Sinister Substitute Read Free Page B

buddy inside and told him about Dr. Schwarz and his keen interest in geckos.
    “Are you serious, man?” Sticky asked.
    “Of course I’m serious! I’ve been freaked out about it all day. I think he’s a reporter. Or some guy from the FBI or something.”
    “Hmm,” Sticky said (in a maddeningly calm manner). He cocked his little gecko head.
    He tapped his little gecko chin.
    He hmm’d again.
    And at last he said, “Do you think he’ll be there tomorrow? I could check him out,
señor.”
    “Tomorrow? No! Krockle’s not going to miss
two
days. It’s a miracle she missed one!”
    But Ms. Veronica Krockle was, indeed, absent the next day.
    And Dr. Schwarz was again her substitute.
    “Uh-oh,” Fons Soto said when he saw Dr. Schwarz through the open doorway. “Same seats as yesterday,” he whispered to the kids around him. “And don’t get busted!”
    So once again Fons sat in Dave’s seat, Dave sat in Reuben’s seat, Reuben sat in Fons’s seat, and so on and so forth. And when they were all seated, Dr. Schwarz smiled across the expanse of somewhat guilty faces and said, “So! Who brought in extra credit?”
    Tyler Mills had, in fact, brought in a gecko. He had spent his lunchtime searching, and had finally captured a very handsome banded gecko.
    Unfortunately for Tyler, he was in a terribly uncomfortable position. Raising his hand and saying, “I have a gecko!” would result in Eli Laslow getting the extra credit (as that’s whoseseat Tyler was in). Yet explaining who he really was would result in his ratting out the rest of the class.
    Ah, the hazards of pranking the substitute.
    To circumvent the problem, Tyler slipped the gecko to Greg Lazo (as Greg was, once again, sitting in Tyler’s seat) with the understanding that Greg would continue the seating charade by raising his hand and saying, “I have a gecko!”
    Unfortunately for Tyler, Greg had seized upon this as an opportunity for blackmail. “It’ll cost ya five bucks,” he whispered.
    The whole situation had become one big jumbled shouldn’t-have-pranked-the-substitute mess, but what could Tyler do?
    He slipped Greg a five.
    Now, Greg did hold up his end of the bargain, but for all the interest Dr. Schwarz had professed to have in geckos, he paid the one Greg held very little attention. “That’s it?” he asked after giving the banded gecko a quick inspection. “No one else has one?”

    No one volunteered, but someone else did (as you know) have one.
    One that was staying uncharacteristically quiet.
    One that had been watching the professor’s every move from a sneaky-peeky spy spot inside Dave’s sweatshirt.
    One that had been thinking how this strange man in the tweed suit and horn-rimmed glasses was strangely familiar.
    (Dr. Schwarz was, in fact, wearing the exact same outfit he had worn the day before, something that further raised the growing
ewww
factor in the eyes of the girls.)
    And then Dr. Schwarz moved slowly, purposefully toward Dave’s assigned seat, where he stopped.
    He gazed down at Fons Soto and raised onedark eyebrow. “I’ve been told that
you
have a gecko, Mr. Sanchez. Why didn’t you bring him in?”
    And then Dr. Schwarz made a fateful mistake.
    He smiled.
    “Hopping
habañeros!”
Sticky gasped (ever so quietly) from his sneaky-peeky spy spot. “That’s no teacher! That’s Damien Black!”

Chapter 5
THE DEADLY, DIABOLICAL DAMIEN BLACK
    Ah, yes.
    Damien Black.
    Is there a more diabolical villain on the face of the earth?
    I think not.
    Besides being a ruthless treasure hunter, Damien Black is many things:
    For one, he is a builder. His mansion (which looms large and lonely atop an area of the city known as Raven Ridge) was once simply a spooky old house with the classic dangling shutters and pointy spires and slipping shingles (and, of course, owls that went
whooo
in the night).
    It is still that, but it is now much more.Damien, you see, added mysterious rooms (which jut out at odd angles), secret passages