by Greg Cox
“Here you are, young man,” Farmer Simon said. “Say hello to Mary for me … and don’t worry, mum’s the word about those rodents of unusual size.”
Ezekiel waited until the truck drove off before wiping a clinging strand of drool off his shoulder and taking a closer look at the library. It didn’t look terribly impressive from the outside, but then again, neither did the Annex, which was tucked away under one end of a suspension bridge back in Portland. He started toward the entrance only to be interrupted by his phone. The ringtone identified the caller as Baird, so he figured he should actually answer it.
“Hello?” he said. “Please tell me you’ve already solved this case so I can catch a one-way trip back to the Library. I’m getting nowhere fast here in Farmville. I don’t suppose you have any tips on the best way to wipe drool off silk and cashmere?”
“Drool?” Baird’s voice asked.
“Never mind,” he said. “What’s up?”
He listened as Baird filled him in on her expedition to Mother Goose’s Magic Garden, all of which sounded a lot more exciting than anything he’d run into yet. “So there’s an actual Mother Goose running around, making trouble?”
“Flying around, actually,” she confirmed. “And, according to Jenkins, we can’t let her get her hands on all three segments of that original Mother Goose book.”
“Or Humpty Dumpty gets put back together, the universe gets unhatched, and it’s the end of everything as we know it,” Ezekiel said glibly. “Got it.”
“You don’t sound too freaked out by that,” she observed.
“I’m a Librarian. I know the drill by now.” Freaky was their business. “But don’t worry about it. You’ve got Ezekiel Jones on the case. No way is some Mary Poppins wannabe on a flying goose going to get to those pages before me.”
“Just stay on your toes,” she said. “We still don’t know entirely who or what we’re dealing with.”
“Do we ever?”
Getting bored with the call, he wrapped it up before Baird could remind him one more time of how vital their mission was and how he needed to watch his back. He liked Baird, and appreciated that she took her job as Guardian very seriously, but the whole worried-den-mother thing got old sometimes. He didn’t need a babysitter or bodyguard.
Especially not when dropping in on a small-town librarian.
He strolled inside the library. To his slight surprise, it actually looked more modern and up-to-date than the Annex, which, in all honesty, was a little too stuffy and retro for his tastes. It was brightly lit and airy, with computer stations instead of dusty wooden card catalogs, and an automated, self-service checkout setup. Sure, there were still plenty of dead trees crammed on the shelves, but he also saw a wide selection of games and movies on display. His opinion of the town rose a notch.
Now this is my kind of library.
He sauntered up to the front desk where a twenty-something librarian or intern was assisting the patrons too set in their ways to check their books out themselves. He waited impatiently for his turn.
“Excuse me, I need to talk to Mary Simon. The children’s librarian?”
“Sssh!” The young woman at the counter raised a finger to her lips. “You’re going to have to wait. It’s story time.”
She pointed to the children’s section, where an older woman sat in a rocking chair surrounded by a pack of rug rats listening to her with rapt attention. An open storybook rested in her lap. Groaning inwardly, Ezekiel began to wonder if he was ever going to be able to get on with his investigation. Still, with any luck, maybe story time was just wrapping up.
“Once upon a time…” Mary Simon began.
Ezekiel sighed.
Still, he had to admit that Mary Simon certainly looked as though she was descended from a long line of Mother Gooses. A matronly, rosy-cheeked senior citizen (at least by Ezekiel’s standards), she had neatly coifed silver hair, glasses, and a lap large enough to accommodate a grandkid or two. Watching her cast her spell over her underaged audience, as opposed to them squirming impatiently, it was clear that she had inherited a knack for keeping small children entertained. Cassandra’s genealogical detective work, it appeared, had been right on the money.
Got to hand it to her, he thought. You never want to bet against that brain grape of hers.
Too restless to sit still for the story, Ezekiel killed time by quietly casing the library and assessing its security measures. He had figured out approximately sixteen different ways to rob the place blind and was working on a few refinements when he heard story time winding down. He wandered back toward the kids’ section.
