The Case of the Toxic Mutants Read online

  “That is a good question, though,” said Christiana, nodding to Danny. “Is anything else missing, Mr. Turlingsward?”

  “Nothing!” said the old dragon. “Except the bag of peanuts off the counter, and that’s nothing new. You can’t keep peanuts around here. The nurses take them. They say they don’t, but otherwise somebody’s breaking into my house every three days and stealing peanuts, and that’s just crazy talk.”

  “I’ll make a note,” said Christiana. “Now, can you describe the missing item? Do you have a photo, maybe?”

  “Oh, yes,” huffed Grandfather Turlingsward. “I routinely take photos of my dentures. I have Dentures at the Beach and Still Life with False Teeth. I’m thinking of having a one-man show at the Museum of Modern Art.” He sneered at Christiana, revealing a vast expanse of pink gums.

  Danny and Wendell snickered.

  Danny was impressed. He’d never heard his grandfather apologize to anybody before. He’d once hit Danny with the front door and blamed him for lollygagging on the front step, even though Danny was pretty sure he had never lolly-gagged in his life.

  “All right, then,” said Christiana. “You’ve been very helpful. We’ll see what we can find out. We’ll start by checking around the outside of your house for clues.”

  “You do that,” said Grandfather Turlingsward, closing his eyes. “I’ll be right here if you need me.”

  And with that, the elderly dragon went to sleep, right in front of them.

  “Who put you in charge?” Danny asked Christiana as they walked around the back of the cottage. “He’s my granddad.”

  “You wanna be in charge?” asked the crested lizard. “Fine. Lead the way. I just thought you wanted to get out of here as quickly as possible.”

  Danny gritted his teeth. Christiana was always so bossy. And assuming that she could solve the mystery faster than he could! Sheesh! Just because he couldn’t do math problems at the speed of light didn’t mean he was bad at mysteries!

  “You think there really ith a denthure thief?” asked Wendell skeptically.

  “I know, it sounds crazy. But I think there are some interesting clues here. The open window. The missing peanuts. The footprints that you are just about to trample, Danny Dragonbreath!”

  Danny froze.

  “That’th not a clue,” said Wendell scornfully. “Thothe are animal trackth.”

  “So?” Christiana shot back. “Plenty of animals steal things! Magpies and crows steal shiny objects all the time.”

  “You think a bird stole my granddad’s dentures?” asked Danny. “Seriously? As big as he is, those dentures have got to weigh like fifty pounds. It’d take a whole flock of birds.” He paused, struck by the mental image.

  “Laden African thwallowth,” said Wendell, and giggled at nothing in particular.

  “Okay, maybe not birds,” Christiana allowed. “But there are still animal tracks in the dirt there.”

  “Huh,” said Danny. In movies, great detectives always looked at suspicious tracks and said things like “I see that this could only have been left by a six-foot-tall lizard with a limp, who has recently been to New Jersey!”

  Apparently this was something they taught you in detective school, because they just looked like animal tracks to Danny.

  “They go up to the window,” said Wendell, pointing. “Do you think that’th the bedroom window?”

  The window was firmly closed now.

  “It looks like there’s more than one animal,” said Danny.

  “Or one that walked around a lot,” said Christiana.

  The tracks were in soft dirt around the base of the window, which had a few patchy weeds. It turned into mowed grass a few feet out from the wall, though, and then into the tall, unmown meadow five or six feet past that.

  “If they walked on the grath, they didn’t leave any trackth,” said Wendell gloomily.

  Danny agreed. Who knew that footprints would be so unhelpful?

  “We still need to gather more information,” said Christiana. “Let’s talk to Miss Flicktongue.”

  They walked across the street to Miss Flicktongue’s cottage. Danny felt unexpectedly nervous—if she was nice, he was probably going to have to apologize for his granddad, and if she was mean, she was probably going to yell at him about his granddad. Neither option was very appealing.

  Wendell, untroubled by such concerns, rang the bell.

