“Sounds like he’s living pretty high on the hog,” said a suddenly intrigued Detective Cheese.
“Oh yeah,” said Grundy. “Let’s just say he doesn’t exactly have to sing for his supper these days. And there’s more. Lots more.”
“We’re listening,” said Elspeth.
Moments later, just outside the room, the office secretary, a prim woman named Polly, sat at her very tidy desk, typing up a report on the case of Mrs. Pumpkin Eater, which had been solved that afternoon when she was found quite unharmed in a hollowed-out gourd. Polly stopped typing when the door to the interrogation room opened and out walked Grundy, followed closely by Elspeth and Detective Cheese.
“You’re free to go for now,” said Elspeth. “But don’t leave town.”
“That’s right,” echoed the Cheese. “And so help me, if I find out you’re not being straight with the Cheese, I’ll throw the book at you faster than you can say if Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, how many pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick? You got that?”
“I think so,” said Grundy, who had never been very good at tongue twisters. Elspeth and the Cheese watched as the tired and hungry guard loped off toward the exit. Then the Cheese turned to his secretary.
“Hey, Polly,” he said. “I need you to find Dumpty for me. Tell him we need to speak to a guard by the name of Tommy Tucker right away.”
“Will do,” said Polly, pushing back from her desk.
“Oh, and Polly?” said the Cheese.
“Yes?”
“Put the kettle on. It’s gonna be a long night.”
Little Tommy Tucker sold Krool some supper,
Fine stinky cheese and fresh bread and butter.
Will he row merrily right down the stream?
Or be sent up the river for his part in the scheme?
Chapter
8
When Tommy Tucker arrived at the station, he was, unlike Grundy, overly congenial and visibly nervous. He was escorted by an officer in uniform to the interrogation room, where he sat alone for a time, fidgeting and drumming his fingers on the table with enough force to create ripples in the water pitcher.
Outside the room, through a window of one-way glass, Elspeth and Detective Cheese observed the suspect, paying close attention to the man’s body language.
“Well? What do you think?” asked the Cheese. “What’s your gut telling you?”
“Sure looks guilty to me,” Elspeth replied.
They watched as Tucker sighed and rubbed the back of his neck then filled the water glass. His shaky hands betrayed him—leaving a glass half full and a small puddle on the table. He was mopping up the water with the sleeve of his shirt when the door opened and in rolled the Cheese, closely followed by Elspeth.
“Evening, Mr. Tucker,” said the Cheese. “Appreciate you coming in on such short notice.”
“No problem,” said Tucker with a tight smile, hiding his wet sleeve beneath the table. “Always happy to help out law enforcement.”
“Glad to hear that,” said the Cheese. “Because I need you to help me understand something, Tommy. You mind if I call you Tommy?”
“Not at all,” said Tucker.
“Great,” said the Cheese. “Let me ask you something, Tommy. Heard you got yourself a brand-new boat recently.”
Tommy’s face dropped as he instantly realized why he had been summoned to the station. “Yes,” he admitted. “Just a row boat. Nothing fancy.”
“Where’d you get the money for it?” Elspeth demanded.
“Well, I . . . I saved up,” Tucker sputtered. He took a quick drink of the water and choked on it a little.
The Cheese scoffed and spat on the floor. “Saved up? Ha! Give me a break. You’re dirty, Tommy. You’re in Krool’s back pocket, and you know it.”
“That’s a lie!” Tucker protested in a way that Elspeth thought was a bit too adamant. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” With his dry shirtsleeve he wiped away a pool of sweat that had gathered on his upper lip.
“You know, I spoke to a couple of your neighbors, Tommy boy,” said the Cheese. “According to them, just yesterday you went to market to buy a fat hog, then came home again looking all jiggety-jog.”
“I . . . I can explain that,” Tucker stammered. “I won that hog. In a contest.”
“Oh really?” said Elspeth. “What kind of contest?”
“Uh . . . hog-calling contest?”
