The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen (2 page)

Want to learn more about these fascinating characters? You can read their previous book,
Whales on Stilts!,
available for the laughably low price of $15.00 at fine bookstores near you.
^*

“If you're bored,” suggested Mrs. Mulligan, “why don't you get out of the house? You could go down to the old swamp, or the rust exhibit at the museum, or maybe that weird store that just appeared last night on Bunk Street.”

“No,” said Katie. “I'm sick of adventures. I'm sick of it all.”

Mrs. Mulligan put her hands (intact) on her hips and smiled. “Whenever I hear that, I know a particularly big and baffling adventure is just around the corner! You kids just wait!”

Katie gritted her teeth. She was about three inches away from having a good old-fashioned tantrum. “No,” she said. “I'm going to have a normal vacation. Like a normal kid. Not like a mass-market celebrity in a weird, psychopathic suburban development.” She stood up and began rummaging around in the garage mess. She knelt in front of a pile of stuff. She started to rifle through it. She grunted, “We're going to play Twister. Okay? That's it. We're playing Twister.”

She threw old kites and skates and carpet samples across the garage.

“Hey!” said Mrs. Mulligan. “Katie! Stop!”

Katie didn't listen. She hurled a pair of running shoes onto the hood of the car. She tossed a map of the world into the air.

Lily felt kind of embarrassed for Katie, in that tingly way you feel embarrassed when a friend is having a tantrum in front of you and you're not along for the ride.

“Katie!” scolded her mom.

Katie kicked a box of Christmas lights under the workbench.

“Be reasonable,” said her mother.

Suddenly Katie shrieked and leaped back.

“Jupiter's moons!” gasped Jasper Dash. “Your father's dismembered torso!”

*
Remember: If you buy two copies and hold them at different distances from your eyes, you can see the book in 3-D.

“I built my house out of
Whales on Stilts!,”
says David Gonzales of South Rupture, Indiana. “I stacked them up in a big pile. I've never regretted it. It was way cheaper than marble.”

Jenn Ross of Dexter Heights, South Dakota, writes that
she
uses multiple copies of
Whales on Stilts!
to keep deer out of her flower garden. “Oh, I love that book,” she says. “It's just the right weight for hurling. Or I use a kind of a book launcher my husband made for me. Yessiree Bob, there's many a deer in Dexter Heights that regrets it ever heard about the exciting career of plucky heroine Lily [Gefelty].”

“Oh,
that
old thing!” said Katie's dad, strolling in from the den.

Katie's mom laughed. “Oh, Ben! The torso! I haven't seen that for years!”

He smiled. “Not since the day of our wedding.”

They squeezed each other and giggled.

“That's it,” said Katie.
“I'm through!”
she screamed. “Forget it!”

And by three o'clock that afternoon, she, Jasper Dash, and Lily Gefelty were whizzing off for a week of rest and relaxation in the mountains at the Moose Tongue Lodge and Resort.

Jasper had wanted to go to the Moose Tongue Lodge and Resort for a long time. There were trails through the mountains and decks you could sit on and look across the horizon. Jasper had a way of finding places that looked like they had never seen 1968, let alone 1973 or 1994.

Plus, he had recently received a coupon for a free dinner in their dining room.

Katie, Lily, and Jasper didn't have the money for hotel rooms, so Jasper had fired up his Gyroscopic Sky Suite, which was designed to attach inconspicuously onto the outer walls of classic hotels.

Inside, there were several small rooms with bunks, each room equipped with a shortwave radio and a speaking snorkel. There was a lot of
closet space and a common area for sitting together and playing games. The Sky Suite also had other things one might need when on vacation, like a sauna and a crime lab. The whole capsule was shaped kind of like a rocket, but it was shingled so that when it attached itself to a vintage hotel, it appeared to be a turret. It had rocket engines, like almost everything Jasper invented, but they were only for emergencies. Usually, it was dragged through the sky by a robotic jet with a large girdle. The Sky Suite hung below the jet. The robot drove.

During the flight up to the lodge, the kids sat in Lily's room, playing 52-pickup with magnetic cards. Occasionally, they'd look out the window and see the foothills flying past beneath them, covered with oaks and maples.

Finally, the lodge itself came into view. They saw the mountain, its summit bristling with weather antennae. It was nestled on cliffs below the mountain peaks. It was surrounded richly by pines—a huge wooden hotel with gables and chimneys and grand staircases and big windows and little suspended bridges that led into the woods across fissures.

Jasper lifted his speaking snorkel. “All right!” he said. “Aim and toss!”

