The S’more Bomb

A round, yeasted donut filled with puffy marshmallow cream and topped with a hazelnut-milk-chocolate glaze and graham cracker crunchies!

The next morning, Mattie pushed herself up in bed and saw Aunt Molly outside on the deck, staring across the highway at some bright yellow caution tape. It was blocking off the ditch. That meant the sheriff’s deputies coming last night hadn’t been all bad. The deputies must have noticed the gloop. And now maybe Aunt Molly knew that the gloop could be trouble too. But somehow that didn’t make Mattie feel any better. She knew now that grown-ups weren’t always able to fix things. Even when they wanted to. Even when they tried.

Aunt Molly was going to need her help.

Mattie crawled across a still-snoring Beanie and tiptoed out onto the deck. She hugged her goose-bumpy arms in the morning chill. Next to her, Aunt Molly sighed and put her mug of tea down on the rail.

Steam curled up into the air.

“Does Mrs. Mantooth know yet?” Mattie asked.

Aunt Molly flattened her mouth into an I’m-trying-not-to-worry line and pulled Mattie in for a sideways hug. “Don’t worry about that, kiddo. I’m sure this will all be fine. I’m sorry those dumpers have been waking you up in the middle of the night, but the officers will figure out what’s been going on. Your job is to have the best last six days of summer ever.”

A little less than six days, Mattie thought. Aunt Molly was counting today too, which wasn’t something Mattie ever did. To Aunt Molly, a dozen donuts was always thirteen. But although it was still morning, Wednesday had already slipped by a little bit. So there were really only five days of summer left. But Mattie didn’t correct her aunt. And she didn’t argue with Molly about the sheriff’s department being able to figure out what was going on.

Even if, last time, they never were.

Just then, Mrs. Mantooth came mincing down her driveway and across the parking lot. Her black leggings and fleece sweater were crisp and sharp in the fuzzy morning light. Even though she was on the official suspects list in Mattie’s notebook, Mattie didn’t really think that she was a glooper. She’d decided nobody would dump bad stuff near their own well. Not even Mrs. Mantooth. Besides, she was enough trouble as a neighbor already.

“Mattie, why don’t you take Beanie home and play at the Little’s for a while?” Aunt Molly asked. “I need to go talk with Mrs. Mantooth. Have fun—no worrying—okay?”

She turned toward the deck steps but waited for Mattie to answer.

“Okay,” Mattie said, hoping it wasn’t a lie. She’d try not to worry. But she had to catch the gloopers before Mrs. Mantooth could make too much of a fuss. She’d make sure Aunt Molly’s donut shop was safe. And she wasn’t going to count on the county sheriff.

Not again.

Aunt Molly swept down the deck steps, off to intercept Mrs. Mantooth before she could make it to their trailer. She had left her tea steaming on the railing, and the scent of peppermint prickled in Mattie’s nose.

Mattie hurried inside and changed into her softest T-shirt, her shorts with the biggest pockets, and a fuzzy green fleece with even more pockets. She loaded the pockets up with Aunt Molly’s old phone, a charger, and her notebook. She almost put the jar of gloop into her jacket pocket too, but she’d already showed that to Sasha. Besides, it might break.

Before leaving, she shook Beanie awake. “Come on, we’ve got to get Sasha—I’ll explain on the way.”

Beanie blinked a couple times and hopped out of bed. She had to hike her pajama bottoms up by the time they got to the creek. But she splashed along behind Mattie, nodding while Mattie tried to explain about the stakeout and the deputies and Sasha.

Over at the Little Family Campground, Sasha was already awake. As soon as Mattie made it up the bank and into the campground, she heard Sasha’s window rattle open. Sasha knelt in her top bunk, peering down, waiting for them to arrive.

“Beans, grab some cereal from the kitchen,” she said through the opening. “We need to have a meeting.” Then she rattled the window closed again.

Beanie looked up at Mattie.

“Told you she believes us,” Mattie said.

“How’d you do that?” Beanie asked with amazement.

“I didn’t. She figured it out by herself.”

Beanie huffed up the back stairs and charged into the kitchen. Somehow she got two boxes of cereal, a carton of milk, and three bowls and spoons to fit within her tiny arms. She was like an octopus. Mattie kind of wished she had snuck over some of Aunt Molly’s Wednesday specials. The S’more Bomb was a serious donut for serious thinking.

But cereal would have to do.

Sasha thumped to the floor in one jump when Beanie and Mattie came in with breakfast. She snatched a box of granola from Beanie, crammed her hand in, and crunched away.

“All right,” she said. “Let’s list what we know about these . . .”

“Gloopers?” Mattie suggested.

“Right. Gloopers it is.”

Mattie pulled her notebook out of her pocket, happy to finally have Sasha on her side. “Let’s start with the night of the broken pot. The owl tapped on my window and woke me up, spinning its head toward the road three times so I’d notice the white truck. I saw two people. One skinny and tall. One shorter, but not short-short, and roundish. That one was wearing a hooded sweatshirt. They were both doing something with a floppy hose when the owl dropped or threw or maybe pushed a flowerpot off the trailer.”

“Let’s stick to the facts,” Sasha interrupted, making a face. “A pot got smashed. You didn’t actually see the owl do it, right?”

Mattie squeezed the little notebook. Working with Sasha was never going to be one-hundred-percent easy.

“What happened next?” Sasha said, trying to ignore the whole owl thing.

Mattie sucked in a breath. At least she had Sasha listening. “The gloopers heard the crash and sped off. I didn’t get their license plate, and Aunt Molly woke up.”

