The Potato Chip Puzzles: The Puzzling World of Winston Breen by Eric Berlin Page B

I heard that.”
    “He’s got the tire off,” said Mal, gesturing back to Mr. Garvey. “Let’s start walking, huh?”
    So they started back to Mr. Garvey’s car, walking slowly. Jake kept talking. “You know Mark Mazslos? From the baseball team?”
    Winston nodded. Big kid, born to play sports.
    “He told me once about getting revenge on his older brother. They don’t get along too well. Mark wedged a bottle under the wheel of his brother’s car, nice and tight. His brother started the car, tried to back up, and blam. Instant flat tire. He says next time his brother picks on him, he’s giving him four flat tires.”
    “Or maybe we drove over some broken glass and that’s that,” Mal said.
    Jake shrugged. “Maybe. But I think that popping sound we heard was the bottle breaking.”
    “So who put it there?” asked Winston. “One of the kids on that math teacher’s team?”
    He made the mistake of saying this as they neared Mr. Garvey’s car. Mr. Garvey had just gotten the spare tire into place and was screwing the lug nuts back on. He craned his head around. “What math teacher? You mean Mr. Denham?”
    There was an uncomfortable pause, then Winston said, “We think someone might have given us the flat tire.”
    Mr. Garvey sat up a little straighter and clenched the lugwrench in his fist. His eyes widened. “Denham,” he growled. “He knows I’m out to beat him. Would he do that? Would he really do that?”
    “I don’t know,” Winston said quickly. “It could have been somebody else, too.”
    “We just can’t figure out how they did it,” Mal said.
    “Come on,” Jake said. “How hard is it to pop a bottle under somebody’s tire?”
    “We were all standing right there,” Mal reminded him. “We would have noticed if somebody started crawling around under the car.”
    Mr. Garvey lowered the car from the jack and made sure the lug nuts were nice and tight. “Boys, get in,” he said while he did this. “We’ll have to worry about this later. Right now, we don’t have proof that anybody gave us this flat tire. That means it’s up to us to make up all the time we lost. This could be a real setback, but it won’t be because we won’t let it. Right?”
    The boys stared at him.
    “I said, right ?”
    Oh, that wasn’t a rhetorical question. Now the boys all hastily agreed: “Right, absolutely.” But Winston wondered how they could possibly catch up.
     
    Mr. Garvey wasn’t driving recklessly, exactly, but he was going fast enough that Winston checked his seat belt a couple of times. Winston could see the teacher’s expression in the rearview mirror, and it was one of grim determination. They might not catch the other teams, but it wouldn’t be because Mr. Garvey was afraid to exceed the speed limit.
    After a few minutes of driving in silence, Jake turned on the mini computer. “Teedly-teedly-tee!” it said.
    “Can I see that thing?” Winston said. Jake handed it to him.
    Winston turned the computer around in his hands, examining it. Incredible, when you thought about it. Dmitri Simon must have spent a small fortune having these things made up. You couldn’t just go into a store and buy special puzzle hunt computers.
    As Jake had said, there were six numbered buttons on the screen. Right now all but the first of these was useless. A seventh button said STATUS. Winston pushed this. The device mulled it over for a few moments and then informed him, “Please check back later.” Okay, then.
    He called up the information about the space museum. Winston had been there a few times—on field trips with school, mostly. He wondered if the puzzle would be right where they could see it, or if they would have to hunt around for it. He wished there was something about that puzzle here, something they could begin thinking about. But other than the map and the instructions about how to get in free, there was nothing but the input box for when they had the answer. Glancing up at Mr. Garvey—who