Chapter 1 of The Mystery of the Existential Envoy

And a bit of other news

Dear Friends and Fans of The Three Investigators,

The Mystery of the Existential Envoy began with the idea that it might contain an homage to The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot, and although it actually evolved into something very different, old fans will be able to see the shadow of its origins in its first chapter - and in some later chapters, too.

Although this is the last time Steven and I will be publishing three books on the same day - starting in September I’ll simply be sending out the first chapter of a new book on the 3rd of every month - since I sent you the first chapter of Bob’s latest entry on publication day, I think it’s only fair to also send you Pete’s, below - with Jupiter’s still to come.

Also, you might be interested to know that Steven and I have had some good news from Barnes & Noble. Someone who works for the online division of the company has selected The Mystery of The Dramaturgical Dagger for inclusion in a list called “Top Indie Favorite eBooks for June and July.”

That’s pretty cool - and so is the fact that The Mystery of the Factitious Falconer is currently #4 on Amazon’s “Best Sellers in Teen & Young Adult Historical Mysteries & Thrillers” list.

To be honest, I don’t think there are all that many Teen and Young Adult books that can qualify as historical mysteries or thrillers (or all that many readers who might ever stumble across that list), but I’m still pleased that those who do will stumble across the title.

Now on to the main event. Links to Amazon and Barnes & Noble are at the bottom of the page this time.

Chapter One: A Confrontation With Evil

Pete Crenshaw tossed the ball into the air and, as it fell, he swung, hard. The ping an ash bat made hitting a hardball right was one of the sweetest sounds in the world, and from the vibration he felt in his hands, he knew he'd hit a homer. Or he would have if he'd been playing baseball. The ball shot from the bat and flew straight into the batting cage where it hit the nylon net with a whisper and fell to the ground.

It was a sunny Saturday morning at the beginning of August, and although Pete had been planning to go to the Rocky Beach Animal Rescue Center first thing this morning to help out, since he hadn't actually told Mr. Munson when he'd be coming, he'd thought he'd steal a little time for batting practice. However, he was already feeling guilty about his choice.

Not only had he - sort of - broken his word to Mr. Munson, but he'd also - sort of - broken his word to the animals he was taking care of - and since he and his best friends Jupiter Jones and Bob Andrews didn't have a case to investigate at the moment, he didn't have much of an excuse.

Of course, Jupiter had often told him and Bob that you never knew when a case would pop up, and as Pete had walked the six blocks from his house to the small pocket park at the corner of Acacia and Broad, he'd kept an eye out. The Rec Department of the town of Rocky Beach had developed the park several years before. Half the size of a square block, it was a great place to get some exercise or to relax.

There were swings and slides, monkey bars, and a spinner for younger children, two basketball hoops and the batting cage, as well as benches and three picnic tables. Though Pete had arrived early, before it got too hot, already the swings were full. Parents pushed their kids as the children screamed. There was another noise Pete heard, jangly and discordant, as if someone was playing music outside - music Pete didn't like.

Pete picked up another ball from the bucket at his feet, tossed it, and swung again. This time the hit was less solid and it veered off to the right. Darn, Pete thought. He and Bob and Jupiter would be freshmen at Rocky Beach High in the fall, and Pete planned to try out for the varsity soccer team in the fall and the baseball team in the spring. It would be a change, moving from softball to baseball, and he wanted to get a head start. He'd done well on the junior high softball team, but not as well as he'd hoped, even if his batting average had been the best.

He picked up another ball, tossed it, and swung. Ping! Another winner. Pete dropped the bat and raised his arms into the air. "Go, Badgers!" he yelled and did a little victory dance.

"You done?" a voice said behind him.

He turned, embarrassed. He could feel his face get hot. A younger boy was standing about ten feet away with a bat and a bucket of softballs. He was shorter than Pete, with squinty eyes and scruffy blond hair that peeked out from under his baseball cap, which he wore backwards. He was a scrappy kid who Pete had seen walking his dog, a Golden Retriever, around the neighborhood. Pete had even spoken to him once or twice.

"You came down to practice your swing," Pete said, stating the obvious. "You're Mickie, right?"

"Close," the boy said. "Mikey." He looked pleased that Pete had remembered him.

