The pantry-elevator touched down. After such a sudden surprise drop, the landing was actually kind of gentle. Nipper stood, stunned, for a moment, facing the same shelves he’d been facing upstairs. Then he turned and peered out through the doorway.
A long corridor led away from the pantry-elevator. It was lined with metal cabinets. They looked a lot like the ones Nipper’s dad had in his office, where he kept all his lightbulb notes, charts, and diagrams. Nipper counted ten cabinets on each side of the hallway.
He tried to read the labels on one of the cabinets, but the writing was small, and the light in the hallway wasn’t very good. He reached for his hand lens, but then he remembered that Samantha had it.
The door at the other end of the hallway was half-open, and light streamed in from the space beyond. There was only one place to go, so he walked to the door and peeked through the opening.
The room seemed to be empty, so he pushed the door open and entered.
It was a tiny office. A desk, a floor lamp, and an old, wooden swivel chair were against the wall. Above the desk, two large, glossy photos were pinned to a bulletin board. Each one featured a smiling face. They were photos of Missy’s parents.
Nipper leaned in for a closer look. “Craig Zilch,” he read on the bottom of the photo of Missy’s dad.
He scratched his head. That was odd. He’d expect the man’s last name to be Snoddgrass. He inspected the second shiny photo.
“Lucinda Q. Blurglestein?” Nipper said.
He shook his head. Who were these people?
A folder on the desk was stuffed with papers. He opened it.
He gasped.
They looked like legal papers.
“My Yankees?” Nipper asked breathlessly.
Could he have found his player contracts and the deed to Yankee Stadium?
He took a closer look.
No. They weren’t baseball player contracts. Nipper hung his head sadly until something on the paper caught his eye.
“Model Parent Release Form,” Nipper read. “Employment Agreement.”
He scanned the first document. The page was filled with a ton of fine print that he wasn’t interested in reading without his hand lens. He skipped to the bottom. In bigger print it said:
ROLE:
Jonathan Jacob Snoddgrass.
DESCRIPTION:
A friendly and mild-mannered father in his midforties.
Winner of several World’s Greatest Dad awards.
Alert, confident, eager to please. Boss-level griller.
Nipper picked up a second contract:
ROLE:
Rebecca Jane Snoddgrass
DESCRIPTION:
A cheerful and energetic mother, president of the PTA.
Kind, content, soft-spoken. Blueberry pie enthusiast.
Frilly apron wearer.
Nipper shook his head and closed the folder. He wasn’t interested in contracts that didn’t have anything to do with his Yankees.
He glanced sideways and noticed something on the wall to his right. An oil painting in a fancy gold frame.
The painting featured a boat—an old-fashioned sailing ship. A flag with a skull and eight bones sticking out of it flapped from the top of the main mast.
A pirate crew fired cannons and waved torches. Nipper counted ten…fifteen…twenty people on board.
Near the middle of the ship, a pirate captain waved his sword at some poor guy on a plank stretching out over the choppy water.
Nipper could swear the captain in the painting looked familiar. Nipper leaned forward to get a better look and gasped. It was Nathaniel, Buffy’s one-legged pirate assistant! The man had attacked Nipper with a sword and probably would have killed him if a Komodo dragon hadn’t saved Nipper!
He squinted to try to make out the person on the plank.
Wait…a…minute…
It was him!
“What? Huh? Who?” Nipper spluttered.
In the painting, Jeremy Bernard Spinner stood on the edge of the plank, about to plunge into the dark, choppy sea. He was wrapped in mustard-yellow-colored string, with his hands pinned to his sides. Sharks splashed in the water below, eagerly looking up at their next meal.
Nipper turned his back on the painting.
“How incredibly…awful,” he said quietly, and shivered.
It really was awful. And alarming. And it probably was a big clue about really important things. He had to tell Sam!
Nipper left the room quickly.
“I bet this has something to do with the WIND,” he said as he reached the pantry. “When I tell Sam all about this, she’ll probably want to come back and explore…”
He spotted a box on one of the shelves.
“Peppermint s’mores cookies,” he read from the box.
He picked it up and shook it.
The box was empty.
“It figures,” said Nipper.
Snap!
ZOOM!
The pantry, with Nipper inside, shot upward.