The Case of the Toxic Mutants

by Ursula Vernon

  It would serve them right if he found the critical bit of information that blew this case wide open.

  He picked a computer terminal away from the other two and stared at the screen.

  What if it wasn’t some kind of normal animal? What if the explanation was something more mythical? Danny was great at mythical stuff.

  What sort of mythical creature would steal dentures?

  What if it didn’t mean to steal dentures?

  Lots of mythical creatures weren’t very bright. Maybe they couldn’t tell the difference between dentures and teeth. If you were a mythical creature out hunting for loose teeth, and you came across Grandfather Turlingsward’s dentures, wouldn’t that seem like you’d hit the mother lode of teeth?

  “You guys!” cried Danny, standing up from the keyboard. “I’ve got it!”

  “Your parents probably should have told you this already,” said Christiana, “but Danny, there is no Tooth Fairy.”

  “There are totally fairies,” said Danny.

  “Oh. Hmm.” Danny thought about that. If it really was a Tooth Fairy, then yeah, it would have to leave payment for the teeth it took. Given the size of Grandfather Turlingsward’s dentures, a couple of gold bars might even be in order.

  “Anyway, I don’t think we should—” Wendell began.

  “You’re not lisping,” said Christiana. “Wendell, where’s your retainer?”

  “Oh god, I’ve lost it,” moaned the iguana. “It’s gone. My mom is going to have to get me a new one. She’ll die. It’s really expensive. Maybe I should run away from home.”

  “You could join the circus!” said Danny. “And change your name and become a lion tamer and—”

  “Where did you have it last?” asked Christiana.

  “—and teach them to jump through hoops and—”

  “I took it out when we were eating cookies at Miss Flicktongue’s. I bet I left it on the big rock out front.”

  “—you could even have a bullwhip!” said Danny.

  “Many circuses are very cruel to the animals in them,” said Christiana disapprovingly.

  “I’d be very nice to the lions,” said Wendell, “so they don’t turn on me.” He considered for a moment. “Does it have to be lions? Couldn’t I tame, like, butterflies?”

  “Or, y’know, we could just go back there and find your retainer,” said Christiana.

  Wendell relaxed a bit. “You think it’s still there?”

  “Unless the denture thief took it,” said Christiana, turning back to her computer.

  Wendell made a noise like somebody had stepped on his tail.

  “That just means we have to solve the mystery!” said Danny, and dove back into the computer files.

  Half an hour later, all three kids gathered by the reference desk with their books.

  “Book on animal track identification,” said Christiana, holding up one of her choices. “I’m pretty sure I know what it is, but I want to identify it in the field to be sure. What about you guys?”

  “I was too busy worrying about my retainer,” said Wendell gloomily. He clutched Butterfly Taming for Fun and Profit closer to his chest.

  “The astonishing thing isn’t that you found that book,” said Christiana, eyeing it, “it’s really that it ever got written at all.” She glanced over at Danny.

  “Great Detectives Through the Ages!” said Danny, holding up one of his books. He’d spent the last ten minutes paging through the book, and while parts of it were pretty boring, there was some really interesting stuff about dead bodies. “Did you know that in 1248, there was a Chinese book called The Washing Away of Wrongs that told people how to tell the difference between drowning and strangling? Isn’t that cool?”

  “. . . actually, I knew that,” murmured Wendell.

  “And listen to this! A guy named Thomas Bell discovered that if people are drowned or hanged, their teeth turn pink after they die! Pink teeth!” Danny waved his arms.

  “Fine,” muttered Danny, “but I’m checking this book out anyway, in case any dead bodies show up.”

  “If any dead bodies show up, we’re calling the police,” said Christiana.

  “Butterfly training, step one,” read Wendell. “Get a very, very tiny chair . . .”

  “What’s your other book?” asked Christiana.

  Danny set aside Great Detectives Through the Ages and revealed his second book with a flourish.