The robotic jet pilot said, “Righto! Hold on to your lunches!”

“Huh?” said Katie. “We already ate our—”

Suddenly the pilot ejected the Sky Suite from its girdle. It flew through the air. With a huge crash, it hit the side of the hotel. As it hit, big metal clamps bit into the wood—there was a detonation—loud as the blasting of volcanoes—and the Sky Suite was secured, smoking, looking as if it had always been there.

It took a minute before anyone could hear again.

“Jasper!” said Katie, livid. “That was insane!”

Lily bit her lip and waited for the police to arrive, banging on the metal door of the capsule. But there was no sound.

“Have no fear, chums,” said Jasper. “We've arrived as safe and sound as chicks on Easter
Sunday.” He unstrapped himself from his chair. “I just hope we managed to connect with a hallway. Otherwise, it could be a little bit sticky.”

The three of them walked to the metal door. Jasper unlocked the door and swung it open.

They stepped out. They were in a guest's private bathroom. A man was cowering in the bathtub suds. There were broken wooden planks and chunks of plaster floating on the gray water all around him.

Jasper cleared his throat and said, “I'm sorry. You appear to be in our antechamber.” He marched to the bathroom door.

Katie gasped, “Oh wow. Oh wow. Here, let me help you pick up some of this … Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm so …” She and Lily scurried around, gathering pieces of wood.

The man made a high-pitched meeping noise.

Jasper said, “Madam, we regret any inconvenience we may have caused you. Unfortunately, we're staying right here in rooms 23 A-E.”

He pointed at the metal door of the capsule, on which was painted “ROOMS 23A-E.”

“This is the fourth floor,” whispered the man. “I think you have the wrong room.”

“Excuse us, good lady, if you will,” said Jasper. “We have to go tip the concierge. He appears to have given us a smashing view of the hot spring.”

Jasper walked out through the man's bedroom and into the hall. The girls followed him.

“Jasper,” said Katie, “Jasper, you idiot! How are we going to get back to the capsule? We'll have to go through that man's bathroom every time we want to go to our bunks!”

“What man?”

“The bald one in the bath.”

“I would hate to inconvenience anybody,” said Jasper, “except that I've found, in certain situations, that people would rather have a good story to tell than just another dull old bath. I think that eventually he will see the funny side of it.”

“After a few days?” demanded Lily.

“I hope it doesn't take him that long,” said Jasper, uneasily. “He might find it hard to sleep until then. The ventilators are quite loud.”

They walked down a sweeping staircase into the lobby.

The lobby was cavernous. On the walls were old moose-hide snowshoes and wooden skis. There was a birch-bark canoe hanging above the front desk. A row of mounted animal heads hung high on the wall. People were bustling everywhere. Porters were taking bags; bellhops in pillbox hats were squeaking, “Yes, ma'am!” and bowing; there were lots of big men in raccoon-skin coats and pinstripe suits smoking cigars and pointing at portraits on the walls. The portraits were of famous men and their horses and hounds. One was of a sport fisherman with his trained eel, Loopy. Another man in a portrait had a falcon on his gloved arm.

Jasper walked right up to the front desk.

“Hello,” he said. “We're Jasper Dash, Lily Gefelty, and Katie Mulligan. We've just taken those rooms in that new tower addition, rooms 23A-E, off the bathroom of 46B.”

“Oh, Mr…. Mr. Dash?
The
Jasper Dash? Boy Technonaut?”

Jasper looked humbly at the inkwell. “Yes. Yes, that's me, sir.”

“It's great to meet you!” said the man at the desk. “We just cleared a whole bunch of your books out of the lounge library! Burned a whole stack of them!”

“Ah,” said Jasper, looking at his toes.

“Hey, you aren't the only child hero at the hotel this weekend. We got the Cutesy Dell Twins, the Manley Boys, and those adorable mystery-solving Hooper Quints! You know, the Quintuplets!”

“Ah,” said Jasper. “The Manley Boys used to babysit me.”

“The Manley Boys?” said Katie, standing
behind him. “You know them? They look really cute in their books.”

“They are not so cute,” said Jasper miserably, “when they have covered you with lye and buried you in the victory garden.”

“Oh,” said Katie. “Sorry. If it means anything, I'm not crazy about the Cutesy Dell Twins being here.”

Lily explained to Jasper, “They go to our school.”

“They're like two little love-struck pythons,” said Katie. “With, you know,” she stuck out two fingers near her mouth like fangs. “Mean and bitey,” she said.

Jasper explained to the man at the desk, “We have come to redeem our coupon for a free dinner.”