Scooby Doo's Unsolved Mystery ~Part Four: Fred's Trap

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Part Four

Now I could die happy. I'd gone for a ride in the Mystery Machine. The only thing that could make my life better would be an invitation into the TARDIS.

Fred Jones had to be the single nicest person I’d ever met in my life. All I’d done was send him an e-mail asking how he’d feel about a phone interview for an article on their experience at C.S. Barley’s museum. An hour later I received a response. Fred offered to drive me out to the old site. In the Mystery Machine. I melted.

Okay, poor word choice considering what Scooby had told me about the Spooky Soothsayer's fate, but it took all of my self control just to limit my giggling like an idiot to no more than thirty percent of the trip. Something about the green metallic beast just gave me a sense that I was at a home that I hadn't previously known I was a part of.

Fred and I gabbed about things and stuff; nothing crucial, just...whatever, man. Exotic locations travelled to, irreplaceable personalities met. Fred clearly missed the old gang, even though he admitted mystery solving is really better in phases than in a constant barrage of masks and menaces.

We'd arrived at the general store he and the rest of Mystery Inc. had visited so long ago. According to Fred, little about the place had changed except for the management. He'd insisted on stopping here, partially to retrace his steps and jog his memory of the event, but mostly because this store was where he'd bought the supplies on his previous trip to build the infamous trap which had ultimately failed. Fred was going to show me first hand exactly what had happened.

He'd gone on inside while I took a few snapshots of the store's exterior. I still had the chorus of "Trap of Love" stuck in my head (I'll never figure out how Fred had managed to get The Hex Girls on 8-track) and somehow it was starting to feel like the background anthem for this ongoing attempt of mine to create a story out of a situation that seemed reluctant to be created. By this point I was considering the possibility that my Unsolved Mystery piece might be a bit of a bust that I could hopefully disguise as journalism with a few carefully distracting pictures.

I finally went into the store and immediately began to scout for the Scooby Doo coffee mugs that Velma had mentioned being here. I know I could get one of those just about anywhere but it would take on a personal meaning if I could find one at this store. Fred was speaking with the woman at the counter.

"Can you tell me where your nets are?" he asked her.

She indifferently pointed him in the direction towards my spot. I quickly surveyed the cans of fluorescent spray paint and extensive collection of personal flash lights until I found what I thought he was looking for.

"Is this it?" I held up the biggest butterfly net I could find.

"Not exactly," he joined me and grabbed an armload of bulbs. "There is probably a large roll of fishing net."

"So large enough to drop on someone."

"Actually large enough to build a bigger butterfly net," he said proudly. "I remember the crane was designed to sweep down sideways and scoop up the ghost like a fish in an aquarium."

"Is that way more effective?"

"It depends on where we are. With lower ceilings you sometimes have to improvise." He found the netting he needed and began loading up my arms with wire and batteries. "So Sheriff Braxton?" he asked me, returning to our previous conversation in the van.

“Velma said that the signs were pointing to the Sheriff until you all found that ticket stub to PhantomCon.”

“Yeah, I always thought there was something about that guy. But him dressing up like the Soothsayer never seemed to make much sense.”

I could tell Fred really wanted to agree with me, if for no other reason than to confirm the person inside the costume hadn't in fact been killed. But in truth I was really reaching for straws.

"Technically the Sheriff was never ruled out. What if the ticket stub was a red herring?"

Fred grumbled. "I've never liked those."

"Okay, let's say Daniel did go to PhantomCon and somewhere along the way he did inadvertently drop his ticket stub. If you guys hadn't stumbled across it where would the investigation have gone?"

“I don’t know. Coincidences are pretty rare in mystery solving. I think what Velma was getting at was that Daniel gotten there when we had. Until then no one in the museum had even heard of the Soothsayer. ”

"That they admitted to," I said a little more enthusiastically than I was intending. "Somebody is lying about something."

"Well, this is true," Fred laughed. "nobody ever told Shaggy to look for clues in the kitchen."

We set a mountain of stuff on the counter in front of the worker. She shot us both a glance. "Is there anything else?"

"Do you still carry Scooby Doo coffee mugs?"

She huffed. "Try looking under that stack of old ponchos."

One thing I learned from this whole experience is that Shaggy doesn't get enough credit for bravery. I stood outside the abandoned Barley Museum with a chill running down to my ankles. 'Creepy' was an unqualified euphemism to describe the face of this decaying yet still hungry façade that we were about to voluntarily set foot into. "I can't do this," I thought, fully agreeing with the imaginary horror movie audience in my head screaming at me not to go in there.

"All right," Fred lit up, paralleling his flashlight, "Let's go."

Fred Jones was fearless, perhaps psychotically so, and Velma certainly had the same lack of flight response. I hadn't met Daphne, but either she was as unconcerned about her well-being as the other two, or she fed off of Fred's charisma. The latter was certainly what I was doing. The moment he said "Let's go" my feet obeyed, despite how convinced I was that I would be jumping into his arms at the first floor squeak.

We were in the foyer area and Fred shone his flashlight beam on the opposite wall. "That's where Barley's coffin used to be." He waited patiently for my response before kindly giving it to me, gesturing at my camera. Oh yeah. I forgot I wanted to remember this whole experience. -snap-

Fred gave me a quick tour of the now empty rooms he and the gang had explored. I traced the barrel's path which had deposited him outside during the final chase. -snap- I saw the room where Daphne had been stashed after her kidnapping. -snap- The hallway where Velma had lost her glasses. -snap- And the entire time Fred was completely nonplussed by the overwhelming sense of dread this place induced in me. I'll admit, after the series of causal "There's where Daphne found the ticket stub",  "There's where we had the collision with Daniel" and "There's where Lindsey screamed about the presence of the dog" I was feeling significantly more at ease.

