Curds and Whey Box Set

by G M Eppers

  “Yeah. I had a creative surge,” I said. “Have you seen Nitro and the twins?”

  Sylvia responded first, shaking her head. “I went around the far side of the barn to get a closer look at the Nordenfelt. If he puts THAT on eBay, I might bid on it. It’s an awesome piece of military history!”

  “Sylvia, where the hell would you put it?”

  “In my room!”

  “You going to sleep on it?” She’d have to take the bed out to make room for the thing.

  “Honey, I’d sleep WITH it!” she said enthusiastically.

  I inched a little further away and continued my original inquiry. “Badger, how about you?”

  “Not interested. Sylvia can have it.”

  “Nitro and the twins!” I reminded him. “Where are they? Can you see them?”

  “Nope.” He twisted, trying to see the house. “Hey, I think they got him!” The dormer shooter hit the ground. We hadn’t been able to see him on the roof, but we could sure see him fall. And right after him, a big black spider fell off the house, too.

  I had my door open before the thud reached us. The chimney shooter and the one from the bedroom were still unaccounted for, but I didn’t care. I ordered everyone else to stay in the van with as much firmness as I could muster, and resumed my running crouch. By the time I reached the girls, Nitro was already there with his case. He didn’t even acknowledge me and I would have been upset with him if he had. Two police officers were cuffing the injured dormer shooter, who had taken one in the leg (we found out later the bullet was friendly fire from the chimney shooter), and hopped him away. Except I noticed that the him seemed to be a her. A daughter? Her hair was very short, almost a crew cut, but the facial bones and subtle curves said female to me, of approximately twenty years of age. Another pair of officers came out of the house escorting another woman. It had to be the bedroom shooter. She was far too wide to fit in the chimney. She had a short ponytail that looked like it had been sheared off by a chainsaw. Her ample arms were bare but with a number of tattoos, and a scowl adorned her face. “Would you like us to call an ambulance?” One officer asked. “We’ve already called two for us, one more won’t be hard.”

  “Nitro?” I asked in a quiet voice. He’d tell me if he thought this was something he couldn’t handle. The girls were blinking up into the sky, but their eyes seemed clear and focused. It was probably just the sunlight making them blink. They both had their vests and helmets on, but their connecting band had been unprotected, covered only by a specially tailored cloth. A neat hole was oozing blood from it.

  Quickly, Nitro felt around the band. When he brought his hand out from underneath, it was smeared with bright red blood. “It’s a through-and-through,” he said. Next, he took a second to feel their limbs for broken bones from the fall. He didn’t detect any and they expressed no pain as he manipulated their joints. As he worked, he quizzed them. They took turns answering. “What’s my name?”

  “Penelope.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Watermelon and Wristwatch.”

  “Who’s the President?”

  “George Armstrong Custer.”

  “I think I got this,” he said. “They seem fine. I don’t detect any broken bones. We can check them for fractures on the plane,” his tone was as if he was talking to himself, but the officer nodded acknowledgement. Nitro continued, “You guys get the wind knocked out of you?” He didn’t wait for an answer this time. “Yeah, thanks, but we’re good,” he told the officers finally. He grabbed a roll of gauze from his kit and started rolling it around the connecting band tightly.

  I nodded to the officer, who tossed a thumb behind him. “We’ll be right back for the other one. She’s sitting in the fireplace with a concussion and a broken ankle. I’ve got an officer guarding her, but we ran out of cuffs. I have to get more from the squad car.”

  “What about the Grundys?” I asked.

  “They’re all Grundys,” he said. “You’ve met the Cletuses. Now meet the Myrtles.”

  “The Myrtles? You’re not telling me…?”

  “Yep, they named all the girls Myrtle, like the mother, with the appropriate Roman numeral suffix. Go figure.”

  I rolled my eyes. That certainly explained the questionable number of children. Certain records would ignore the suffix, particularly for the girls, and it would appear that there were only two children. Duplicated names had probably been deleted rather than differentiated. What a mess. “Okay, what about the Cletuses, then?”

