by Doug Cornett
“I found this,” he said, holding up one of our telltale duckies. “And then I saw you kids here with another ducky, so I figured this must be the place.”
“Yep,” Shanks cut in. “You got something to confess?”
He sighed and nodded. “I’ve been wanting to get this off my chest for a while now. See…I’m the founder and president of the Bellwood Bigfoot Hunters Society, and…” He cast his eyes down to his feet. “And…well…I don’t believe in Bigfoot.” He looked up at us, instant relief on his face. He blew out a big breath and laughed. “I feel so much better! Thanks!” With that, he turned and skipped off into the crowd, looking lighter than air.
A minute later, a woman with short dark hair and a flowery dress approached the statue, a ducky in her hand. “I have a confession to make. I ate some plums that my husband was saving for breakfast. They weren’t as delicious as I thought they’d be.”
A few minutes after that, a man with long wavy hair confessed to eating all of his dinners in bed, then putting the dirty dishes in his bedside-dresser drawer because he was too lazy to take them downstairs to the kitchen sink. “It’s my drawer of shame,” he said.
“Maybe we should have been a little more specific about the whole ‘confess’ thing,” Shanks said as the wavy-haired guy slunk into the crowd.
“Yeah,” I sighed, and rubbed my neck. “I guess Bellwood’s feeling a little guilty.”
And that’s when we saw him. Pocus. The ducky was in his hand. He seemed to float toward us out of the crowd, that odd expression still on his face. He was smiling. Not as wide and crazy as when he was with the llama, but the happiness was still visible on the surface.
“I’ve come to confess,” Pocus announced to Mister E, and then he shifted his goofy grin to Shanks and me.
“You have?” I asked.
He nodded. “These duckies have changed my life. I’ve been seeing things differently ever since they showed up. Thanks to these guys”—he bounced the ducky in his palm—“I’m starting to have a little more fun.”
“Fun?” Shanks repeated. “You are Mr. Pocus, right? The fourth-grade math teacher?”
Pocus chuckled. “I know, I know. I’ve been a bit cranky as of late.”
That’s the understatement of the year, I thought, but I kept my mouth shut.
“So,” Shanks said, “you said you wanted to confess?”
Pocus closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I confess that I lost sight of all the joy in the world. I’ve been difficult, I know.” He pursed his lips. “Okay, I’ve been awful. A meanie. A jerk. A…”
“Butthead,” Shanks said.
I flashed her a look, and Pocus raised his eyebrows in surprise. But then he broke into a chuckle. “A butthead, heh-heh. Yep. I admit that I haven’t been the best version of myself in the last, oh, decade or so. But then I saw those duckies on Lance’s lawn, and something about them made me pause. Maybe it was because there was no explanation for them.”
“So…you don’t know why the duckies were there?” I asked.
“Oh, I know exactly why they were there. But I didn’t at first, of course. I was as baffled as everyone else. But then I realized that it was a message. From Clara.”
Clara, I thought. Where had I heard that name? And then I remembered: the old picture in my dad’s yearbook. “Clara was your wife.”
Pocus nodded slowly. “The duckies are exactly the kind of thing she’d find funny. Because they don’t make any sense at all. She would have gotten the biggest kick out of them. And that’s why I know that, somehow, she’s sending me a message from the other side. Lighten up, Buttercup!”
“Buttercup?” Shanks repeated.
“That’s what she called me.” Pocus laughed. “And then when my tomatoes were ripped up—”
“We didn’t ruin your garden, we swear!” Shanks said, putting her hands up.
Pocus waved her off. “It doesn’t matter who did it,” he said. “The only witnesses to that crime were my garden gnomes. And the truth is, I really don’t care. In fact, I owe whoever did it a thank-you.”
“You do?”
