The Mystery of the Squashed Cockroach

by R. A. Spratt

  ‘Okay,’ said Fin, patting his dad comfortingly on the arm. ‘Why don’t you go back to your office? We’ll reconstruct the microwave, then bring you a nice cup of tea. You just relax. Have a nap.’

  ‘You didn’t find any cockroaches, did you?’ worried Dad. ‘I can’t sleep if there’s one in the house.’

  ‘No, not one,’ said Fin. ‘You must have an excellent pest controller.’

  ‘She is very thorough,’ agreed Dad. ‘I have to wear a respirator for a week after she’s been because the house smells so bad.’

  They watched Dad leave.

  ‘I told you he wouldn’t notice if we took apart the microwave,’ said April.

  ‘Only cause he’s bonkers. What are we going to do?’ asked Fin. ‘Once we find a cockroach, we’ll have to bring it back here. He’ll freak out.’

  ‘We’ll worry about that later,’ said April. ‘First we need to find a cockroach. Let’s go and meet the neighbours. Maybe one of them will have lower hygiene standards than Dad.’

  Fin, April and Pumpkin went over to their next-door neighbour’s house. The property had a long tree-lined driveway, just like their own, but that is where the similarity ended. When they got to the top and the trees opened out, a magnificent mansion came into view. It was nothing like their own humble home. This house was new and clean and shiny. It looked like a home from an interior decorating magazine. It was almost too good to live in. Of the three of them, only Pumpkin wasn’t intimidated. He did a poo in the middle of the perfectly manicured lawn.

  Fin and April had known rich people in the city, but no one rich enough to own a house like this. Asking a normal person if they had cockroaches was hard, but asking a super-rich person who lived in a beautiful mansion if their home was pest-infested might just sound rude.

  ‘You knock,’ said Fin nervously.

  ‘No, you do it,’ said April, stuffing her hands in her pockets to make them inaccessible. She didn’t like following orders.

  ‘You do it,’ said Fin. ‘You’re closer.’

  ‘We’re exactly the same distance away,’ said April. ‘Just knock on the door,’ said Fin, stepping back. ‘You’re taller, so it’s easier for you.’

  ‘You’re older, you should take the leadership role,’ said April.

  ‘People like girls better,’ said Fin. ‘You should do it.’

  ‘Don’t you start your gender bias on me!’ exclaimed April, turning on her brother. Pumpkin ran over barking, sensing a fight was about to break out.

  In the end, neither of them knocked. When the door opened a minute later, April had Fin in a headlock and was trying to give him a wedgie while Fin tried to fight April off by whacking her with her own shoe. Pumpkin was hanging off the back of Fin’s jumper by his teeth.

  ‘Hello!’

  They glanced up. It was Loretta. She looked even more beautiful than she had that morning. She was dressed for riding now, wearing long shiny boots, tight jodhpurs and a flowery blouse.

  ‘We didn’t knock,’ said April, confused.

  ‘I know,’ agreed Loretta. ‘But you set off the intruder alarm. The security firm that monitors the hidden cameras rang, advising me to put the house in lockdown, but I was ever so curious to see who the intruders were, so I opened the door.’

  ‘We didn’t mean to bother you,’ said Fin.

  ‘I can see that,’ said Loretta. ‘Clearly you’re busy.’ April let Fin out of the headlock and he straightened his shorts while returning April’s shoe. Pumpkin let go of Fin’s jumper and dropped onto the gravel driveway so he could run over to Loretta for a pat.

  ‘The reason we’re here,’ said Fin, ‘is we’re looking for a cockroach.’

  ‘You’re going in the races!’ exclaimed Loretta, clapping her hands with delight. ‘How marvellous!’

  ‘You’re going in them too?’ asked April.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Loretta. ‘I enter every year. I got Daddy to ship over a Madagascan hissing cockroach. It arrived two days ago. She’s huge. I think she will be a good racer.’

  ‘We need to get one,’ said Fin.

  ‘The race is five days away,’ said Loretta. ‘You don’t have time to order one online. You’ll have to find a normal cockroach. That’s what most kids do anyway.’

  ‘We don’t mean to be rude, but do you think you might have any here?’ asked Fin. ‘Dad is overzealous with pest control, so there are none at our place.’