  Miss Flicktongue was a large lizard, but nowhere near the size of Danny’s grandfather. Her cottage was smaller too, and looked like a large house, not an airplane hangar.

  “Oh, dear!” she said. “Are you selling candy bars to raise money? I’m afraid I can’t buy any just now—I do love your candy bars, but my dentures, you see . . .”

  “We’re thorry to bother you, ma’am,” began Wendell, who was an expert at schmoozing with grown-ups. “But we—”

  “What’s happened to your dentures?” asked Christiana, who was an expert at cutting to the chase.

  “Oh, it’s just so embarrassing.” Miss Flicktongue flapped her apron with her hands. “I’m afraid they’ve gone missing. I feel terribly absentminded, but I haven’t been able to find them, and I really have looked everywhere. And that poor man across the street has been bellowing at me—”

  Danny flushed.

  She looked at him inquiringly. Danny squirmed. She looked so nice. “Err . . . that’s my granddad. I’m really sorry. He’s kinda mean. It’s . . . err . . .”

  “Oh, he’s usually a dear,” she assured him. “He’s gruff, but that’s just his way. I know that. But he gets so upset whenever anything unexpected happens. He’s a creature of habit, you know. He doesn’t like surprises.”

  Danny could not imagine not liking surprises. Surprises were awesome! Just yesterday he’d opened the suitcase he’d forgotten to unpack after summer camp and found something very surprising, and his mother had said something even more surprising when she saw it.

  “When did you notice the dentures were missing?” asked Christiana, refusing to be distracted from the matter at hand.

  “Just this morning,” said Miss Flicktongue. “I usually keep them on my nightstand, you know, and when I went looking for them, they were gone!”

  “Would you mind if we looked around?” Wendell asked. “We’re invethtigating the crime.”

  “How clever of you!” said Miss Flicktongue. “Of course, please be my guests! I do so want my dentures back.”

  They tromped off the porch and around the side of the house. Much like Grandfather Turlingsward’s cottage, there was a narrow side yard, surrounded by the tall hedge of unmown meadow. Unlike the other cottage, this one had a large flowerbed planted with flowers.

  “More tracks!” Danny pointed.

  “Thith ith more like it!” said Wendell happily. The broad flowerbed provided plenty of dirt for the animal tracks, and they were everywhere. They were clustered particularly tightly under the open window, as if something had walked back and forth under it.

  “They come out of the tall grass,” said Danny, following them back to where they emerged from the overgrown hedge.

  “Makes sense,” said Christiana. “It’s where you’d expect animals to live.”

  “Unless somebody did break in,” said Danny, “and they knew they wouldn’t leave tracks in the grass, so they got back there as quickly as possible with the stolen dentures!”

  Christiana did not seem impressed with this bit of deduction. “So how did they leave animal tracks instead of people tracks?”

  “They could have strapped plaster casts of the animal tracks to their feet!” said Danny. “Then we’d think it was animals!”

  “I don’t have one yet,” said Christiana. “We need more data.” She turned back toward the front yard. “Let’s see if Miss Flicktongue leaves that window open . . .”


  Wendell followed. Danny gave one last look toward the tall grass, and froze.

  Something was looking back.

  It was brown. Danny couldn’t make out very many details—was it wearing a coat? Did it have some kind of long fur? It was only about two feet tall, and rather plump.

  When it saw him, it let out a squeak and vanished. Danny almost went after the creature, but it moved too quickly.

  He rushed after Wendell and Christiana, and found them talking to Miss Flicktongue.

  Danny would have been quite interested to hear more about the Panamanian piranha rat—did they swarm like piranhas? Could they skeletonize a cow in five minutes?—but Miss Flicktongue was talking.

  “We do get woodchucks around here,” she said.

