Pun Detectives and the Case of the Missing Music! (Part 2)

According to the message from grandpa, me and Lily were supposed to report to the music practice room, so we made our way from the Old Building to the West Wing and slipped in through the outside door. Our marching band practiced before school, so the room was already packed with students unpacking instruments, leafing through an entire forest of sheet music, and stepping outside in pairs or trios or bigger groups, probably to head over to the East Ring where the practice field was.

If they were practicing on the field today, that was. Our marching band had achieved local infamy for practicing wherever the conductor Mr. Treble directed them, which was usually nowhere a marching band should ever be. Like out in the woods. Or crammed inside his car. Or at the bottom of the school pool. One time he even conducted them straight onto the interstate and had to speed up the tempo till they could keep up with traffic.

It takes a fiery passion to march straight into danger like that and brave it, right? Wrong. Mr. Treble was about as firecracker-ish as a soaked rag. He was one of those people who always seemed wet and weepy and dripping with snot, like he was always on the verge of breaking down in tears. To make matters worse, he was a serial sneezer. One of those eight-in-a-row type guys. That was why our marching band kept venturing into such wack territory. Mr. Treble’s eyes were so watery and his nose so runny that he could barely ever see where he was going. The guy produced more mucus than music.

As the marching band kids got ready for whatever inappropriate practice spots the day was sure to bring, Mr. Treble was getting ready too, shuffling loose sheets of music together into a binder and adjusting and readjusting his glasses, which were one of two things always slipping down his nose. The other was a droopy, dangly strand of glow-in-the-dark-green snot, a rubbery pendulum that swung wide whenever he walked. His eyes were all watery today too. This guy was like a leaky fire hydrant, and he definitely had a few screws loose. When he saw us walk in, he called us over.

“You’re here. The pun detectives? Just in time. We’re starting practice. Most of us anyway.”

“Most of you?” Lily asked. I was too busy getting sucked into the watery pools that were Mr. Treble’s eyes to say much. They were like onions. The more I looked, the waterier my eyes got too.

He cleared his throat. “Not all of us are going to be able to practice this morning. That’s actually why I called you both here. We have a bit of a problem on our hands, and I’m hoping we can 👉depend👈 on you two to solve it. You deal with puns, correct?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said, rubbing the tears out of my eyes.

“Well I think this might be the doing of one. Look over there.”

I followed his finger to the back of the room, where a big group of kids was standing around, not doing much besides whispering to each other and looking disturbed.

“Why aren’t they getting ready with everyone else?” I asked.

“That’s the problem.” Mr. Treble’s voice was runny with phlegm. I was beginning to suspect that his body was a little more than the average 70% water, and that he should probably get that checked out. “They can’t. They don’t have instruments.”

“Then what are they doing in marching band?”

“No, no, you don’t— ah… ah… ahhhhchchchdkldppphphphphpppphhphphpphphppbbbbggtllll!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Mr. Treble shot snot faster than I’d ever seen snot get shot into a fresh tissue that was already dripping.

“Bless you.”

“Thanks. Anyway, like I was saying. You don’t get it. They had instruments. But they don’t have them now. They went missing. We have an instrument storage space over there. See?”

He pointed to the corner of the room where we saw a door leading to a smaller space. It was where the marching band kids kept their instruments when they didn’t bring them home I guessed.

“When I came in this morning, their instruments were gone,” Mr. Treble said.

“I see,” said Lily. “So our task is to determine the whereabouts of the missing instruments and return them to their rightful owners.”

“Sounds about right,” Mr. Treble agreed.

Sounds? You should know. You were the one who called us here. I didn’t say that aloud.

What I did say was, “I think we should start by talking to the kids whose instruments went missing and see if we can’t find anything out. There’s no way this is some kind of accident.” There were way too many kids with missing instruments for this to be a fluke or mistake. The instruments were targeted. I was pretty sure of that. It had to be a prank. Or worse.

