Hiss Me Deadly by Bruce Hale

Author:Bruce Hale [Hale, Bruce]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

"Okay," whispered Natalie after a few moments. "He's gone."

I scrambled down. "Caught him red-handed," I said.

"What did he steal?" asked Natalie.

"I'm not sure, but he was red-handed. That might be the wrong-o who ripped off my sister. Let's catch up to him."

We hotfooted it down the hall.

The lynx must have picked up his pace. We caught a glimpse of a bobbed tail as he slipped around the next corner.

"Hurry!" cried Natalie.

"Hurry is my middle name," I said.

"I thought it was Rambo."

I broke into a jog. "Less chat, more hustle."

But by the time we passed the next building, Gustav Mauler was nowhere to be seen.

"Dang!" I said.

Natalie and I patrolled the corridor, heads swiveling. Across the grass, we spotted a line of snakes pressed to the school fence in silent protest. But no kitty. Mr. Mauler had given us the slip.

Our feet led us at last to the library.

I scratched my head. "Now, where did that cat scat to?"

"Search me," said Natalie. "But weren't the computers stolen from the library?"

"Yeah."

She grinned. "Then what say we stop and look for one of those ... what do you detectives call them? Chews? Gnus?"

"Clues," I said.

"Let's cruise."

Natalie and I pushed through the heavy oak doors into the cool quiet of the library. It smelled of old books, confusion, and fancy-schmancy coffee. Cool Beans, the librarian, held the coffee. The book smell came from, no duh, the books.

And I'm not sure where the confusion came from. (Maybe me.)

"Hey, Cool Beans," I said.

The hefty possum looked up from his cup of java. "What's shakin', private eyes?"

"Nothing but the knees of the bad guys," I said.

"Or their bellies, from laughing," said Natalie.

Cool Beans gazed at us through his wraparound shades. "The word is, you're lookin' into some light-fingered Louies around campus."

"Word travels fast," I said. "What can you tell us about the computer theft?"

The possum sipped his coffee. "Happened after I split yesterday. When I dropped in to work this A.M., I found that space"—he pointed at the gap in his line of computers—"where two machines should have been."

I strolled over to see. "And they didn't break in?"

"Nah, those sneaky squares must have had a key."

Natalie joined me and eyeballed the computer table. "Any clues?"

"No muddy footprints, no bloody handkerchiefs, no bad-guy library cards," said Cool Beans.

I shook my head. "I was afraid of that."

"But outside the window," he said, "I did find this." The possum held up something that looked like a see-through scrap of parchment.

"Paper?" I said. "This place is lousy with it."

"Guess again, Sherlock. Snakeskin."

My eyes met Natalie's. "And where there's snakeskin...," I said.

"There's snakes," she finished.

I grinned. "Hey, great minds think alike."

"Or as my mom says, fools seldom differ."

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