Part Two
After my interview with Shaggy, I was feeling really enthusiastic about doing a piece on Mystery Inc. but my editor was being less than supportive, so for a few months the transcript stayed untouched on my laptop. It wasn't until I was assigned to cover the opening of The Casey Kasem Experience at the Radio History Museum that I noticed my flight had a layover in the city where Velma Dinkley's bookshop was located. My curiosity got the better of me and I shelled out the $50 fee to take an earlier flight so I'd have time to drop by.
The street on which the bookshop was located had a distinct village feel to it, as if it was geared towards a very specific kind of tourism. The streetlights were shaped like oil lanterns and the buildings had been constructed in a Colonial American style. There was also a faint smell of 'horse' in the air, suggesting the possibility of a carriage tour were I to arrive at a different time. Right now the street was empty. It was just me and my hope of uncovering the lost Mystery Inc. mystery.
I stepped into the bookshop, immediately trying to think of an adjective other than 'quaint' because it's clichéd and I never actually figured out what 'quaint' means in the context. Old-timey? Traditional? Clearly inspired by artist depictions of Edgar Allen Poe's study maybe?
From the moment I bumped the overhead bell with the door frame I felt like I was being taken back to a more innocent yet enlightened time; where books were portals to knowledge and revered as such. The darkly painted wood on the inside of the shop managed to convey not a sense of dismalness, but an invitational silence.
I crept past the front end shelves, arranged to resemble a tiny library with fiction organized on the shelves to the left and non-fiction to the right, and a box on the floor full of Ben Ravencroft books marked 'Free. Please take one." Why I crept, I don't know. It just felt natural given the atmosphere.
The back of the shop was a much more open space, as if it was meant to be a reading/meeting area with the proprietor's work station overseeing the half-room like a hotel desk clerk. A few masks hung on the wall behind the desk; ghoulish things. I recognized them by sight, even if the names of said specters weren't coming to me.
I was scanning the station for a second bell to ring when I realized there was a large figure standing behind me.
I turned.
And I had a single moment permanently etched into my brain.
It was a wax figure in a glass case, I get that. But it was a realistic one, and in that moment I could only process those large green-skinned hands reaching for me. My mind supplied the low moaning that I would have attested to under oath was coming from this monster. "Greebus!" I called out as stumbled backwards over my own feet.
And with that, Velma was behind her desk, jovially snickering at my outburst.
"I see you've met Mr. Carswell," came the cheerful yet sly voice behind me. I jerked my head to see where it had come from. Velma Dinkley. Same turtleneck. Same glasses. Same blatant disregard towards the ability of others to have a heart attack.
"I wasn't expecting that," I said trying to regain my composure.
"I probably need a bigger sign out front mentioning that he's in here," she laughed. "He gets some interesting reactions. 'Greebus' is a new one."
"Yeah, I'm not sure where that even came from."
"It happens to the best of us." Velma slipped around the counter to admire her wax centerpiece which stood twice as tall as her.
"Mr. Carswell isn't actually inside there is he?" I asked only half-jokingly.
"It's a wax replica. One of our fans made this for a convention and then donated it to the shop. The original costume was four inches shorter but the details are surprisingly accurate."
"Indeed," I said while consciously trying to keep 'greebus' from downloading into my mental lexicon.
"Now these guys back here," she pointed to the pair of masks mounted on the wall behind the her, "they're the real things. The Strawberry Phantom and the Snow Beast. And the glass casing on the counter contains the actual cat medallion Dr. Bell used to hypnotize Daphne's aunt." Velma smiled proudly. "I've also got Zombie Cleopatra in the back, but I've never felt right about hanging her up."
"Don't you ever feel a little uncomfortable with them staring at you while you work?"
She laughed. "They're just masks. I've actually got a lead on the Chocolate Phantom mask. I would love to get all three of them together again."