Pete picked up his bat and rested it on his shoulder. "I'm almost done. I'm Pete," he said.

Mikey nodded as if he knew. "Come on over," Pete said. "Let's see what you can do. What grade are you in? I think I knew but I forgot."

"Seventh, in the fall," Mikey said.

"Go on," Pete said, gesturing to the cage. "Don't mind me."

But Pete's presence clearly made the younger boy nervous. He tossed a softball up and swung, missing it. He winced, picked it up, and threw it in the air again. This time he got a solid hit. The bigger ball made a thwack and flew into the batting cage's net.

"Good one," Pete said. "That would have been a double, at least!"

A high-pitched earsplitting shriek rent the air, so loud and jarring Pete put his hands to his ears. "Ouch!" he said. "What was that?"

"Existential Evil," Mikey said.

Pete looked at him, baffled. "What?"

"It's a garage band," Mikey said. "That was probably one of their amplifiers. They always practice on Saturday morning, no matter how many people tell them to can it. Kyle Bault and his friends."

"Who's Kyle Bault?" Pete asked.

"He's some guy," Mikey said. "I think he was in prison for a while, but now he's home living with his parents. About a block from my house."

Maybe that noise he'd heard earlier - someone might call it music, he guessed - had been this garage band.

"They're pretty terrible," Pete said.

"Yeah," Mikey agreed. "They just like to rock out."

"Well," said Pete, gesturing toward the cage. "It's all yours, Mikey. I've got to go, anyway. I'm volunteering at the Animal Rescue Center today."

"Really? That's terrific!" Mikey said. "We got our Golden Retriever from them. At the time, they didn't know what he was, though. He was really little and covered in mud. The guy who had him chained him up outside."

"I can't understand how anyone can do stuff like that," Pete said.

"Me, neither," said Mikey. "Did you hear about that guy they arrested down in San Diego? The one with the parrots?"

Pete shook his head. Mikey suddenly looked angry.

"It was in the paper," he said. "They caught him trying to smuggle some sort of little parrots into the country from South America. They were blue and he'd stuffed them inside blue plastic hair curlers. They couldn't move or make any noise. When the Customs guys found them, they were almost starved to death. A bunch of them had already died."

The thought of it made Pete's stomach lurch. "That's awful," he said.

"My dad said he thought some bird shop in Rocky Beach might be bringing parrots into the country illegally."

"Why does he think that?" Pete asked. "What bird shop?"

"I don't know. It's a woman's name. V something,"  Mikey said. "He heard some rumor, I guess."

Pete was already feeling upset about the parrots, as well as guilty that he wasn't at the Rescue Center right now, when suddenly the music from the garage band jumped in volume. For the first time, Pete could understand some of the words that they were singing, and they shocked him.

"Did you hear what I just heard?" he asked Mikey.

"Yeah," Mikey said. "It's not the first time."

"But there are little kids here!" Pete said. He suddenly felt truly angry. He might not be able to do anything about the trade in South American parrots, but he could certainly do something about this so-called band playing so close to a playground. "You know these guys?" he asked.

"Just a little," Mikey said. "I'll go with you if you want."

"Let's go," Pete said. He shouldered his bat and picked up his pail of balls. Mikey followed him.

The house was only a few blocks away on Green - the garage door was open and three guys in their late forties or early fifties stood there, whaling on electric guitars. A fourth was beating up a drum set. Pete wasn't sure what "existential" meant, but he thought that "evil" was a pretty good description of the noise the band made.

The lead singer was screaming into a microphone - crass and ugly words that Pete, even at almost fourteen, disliked hearing. The guy was wearing sunglasses, a flowered Hawaiian shirt, a black fedora, and skintight jeans. He was wiry and taut and there was a twang in his voice. His face was hard, with a jaw that jutted forward and looked like it was made of granite.

The guy next to him on bass guitar was medium height, with close-set eyes, olive skin, a shaved head, and several days of stubble. He wore tight black pants and a black muscle shirt. Clearly he lifted weights; his biceps bulged. Around his neck he wore a big gold cross on a substantial gold chain. He looked surly, even a bit threatening.

