Mallory and the Mystery Diary #29
Mallory and the Mystery Diary….the final installment!!!!!!!!
Chapter 13
We open with Mallory asking Buddy what he thinks…no it is not a philosophical question about why he thinks her life sucks, she is asking what he thinks the solution is to an Encyclopedia Brown mystery. This is her newest addition to the “Buddy should love reading” ideas. I wonder if the BSC references these books every time they try to solve mysteries? Although those mysteries had pretty obvious clues and the BSC tends to miss those!! Anyhootie, back to the tutoring session…Mal and Buddy take turns reading the mysteries to each other and solving them. Buddy is so into this that Mal tells him about their “real” mystery. This is a sad commentary on the BSC’s intelligence that they have to depend on Charlotte and Buddy to help them solve this. After hearing all about this mystery, Buddy nearly pees himself in his excitement to read the diary. Mal decides to take him to her house to read it and they say goodbye to Mary Anne who is b-sitting for the rest of the Barrett clan. As they enter Mal’s room, Vanessa looks up in surprise and Mal notices she has poetry-writing papers spread all over her bed. Mal “hopes they hadn’t broken her train of thought.” Who cares if you did? Vanessa sucks at poetry-she is probably trying to figure out a word that rhymes with orange! Vanessa leaves and Buddy opens the diary. He begins to read and notices Sophie can’t spell. Mal decides that if only “Mr. Moser (buddy’s teacher) could see him now, he would probably send a nice note home to Mrs. Barrett.” Yea, a nice note detailing what he would like to do to the MILF of Stoneybrook!! Buddy skips ahead to the mystery part and reads for so long that Mal gets bored and reads her new horse book from the library. Mal likes horses??? Who knew????? God, give the poor girl a bone-have her read Forever by Judy Blume or something. My friend and I read that book when we were younger solely because someone told us all about the dirty parts! At least this way, Mal can find out what you can do with a boy so when she does get a bf, she isn’t completely clueless!! Back to the story, Buddy is disappointed because he can’t find a clue in the diary so he asks to look in the tunk trunk. Mal reminds him that it is not surprising he didn’t find a clue in the diary-this isn’t an Encyclopedia Brown mystery!!! Conveniently, Buddy gets his hand stuck. Where you ask? Why in the false bottom of the trunk!! Buddy also has found some old papers stuck in there! Knock, Knock,Knock! Who’s there? Why it’s a solution! Sure enough, the papers they pull out are headed, “My Confession by James Hickman.” Hmm….I smell Encyclopedia’s hand in this-it is obvious enough what the solution is!! Buddy begins to read this confession out loud and Mal says, “I was too excited to listen to his slow and careful pronunciation. For just awhile, I couldn’t be his tutor. I skimmed ahead silently.” Listening to kids read aloud sometimes IS painful, I will give you that Mal. Apparently, “Old Hickory was James Hickman-Kristy had been right.” When is she not? This is shocking news how? So…when his daughter died (Sophie’s mom) he couldn’t bear to look at her portrait so he hired someone to come in (an itinerant painter) to paint over it and he changed the frame and hung it in another room so “his daughter wasn’t with him but still was.” Again, was Encyclopedia consulted when writing this? When asked by his friends where the painting of his daughter went, he was embarrassed to admit what he did and so he said it had been stolen. The townspeople suspected Jared because Old Hickory was shooting his mouth off to anyone who would listen about what a crappy son-in-law he was and that he made Sophie’s mom have another kid when he knew she was too weak to handle it so Jared is the reason she died. Now, even though I have pact right now with all the men in my city to NOT have ANYTHING to do with me, I know it takes two to tango!! Mal states that the “terrible thing he had done was let people believe they were right (about stealing the painting).” Ummmm, I think accusing your son-in-law of murder because he made your daughter have another kid is FAR WORSE than letting people believe he stole some crappy painting. Also, why shouldn’t he have the portrait of his dead wife?? Is it so terrible to think he MIGHT want to remember her?????
