Charlene was sobbing. Jacinda was indignant. Mrs. Morales was puzzled, and nobody knew what was happening. Everybody was trying to make sense of the non-end of the show.

Ms. Early stood onstage and clapped her hands. “Dontel Marquise,” she called. “And, if I know anything, Smashie McPerter. Come up here. I think you two have some explaining to do.”

Smashie threw up her hands. “What do I know? Dontel, why did you give that paper to Jacinda’s mom?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Morales, puzzled. “Why? What is it?”

“It goes with these.” Jacinda crossed over to her mother and handed her three other pieces of paper. “We’ll need them all.”

“Jacinda!”

“Dontel!”

“Charlene!”

Everyone was yelling at everybody else, and nobody could make head or tail of a thing. The adults were concerned, and the rest of the third-graders were unsure whether or not to leave their Mashed Potato positions.

“BY THUNDER, WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?” It was Mr. Bloom. “Nobody knows what in tarnation you are talking about, Mr. M. and Miss McP.!”

“Yes!” cried Mrs. Armstrong. “You are making me ILL with worry!”

“Begin at the beginning, Dontel and Smashie,” said Ms. Early. “And don’t stop until we all understand why our musicale had to be disrupted.”

“It had better be good,” said Siggie.

“Everybody better come up on the stage,” said Smashie. “It’s kind of a long story. And I don’t even get the end of it myself.”

So the families clumped up the stage stairs and joined their children. Miss Dismont began to pass around the plates of refreshments Cyrus had made as Dontel started the tale.

“It all started with the missing jars of Herr Goop,” Dontel began. “You all remember how we worried they were being stolen, Room 11?”

Room 11, scattered around the stage, nodded. Family members leaned toward their children, and whispered explanations filled the air.

“Well, it turns out we were right. They were taken.”

“Are you accusing Mr. Bloom again?” Tatiana was outraged.

“What?!” cried Mrs. Armstrong. “Please do not tell me you are accusing a treasured member of our staff! Why, I will be SO ILL I’LL NEED A NIGHT NURSE! I’ll —”

“No!” said Smashie hastily. “We thought it was him once, but we were wrong! He only found the first jar!”

“We keep trying to tell him we’re sorry — we even baked him some apology brownies a few days ago, but they are yucky now,” said Dontel.

“You poor kids,” said Mr. Bloom. “Why, I forgave you ages ago. Just away at my UFO convention and no way of telling ya. No need for apology brownies. I know how it is to be eight years old and get carried away. Why, one time, I was convinced my own mother took my toy helicopter. Why would the woman want it? I don’t know. But it made all kinds of sense to me at the time.” He shook his head and patted their shoulders. “You’re my little friends. Of course I forgive you.”

Smashie’s eyes filled. She was very sorry, and very grateful. Smashie’s mother and Grammy hugged her shoulders.

“Back to the mystery, Smashie and Dontel,” said Joyce firmly.

“We figured it was too much of a coincidence for the next two jars to go missing,” said Smashie. “So we knew something was afoot, even if we didn’t know what.”

“I thought something was afoot after the first jar, too,” cried Charlene. “When that jar was gone, I was sure Carlos had taken it to give to his father so Mr. Garcia could figure out what was in our Herr Goop and make it and sell it as his own!”

“What!” cried Carlos and Mr. Garcia at the same time.

“Oh!” said Joyce. “So that’s why you were staring at him during that tag game.”

Charlene nodded. Carlos looked crestfallen.

“Please,” said Mr. Garcia, startled. “What are you talking about?”

“You know what she’s talking about!” cried Mrs. Stott. “I overheard you telling the other gals at the salon that you didn’t believe I made our goop in my own kitchen. You said I had to have made it in your salon, using your ingredients, and therefore it might as well have your name on it!”

Mr. Garcia looked puzzled. Then his face cleared. “Mrs. Stott,” he said, “you misunderstood. I was talking about the birthday cake one of the stylists made and served at our salon party for my wife. I was being rude about the stylist’s cooking, for which I am sorry, but I never, ever meant your goop. Why, you invented that goop and it’s genius!”

