Something’s a bit soapy about this.
‘We’ve solved it. Famous Kid stole the necklace!’ I say in my excited ThunderButt voice. We’ve just left Hugo’s parents’ shop and we’re standing out in the street. Mr and Mrs Goldstein said they would talk to Abby’s mum about Abby’s theory, but I don’t see why we have to wait for that to happen. I’m finally going to get to beat Famous Kid once and for all. ‘Let’s take him to jail. We’ve got him!’
‘No, we don’t,’ Abby replies, still scribbling in her notebook.
‘What do you mean, we don’t?’ I ask. I’ve watched enough Captain Kickbutt cartoons and read enough Captain Kickbutt comics to know how it works. Find the bad guy, then catch the bad guy.
‘We have a suspect,’ Abby says. ‘But we don’t have any proof.’
Oh, come on! She must be getting this stuff from her Hailey Plum books. Proof?
Abby sighs the same way Miss Sweet often closes a textbook and sighs. It’s a sigh that seems to say, ‘How did I get lumped with you lot?’
‘What are you going to say?’ Abby asks. ‘What are you going to do? Walk up to him and say, “Spencer Daniels, you stole a necklace!”? He’ll just say, “No, I didn’t.” And then you’ll be like . . . Oh, what now?’
I really thought she would be more friendly to ThunderButt than she is to me, but no, apparently not.
I turn around everywhere, pretending to look for Max. Abby stares at me strangely.
Luckily Pip and Tyson turn up, although Pip looks really sad and Tyson . . . well, Tyson has soap suds coming out of his ears. How could they go and visit Spencer Daniels at his trailer and end up looking like this?
Really, Hugo? Surely the obvious first question should be about the soap suds?
I grin. I think that might be my favourite sentence of all time.
‘What did he do?’ Abby asks.
‘Well, I got to his trailer and knocked on the door, and his mum came out,’ Pip says. Famous Kid’s mum always seems to be lurking around in the shadow of his giant head. She’s kinda creepy. ‘I said I wanted to see Spencer, and she called me a little rat and told me to go away!’
‘She called you a rat?’ Hugo asks, surprised.
‘It gets worse,’ Tyson says. This must be the soap suds bit. ‘I told her she wasn’t allowed to speak to my sister that way. That, actually, Pip had done something really nice for Spencer, even if it was a little bit, you know . . . weird, and that she just wanted to tell him about it.’
No soap suds yet.
‘That’s when The Fridge came out,’ Pip says. ‘He had this big plastic bucket in his hand. He’d been washing up. There were soap suds and stuff.’
Okay, there are the suds, but how did they get on Tyson? This is turning into a really long story.
‘I was like, okay, cool, this guy will understand,’ Tyson says. ‘The Fridge is my mentor. We have a connection, you know?’
Hugo puts his hand over his mouth in astonishment. ‘This is horrible,’ he says.
Pip screws up her face and looks at me weirdly.
‘You’ll never believe what he did,’ Pip says.
‘What?’ Abby, Hugo and I reply together. Surely this is the important bit.
Thank you! This is why Tyson has soap suds in his ears. Finally.
‘Then out comes Spencer finally. He’s like, “What’s going on out here?” and then he sees Tyson and he starts laughing,’ Pip says. ‘He goes, “Aren’t you George Khan’s kids?” and I’m thinking, oh, good, he’s going to apologise for his insane mum and his kitchen-appliance bodyguard. So I’m like, “Yeah,” and then he goes, “I hate your dad!” He said he was a bad actor and he was ugly! In fact, we’re all ugly and Redhill stinks and he can’t wait to get out of this stupid place!’
‘What a horrible person!’ Abby says.
‘I know,’ I add, shaking my head. ‘Max would be horrified!’
They seem to have stopped noticing that I keep saying my own name all the time. That’s good. I don’t think they have any idea that Max Walburt and ThunderButt are actually the same person.
‘He turned out to be the most awful person I’ve ever met!’ Pip says.
‘No one is allowed to speak to my friends like that!’ Hugo says, putting his hands on his hips. ‘Or pour dirty soap suds on them!’
‘He’s not just awful,’ I say, using my deep ThunderButt voice. I turn to Pip and Hugo. ‘He’s also a thief. He stole the necklace from the Goldsteins. We just worked it out.’
The twins gasp.
‘Oh, we did, did we?’ Abby says, glaring at me.
She’s not much of a team player, that Abby Purcell.
‘No way!’ Pip says. ‘Really?’
‘We think he did,’ Abby replies. ‘We just need proof.’
I cross my arms and scowl. She’s on about proof again.
‘I want to get this guy so bad,’ I say. ‘I bet Max would want to get him too.’
Everyone gives me that weird look again.
‘So how do we get proof?’ Hugo asks Abby.
‘Either we find some evidence that shows that he did it,’ Abby explains, ‘or we find a way to get him to admit to it.’
Now, that’s an interesting idea. I had been imagining we were going to have to do something really boring like dusting for fingerprints or talking to witnesses or yawn, yawn, yawn. But, instead, what if we could do a sort of ‘sting’? A face-off between ThunderButt and Famous Kid? A face-off where Famous Kid goes down!
‘How would we ever get him to admit to it?’ Pip asks, but my mind is already racing.
‘He’s got this big press conference tomorrow, right?’ I ask in my deep, confident ThunderButt voice.
‘Yeah,’ Tyson says.