They finish reading the confession and Buddy has a question-how did the trunk end up in Sophie’s house? Mal says that maybe when Old Hickory’s nephew inherited Old Hickory’s house, he moved things he didn’t want over to Sophie’s house because Old Hickory owned that too. Buddy then says that if he moved the trunk over, maybe he moved other things too? Like old paintings? AND scene!!!
Geez, the BSC can’t do anything on their own!!!!!!!! This story should be called “The Mystery that the BSC half-heartedly attempt to solve but are too lazy so they let two nine-year-olds solve it for them.”
Chapter 14
Mal calls Buddy a genius and they immediately get Stacey on the horn to share the news. As they explain the story, Stacey is confused. I have another question for you Ann- If she is this confused by what Old Hickory’s confession has to do with her and her house, why is she a part of this book? Better yet, why is she left in charge of small children when it is completely obvious she is an idiot??????? No wonder she and Claudia are best friends! Mal spells out that they think the painting might have ended up in the attic with the trunk and Stacey suddenly sees the light. Stacey invites them over right away and Mal says, “We probably broke a record getting to Stacey’s house from mine. Then we probably broke another record getting upstairs to the attic. If nothing else, we broke a noise record.” All right already! We get that you are fast (Stacey in more ways than one) and we get you are excited! That is no reason to beat a dead horse!!!! Once they get to the attic though, they are “stumped” Did you forget what you were looking for??? They have no idea where to start. Ummm, how about looking for a big square with pretty shapes and colors on it? So they split up and shocker-Buddy AGAIN finds what they are looking for! Paintings! Are Mal and Stacey sitting on another trunk sipping martinis and yelling, “Have at it Buddy! We’ll be right here when you find what we need!” Seriously, the BSC haven’t lifted a damn finger to solve this mystery, yet they are the first ones to complain about how long it’s taking! A kid who can’t read solved the mystery faster than the entire BSC combined! And that’s giving them a handicap for having Claudia dragging them down with her subpar IQ!!! They carefully go through the paintings Buddy found but they aren’t sure which one it could be. Mal then stumbles across another painting in a different part of the attic and triumphantly exclaims that this is the one! Buddy scoffs at her dectective skillz, “Yea right! Like a painting of ships is the answer! You two would still be scratching your heads and sipping martinis if it weren’t for me!” However, Mal notices the ships are sailing over a finger with a ring on it! Eureka!!! Mal wants to know what they should do with it. Ummm, bring it downstairs???? Isn’t this what you’ve spent the last 100 pages looking for? You’d think they would have thought this through!! Stacey, not Buddy who’s taken the lead thus far, suggests they bring it downstairs to her mom who “has been pouring over the want ads for a job. I’m sure she’ll be excited to take a break.” Oh really? I’m sure Mrs. McG has nothing better to do than look at a crappy painting that may or may not solve a stupid 100 year old mystery, like find a job that can keep her and her diabetes ridden daughter in the lap of luxury they are so accustomed to. As they lug the painting downstairs, Mrs. McG is less than thrilled to see them, until Stacey tells her the story. Mal is bored of telling the story (I hear you-I am tired of listening to it). She suggests they take the painting to a professional art restorer because she “doesn’t want any ghosts hanging around the house.” May I interject that until this point I forgot about the whole “Sophie is haunting Stacey’s house” subplot. What ghosts??? THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE BOOK THERE HAS NOT BEEN ONE GHOSTSIGHTING!!!! STOP WITH THE DAMN GHOSTS!!!!!!!!!!!! They realize the time and remember that Buddy needed to be home five minutes ago. Mal takes him home and Mrs. Barrett comments about what a wonderful job she has done with Buddy and making him into a reader. Mal does the false modesty thing and Mrs. B is all, “What would I have done without you! You saved my family from certain ruin! God forbid I should sit with my own kids and work on homework with them! My social life would be out the door!” Buddy then comes back down and to cement that he is now a reader, he puts on a magic show with the magic tricks he got from Stacey. How does this show he is a reader? Well, he READ the directions to learn how to do the magic tricks!!! Ahhhhhh, success!!! Buddy is saved from a life of asking, “You want fries with that?” Mal then hightails it home to tell her family the exciting adventures of her life. I bet you Mr. and Mrs. Pike are playing footsie under the table and thinking, “God! When will she shut up so we can get to bed? Whose genes did this kid inherit anyway? Certainly no one in MY family was EVER this nerdy!”
