Curds and Whey Box Set

by G M Eppers

  “Absolutely,” said Sylvia as she scratched the top of Backwash’s head until he shook his ears loose. “I haven’t been here as long as the others, but you know how observant and perceptive I am. I could tell from day one that CURDS was the right place for me. A job is only as good as its leadership and this is definitely the best job there is. Whatever you’re going through, I want to help. You shouldn’t need the flask.”

  Badger had his phone in one hand while Backwash stopped to sniff and lick his other hand. Badger finished tapping and set the phone down. “Alcohol is the most common addictive substance. There are a number of wonderful resources out there to help you. I have the numbers of local D.C. AA groups right here. I’d be happy to attend with you until you get more comfortable. I did the same thing with my Dad several years ago and he’s about to get his 10 year chip. I kind of felt obligated,” he explained. “I think my coming out drove him to drink in the first place.” He blushed slightly.

  She gave him a brief, simple nod. The suspicious expression was becoming one of amusement. I felt mildly offended. Did she think we were funny? Attentively, she turned her eyes to Roxy, who appeared to be next.

  Roxy cleared her throat, a little annoyed herself when Backwash chose that moment to reverse course as if to avoid her attentions. “Legally, of course, we can’t force you to do anything. But it would be simply awful if this began to affect your job. I don’t want to break in a new director without even trying to save the one we’ve got.” Idly, she tapped the table with her fingers trying to attract Backwash, as Agnes obligingly removed Harelip from the ledge and placed her on the floor.

  “I’m sure you’re aware that alcohol can do serious damage to your liver, Miss Chiff,” said Nitro. “But it can also contribute to high blood pressure, blood clots, anemia, heart problems, and even some cancers. Not to mention dilation of the blood vessels of the nose, seizures, pancreatitis, gout and memory loss.” I wasn’t sure if he was being truthful or was just trying to scare her. It was quite an impressive list of side effects and certainly was steering me away from any flirtation with alcohol. “You’re our Director, you’re our friend, and we want you around for many many more years.”

  “Are you folks quite finished?” Miss Chiff asked with a deceptive little smirk on her face. “This is all very sweet, but totally unnecessary.” Well, I thought, at least she wasn’t mad at us. I’d been expecting a more defensive posture.

  Badger said, “Denial. That’s also to be expected. Admitting there is a problem is the first step and can also be the most difficult.” With a sigh, Miss Chiff bent over to reach her carpetbag. She reached inside and felt around a bit and came up with the flask in one hand. “Excellent, Miss Chiff,” Badger praised her. “You’re willing to give us the flask?”

  “Oh, I insist on it.” She handed the flask to Avis. “Please, have a sip.”

  “Excuse me?” Avis, at first, refused to accept the flask.

  “Take a sip. I want all of you to have one,” said Miss Chiff. “Go on. Pass it along,” she urged Avis. “Just a small one, though. There’s not much left and I want to make sure everyone gets a taste.”

  Slowly, a bit confused, Avis unscrewed the cap and put the flask to her lips, tilting it until she got a taste. She swallowed quickly and put her free hand to her mouth in surprise. Agnes took the flask and did the same, passing it on. They both began to giggle.

  “Now, don’t tell,” Miss Chiff admonished. “Not until everyone has had some. Don’t spoil it.”

  One by one, each of us took the flask. By the time it got to me, which left only Sir Haughty waiting in confusion, the others were all laughing and nudging each other with their elbows. With an eye on them, I tilted the flask and took a sip. It was not alcohol. The liquid tasted mildly of grape but did not have the sharp tart flavor of actual grape juice. I remembered my guess of cough syrup from before as I handed it to Sir Haughty, licking my lips, though it was rather thin to be a syrup. Perhaps it was diluted. He also drank and handed it back to Miss Chiff as his educated taste buds absorbed the flavor. “Would you care to take a guess, Sir Haughty?” asked Miss Chiff.

  “No, I think not,” he answered, still examining the flavor in his mouth.

  “Anyone?”

  “Kool-Aid?” guessed Avis. “Weak Kool-Aid.”

  “Incorrect. Anyone else, or must I explain what fools you all are?”