I wasn't sure how to respond, kind of getting lost in this bizarre reality that I was standing next to THE Velma Dinkley in all of her knee high stocking glory. I wondered what kind of impression she had made on the various criminals her ever-analytical brain had put in prison. She came across as warm, friendly, and easy to underestimate. But listening to the confidence in her soft voice for longer than ten seconds left me feeling like she was fully in control, kind of the early adult version of Miss Marple.
"So which of our mysteries did you want to ask me about?" Velma asked me, with her eye's twinkle visible through her very thick glass lenses.
"Mysteries?" I repeated, wondering just how transparent I was.
"You've never been in here before," she explained, reading my mind, "but you barely looked at the books. So you're not browsing. You're here for a reason. Something you didn't want to call ahead for."
Well, my cover story was irrelevant now, and frankly I wasn't too disappointed. "The Spooky Soothsayer."
She smiled and disappeared behind the counter, returning a second later with a scrapbook. "No mystery there."
"Shaggy said you never unmasked the culprit," I said.
"This is true," Velma admitted. "We didn't need to. It was obvious."
"Velma obvious, or bystander obvious?" My flattery got a giggle out of her.
She sat down on one of the sofas in the center of the room and patted the cushion beside her, indicating I should join her there. I took one last defiant glance at Mr. Carswell before accepting half of the open scrapbook in my lap.
A newspaper article showing a massive structure surrounded by woods
"This was the home of C.S. Barley, a carnival emcee and master of hoaxes. He made an impressive living by convincing spectators of such nonsense like charms, fortune telling, and mythical creatures. When he retired, he turned his home into a museum displaying the collection of oddities he'd accumulated throughout his life. And this...
Another newspaper article showing a thick white coffin
"was the coffin he used to have displayed in his front room. Barley would wait in the coffin while the tour groups filed in and looked around at the various minor trinkets. Then when he was certain they were not expecting it, he'd pop out of the coffin to give them a premature startle. Always the showman."
"So, is he actually dead now?"
"Yes. At the age of seventy-three."
"Was he buried in the same coffin?"
"No, but let's not get too far ahead."
A magazine photo of an attractive dark haired woman
"This is Lindsey Channing, AKA The Angel Swan, an upcoming trapeze artist. She was nineteen when she and Barley got married. He was seventy-one. When he died, Lindsey's family went into an extensive court battle over her inheritance with Barley's former wives. It took twelve years for that to get sorted out."
"Did you guys meet her?"
"How did you know?"
"Shaggy said there was a glamazon in the museum."
"We happened to show up the night Lindsey was signing over what was left of the house to the city."
"Was that a coincidence?"
"Part of mystery solving is figuring out when a coincidence is and when it isn't. We were at a paranormal convention when we first heard about the existence of Barley's museum, and that Lindsey was about to sell it off. Freddy made a special trip out there so we could check it out before the place closed forever, and that's when we encountered...
A hand-drawn sketch of a long armed, ghastly figure in a cloak with glowing eyes
"the Spooky Soothsayer."
"Who drew this?"
"Scooby did. He's a dog of many talents."
"Was the Soothsayer supposed to be the ghost of C.S. Barley?"
"That was one thing that never really made much sense. Usually the fake ghosts at least try to tap into some sort of legend about the place they haunt. This one just seemed sort of generic. In fact, Shaggy was the one who named him the Spooky Soothsayer. You could just as easily have called him the Blue Banshee."
"So the Soothsayer was trying to scare people away from...what?"
"We never found that out either. Money. Jewels. Something valuable."
"And yet you knew who it was?"
"I did. But Freddy's trap didn't work out so well."
"What happened?"
"Three words. Danger Prone Daphne. And without being able to catch the Soothsayer red-handed, there was no proof, just circumstantial evidence. No arrest was made. In fact...
Another newspaper photo of a large man with a Sheriff's badge
"Sheriff Braxton was furious with us. He said if he ever saw any of us 'meddling kids' and our 'blanket-blank dog' again he'd throw us in jail on principle."
"Shaggy mentioned another person there."
"Daniel!"
An advertisement image of a young attorney
"He was the lawyer overseeing the transition of the house's ownership to the city."