  “Aztec Myths and Legends?” Christiana frowned. “It was a pretty impressive empire in its day, I grant you, but what do Aztecs have to do with your grandfather’s dentures?”

  “Step two,” Wendell murmured, “select a cocoon . . .”

  “I think it’s an ahuizotl!” said Danny.

  Wendell looked up from his book. Christiana blinked.

  Danny was enormously pleased to have found a creature that Christiana had never heard of. He’d had to practice pronouncing the name under his breath, but it was worth it. “An ahuizotl! It’s an Aztec monster. It’s like a mutant otter with a hand on the end of its tail—and it steals teeth!”

  He consulted the relevant section of the book. “It drowns people and takes their teeth. Also their eyeballs and their fingernails, but I guess that doesn’t really apply—”

  “Nobody is missing their eyeballs,” said Christiana. “But you must be missing your marbles!”

  “I’m telling you, it makes sense!” said Danny. “The ahuizotl comes out of the creek, leaves all those tracks, goes in through the window, steals the teeth—”

  “Wouldn’t it have to drown your granddad first?” asked Wendell. “I mean, what I’ve read about ahuizotls says that they only take teeth and fingernails from their victims.”

  “You’d need an Olympic swimming pool,” said Christiana. “Actually—wait, what am I saying? This is ridiculous! It’s not an Aztec monster! How would an Aztec monster, even if such a thing existed, get here from Mexico?”

  “It could stow away in a box of fruit,” said Wendell. “Or on the landing gear of a plane. That’s how the Guam tree snake got everywhere.” For Danny’s benefit he said, “They’re little tiny snakes. Not like people-snakes.”

  “I am familiar with the Guam tree snake,” said Christiana grimly. “Guam tree snakes are not mutant Aztec teeth-stealing otters!”

  “I did see a little brown creature,” said Danny. “That could have been the ahuizotl!”

  “No, it couldn’t have, because ahuizotls don’t exist!”

  “Maybe we should go outside,” said Danny.

  “Maybe we should get my retainer,” said Wendell.

  Christiana stalked off, her tail quivering with rage.

  The ride back to Sunny Acres was not an entirely pleasant one. Christiana was ignoring Danny, and Wendell was immersed in his guide to butterfly taming.

  Danny amused himself by reading more Great Detectives Through the Ages. The style was a bit dry and there were no pictures, but it was full of murders and blood and mysteries.

  They were most of the way back to Sunny Acres when Danny judged that Christiana had probably cooled off. She got mad at him all the time, but she didn’t stay mad for long, which was good. It would have been difficult to be friends otherwise.

  “So what do you think it is?” he asked, leaning over the seat.

  Christiana gave him a look, then apparently decided to forgive him. “I don’t know yet. I’ll need to look at the tracks to be sure.”

  “Sunny Acres!” called the bus driver, and they all piled off the bus again.

  Mrs. Scalinghurst was still out on her rock. She smiled at them. “So busy today! My goodness!”

  “Gotta run,” said Danny, waving.

  “All right. You children be careful playing back there—the old hospital building used to be behind those cottages, and heaven knows wh
at’s still out there . . . scalpels or needles or X-ray machines, I don’t know what all.”

  Danny immediately vowed to return and find a broken X-ray machine as soon as possible.

  They rounded the corner, and Wendell ran down the sidewalk to the rock in the front yard, scanning for his retainer. “I was sitting here—so it should be right here—or maybe here—”

  “The thief must have gotten it,” said Christiana.

  “What am I going to tell my mom?” asked Wendell hopelessly.

  “We’ll get it back,” Danny said. “We’ll catch the denture thief, Wendell, don’t worry.”

  Across the street, Grandfather Turlingsward was still on his rock. Danny thought that he was really asleep this time. Every few minutes he’d let out a snore and the windows in Miss Flicktongue’s cottage would rattle a little.

  “I guess we could ask if he saw anything,” said Christiana.

  “Let’s not wake him up,” said Danny. “Please.” He didn’t think he could handle another session with his grandfather, so soon after the last one.

