Daphne and Velma #2: The Dark Deception

“We never see you anymore,” Shawna pouted. “Now that you have that ‘important’ job.”

I ignored the way Shawna used air quotes around the word important and plastered on a smile. “Yeah, my internship is keeping me pretty busy.” I left out the more important truth, which was that, even if I hadn’t scored the internship, I’d have found some way to limit my time with Shawna. She and Nisha—and, come to think of it, a lot of my so-called friends—were part of my social circle mostly by default. We hung out together because we were all popular; we were all popular because we hung out together. It was a real chicken-or-the-egg situation.

I distracted myself by picturing Nisha and Shawna dressed up as chickens so as not to get annoyed at the way they were making fun of Velma as she danced with Fred.

“Ugh, don’t say the G-word,” Shawna cried. “Something creepy is happening here, and I don’t like it.”

“How could I not? The girl is constantly staring at everybody!” Shawna mimicked what could only be Taylor Burnett by pulling her bangs over her wide eyes, ducking down to appear shorter, and making a goofy face at Nisha, who cracked up.

“Daph, please tell me you’ve noticed her,” Nisha said through giggles. “What a freak!”

I mean, freak was a little harsh, but Shawna’s impression did make me smile. As usual, though, Shawna took it a step further than necessary by adding, “She’s so obsessed with Shaggy. Can you imagine them hooking up? She’d need a stepladder, she’s so tiny!”

I rolled my eyes. They landed on Taylor, who was—no surprise—standing nearby, watching us.

“Wait,” I called out weakly as she flushed, ducked her head, and ran away, practically diving under bodies to escape.

“Rude,” I muttered, grabbing my phone at the first hint of a vibration. They were so not worth the fight. I checked my text alert and then double-checked it, certain I was hallucinating.

It was Ram. Daphne, just wanted to thank you again for your advice today. You were right! You free tomorrow for a coffee?

I’d gotten so lost in reading—and rereading—Ram’s words that I hadn’t realized Velma was back, or that the song had changed. Or even, I realized, glancing around, that Nisha and Shawna—and Taylor, of course—were gone. Good riddance.

Velma looked much less dreamy than I’d anticipated she’d look after her first dance, her first anything, with Fred, whom I knew for a fact she had a crush on. Then again, half of my brain was still absorbing that text message, wondering whether Ram was asking me for a coffee, or a coffee date. The difference was significant.

“I told you I didn’t want to come to this stupid party,” she grumbled. Uh-oh. I struggled to find something to say in response. Finally, I just reverted to what I hoped was a safe subject: the jewels.

“Why don’t we do what we came here for,” I suggested, “and find Shaggy. Get him to answer our questions. For real this time.”

“He’s just going to dodge us again. Or lie to us.” She shook her head, avoiding my eyes. “Guys suck.”

“Okay …” I pocketed my phone. I knew at least one guy who didn’t suck—yet—and he’d just texted me for a date. Or something. Maybe it was Ram’s age that made him so cool, so mature, so real, I thought. College guys were different. Right?

I jumped out of the way when two sophomores nearly crashed into me as they threw a football around. Yes, college guys had to be different. I was sure of it. “Let’s go.”

While the noise level in the house was more manageable, the volume of people was somehow even higher, and I lost Velma somewhere between the kitchen and the study. Good, I thought. I wanted to give her a minute to cool down from whatever happened with Fred.

Everyone knew the only rule Shaggy had about his parties was to stay downstairs. Luckily, not everyone knew about the secret back staircase, the one we used to hide in every time Shaggy hosted a sleepover. It was tucked back in a far corner of the kitchen. I made my way over and, when I was pretty sure no one was looking, darted up them.

Ah, quiet. Or at least, not the pounding bass that had overtaken the first floor. Just in case, I skipped over the fifth stair—it used to be super creaky, and I didn’t want to take the risk—and padded down the upstairs hallway.

The second floor was mostly dark and mostly quiet, but at the end of the hallway I noticed some light peeking out from under a door. As I crept closer, I remembered what the room was: Mr. Rogers’s study. Shaggy used to call it his war room, the place where he kept a bunch of random family heirlooms—photo albums and chipped plates and vases, but also military artifacts from various Rogers family members’ service, like old uniforms and helmets. Weird, but I guess every family had its skeletons. Some more so than others, I thought as I walked past yet another creepy portrait.

