by Sophie Lee
Edie reached for her notebook just as the gate slammed shut.
The Missing Shoe
My monkey shoe has to be recovered by eleven o’clock the morning after tomorrow or my party will be an absolute disaster, thought Edie, trying not to be histrionic, and failing.
‘Edie,’ called her dad up the spiral staircase, ‘we need some help down here with the recycling.’ Her dad was always using his pent-up energies to invent extra things at home, like saucepan shoes or anti-matter goggles. His inventions, however, were not widely understood. The anti-matter goggles had been unveiled at a recent Science Expo, where they had been widely derided by his peers (which is just a polite way of saying that the other scientists had booed him off the stage), and his shark-detecting surfboards with in-built getaway motors and siren had yet to take the surfing community by storm. But surfers, concluded her father, were notoriously difficult to please.
‘I’m busy, Dad,’ she called back. But then her curiosity got the better of her. ‘Recycling what?’
‘Vegetable matter. I’ll use it to bind the outside of the piñata.’
‘What piñata?’
‘Never mind if you’re busy. I’ll manage,’ he called. She could hear the sound of paper being ripped up, and the snuffles of Mister Pants.
How I’ll ever find my monkey shoe in this chaos is beyond me, thought Edie. She turned to a fresh page in her exercise book and wrote the word SUSPECTS. Under this heading she listed the following names:
Mum
Dad
Mister Pants
The Blank Marauder
Cheesy Chompster
Even writing Cheesy’s name made her wince. Cheesy Chompster gave her a headache. She immediately crossed Mister Pants’s name from the list. It seemed ridiculous to start accusing a dog of shoe theft when he made a huge amount of noise climbing the spiral staircase anyway, and had once tumbled from top to bottom, rendering him nervous of stairs for months after. If he did venture upstairs, he was usually so pleased with himself for making it to the top that he would lie quietly in Edie’s room, presumably daydreaming about his next meal.
Mister Pants was undoubtedly clever and could sometimes be mischievous but, no, she was quite sure he wouldn’t have been capable of taking the shoebox from its place under the bed, opening it and then consuming the left shoe, leaving no evidence at all behind.
And as for her parents, well, why would they go to the bother when they had all those pumpkins and piñatas to prepare?
Her thoughts returned to Cheesy.
She certainly had a motive.
Cheesy Chompster
Every afternoon Edie’s parents encouraged her to play with a girl named Charisma Chompster, whose parents had recently relocated from Scotland. Edie’s nickname for her was Cheesy because of the vast amounts of cauliflower cheese she ate.
In Edie’s opinion, Cheesy was an objectionable girl who found fault with the way Edie’s parents kept house and was happy to express her opinions whenever the fancy took her.
Cheesy was afraid of insects and lousy at sport. She had jet-black hair, which she wore in two long plaits, and thick black-rimmed spectacles. When she became annoyed, red spots appeared on her cheeks and she bit her bottom lip with her front teeth, leaving an indentation that often lasted for a few hours after her mood had subsided.
Hogmanay Chompster had an enormous auburn beard and made humming noises as he ate. Cheesy’s mother, Beltane, spent her days preparing him meals of kippers, haggis, kedgeree, devilled sausages, silverside with white sauce and bread fried in lard, all the while running a profitable cottage industry knitting tartan vests, jumpers and scarves on her enormous loom.
One of the few advantages of spending an afternoon playing with Cheesy at the Chompsters’ house was that Edie was able to sample delicious food hitherto only dreamed of. What a change Pigs in a Blanket were from Brown Rice Medley.
However, the last time Edie and Cheesy had played together, Cheesy had accused Edie of stealing her antique Star Wars cards. ‘If your father can steal other people’s words, I’m sure you’re capable of stealing my Wookiee cards,’ she had blurted in her usual tactless style, tripping down the staircase.
Edie wondered if Cheesy had secretly pocketed her monkey shoe on the way out.
