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Prologue - 1: Lab-16
- 2: Recon - 3:
PBJ-Magic - 4: Noah's Arc
5: Math Wheels
- 6: Gapwar - 7: Rack'Em
- 8: FitTris
The Big Help - Chapter 04 -
Noah's Arc
The bulldozer had just unearthed a large stone bolder....but that
was another quarry. (Editor's Note: Yes, I know they're getting worse but then again, there are worse yet to come.) I had just wrapped up the
case of the missing breath mint when the phone rang. I was eating Jello pudding at the time so I decided to do my best Bill Cosby impression. I
said "Jello - Who is it?"; they answered "Noah" in a voice that boomed like God from a Cecil B. DeMille movie. I, of course, said "Right".
This guy Noah said he had lost his Arc and could I help him find it. Well I had once helped The Big Shaq Attack find his Arc from the charity
stripe but this time I suspected a different kind of fowl play. My suspicions were confirmed immediately when Noah showed me the last known
location of his missing Arc. Wrapped around a hard gray rock was a note that read "Death to Bi-Quadruped Collectors". There was also a One Dollar
Bill with the words "Ok, maybe I told one lie once." written in bright cherry-red lipstick. I immediately ruled out Bill Clinton from my list
of suspects. Whoever did this, was cruel and obviously liked playing sick jokes. On the back of the note was a little puzzle with a picture
of Noah at one end and a picture of the missing Arc at the other. In between were animals both large and small. I stared at that puzzle for
what seemed like hours, but I came up with nothing. Like a Salvation Army Bucket on July 25'th....I kept coming up empty and nothing was
ringing my bell.
And then it hit me; maybe empty wasn't such a bad feeling after all.
Empty....Empty....Emp-ty.....Em....Tee.....M...T........Mt.
I put it all together. Mt... Cherry-Red... lies... Washington... it was all there if you knew where to look. So I took Noah up to Mt. Washington,
New Hampshire's highest peak; and buried beneath a chopped down Cherry Tree at the top was his Arc: the left half of his gold wedding band. Joan still
had the other half of course because she was always right. There was also a note addressed to me that read "Hey Nick! Quite the ingenious use of an igneous rock, don't you think? - your Arc-Enemy Inga". She was trying to make a
pun, but as usual it smelled like only two-thirds of one.
That case taught me a valuable lesson - "Never take anything for Granite.". You see New Hampshire is the Granite State, so I guess that wasn't another
quarry after all.
(Go to
Chapter-05 to read more)
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