  “I suppose it could have been a woodchuck . . .” said Danny dubiously. He wasn’t entirely sure what a woodchuck looked like—most of what he knew about woodchucks involved how much wood they could chuck, if indeed they chucked wood at all—but he didn’t think they usually wore coats. Wearing coats was very odd behavior. Danny had known several very intelligent rats, and even they didn’t wear clothes.

  “It looked like it was wearing something with a hood,” he said slowly. “Sort of reddish.”

  “Woodchucks don’t wear clothes,” said Christiana. “Are you sure it wasn’t a person?”

  “It’d be a really tiny person,” said Danny.

  “Maybe it had an odd fur pattern,” said Wendell. “Thome of them get mange, you know. If you thaw it thitting up . . .”

  Danny shrugged. He hadn’t gotten that good a look at it. Sometimes your eyes played tricks on you. He remembered one night when he’d seen an incredibly realistic monster in his bedroom, and when he screamed “DIE MONSTER SCUM!” and threw his clock radio at it, it turned out to be a pile of laundry, a lamp, and a rubber chicken.

  His mother had been very sarcastic about it.

  “Excuse me one moment,” said Miss Flicktongue, and bustled into the house. From across the street, Grandfather Turlingsward opened one eye and glared at them. “Probably going to destroy evidence,” he grumbled, in a whisper that could be heard a block away.

  “Maybe she needs to use the restroom,” said Christiana practically.

  “I don’t think she took your dentures, Granddad,” said Danny. “For one thing, hers are missing too.”

  “The times don’t match,” said Christiana. “Hers have been gone for one day, and yours have been gone for three. And also . . . err . . .”

  “Hmmph!” Grandfather Turlingsward dropped his chin back onto the warm rock and glared across the street. “Maybe she stole them for some other nefarious purpose, then. Look at all those flowers! I bet she planted petunias in them!”

  Danny was forced to admit that this was the most plausible theory yet. Miss Flicktongue was apparently one of those people who thought it was cute to grow plants in watering cans, old boots, little red wagons, and various other junk. There were even plants growing in a pair of high heels on the porch.

  Could the missing dentures be lurking somewhere, disguised with geraniums? He lifted the leaves of a particularly dense fern, to reveal . . .

  “Whoa,” said Wendell. “It’th in a toilet!”

  “Country kitsch,” said Christiana grimly. “Mark my words, somewhere around here, there’s a stone goose that she dresses up for holidays.”

  “You mean Mister Honkers?” asked Miss Flicktongue, emerging from the house. “Oh, I miss him! He went missing a few months ago. I thought it was just kids—no offense meant, my dears, I mean bad children—but now that my dentures are gone, I wonder . . .” She sighed. “And he was wearing the most adorable little outfit too.”

  Christiana swung around and gazed vaguely into the distance, with the air of one who is resisting saying “I told you so,” with great effort.

  “It doesn’t seem like Mister Honkers can be related, though,” said Miss Flicktongue, pursing her lips. “Somebody really didn’t like him. I used to make him the most darling little outfits, and they were always vanishing, especially at Christmas. Some people have no holiday spirit!”

  A loud snort came from the rock across the street.

  Danny thought that the prime suspect was probably pretending to sleep about twenty feet away, but this was the Case of the Missing Dentures, not the Case of the Vanishing Goose.

  “It’s been twenty minutes,” Christiana said. “We aren’t—”

  Wendell elbowed her in the ribs. The iguana did not get cookies at home, unless they were made with carob and brown rice. “We’d love some,” he said, making an effort to speak clearly around his retainer. “It’s very nice of you to offer.”

  The cookies were chocolate chip, and very good. “I freeze the dough in batches,” explained Miss Flicktongue, “for when my little nieces and nephews come over. I do love how baking cookies make a house smell, don’t you?”

  “Well,” said Christiana, licking the last crumbs off her fingers. “I think we’ve got a few interesting points to consider.”

  Danny rolled his eyes. There went Christiana, taking over again.

  She noticed the eye-roll. “You want to sum up, Danny?”

