Curds and Whey Box Set

by G M Eppers

  “Is there roof access up there?”

  “A pull down ladder goes into the attic. From there, a widow’s walk.” Come to think of it, I’d seen the widow’s walk when we arrived, directly opposite the chimney. Seemed like an odd bit of architecture, since we were considerably inland. Widow’s walks were originally for sailors’ wives to watch for their husbands’ returning ships. He saw my confusion. “It was there when I bought the place,” he shrugged. “It’s quaint.”

  “And American.” I said. “Now go back to hiding and stay out of the way.” I gave him a pat on the back and headed up the stairs, this time turning left and going all the way up. I knew Butler would go for the roof access, so he could check the lay of the land and plan an escape path. By the time I got to the widow’s walk, which was hidden from the street, I knew the twins and Butler must already be on the roof. It was pitched at about thirty degrees, which is pretty steep. Our calf muscles were going to get a workout. It was a little easier where the gables joined the roof. I saw the twins perched on the center gable, one straddling the apex of the gable and the other nestled in the joint. After climbing over the railing surrounding the widow’s walk, I maneuvered onto the first gable and straddled it. “Where’s Butler?” I called.

  It was windy up here, and the wind was against me. I had to repeat my question and shout, but the moon was out and here above the trees it was easier to see as my eyes adjusted to the dimness. It was still colorless, like a degraded black and white movie. I was hoping it would be more Citizen Kane and less Harold Lloyd, though considering we were on a third floor rooftop the latter seemed far more likely.

  Agnes, who was safer in the joint of the gable, twisted her head toward me. “He’s holed up next to the chimney. I can barely see him. There’s too much shadow. I can see the guns, though.”

  “A stand-off is fine for now. Don’t antagonize him. Be careful over there!”

  I barely heard Avis’s muttered reply. “Geez, you fall off one roof and you’re marked for life!”

  I wanted to get up to the top of the roof so I could see better, too. Staying in line with the gable so it would break my fall, I carefully inched upward. The twins knew better than to voice any objection and distract me. Until I reached my goal, of course. Once I was straddling the top apex, they let loose. “Helena, are you crazy?” It was possible. Not only had the climb been dangerous, but it put me into Butler’s line of fire.

  I could see Butler from there, straight ahead at twelve o’clock, hunched into the shadow of the chimney. It was too dark to see his eyes, or the expression on his face, but Agnes was right about the shadow, and the moonlight glinting off the gun metal. I looked down below, but it was too dark to see much beyond the top layer of leaves. I thought I heard movement, but figured it was just someone getting into position to be crushed by me when I fell. “Don’t come any closer,” Butler said. “Don’t make me shoot you.”

  I obeyed. For now. “You are a real sleaze, Butler. How long have you been here terrorizing that poor man?”

  “Poor man, my patoot.” Said Butler. “Don’t tell me you haven’t figured it out yet.”

  “Okay, I get it,” I said, relieved and wishing I could tell Sir Haughty. “He’s not dying. You made him say that to lure us here. That doesn’t make him less of a poor man. He doesn’t deserve what you’ve done to him.” I was wondering if, and hoping that, Sir Haughty had figured this out as well. The sooner he could stop grieving for his friend the better. But I certainly couldn’t climb down and find him right now, or stop for an unnecessary conversation like that even if I could yell loud enough to be heard from below.

  “What I’ve done to him!” Butler spouted. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to live with that man for three weeks? I should get combat pay. He never stopped cleaning. He never stops, period. I’ve barely slept. I had to threaten his favorite antique lamp just to get a little shut-eye. Sitting here, day after day, waiting for cheddar that never arrived because of YOU.” I smiled, though he probably couldn’t see it. We had intercepted his shipment from Paris. I would have loved to have seen the look on his face when he watched the news coverage. “Then, little Mr. Cleverpants tips you off with his stupid speech before you even ATE anything. This hasn’t even been worth the effort. I’m getting out of here, Lady Montana. I have every right. I haven’t done anything.”