Chapter 15
Ahhhh, the last chapter! Stacey rushes into the BSC meeting and has big news! No, she is not preggers and will not die a la Steel Magnolias…her mom got the painting back from the art restorer and…but wait! If she tells her big news before Kristy and the others get there, Mal says Kristy will “kill them!” There might be more truth to that statement than you know Mal! Stacey threatens to explode if the others don’t show up soon and Mal admits she can live with that. I bet you can Mal, that’s one less person out there who thinks you are a dork! Claudia finds her ring-dings and waxes poetical about how great unopened junk food is. Stacey rolls her eyes and Mal wonders if Stacey is jealous because SHE can’t eat junk food. Or maybe Claud just sounds like an idiot…ever think of that? Finally, everyone else arrives, and Mary Anne and Dawn have big, idiotic grins on their faces. When asked why they look so stupid happy, they admit it is because their parents are celebrating their anniversary of their 25th date as adults. Quite frankly, I am surprised Sharon remembered who Richard is for so long considering she sticks random objects in random places…heehee. Maybe Richard has stuck something to her to help her remember. Stacey tries to announce her news but Kristy, who has lost control of the meeting and the attention has not been on her for five minutes now, decides they have to start by asking if there is any club business. Mal states that no one would dare raise any business because Stacey was in danger of exploding. Finally, it was time for Stacey’s news. She announces that the portrait was of a beautiful woman and looked just like how Sophie described her mother in the diary. Then, we get this little gem,
Stacey says, “You know something? Charlotte was right. Things aren’t always what they seem to be. I didn’t understand what she was trying to say before but now I see.”
“Do you think Charlotte knew the portrait had been painted over?” I asked incredulously.
“Oh no, not at all. I think she just meant that sometimes you have to look beyond the obvious. Use your imagination or a little ingenuity.” Stacey replied.
I can’t believe Mal thought Charlotte knew the answer all along and was hiding it from them! Who the hell does she think Charlotte is, the next Nancy Drew? Although Charlotte does seem to have a few more cards in her deck than the entire BSC put together, considering Stacey took 50+ pages to figure out what a 9 year old was trying to tell her!!!! Then, thankfully the phone rings and they settle into club business. Stacey announces her mom and her are going to hang the portrait in their living room over the mantel because the mom deserves to be with the spirits of her husband and daughter. Stacey rushes to reassure them she doesn’t think there are ghosts but you know, just to be on the safe side…lame.
The phone rings again, junk food is consumed, and Kristy wonders how all that crap got into Stacey’s attic. Mal speaks up that she and Buddy have a theory. Kristy says, “Oh goody.” Mal rushes to tell us Kristy wasn’t being sarcastic, Kristy truly wanted to know. Hmmmm, you sure about that? Here is the theory that I am betting Buddy came up with on his own considering everyone else’s track record in this book: Old Hickory’s nephew inherited both houses and decided he wanted the bigger one. He decided to rent out the smaller one but threw a bunch of stuff from the big house he didn’t want into the little one’s attic. Then he sold the little house, forgetting about all the crap in the attic. Mal admits “they” made this up and at least Jared’s name has been cleared. Buddy Barrett then calls to talk to Mal. He lets her know he was moved up a reading group at school AND read a chapter book all on his own AND it was a Hardy Boys AND he solved the mystery before the end of the book. Mal wonders if there is such a thing as too much good news-“the painting has been found and Buddy was becoming a reader.” Ahhh, the two plots meet a sunshiney happy ending!!!! After hanging up the phone, Mal asks Scrooge Stacey if there is enough money in the treasury to buy Buddy a reward-a made up book called “GOOPS and how to be them.” Lame…Stacey hands her the money, reminds her to bring back change and they all laugh. THE END!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Another BSC triumph!! Well, technically it was the mini Doogie Howser and the kid who can’t read that should really reap any forthcoming benefits! Until next time loyal BSCers…