“The end,” Mary Simon said, closing the book on her lap.
“One more story,” a child pleaded. “Please, Mrs. Simon.”
She shook her head. “That’s enough for today, I think. Run along now. Your parents are waiting for you.”
They’re not the only ones who’ve been waiting, Ezekiel thought. As the kids reluctantly dispersed, he approached the librarian. “Mary Simon?”
“Yes?” She rose from the rocking chair to reshelve the storybook. “Can I help you, Mr.—?”
“Jones,” he volunteered. “Ezekiel Jones.” He held out his hand. “I’d like to talk to you concerning a certain rodent problem you encountered recently.”
“That again?” A frown transformed her from lovable granny to stern librarian. “I’ve already discussed this with the police, Animal Control, and the local paper. How many times do I have to go over this again?”
Her uncooperative attitude momentarily fazed Ezekiel, but he figured it was nothing he couldn’t handle. Heck, he’d once talked his way past the guards at the Tower of London.
“I understand,” he said, feigning sympathy. “You’re obviously a very busy woman and I don’t want to take up one minute more of your valuable time than I have to, but I’d really appreciate hearing the story in your own words.” He treated her to his most winning smile. “As a personal favor?”
She saw right through him.
“Dial it down, buster. I’m a married woman and you’re too young for me anyway.” She inspected him warily. “Why are you so interested?”
He briefly considered mentioning that he was a Librarian as well, albeit of a very different sort, but he figured he needed to stick to his original cover story just in case she compared notes with her husband at some point. “I’m with a global animal control organization, investigating similar reports from all over the world.” He lowered his voice. “You didn’t hear this from me, but your case may be only the tip of the iceberg. It’s imperative that I get the full scoop … ASAP.”
She listened, nodding, then rolled her eyes.
“Right,” she said skeptically. “Tell me another one.”
“You don’t believe me?” Ezekiel clasped his hand to his chest, as though wounded to the heart. “What kind of friendly librarian are you?”
“The kind who has heard enough lame excuses about late or lost books to know when I’m being fed a load of bull.” She crossed her arms atop her chest and looked him squarely in the eyes. “Look, Mr.… Jones, was it? If you require assistance researching pest control or the natural history of barn mice, I’ll be happy to steer you toward the appropriate shelves and reference works. I can even direct you to our neighborhood police station where you can ask to review my previous statements, but, if you don’t mind, I’ve just talked myself hoarse reading aloud to those kids and I’ve got a lot of administrative paperwork to catch up with. Story time is over, so you’ll have to get your jollies elsewhere.”
Leaving him dumbfounded in the children’s section, she walked away from Ezekiel and past the front desk. She was about to disappear into her office when he blurted out the first thing that came to mind.
“Wait! What do you know about Mother Goose … and the Three Blind Mice?”
That got her attention. She froze and looked back at him.
“What did you say?”
“We need to talk about �
� Mother Goose.”
Their conversation was starting to draw curious looks from the library’s other patrons and staff. Looking slightly uncomfortable, Mary beckoned to Ezekiel.
“Let’s talk about this in my office,” she suggested. “That’s a … fascinating topic, but we shouldn’t bore the other patrons.”
Works for me, Ezekiel thought.
He followed her into an office behind the front counter. She shut the door and took a seat behind her desk. Glancing around, Ezekiel spotted a framed piece of needlework mounted on a wall. Embroidered on the quaint country sampler was a nursery rhyme:
Simple Simon met a pieman,
Going to the fair,
Says Simple Simon to the pieman,
Let me taste your ware.
Ezekiel took the sampler as proof that he was on the right track. He nodded at the decorative needlework. “How about that?” he said with a smirk. “Mother Goose, right?”
“An old family heirloom, that’s all.” She shrugged as though it was of no consequence. “Now then, Mr. Jones, what’s all this about Mother Goose?”