The Blank Marauder
Edie’s next-door neighbour certainly had the look of a monkey-shoe thief about him. Her father called him the Blank Marauder. Michaelmas was in the habit of giving odd names to his neighbours. Edie didn’t know what a blank marauder was, but just the sound of it seemed to sum up her next-door neighbour’s tall, thin clumsiness, bowed legs, mean grey face and wiry hair. He didn’t like children, lived alone and was cadaverous (which is just a fancy word for saying he looked like a walking corpse), and he spent most of his day tinkering on his automobile, a piece of rusting machinery that was part lawnmower, part shopping trolley.
‘Your vine attracts gnats and they buzz around my head while I’m fixing my car,’ he’d complain. ‘Cut it back!’
The Sparkses were too busy developing important ideas and campaigning to get Michaelmas’s job back to be bothered cutting back a vine. But Edie remembered a time when her next-door neighbour had a bounce in his step and a ruddy colour in his cheeks, a time when his garage wasn’t in such a higgledy-piggledy mess.
Long ago, from fellow feeling, she had offered to organise his junk for him. Her idea was to arrange it in alphabetical order, and then to colour-code all the items. The abacus would sit next to the bolts, which would stand beside the cartridges which would nestle next to the diving devices and so on and so forth, until one day he would be able to navigate his way with ease around his shed, locating every object beginning with a b or c through to his x-ray machine, his yacht sail and his awesome collection of Zelig nuts. (Don’t even ask what these were. Edie had merely spied a bag of them underneath the rusty haymaker.)
Alas, not only had her neighbour rejected her kind offer, but had frogmarched her out of his yard, angrily muttering something about ‘people in glass houses’ that Edie didn’t quite follow. When she had relayed the story to her father, Michaelmas had named him ‘the Blank Marauder’ and advised her to be a little more careful in future.
Had the Marauder snuck in and taken her shoe in revenge? Had he wanted to get even with her for implying that the way he kept his possessions was less than perfect?
Edie hung from her bedroom window to stickybeak through her binoculars. There were black clouds banked up to the west and all the trees and vines seemed very still. The Marauder was in his garage, tinkering as usual. There were gnats buzzing around his head.
Fantastic, thought Edie, a ringside seat! But nothing of interest happened for at least five minutes, at which point she decided the best course of action was to redirect her investigation closer to home.
The Binoculars
Edie positioned herself with the binoculars at the top of the spiral staircase so she could see what was happening in the kitchen.
There was her dad, staring at a picture of deep-fried spring rolls in a food magazine, open on the kitchen bench. He sighed, and if Edie was not mistaken she could see his grey nostril hairs quivering and his eyes watering.
‘Why on earth they include hors d’oeuvres dripping in saturated fat in that supposed “health” magazine is beyond me,’ said Cinnamon, spying the offending photograph. Edie focused her binoculars on her mother, who continued seeding pumpkins at a frantic rate while launching into this familiar tirade. ‘Honestly!’ she continued, ‘I don’t know what I’d do if I ever saw my family being poisoned by that muck!’ She stabbed a finger in the direction of the image, sending pumpkin pulp flying.
‘Of course, dear,’ said Michaelmas, nodding vigorously in agreement and pushing the offending magazine away. He roused himself to help with the delicate task of festooning pumpkin seeds on pieces of brown string to make party decorations.
‘More mess,’ said Edie as Mister Pants waddled into view.
He had cornered something by the back door.
Edie gasped, steadying her binoculars and staring with enormous concentration at a most peculiar scene. Mister Pants had a seagull within snout’s reach, which was odd in itself as he wasn’t the most dexterous of dogs and had an extremely short snout. But it was what was in the seagull’s beak that had made Edie gasp. It was the unmistakable red lace of her monkey shoe.
Juniper Cutlets
Mister Pants eyed the bird hungrily and moved closer. He then let out one of his very rare barks, which sounded like a person clearing his throat after a long illness. It was his warning bark, and Edie was certain he recognised her shoelace.
The seagull took flight.
Edie hurried to her bedroom window and managed to get the bird in her sights.
‘Got you!’