Chapter 13
We open with Mallory asking Buddy what he thinks…no it is not a philosophical question about why he thinks her life sucks, she is asking what he thinks the solution is to an Encyclopedia Brown mystery. This is her newest addition to the “Buddy should love reading” ideas. I wonder if the BSC references these books every time they try to solve mysteries? Although those mysteries had pretty obvious clues and the BSC tends to miss those!! Anyhootie, back to the tutoring session…Mal and Buddy take turns reading the mysteries to each other and solving them. Buddy is so into this that Mal tells him about their “real” mystery. This is a sad commentary on the BSC’s intelligence that they have to depend on Charlotte and Buddy to help them solve this. After hearing all about this mystery, Buddy nearly pees himself in his excitement to read the diary. Mal decides to take him to her house to read it and they say goodbye to Mary Anne who is b-sitting for the rest of the Barrett clan. As they enter Mal’s room, Vanessa looks up in surprise and Mal notices she has poetry-writing papers spread all over her bed. Mal “hopes they hadn’t broken her train of thought.” Who cares if you did? Vanessa sucks at poetry-she is probably trying to figure out a word that rhymes with orange! Vanessa leaves and Buddy opens the diary. He begins to read and notices Sophie can’t spell. Mal decides that if only “Mr. Moser (buddy’s teacher) could see him now, he would probably send a nice note home to Mrs. Barrett.” Yea, a nice note detailing what he would like to do to the MILF of Stoneybrook!! Buddy skips ahead to the mystery part and reads for so long that Mal gets bored and reads her new horse book from the library. Mal likes horses??? Who knew????? God, give the poor girl a bone-have her read Forever by Judy Blume or something. My friend and I read that book when we were younger solely because someone told us all about the dirty parts! At least this way, Mal can find out what you can do with a boy so when she does get a bf, she isn’t completely clueless!! Back to the story, Buddy is disappointed because he can’t find a clue in the diary so he asks to look in the tunk trunk. Mal reminds him that it is not surprising he didn’t find a clue in the diary-this isn’t an Encyclopedia Brown mystery!!! Conveniently, Buddy gets his hand stuck. Where you ask? Why in the false bottom of the trunk!! Buddy also has found some old papers stuck in there! Knock, Knock,Knock! Who’s there? Why it’s a solution! Sure enough, the papers they pull out are headed, “My Confession by James Hickman.” Hmm….I smell Encyclopedia’s hand in this-it is obvious enough what the solution is!! Buddy begins to read this confession out loud and Mal says, “I was too excited to listen to his slow and careful pronunciation. For just awhile, I couldn’t be his tutor. I skimmed ahead silently.” Listening to kids read aloud sometimes IS painful, I will give you that Mal. Apparently, “Old Hickory was James Hickman-Kristy had been right.” When is she not? This is shocking news how? So…when his daughter died (Sophie’s mom) he couldn’t bear to look at her portrait so he hired someone to come in (an itinerant painter) to paint over it and he changed the frame and hung it in another room so “his daughter wasn’t with him but still was.” Again, was Encyclopedia consulted when writing this? When asked by his friends where the painting of his daughter went, he was embarrassed to admit what he did and so he said it had been stolen. The townspeople suspected Jared because Old Hickory was shooting his mouth off to anyone who would listen about what a crappy son-in-law he was and that he made Sophie’s mom have another kid when he knew she was too weak to handle it so Jared is the reason she died. Now, even though I have pact right now with all the men in my city to NOT have ANYTHING to do with me, I know it takes two to tango!! Mal states that the “terrible thing he had done was let people believe they were right (about stealing the painting).” Ummmm, I think accusing your son-in-law of murder because he made your daughter have another kid is FAR WORSE than letting people believe he stole some crappy painting. Also, why shouldn’t he have the portrait of his dead wife?? Is it so terrible to think he MIGHT want to remember her?????