“You betcha. See, I’ve been holding on to those tomatoes for a long, long time. Clara and I used to grow them together. That was something we shared. We never had kids, and it sounds silly, I know…but the tomatoes were sort of our children. And for a long time after she died I protected them, worried over them. But I never enjoyed them. Did you know I haven’t eaten a single tomato from my garden since Clara died? Can you believe that? All those tomatoes, gone to waste. I suppose in a strange way the tomatoes represented my memories of Clara. I was so scared to lose them. But when they were ripped up, it was like I had been cut loose from that weight. From that pain. I was given permission to move on. To grow something else. To start something new. And you know what I realized? My memories of Clara can never be taken away. They’ll be with me forever, no matter what.”
“Wow,” I said, because nothing better came to mind. This was, of course, the same Mr. Pocus standing in front of us that we’d had for a teacher, but he looked like a completely different person. I saw, for the first time, that he was carrying so much with him. I had never thought of him as a real person at all, really.
“So you’ve got to tell me,” Pocus said, leaning in closer. “How’d you get all those duckies in Lance’s yard without him seeing you?”
Shanks and I looked at each other, baffled. “But we didn’t put the duckies in Babbage’s yard!” I said.
Pocus tilted his head a little. “You didn’t? Oh…I assumed it was you kids playing some kind of prank. So who did put the duckies there?”
“We don’t know, exactly,” I sighed.
“But we’ve got a few suspects,” Shanks added.
“Well, that sounds like a good old-fashioned mystery.” Pocus chuckled, then looked at the ducky in his hand. “Say, do you kids mind if I keep this? I think it’ll be a good reminder for me. To relax. To have a little fun.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Thanks.” He smiled at us, which still felt weird. “You know what I’m going to do first thing tomorrow morning? I’m going to plant a zucchini garden. And then I’m going to tear down that silly barrier between Lance’s yard and mine. Life’s too short for building walls.” He winked at us, then turned and melted back into the scrum of bodies at the Bonanza. There he goes, I thought, the meanest teacher in Bellwood. But something told me that was about to change.
“Paul?”
My shock at Pocus’s confession was interrupted by Bella Tuff, who was standing off to our side, watching us with a curious expression.
“Oh, hi, Bella.” I suddenly felt very awkward.
Bella held up her telltale ducky. “What’s this about?”
“I…well…” I looked to Shanks to take over, because she was usually the one who did all the tough talking, but she just stared right back at me. My face got hot, and my throat closed up a little. How could I confront a woman I’d known my whole life? “Bella…do you have…something to confess to us?”
Bella arched an eyebrow at me. “This has something to do with that fish you brought me, doesn’t it?”
“Tina,” Shanks said. “And the rubber ducky on your desk.”
“I thought so,” Bella said.
I worked up the courage to continue. “And…well…it seemed like you were…maybe…hiding something from us. About the day you missed work.”
Bella shifted her footing a little, and she passed the ducky from one hand to the other. She didn’t say anything. She seemed to be considering us. Maybe she was trying to decide how to respond.
“What are you kids, the police?” she asked, sounding more amused than worried.
“Junior police,” Shanks said.
“Actually,” I said, “we’re amateur detectives. We’re trying to get t
o the bottom of the duckies case.”
“The ones from Lance’s backyard?”
I nodded.
Bella took a couple of steps forward, a low rumble of a laugh escaping her lips. “Well, you kids are perceptive. I’ll give you that much.”
“We are?” I asked, my voice squeaking. “I mean, we are.”
“Yep. You caught me. I did lie about being sick that day.”
“We thought so,” Shanks said matter-of-factly. “Well, Peephole thought so, anyway.”
“Well, can you blame me? Paul, I’ve known your dad for a long time. Jerry and I are good friends. But he’s also my boss. After all, he does own the hardware store. And I couldn’t very well admit to the boss’s kid that I’d skipped work to go fishing.”
“Fishing?” I echoed.
“That’s right,” Bella confessed. “I needed some fresh trout for my Triple B recipe, and Tuesday was the perfect day for fishing. I woke up, saw the weather report, and decided right then and there to head out to Schuylerville Lake. I told your dad that I’d come down with a virus. I felt bad for lying to him, but nothing’s more important than fishing. Of course, I wasn’t planning on you kids catching me in the lie.”