Ezekiel didn’t feel like wasting any more time beating around the bush. “You are descended from the Mother Goose, right? The one in Boston way back when?”
She stared at him agape. “That’s what we were told, growing up, but it’s probably just a colorful family legend, passed down for the generations, the same way most every American claims to have a genuine Cherokee princess as an ancestor. I doubt if there’s anything to it.”
“Oh, it’s no legend … at least not one of those legends that aren’t actually true. Believe me, I have it from a very reliable source that you’ve got plenty of geese in your family tree, going back to Ye Olde Times.”
“How … how do you know any of this?” she stammered. “And what does this have to do with those ugly vermin anyway?”
“Come on,” he said. “Mother Goose … the Three Blind Mice. You’re a children’s librarian. Don’t tell me you didn’t make the connection?”
“The thought crossed my mind,” she admitted, “but the very notion is absurd. That business with the mice had nothing to do with an old nursery rhyme. That’s just an odd coincidence.”
“No such thing,” Ezekiel stated. “Not in my line of work.”
“Which is?” she asked. “And don’t give me that line about Animal Control again.”
Ezekiel saw no reason to stick with a cover story that wasn’t working. “I’m a Librarian, actually. Honest.”
“A librarian investigating the Three Blind Mice?”
“Nailed it in one.” He sat down across from her. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“But … but that’s insane.”
“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that,” Ezekiel suggested. “What’s the real scoop on those mice?”
“Fine,” she relented. “If you must know, I was in my kitchen at home, doing some dishes, when I heard this loud skittering and squeaking behind me. I spun around and, lo and behold, there were these three hideous creatures scrambling on top of the kitchen island, twitching their whiskers at me.” She shuddered at the memory. “They were bigger than any mice or rats I’d ever seen, and, yes, they had no eyes. Just … fur.”
Ugh, Ezekiel thought, glad to have missed them. “Any idea where they’d come from?”
“Not a clue. We’ve never had any serious vermin problems before, let alone king-sized rodents making themselves at home in my kitchen. They just showed up all of a sudden, bold as brass and ugly as sin.” Mary’s flair for storytelling kicked in as she got caught up in recounting the incident. “Gave me quite a start, I’m not ashamed to admit. I yelled at them, hoping to chase them away, but they sprang at me instead, all claws and teeth and spitting mad.”
Ezekiel leaned forward in his chair. “And…?”
“I’m spryer than I look, young man. I ducked out of the way and snatched a steak knife from a rack and slashed at them in self-defense. I nicked one of them in the tail and that, thank goodness, was enough to put the fear of God into all three of them. They turned tail, springing off the counter, and scurried out of the kitchen, tearing right through a screen door.” She grimaced. “Haven’t laid eyes on them since.”
Ezekiel hoped that would remain the case. Freaky mutant mice were not his idea of a fun time. Shiny lost treasures and world-class heists were more to his liking. He was a Librarian, not an exterminator. Pest control was a waste of his talents.
“But don’t you see? The Three Blind Mice, a carving knife, you being a farmer’s wife … it all adds up.”
“Maybe in whatever fantasy world you’re living in, Mr. Jones, but not here in Ohio,” she said firmly. She sat solidly behind her desk, her tone and attitude rooted squarely in reality. “Those unpleasant creatures were surely just some deformed, unusually aggressive rodents, no doubt caused by pesticides or fracking or GMOs.”
“Or maybe a spell from Mother Goose’s lost book of magic rhymes?”
She blinked at him in surprise. “That … that’s just a myth. A bedtime story my late grandmother used to tell me.”
“About how the book was divided into three parts by three different branches of your family?” He enjoyed her startled expression. “I’ve got news for you. That’s no myth, no story, and I really need to find those missing pages. I don’t suppose you’ve got them tucked away somewhere?”
She shook her head, looking a bit dazed. “Not that I know of.”