  “You held a man hostage, and now you are holding me at gun point. This may be England, but I’m pretty sure law enforcement here still frowns on those things.” At the same time, they were very minor infractions, comparatively speaking. I really wanted to get him on something more. “By the way, if you didn’t get your cheddar, what did you put in the food?”

  I could hear him smirking. “Pure rennet, baby. Everything on that table is Uber Uber.”

  Crap.

  “Billings!” I shouted as loud as I could, hoping the wind was with me and he would hear.

  “I hear you, Mom!”

  “Make sure NO ONE touches ANY of that food. And call the Chembassy!”

  “Gotcha!”

  Pure rennet was never used in anything but cheese making. If people were using it raw it was probably like freebasing, but I didn’t remember anyone ever trying it. “Now we’ve got you on attempted murder, Butler. Thanks for the confession.”

  “You got a recording device on you?”

  “Who needs one of those? We’ve got Sticky.”

  “A known liar. His testimony will never stand up in court.” He had a point. Given what Sticky had done in the past couple of weeks, it would be simple enough to create reasonable doubt, even if he was a hostage at the time. In addition, all of it hinged on getting Butler arrested and into a courtroom to begin with.

  My calf muscles were getting achy from standing on the roof. We had to get those pistols away from him, and somehow take him into custody. While he’d been talking, Butler had been moving his head. I couldn’t see his eyes, so I couldn’t tell what he was looking at. There wasn’t much visible beyond the foliage. I couldn’t see even a single member of my team down below.

  Suddenly, a huge billowing cloud of smoke burst out of the chimney, floating dusty gray against the navy blue background of sky. Some of it floated away, but a fortunate gust of wind blew the majority of it right at Butler. “What the--?” he yelled, and began to cough. He drew the gun he’d tucked behind him and waved his arms wildly, trying to disperse the smoke.

  The twins acted quickly. They rushed up to the roof and directly at Butler, all four hands reaching for his wrists. They were quickly engulfed in the smoke as well, and my unoccupied hands began to shake. There was a flash of light and a report as one of the guns fired, and then another. I heard Butler grunting and the sounds of a struggle. Then I heard a rumble and clatter in stereo. “Agnes!” I called. “Avis!” I waited impatiently for the smoke to dissipate. After what seemed like an hour but was probably less than five minutes, the air cleared enough for me to distinguish the twins, holding on to Butler’s wrists, his hands now empty of weaponry. His eyes were squeezed shut, probably burning from the smoke.

  He blinked rapidly to regain his sight, and shook his head, but he really needed to rub the residue from his eyes and couldn’t with the twins holding his hands at arm’s length. “Let go of me, you freaks!” Agnes looked at me for permission, which I gave with a nod, thankful that no one had been shot, then, holding Butler’s wrist against the chimney with her left hand, she balled up her right and punched him in the stomach with all the force her small frame could muster. After his bout with the smoke, Butler was already oxygen deprived, so the punch elicited an impressive “Oof!” and a sputtering that was music to my ears. He fell limp against the chimney, his head bowed.

  Avis was holding his other wrist in both of her hands. Human handcuffs. How many enforcement teams have that? I started to move toward them, walking along the apex as if I were a bowlegged cowgirl. Yeeha! But by then, Butler had caught his breath. He used the advantageous leverage from his more
stable position at the flat of the chimney and brought his hands suddenly and forcibly forward, throwing both twins off their feet, hanging one on each side of the roof, with their connecting band across the apex. They had to let go to right themselves. If not for their band, they both would have fallen off the roof in opposite directions some forty feet to the ground.

  Butler wasted no time. As soon as they were down, he was up, stepping over the twins’ connecting band and dashing down to the third gable. If I diverted to catch him, I ran a huge risk of losing my balance and falling myself. Butler was already descending the window of the gable when I yelled “incoming!” to alert my team below. I heard leaves rustle and the sound of feet hitting ground.

  By the time I reached the twins, they had righted themselves and gotten their footing. “Sorry, Helena,” said Avis. They were both panting. “We had him! Damn it!” Agnes shouted.

