- Title: The Mystery of the Laughing Shadow
- wiki: link
Wayback Wednesday takes us back to a mystery involving the Three Investigators whose mantra of “We Investigate Everything” leads Jupiter Jones, Pete Crenshaw, and Bob Andrews into a new case which begins with a cry for help, a mysterious mishappen shadow with an evil laugh, and a Native American amulet with a cryptic clue inside which points to the existence of a long lost treasure hidden somewhere in Rocky Beach.
Bob and Pete discover the shadow (whose laugh neither can properly describe to the First Investigator), the amulet (whose hidden message Jupiter unlocks) thrown from the estate, and the cry for help on the ride home from the mountains. The Three Investigators are later invited to the estate under the guise of clearing out old furniture and knickknacks for the Jones Salvage Yard but also get hired to find the amulet that at least one of their new clients already knows they have (well, they would have if the artifact hadn’t been stolen from them just a day before).
Although odd, the laughing shadow may not be one of the best hooks for the series but it works to keep the Investigators confused. Later, from a distance, they see what appear to be headless captives kept on the estate in a stakeout where Jupiter first hears the laugh for himself only further confounding the trio as to what is going on. Of course it doesn’t help that Jupiter chooses to trust the wrong person on the estate, allowing them to be misled which nearly ends in disaster for the boys. There are plenty of twists to the mystery starting with the discovery that the secret message is written in a completely different language than that of the amulet itself which almost certainly part of the Chumash Hoard.
A wrong assumption about who might be behind the laughing shadow almost loses the case for trio, but in the end all mysteries are answered (with some of the Investigators being put in a life-threatening situation by the real villain), and Jupiter successfully solves the clue at the last minute to rescue not only his friends but reveal the location of the treasure.