Mrs. Stott’s jaw dropped.

“Is this why you left my salon?” Mr. Garcia asked her.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Stott. “It is.”

“Please come back,” pleaded Mr. Garcia. “The salon hasn’t been the same without your creativity. And your real gift is sculpture. We need you!”

Charlene’s mother blushed, and her shoulders sagged with relief. “Mr. Garcia, thank you! I’d love to come back. I miss your salon, and it really has not been all that much fun trying to strike out on my own.”

“Back to the mystery, please,” said John. “I mean, I’m glad for you and all, Mrs. Stott, but I still don’t get what’s going on.”

“We didn’t either, at first,” said Smashie. “We thought the goop was just being stolen.”

“I helped people think that,” confessed Charlene. “I shouted when the second one disappeared so no one would suspect me of stealing our own goop. But then Dontel must have seen one of the missing jars in the gym —”

“And it had a secret code on it!” Dontel finished.

There were many gasps.

“A secret code?”

“What was it?”

Smashie and Dontel explained the math they had used to figure it out.

“Yes,” said Charlene. “That was it.”

“Well, I’m glad, at least, you were paying attention in math class,” said Ms. Early. “Please go on, Smashie and Dontel.”

“We figured out pretty quickly it must have been Charlene who was writing the codes and taking the jars to hide in the gym for someone else to find,” said Dontel.

“Dontel was the one who figured that out,” said Smashie.

“But why was she doing that? What did the codes lead to?” asked a parent.

“Messages,” said Dontel. “All over town. At first we thought that they were just, uh — notes,” said Dontel delicately. “To Carlos.”

Smashie was less delicate. “Because of all the silly like-like talk.”

“You thought I was sending Carlos like-like notes? Sheesh!” Charlene was very put out.

Carlos cast his eyes down sadly.

“Yes,” said Smashie. “But then when I got my hair cut —”

“You got your hair cut?” asked Miss Dismont. “Why, it looks just the same.”

“So they tell me,” said Smashie flatly. “Anyway, when I got my hair cut by Mrs. Stott, Charlene had put a last, nearly whole jar that Mrs. Stott had scraped together from the last of her ingredients into a bag. I knew that it just had to have a code on it. And I was right — it did! So when Mrs. Stott gave me the bag to bring to school, it meant that Dontel and I got to the secret message before Charlene’s partner in crime did.”

“I was so mad my mom gave you that jar,” admitted Charlene. “I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to hide it in the gym!”

“I bet,” said Smashie. “Anyway, when we found the message, it wasn’t a regular old like-like note at all! It turned out to be a part of the Herr Goop recipe!”

“Charlene!” cried Mrs. Stott. “Were you giving our recipe away to Carlos because you thought his dad had the rights to it?”

“No!” cried Charlene. “Mom, how could you even think that?”

“We thought that, too,” confessed Dontel. “But we were wrong. We knew Charlene was writing the codes and taking the jars and leaving them to be found, but it turned out it had nothing to do with Carlos. And everything to do with you, Mrs. Stott.”

“What do you mean?” asked Mrs. Stott. “And, Charlene, if you took all the jars meant for your class —”

“Except the first one.” Smashie interrupted.

“— and used them for this” — Mrs. Stott fought for the words — “code thing, how come we still had them all for tonight?”

“When I took the second one back, I pretended you had replaced one of the jars and brought it to school for us,” said Charlene, her eyes welling up a bit with the admission of her fib. “I pretended you had a mysterious benefactor.”

“Oh!” said Mrs. Stott. “So you weren’t just kidding around when you mentioned a mysterious benefactor, Smashie.”

“Nope,” said Smashie. “I still thought that was true at that point.”

“And I put the last missing jar back in the reading corner so someone in our own class would find it and think I’d just been careless,” Charlene confessed.

“I’m the one who found it,” said Tatiana.

“What I don’t get,” said Siggie, “is how you managed to take the jars out from under our very noses. With the exception of the one that rolled away, the others were taken when we were all there in Room 11.”