  “The ones at the silo? None of them fired a shot, so technically they didn’t break any laws. The cheese wasn’t contraband and all their guns are licensed and registered. There will be civil charges, I expect, over time. But we have nothing to bring them in for right now.”

  And almost as an afterthought, I added, “Hey, any idea why Mrs. Grundy was shooting at the silo?”

  The officer shrugged, and nudged the Myrtle he was holding. “Any idea, Myrtle?”

  She snarled. “Idiots. He sold the cows. OUR cows. All of them. From Elsie I to Elsie XV!” I was not surprised by this anymore. I was pretty sure that inside the house there were six or seven Fidos and the youngest barn cat was Kitty XLVI. “He sold them to slaughter! Rat bastard! So he could take care of his stupid cheese. I was shooting the silo, too, you know.” She said it like it would be her saving grace, that she wasn’t actually firing at people. “Must not have hit it right.”

  “Hit it right?”

  “It didn’t blow up. I thought it was supposed to blow up. Things always blow up when you shoot them on TV.” She turned to the officer for reinforcement. “Don’t they?” The officer gave me an exasperated look.

  It was then that Cletus senior ran up toward us, shouting, “Get your hands off my daughter!” He didn’t aim the gun, though. He tossed it on the ground and pulled at the officer’s arms with both hands. “Let go!” His sons gathered around, pulling on their father to add more weight, like it was a tug of war.

  “Sir, she tried to shoot you,” said the officer, struggling not to lose his grip.

  Myrtle took offense. “I would never shoot my Daddy! I told you. I was trying to shoot the cheese!”

  The officer was holding his own against five males of gradually descending size. Finally, more of his colleagues came to help and began peeling off Cletuses like layers of an onion. Meanwhile, the original officer explained, “Ma’am, if the cheese had exploded, what do you think would have happened to your father and your brothers? Your gunfire is reckless endangerment, even if the silo had been empty.”

  “They were outside. Stuff only explodes on the inside!” Aha. The Grundy family had apparently been teaching physics via Roadrunner cartoons.

  I resisted the urge to put my head in my hands in despair. “Myrtle, I’m sorry about your cows,” I told her honestly. I really did feel bad. Maybe they hadn’t been killed yet and could be retrieved, but I didn’t hold out much hope.

  She kind of smiled a little. “Hey, thanks. You’re a nice lady. I’m glad you didn’t get shot.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said to the officer as he led her away. “I bet the judge is going to love this one. That is, as soon as he gets out of jail…”

  “Thank YOU,” he responded. “The firing started in the hayloft and none of us had a clear shot. It was your team that’s responsible for the capture. I hope your friends are okay.” He motioned with his head toward the twins because his hands were full of Myrtle. The Cletuses had fallen back, but still voiced meek objections.

  It was only then that Cletus the first realized there had been an injury. “What? Who shot them? Didn’t I tell you if shooting started you wasn’t supposed to hit nobody? I didn’t pay for those shooting lessons so you could go around hitting people.” He was directing his complaints to the heavy set Myrtle because she was there, although she was not the one who had shot the twins.

  “Daddy, I didn’t! It was Myrtle III. I swear!”

  Her father grumped. “She’
s going to be grounded for a hundred years.”

  “Having fun yet?” I asked the officer.

  He was tired of standing there and began guiding heavy Myrtle away. “Yeah, this makes Disneyland look like a root canal.” Myrtle gave a half-hearted struggle, but went with him.

  It was not a surprise that Billings, Sylvia and Sir Haughty had all disobeyed my order to stay in the van. It was also convenient. When Nitro finished the bandage, the twins tried to get up on their feet, but were still wobbly from shock. We needed the whole team to help carry the twins to the van and put them in the way back on top of the folded down seat. They were conscious and in good spirits, though the movement made them both wince. “I told you to duck,” Agnes told Avis.

  “I told YOU to duck,” Avis told Agnes.

  “And I’m telling you both to shut up and rest,” said Billings.

  I smiled. He was beginning to sound just like me. In fact, those very words had been on the tip of my tongue. “Someone should ride back here with them,” I said. With the seats folded in, comfortable access to the rear row was compromised. It would be okay for gear, but not for a human being. Billings volunteered. It would be cramped, and probably not entirely legal, but it was only to go as far as the airport.