That did explain why she acted so strange when Peephole asked her about her illness. But then I remembered something else. “But if you were out of town, then that means you couldn’t have got that ducky you had on your desk from Babbage’s yard. Where did it come from?”
“Strangely enough,” Bella said, spreading her hands out in a don’t-ask-me-because-I-don’t-know gesture, “I got that ducky from Schuylerville Lake. It floated right up to my boat when I was out there fishing. There were a few more just like it, but I picked up that one as a souvenir. How it got there? Your guess is as good as mine.”
So the duckies were at Schuylerville Lake. But we weren’t any closer to knowing why, or how they got to Babbage’s yard.
“But what about your vendetta against Babbage?” Shanks asked. It didn’t look like she was ready to entirely remove Bella from our suspect list. “We know that you used to date him in high school.”
Bella’s face softened. “Yup, Lance and I were together in high school. I daresay that we were in love, once upon a time. But vendetta? No way. I have nothing but fond memories of Lance. We had a great time together. In fact, I’ve been meaning to reconnect with him one of these days.” She looked down at the ducky in her hand and smiled. “Maybe I’ll take this opportunity to do that.”
A moment passed during which nobody said anything. The sound of an accordion from somewhere in the festival reached our ears.
“I guess we owe you an apology,” Shanks said. “Sorry we put you on our prime-suspect list.”
Bella waved the comment away. “Nonsense,” she said. “You’re detectives. You’ve got to follow the clues. I wish I could help you crack the case, but it looks like you’re back to where you started.”
“Not exactly,” I said.
With Pocus and Bella crossed off the list, we were down to two suspects: Darrel Sullivan and Janice.
We went back to waiting. More minutes passed as we leaned against the base of the Wolfgang Munchaus statue.
“This is stupid,” Shanks finally said. “If Janice and Darrel Sullivan had been overwhelmed by guilt, they would have marched over here and confessed already. We’ve got to face it: they’re not coming.”
“You’re probably right,” I admitted. “So what do we do?”
“If they’re not going to come to us,” Shanks said, “let’s go to them. I bet Darrel’s still at his tasting table on contestant row.”
Before I could argue, she was bolting through the crowded festival toward the tasting tables. I had no choice but to follow her, even though I was a little nervous to actually confront Darrel Sullivan. But I knew we had to do it. If we were going to solve this case at the Triple B, we had to take some risks.
Shanks was right: Darrel Sullivan was still at his booth, both feet up and resting unsettlingly close to one of his “lobster” roll plates. He was leaning back in his chair, which gave the impression that he was relaxed, though his shifting eyes told a different story. And I could see that under the table he was gripping our telltale ducky in his hand.
“So what’s the plan?” I said.
“No plan,” Shanks said, already marching toward him. “It’s time to confront him.”
She really was fearless. She stomped her way up to the table with such conviction that she almost seemed to be leaning forward. I’d made it to her side when she drew in a deep breath to let Darrel Sullivan have it.
“Okay, Sullivan,” she began in her best junior police officer voice—but as soon as he noticed us standing there, he leapt to his feet, knocking over his chair, and sprinted away from us down contestant row.
Shanks and I stood there, rooted to the ground in disbelief. Then we snapped out of it. “He’s fleeing!” I yelled. “Follow that goatee!”
The chase was on.
Darrel Sullivan weaved and bobbed through clumps of people, throwing backward glances at us at every turn. He didn’t look particularly athletic, but he was surprisingly nimble. We did our best to keep up, but before we knew it, our suspect had made it to the edge of the crowded field, where it would be easy for him to blend in and make his escape.
He flicked one last look in our direction, and that’s when we got lucky once again.