“Okay, next!” Sasha said, pacing.

“The gloop clue. It came the day after. The owl visited me at the campground—I’m sure it was following me around until I was alone—and it dropped a load of gravely gloop for me to find.”

Mattie raised her eyebrows, waiting for Sasha to question her account of the owl, but this time Sasha didn’t interrupt.

“That’s when we became detectives!” Beanie said, raising her spoon.

“Right,” Mattie replied. “The gloop trail. We found more stinky goo at the side of the highway, right where that truck had been parked the night before. It looked like people had dumped the gloop a few times. Some of it was almost dried up.”

Sasha squished her mouth like she wanted to hurry past the part of the story where she’d been so totally wrong, so Mattie charged ahead.

“Night two,” she said. “The owl woke me up and left the second clue. Two jiggety lines drawn in the flowerbed with its talon.”

Now Sasha couldn’t help interrupting. “Come on, Matt. How do you know it was some special message? It didn’t look like anything to me.”

Mattie was determined not to get off track. She didn’t have time to try to convince Sasha of something Sasha didn’t already believe, because that would take forever. She flipped to the next page in her notebook. “Focus, Sasha. I still need to show you the list of suspects I made.”

“We made,” Beanie squeaked.

Mattie nodded at Beanie.

Sasha stopped pacing and peeked over Mattie’s shoulder to read the descriptions. She poked at the list of people from the campground. “That guy checked out this morning. The mom and her teenage son are still here . . . Those guys are gone.”

Sasha narrowed her eyes when she got to the notes about Mrs. Mantooth, the angry arguing couple, and Hermit Harriet from the donut shop parking lot. “Why don’t you have that Mr. Slug guy on the list? I saw him drive by yesterday.”

Mattie shook her head. “No, Mr. Slug only comes on Sundays. Besides, he’s an old friend of my grandma’s. You must have seen somebody else.”

Sasha shrugged. “Well, I would make her suspect number one,” she said, pointing to Mrs. Mantooth’s name.

“But . . .” Mattie stumbled, trying to explain why that couldn’t be. Mrs. Mantooth’s demands about the well had her worried, but she didn’t really think Mantooth was a glooper.

Sasha crunched on another handful of granola. “And Hermit Harriet should be number two. She’s definitely suspicious. There’s a trail that goes right behind her old shed. We should go snoop around.”

Mattie wasn’t so sure.

She felt like they were still missing something.

Her mind ticked through all the customers who’d come into Owl’s over the last few weeks. Lines and lines of people. Tourists, regulars, friends, neighbors. All the happy parents and kissy couples, the silly slug man, and old wrinkled grandparents driving swanky new motor homes. There were too many people to consider. They had to find some clue that narrowed it down.

Something from the night before had to point them in the right direction.

Mattie flipped to her next page of notes.

“Last night. When the truck pulled up, I grabbed the old phone and ran outside. But it was dead.” Mattie paused to shoot Beanie a look. “And then Sasha’s flash went off. I didn’t get the license number, again, because they drove off so fast.”

“Sorry,” Beanie said through a mouthful of cereal. “I didn’t mean to forget to plug it in. Besides, the stakeout was boring without Sasha.”

Mattie wasn’t mad. Well, she was a little bit mad about the phone, but she wasn’t mad about Beanie saying a sleepover was boring without Sasha.

It kind of was.

Mattie raised her eyebrows, wishing Sasha would say sorry too, but she didn’t. The flash from the disposable camera had scared the gloopers away, keeping Mattie from getting the license plate number. But it could also be their best hope of finding out who dumped the gloop.

“So, did you get a picture?” Mattie asked Sasha. “Was that flash worth it?”

Mattie had been wondering about the camera all morning. The flash had come from the boulders across the highway. If Sasha had been even halfway pointing the camera in the right direction—which, knowing Sasha, she absolutely was—then she would have to have a good picture of the gloopers. Maybe even their license plate.

“I snapped three pictures on the click camera,” Sasha said, finally sitting down. “Two before the one with the flash. But we can’t see them yet.”

She slid her hand into her pocket and pulled out the green and black click camera. The girls passed it around their little circle.

“Busted,” said Beanie.

“It’s so light,” Mattie said, lifting it up. It didn’t look promising, that smashed-up cardboard-and-plastic box. “Do you think it’ll still work?”

“Course it will,” Sasha said. But then she didn’t look so sure. “I mean . . . it got cracked after I took the pictures, so I bet they’re totally fine.”

She grabbed the camera back and stuffed it into her pocket.

Mattie knew Sasha didn’t want to admit that maybe there was no good picture on that camera. Mattie didn’t want to think it either. But they both knew it was a possibility.

“We just have to get the pictures developed,” Sasha said. “If I got a good picture, which I bet I did, then we can show it to that deputy guy. But let’s see the photos before telling anybody else. I’m not getting into trouble for sneaking out onto the highway if the pictures are all blurry and black. We can take the camera somewhere special, and they’ll print the pictures out on shiny paper just like in the olden days.”

This is when Mattie got nervous.

Really nervous.

Her head started to feel like a soda on a summer day. Fizzy. Bubbly. Warm. She knew that there was nowhere in Big Sur to get photos developed. There wasn’t even a big grocery store or a pharmacy. You had to go to Carmel or Monterey for stuff like that. You had to ride in a car or a bus for stuff like that.

Which was definitely going to be a problem.

One that Mattie couldn’t ignore.

Not anymore.