Ernestine, Catastrophe Queen

by Merrill Wyatt

  “Okey-dokey.” Ernestine took the mouse out of the trap and popped it into the cage she’d brought along, wondering what on earth she’d do with it. She supposed she’d have to kill it but felt sort of bad about the thought. Maybe she could bring it back as a zombie afterward?

  “Goodness, what a morning!” Mr. Theda fidgeted with his cuff links. To Ernestine’s surprise, the onyx stone set in the cufflink fell back to reveal a compartment beneath. Out of this, Mr. Theda popped two aspirin and swallowed them with a glass of water.

  “Nifty cuff links,” Ernestine observed, impressed.

  “You like them?” Mr. Theda beamed with pride. “Mrs. MacGillicuddie gave them to me. They belonged to her ex-husband. Apparently, the Duke of Wibblington once used them to poison a political rival.”

  “Gosh! That’s terrible!” Now Ernestine was even more impressed. Not least because it seemed that Mr. Theda had the perfect means for storing the poison that had been slipped into Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s bottle of bourbon.

  “Well, it saved the Duke the bother of having to frame him for a crime and executing him legally. Courts can take a terribly long time to get around to that sort of thing, you know.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” Ernestine really would. When you were planning the apocalypse, you never knew what sort of legal trouble you might get into. “Say, Mr. Bara, could you take a look at this, please?”

  She took out the bag with its zombie body part and handed it to him. Mr. Bara took the bag and smiled fondly. “Ah, these bring back memories.”

  “Body parts bring back memories?” Charleston asked as he fed the mouse a wedge of Muenster.

  “It’s not a body part. It’s a fake zombie wound. I have a whole drawer full of them.”

  He waved toward a spiky, elaborately carved cabinet that looked like it either belonged in a Victorian parlor or else maybe a torture chamber. With Mr. Theda and Mr. Bara, you never knew which set they’d taken their furniture from. Ernestine opened it gingerly in case she was right about the torture chamber and doing so would trigger a trap to dismember her. Nothing did, which was both good and faintly disappointing. More exciting, it did contain all sorts of realistic-looking severed hands, eyeballs, shrunken heads, and a pickled brain. Just as Mr. Bara promised, there was also a whole drawer full of fake wounds and scabs, plus stuff to make them ooze.

  Ernestine stared into the jar with the pickled brain. Where on earth did you buy a pickled brain, she wondered? Or was that more of a do-it-yourself sort of thing?

  “You know, I think this is one of mine, actually.” Mr. Bara used the feather duster to clean it up a bit. “Whoever has been trying to kill Mrs. MacGillicuddie must have taken it when they also stole that prop wig.”

  “That was yours, too?” Charleston asked, taking a bite off the hunk of Muenster before handing it back to the mouse again.

  “Of course it was ours. Who else has a large collection of zombie costumes just lying around?” Mr. Theda snorted scathingly, then stopped to think about it for a moment. “Well, aside from all of our fans, I mean. So I suppose millions of people, really.”

  As Mr. Bara got down off of his crocodile and gently pushed Ernestine out of the way so he could take stock of his body part collection, Ernestine decided this was the perfect opening to grill Mr. Theda. Especially now that she knew about his possibly-poison-storing cuff links. “Yes, you have a lot more fans now than you did back when you were on Torrid Dilemmas, don’t you, Frankie Nelson?”

  Gasping, Mr. Theda recoiled in horror from her as though she was one of the monsters he usually unleashed in his movies. Mr. Bara closed his eyes like he’d just developed a very bad headache.

  “How—how—how—did you—” Mr. Theda stuttered before trying the same tactic both Dill and Aurora Borealis had used. He drew himself up and said haughtily, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, really?” Ernestine marched over to Mr. Bara’s computer and pulled up the picture of Mr. Theda as Frankie Nelson. Turning around, she crossed her arms smugly and dared him to deny it.

  “Oh, farts,” Mr. Theda swore, crossing his arms sulkily.

  “Um, Ernestine? Maybe we shouldn’t provoke the potential murder suspects while in a room filled with weapons?” Charleston glanced around at the various axes, maces, and swords. To say nothing of the chandelier made out of all the prop knives that had ever appeared in Mr. Theda’s movies.

  Getting up from the cabinet with a handful of spare body parts, Mr. Bara said, “I had our legal team contact that website months ago, telling them to take it down! Well, looks like I’ll have to hack it instead.”

