The house was empty. Fran could have been anywhere by now. Well, not anywhere. She was probably headed straight for my family! I had to warn them. Only I didn’t know where — or even who — they were!

“Okay, don’t panic,” I told myself. “I’ll figure something out.”

I looked around. On the computer screen were the pages of Dr. Frankenstein’s journal she had scanned in. I could see they talked about my dad and his parts. I started printing them out.

But which body part was Fran after? She could be tracking down any one of them.

I took a deep breath and thought it through. She had run out without closing the front door. She must have seen something that made her jump up and rush out. What could have made her do that?

I looked at the last thing she had scanned from the journal. It was a TOTALLY gross drawing of a pair of feet. When I looked at those feet, I didn’t feel grossed out. Instead I was shocked.

Those teeny toenails! The bumpy ankles. The feet in the drawing looked just like MY feet!

But there was something else that made my hair stand on end: The words scribbled on the bottom of the page. “Subject: Mr. Percy of Victorville.”

Mr. Percy must have been the man my dad got his feet from!

I didn’t even have to type the town or the man’s name into Fran’s computer. They were the last things in her search history. I clicked on the one article in the list that was highlighted in green, meaning it had already been read. It led to an article about Mr. Percy, a famous explorer who lived in a small town called Victorville.

That must have been the location where Fran was headed right now!

I had to get there before she did and warn him! Even though I had no idea where Victorville was or how to get there.

As I jumped up to rush out, I accidentally hit the mouse and clicked on another link. It brought up an article, which said that the famous explorer Mr. Percy of Victorville had died many years ago (I hoped before Dr. Frankenstein got his hands on his feet!).

I remembered what Fran had said: bodies that were dead for too long were no use to her. So I sat down and did a little more digging.

Turns out, Mr. Percy had a son. His name was Robert — and he was an explorer too.

I printed out the most recent article I could find about him. It talked about Robert’s expedition to an island in the South Pacific.

According to the story, Robert didn’t bring any of his high-tech exploring gear with him on this expedition. He had to use what he found. He lived on bananas and used coconuts to mark his trail. Blah, blah, blah. That didn’t really interest me.

But the photo did . . .

In it, Robert was barefoot. He had the same teeny toenails and the same bumpy ankles as I did.

No doubt about it . . . he was my cousin!

The article mentioned that an Explorers Club had sponsored Robert’s trip. That was a couple years ago. I couldn’t find any more recent information on Robert, but a quick search revealed that the Explorers Club was right here in town.

Fran didn’t know any of that — it wasn’t in her search history.

Which meant while she was chasing a dead end (literally), I had a chance to find Robert before she did!

I took out my journal and wiped the last bits of guacamole off it. There were still plenty of blank pages in it, so I taped in all of the scanned pages I had from Dr. Frankenstein’s journal, as well as the article about Robert.

Then I printed out a map of town with the Explorers Club marked on it. I taped that map to a page too.

That’s when I realized: I had used Fran’s computer to do all this! She could probably figure out how to retrieve my search, just like I had found her search!

Even if I tried to smash the computer or delete the search, someone as smart as Fran could probably figure out a way to retrieve it.

But there was no time to worry about that. I had to get to Robert first! Grabbing my journal, I rushed to the door.

And then I stopped.

I ran back to the refrigerator, grabbed all the guacamole, and dumped it down the leftovers chute. I didn’t want the beast outside going hungry. I didn’t know when Fran would come back. I just hoped that when she did, it was without my cousin.