  Fortunately, Nitro had the answer, so we need not all be fools. “B12. Liquid B12,” he said with absolute certainty. “I can feel it hitting my system.”

  It was a very mild effect from such a small sip, but I felt it too. A little kick similar to the adrenaline burst from a sudden scare in a film, or that first delicious sip of coffee in the morning. I had been more tense about our perceived problem with Miss Chiff than I realized and the release from discovering she wasn’t an alcoholic only complicated things. I found myself laughing out loud. “We just did an intervention for B12!” The flask began making another round. Some drank, others just passed it on, giggling. “Oh my!” I was breathless with laughter, T.B. still heavy on my feet. Badger and Nitro were slapping the table, pretending it was hard whiskey or something. Roxy and Sylvia were in each other’s arms. The twins were nearly under the table, nearly everyone pretending to be three sheets to the wind. In the midst of it all sat Backwash, watching the crazy humans go off the deep end. Harelip, taking advantage of the distraction, was actively licking Miss Chiff’s bun, tapping it with a paw as if to keep it under control.

  “Miss Chiff, why did you keep the B12 in a flask?” I had to ask. “Don’t they come in nice little bottles?” For some reason, the phrase “nice little bottles” seemed very funny on its own.

  She reached her hands behind her head, trying to fix the bun that Harelip had partially torn asunder. “For one thing, those nice little bottles are ridiculously hard to open, so I prefer to take care of that all at once and get it out of the way. Secondly, sometimes I need less and sometimes more so it got to be very difficult messing with parts of a bottle. And thirdly, if you can believe it, I didn’t want anyone to know I was using B12. That’s not the image I want to convey, you see.”

  “So you chose to look like an alcoholic instead?” mused Sir Haughty.

  “Well,” Miss Chiff answered, “that wasn’t my intention, of course. As it turns out, my grandmother had a saying that fits this situation perfectly.” Miss Chiff then proceeded to spew forth a long string of what sounded like Welsh.

  No sooner had she finished than Badger began to bluster, a huge laugh bursting forth from his mouth as if it had been sent through with a bellows. He couldn’t catch his breath to explain to the rest of us, though he tried a number of times, succeeding only in a gasping, “I can’t…” The very thought simply got him going again and it wasn’t long before it became infectious. Even without comprehension, all of us were giggling uncontrollably.

  That was when Dinny came in carrying a large platter of crackers, deli meats, condiments and several bottles of Diet Pepsi, one of the rare universally approved beverages among our group. She stood there staring at us, holding the platter in amazement. She eyed the flask, which Roxy was now holding upside down to indicate its emptiness, and then eyed all of us laughing and carrying on like we were in the middle of a frat party. She rushed forward, finally, dropping the platter in the middle of the table, nudging Backwash out of the way without a second thought, and swiping the flask from Roxy’s hand. Roxy was laughing so much she didn’t have the strength to hold onto it, and feeling it pulled from her hands and seeing Dinny’s misunderstanding it was even funnier still. “Oh, dear! Oh, my goodness!” She sniffed the flask and because there was no odor jumped to an entirely incorrect conclusion. “Vodka!? Oh, my goodness! This is so unlike you. I have to fix this. I have to make coffee. Lots and lots of coffee. Very black, too. Don’t go away, I’ll be right back!” And with that she dashed from the room back into the second story kitchen.

  This elicited a brand new round of laughter
from everyone. “Just what we need!” roared Sir Haughty, “Another stimulant!”

  Billings leaned in close to me, wiping his hands just under the table between us to indicate a job well done. With the laughter hiding his words from everyone but me he said, “Miss Chiff, managed!”

  A few minutes later the laughter finally died down and we began to reach for the food. The crackers were artfully fanned around the outer edge enclosing another circle of various deli meats cut to fit the shape and size of the square crackers. “Hold on,” I said suddenly. “Those aren’t the Crispy Craboons, are they?” I asked. I hadn’t actually seen what the crackers looked like. On the bus, Ross had broken them into pieces, and I’d only seen the boxes at the compound from a distance.