Figures, Ezekiel thought. “I should’ve known it wouldn’t be that easy. These capers almost always involve clues and puzzles and riddles, and clues inside puzzles inside riddles. If you ask me, people in the past had way too much time on their hands.…”
“You’re really serious about this,” she said incredulously. “Aren’t you?”
“Well, as serious as I am about anything.” He pondered what his next move should be. Grilling witnesses wasn’t exactly his specialty; he hoped there’d be a museum or vault to break into at some point. “You mentioned a grandmother before. She ever drop any hints about where your family’s chunk of the book might be hidden?”
“Not that I recall,” Mary said, thinking it over. She glanced up at the sampler on the wall. “Although that was a legacy from Grandma, and I remember her telling me, more than once, that it must always remain in the family.” She shrugged again. “As far as I know, it only has sentimental value.”
“Sentiment is for suckers.” He walked over to examine the sampler. “What I’m looking for is a clue.”
As much as he hated to admit it, Ezekiel found himself wishing that Stone was on hand to help out. This kind of boring, old-timey stuff was more Stone’s thing; he could probably tell just by looking at the embroidery and thread when and where it was sewn, right down to the exact year. Ezekiel was tempted to “borrow” the sampler long enough to run it past Stone, but balked at the idea of allowing that he was stumped. He had an image to maintain, after all. Ezekiel Jones did not need backup.
Maybe the clue was in the actual rhyme?
“Pie, fair, wares…” He looked to Mary Simon for guidance. “Any of this ringing a bell?”
“Well, fairs and markets and pies recur frequently in Mother Goose,” the librarian said. “Little Jack Horner, ‘to market, to market,’ and so on.”
Ezekiel had trouble imaging that an old book could be hidden for generations within a soggy old pie, unless there was some kind of mathematical pun involving pi going on, in which case he might have to call in Cassandra as well, although she was presumably busy investigating that tree trimmer in Miami.
“What about fairs?” he asked. “Are there any actual fairs in the vicinity?”
“The annual Banbury Fair is the oldest in the county,” she said proudly. “As it happens, it’s going on right now … at the fairgrounds outside of town.”
Ezekiel remembered seeing a banner advertising the fair.
“Well, that’s not coincidental at all,” he said wryly.
“Good point.” He saw another excursion in his future. The sampler wasn’t much to go on, but it was the closest thing he had to a lead. “Guess I’m going to the fair.”
“Not without me you aren’t.” She got up from behind her desk. “If there’s anything to any of this, that’s my family’s legacy you’re looking for. Don’t think for a minute that I’m not going to be looking over your shoulder the whole time.”
Ezekiel found that prospect less than appealing.
“Thanks, but I work alone,” he lied.
“Tough,” she said. “Don’t cross me, Mr. Jones. I can be quite contrary when I want to be.”
A suspicious thought crossed Ezekiel’s mind. Was she just being stubborn or did she have an ulterior motive? How much did she really know or believe about the Mother Goose Treaty and all that? For all he knew, she could be in cahoots with that “Mother Goose” character Baird ran across in New Jersey.
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” he said. “Those scary Blind Mice may just be the warm-up act. You’d better let me handle this.”
“Not a chance. And don’t even think about trying to ditch me. I’d hate to have to alert the local authorities to a con man posing as an Animal Control agent.” She brushed past him on her way out. “Car’s parked outside. You coming or not?”
Ezekiel sighed. “There’s not a dog in the car, is there?”
Before she could reply, frantic squeals and shrieks came from outside the office.
“What in tarnation?” Mary exclaimed.
Rushing out to investigate, Ezekiel and Mary were shocked to see the Three Blind Mice rampaging through the library. The large, eyeless rodents were even more revolting than Ezekiel had imagined and had, understandably, thrown the library into pandemonium. Hysterical patrons and library staff bolted for the exits, often screaming at the top of their lungs. Books and DVDs, heedlessly dropped in the panic, were strewn across the floor.