  “Let’s get back down, fast.” I managed to turn around and headed back to the widow’s walk, the twins right behind me.

  A few minutes later, I came out the front door of the Hearth and Home and saw Butler sitting in our rental van. The headlights were on, the inside lights were on, the hazard lights were flashing and the horn was sounding continuously. Billings strolled toward me with the key fob in his hand. “That was too easy, Mom.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Sorry. I mean, he went right into the car. I locked it and pushed the panic button. Easy peasy.”

  Butler had his eyes squinted against the light and his hands over his ears to block out the noise. Through his squint, he could see the team beginning to surround the car, and he got a determined look in his beady little eyes and his hands moved down below the steering wheel. “He’s trying to hot wire it!” I yelled. We had to contain him. This wasn’t over yet.

  With the car surrounded, I had no doubt Butler would run someone down if he managed to get the car started. Sir Haughty had placed himself at the front of the car, standing akimbo. Sticky, thinking the danger was over, came creeping out of the house, wanting to tell his friend the truth about his health. I got there first. “Sir Haughty, you know Sticky’s all right, don’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “How?” I was taken aback, not that he knew, but I couldn’t figure out what had tipped him off.

  “The prayer,” Sir Haughty replied without moving a muscle, shouting over the noise of the horn. “Sticky’s an atheist. Also, when he compared you to his sister. He hates his sister. In fact, the entire speech simply screamed that he was lying if you knew him at all.”

  Butler was still fiddling under the steering wheel. I couldn’t tell if he’d even found the wires, but I knew he’d know what to do with them if he did. “Sticky, you wouldn’t happen to have some handcuffs laying around?”

  “Actually…” he said, turning and running back into the house. A few moments later he emerged and handed me a pair of handcuffs. In the glare of the headlights, I could see they were purple. And fuzzy.

  I looked at him. He blushed. “Lady friend in Elstree,” he said, as if that explained everything. It kind of did.

  I tossed the cuffs to Billings, and he and the rest of the team descended on the car. Sir Haughty took a new position behind Billings in case Butler tried to run. Quickly, Billings unlocked the door, reached in and cuffed Butler’s left wrist with one of the fuzzy purple handcuffs. Then Billings pulled him by the chain out of the car, snapping the cuff on Butler’s right wrist as he did so. Badger slipped in as Butler came out and a moment later, the car fell into blissful silence and darkness descended on the driveway.

  Watching on the sideline with me, Sticky was smiling. “Would you like the nipple clamps, too?”

  “Tempting, Sticky. Tempting.” I replied, giving him a pat on the back. As usual with most of my friends, I had to reach up to do it.

  We corralled Butler into the Hearth and Home, where Sticky called the authorities and we sat with a recalcitrant Butler in the lobby to wait for them. “Oh dear,” muttered Sticky, as we sat.

  “What is it?” I asked. “We’ll pay for any damage we caused.”

  “Oh, it’s not that. I just remembered. My lady friend has the only keys.”

  We couldn’t help laughing about that, except for Butler, who would have to go all the way to a holding cell, and possibly longer, wearing fuzzy purple handcuffs. He was sitting in an armchair with both Billings and Badger on his lap, each one holding onto the chain of the cuffs. Badger playfully stroked Butler’s hair and ear and whispered things into his ear that made Butler’s face actually move off his head. I’d be more comfortable if they’d had their stun guns handy, but we’d left everything on the plane. This wasn’t supposed to be a working vacation. However, Butler could throw the twins off their feet on a rooftop, but he wasn’t going to unseat those two.

  Agnes spoke up. “I think we owe some recognition to whoever created that smoke cloud. We couldn’t have disarmed him without that.” Avis seconded the recommendation.

  Sylvia raised her hand. “I guess that’s me. Although Sticky actually did it. I told him to douse the fire with a pot of water to create a lot of smoke. We were lucky the wind was in the right direction. I couldn’t really tell what was going on up there. It could just as easily have been useless.”