I crept closer. My heart thrummed loudly inside my chest. I could hear my own pulse inside my ears; it drowned out the music downstairs, the sound of my footsteps.

Another step; then another. The door to the war room was fast approaching. What was my game plan? I wondered. Was I going to burst in and yell “Gotcha!”—or was I going to stay outside the door and eavesdrop? I had to decide. Time was running out.

The hand covered my mouth. Gasping for breath, I fumbled to lift my elbow and hit the ghost in the—

“Shh!” she hushed. She pulled us back into an open door—one of the several guest bathrooms that lined this floor—and then ducked out her head, peeking up and down the hallway. “Coast is clear.”

“What are you doing? You scared me to death!” My heart was beating double time now, frantic, like it was desperate to escape my body.

She had the decency to look ashamed. “Sorry. But I figured you’d be up here looking for Shaggy, and then I saw you getting closer to the war room, and I thought I’d save you from yourself.”

I rubbed my shoulder where she’d grabbed me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Velma shot me a look. “Come on. You were totally going to kick open the door and yell ‘aha!’ ”

Velma nodded, smirking. “I just think we need a better plan,” she explained. She looked at the floor. “I need tonight to not be a total bust. We need answers—either about the jewels, or about Shaggy. Preferably both.”

I studied Velma for a few beats. For a girl who’d just danced with the guy she was crushing on, she seemed way down. “What’s up, V?”

She sighed and played with the zipper on her jacket. “I overheard Aimee Drake telling Aparna Din that Fred only asked me to dance because … because …”

“What?” She snapped up her head. “I wish. No. They said that Shaggy had asked Fred to keep me occupied. To keep me away from him because I was, and I quote, ‘going all Detective Dinkley on him.’ ”

I dropped my head into my hands and groaned. “Oh, V. I am so sorry that dumb nickname keeps coming back up. It’s not even a funny insult! I don’t know why they keep saying it!”

Velma held up a hand. “It’s fine. Honestly. I barely even care about the nickname. I just …”

I nodded, but I was burning inside, my throat swelling. I’d made up Velma’s nickname when we were ten years old. You’d think people would have forgotten it by now. Except they couldn’t, because I hadn’t let them forget it. For years I’d been eager to hurt Velma, to lash out and make her feel the same pain I’d felt when my family fell apart. It was the same pain I’d felt until recently, only sometimes I did still feel it, even though things were so much better now.

The truth was, I’d gone scorched earth on my best friend, and I was still paying for it. So was she.

I squeezed her hand. “Those girls are almost always wrong, you know. Half the time they just make up gossip out of thin air.”

I didn’t have a response to that. It was true that occasionally Aimee and Aparna got their stories right. But I couldn’t imagine Shaggy asking Fred to keep Velma, one of his oldest friends, away from him. And I didn’t want to imagine Fred agreeing to it.

Unless, of course, Shaggy’s secret was so massive, he would put up every roadblock he could find to prevent us from finding it.

“We know Shaggy’s probably in his dad’s study,” I said. “So let’s decide right now: What’s our priority question?”

Velma stared at the black-and-white tile floor. I knew which question I wanted to get to the bottom of first, but I wasn’t sure where her head was at. Especially now, after that dance with Fred, and her mistake with the fake jewels.

Finally, she set her jaw and gave me a steely look. Decisive Velma was the one I knew best.

I nodded once and together we crept out of the bathroom, down the hall, and straight to the war room.

“One,” Velma whispered as we stood outside the door. Warm light cast a glow on our feet.

“Shaggy Rogers!” I said. “We’re your friends, and we’re here to help!”

“We know something’s up with you, and we’re not leaving until you tell us what it is!” Velma stated. We stood in twin Wonder Woman poses, hands on hips, feet spread apart. For a moment I actually felt like a superhero. I gotta say, I didn’t hate it.

Shaggy stood in the center of the war room, with Jack at his side. They both whipped their heads around at our arrival. Jack looked dismayed to see us, but Shaggy looked relieved.

“Like … something is definitely up!” Shaggy pointed to the wall above his father’s oversized mahogany desk.

I looked up. The walls of Mr. Rogers’s study were crammed with items: photos, memorabilia, framed American flags; candelabras, medallions, newspaper clippings. And right there, in the space directly above Mr. Rogers’s desk, was a gaping hole where something large had been. Remnants of it remained—a shadow on the wallpaper where the sun had lightened its colors; a ring of dust.