  ‘I’m sure there must be,’ said Loretta, waving them into the house. ‘Let’s have a look.’

  Fin, April and Loretta spent over an hour searching for a cockroach. Loretta very kindly let them rifle through the whole house. She didn’t even make them take their shoes off before walking on the expensive Persian carpets, the pristine polished marble floors or the impeccably ironed linen bedding. They’d spent quite a lot of time standing on the master bed because it was the only way they could pull down the cut-glass light fitting to see if there were cockroaches inside.

  Eventually – after dismantling the state-of-the-art stainless steel microwave in the designer gourmet kitchen, then putting it back together with sticky tape – April and Fin had their roach. She looked like a normal, ordinary cockroach, but it had taken a long time to catch her as she scurried about the kitchen floor desperately trying to escape, so they had great hopes she would make a top racer.

  ‘Well done,’ said Loretta. ‘What are you going to call her?’

  ‘You name your cockroaches?’ asked April.

  ‘Of course,’ said Loretta. ‘The commentator has to yell out something when they take the lead.’

  ‘There’s a commentator?’ asked Fin. ‘So people take these races pretty seriously then?’

  ‘Oh my word, yes,’ said Loretta. ‘There’s a commentator, a referee, an official weigh-in and a camera crew.’

  ‘What’s the camera crew for?’ asked April.

  ‘The races are televised,’ said Loretta.

  ‘No way!’ said Fin.

  ‘Yes way!’ said Loretta. ‘It’s very popular. People watch them all around the world. They love it in Japan. We had a Japanese team enter a couple of years ago, but they misunderstood the rules. Apparently in their country there is a game show were people put cockroaches down their pants. Several contestants were lost before we could get hold of a translator to explain that wasn’t the way we played the game here in Currawong.’

  ‘You’re kidding,’ said Fin.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Loretta. ‘It’s televised across India as well, but then most things you can gamble on are televised in India.’

  ‘People gamble on cockroach races?’ exclaimed April incredulously.

  ‘Of course,’ said Loretta. ‘I don’t see how that is any harder to believe than betting on horses or greyhounds. In fact, it makes much more sense. Cockroaches are far cheaper to keep. And it’s easy to televise because the race takes place in a two-metre-wide circle, so you only need one camera. When you think about it, it’s amazing it hasn’t taken off in more places.’

  ‘Thank you for letting us look for a cockroach in your house,’ said April begrudgingly. She didn’t like being grateful to anyone, especially someone so beautiful and charming, but it had been kind to let them search the splendidly decorated house.

  ‘Yeah, and if you have any problems with the microwave, let me know,’ said Fin. ‘I’m good at fixing things.’

  ‘Oh, this isn’t my house, or my microwave,’ said Loretta.

  ‘Of course, it’s your parents’ house,’ said Fin. ‘But thank you anyway.’

  ‘No, it’s not their house either,’ said Loretta.

  ‘But you live here,’ said Fin.

  ‘No, I live in the house on the other side of yours,’ said Loretta. ‘The big blue one with the more modern architecture.’

  ‘Then whose house is this?’ asked April.

  ‘Mrs Sherman,’ said Loretta. ‘She works in the city during the week. She’s a terribly important lawyer, or judge, or something to do with sendi
ng people to jail. Actually, I think technically she’s Justice Sherman. She does keep asking me to call her that.’

  ‘Then why are you in her house?’ asked Fin. ‘Do you come over to water the plants?

  ‘No,’ laughed Loretta. ‘I break in for fun.’

  ‘You’re yanking our chain!’ said April incredulously.

  ‘It’s true,’ said Loretta. ‘These people who buy weekenders are never here. Not even on weekends because they’re always too busy. It’s fun breaking in and looking at their stuff. Mrs Sherman has a lovely grand piano. It’s a lot of fun to play. Miss Smith across the road always has chocolate in her pantry, and Salman down the road loves vacationing in Europe, which gives me lots of time to go over and swim in his pool.’

  April squinted at Loretta. She wasn’t sure if she was joking. She didn’t look at all like the sort of person who would break into houses. She was much too neat and pretty for a start. If April broke into a house, she would look like she’d been pulled through a hedge backwards.

  ‘Don’t you have a pool?’ asked Fin.