“I agree,” Lily agreed. “Let us start by questioning the victims. It may lead us to some clues. May I recommend that we separate them instead of questioning them all as a group, Boss?”

“Why?”

“Questioning them together will encourage groupthink. Teasing out what happened and uncovering the pun that caused this wrongdoing will be easier if we piece together the story ourselves, from individual testimony.”

“If you say so.” I was game for it. “We can split them down the middle. You take half, I take half.”

Lily nodded once decisively.

“Here,” Mr. Treble said. “This may help.” He handed me a sheet of printer paper that looked — and felt — kind of like it had been used as a tissue at some point. Whatever this vaguely green gunk all over it was, I sure hoped it wasn’t snot, but I wasn’t holding my breath. I wished I was though, because then I wouldn’t have had to smell it.

I wiped as much slime off of the sheet as I could and Lily and I scanned it. It was the class roster, filled front and back with the names of all the kids in marching band. Next to each name was a number: 9, 10, 11, or 12. That was probably their grade. And next to each grade number was the instrument that each kid played. Saxophone. Trumpet. Flute. Timpani. Theremin. Ocarina. Keytar. Didgeridoo. The usual.

Circled in (snotproof) marker were 10 or so names in particular. “Those are the ones with missing instruments,” said Mr. Treble.

“Notice anything funny?” I asked Lily.

“Yes. All the students whose names are circled play the same instrument.”

“Bingo.”

Violin. Every single kid whose instrument had vanished was a violin player.

“Wait a second,” I said. “Violins are string instruments. There are strings in our marching band? How does that work?”

“It doesn’t,” Mr. Treble replied curtly. “That’s why we’re consistently ranked as one of the worst high school marching bands in the state.”

It was true. Somehow I remembered that last year we had swept last place in every marching competition we’d entered. It was a state record, and it wasn’t about to be broken anytime soon. At least not by anyone but us.

All of a sudden, Mr. Treble was all waterworks again. He was leaking, and worse than normal. Misty sobs escaped his throat, gasp after moist gasp. He was expelling droplets the size of walnuts, except way smaller.

“I-I-I-I’m sorry,” he choked out. “I just… I just…”

PPPPFLGHLLPPPHTTFFPT. A spray that could shame a whale’s erupted from Mr. Treble’s nose. At the last second, reflexes I barely even knew I had saved me from taking snotspray and booger balls to the face. Lily ducked out of the way too, saving herself from the sticky spray.

“Oh god. I’m sho shorry.” Even his words were devolving into a slurry of phlegm.

“I-it’s fine,” I lied. “No problem. I can see why you’re upset.” As little as Mr. Treble seemed to care about the missing instruments, he was still the school’s only music teacher. There was bound to be at least some tiny mucus sac of lament somewhere deep inside the guy. I could see why my reminding him of the marching band’s total, constant, abject failure was making him sad.

“Upset? Oh, no, ‘snot that at all,” he said. He straightened out his clothes and wiped his nose with a wet tissue wad. “Don’t get me wrong. These are tears of joy.”

You mean you’re happy about this?! It was my turn to spew. Or it would have been if I’d been drinking anything at the moment. What kind of teacher would be happy about his students’ instruments going missing at best or getting stolen at worst? This one apparently. What a stand-up guy. It almost made me want to sit down out of sheer exhaustion.

“I’m just so… so… so happy. Not having to conduct the violins is the best thing to happen to me since I won 25 cents off that $1 — snnnnnoooooooorrrrrrrrrt!! — scratcher three and a half years ago. All our violin players suck. They’re just the worst of the worst of the worst. Not a single one of them can play worth a darn except for Vance. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I do want you guys to help find their instruments and everything. For their sakes, you know? But personally, I hope you never do. If I never have to conduct them again, I’ll be better off for it. Well, good luck.”

Then he walked outside, following the last couple students and leaving me, Lily, and the violin players behind to sort out what happened and get to the bottom of the missing musical instruments.

The end of Pun Detectives and the Case of the Missing Music (Part 2)!
To be continued in Part 3!