“What is?” Velma asked. I tried to place what could have been there, tried to recall if I’d ever taken note of that space during the handful of times I’d been in this room.

Suddenly, a memory: a sleepover during the summer of Mystery Inc. The four of us had split up to play a game we coined called hide-and-scare—a game with an obvious goal—and Shaggy and I were the first to hide. It was one of the many times his dad was traveling, and I convinced him to bring me here, to the war room, where I knew the perfect place to hide from Velma and Fred. Giggling and shushing each other, Shaggy and I ducked behind the suit of armor that stood, hulking, in the corner of the room. We stayed there for enough time that I began to memorize the walls, counting the artifacts and whispering my questions about them to Shaggy. He knew everything about every item in that room; he’d told me once that his dad used to quiz him on Rogers family history.

“I know what’s missing,” I announced. Shaggy’s eyes glistened with sadness. He nodded glumly.

I checked with Shaggy; he nodded. I took a deep breath. “The Crystal Cove Crystal.”

A hush fell over the room. For the first time I could ever remember, laid-back, chill Shaggy looked like he might burst into tears. “Someone stole my father’s, like, most prized possession.”

A famous—or infamous—artifact, the Crystal Cove Crystal was a shining, craggy gemstone about the size of a dinner plate that was discovered hundreds of years ago in the sea caves by an ancestor of the Rogers family, one of the original settlers of Crystal Cove. Deep purple in color with threads of shiny yellow running through it, the crystal was well known around town—my own mother had even included purple stones as a central theme in The Curse of Crystal Cove. Decades ago, someone had dubbed its rich, thick color “Crystal Cove Purple,” and, like most things surrounding this place, there were a few conflicting stories about it.

Some people said the Crystal had once been much larger, but that various Rogers family members, who had passed down the Crystal through each generation, had sold off bits and pieces of it throughout the years to finance various business deals … or, depending on who you asked, to pay off illicit debts. But the Rogers family had always maintained that the item they possessed was original and had never been tampered with; instead, they claimed, they had protected it. To hear them tell it, the Crystal Cove Crystal was so vital to the history of this town that only a Rogers could keep it safe. It had sat in a custom-built case on a custom-built shelf in Mr. Rogers’s study for as long as I’d known Shaggy. According to scientists, no other gem like it had yet been discovered elsewhere in the world.

“How long has the Crystal been missing?” Velma asked the room. For a long while, no one said anything. “Shaggy? How long?”

Shaggy shook himself, like he was waking himself up from a long nap. Somehow, even in the warm light of the study, he looked wan, washed out. Paler than usual and more tired than I’d ever seen him.

“Hard to say. My mom, like, never comes in here, and I haven’t been in this room in a couple of weeks. There was that one time when Taylor was over and I was giving her a tour of the house.”

Shaggy shrugged. “My dad and I are, like, two snacks on the opposite side of the buffet table. We barely see each other. He was away all last week, right?”

Jack nodded, and Shaggy continued, “He flew back late Friday and went straight to my parents’ master bedroom on the first floor. Scooby and I were up watching a movie, and I, like, for sure would’ve heard him if he were upstairs. I even peeked in here to see, but it was empty. And the Crystal was still here.”

Shaggy scratched his head, thinking. “My mom had pulled a thirty-six-hour shift, so she went on duty first thing in the morning. My dad … he went straight to his office downtown that morning. I know ’cause he gave me and Scooby a ride. He was supposed to meet my mom for lunch, but then the thing at the beach happened and … like, they never got to eat. Then he flew out again Saturday afternoon.”

Shaggy looked at the ceiling as if the answer were pasted on the chandelier. Finally, he said, “Probably not. The housekeepers aren’t really allowed in here. One too many incidents in the past of misplaced papers from my dad’s desk.”

I could see Mr. Rogers getting really mad about someone touching his stuff. Apparently Jack could, too, because he put an arm around his cousin and said, “Oh man. Oh, Shaggy. Your dad is going to be furious.”

Shaggy closed his eyes, his shoulders drooping even more than usual. “Yeah.”

Shaggy grew defensive. “It’s Crystal Cove. Our home. No one would break in here. Everyone knows us!”

“And they also probably know when you’re home, and when you’re not,” I pointed out.

“I’m, like, beyond furious. We’re talking about extreme rage.” Jack was still talking about Mr. Rogers, pacing around the room with his arms crossed.