  Sylvia held open her hands and Billings tossed her the car keys and climbed in next to the twins, wedging himself between Avis and the driver side rear wheel hub. We carefully brought down the hatch and pushed it until it latched. The handle was twisted where the bullet had hit it, there were dings along the driver side, and a spider-webby hole in the driver’s side window. In the storage compartment under the girls was a completely flat tire. The woman at the car rental window wasn’t going to be happy. I got into the shotgun seat and called Roxy to tell her to meet us at the airport.

  Chapter Five

  Turning in the car wasn’t all that bad. It was embarrassing, but having bought the maximum insurance as a matter of course we weren’t financially liable for any of the damage. I gave them an extra hundred, though, to soothe my conscience. It took another half an hour to get everyone to the plane. The twins, carried by Billings, Sir Haughty and Sylvia, went through the locker room first, barely stopping long enough for Dinny to confiscate the weapons. The rest of their gear we could bring back to the locker room at our leisure. Nitro trailed right behind, shouting instructions ahead of himself at whoever was listening. Take off would be delayed until the girls were secure, and he first had to properly dress the wound. He would also be using his portable X-ray machine to check for fractures, all of which was easier to do upstairs on the conference table. The team was working like a well-oiled machine before I even got through the locker room. Dinny darted up to cover the table with several towels as soon as she had locked up the last of the weapons. Sylvia and Billings cut off the improvised bandage and covering to give Nitro immediate access to the bare wound. While he went to work cleaning the wound, the rest of us helped get the bulky riot gear off of them and Badger ran it down to the locker room, after Agnes whispered the combination into his ear. The twins were free to change the combination if they didn’t trust him. I don’t know to this day if they did.

  Roxy had met us at the plane and was all aflutter over their injury. “Are you sure it wasn’t friendly fire? Was it self-defense? Did the girls fire back? Did anyone see who shot first?”

  “Calm down, Perry Mason,” I said. “There won’t be any legal repercussions from this, you have my personal guarantee. The twins may be asked to come back to testify when Myrtle ‘pick a number’ gets a court date, but there were enough law enforcement witnesses that it probably won’t be necessary.”

  Finally, the wound cleaned, disinfected, and dressed, and all appropriate X-Rays taken, the team carried the twins back downstairs to their chairs for takeoff, and we gently raised the seats to their upright position. After takeoff, we could recline them so they could rest. We covered them with a CURDS issue airplane blanket and gave them cushy pillows, and between that and the mild sedative Nitro gave them, they were sleeping before we even started to taxi. It was only then that I began to relax. I took my window seat and watched the runway, the nameless farms, and the Cletuses and Myrtles and daylight all drop away like a bad dream. It wasn’t long before we got to a comfortable cruising speed.

  “Hey, Sylvia. Look,” I heard Badger say behind me. He had brought in his empty HEP belt from the locker room and had Backwash in his lap. Sylvia was sitting across from him on the inside aisle. Badger carefully draped the HEP belt over Backwash’s head. Backwash swatted at the buckle as Badger said, “Backwash is one HEP cat!”

  I’d been wondering when Badger was going to pull that joke out. He’d been doing it for every new team member, but I hadn’t seen him do it for Sylvia yet. Another milestone reached. But Sylvia was the first one who found a good comeback. “Are you studying Beatnik now? Isn’t that a dead language?”

  “It’s not a language. It’s a dialect. And it’s not dead. Yet.”

  “Is there a way we can kill it faster?”

  “Why would you want to do that?”

  “Careful, Sylvia,” I warned her. “Badger is the Baptist minister for the Church of Linguistics. Don’t invite him onto a soapbox.” Badger looked at me like I’d accused him of murder as Backwash jumped down from his lap. He put the belt down. “Besides, Badger, every newly dead language makes your job easier. Or would you like to learn Sumerian or Ancient Egyptian?”

  “I tried Etruscan once. I sprained my tongue.” He got up to put his HEP belt away until the next time we got a new team member. By then, maybe Beatnik would be extinct.

