A/N: Hope you like the next chapter of this Scooby Doo mystery. Thanks for the awesome reviews!!! I still do not own Scooby Doo.
Chapter 2:
The next day, the gang was ready get to work. There cover was that they were foreign exchange students from Canada here to se what life is like in the US.
Shaggy and Velma were set up to follow the same schedule as Matt did. Since Matt had no known enemies Fred followed his best friend Jake Martin and Daphne followed his girlfriend Ella Bookman.
Shaggy and Velma's first hour of the day was A.P. art which was interesting. The class was taught by Mr. Mertz, a middle aged man who taught the class, but I use the word taught loosely. He spent 5 minutes telling the kids what he wanted them to draw and spent the rest of the period reading "Sport's Illustrated." The room was covered in sports posters and drawing of football stars kids drew which were no doubt the subject of a lot of assignments given to them. Today was actually a free day so they kids could work on anything they wanted or finish up projects.
Shaggy and Velma thought their best bet would be talking to the students before this guy, they knew they wouldn't get much information out of him. They noticed a guy working on some a large mural in the back of the room. He was wearing a plain white T shirt and jeans had short blonde hair and glasses who looked like he'd be a member of the science club before any kind of art class. Velma felt pretty comfortable around him so she decided to ask a few questions.
"You missed a spot," was Velma's lame attempt of an icebreaker. The guy looked up and smiled at her. "Thanks," He said sarcastically, but not unfriendly. "Hey you're new here aren't you?"
"Is it that obvious?" Velma asked with a laugh.
"Nah. It's just a new student is pretty big news, not that not much happens around here…well until recently that is."
"Yeah. I heard about that. Didn't who of the students fall from a catwalk or something?"
"No. He was pushed." he said in a hushed voice. Velma let out a fake gasp.
"I know. I couldn't believe it either. But the school's keeping everything hush. They're telling the kids it's just an accident, but the police are having a police investigate it and I think they're even hiring a team of detectives to look into it and it sounds like the police are suspecting foul play and I'm sure those fancy detectives will say the same thing."
"Wow. So what do you think happened?"
"Eh. What do I know, I'm just your typical science geek," Velma gave him a quick high five, "but I seriously think that what happened to Matt was no accident."
Just then the bell rang and it was time for them to go to their next class. "See you later. Mystery Man said with a wink. Velma blushed slightly then gathered her bag and walked to the hallway where Shaggy was waiting.
"So come up with anything interesting?" she asked.
"Sure did." Shaggy announced and pulled out a drawing of him standing on top of and mountain of his favorite food like chocolate anchovy pizza and peanut butter and salami sandwiches. "It's beautiful. Isn't it?" Shaggy sighed and kissed the picture.
Velma rolled her eyes. "Shaggy, you were supposed to be asking people about Matt's death." she said sternly.
"Sorry Velma. Like you know how I get when I'm hungry." Shaggy said.
"It's ok. We still have six other classes to check out. Fred and Daphne should have a lot of information for us." She added.
* * * * * * *
Fred didn't get a chance to talk to Jake until gym, fourth period. He went the locker room in the basement to change. The room was stuffy and the tile floor was slightly wet from teens taking showers for their after school sports and the room smelled strongly of sweat and Axe. There weren't many kids still changing and Fred was easily able to spot Jake from the picture Mr. Anderson showed him. He was wearing a blue and white Coolsville Softball jersey, his light brown hair was in a mop top style and his brown eyes looked a little distant, starring off into space as he sat on a bench tying his shoes.
"Hey, what's up?" Fred greeted as he walked towards him.
"Hey," Jake said without even looking up.
"I'm Fred...Smith," Fred changed his name quickly afraid Jake might recognize it.
"I'm new around here, transferred here from Canada."
"Well you sure picked a heck of a time to transfer."
"Why?" Fred asked playing dumb.
"Nothing. Just forget about it," he said heading towards the door.
"Why? What happened? I got to know."
"Fine. I guess it's better you hear it from me then the people around hear spewing out crap," he sighed. "A kid here named Matt Palmer fell from the catwalk, I guess when he was working on some lighting equipment or something, and he died….He's also been my best friend since elementary school."
"Wow, that's rough. I'm so sorry."
"Yeah, and the school won't freakin' let it go. They want to investigate it because they think it might be murder, but that's bull. The school just wants some publicity. No one would ever want to do something like that to Matt. He's the nicest guy in the world, got along with everyone the preps, the nerds, the jocks- everyone loved him. He'd be the last person someone would want dead…He was such a cool guy…" Jake was now on the verge of tears.
"Sorry." Jake said rubbing the corners of his eyes, "I've just been holding this in for a while."
Fred patted him on the back to console him a little bit.
There was silence or about another thirty seconds. Then Jake got up, "Well, I gotta go. Mr. Luiz gets mad if we hang out in the locker rooms too long," he said as he turned his back and headed toward the door. Fred stared at the locker, thinking this would probably be a good time to check it out while no one is around. He headed towards it when a voice startled him, "Hey you coming?" Jake asked as he waited in the doorway. He knew he wouldn't get anywhere with Jake watching him like they so he just answered, "Right behind you."
* * * * * * *
The gang met at a lunch table to talk about what they had found. It sounded like they all came up with the same thing. Matt was a friendly, smart kid who loved the arts (pretty much all of his classes were art or theater classes). There wasn't really anyone who disliked him, especially not enough to kill him. Daphne informed the gang that Ella was on a field trip so they would have to wait another day to question her.
"So Scooby, did you find anything interesting?" Daphne asked, but Scooby was too where to be found.
"Hey, Shaggy gone too. Now where do you suppose they went?" Fred wondered.
"Give you one guess," Velma said as she pointed towards the lunch line.
Sure enough, Shaggy and Scooby were in the line with their tray piled up with four of everything on the menu. They marched over to the table past the horrified lunch ladies and sat down.
"This will be a good start," Shaggy said as he wrapped a bib around his neck.
"Reah, a shtart." Scooby added.
"So Scooby, did you find anything interesting?"
"Reah! Reah!," Scooby said excitedly as he pulled out a garbage bag of half eaten sandwiches, pizza crusts, stale French fries, and other cafeteria food rejects. Scooby pulled out a half eaten hot dog and ate it in one bite.
"Ewwwww…" Fred, Daphne, and Velma said simultaneously as Shaggy was trying to get his share of the loot.
* * * * * * *
As the rest of the gang went to their next class, Scooby went on his hallway patrol.. He was sweeping the hall of the administrative offices, humming to himself. When he passed the principal's office, he heard Mr. Anderson talking over the phone with someone. He put his ear to the closed door and listened.
"This stunt has turned out better than I could have the imagined. With the news covering this story, the school board is sending us a colossal amount of money for security cameras, monitors, anything they think we'll need to prevent further "accidents" and we will still have money left over! This is too good to be true."
"Rut Roh! Ri retter rell Raggy,"
