additionally) confused, Tito staggered for a few steps, dropped the tray of food, but did not go down. (It is, after all, impossible to knock out a rock.)

But dazed and confused was all Ms. Veronica Krockle needed. Before Tito could react, she’d scooped up a runaway apple (as she was, at this point, starving), dashed out, slammed the door closed, and shoved in the security latches, locking Tito inside the room.

“Freedom!” she cried (with a laugh that sounded eerily like “Bwaa-ha-ha”). But after she had descended the tower’s steps and looked around, she had no idea which way to go.