  “Sure!” Danny began ticking points off. “First of all, more than one set of dentures is missing. Second, Granddad’s dentures went missing first. Third, there’s animal tracks all over the ground outside the windows. Fourth, I saw a weird animal. Fifth . . . err . . . fifth . . .”

  “Fifth,” said Wendell, holding up a finger, “other thtuff hath gone mithing. The peanuth, and Mithter Honkerth.”

  “Does that stuff matter?” asked Danny. “I mean, they might not be related at all.”

  “We don’t know yet what’s relevant and what isn’t,” said Christiana, nodding to Wendell.

  Danny snorted. She was one to talk. Christiana’s mind, on the subject of dragons, was closed tighter than a steel bear trap.

  “I don’t know about you guys,” said Christiana, “but I think we need to do some research.”

  “I concur,” said Wendell.

  Danny sighed. It was always the same with Wendell and Christiana. Take them on a thrilling adventure, and they always wanted to stop at the library.

  Still, if the alternative was hanging around with his grandfather . . .

  He slid off the rock. “Okay. You guys tell Miss Flicktongue, and I’ll go explain to Granddad . . .”

  “I saw you over there,” grumbled Grandfather Turlingsward, opening one eye. “Fraternizing with the enemy, that’s what it was. Hmmph!” The old dragon shot twin jets of smoke out of his nostrils. Danny looked around hurriedly for Christiana, but she had her back turned and was talking to Miss Flicktongue. Darn.

  “We’re going to the library,” said Danny. “My friends—Wendell and Christiana, you met them—they’re really smart. They think they might be able to figure out what’s stealing your dentures.”

  “I know what’s stealing my dentures, and it’s a who, not a what!” snapped Grandfather Turlingsward. He grumbled for a moment. “Still . . . if they’re researching the workings of the criminal mind . . .”

  “Criminal mind,” said Danny. “Absolutely. Wendell was talking all about it. Said he just needed to check a few books.”

  “Hmmph!” said Grandfather Turlingsward, but he looked grudgingly impressed. “All right. Get to the library, then, and don’t come back until you’re willing to arrest the denture thief!”

  “I don’t think we can really arrest people . . .” said Wendell apologetically.

  “Citizen’s arrest!” roared Grandfather Turlingsward. “That’s the problem with you young people! No drive! No gumption! No willingness to stand up to wrong-doers!”

  “I think I hear the bus,” said Danny. (This was absolutely not true, but the dragon felt it was a lie in the service of a good cause.) He and We
ndell hurried toward the bus stop, pausing only to pick up Christiana on the way.

  They were halfway down the block when Danny glanced behind him.

  “Hey! Watch where you’re going!” said Wendell as Danny stepped on his foot.

  “Oh!” Danny turned back. “Sorry, dude . . .”

  He could have sworn that when he looked back, just for a moment, he’d seen another of those little furry figures.

  It had whisked out of sight so quickly, Danny hadn’t been able to make out any details. But just for a second, he’d had the impression—well, it was pretty crazy, but he could have sworn that the figure was wearing a tiny yellow rain slicker.

  “Nah,” he said to himself. “That’s just nuts.”

  Still, he wondered . . .

  The Slithering Heights public library was a big, comfortable building with lots of posters that told people to “Find Adventure in a Book!” Danny had fond memories of the kids’ section, but of course Wendell and Christiana headed for the shelves where the books had no illustrations and very small type.

  The card catalog had been put on computers recently, and so both the iguana and the crested lizard pulled up keyboards and began typing. They conferred together quietly, a conversation about decimal numbers and cross references that quickly excluded Danny.

  “So . . .” he said.

  “Leave this to us,” said Christiana. “We’ll get it done quicker.”

  The dragon felt annoyed. He could do research too. He’d researched a whole paper on volcanoes last spring, with a bibliography and everything. It was a solid C+ paper! Maybe even a B, if he hadn’t drawn the sacrifices being thrown to the volcano god. His teacher hadn’t appreciated that nearly enough.