Snaggle

by PD Kiernan

  Suzie could hardly contain herself as she rode home. She quickly ran into her room and took out some old index cards and spread them out on her bed. Detectives used cards to get tips from people, at least that’s how they did it on TV. She took a scissors and cut them all in half and wrote out her name and other important details. She folded them neatly into an old wallet her dad had left behind.

  She decided she also needed a good detective’s kit. That was essential in every detective story she ever read. She glanced over at her bookshelf where all of her old detective novels were lined up, where Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple sat next to Nancy Drew and the master, Sherlock Holmes. They seemed to stare back at her with all-knowing silence and send her hints of what she needs.

  A flashlight! she thought. And a magnifying glass, of course.

  She gathered those from an old geology project supplied by her school. She found a small pair of binoculars her dad had left in his old desk. The last thing would be the hardest. She needed some sort of fingerprinting kit.

  She borrowed an old makeup compact that used to belong to her grandma, with a large brush that went along with it. She found some leftover baby powder with all of Debbie’s baby items still kept back in her closet. She grabbed some clear packing tape and went off to try it out.

  She went to where Debbie was eating her lunch and found the empty glass of milk left out, as usual. She loaded the brush with the powder and dusted the glass. A little thumb print magically appeared on the side of the glass.

  “Ha! Gotcha!” Suzie whispered as she took out the magnifying glass and peered closely at the little lines of the fingerprint so visible in white. She peeled out a piece of the clear tape and pressed it onto the fingerprint and peeled it off again. On the tape was the perfect imprint of Debbie’s thumb. “I’m saving you for later,” she said as she carefully placed it with a few more things into an old lunch box she had. After a little squishing together it all fit and made for her very own professional detective’s kit. Then she said goodbye to her grandma and headed out.

  She placed the little lunch box on the back of her bike and rode the block and a half to the police precinct as fast as she could. She parked the bike right next to the front door under one of the huge black iron lanterns. They were always lit green on both sides of the massive stone steps at the entrance.

  She walked slowly up the steps and passed her usual spot, a glass water cooler near the main door. A short hallway led to a very large room with high dark ceilings. A tall wooden desk stood beneath low hanging fluorescent lights. The lights were connected by a tangle of dusty electric cords hanging down across the large space.

  Suzie approached the desk and looked towards the top, but saw no one there. She waited as a few police officers walked past her on their way out. Then a couple more came in and didn’t pay her any attention. Finally Suzie cleared her throat once, then again a little louder. A big head popped out from the top of the desk. She was relieved. It was the one face she knew.

  “Huh? Oh, it’s Suzie!” said a large man, who was bald on the top of his head, with dark bushy hair on the sides. He had a light blue police shirt that barely fit around his thick neck with no tie. The police badge that was on his shirt had little squares below it in all sorts of colors. He smiled widely as he leaned down towards Suzie.

  “Hey Sergeant Joe,” she replied. She knew him as Joe. His last name was very long and she could never pronounce it anyway.

  “Come in for some water? I’m afraid I’m all out of gum,” he said with his hands held up over the desk.

  “Oh, that’s okay. Did you see the paper today?”

  “Yeah, sure. I got the News right here,” he said pulling out the large paper and plopping it on the top of the desk.

  “How about the Post?” she asked.

  “Post? Uh- no. Wait a minute,” he said as he leaned back and turned around. “Hey Charlie! Hey- ya got the Post over there?”

  “What? Yeah, sure,” the other policeman said and handed the newspaper over to the Sergeant Joe.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll give it back for ya horoscopes,” he said to the other officer with a smile. “Okay, what am I looking for kid?” he asked.

  “Turn to page four,” she said excitedly.

  He put on a pair of thin black reading glasses and thumbed through a few pages, had to turn back one, and looked closely among the articles. Suzie stood and waited for a few seconds and he still didn’t see it. Then he stopped and grabbed the paper and lifted it close to his eyes.

  “Hey! Hey- that’s you!” he yelled. “Hey Charlie, hey guys, look at this! Little Suzie here made the paper.”

  “That’s usually not a good thing,” another police officer said as he slowly strolled up to the front desk and looked over Sergeant Joe’s shoulder at the article. A couple of other officers joined him.

  “Don’t be a wise guy,” Joe said to Charlie and then turned back to Suzie. “Ya take a cute picture there, sweetheart. Ya mom must be thrilled. Hero girl, huh?”

  “Well, I don’t know about ‘hero’. I only got my friends together to help,” Suzie said as the other officers drifted back to their desks.

  “Pretty good! I like this bit- ‘She could teach the NYPD a few things’, ya hear that Sammy!”

  “Huh? What?” said another man from far behind Joe where Suzie couldn’t see.

  “Ah, never mind,” Joe yelled out, and turned back to Suzie. “He’s a detective. Ha! Think they know it all, and can’t even hear what’s goin’ on in the same room!”

  “I heard dat!” the other man said.