  The cabin lights dimmed, and we all began to yawn. Before I turned in, I consulted Nitro, who was sitting near the twins to keep an eye on them. “How are they doing, Nitro?”

  “Really well. No vital organs, of course, and the main connecting artery was missed completely. I cleaned and debrided and gave them a broad spectrum antibiotic. They have a healthy immune system, but I’ll watch for signs of infection for the next few days. I’m not expecting any complications. They should be ready for action in a couple of weeks, and a pain in the butt by tomorrow night.”

  “And the X-Rays?”

  “Clean as a whistle.”

  “Badger,” I said as Nitro returned to his seat, “can you give me an update on the disposition of the Myrtles or is all that going to be classified? And where in Hell did they get a silo full of Chmelty in the first place?”

  Badger took out his smart phone, then noticed the warning light above his seat. “Are we high enough yet?”

  From nearby, Nitro sucked in air, with two fingers in front of his tightly circled lips miming a cigarette shaped object. In a voice that was supposed to be Cheech Marin, but could have been Elaine Stritch, he said, “You tell me.”

  I nodded at Badger to go ahead and turn on his wireless connection. His thumbs flew. I watched his eyes as they scanned the screen. “The FBI will send me a full report within 48 hours, but there’s a story from the local newspaper about a semi overturning on the freeway about a week ago not far from the Grundy ranch.. I would guess that at least one of the Cletuses saw the accident, and they simply helped themselves to the cheese. The driver was unconscious, came to while they were loading him into an ambulance, to see three stray packages of Chmelty lying in the middle of the road. The story says the truck was empty and the remainder of the load was never recovered.”

  “Thanks, Badger.”

  Before I closed my eyes to sleep, I noted that Sylvia’s eye patch was back over her right eye.

  It was only a two hour flight, so I was expecting to sleep the entire trip and be awakened by the landing gear hitting the runway in DC. Instead, Dinny was shaking me awake after only an hour or so. “Mrs. Montana,” she whispered, and I got the vague impression that she’d said it several times. “Mrs. Montana, call from Miss Chiff.” Dinny gently picked up a sleeping T.B. from my chest. The cat woke immediately and presented all four paws in preparation to meet
the floor. He was given a soft landing, looked back at me with a certain amount of annoyance as if I were responsible for the disturbance, then padded silently away.

  The lights were still subdued, but I found myself blinking at their brightness anyway. “What is it, Dinny? And please, call me Helena. I’ve told you that before.”

  “Call from Miss Chiff.”

  I sat up straight and my seat back clicked up to follow me. Miss Chiff would not be making a ground to air call unless it was important. A glance out the window showed me nothing. It was full dark.

  “I’ll wake the others,” she said. “I think you should take it upstairs.”

  I made a stop in the restroom to, well, do the usual, but also to throw some cold water on my face to wake me up. I didn’t want to appear sleepy in front of Miss Chiff. When I came out, the other rooms were occupied and Roxy was waiting for a vacancy. Agnes and Avis remained in their seats, recuperating. Great, I thought. All I have to do to get a good night’s sleep is to get shot. Some people have all the luck. I went upstairs ahead of the rest, noted that the conference table had been relieved of the towels and presumably disinfected. I got the speaker and plugged it into the phone and set it in the middle of the table, but waited to accept the call until the team was assembled. There were no donuts, but by the time the team was ready Dinny had rolled in a cart of hot coffee. I poured myself a full strength cup. I actually hate black coffee, but find myself drinking it more and more often. I pushed the button to accept the call. “Thank you for waiting, Miss Chiff,” I said, wondering what was up as I felt the plane bank for a turn. Down below, I heard a jingle ball come loose and tinkle its way across the floor, followed by the sound of a cat’s claws on the low nap carpet.

  “I apologize for the hour. I know you’ve all just come off an assignment and are undoubtedly tired. You’ll have more time to rest shortly.” This was not a video phone, so we could not read her facial expression. We waited tensely for her to continue. “First off, I’ve received the preliminary report from the local PD at the Grundy farm. It looks like you handled everything professionally and I hope the twins will be all right.”