The Cheese rolled behind Tucker and leaned very close to the man’s ear. “You and I have a little problem here, Tommy. Because I’m not picking up what you’re throwing down.” The Cheese’s voice was just above a whisper now. “I got witnesses who saw you at the casino last weekend playing knick-knack paddywhack. They said you dropped a cool ten thousand sixpence in twenty minutes then threw the dog a bone like you were made of bones.”
“That was just money I won earlier. I swear it. I was up big at the blackjack table.”
“You sure are a lucky man, aren’t you?” said Elspeth. “Winning a hog-calling contest. Cleaning up at the casino. It sounds almost too good to be true.”
“Well, what can I tell you?” Tucker chuckled awkwardly.
“You can start by telling us what we wanna hear.” The Cheese had suddenly abandoned his whisper in favor of a booming baritone that ricocheted off the empty walls. “You listen to me and you listen good, Tommy. We’re giving you one chance to come clean. One chance to cut a deal for a lesser sentence.”
Tucker’s eyes darted about the stark white room until he caught his reflection in the one-way glass. He was surprised at how guilty he looked. “But I haven’t done anything,” he insisted.
“Okay,” said the Cheese, rolling back around to face Tucker. “Have it your way. But make no mistake. Once you leave this room, the offer is off the table. And then I’m gonna be all over you like cheese on a cracker. Now, you sure there’s not something you wanna tell us, Tommy?”
Tucker’s breathing became increasingly shallow, his eyes ever more shifty. A bead of sweat meandered down his forehead, followed by another. And then, finally, he broke. “Okay,” Tucker sobbed. “I’ll tell you what you want to know. But please, I can’t go to prison. I’ve got a family.”
“I can’t promise you won’t do some time in the joint,” said the Cheese. “But I give you my word that I’ll ask the judge to go easy on you. Now, tell us everything.”
Outside the room, Dumpty, who had just arrived at the station, watched through the one-way glass as Tucker blubbered into his hands while telling Elspeth and the Cheese all that he knew. That the confession lasted only ten minutes indicated that he didn’t know a lot. But it was more than enough.
The door to the room opened, and out came Elspeth and the Cheese to find Dumpty waiting for them.
“Well?” said Dumpty, his eyes transfixed on Tommy, who was now pacing the room in a state of anguish.
“We grilled him like a grilled cheese sandwich,” said Elspeth with a smile.
“And?”
“He cracked like an egg.”
“That’s right,” said the Cheese. “Gave up everything. Says our guy is a dude who goes by the name of the Muffin Man.”
“The Muffin Man?” gasped Dumpty. “Who lives on Drury Lane?”
“No. Different Muffin Man. This guy works the Lower East Side. Fifty-Fourth and Mulberry. First name Larry.”
“Nice work,” said Dumpty, with a smile of pure relief and giddy anticipation at the thought of telling Krool just what he could do with his offer. “Nice work indeed.”
“Thanks,” said Elspeth.
A long night of interrogation had taken a physical and emotional toll, and the Cheese rolled over to the office break station for much needed refreshment. “Can I offer you a cup of tea, Elspeth?”
“Sure,” she replied.
“Dumpty?”
“Delighted.”
Suddenly, the Cheese frowned and exhaled in disgust. He turned to his secretary, who was readin
g a message that had just been delivered. “Hey, Polly. I thought I told you to put the kettle on.”
“I did,” said Polly. “But Sukey took it off again.”
The Cheese fumed and turned a darker shade of orange. “You tell Sukey to keep her hands off my tea kettle. Now get a message to dispatch. Tell ’em I need a couple of plainclothes guys to pick up Larry the Muffin Man and bring him downtown right away.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” said Polly.
“What do you mean that won’t be possible? Why not?”
“This just came in,” said Polly. She leaned over her desk and handed the message to Elspeth.
“Well, what is it?” asked the Cheese.
“According to this,” said Elspeth, “the Muffin Man’s wife found him dead earlier this evening. Floating facedown in a vat of muffin batter.”
Dumpty and the Cheese stood in stunned silence, the air instantly taken out of their sails.