"The one over there?" Mikey said. "That's Kyle Bault." He pointed to the third guy, the one playing back-up guitar. The drummer had a full beard that looked in danger of catching fire from the cigarette clenched between his teeth.

They played on for a minute, but the lead singer now stared at Pete and Mikey, and when he stopped shouting, the band stopped playing. He took off his fedora and swatted it across his thigh, then strutted out to where the boys stood. Pete could see his hair was thinning, but what was left of it was long and it had been gathered into a bun the hat had hidden.

The man left his sunglasses on, and his eyes were inscrutable. He was taller than Mikey but not taller than Pete. His expression wasn't friendly, but he tried to make his voice hide the way he felt.

"Can I help you?" he asked. "Are you looking for someone?"

"There are very young children right over there," Pete said, pointing toward the playground. "You  shouldn't be singing that song so loudly."

By this time, the bass guitarist had joined him. He wrinkled up his nose as if he smelled something unpleasant. "I thought only geezers like your old man gave us trouble," he said to the singer. "What do these kids want?"

"They want us to stop singing so loud," the singer said.

The bald one laughed. "Those kids probably hear worse at home," he said.

"I live right up the block," Mikey said defiantly. "Do you want me to get my dad?"

"Hold on, hold on," the lead singer said. He put his hands out in front of him as if he were trying to stop traffic. "Let's not get carried away. I'm Russell," he said. "And you are?"

"I'm Pete," Pete said. "And this is Mikey."

"Mikey?" the bald guy said, laughing. "Mikey mikey mikey," he chanted in a singsong voice. He was a hothead, Pete saw.

Russell clearly already knew that. "Be quiet, Slade," he said. To Pete and Mikey he added, "We've got no problem skipping that song for now."

Pete was still trembling with a combination of adrenaline and anger, but they'd done what they'd come to do and he didn't want to hang around another minute. He nudged Mikey who looked up at him with wide eyes. Pete could see he'd been a little scared. So had Pete, but as he and Mikey walked away, he would have been feeling pretty good if it hadn't been for Mikey's story about the parrots.

Pete thanked Mikey for his help and said  that he hoped to see him around. Then he headed for home, where he found his mother in the kitchen, making a chicken salad for lunch.

She hummed as she worked - a catchy pop song from a year or two ago. She wore a summer dress with a subdued pattern of tiny roses and looked much younger than she actually was - almost as though she could be Pete's older sister. Her curly black hair cascaded over her shoulders.

When he sat heavily down at the table, still a little shaken, she looked at him appraisingly.

"So what have you been up to?" she asked. Sometimes Pete thought his mother could read his mind. He told her about batting practice and Mikey and Existential Evil.

"You should have heard them," Pete said "They'd have given you a fit. What does 'existential' mean, anyway?"

His mother laughed. "It's one of those big words people use when they're trying to sound really smart," she said. "It refers to existence. For example, if I say that nuclear war is an existential threat, I mean that nuclear war threatens existence. People also use it to talk about big philosophical questions, like how and whether life has meaning, and why human beings exist. Of course it has meaning, and human beings exist to find it!"

She brought him a cup of coffee and sat down across from him. "I actually like the word," she said. "There aren't all that many words in English that remind you of how interesting existence really is."

"And not just human existence," said Pete. He'd long been able to confide in his mother, and now he decided to tell her what else was on his mind. He explained about the man arrested in San Diego with the baby parrots and the rumor about a bird shop in Rocky Beach maybe being involved with smuggling.

As he talked, his mother listened carefully, her face a picture of sympathy and understanding. "I thought maybe me, Jupiter, and Bob could look into it," Pete said, "but I'm afraid they might think it's all too vague, or that we should wait for another case to come along."

His mother reached across the table and covered his hand with hers. "First of all," she said, "It's 'Jupiter, Bob, and I.' And second of all, I'm surprised at you! You're not giving your friends enough credit. But I'm interested, too! If you'd like to do a sort of preliminary check on this bird shop, I could take you."

Pete looked at her, surprised. "Really?"

"Of course," his mother said. "Let's find out what it's actually called."

It seemed it was called Veronica's Exotic Birds, and since the shop was just up the block from the Rocky Beach marina, Valeria Crenshaw decided to park in the marina parking lot. The air smelled strongly of salt and the early afternoon sun glinted off the water.