  “Right!” Sergeant Joe said as he cleared his throat. “So, anyway. This is great Suzie. Did you need help with anything else?”

  “Well, actually,” Suzie said in a lower voice and took a step closer to the large desk. She nervously took out one of her home made cards from her pocket and handed it over to Joe. “The article gave me an idea. It’s all right there on the card.”

  Sergeant Joe held up the card closer to see it over his reading glasses. He leaned back and smiled a little as he took a quick look down at Suzie and back at the card. He started to read aloud.

  Double Scoop Detective Agency

  “No Case Is Too Small”

  Suzie Snaggletooth

  Lead Detective

  118th Street, Richmond Hill, Queens

  New York City, New York, USA

  “Well, I see.” He took another closer look at the card, inspecting the back and the little logo design of an ice cream cone with its two scoops. “I love it! I absolutely love this! You made this yourself, Suz- uh- I mean, Ms. Snaggletooth?”

  “Yup, and you know that’s not my real name. That’s called an alias, you know, for undercover type stuff,” she said with a smile as she leaned an elbow on the desk.

  “Oh sure, sure, of course. For undercover type stuff,” he said as he inspected the card again.

  “I was wondering, you know, to get started with this kind of thing, someone needs cases to solve. Ya know.”

  “Oh sure. I would think that would be very true,” he said squinting his eyes at Suzie over the narrow lenses of his glasses and smiling. “Well, I am sure we have enough room in this neighborhood for some helpful legwork from a top notch detective such as yourself, Ms., uh-” he stopped and picked up the little card again, “Ms. Snaggletooth. Let me take a look here.”

  He walked over to the side of the desk and brought up a metal basket that contained a large pile of papers. Suzie was so excited she practically skipped over to the side of the big desk and could barely contain herself as she stood next to Sergeant Joe.

  “Okay, let’s see what we have here,” he said as he picked up a handful of the papers. “Umm- no,” he muttered as he leafed through several of them. “Definitely not that, and this one neither. Stay away from the likes of that fella. Nope, that’s not going to work. Let’s see.”

  Suzie began to get nervous as paper after paper fell to the side and he grabbed another batch, an
d put those aside, and grabbed up another.

  “Naaa, no way on this one.” Then he looked towards another smaller basket. “Yeah- wait a minute, let’s check the new ones.” He picked up a few papers and lifted one up high and looked at it closely. “Sure, I think this one will work just fine. Yeah, that’ll do nicely. Okay, c’mon over this way kid,” he said.

  He walked over to the side of the big desk and opened a brass metal gate that was part of a blue painted metal railing that divided the entire room. Suzie entered the gate and they both moved passed the large desk to a smaller one. Suzie looked around at the hanging lights. She could see dust particles in the streaks of sunlight that made it past the dark window blinds.

  People were either moving about quickly with files in their hands or sitting at desks and typing on computers. There was barely a word spoken except for those answering the constantly ringing phones that sat on desks next to spinning metal fans and small computer screens. It was a busy, hectic place full of noise and activity, and she loved it. Joe motioned to the seat in front of the desk and Suzie sat down, then he did.

  “Okay, ya gotta notebook handy?” he asked her. She quite embarrassingly shook her head no, she didn’t think of that! “That’s alright, I’ve got an extra,” he said as he opened his desk and pulled out from a pile a small brown leather-bound official case notebook. It was brand new and even had a little pencil that fit perfectly in a little holder at the top. He handed it to her.

  “Wow,” Suzie said as she rotated the notebook around in her hands and inspected it from every angle. “This is great. Thanks!”

  “Sure, kid. Consider it an investment. Now, here are the details of the case. Looks like a family in our neighborhood reported a bike missing yesterday. It happened sometime in the night. It was a kid’s bike. Um, name of Nelson. Jimmy Nelson.”

  Suzie began to write and stopped. “Jimmy Nelson! Someone stole Jimmy’s bike?” Suzie asked excitedly.

  “Yeah. You know him?” Sergeant Joe asked.

  “Of course, everyone knows the Nelson twins. They live over by school. That’s weird, because when we rode by to get them, their bikes were locked up in the garage.”

  “Not according to the police report, it says here Jimmy left his bike in the driveway. The other one, his brother’s, was locked up in the garage. I guess he should have followed what his brother did. Anyway,” Joe continued, “if you want, try to track the bike down. Maybe some kid saw it in the driveway, took it for a joyride, and dropped it somewhere. It would be a good case to solve, for your first one. Ya know?”

  “Second case, remember?” Suzie smiled and pointed a thumb over towards the newspaper.

  “Right! Well, it’s your first official case, Detective Snaggletooth,” Joe said and laughed. “Well, you’re not really an officer, so I guess we can say officially unofficial,” he said and tapped the side of his nose with his forefinger.

  “Right,” said Suzie and she did the same back to him.

  Suzie left the precinct and was off on her first officially unofficial case.

  Chapter 8