“Well, ain’t that a pocket full of posies,” said the Cheese finally. “I can tell you one thing. This was no accident. And it ain’t no coincidence.”
“Krool,” Elspeth agreed. “I guess he’s got more friends than we thought.”
“B-i-n-g-o,” said the Cheese. “Bingo.”
Suddenly none of them felt too much like a celebratory cup of tea. Since Krool’s reign had come to an end, violent crimes were rare in Banbury Cross. In fact, this was the first murder since the killing of Cock Robin, a crime that, two years later, remained unsolved.
And though the Muffin Man may have contributed to his own murder by involving himself with the likes of Krool, the news of his death was unnerving and depressing all the same. And whether or not Krool had a hand in the Muffin Man drowning in a battery grave, one thing was certain. They were once again playing by Krool’s rules.
Did you know the Muffin Man, the Muffin Man, the Muffin Man?
Did you know the Muffin Man, Larry was his name?
Yes, I knew the Muffin Man, the Muffin Man, the Muffin Man
Yes, I knew the Muffin Man, but now I fear he’s slain.
Chapter
9
Winkie’s advisors had been summoned to the throne room once more, both to offer support and to witness the transaction that was taking place.
“May I remind Your Majesty that this is a legally binding agreement,” said Jeremy Nod of Wynken, Blynken, and Nod, the best law firm in Banbury Cross.
“You don’t have to remind me,” said Winkie.
Nod, with his well-manicured fingers, slid the small stack of papers across the tiny table where Winkie sat, his face red from rage and high blood pressure, his own fingertips white from squeezing the pen much harder than it was designed to be squeezed.
“Just sign right there,” said Nod.
Winkie looked at each and every face in the room before expelling one last angry sigh then scrawled his name above the line at the bottom of the page.
“And initial here,” Nod added, flipping to a new page. “And here.”
Winkie scratched out a quick triple W on the indicated spaces then sat back, closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “When I had discovered that my lovely Farrah was missing,” he said, “and when the ransom note arrived, I swore I would make a deal with the devil if necessary in order to get her back. True to my word, that’s exactly what I’ve done.”
The king looked at Fergus and Bo-Peep as if he had just stabbed his longtime friends and trusted advisors in the back. “I’m so sorry,” he said, lowering his gaze to the table, unable to look them in the eye.
“You did what you had to do,” said Bo-Peep. “And each of us would have done the same.”
“It’s true,” said Fergus, placing a sympathetic wing upon Winkie’s back. “Sometimes the pill that cures is the most difficult to swallow.”
Nod took the document, jogged the pages, and slid them into a large brown envelope then tucked it beneath the arm of his designer suit. “I will witness Krool’s signature and return a fully executed copy to Your Highness posthaste,” he said.
“Very well,” said Winkie, in the way someone would who had just chosen the lesser of two incredible evils. Nod hurried out of the room, and Winkie pushed back from the table and stood. “Well, we’d all better get some rest,” he said. “First thing tomorrow, we set out to find the hidden money. That will give us a full three days to travel to the Thick to rescue my sweet Farrah.”
Normally when she was a guest of the castle, Elspeth slept soundly and peacefully between the finest linen upon the softest, most inviting mattress. This night would be different. Dark, gruesome dreams woke her several times, each nightmare playing in her head more vividly than the one before. She dreamed of Krool, Mary Mary, and the Great Spiny Gleekin, a creature Elspeth had never seen, though her subconscious did a fine job of creating a very vivid picture.
If that weren’t enough, there were the lambs. Though Elspeth would never admit it to Krool and give him the satisfaction of being right, he somehow had been able to describe her nightmares with astonishing accuracy. She did frequently dream about those poor lambs and their horrible fate. How Krool could possibly know such a thing made her wonder if perhaps he had the power to enter her very thoughts.
When she gathered with the others in the throne room early the next morning, it was evident that she was not the only one who had endured a restless night. If the eyes are the windows to the soul, thought Elspeth, you can also tell a lot about a person by looking at the drapes.