  Dumping the fake body parts into Ernestine’s hands, he sat down in a chair made out of a leftover medieval throne from Mutilated Medieval Misanthropes to type complicated things in code.

  Dumping the various ears, fingers, and eyeballs onto the floor, Ernestine snatched up a mace for protection. “Were either one of you the zombie last night? Did you break into Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s suite to steal those old VCR tapes?”

  “No!” Mr. Theda cried in shock. Then, wringing his hands, he added, “But also, yes.”

  “I’m confused.” Deciding it was best to be prepared, Charleston grabbed the axe off the mantel and brandished it about, ready to defend himself and his new fuzzy friend.

  “You know that’s rubber, right?” Mr. Bara took the mace from Ernestine’s hand and whacked himself over the head with it. Rather than caving his skull in, it just bounced off like a basketball.

  “That, too. Though it’s lovely for slicing cheese with.” Mr. Theda took the axe from Charleston and used it to carve himself off a hunk of the Muenster to nibble.

  “I think you’d better tell them, Sterling,” Mr. Bara said to Mr. Theda. “I’m missing quite a bit of zombie makeup from my cupboard. If the police come asking questions, it will all come out, anyhow.”

  “Oh, all right.” Still munching sourly on his cheese, Mr. Theda did just that. “Yes, I was Frankie Nelson, but after that laughably awful soap, I couldn’t get any work under that name. So I became Sterling Theda.”

  “It was my suggestion that he try out for the horror movies I was working on,” Mr. Bara explained, still tapping away at the keyboard. “They didn’t pay much, but each one was filmed so quickly that he could make dozens of them each year.”

  “Soon, I had hundreds of credits to my name and no one at all remembered Frankie Nelson or Torrid Dilemmas.” Mr. Theda wrung his hands some more. “Except that blasted woman. She’d taped every single episode.”

  “If you’ll recall, the reason she invited us to live here was because she loved you in that soap opera,” Mr. Bara pointed out just as the old photo of Mr. Theda vanished from the website.

  “She promised never to reveal my secret to anyone! I’m to inherit the tapes when she dies so I can finally destroy the last evidence of that—unfortunate—period in my career. But I know she still watches them every night! And with all of those parties she throws, how could I be sure someone wouldn’t stumble across them?”

  “But neither one of us would ever harm Mrs. MacGillicuddie,” Mr. Bara said firmly, closing the lid on the laptop. “She’s been a good friend to us both, even if those tapes make Sterling a little… anxious.”

  Mr. Bara, Ernestine, and Charleston all turned to look at Mr. Theda. Who, by now, had wilted halfway out of his wingback chair, murmuring over and over again, “The horror… the horror…”

  Tugging him upright, Mr. Bara explained, “We were in our apartment when we heard the commotion downstairs. Sterling took advantage of it to retrieve what he felt should rightly be his. So, yes, he did break in, but neither one of us was the zombie. However, someone has stolen quite a bit of my prop makeup.”

  “Do you know who it could be?” Ernestine asked.

  “I don’t.” Mr. Bara shook his head. “Though the night after Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s Mardi Gras party, I came home to find a window open.”

  “I could guess.” S
traightening up, Mr. Theda made a face. “I caught that ridiculous granddaughter of Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s in here the night of the party, trying to steal the jeweled collar off that fake mummy over there. She was getting ready to toss it out that open window and down into the bushes below. No doubt so she could retrieve it later, the thieving little brat. She probably came back the next night.”

  He waved his hand toward the open sarcophagus propped between the living room and dining room.

  Aurora Borealis. Who had stolen at least one pair of the twins’ shoes. Who would need to pry a window open with a crowbar to attack her aunt because she didn’t have a key to the building. Who would have had ample opportunity to saw apart her grandmother’s floorboard and sneak poison into her bourbon.

  Aurora Borealis, who had a lot to gain if her grandmother died.

  Which, of course, would also make her the perfect person to frame for the crime.

  “One last question.” Not ready to jump to any conclusions just yet, Ernestine showed them the picture of the little girl looking in the mirror. “Do you know who this is?”

  Both gentleman looked at the picture, but once again, they shook their heads. However, Mr. Theda flipped it over and read the notation on the back about MacGillicuddie House. “Perhaps it was Mr. MacGillicuddie’s sister? Lyndon’s mother?”

  “Hm. I never thought of that.” Actually, Ernestine had completely forgotten that Mr. MacGillicuddie even had a sister, though obviously Lyndon had to have come from somewhere.

