“It’s okay, Reilly!” Joe cut in. “The song was . . . awesome enough.”
“Thanks,” said Reilly. Her pineapple hat wobbled as she walked away.
The brothers waited until Reilly was out of earshot. Frank then turned to Joe and said, “Crackers sang Reilly’s song! He must have heard her sing it to Jason last night!”
“So Reilly’s message wasn’t the message in the bottle,” Joe weighed in. “It was her Pineapple Gram.”
“Could Reilly have stuck around after her Pineapple Gram?” Frank wondered. “To leave the bottle and coins and teach Crackers that song?”
“No way,” Joe said, shaking his head. “You heard what Reilly said about Crackers.”
“Yeah,” Frank chuckled. “She probably couldn’t leave the Wang house fast enough!”
Joe crossed Reilly’s name off the suspect list. “Reilly Voorhees is no longer a singing suspect,” he said.
Frank looked up the block. “Jason lives a few houses down,” he said. “Let’s tell him what we know so far.”
The brothers made their way to Jason’s house. Crackers squawked from his cage on the porch while Frank rang the doorbell. By the third ring, the brothers decided the Wangs were not home.
“It’s Saturday,” Joe said as they turned away from the door. “Maybe they went to the movies or—”
“Dig ’em up! Dig ’em up!” Crackers screeched.
Frank and Joe turned toward the parrot’s cage. Crackers bobbed his head up and down as he squawked, “Dig ’em up, dig ’em up. Ooh boy!”
“Dig ’em up?” Frank said as he and Joe approached the parrot’s cage. “What’s that mean?”
Joe peered into Crackers’s cage and smiled. “I want to know if that bell made out of birdseeds really rings!” he said.
“Joe, don’t open the cage door!” Frank warned.
Too late. The second Joe opened the door, Crackers squeezed through. He hopped onto Joe’s arm, spread his colorful wings, and took off!
“No, Crackers, no!” Joe shouted after the fly-away parrot. “Come back!”
“I told you not to open the cage!” Frank said as they chased Crackers around the house.
“Where’d he go?” Joe cried as he and Frank raced into the Wangs’ yard.
“There!” said Frank, pointing toward the back of the yard. Sitting atop a tree branch was Crackers!
The brothers ran to the tree and the parrot.
“Great,” Frank groaned. “How are we going to get him back into his cage?”
“Wait, look over here!” said Joe excitedly.
Frank looked to see where his brother was pointing. On the ground below the branch was a freshly dug hole.
“An animal could have made that,” Frank said.
“Would an animal wear a hat?” Joe asked.
“Huh?” said Frank.
Joe walked toward a red cap stuck on the twig of a nearby hedge. “This cap looks familiar,” he said. “Where did we see it before?”
“Dig ’em up! Dig ’em up!” Crackers squawked.
Dig ’em up?
The brothers looked at the red cap, then at the hole in the ground. That was when it suddenly clicked!
“Hey, Frank,” Joe said. “I think our feathered friend is trying to tell us something.”
Crackers looked satisfied as he hopped back into his cage.
Chapter 6
FOLLOW THAT BEEP!
“The Junior Diggers of Bayport wore red caps like this,” Frank said. “They could have left the pirate clues around the place to scare Jason.”
“And after they left the clues,” Joe said, pointing at the hole in the ground, “they could have stuck around for a quick dig as the last straw!”
“Tobias and his club are already suspects,” Frank said. “But Dad always says we should get as much evidence as possible before accusing anyone.”
“In that case,” Joe said as he grabbed the cap and put it on, “let’s go to their clubhouse to dig around for clues.”
Tobias lived only three blocks away from Jason’s house. When Frank and Joe rang the bell, the door was opened by Mrs. Singh.
“Hi, boys,” Mrs. Singh said with a smile. “If you’re here to visit Tobias, he and his club went out on a dig.”
“Can we wait for them, please?” Frank asked.
“In the clubhouse?” Joe blurted quickly.
“I’m pretty sure Tobias’s clubhouse is for members only,” Mrs. Singh said, but she smiled when she noticed Joe’s cap. “I can see that you’re a member too, so go on up.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Singh!” Joe exclaimed.
Mrs. Singh led the boys into the house. “You know where the stairs are,” she said, pointing to a staircase at the end of a hallway. “Tobias and the others should be home pretty soon.”
“Not too soon, I hope,” Joe told Frank softly as they climbed the stairs. “We need to check out the clubhouse for clues!”
Frank and Joe reached the top of the stairs and stepped into the attic. What they saw made their jaws drop.
“Holy cannoli!” Joe gasped.
“Look at all this neat stuff!” Frank exclaimed.
All around were old-timey relics from Bayport: a ship’s steering wheel, a yellowing map of Bayport, plus shelves full of dusty old bottles of colored glass.
“That’s where they could have gotten the blue bottle!” Joe pointed out excitedly.
Frank turned toward a tall, oblong case leaning against the wall. “There’s the mummy Tobias told us about,” he said. “It must be inside that sarcophagus.”
“Sar-koff-a-gus,” Joe pronounced carefully. “How do you know so much about mummies, Frank?”
“We learned about ancient Egypt in history,” Frank answered. “But what’s an ancient Egyptian mummy doing in Bayport?”
As he headed toward the sarcophagus, Joe called out, “Hey, Frank, look at this!” Frank turned to see Joe holding a long sticklike device. It had a handle on one end and a wheel on the other.
“Isn’t that the metal detector Phil invented?” Frank asked.
Joe nodded. “The Junior Diggers must have talked Phil into giving it to them,” he said, “so they could use it to find more ancient stuff.”
After pulling a penny from his pocket, Joe dropped it onto the floor. “Let’s see if it still works,” he said.
Frank watched as his brother waved the device over the penny. As it began to beep, he said, “It works, all right.”
“It’s fun, too!” Joe said. He waved the rod back and forth as he walked around the attic.
“Joe,