  “Well, it wasn’t,” I said. “It made all the difference. Thank you, Sylvia.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  As we waited, Sticky filled us in on all that happened before we got there. Approximately three weeks ago, Butler had arrived, pretending to be a friend of Sir Haughty’s. Once in the building, he pulled out his pistols and forced Sticky to empty the place. He had then forced Sticky to compose the letter that had been waiting for Sir Haughty when we arrived at HQ. Thinking it hadn’t been received, he followed that with the phone call, and the invention of a fatal illness to bring our team to England in a hurry. Butler had expected the 400 kilograms of cheddar to be delivered by Mr. Ferruz, which he intended to use to infect our CURDS team, turning us all into addicts with any luck at all, leading to our eventual untimely deaths, but, of course, that shipment hadn’t arrived. So he had Sticky prepare several dishes, just to make sure everyone would eat something, and mixed in his supply of pure rennet which he kept in a flask in his jacket pocket. Sticky tried to trick him a number of times and got pistol whipped in return. Butler even slept with the pistols in his hands, and he was a decidedly light sleeper.

  Law enforcement and the Chembassy reps got there at the same time. We directed the chembassadors to the dining table, and they began bagging and tagging everything into containers and sealed plastic bags. “I want to see the results of the testing,” I said, curious about the effects of pure rennet in food. I warned them that the Uber testing might be unique and explained why. Nitro assured me that it would in no way be mistaken for clean, even though there was no cheese. I also warned the chembassadors to keep it top secret. If the general public got wind of this, some people might literally starve themselves to death in fear of Uber, and others would exploit it like Butler had tried to do.

  I gave the police a verbal report and they sent an officer up to the roof to recover the pistols from the gutters. After several minutes, the officer returned with each pistol in a sealed, labeled plastic bag. They all got a good laugh at the fuzzy purple handcuffs and were more than happy to see that they stayed on Butler as long as possible. They also agreed to return them to Sticky as soon as they were no longer needed. They took his phone number and address and tagged the chain of the cuffs. So, not only did Butler get to wear fuzzy purple cuffs, they featured a large tag that said ‘Sticky. Hearth and Home, Chigwell.’ Let him try to explain that to his cellmates.

  Chapter Four

  After a night’s rest, more or less, at Hearth and Home, Roxy and I got an early start for the Chembassy to make the arrangements to have Butler extradited to America. We hoped to be able to take him back on our plane. Personally, I didn’t want to let him out of my sight until I’d seen the
iron bars clang shut, but I didn’t have that authority. He was in police custody for now. The rest of the team slept in. They’d been up late preparing affidavits for Roxy to present at the Chembassy to argue our case for extradition. This would give Sir Haughty more personal time with his friend, as well. I hoped for a quick decision on the extradition, but it could take days, weeks, or even months to achieve. If there was a delay, we’d have to leave England without Butler.

  An officer from the Office of International Affairs met us in the Chembassy lobby. The Chembassy sounds like it should be a fairly majestic building, but they usually aren’t. Even though this was London, it was a non-imposing red brick two story building that could have been a small public library or a dentist’s office. “How splendid to meet you, Ms. Dubois, Ms. Montana. I’m Alexandria Forthright with the Office of International Affairs. I understand you have an extradition to discuss.”

  “Yes, we do,” said Roxy. This was her turf and I was a fish out of water. I was only there to represent the leadership of CURDS.

  Ms. Forthright led us into her office, which was located down a long hallway of pale green linoleum, but it had that look that said this was not its original color. It might have been white at some point a few decades ago, when the building still housed that dentist or library. I tried not to think about what would turn linoleum that particular shade of green. Her office was small, mostly because the desk was ridiculously large. I couldn’t even imagine how they’d gotten it through the doorway. But it was a gorgeous mahogany desk that had been polished with several layers of polyurethane and was probably valued in four figures. Yes, I coveted that desk. I didn’t need it. I had no use for anything like it. But I wanted it all the same. Ms. Forthright moved behind the desk and sat in a high-backed black leather swivel chair. Two red cushioned armchairs faced her desk and Roxy and I sat in those. I had to inch my chair a little closer to Roxy so we could close the door.