  “Let’s check the tracks,” said Christiana, opening one of her books.

  Danny and Wendell crowded around as the crested lizard opened to the page on pack rats.

  They looked at the tracks.

  They looked at the book.

  They looked at the tracks again.

  “Aha!” said Christiana. She brandished the book. “As I suspected! It’s a pack rat!”

  “Pack rat?” Danny frowned. “Is that like a rat that carries a little pack around, or rats that run in packs, like wolves?”

  “It’s a type of wood rat,” said Christiana. “Not like a rat-rat. They collect stuff. Particularly shiny objects. I think one found the dentures and wanted them for its nest.”

  “Sometimes they climb up into the engines of cars and chew on the wires,” said Wendell, putting down his butterfly book. “And they can build these huge nests called middens. They’re full of sticks and twigs and any neat stuff the pack rat found to drag home.”

  Christiana nodded.

  “Maybe ahuizotl tracks look like pack rat tracks?” asked Danny hopefully.

  “It’s an aquatic monster,” said Christiana. “They’d be webbed.”

  It wasn’t that Danny minded when Christiana was right, he just wished she wouldn’t do it so often, and in that tone of voice.

  There was no denying that pack rats were possible . . . but so were ahuizotls, right? Just because Christiana didn’t believe in them didn’t mean they weren’t out there!

  On the other hand, he had to admit that it would probably be easier to get the dentures back from a pack rat than from a monster that drowned people and stole their eyeballs. Hmm.

  “. . . hang on a minute,” said Wendell, staring at the dirt.

  “They’re identical,” said Christiana. “Those are totally pack rat tracks.”

  “Can I see the book?”

  Christiana handed over the book. Wendell examined the drawing of the tracks, and then the tracks themselves.

  “They look like pack rat tracks,” the iguana admitted. “They’re the right shape. But did you look at the scale?”

  Christiana looked surprised. “No, I guess I didn’t. Why?”

  “The biggest pack rat in North America is twenty inches long,” said Wendell, “and most of that is tail. And they have tiny little feet. Those tracks are at least six inches long. In order to leave a track that size, how big would the pack rat have to be?”

  Danny almost never saw Christiana at a loss, but he was seeing it now. She took the book, looked at the text, looked at the tracks, and said “Huh!”

  “Could it be a giant pack rat?” asked Danny. “Like a giant mutant pack rat! Maybe it ate some radioactive seeds and it grew enormous and pretty soon it’ll go rampage through the city—”

  He was sad to abandon the ahuizotl theory, but if it involved a giant mutant pack rat, that was pretty cool too.

  “There’s a couple of them,” said Wendell. “At least three distinct individuals. This one’s got a crooked hind toe, and one of them is missing a claw on the front feet.”

  “Jeez,” said Danny. “Listen to you, Daniel Boone! Get your mom to buy you a coonskin cap.”

  They trekked back to the front yard thoughtfully. Danny went to sit down on the rock, and then jumped up again. “Hey, Wendell—is this where your retainer was?”

  “Did you find it?” asked the iguana excitedly.

  “No—but this was sitting here.” He held out a bedraggled hunk of fabric with a puff on the end. “I think it’s a clue!”

  “That’s not a clue, that’s a Santa hat,” said Christiana. “A little tiny one.”

  “Something took my retainer and left a Santa hat,” said Wendell. “Oh, Mom is going to be thrilled.”

  “That’s consistent with a pack rat,” Christiana admitted. “They frequently drop what they’re carrying to pick up something new—but what was it doing with a Santa hat?”

  “Christmas isn’t for months,” said Danny.

  “The only thing deepening is the trouble I’m going to be in,” muttered Wendell.

  “Oh, you’re back!” said Miss Flicktongue, opening the screen door. “Have you had any luck, children?”

  “We’ve found a clue!” said Danny happily. “Do you recognize this object?” He waved the Santa hat at her.