“Well” — Charlene’s voice was teary — “it was pretty easy. You people don’t zip your backpacks much. Mom, I’m so sorry!” Charlene’s eyes filled again. “I was lying and pretending all over the place!”

Smashie was full of sympathy. She had been just as conflicted about fibbing as Charlene. On the other side of the coin, though, she thought, I was fibbing for justice. But who could say where the line for fibbing was drawn? Smashie shook her head.

“Charlene did pretend,” said Dontel. “When I peeled up the label on the jar before our last dance tonight, I saw one of the old codes underneath. So it just confirmed to me that Charlene had taken the other, coded jars and then arranged to have them reappear with new, code-less labels on the top.”

“Yes,” said Smashie. “But now you have lost even me. I thought we had figured out that Carlos was going to get the last part of the formula during the Mashed Potato, and that it was my job to take it from Charlene and make sure he didn’t get it. How did you figure out that Jacinda was Charlene’s real partner in crime?”

“It was when we all lined up in height order tonight,” said Dontel. “I realized then that in a black sneaky Thief Suit, like the one we saw at the Dairy Delight, Jacinda is the same height as Carlos and would look the same. They are both excellent runners, too. And I knew how worried Charlene was about her mom’s business, and I remembered that Mrs. Morales was a patent lawyer, and it all . . . it all just fell into place. I knew Charlene was just trying to get the goop patented in her mom’s name before someone else did it first!”

“You’ve got it exactly,” said Charlene, her eyes filling with tears again. “Even though you told us that Mr. Bloom had the first jar, I couldn’t shake the worry that Carlos was trying to get my mom’s goop. He kept staring at me!”

“Charlene —” said Joyce gently. But Smashie interrupted.

“Dontel, I had no idea!” cried Smashie. “I thought you had gone nuts and wanted Carlos’s dad to have the formula after all!”

“I’m sorry, Smashie! I asked you if you understood before the dance started, and you said yes.”

“I meant I understood the plan we had made,” said Smashie. “Not that you had made a new one. No wonder we were dancing at cross purposes the whole time during the Mashed Potato! Our minds were not as one!”

Charlene was sobbing again. “Mom, I would never betray you! Me and Jacinda did it all for you! I wanted you to strike it rich with the goop!”

“I am more than happy to help with the patent,” said Mrs. Morales.

“Why, thank you!” said Mrs. Stott.

“But why didn’t you just give me the formula, Charlene?” asked Mrs. Morales, puzzled. “Why all the codes and running around?”

“I needed to make sure that the whole formula was never in one place, in case someone did steal it,” Charlene explained. “This was important! It was top secret! It was industrial espionage! I couldn’t trust it to a plain old piece of paper delivered all at once in just a regular old way.”

Industrial espionage! Smashie couldn’t wait to add that to her and Dontel’s Investigator Language list.

“So Jacinda and I devised this plan,” Charlene continued.

“That first day on the blacktop?” asked Dontel.

“Yep,” said Charlene.

“We all thought you were just like-liking Carlos,” said Cyrus.

Charlene blushed. So did Carlos. “Well,” said Charlene, “I do think he’s a wonderful dancer.”

“And I — I . . .” stammered Carlos, “think you are amazing at hair.”

“Thank you,” said Charlene, and smiled a very small, shy smile at Carlos.

“Hoo-boy,” said John. “And so it begins.”

“Smashie and Dontel,” said Jacinda, “I’m sorry I let everyone be so mean to you about Mr. Bloom while you were investigating. I just had to throw people off the trail!”

“Yes,” said Charlene. “Me too. I really apologize! I stirred the pot about Mr. Bloom and you being awful that day in the gym just because you were by the basketball bins and I needed the area clear so Jacinda could find the goop I hid!”

“It’s okay,” said Smashie. “We understand now that you were trying to help your mom.”

“Jacinda, how did you get so involved in this?” asked her mother.

“I felt bad for Charlene and Mrs. Stott. It’s hard to be out of work,” said Jacinda, her lip quivering. “Daddy got laid off and he still . . .” She gulped and stopped. Her parents both put their arms around her.