It was hard to tell who crashed into whom. The unicycle bagpiper lady wobbled in from Darrel Sullivan’s right, a long, high, Scottish screech signaling that she’d lost control of her one-wheeled vehicle. The lady on the stilts, to his left, was already in midtumble, having just slipped on a discarded bratwurst bun. She yelped a quick “Look out below!” as the unicycle slammed into her stilts, causing a clattering, confusing, bagpipey collision. By the time Darrel turned back to see where he was going, it was too late. He was enveloped in the chaos, joining the heap of tangled bodies on the grass.
We caught up to him as he was sitting up. He rubbed his head and cast a ferocious look at us.
“You kids leave me alone,” he snarled. “Every time you appear I get banged up. Your tall friend isn’t here, so which one of you is going to poke my eye out today?”
“We’re not here to poke your eye out,” Shanks told him. “We want to ask you a couple of questions.”
“I don’t have anything to say to you.”
“But how about to me?” The gruff voice came from behind us. We whirled around to see a familiar mustache.
“Officer Portnoy!” I exclaimed. “You were following Darrel Sullivan, too?”
“Nope,” Portnoy said, shaking his head. “Actually, I was following you two. I saw you sneaking around the Bonanza earlier, placing those little rubber duckies everywhere. I could tell you were playing detectives again, so I’ve been keeping an eye on you. But I have to admit”—he turned his gaze on Darrel Sullivan—“I’m awfully curious as to why you were running away from our little friends here. I wonder”—he put a finger to his mustache—“if it has anything to do with the fact that we found traces of your pickup truck all over the scene of the police shed break-in.”
Darrel Sullivan stared up at Portnoy for a long few seconds. His expression was hard. It seemed like he may have been considering another escape.
“Ah, what the heck,” he finally said with a sigh, his shoulders drooping in defeat. “I guess there’s no use in hiding it anymore. Yep, I broke into the storage shed. Drove over there late Tuesday night, around two in the morning, and smashed the lock with a bowling pin. I tried to steal the duckies, but I couldn’t.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because somebody beat me to it. They were already gone.”
“Somebody stole the ducks before you? But who would do that?” Shanks asked.
Darrel Sullivan threw
his hands up and let out a humorless chortle. “Ya got me. You’re the detectives—you figure it out. All I know is, those duckies had flown.”
“I still don’t get it,” I interjected. “Why’d you put the duckies in Babbage’s yard to begin with?”
“The only thing I know about Lance Babbage is that he makes a mean bratwurst,” he replied. “I didn’t put the ducks in his yard.” He looked beyond us out into the crowd, then ran his hand through his spiky hair. “Look, I’m as confused as you are.”
“I think you better start from the beginning,” Portnoy said.
“All right. The beginning. What have I got to lose?” He looked up at the sky and took a deep breath. “Well, I’ve got this job as a delivery driver for Dunning Toy Company. Now, I’ve had the job only a few weeks, but I really need to hang on to it. I’ve sort of…uh…bounced between professions for a little while, and my bills have a way of stacking up. Anyway, a few days ago, I’ve got a shipment of toys—rubber duckies—on my flatbed truck, and I’m on my way to drop them off at a warehouse in Hudson. I’m driving over a bridge out by Schuylerville Lake and, okay, so maybe I was going a little fast, and maybe I wasn’t paying real close attention to the road, but I’ll tell you one thing: that deer came out of nowhere. I swerve to avoid it, and a crate of the merchandise—a couple hundred rubber ducks—goes flying off the truck, over the bridge, and into the lake.”
“So that’s how the ducks got into Schuylerville Lake,” I said.
Darrel Sullivan continued: “I pull the truck over and walk down to the shore in hopes that I can gather the ducks. By now, they’re all floating out in different directions. I waded in a little and snagged a few, but it was hopeless. I left ’em all there in the lake.” He cackled in disbelief. “So you can imagine my surprise when I heard that they suddenly showed up in the Bratwurst King’s backyard. I drove over there on Tuesday morning, and, sure enough, there were my duckies. I followed Officer Portnoy and watched him throw them into the shed behind the police station. I waited until it was the middle of the night, and then I went to retrieve them.”