  “There is something unusual about this photo, though, isn’t there?” Mr. Bara continued to study it, frowning. “Something’s wrong with it, but I can’t quite put my finger on what.”

  “Is it that she looks like Wednesday Addams?”

  “Ah, it could be that, yes.”

  As Mr. Bara shut the door behind them, Charleston took the mouse out of the cage so he could pet it. Ernestine took out her list and scratched off two more names:

  MR. THEDA

  MR. BARA

  That pretty much left her with:

  EDUARDO

  RODNEY

  AURORA BOREALIS

  She couldn’t rule out Mr. Sangfroid and Lyndon yet, and things weren’t looking good for Aurora Borealis, but after mistakenly accusing Mr. Talmadge, Ernestine wanted hard evidence before she claimed anyone else did it. Anyone could make one false accusation of murder, but two just started to look sloppy.

  Deciding it was time to talk to Mrs. MacGillicuddie, Ernestine and Charleston went downstairs. They found her with an improving Eduardo on his phone, speaking with the Vatican about arrangements for Fluffy-Wuffy-Kins’s funeral.

  “I want five thousand white roses,” Mrs. MacGillicuddie declared into the old-fashioned, fancy gold phone as she gestured with her teacup, slopping what Ernestine suspected wasn’t tea all over the oriental carpeting. “I don’t care how you do it, darling. Fly them in from Ecuador, if you have to. Yes, I understand that’s expensive. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? Why on earth would I be ordering five thousand white roses if I didn’t think it would look expensive, you ridiculous creature. Oh, thank heavens. Here’s someone who knows how to get things done!”

  Slamming down the phone, Mrs. MacGillicuddie peered at the mouse in Charleston’s hands.

  “What on earth is that?” she asked.

  Charleston looked down in his hands to confirm he was, in fact, still holding a mouse. “It’s a mouse.”

  “Yes, I know that, darling. Why are you bringing it into my suite?”

  “It seemed better than returning him to Mr. Theda’s apartment?”

  “Oh, that man.” Mrs. MacGillicuddie narrowed her eyes murderously as Eduardo spotted the mouse. Holding his own phone against his ear with his shoulder, he dumped out the remains of the teapot into a nearby lemon tree and popped the mouse into it as means to ensure that it couldn’t escape. To keep it happy, Ernestine dropped the last of the cheese in after it. “If he doesn’t give me my videos back, I’ll release a whole colony of cobras in his apartment, that’s what I’ll do!”

  Mentally, Ernestine made a note to get the videos back from Mr. Theda. The last thing she needed to deal with on top of an escaped zombie was a bunch of venomous snakes roaming about the house, clogging up the pipes.

  “There will be five thousand white candles set up out in the garden by tomorrow evening,” Eduardo murmured to Mrs. MacGillicuddie with a bow. “A thousand for each year of Fluffy’s life. And the bishop himself will preside.”

  “The pope wasn’t available?” Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s face fell.

  “Not on such short notice, no. I’m also afraid that I couldn’t get the permits necessary to release five thousand white doves in the middle of winter either.”

  “Oh, it won’t be the grand affair Fluffy-Wuffy-Kins deserved, but I suppose it will have to do.” Sighing, Mrs. MacGillicuddie forgot about the mouse in the teapot and tried to pour herself another cup. She blinked at the pink tail that curled out of the spout rather than the stream of liquid she had expected. Though Ernestine supposed it would have been worse if a stream of liquid had poured out of it.

  “Mrs. MacGillicuddie.” Ernestine settled herself down in the least elaborate chair she could find. “I’m very sorry for your loss, but I need to ask you some uncomfortable questions.”

  “Oooh! That sounds exciting!” Her landlady perked up, and so did Eduardo. They both leaned in with teacups in their hands as though preparing to hear a particularly juicy story.

  “Do you have any idea what scandalous things Mr. Sangfroid knows about the MacGillicuddie family?”

  “Heavens!” Mrs. MacGillicuddie blinked, rather surprised. She collapsed backward onto the fainting couch as though exhausted. “There are so many of them, I couldn’t even begin to know which ones he knows.”

  “There’s the fact that Mr. MacGillicuddie’s grandfather accidentally started the Great Depression,” Eduardo suggested helpfully.

  “True, it could be that,” Mrs. MacGillicuddie agreed. “Or it could be that unfortunate cigarette his second cousin Perpetua lit aboard the Hindenburg.”

  “Yes, or the fact that his Great-Great-Uncle Phineas distracted the captain of the Titanic by doing the can-can on the railing. If only he’d chosen to do it on the other side of the ship, perhaps things would have turned out a bit differently that night.”