“Well, it certainly is a fine goop,” said Ms. Early. “I am quite enjoying my own hair sculpture!”

“I sure enjoyed mine, too,” said Mr. Bloom. “But I got tired of all that extra hair and washed it out. I’m my old self again!”

Mr. Flange silently extended the near-empty jar of goop that he and Mr. Bloom had used to Charlene’s mother.

But Mrs. Stott shook her head. “You keep it,” she said. “We wound up with enough Herr Goop for the musicale after all, and I think it’s nice for you two to have the option of lengthening and molding your hair again someday if you want to.” She beamed at them. Mr. Bloom beamed back. It was hard to tell about Mr. Flange because of the size and length of his Herr Gooped mustache, but his eyes looked like they were smiling.

But not everyone was feeling the moment. “This goop stuff washes OUT?” Mrs. Kamarski exclaimed. “Billy Kamarski, why would you tell me it was permanent?”

“Um, because it was funny?”

“We’ll see how funny it is when I get you home with your hair washed in the tub!”

“Aw, Mom!”

“I’m not tired of my old self,” said Smashie unhappily. “I liked my old hair self. Now my hair goes in a lot of different directions when I don’t have the goop in.”

“I am more than happy to . . . recut anyone’s hair,” said Mr. Garcia. “For free, to celebrate Mrs. Stott’s return to my salon.”

“Thank you!” cried Joyce.

“Yes, thank you,” said Smashie, fully aware that nobody thought she needed a new cut.

“I look forward to making your hair beautiful,” Mr. Garcia said to Joyce, and Joyce and he exchanged beams.

“Smashie and Dontel,” said Ms. Early, “I would like to applaud your thinking, even if it has been a very disruptive week.”

“I second that!” said Miss Dismont. “And anyone using math to solve a mystery is an A-plus in my book! Now I think we should celebrate the whole third grade and this Hair Extravaganza and Musicale and its wonderful ending,” she continued. “Let’s have a party!”

“A dance party!” cried Jacinda.

“Yay! Yes!” cried the children.

“I know a great dance!” cried Mr. Bloom. “In keeping with the sixties stuff! It’s called the Jerk!”

And before Mrs. Armstrong could say a word of protest or about being ill, Mr. Bloom had the sound system blaring the Larks, and all the adults were moving.

“Woo-hoo!” cried the dancers.

“Whee!” cried the teachers.

And even Mrs. Armstrong moved her arms in the appropriate motions for the Jerk. Twice, even, she was seen to smile.

The music ended, and Ms. Early went up to the stage and took the microphone.

“I have another fun idea,” she said to the audience. “Dontel and his dad and Smashie’s grammy can teach everyone another sixties dance. It’s called the Loco-Motion.”

“What about me?” cried Smashie, stung. “Can’t I help teach it, too?”

“No,” said Ms. Early. “Because we need you to sing the song while we dance.”

“Sing . . . sing the song?” said Smashie, hardly daring to hope.

“Yes!” cried the audience as a whole.

Smashie caught her mother’s eye.

“Opportunity,” said her mother.

“And I know just what to sing,” said Smashie.

“I’ll improv the piano for you!” said John.

Smashie blinked with joy. “Thank you, Ms. Early!” She hugged her teacher. Ms. Early hugged her back. Then Smashie leaped to the front of the stage, feeling as light as air. While everybody lined up behind Dontel and Dr. Marquise and Grammy to learn the dance, she took up the microphone. “These aren’t going to be the real lyrics to ‘The Loco-Motion,’” she said. “I’m going to make some up in honor of Ms. Early and her tips about thinking. Me and Dontel couldn’t have solved this mystery without them.”

And then, to the tune of “The Loco-Motion,” Smashie began to sing as loudly as she could.

“Everybody needs to think and come and dance now!

Come on, third grade, motion sparks the notion!

You’ve got to use your brains if you want to advance now!

Come on, third grade, motion sparks the notion!”

Smashie was loud but the audience was louder. Everybody sang and danced, and nothing had ever felt quite so wonderful.