The bird flew upwards, then swooped and dived towards Bunkie’s Millow, a tiny haven at the far end of the garden which Edie’s dad had constructed from salvaged trampolines and parachutes. Bunkie’s Millow was such fun to visit on a summer day, with a comic book and a home-made soy-milk ice-block, if only she could dissuade Mister Pants from thinking he had every right to gobble at the ice-block as well.
Edie tightened her grip on the binoculars. ‘Where’s it gone?’ she muttered, fearing she had lost it, but then there it was again. The bird swooped out from behind an acacia tree, circled high up in the sky and headed towards the big rubbish tip at the end of the street.
Edie snatched her portable detective kit from the second drawer and attached it to her belt. It contained a magnifying glass, a Swiss army knife, tweezers, a dusting cloth and little evidence bags, plus her notebook and pencil. She’d begun taking an interest in observational work after reading the detective manual her father had given her as a gift on her fifth birthday (‘You know, in another life I’d have been a private detective,’ he’d said wistfully).
She slid down the spiral bannister as quietly as she could. Unfortunately, Mrs Sparks happened to look up from the birthday catering just at that moment to say, ‘Hi, dear. Cheesy, I mean Charisma, will be here in five minutes, okay?’
‘Mum!’ exclaimed Edie. ‘I’m investigating now and I don’t want Cheesy under my feet! I don’t have much time!’
‘Now, now, dear, don’t be so histrionic,’ said her mother. ‘Don’t these juniper berry cutlets look divine?’
‘I don’t know why we can’t just have party pies like everyone else,’ said Edie to no one in particular, and stepped over a half-constructed piñata into the cool of the backyard.
Edie made a bee-line for the tree house. Its timber frame was the colour of old grey underpants, and some of the nails holding it together were rusty and protuberant (which is just a fancy word that means they stuck out). Edie had to be careful climbing up when she was wearing her best party dress.
Edie intended to make a couple of important notes, then proceed directly to the tip, but no sooner had she added Seagull to her list of suspects than Cheesy Chompster arrived and announced, ‘I just saw a man with gnats in his hair complaining about the fishy smell. Is there anything to eat?’
The Rubbish Tip
‘Cheesy Chompster, put down that juniper cutlet and come over here,’ hissed Edie from her hiding spot in the Millow. Cheesy was always keen to sample Cinnamon’s organic fare—it was a welcome change from her usual heavy diet. ‘We’re going to the tip right now! Do you hear me?’
‘The tip!’ shrieked Cheesy. ‘Ugh . . . I couldn’t possibly . . .’
‘Cheesy, I’ll forgive you for that remark about your Star Wars cards on the one condition that you shut your trap and come with me,’ said Edie with a firm hold on one of Cheesy’s plaits.
‘Mum, we’re going out to play!’ she said loudly, then, under her breath to Cheesy: ‘Has all that haggis turned you into a wuss?’
‘Ow,’ said Cheesy, screwing up her face in discomfort. ‘You’re a bossy so-and-so and should learn some manners.’
Cinnamon emerged from the kitchen in a cloud of flour dust.
‘What’s this? Oh . . . I don’t like the look of those clouds, darlings,’ she said. ‘Make sure you don’t get rained on, especially you, Charisma. You know your mum gets worried when you’re not wearing your knitted cardie and that bed turban thingie.’ She eyed Cheesy’s bare arms dubiously before returning to her work in the kitchen. ‘Supper at six, girls. Hope you work up an appetite for my organic cumquat pizzas . . . I need you two to sample my party food . . .’
‘Okay Mum!’ Edie shouted, dragging her reluctant companion behind her.
As the kitchen door slammed shut, Edie let go of Cheesy’s plait, and Cheesy kicked Edie in the shin.
Mister Pants snuffled three times in protest.
Edie trained her binoculars on the sky to see if she could spot the seagull. Edie, Cheesy and Mister Pants had set off at a clip down the wide street that led to the tip. They hurried past the row of terrace houses whose occupants were bringing in washing from their balconies, calling to their cats and closing their window shutters.
Soon, when the terrace houses were behind them and they were surrounded by weeds, they heard the call of scores of birds. There seemed to be hundreds circling above them in the darkening skies, and the smell of rubbish was becoming stronger.