  Remembering Ban’s assertion that the amount of Uber on the crackers was very miniscule, Sir Haughty, with an air of utter self-sacrifice, took one cracker gingerly and nibbled the corner. Smacking the morsel in his mouth pretentiously, he announced, “Buttery garlic! Not even a hint of crab.”

  Unseen by me, Dinny had arrived with another tray with a pot of coffee on it and several cups, conspicuously missing a sugar bowl or creamer. She’d come up behind me as we were discussing the crackers. Setting the coffee tray next to the food tray, she pretended to be offended. “Really, Helena. You think I would serve you Uber crackers?”

  “No, of course not!” I insisted immediately. I apologized, thanked her for the coffee, and explained about the B12, which elicited a few more snickers as Dinny was let in on the joke. Nitro and Roxy each helped themselves to some black coffee anyway.

  She squeezed in between Roxy and Nitro, who was having his crackers spread with marmalade, and began to assemble her triple-decker cracker sandwich. “B12,” she said. “Does it come in raspberry?”

  We survived the flight home, collecting our dignity in time to catch the Blue Line back to HQ. I took the time on the train to send a thank you and a bouquet of cookies to the Minnesota State Troopers for the use of their winter gear. Miss Chiff parted from us at the station. We were still a sight to see with Billings and Badger providing support for the conscious, but unstable Knobby. I’m surprised local police didn’t pick us up for vagrancy or ask if we needed medical assistance. After getting him into the house, they carried him downstairs to his own rooms, then most of the team adjourned to theirs upstairs. As they climbed, I heard the twins lament to Roxy about the remains of her glarf. “What stops a bad guy with a gun?” Roxy responded. “A good woman with a glarf! I can still do this!” Oy.

  Before she could leave, I tugged on Sylvia’s arm. “Just a sec.” We stepped aside, letting everyone else climb the stairs, and she waited for me to speak. “You didn’t tell me you could do the Hu Hold.”

  “You didn’t ask.”

  “Because it’s a Ninja move. The twins have Ninja status. You don’t.”

  “Not officially, no.” She gave me a satisfied grin.

  I was hoping for a more detailed response than that. “Any other skills you’re hiding from me?”

  She smiled, deliberately silent, and proceeded up the stairs. Well, I thought, it’s not like I didn’t know that. Sylvia had been surprising me since she joined us. I think even she didn’t know what she could do.

  I went down to make sure Knobby was comfortable and caught him heaving himself off the sitting room couch where they had left him and, using the furniture for stability, maneuvering over to the card table. He plopped into a chair, the chair where he’d told me his wife Izzy would sit. “It’s okay, Helena. Come on in. I just wanted to take another look at this.” He stared down at the unfinished puzzle, then picked up the box cover and looked at the picture.

  I approached quietly and stood at the corner of the table.

  “I just realized that the monster isn’t even in the picture.”

  “Sure he is. The little girl is giving him the cheese.”

  Knobby shook his head. “That’s Frankenstein’s creation,” he said. “He’s not a monster.”

  I smiled. “No, I guess he isn’t. But people say he is. The name of the film is simply Frankenstein, who is the doctor, not the creature. A lot of people make that mistake at first.”

  “Oh, there is a monster in the story. But it’s not him,” he said, pointing to the flat-topped character in the puzzle. “The monster is the villagers that come after him with torches and pitchforks. The monster is hate and fear, like that Herd fella. Yeah, I heard what he said. Nasty. Shameful. That’s what the story is all about.” He pointed at the box cover.

  “That’s very perceptive, Knobby.”

  He blushed. “Actually, it was Izzy told me that, but I didn’t get what she meant. But I see it now. This was the last puzzle she worked on. But we never finished it. I put it away after the funeral, been doing other puzzles ever since. Something told me to pull out this one, though. Something’s telling me to finish it.” He stared at it, but he wasn’t seeing it. “And something else is stopping me.”

  “And what would those somethings be?” I asked him.

  He sighed, thinking. “I guess Izzy’s spirit wants me to finish it. And I’ve always wanted to keep Izzy happy, but I don’t think I can this time.”

