Prologue

I ended my last story at the point when Daphne, Fred, Shaggy, and I had decided to work together as a group and pursue the various ghosts and legends surrounding Chrystal Cove. My last thought at the time was 'what's the catch?'.

I found out.

Fred's love of mysteries was real enough but his preoccupation with sex was his primary driver. He spent more time trying (and failing) to share this preoccupation with Daphne than he did trying to coordinate our first investigation together.

Daphne was obsessed with Daphne. The fact that she had decided that solving mysteries was a less boring way of filling her hours did not make her suddenly a nice person.

Shaggy remained a stoner. He was completely unreliable. While relatively useful during his rare periods when he was straight, those were few and far between. When he was high, he was slow, dim-witted, clumsy, forever hungry, and made horrible jokes—most of which made it into the network show.

In case you think I'm leaving myself out, the fact that my neuroses completely spanned 'the spectrum' made me useful solely for the logic part of the investigation. My people skills are non-existent. My only worse trait is a complete lack of patience.

The most rational one among us was the dog. And it turned out that he could be easily manipulated with these nasty things called 'Scooby Snax'. I feel guilty for how much we abused that weakness. Of course, if Shaggy was high, he would eat the awful things too and was just as easy to manipulate. I feel less guilty about that. It was his choice to be high all the time.

As winter turned to Spring, we worked trying to figure out our first case. We also tried to come up with a name for the group since it was going to be featured prominently on the YouTube channel. Fred put forward 'Mystery Incorporated' or 'Mystery Inc'.

I asked the obvious question. "But we're not incorporated."

Fred stuck to his guns. "But we will be some day. This is how we're going to make our living, by being famous ghost detectives." Fred could dream with the best of them.

We all voted. The vote was one for and four indifferent. Motion carried and we were Mystery Inc. "The Scooby Gang" was later foisted on us by the network when we signed that awful contract. Even then, no one cared much except for Fred.

Then we had a name, but no case. I went through all of my files and prioritized them in the order I thought they might make interesting studies. Being young and indifferent to things like cholesterol, our hang-out was the Burger Binge Diner which showed up only as 'Malt Shop' on the network show since the owner wouldn't sign a release because he didn't want the health department to know that he allowed a dog to eat in his restaurant. I don't know why he never noticed that Scooby would sit in the booth with us rather than sitting dog-style on the floor.

I always voted against sitting in a booth because chairs allowed for some separation while booths squeezed us together and physical contact was not good for my anxiety. But it was a YouTube video, and the booth made a better visual.

My side was still sore from the broken rib I had suffered in the last mystery after I was kicked by a knight. If you don't know what that means, then you need to go back and read it or, at least, watch the network show 'What a Night for a Knight'. The point where I got kicked is obvious.

I opened up my laptop and was about to pull up my research when Fred pointed to a trending local news story that had popped up on the screen. We had found our mystery.