  ‘Of course,’ said Loretta, ‘but Salman has a better jacuzzi.’

  ‘What about the security system?’ asked Fin.

  Loretta laughed. ‘That’s the funny part. Mrs Sherman is forever overseeing murder trials, so she should know all about how devious criminals are, and yet in her own house the security code is 1234. Can you believe it? 1234! I was all prepared to hack the security company’s mainframe but there was no need.’

  Dad was fast asleep in his office. He could never sleep at night. He was too scared. That’s when the bad dreams would come. But for some reason, when he sat as his desk with a huge pile of work to get through on a warm afternoon – he could sleep like a baby.

  He was dreaming about a Venus flytrap. It kept growing bigger and bigger. Then, when he looked down, he realised he was standing inside the plant’s jaws. He tried to escape but the jaws had been triggered and they were snapping shut. He couldn’t push through the teeth. When he looked up, the leaves of the plant were folding over him, ready to kill, but then the leaves transformed into his wife and the teeth were samurai swords swishing through the air towards him.

  ‘Waaaghh!’ cried Dad. A noise had woken him up. His first thought was of his wife, but then he remembered she was in jail on the other side of the world. He knew he shouldn’t be relieved, but he was. Then he remembered that there were other people out there almost as scary. Kolektiv agents who wanted to kill him.

  Dad heard the noise again. It was faint, but definitely a whirring, like a power drill. Dad leapt to his feet. He was too terrified to confront anyone, but he was brave enough to go and see if he needed to run away.

  Dad crept over to the window. He couldn’t see anything. As quietly as possible he pushed up the sash and leaned out. There was nobody there. Then his eye caught a movement at the far end of the garden. He could have sworn he saw a foot disappear into a hedge. Dad started to tremble. Someone had been there. What were they doing? What did they want? If they were going to kill him, why didn’t they do it?

  Dad awkwardly climbed out of the window to have a closer look. Perhaps he had imagined it. His psychologist had told him he had an overactive imagination. Perhaps the whirring wasn’t a drill, it was the wind. And perhaps the movement in the bushes was just a rabbit or some other wild animal. Dad couldn’t see any alteration to the outside of the house. Then he noticed something. Something tiny on the grass right by the house. He crouched down to get a closer look. There was a very small pile of sawdust, as if someone had drilled a hole in the side of the house.

  Dad ran his hands along the walls, taking his time to thoroughly search, but he couldn’t find a hole. What did that mean? Had someone drilled a hole, then filled it? This was going from bad to worse.

  Joe let himself in the front door and headed for the kitchen, where he found his dad crouching behind the kitchen sink. He was peering out through the venetian blinds.

  ‘Hey, Dad,’ said Joe, as he dumped his schoolbag by the kitchen counter.

  Dad jumped with fright. ‘Aagghh!’

  ‘It’s only m-m-me,’ said Joe. ‘Where are April and Fin?’

  ‘What?’ said Dad, suddenly alarmed. ‘They’re not here?’

  Joe looked about. ‘I can’t see them.’

  ‘They were here half an hour ago,’ said Dad, looking out the window as if a Kolektiv hit man might be lurking among the daisies. ‘You don’t suppose they’ve been kidnapped?’

  ‘They’re probably doing something out in the yard,’ said Joe, walking over to the cupboard to grab a bag of popcorn. He stopped when he saw the microwave. ‘What happened?’

  The microwave was back on the counter and it had been reassembled, but the metal casing was warped and the plastic panel at the front was only held on by kitty-cat bandaids.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Dad. ‘Do you think someone broke in and tampered with it?’

  ‘I don’t think a secret agent would do such a bad job,’ said Joe, ‘or use such pretty b-b-bandaids to put it back together. This looks more like April’s handiwork.’

  ‘She was doing something with a mallet earlier,’ Dad remembered vaguely.

  Joe put the popcorn in the microwave and turned it on. The microwave started up, the light came on and the dish started turning. ‘Hey, it still works. Cool!’

  The front door slammed.

  Dad gasped and ducked under the kitchen counter. ‘It’s the Kolektiv! Hide!’

  ‘Hello,’ called Fin.

  Pumpkin barked.

  ‘It’s just April and Fin,’ said Joe.