"He looks pretty charismatic."
"Freddy insisted that Daniel was flirting with me. But I still hold true to my original theory."
"Which is?"
"Hang on, we're not quite there yet."
Another drawing, this time of a stone ankh
"This is something we found pretty early on but we weren't sure what it was for. It turned out to be the key to Barley's coffin."
"What was in there?"
"We never found out. It was locked when we first got to the museum, but after Fred's trap failed we found the coffin unlocked and empty."
"Who had the key last?"
"I did. But I lost it when my glasses were knocked off."
"So who was it then?"
"Do you want to take a guess?"
"Lindsey."
"Why Lindsey?"
"She was a trapeze artist, so she had the skills to pose as a ghost. Maybe she was trying to scare off Barley's former wives for whatever was in the coffin."
"That's a good thought, but that court case had already settled, and Lindsey had no real motive to dress in a costume since she already owned the house. She could have spent as much time as she needed searching the place."
"So Sheriff Braxton?"
"That was actually my first thought, considering how odd it was that the town sheriff was personally overseeing a real estate venture. But then we found this...
Half a crumbled ticket stub to PhantomCon
"This was the clue that solved the mystery. We had just come from PhantomCon ourselves where we'd first heard about Barley's museum. And at one point Daniel had made an offhanded comment about the latest Mile Selinker game which had made its public debut at the convention."
"So while he was at the convention Daniel discovered something was of value in the very mansion he'd been in charge of handling the paperwork for?"
"Exactly!"
Velma sat next to me, still pleased with her own deductions. I, on the other hand, felt less than satisfied. Perhaps it was a combination of the lack of a definite conclusion and the fact that my idea for doing a piece on Mystery Inc. was dead in the water.
"Do you know he even had the nerve to wink at me as we drove off?"
"You think that was a victory wink?"
"He got away with it, despite our meddling. Maybe even because of it."
"How so?"
"Well, one thing that bugged me for a long time was why he'd go through the trouble of creating a costumed character in order to steal something, but then I realized that Mystery Inc. was getting recognized. People knew us wherever we went. Even the town store where we stopped just before the Barley Museum sold mugs with Scooby's face on it. Daniel knew our methods, and knew that with a ghost to catch we'd all get too distracted with trying to solve a mystery to notice the valuables being slipped out from under our noses."
Velma sighed, briefly losing her aura of confidence for just a moment.
"It's a stain on our record. We may not have been outwitted, but we were beaten."
Everything went really fast after that and I just barely made my flight, but finally with several hours to do nothing but sit and think I spent a fair amount of time just feeling lousy. Selfishly, I'd really thought this was going to pan out in my favor. I could also tell that the undefeated Soothsayer still bothered Velma, and I couldn't help but empathize to a degree.
After I was done just feeling lousy I started sketching out as much information as I could remember Velma telling me, just to see if there was anything not adding up.
If there was I wasn't seeing it.
Except-
Okay, it was a long shot, but there were a huge number of gaps in the story. Even the explanation Velma had put forth, legitimate though it was, was anything but airtight. I had one question gnawing at me: What if Velma was wrong?
At first it felt to me like I was being disrespectful to her by questioning her explanation, but by the time the plane landed I'd convinced myself that even Velma wasn't entirely satisfied with her own conclusion, and the most respectful thing I could do for her was try to prove her wrong. If nothing else, I'd fail at that and wind up supporting what she already believed.
Regardless, I wasn't finished.
I checked into my hotel and went straight to the internet, single-minded of purpose. My editor was going to have to indulge me, or at least tolerate what I was doing.
My search engine came up on the screen and I entered my credentials. I filled in the 'who do you want to search for' tab and hit enter.
And honestly, as the search engine took a minute to do its thing, how could I resist saying these words out loud in the only time in my life I'd ever be able to utter them professionally?
"Scooby-Doo, where are you?"
Scooby Doo's Unsolved Mystery continues with Part Three: Scooby's Snack.
No comments:
Post a Comment