The marina was large, and most of the slips were filled with sailboats, but at the moment there was only one person in sight - a man in his late twenties or early thirties, with skin brown from the sun, and a bristly black mustache. He was wiping down the deck of his sailboat - a good-sized boat with two masts and Santa María painted on its hull.

The man looked up as Pete and his mother walked by. "Hey," Pete said cheerily. "That's a beautiful boat."

The man seemed nervous to Pete. "Sí," he said. "Mi inglés es very bod. Muy poco inglés."

"No habla inglés?" Pete said. "Yo hablo español bastante bien. Me llamo Pete."

The man seemed to relax a little at this. "Bueno," he said. "Me llamo José."

As they walked on, Pete's mother congratulated him on how well he was coming along with his Spanish. Although his mother had always spoken fluent Spanish, his father's parents had thought their son should learn only English, so Pete's parents hadn't spoken Spanish together when Pete was a kid.

He and his mother walked side by side as they crossed the parking lot to Veronica's Exotic Birds. A set of bells jangled as Pete pulled open the door, then stepped into a brightly lit store that smelled faintly of wood shavings and something vegetal. In the far back, a young man was emptying a large bag of birdseed into a bright galvanized can. The air was filled with chirping, twittering, and fluttering, punctuated by an occasional birdcall and the sound of a parrot talking to itself.

Pete's eyes immediately landed on a startlingly blue bird with a big curved gray beak sitting calmly on a perch at the front of the store. It was one of the biggest birds Pete had ever seen - about three feet long from the crown of its head to the tip of its tail feathers - and easily the most beautiful. Its feathers were cobalt blue and seemed almost to shimmer with the purity of their blueness. A bright yellow ring surrounded its black eye, and a corresponding yellow stripe accented its bottom beak.

Pete couldn't stop himself. Ignoring everything else, he made a beeline for the bird. It looked even bigger close up. He stood in front of it, awestruck, and the bird looked at him mildly, turning its head to better peer at him. His mother came up behind him. 

"This is the most amazing bird I've ever seen!" Pete said to her. "Do you think it's a parrot?"

"Hello," an unfamiliar female voice said. "I'm Veronica Harrison. I see you've already met Agatha."

Pete had been so engrossed admiring the bird that he hadn't noticed the woman walking toward them. She was middle-aged, with short salt and pepper hair and a pleasant face. She'd taken her glasses and perched them on top of her head.  She had a name tag that read "Veronica."

She raised her arm and Agatha stepped confidently from her perch to the woman's wrist. She bent her head and the woman scratched her head feathers as she kept talking.

"Hyacinth macaws are native to South America," she said. "They live mostly in a large grassy open wetlands area in Brazil called the Pantanal. They're the largest flying parrots in the world and can live to be fifty or sixty in the wild - even longer in captivity.

"I've had her for fifteen years," she added. "I hand-raised her. She's not for sale, obviously. But a healthy hyacinth macaw can bring $20,000 on the open market these days. Wild ones are very rare - and totally protected. A lot of people wanted them because they're so beautiful, so they were caught and sold as part of the exotic pet trade. And big portions of their habitat have been destroyed as people moved in nearby. I'm very lucky to be able to own a sweetie-pie like this one. She's only here two days a week. At home I have an aviary for her." 

"Does she bite?" Pete asked.

The woman smiled. "The beak is for cracking nuts," she said. "In the wild she would eat Brazil nuts."

Just then, the bells on the front door jingled, and Pete turned to see a man entering the shop. He was over six feet tall and in his mid-to-late-40s, Pete thought. His skin was bronze from the sun, his face open and welcoming. He wore a loose-fitting blue tunic over a pair of well-worn jeans and his long jet-black hair was pulled back in a ponytail held with a silver clip.

He carried a largish cage with a bird with a brilliant red head. It was clear at once that he and Veronica knew one another.

“Rafael!" she said. "You're down from Santa Barbara! And you have a scarlet macaw!"