  “And then there was his great-great-great-great-great-grandfather who had a bit too much to drink and then started tossing all of that tea in the harbor, thinking he was brewing the world’s largest cup of tea. Strange family.”

  Ernestine and Charleston’s heads whipped back and forth from one to the other as they each tossed out these possibilities, not quite sure whether to believe them.

  Then both Mrs. MacGillicuddie and Eduardo went silent, raising their teacups to their lips. Realizing hers was still empty, their landlady sighed and set it down. “They were all a bit mad, you know, but not in a good way. Well, Uncle Phineas seemed to be crazy in a good sort of way, but he ended up as an ice cube long before I could meet him. The rest of them were horribly uptight and proper. Awful people, really. Don’t know what I was thinking marrying into them. Ah, yes, now I remember. They had money. Lots and lots and lots of lovely money.”

  “Do you know who this girl is? Mr. Sangfroid stole one of the MacGillicuddie photo albums that contained this picture the night of the party, and he was still carrying it around when he was attacked.” Ernestine handed her the photo. “Charleston thought it might be you, but it was taken at MacGillicuddie House. Could it be Lyndon’s mother?”

  Eduardo gallantly held a pair of glasses between Mrs. MacGillicuddie’s nose and the picture so that she couldn’t technically be said to be wearing them and could therefore honestly claim that she “didn’t wear glasses.”

  “Heavens, darling! I was born many decades after 1952! And no, that’s not Patricia, Lyndon’s mother. She was a blonde and this girl is a brunette. Plus, Patricia was as skinny as a string
bean, not all adorable and chubby like this little girl. I don’t know who this is, though I wonder…”

  Waving the glasses away from her face, Mrs. MacGillicuddie trailed off. Now Ernestine and Charleston leaned forward, suspecting they were about to hear something good.

  “Of course, there was another sister they made disappear.”

  “What?” Ernestine and Charleston cried together.

  “¿Que?” Eduardo cried on his own.

  “Disappear?” Ernestine sputtered. “What? How? Did they murder her?”

  “I don’t know! I didn’t do it! I just know that soon after she was born, the MacGillicuddies shut the house up and stopped socializing with everyone. No one minded that much, of course, because no one much liked them. As I said before, dreadful lot.” Mrs. MacGillicuddie smoothed her poofy black hair and adjusted the flow of her silver gown before continuing, “Of course, people tried to bribe the servants to find out what was going on, but no one wanted to risk their jobs by talking. There were rumors that the MacGillicuddies considered the little girl some sort of monster, but no one could ever figure out why. Mind you, the MacGillicuddies were such snobs that they would have considered her a monster for burping after taking her bottle, so who knows what was really wrong with her? Anyhow, they moved down to Rio de Janeiro around the time the girl would have been two or three, and there they stayed for years and years until they suddenly moved back to MacGillicuddie House around the time I had my debutante ball. Wouldn’t say a word about their time down in Brazil, but not long after I married Mr. MacGillicuddie, I stumbled across a couple of pairs of baby booties in an old trunk. I brought them down to dinner to ask my mother-in-law about them, and the whole family went crazy! Mother MacGillicuddie threw them in the fire and Father MacGillicuddie swore that he’d have me committed to an insane asylum if I ever brought it up again.”

  “So you didn’t?” Charleston asked, eyes large.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, darling. I had him committed to an insane asylum instead. Mr. Sangfroid, who was an art critic, remember, was ever so helpful with that, you know. Convinced the judge that Father MacGillicuddie had an unhealthy obsession with Stubbs’s paintings of horses. Well, it didn’t hurt that Father MacGillicuddie had become convinced that his real calling in life was to become the world’s oldest jockey. Anyhow, once he was gone, I shipped Mother MacGillicuddie off to a commune in California where she lived out her life happily making papier-mâché flowers and selling them in airports. With them conveniently out of the way, I was free to help myself to their fortune.” Mrs. MacGillicuddie and Eduardo both chuckled at the ridiculousness of anyone intimidating her. “I also made some inquiries down in Rio, but all I could come up with were some vague sightings of a little girl the family considered a monster. I never could find out why, but apparently, they shipped her off to an orphanage and claimed there never had been a third child. Horrible people. Rodney, Lyndon, and Aurora Borealis have all turned out quite well, really. They might be ungrateful, dreadful wretches, but if they’ve made anyone disappear, they’ve at least had the good sense to hide it from me.”