Finally at long last we went down into the cellar where the trap had failed and the Soothsayer's fate had been sealed. It was completely empty now, save for a few cobwebs and dust. Fred got to work rebuilding a mock-up of his trap in the exact spot he'd had it previously, right at the bottom of the staircase.

"Do you need me to do anything?" I offered.

"No thanks. I have a rhythm to this," he replied.

Based on the skeleton of the trap, it looked as though Shaggy and Scooby were to have gotten the Soothsayer to chase them down the stairs where the well-timed release of the trap would cause the huge net to scoop up anyone at the bottom of the steps and then rotate on an axis to dump the victim into a predesigned location.

"What used to be down here?"

"Some sort of processing machine. There was a huge vat of molten wax in the middle of the room." He seemed uncomfortable mentioning it.

"Was that where the Soothsayer fell?"

Fred only nodded, still being focused on the task at hand.

"Could he have been fake?" I suggested.

"The spooks usually are."

"I mean if C.S. Barley had been dealing with wax figures, could the Soothsayer you captured have melted because it wasn't real?"

"Believe me, I'd love to say that's what happened," said Fred. "But I heard a scream as he went under the surface."

I was getting tired of holding the camera so I put it on the floor while I sat on the bottom step, mulling the mystery over. It took me a few moments to work up the courage to ask, but I figured if I could handle the museum I could handle awkwardness. "Could you be wrong?"

"About what?"

"The scream."

I guess I threw off Fred's rhythm, because he stopped working and looked at me curiously. I'd hoped I hadn't hurt his feelings.

"When I was at Velma's bookshop," I explained, "I had an unexpected run in with her wax figure. My own brain added a growl to him, which under other circumstances I might have sworn I'd actually heard."

"You think I imagined the scream?"

"You'd just watched you trap drop someone into a vat of boiling wax. Stress can play tricks on you."

Fred ran that through his mind a few times, and I could tell that the thought of not having been involved in someone's death was giving him hope. "You think Velma was right all along?"

"I don't know. Did Daphne hear a scream as well?"

"She said she did," answered Fred. "Of course she felt even more responsible. She was on that side of the room waiting to release the sandbags on the Soothsayer when the net got to her spot. When her dress got caught on the lever opening the top of the vat it-"

He was cut off by the sound of the front door opening and shutting. For a moment we just stared at each other. Several possibilities ran through my head (most of them involving the Soothsayer and a missing journalist) before I made the connection that the van was outside and Sheriff Braxton had made his feelings about Mystery Inc. quite clear.

"Are we supposed to be here?" I asked Fred.

"No. Run," he advised.


My one chance at a really classic Scooby-Doo chase scene was undermined by my own stupidity. I'd forgotten my camera down in the cellar. And of course when I went back for it I sprung Fred's trap and wound up being carried across the room in the netting I'd helped him purchase.

Yes, it was indeed the Sheriff, just not Sheriff Braxton. Sheriff Henning, in between helping me out of the trap and trying not to laugh out loud, informed us that Sheriff Braxton had recently left his old job to make a run for Governor. He'd left explicit instructions to arrest any member of Mystery Inc. on sight, which Sheriff Henning was choosing to ignore in exchange for a photograph of him with Fred. I was happy to oblige.


We were back in the Mystery Machine and "Trap of Love" was back in my head. I couldn't help but feel a little discouraged by the revelation about Sheriff Braxton. He'd evidently been trying to run for Governor for a while now but hadn't managed to stir up the necessary funding. When Sheriff Henning told us that I thought "That's it! We've got the motive!" only to then figure out that Braxton hadn't run in any previous elections, suggesting that he hadn't walked out of the museum with whatever had been locked in the coffin.

That also inadvertently answered my question about Velma's Scrapbook. With Braxton going into politics, people were going to try to dig up dirt on him. At some point, someone would be asking the same questions I was asking, and Velma (consistently being a step ahead of the rest of us) was going to have the information ready to go for anyone who made their way to her bookstore. Like I said, discouraged.

Of course, Fred was in great spirits. He clearly missed the chase, and even though we'd accomplished jack sprat I could tell he'd really had fun. And honestly, so had I.

A few miles down the road and we were laughing about the whole thing. Fred assured me that getting caught in one of his traps was a rite of passage, and he even admitted to being as terrified as I was when we heard that front door. I guess he's not inhumanly fearless after all.

"Thank God the new Sheriff was a Mystery Inc. fan," I said.

"Yeah," he agreed, "It's always nice when we have a positive impact on people who recognize us."

They'd definitely had a positive impact on me. From the moment I'd spotted Shaggy in that café I'd been compelled to want to get involved in some-

Wait. What was it Shaggy had told me?

I pulled out my laptop where I had the transcript of his conversation saved and scrolled through it. Looking...for...

"Greebus!" I said without thinking.

"Greebus?" Fred chuckled, "What's that?"

I stared at him in personal bewilderment. "I think I just solved the mystery."


Scooby Doo's Unsolved Mystery will conclude with Part Five: Daphne's Treasure.