"Temporarily," Rafael said. "I bought him this morning at the Farmer's Market. A Mexican man was selling him for much less than he's worth. The man had no papers showing where the bird came from, and I was worried he was so cheap that someone who wouldn't be able to take care of him properly would buy him on a whim. You don't expect to find endangered birds for sale next to the tomatoes, but there he was."

There was a clatter from the back of the shop, and all four of them turned to look. The young man who'd been filling the can with birdseed looked startled and vaguely guilty. Pete thought he probably always looked guilty.

"Is everything all right, Jack?" the woman asked.

"Yeah," the man said. "I just knocked over a cage." He was in his twenties, with  blond hair, a weak chin, and twitchy eyes. Under his lower lip he sprouted a tuft of hair that Pete thought was called a "soul patch." Pete knew it was meant to look hip, but in this case it didn't much work.

The man named Rafael turned back to Veronica. "His name is Rojo," he told her, "and I have nowhere to keep him at the moment. Do you think you could look after him until I leave for Santa Barbara?"

"Of course I could," said Veronica. "But I have to wonder how this Mexican man came to be selling a scarlet macaw in a farmer's market."

Pete had been wondering the same thing, but when Veronica asked her question, his last tinge of suspicion that she herself might be involved in the illegal animal trade vanished. Between the way she'd talked about Agatha and what she'd just said to Rafael, she was clearly one of the good guys. The rumor Mikey's father had heard must have had no basis in fact.

"I wonder, too," said Rafael "And I wish I could think of how to conduct an investigation into the matter."

"Excuse a mother's pride," Valeria Crenshaw said suddenly,  "but my son is one of The Three Investigators. Perhaps you've heard of them? They ask a lot of questions, and they investigate anything."

Veronica shook her head, but an expression of interest crossed Rafael's face. "The Three Investigators?" he said.

"You may remember reading in the paper about the three boys who discovered the hidden gold up in Auburn?" Pete's mother said.

"That's it!" Rafael exclaimed. "By the way, my name is Rafael Solares." He reached out to shake Pete's mother's hand, and afterward, Pete's. His grip was warm and powerful.

"I'm Pete Crenshaw," Pete said.

His mother nudged him. "Why don't you give him your card?"

It was a radical idea. Pete did have some Three Investigators' business cards in his wallet, but it had always been Jupiter who handed them out. "Go on," his mother said.

Why not? Pete thought. Why carry them if not for moments like this? He took one out and handed it to Rafael Solares, who glanced at it with interest.

"It's good to meet you, Pete," he said. "I've got a son about your age. You remind me of him a little. He lives with his mother south of San Diego and just north of Tijuana, in Chula Vista."

"Gosh," said Pete. "That's a long way from Santa Barbara."

"Too long," Rafael said.

Pete didn't know what to say to this, so he said nothing as Rafael looked at the card again. It said, as it always had,

THE THREE INVESTIGATORS
      "We Investigate Anything"
                            ???
 First Investigator - Jupiter Jones
 Second Investigator - Pete Crenshaw
 Records and Research - Bob Andrews

and at the bottom was the number of the land-line in Headquarters, the number of Bob Andrews' cellphone, and the website address of their firm. 

Rafael looked up at Pete again. "So you're the Second Investigator," he said. "Well, if you and your friends really investigate anything, maybe I will ask you to see what you can find out about Rojo and the man I bought him from. I've got something I need to do first, but I'll think about it and let you know."

"You see?" Pete's mother said triumphantly. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained."

Rafael smiled, then said he had to be going. Veronica promised she'd take good care of Rojo until Rafael came back for him.

"Mrs. Crenshaw," Rafael said, nodding politely. And then he was out of the store and striding toward a battered pickup hand-painted a cheerful bright yellow and parked right outside the shop. Figures that looked like wheels with spokes decorated the doors and tailgate; some had the points of stars radiating from them. A representation of a human figure had been painted with contrasting stripes of black and white - with a single red line down its middle.

The paintings weren't finely drawn, but they were compelling. On the truck's back, a handmade plywood truck cap rose to a gentle point, like the roof of a house. It, too, had been painted with symbols.

"Look at that," said Pete's mother. "Those are Chumash Indian symbols. They look at lot like wall paintings in Chumash Painted Cave State Park! I took my class there just this year."