They finish reading the confession and Buddy has a question-how did the trunk end up in Sophie’s house? Mal says that maybe when Old Hickory’s nephew inherited Old Hickory’s house, he moved things he didn’t want over to Sophie’s house because Old Hickory owned that too. Buddy then says that if he moved the trunk over, maybe he moved other things too? Like old paintings? AND scene!!!
Geez, the BSC can’t do anything on their own!!!!!!!! This story should be called “The Mystery that the BSC half-heartedly attempt to solve but are too lazy so they let two nine-year-olds solve it for them.”
Chapter 14
Mal calls Buddy a genius and they immediately get Stacey on the horn to share the news. As they explain the story, Stacey is confused. I have another question for you Ann- If she is this confused by what Old Hickory’s confession has to do with her and her house, why is she a part of this book? Better yet, why is she left in charge of small children when it is completely obvious she is an idiot??????? No wonder she and Claudia are best friends! Mal spells out that they think the painting might have ended up in the attic with the trunk and Stacey suddenly sees the light. Stacey invites them over right away and Mal says, “We probably broke a record getting to Stacey’s house from mine. Then we probably broke another record getting upstairs to the attic. If nothing else, we broke a noise record.” All right already! We get that you are fast (Stacey in more ways than one) and we get you are excited! That is no reason to beat a dead horse!!!! Once they get to the attic though, they are “stumped” Did you forget what you were looking for??? They have no idea where to start. Ummm, how about looking for a big square with pretty shapes and colors on it? So they split up and shocker-Buddy AGAIN finds what they are looking for! Paintings! Are Mal and Stacey sitting on another trunk sipping martinis and yelling, “Have at it Buddy! We’ll be right here when you find what we need!” Seriously, the BSC haven’t lifted a damn finger to solve this mystery, yet they are the first ones to complain about how long it’s taking! A kid who can’t read solved the mystery faster than the entire BSC combined! And that’s giving them a handicap for having Claudia dragging them down with her subpar IQ!!! They carefully go through the paintings Buddy found but they aren’t sure which one it could be. Mal then stumbles across another painting in a different part of the attic and triumphantly exclaims that this is the one! Buddy scoffs at her dectective skillz, “Yea right! Like a painting of ships is the answer! You two would still be scratching your heads and sipping martinis if it weren’t for me!” However, Mal notices the ships are sailing over a finger with a ring on it! Eureka!!! Mal wants to know what they should do with it. Ummm, bring it downstairs???? Isn’t this what you’ve spent the last 100 pages looking for? You’d think they would have thought this through!! Stacey, not Buddy who’s taken the lead thus far, suggests they bring it downstairs to her mom who “has been pouring over the want ads for a job. I’m sure she’ll be excited to take a break.” Oh really? I’m sure Mrs. McG has nothing better to do than look at a crappy painting that may or may not solve a stupid 100 year old mystery, like find a job that can keep her and her diabetes ridden daughter in the lap of luxury they are so accustomed to. As they lug the painting downstairs, Mrs. McG is less than thrilled to see them, until Stacey tells her the story. Mal is bored of telling the story (I hear you-I am tired of listening to it). She suggests they take the painting to a professional art restorer because she “doesn’t want any ghosts hanging around the house.” May I interject that until this point I forgot about the whole “Sophie is haunting Stacey’s house” subplot. What ghosts??? THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE BOOK THERE HAS NOT BEEN ONE GHOSTSIGHTING!!!! STOP WITH THE DAMN GHOSTS!!!!!!!!!!!! They realize the time and remember that Buddy needed to be home five minutes ago. Mal takes him home and Mrs. Barrett comments about what a wonderful job she has done with Buddy and making him into a reader. Mal does the false modesty thing and Mrs. B is all, “What would I have done without you! You saved my family from certain ruin! God forbid I should sit with my own kids and work on homework with them! My social life would be out the door!” Buddy then comes back down and to cement that he is now a reader, he puts on a magic show with the magic tricks he got from Stacey. How does this show he is a reader? Well, he READ the directions to learn how to do the magic tricks!!! Ahhhhhh, success!!! Buddy is saved from a life of asking, “You want fries with that?” Mal then hightails it home to tell her family the exciting adventures of her life. I bet you Mr. and Mrs. Pike are playing footsie under the table and thinking, “God! When will she shut up so we can get to bed? Whose genes did this kid inherit anyway? Certainly no one in MY family was EVER this nerdy!”