  I sat in the other chair and put one hand on top of his. “I’d be happy to help you. I get the feeling we’ll both be here together for a while.” Nothing was going to get Miss Chiff to allow me to participate again until my ribs were healed. And after repeatedly getting knocked around and banged up I felt more than happy to comply. “Not tonight, though. We all need a good night’s rest, or day…what time is it again?” I grinned.

  He shook his head. “No idea. Still light out, though.” He tilted his head toward the narrow ground level window, which glowed bright yellow.

  “Okay, good day’s rest then. Later, tonight or tomorrow, I’ll come back down here and nurse your knees and help you with the puzzle. We will finish it, Knobby. We will finish it and move on.”

  Billings and I spent some time freshening up, then came back downstairs, both of us still needing winding down. Billings sat on the couch in front of the picture window with his Kindle, but didn’t open it. Behind him, the drapes were drawn, keeping the daylight out. Hard to wind down and get sleepy with bright sunlight streaming in. He glanced over to the stairs to make sure no one else was coming down and said, “So, Mom, how did I do on my first full mission?”

  I’d mostly forgotten that I was informally supposed to be evaluating him, so I spent a few moments going over the entire thing in my head before I answered. “Well,” I said, comparing this mission to the last one in Europe where he’d had to take over unexpectedly, “you didn’t go off half-cocked and get kidnapped, so I guess that’s a plus.”

  “But you got kidnapped. You and Knobby. And I had to send you to the Angle with Gary.”

  I sat down next to him on the couch. “You couldn’t have stopped them taking the bus without endangering Clara, and sending people into danger doesn’t mean it’s a bad decision. I practically insisted, after all.”

  “It still feels like a bad decision. It feels like I should have been able to catch the Nonegans at the cabin. I let them get away.”

  “No. It was a good mission. We helped the FBI get the Herds. But this isn’t the hardest thing you’ll do.”

  He looked at me sharply, worried, but knowing I was right about that. “What could be harder than sending my mother into combat?”

  “Sending your son,” I said simply, patting his hand.

  At first he waved away my comment. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

  “I’d worry about you even if you became a librarian,” I said.

  “I considered that.”

  “Would you rather chase bad guys or Dewey decimals?”

  He didn’t even have to think about it. “Bad guys. But maybe someday we’ll chase a bad guy named Dewey Decimal and I can do both.”

  He was quiet then, and despite his joke I could tell he’d never thought about our relationship tha
t way, that every time we went in it meant me putting my own son in danger. For the first time, thinking of the prospect of his own children, he saw the role I’d been in ever since he joined the team. He searched my face. “I’m sorry, Mom.” He was fighting back tears, empathizing with the difficult choices I had to make. In a way, I was a bit like Ban in that sense. She let herself get involved with the animals to ensure her own desire to do good research, and I sent my son on missions to give me incentive to be at my best, too.

  I hugged him. “Nothing to be sorry for, Billings. It’s the nature of the job. But what I was thinking was the day, and it will come, when you’ll have to send the twins.” I fluffed his hair to ease my way into the topic. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m very pleased with the engagement. But you need to think about this. Will you be able to send the Nicelys into combat if you need to? Even if their odds of surviving are not good? Because if you can’t do that, you need to rethink either your relationship or your career.” I kind of felt like I was being too blunt, but I wanted to make sure he understood.

  His eyes clouded over for a minute and when they came back he said, “I don’t know.”

  Pushing myself straight again, I met his confused gaze. “You know, I’m grounded for about a month here because of these stupid ribs. If you get another mission, and you almost certainly will, I’ll have to stay here. I can’t use the evaluation story again. Listen, no one will think less of you if you ask for more help. Just ask Miss Chiff and she’ll find a Coordinator Pro Tem or something like that.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks, Mom. I already feel better about the whole thing.”

  “That’s good.” I pointed at his still unopened Kindle. “Hey, why aren’t you using the ereader your grandmother sent you? That Swedish thing?”

  He shrugged. “I guess it takes a little getting used to. It’s different. I need some consistency today. I’ll use that one when Grandma comes to visit.” His grandmother had come to visit precisely once in all the time we’d been living at HQ.