  “Oh my!” Miss Flicktongue lifted up her glasses to inspect the hat. “Oh dear me, yes! This is mine!”

  “And we found it in her yard too,” muttered Christiana. “Astonishing!”

  Danny ignored her. She was just jealous because he’d found the clue.

  “A pack rat could have taken the outfit,” said Christiana thoughtfully.

  “Oh!” said Miss Flicktongue. “I always thought—well—” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “I’m sorry, young man, but I always thought that your grandfather took it! He never had a kind word to say about Mister Honkers.”

  “What?” said Wendell.

  Christiana rolled her eyes.

  “The thing I saw!” Danny waved his arms. “It was really filthy, so I didn’t recognize it, because it wasn’t red anymore, but I think it was wearing a Santa outfit! And it was wearing the hat, so it must have taken the retainer and left the hat behind!”

  He turned. “Miss Flicktongue—ma’am—this is really important! Did your goose have a little yellow raincoat too?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Miss Flicktongue. “He was wearing it when he vanished.” She sniffled. “Poor Mister Honkers!”

  A brief silence followed this pronouncement.

  “Right,” said Christiana. “I gotta sit down.”

  “But they actually stole Mister Honkers,” said Wendell. “Like, the whole goose.”

  “Well, they probably aren’t very bright,” said Danny.

  Wendell rubbed his forehead and sighed. “Let’s move on. Okay. Assume that these are—I dunno, some kind of giant pack rats—and they’ve stolen dentures and my retainer and Miss Flicktongue’s goose. Somewhere, there’s probably a stash with all our stuff in it.”

  “It’s all right here in this book,” said Danny, waving Great Detectives Through the Ages. “When you think you’ve got your criminal, but you have to catch him in the act. We need a sting operation!”

  “Eh?” said Wendell, who had been busy mourning his retainer. “What? I’m allergic to stings. I swell up and can’t breathe and die.

  It’s kind of a problem.”

  “No,” said Grandfather Turlingsward. “Absolutely not. No, no, a thousand times no. You’re not touching my hoard.”

  “But Granddad!” said Danny. “We need something shiny! It doesn’t have to be valuable! And we’ll give it back as soon as we’ve tracked the pack rats.”

  “Pack rats!�
� His grandfather blew a puff of smoke through his nostrils. “I don’t know where you got this fool notion about pack rats in your head! Anybody can see it’s that harpy across the street!”

  “If it’s not pack rats, then nothing will happen to whatever you loan us,” said Wendell patiently. “This is just to test our hypothesis.”

  “Not gonna happen, young whippersnapper!”

  “Fine!” said Danny, exasperated. “Don’t help us! Eat oatmeal forever! If we do get your dentures back, I’m gonna sell them on the Internet!”

  “I’m sure Miss Flicktongue will loan us something,” said Wendell. “She’s been very nice about all this.”

  “Unlike some people,” said Christiana.

  Danny was so annoyed with his grandfather that he turned on his heel and stomped across the street. He was nearly to the other curb when Grandfather Turlingsward said, “Hold your horses, boy.”

  Turlingsward heaved a sigh like an earthquake. “All right . . . all right . . . I’m sure I’ve got something . . .”

  He got up from his rock and lumbered into the cottage.

  Ten minutes later, Grandfather Turlingsward returned, carrying a small piece of jewelry. It was a brooch set with dozens of sparkling gems that glittered in the sunlight.

  “Wow!” said Wendell. “Are those diamonds?”

  “Cubic zirconium,” said Danny, who, like all dragons, knew exactly how much any object in a hoard was worth. He turned the brooch in his hands. “The setting’s pewter. Workmanship’s not bad, though. I’d say . . . sixty, seventy dollars.”

  “Ha!” said his grandfather, and patted him on the head. Since Grandfather Turlingsward’s claws were as big as Danny, the smaller dragon had to brace himself to avoid being knocked flat. “I may have misjudged you, boy. You’re a dragon to your tail-tip.”