Dumpty’s eyelids drooped heavily while Bo-Peep’s featured puffy bags. Fergus’s were completely closed, and Winkie’s, by now, were twitching involuntarily and practically nonstop.
In addition to worrying about Farrah and suffering the pangs of buyer’s remorse for the deal he’d made with Krool, Winkie had spent much of the night lying awake, trying to decide just who should accompany him on this life-or-death operation. The group, he decided, should be small and unintimidating but capable, each member bringing to the effort a unique or necessary skill.
As the king’s chancellor and the person most responsible for his well-being, Georgie was vehemently opposed to this idea. “It’s far too dangerous,” he said. “We’re dealing with an adversary of unknown capabilities. We should be sending our entire army.”
“And what do you suppose Mary Mary would think if we marched into the Thick with full forces?” said Winkie. “She’ll think we’re there to take the queen back by force. We must exude a spirit of cooperation. Besides, there’s a chance that this entire thing might be a trick to lure my army from the castle in order to carry out an attack.”
It would have to be a small group, Winkie insisted. Those officially tapped to accompany him on the mission were Dumpty, Bo-Peep, and Elspeth, who tensed at the mention of her name. After all, she had promised her father that she was here only for the purpose of consultation and would be going nowhere near the Thick. She felt as though she should speak up, that she should honor Jack’s wishes and insist on remaining behind. But how could she? After all, she was a local hero. And heroes do not disappoint. So instead of objecting, she simply pushed the promise she’d made to Jack from her mind and said nothing.
Winkie also decided that his most trusted guards, Cory, Rory, and Maury, three beefy brothers who had grown up in a shoe, would come along to provide the muscle should it be needed. And they had plenty to spare. Ardent weight lifters, their bodies had become so enormous that their shaved heads looked disproportionately small. Their arms pulsed with veins the size of a towrope, and their washboard abdominals were so defined that the boys could actually use them to do their laundry, their belly buttons acting as a built-in lint trap. Nature thinks of everything.
In addition to King William’s hand-picked roster, Elspeth would add another. Despite his penchant for being insufferably annoying, she insisted that she be permitted to bring Gene along for self-defense.
“And don’t forget good luck,” Gene added. “I’m load
ed with it.”
Once again Georgie was less than enthusiastic about this arrangement. A stick chosen for this all-important mission while the king’s chancellor was ordered to stay behind? Insulting to say the least and, in Georgie’s mind, highly imprudent.
“But, Your Highness,” he said. “I insist that, as your chancellor and official media spokesperson, I be allowed to join you. It’s my sworn duty to tend to your needs.”
“What I need most at this time,” said Winkie, “is for someone to stay behind and take care of the matters of the castle and of the people of Banbury Cross.”
“Very well,” said Georgie. He tried not to answer too quickly or sound too eager to agree, as it might appear that he really had no desire at all to go along, being that he was a notorious coward and the idea of dealing with the likes of Mary Mary and her army of monsters made him weak in the knees.
And so the official roster was set.
Of course there was one more who would be part of the group for the first part of the mission. That person was, at that very moment, being made to kneel at the far end of his cell, facing away from the door, with his hands clasped behind his head.
“This is entirely unnecessary,” Krool insisted as Maury stood at the door and Rory and Cory each took one of Krool’s hands and shackled them together behind his back. “And terribly impolite, I might add. I don’t remember seeing anything in the written agreement about being handcuffed.”
“That’s enough out of you,” said Cory, the eldest of the brothers.
That Krool had been responsible for their childhood home being razed, forcing them to grow up living in a large shoe, might have had something to do with the brothers’ rough handling of the man who, until he fulfilled his part of the agreement by leading them to the ill-gotten money, would remain a prisoner of the Crown. They pulled Krool to his feet and turned him toward the door.
“Let’s go,” said Rory, with a sharp nudge to Krool’s upper back, a move for which Krool showed his lack of appreciation with a slow turn of his head and a searing glare.
Long Live the Queen Page 6