"Rafael is half-Chumash," Veronica said. "The Chumash originally lived around Los Angeles and Santa Monica, but now they have a reservation up in Santa Ynez, about two hours north of here. About a year ago Rafael was asked to be a sort of Chumash envoy for the Santa Barbara County school system. Now, how can I help you?"

Pete didn't know what to say. They'd come to the store because he'd been suspicious that it was engaged in parrot smuggling. But between Rafael Solares and Veronica Harrison, he now knew his suspicions were misplaced.

"We - we just wanted to look around," Pete said weakly.

His mother, however, seemed fully energized by the challenge of covering up their original purpose. "I'd actually like to buy my son a bird," she said.

Pete's mouth fell open and he looked at her, amazed. "He's always wanted a pet," she explained to Veronica. "A dog would probably be better, but my husband's in the movies and he's away a lot - anyway, I think a bird would be a lovely pet. Do you have any recommendations? Nothing too big, or too hard to take care of," she added.

Veronica smiled. "I have just the thing," she said. She took them to look at the Fischer's lovebirds. They were small parrots, under six inches long, and beautiful. They were very social and did better in pairs, she said. They were found in Tanzania, in Africa, she added. Pete really liked them, but he felt compelled to ask.

"Where do you get your birds?" he said.

"All our birds are bred and born and hand-raised right here in southern California," Veronica said.

All right then, Pete thought.

"We'll take them," Pete's mother said, "and of course a cage and feed and - and whatever they need. Pete works at the Animal Rescue Center so he'll know how to take excellent care."

"Well, good for you, Pete," Veronica said. "I wish more young people took an active interest in animal welfare."

Pete almost said something about the smuggling he was concerned with, but then thought better of it. Jupiter was always saying it was wiser to gather information than to divulge it.

Suddenly, the scarlet macaw, whose cage was now sitting on the counter, started to make noises - first a whooshing sound like wind or water, then a long-drawn-out creaking, and finally, something that sounded to Pete a bit like the engine of a pull-cord lawnmower sputtering before it finally caught.

"Good heavens," said Pete's mother.

She and Pete were even more surprised when Rojo suddenly spoke in a clear voice.

“More copy borrows on the way," he said. He hopped on his perch and turned his head to stare at Pete.

"Whoa!" Pete said. "What does that mean?"

"I may be wrong," Ms. Harrison said, "but I think what he's actually saying is 'capybara.'" She shook her head. "I have no idea where on earth he would have learned to say that - or to make those peculiar noises, either!"

"What's a capybara?" Pete asked.

"It's a semi-aquatic South American rodent - like a gigantic guinea pig that loves water," Veronica said. "They can grow to weigh a hundred and forty pounds."

Pete tried to picture the animal. A hundred and forty pound guinea pig?

Still, as he left the store, what Pete was really wondering was what an envoy was. It was cool that the guy he'd just given a Three Investigators card to was one, but although he had a vague idea that the word meant something like "ambassador," he really wasn't sure.

"Veronica said that guy is a Chumash envoy to the Santa Barbara County schools," he said, as he and his mother headed for the car. "Can you remind me what an envoy is, exactly?" Pete asked.

His mother looked at him sideways, smiling fondly.

"Just someone from one country who represents it to another one," she said, rooting around in her purse for the keys to the car. "Someone who embodies what the people of his country stand for, and who stands in for them, somehow. Like when the first Queen Elizabeth sent Francis Drake to South America. He was her envoy."

"I get it," said Pete. "Thanks, Mom." 

As Pete settled the birdcage with the lovebirds in the back of his mother's car, he had a funny thought. Although the lovebirds had been raised in southern California, since their forebears had been born in Tanzania, maybe you could say that they were envoys for that country. After all, in a way, animals were always envoys for the countries they'd come from, he thought.

After he and his mother took the lovebirds home and settled them in, he'd need to keep his promise to Mr. Munson, but this evening he'd give Jupiter a call to tell him about Rafael Solares and the scarlet macaw he'd bought in the Rocky Beach farmer's market. He really felt there was a mystery here somewhere  - and one it might be important to investigate!

© Elizabeth Arthur and Steven Bauer 2025

Cover Art By Pashur House