“Probably,” Shaggy whispered. I felt so bad for Shaggy just then. I’d done some really rotten things to my mom over the years, but I’d never felt the kind of fear about her reaction to my behavior that he was displaying.

“We need to narrow down the window of time when someone could have gotten into your house, snuck into this room, and taken the Crystal without anyone seeing them,” Velma said.

“No one was here Saturday morning.” Shaggy said it decisively. I wanted to scream at him, We know! We know because we were following you Saturday morning! But obviously, I didn’t.

“Man,” Jack repeated. I glared at him but he kept going. “He leaves you home alone and this happens? Yikes, bro. Yikes.”

“Okay,” I interrupted, a ping in my stomach reminding me to talk to Velma later about who this Jack character was. “No sense in scaring Shaggy to death. Shaggy, call your mom.”

Jack whistled. Shaggy sniffled. And Velma and I stared at each other, daring each other to voice out loud what we were thinking.

Velma chewed her lip. “Well, isn’t it just a little suspicious? Your dad’s prized possession, the most famous item in Crystal Cove, goes missing at the same exact time a bunch of mysterious jewels wash up onshore?”

“This house is about as far away from the beach as you can get and still be in Crystal Cove,” I pointed out. My heart was doing that thing again where it was beating so hard, it echoed in my ears. “And your dad’s travel schedule is pretty reliable …”

But understanding was dawning on Shaggy’s face. “You think the jewels were a distraction?”

“So … it’s not a coincidence that the jewels washed up on Saturday, the same day my dad’s crystal disappeared.”

Velma shook her head. “Definitely not a coincidence. More like an intentional, strategic tactic.”

“Someone unloaded something enticing enough to capture everyone in town’s attention for a couple of hours,” I said, knowing even as I said it that it was true, that we were finally—finally!—onto something. “And in that time, your house was empty.”

“And everyone was rushing to the beach,” said Shaggy, eyes darting between me and Velma, beginning to look scared.

“And once everyone was out of the way, the Crystal Cove Crystal was fair game. Unprotected.”

“So the jewels themselves are … practically meaningless!” Velma snapped her fingers. She had that look on her face, the one that said Gotcha! The one that said Now I get it. It mirrored the feeling swirling inside my stomach: the understanding that this was finally a lead, a plausible answer. A path forward. And, in a way, a whole new mystery to solve: Who stole the Crystal?

“The jewels were a ploy,” I confirmed, feeling the enormity of what was unfolding before us. “Someone was after the Crystal Cove Crystal all along.”

The hooded figure stays close to the shadows. Soon, it will be morning. But for now, the darkness stretches far and wide, blanketing Crystal Cove with a hush.

A heavy thing, this famous Crystal. The hooded figure hadn’t realized just how heavy it would be, how awkward to carry. A few times, it almost tumbles onto the street. Still, it’s held tight, close to the chest, its power seeping through the soft, protective cloth around it.

Snap.

What was that? The figure pauses, heart thrashing. The Crystal’s final destination is so close.

Creeping through the night, the hooded figure feels a warming inside their own chest, where the Crystal is nestled. Ducking around a corner shaded by trees, the figure pauses, considers. From underneath the cloth the Crystal seems to light up, to pulse with power. It glows.

“We’re almost home,” the figure whispers, stroking it. So many stories this stone has to tell. So many lessons. Maybe now, finally, they can be free.

The Crystal hasn’t seen the light of day in who knows how long. Generations, maybe. Years, at least. Samuel Rogers had defied every known theory about the Crystal by tacking it up on his wall, like he owned it. Like it belonged to him.

The hooded figure burns at the thought. The Crystal belongs to no one, and to everyone. It never should have been removed from its birthplace to begin with. Look at what’s happened since then. This town has borne witness to so many mysterious occurrences, so many catastrophes. Can you call that a coincidence?

No, the figure knows. You could not.

Crack.

A pause; the figure takes inventory of the night.

There is someone else out there.

Taking off down the street, and another, and then another. Running away from the chase, the darkness.

The carefully laid plans will have to be altered, the figure realizes, deciding to change course.

Now home, reckless with adrenaline, the hooded figure drops to the floor, knees banging on wood, laughing and crying in silence.

Soon, the Crystal Cove Crystal will be in its proper home. And the ancestors can rest.