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Chapter One
Nightmare on Baker Street
My fourth case as a private detective arrives while I'm having a nightmare.
Not a good sign of things to come.
This nightmare starts out as many of my bad dreams do—with a cricket stuck in my nose. They call this kind of dream a recurring dream, which means you dream it all the time. And for some strange reason, I always dream about crickets crawling up my nostrils.
Sounds weird, I know. But it gets worse.
As I flop around, trying to snort the insect out of my nose, the floor suddenly turns into a sea of ants. I start to sink into the ants like quicksand.
It keeps getting worse: Suddenly I'm not wearing pants.
Then I hear my little sister's voice.
"Not that ridiculous grasshopper dream again," Hailey says, slapping me on my forehead like she's playing a game of Whack-a-Mole.
I am so startled by my sudden return to the real world that I fall off the edge of my bed. I proceed to slap myself all over to knock off any leftover imaginary ants.
"Ants, too?" she chuckles. "Sherlock, you are so messed up."
"Thanks for waking me up," I say simply.
"Doreen heard you screaming," she explains.
"Who the heck is Doreen?" I ask. It's at this point that I notice the surgical glove she's holding. It's filled with water and tied off at the wrist. Hailey has painted a face on it with big red lips and long eyelashes. "And you think I'm weird?" I whisper.
"Say hello to Doreen," Hailey says in the kind of voice people use when they talk to babies. "She's our long-lost sister." Hailey tickles the glove on the chin.
Maybe my nightmare hasn't ended after all.
I wait a moment for my head to clear. "That's just a plastic glove filled with water."
"Sherlock!" she says, pretending to be angry. "Look what you've done; you're making our baby sister cry."
"She probably just sprang a leak," I say. Hailey is supposed to be my assistant, but she's actually more like a monkey wrench dropped into my brain's delicate gears.
Hailey rocks Doreen in her arms and hands me a slip of folded paper.
"What's this?" I ask.
"Mr. Klopper from down the street dropped it off while you were napping," she says with a shrug. "He said it's very urgent."
"Why didn't you wake me up?" I ask, jumping to my feet. "I wasn't napping, you know. I just fell asleep."
"There's a difference?"
"Yes!" I snap. "A nap is something you do on purpose. I fell asleep by accident."
"Oh, brother," Hailey says, waving at me like I'm being silly. "Besides, Doreen says you need to catch up on your beauty sleep."
I hold my breath as I unfold the paper. I know before I even read Mr. Klopper's note that the painfully long and boring wait for my next case has finally ended.
Joe Sherlock, Kid Detective, Case #000004: The Headless Mummy. Copyright © by Dave Keane. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
Excerpted from The Headless Mummy by Dave Keane
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
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