  Dad clutched his chest. ‘What a relief! There was someone in the garden earlier today. I’m pretty sure it was an international secret agent come to kidnap you all.’

  Joe looked out into the garden. Aside from the horse jumping damage, the flowerbeds were beautiful. It didn’t look like the type of place international operatives would work.

  ‘You know, Dad, perhaps you should cut back on the caffeine. Swap to chamomile tea,’ said Joe. ‘You’d be less jumpy.’

  Pumpkin rushed in and bit Dad on the ankle. ‘Ow!’ yelled Dad.

  As soon as April saw Dad she whipped her hands behind her back.

  ‘What have you g-got there?’ asked Joe.

  ‘Mind your own business, big nose,’ said April.

  Dad looked at Joe. His son didn’t have a particularly large nose, so this expression confused him.

  ‘Big head more like,’ said Fin. ‘You must think you’re pretty good now that you’re the big man at school.’

  This confused Dad further. Joe was a large man-sized boy, but he didn’t understand how his size could alter when he was at school.

  Joe blushed. ‘It’s not my f-f-fault I’ve got a knack for it.’

  ‘A knack for what?’ asked Dad, afraid his son was going to say hand-to-hand combat or something equally horrifying.

  ‘Lawn bowls,’ said Joe.

  ‘He’s an idiot at it,’ said April.

  ‘You mean “idiot savant”,’ corrected Fin.

  ‘You say tomato, I say tomato,’ said April.

  ‘You shouldn’t call your brother names,’ chided Dad.

  ‘I don’t see how “idiot” became such a bad word,’ complained April. ‘All the other words for “idiot” are much worse.’ She kicked Fin in the shin to get his attention. ‘Why don’t you show Dad something in your schoolbag?’ She waggled her eyebrows meaningfully.

  Fin looked confused. ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘Because I’ll punch you if you don’t,’ said April, glancing back behind her and twitching the box with the cockroach so only Fin could see it.

  ‘Oh!’ said Fin, catching on. ‘Right. Dad, here have a look at … my um … lunchbox! It’s really important for parents to know what their kids do and don’t eat.’

  While Dad was distracted, April walked over to a large domed terrarium Dad had on the kitchen windowsill where he grew herbs. She chec
ked over her shoulder to see that Dad wasn’t looking.

  ‘But you’ve eaten everything,’ Dad observed, peering into the lunchbox. ‘There’s nothing to see.’

  ‘I know,’ said Fin. ‘And look, here is a tissue I blew my nose on at recess.’

  April dumped the cockroach in the terrarium.

  ‘Fascinating,’ said Dad, looking at the tissue. ‘And you kept this just to show me?’

  ‘If we’re going to build a meaningful father-son relationship,’ said Fin, ‘it’s important to start with the little things.’

  April hurried away, but a movement caught Dad’s eye.

  ‘Did you see that?’ he exclaimed, pointing to the window. For one horrifying moment April and Fin thought he had spotted the cockroach, but Dad rushed to the kitchen drawer and pulled out a pair of military-grade binoculars, then trained them on something distant out the window.

  ‘See what?’ asked Fin.

  ‘Something moving in the bushes! At the far end of the garden,’ said Dad.

  ‘You mean the wind?’ said April.

  ‘You stay here, I’m going to check it out.’ Dad scurried to the back door, let himself out, then commando crawled through the maze of flowerbeds towards the back hedge. Pumpkin happily chased after him, barking and biting Dad on the leg excitedly as he went.

  The Peski kids stood at the kitchen window, watching him go.

  ‘Do you think Dad is nuts?’ asked Fin.

  ‘Beyond a shadow of a doubt,’ said Joe.

  ‘Should we get him some sort of professional help?’ asked Fin.

  ‘He’s just been living alone for too long,’ said Joe. ‘He’ll probably calm d-d-down when he’s used to having us about the house.’

  ‘Besides,’ said April, ‘these wild conspiracy theories do him good. Look, he’s outdoors enjoying the sunshine, playing with the dog.’

  Dad was now running around in circles with Pumpkin delightedly hanging off the back of his pants.

  ‘If there was someone hiding in the hedge,’ said Fin, ‘the sight of that would scare them off as effectively as anything else.’