‘Bother!’ said Edie.
‘Watch your language,’ cautioned Cheesy. ‘My mummy would be very cross if she knew where you were dragging me!’ she added, her glasses fogging up from the brisk pace. ‘Oh, and by the way, your canine companion stinks!’
Mister Pants snorted a response and danced a small circle in a semi-threatening manner around Cheesy’s feet.
‘Eek,’ said Cheesy. ‘Call your dog off!’
‘How dare you!’ Edie looked with concern at Mister Pants, to check whether his feelings were hurt. ‘Why do you have to be such a spoilsport? Couldn’t you just join in without complaining for once?’
‘Maybe I would if you’d tell me what was going on,’ replied Cheesy.
They trudged uphill in silence.
‘It’s my monkey shoes,’ began Edie reluctantly. ‘I have to have them for my birthday party and the left one is definitely missing. For a minute there I thought you had taken my shoe as payback for the Star Wars cards or something.’
‘How could you think I’d do such a mean thing?’ Cheesy seemed genuinely offended.
‘Well, I’m sorry, Cheesy, but I was going through the possible suspects methodically,’ said Edie. ‘It’s called procedure. Anyway, forget that, because I just saw a seagull with my shoelace in its beak, and it was heading for the tip!’
As soon as she’d said it out loud she realised how ridiculous it sounded. She stopped walking. They had reached the crest of the hill that overlooked the rubbish dump. A cold wind blew Edie’s hair across her face.
‘Cheesy, this is crazy, why would a seagull have my shoelace in its beak?’
‘I may be subject to frequent low-grade viral infections,’ sniffed Cheesy, ‘but I can investigate with the best of them. My father is a world-renowned balloonist, you know.’
Used to be, Edie thought, but didn’t say.
‘Those shoes,’ continued Cheesy, ‘are the most unusual red . . . and don’t the laces have crimson tassels on the end? Did you notice whether the seagull—’
‘Yes, that’s it,’ shouted Edie, ‘the tassel! I distinctly remember it dangling from the seagull’s beak!’
‘Then that was your shoelace all right,’ said Cheesy matter-of-factly. ‘Now hurry up and let’s get this over with, Edie Amelia, or we’ll be late for your mum’s organic cumquat pizzas at six.’
‘Yuck,’ Edie grinned, as they scurried down the hill.
Straight from the Seagull’s Beak
The tip was a giant festering mess that reminded Edie of her dad’s cautionary words about the need for society to do something about waste management. For once she didn’t feel so badly about the abundance of recycled objects at home and felt a pang of compassi
on for her dad (compassion, after all, is love with a little less sugar).
From Edie’s vantage point on a lumpy mattress covered in dubious orange stains (had someone been lying on their bed drinking Fanta? Had they lain in bed covered in orange ointment?) she could see a world of once loved but now thoroughly discarded goods. There were car engines, gardening gloves, three-legged tables, skateboards, toasted sandwich makers, teddy bears, tennis rackets, deflated footballs, colanders, cook tops, rakes, fishing rods, mangles, pasta makers, coffee grinders and ironing boards, all finished with, used up and rejected.
‘I guess that’s why they call it a dump,’ she said, more to herself than to anyone else. ‘To think all these things were once brand shiny new and sitting in the shop with price tags on.’
‘What are you on about now?’ asked Cheesy, who had once, during one of her temper tantrums, accused Edie of ‘crusading’.
‘Surely there must be a way for people to use less . . .’
‘Or to hoard a whole lot of junk like your parents do,’ countered Cheesy.
‘Criticise them once more and I’ll punch you on the nose,’ said Edie.
‘Sticks and stones, eh, Sparks?’
Sighing, Edie took out her binoculars and scoured the sky for her seagull. The sky was thick with bird life and the sour smell of garbage.
Cheesy ventured forward gingerly, gagging into her linen handkerchief.
Mister Pants, on the other hand, was in smell heaven, surrounded by enticing edible grunge of all kinds.
Edie stuffed her binoculars into her detective kit and dragged Mister Pants away from an old hospital trolley with an evil-looking drip bag still attached.