Chapter 15
Ahhhh, the last chapter! Stacey rushes into the BSC meeting and has big news! No, she is not preggers and will not die a la Steel Magnolias…her mom got the painting back from the art restorer and…but wait! If she tells her big news before Kristy and the others get there, Mal says Kristy will “kill them!” There might be more truth to that statement than you know Mal! Stacey threatens to explode if the others don’t show up soon and Mal admits she can live with that. I bet you can Mal, that’s one less person out there who thinks you are a dork! Claudia finds her ring-dings and waxes poetical about how great unopened junk food is. Stacey rolls her eyes and Mal wonders if Stacey is jealous because SHE can’t eat junk food. Or maybe Claud just sounds like an idiot…ever think of that? Finally, everyone else arrives, and Mary Anne and Dawn have big, idiotic grins on their faces. When asked why they look so stupid happy, they admit it is because their parents are celebrating their anniversary of their 25th date as adults. Quite frankly, I am surprised Sharon remembered who Richard is for so long considering she sticks random objects in random places…heehee. Maybe Richard has stuck something to her to help her remember. Stacey tries to announce her news but Kristy, who has lost control of the meeting and the attention has not been on her for five minutes now, decides they have to start by asking if there is any club business. Mal states that no one would dare raise any business because Stacey was in danger of exploding. Finally, it was time for Stacey’s news. She announces that the portrait was of a beautiful woman and looked just like how Sophie described her mother in the diary. Then, we get this little gem,
Stacey says, “You know something? Charlotte was right. Things aren’t always what they seem to be. I didn’t understand what she was trying to say before but now I see.”
“Do you think Charlotte knew the portrait had been painted over?” I asked incredulously.
“Oh no, not at all. I think she just meant that sometimes you have to look beyond the obvious. Use your imagination or a little ingenuity.” Stacey replied.
I can’t believe Mal thought Charlotte knew the answer all along and was hiding it from them! Who the hell does she think Charlotte is, the next Nancy Drew? Although Charlotte does seem to have a few more cards in her deck than the entire BSC put together, considering Stacey took 50+ pages to figure out what a 9 year old was trying to tell her!!!! Then, thankfully the phone rings and they settle into club business. Stacey announces her mom and her are going to hang the portrait in their living room over the mantel because the mom deserves to be with the spirits of her husband and daughter. Stacey rushes to reassure them she doesn’t think there are ghosts but you know, just to be on the safe side…lame.
The phone rings again, junk food is consumed, and Kristy wonders how all that crap got into Stacey’s attic. Mal speaks up that she and Buddy have a theory. Kristy says, “Oh goody.” Mal rushes to tell us Kristy wasn’t being sarcastic, Kristy truly wanted to know. Hmmmm, you sure about that? Here is the theory that I am betting Buddy came up with on his own considering everyone else’s track record in this book: Old Hickory’s nephew inherited both houses and decided he wanted the bigger one. He decided to rent out the smaller one but threw a bunch of stuff from the big house he didn’t want into the little one’s attic. Then he sold the little house, forgetting about all the crap in the attic. Mal admits “they” made this up and at least Jared’s name has been cleared. Buddy Barrett then calls to talk to Mal. He lets her know he was moved up a reading group at school AND read a chapter book all on his own AND it was a Hardy Boys AND he solved the mystery before the end of the book. Mal wonders if there is such a thing as too much good news-“the painting has been found and Buddy was becoming a reader.” Ahhh, the two plots meet a sunshiney happy ending!!!! After hanging up the phone, Mal asks Scrooge Stacey if there is enough money in the treasury to buy Buddy a reward-a made up book called “GOOPS and how to be them.” Lame…Stacey hands her the money, reminds her to bring back change and they all laugh. THE END!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Another BSC triumph!! Well, technically it was the mini Doogie Howser and the kid who can’t read that should really reap any forthcoming benefits! Until next time loyal BSCers…