close by.
âWill do,â I said.
âIâll be in touch the moment Iâm done,â Dad told me. âIt shouldnât be too long.â
We split up, although Dad kept looking back to make sure I was okay. It was kind of silly, but I appreciated it anyhow.
I dropped in at the rear of the school group. No one noticed I didnât belong. The parent chaperones and teachers had their hands full with the rest of the class. The studentswere so excited to be at FunJungle that groups of them kept racing off to see different animals. The adults were so busy trying to wrangle the rogues that they were thrilled to see anyone actually staying with the group.
Eventually, after several demands that everyone settle down and a few threats (âIf anyone else wanders off, they will spend the rest of the day on the bus!â), the class headed into the park.
âWhat should we see first?â a teacher asked.
âThe koala!â almost everyone shouted at once.
A few boys tried to argue for either Carnivore Canyon or World of Reptiles, but they were quickly overruled. The teachers and chaperones seemed just as eager to see Kazoo as the kids did. The class eagerly veered toward the Land Down Under.
I stayed with them. I knew my parents wouldnât have been pleased I was heading back to the scene of the crime, but I had a couple of reasons for sticking with the school group besides safety in numbers.
First, something strange was going on. If the entire field trip was so excited to go see Kazoo, that meant no one knew Kazoo wasnât on display. Kazooâs kidnapping should have been the top story on the local news. FunJungle dominated the press in Central Texas; when the park so much as considered changing the ticket prices, it would make the front page ofthe paper. It seemed unlikely that a whole classâincluding teachers and chaperonesâcould have missed the news. The only way no one could have known Kazoo was missing was if FunJungle hadnât revealed it. However, I couldnât imagine how anyone at FunJungle thought they could get away with that.
Second, I wanted to do some snooping myself. Summerâs words kept coming back to me: If I didnât try to find Kazooâs kidnapper, no one would. Perhaps J.J. McCracken could get Marge to back off me for a bit, but if Marge truly believed I was the culprit, she wasnât going to look anywhere else.
As proof of this, there wasnât a single security guard anywhere near KoalaVille. If there had been, I would have kept my distance. In fact there didnât seem to be anything to indicate Kazooâs habitat was a crime scene. To my surprise, the exhibit looked exactly the same as it always did. There was no crime tape blocking it offâor, more to FunJungleâs PR-minded style, signs claiming that the exhibit was CLOSED FOR RENOVATIONS TO ENHANCE YOUR FUNJUNGLE EXPERIENCE . Instead there was actually a line of tourists snaking out the door.
It was all rather eerie. For a moment I found myself wondering if I had merely dreamed the whole thing about Kazoo being stolen.
âMy classâ excitedly headed toward the koala exhibit. But as they did, Freddie Malloy leaped into their path.
Freddie was the closest thing we had to a human celebrity at FunJungleâwhich wasnât saying much. Heâd started out as an actor in the FunJungle Friends Revue playing the evil land developer, Baron Wasteland, who was the villain of the show. However, heâd aspired to more and had eventually convinced the administration to let him host a show heâd cooked up called The Worldâs Most Deadly Animals . According to my father, the show might have worked out if Freddie had done what heâd promised, which was to present a few dangerous animalsâlike tigers, cobras, and Komodo dragonsâand teach the audience about them. But Freddie had been far more interested in promoting himself , hoping to attract a TV
âWill do,â I said.
âIâll be in touch the moment Iâm done,â Dad told me. âIt shouldnât be too long.â
We split up, although Dad kept looking back to make sure I was okay. It was kind of silly, but I appreciated it anyhow.
I dropped in at the rear of the school group. No one noticed I didnât belong. The parent chaperones and teachers had their hands full with the rest of the class. The studentswere so excited to be at FunJungle that groups of them kept racing off to see different animals. The adults were so busy trying to wrangle the rogues that they were thrilled to see anyone actually staying with the group.
Eventually, after several demands that everyone settle down and a few threats (âIf anyone else wanders off, they will spend the rest of the day on the bus!â), the class headed into the park.
âWhat should we see first?â a teacher asked.
âThe koala!â almost everyone shouted at once.
A few boys tried to argue for either Carnivore Canyon or World of Reptiles, but they were quickly overruled. The teachers and chaperones seemed just as eager to see Kazoo as the kids did. The class eagerly veered toward the Land Down Under.
I stayed with them. I knew my parents wouldnât have been pleased I was heading back to the scene of the crime, but I had a couple of reasons for sticking with the school group besides safety in numbers.
First, something strange was going on. If the entire field trip was so excited to go see Kazoo, that meant no one knew Kazoo wasnât on display. Kazooâs kidnapping should have been the top story on the local news. FunJungle dominated the press in Central Texas; when the park so much as considered changing the ticket prices, it would make the front page ofthe paper. It seemed unlikely that a whole classâincluding teachers and chaperonesâcould have missed the news. The only way no one could have known Kazoo was missing was if FunJungle hadnât revealed it. However, I couldnât imagine how anyone at FunJungle thought they could get away with that.
Second, I wanted to do some snooping myself. Summerâs words kept coming back to me: If I didnât try to find Kazooâs kidnapper, no one would. Perhaps J.J. McCracken could get Marge to back off me for a bit, but if Marge truly believed I was the culprit, she wasnât going to look anywhere else.
As proof of this, there wasnât a single security guard anywhere near KoalaVille. If there had been, I would have kept my distance. In fact there didnât seem to be anything to indicate Kazooâs habitat was a crime scene. To my surprise, the exhibit looked exactly the same as it always did. There was no crime tape blocking it offâor, more to FunJungleâs PR-minded style, signs claiming that the exhibit was CLOSED FOR RENOVATIONS TO ENHANCE YOUR FUNJUNGLE EXPERIENCE . Instead there was actually a line of tourists snaking out the door.
It was all rather eerie. For a moment I found myself wondering if I had merely dreamed the whole thing about Kazoo being stolen.
âMy classâ excitedly headed toward the koala exhibit. But as they did, Freddie Malloy leaped into their path.
Freddie was the closest thing we had to a human celebrity at FunJungleâwhich wasnât saying much. Heâd started out as an actor in the FunJungle Friends Revue playing the evil land developer, Baron Wasteland, who was the villain of the show. However, heâd aspired to more and had eventually convinced the administration to let him host a show heâd cooked up called The Worldâs Most Deadly Animals . According to my father, the show might have worked out if Freddie had done what heâd promised, which was to present a few dangerous animalsâlike tigers, cobras, and Komodo dragonsâand teach the audience about them. But Freddie had been far more interested in promoting himself , hoping to attract a TV
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