by Lavie Tidhar
He was still grinning, until he saw me.
“Nelle!”
“Hello, Cody.”
“You won’t tell, will you, Nelle?” he said, looking worried.
“Where’s your mom?” I said.
“She’s gone to the movies with Stuart.”
Stuart was his stepdad.
“You shouldn’t be here, Cody.”
His face fell. “But I like it,” he said. “I just like to play marbles, Nelle. It’s something I’m good at.”
He looked at me with big dark eyes. He extended his hand. “Here,” he said. “Do you want some marbles?”
I had to smile.
“Keep them,” I said. “But you’re coming home with me.”
“All right,” he said. He looked at me with eyes full of trust.
“Who’s in charge here?” I asked.
“Anouk,” he said. “Anouk is.”
I looked up. By the wall of the school lounged a dark-haired girl, older than me by a couple of years. She saw me looking and came over, moving with quiet purpose.
“You Faulkner?” she said.
“You must be Anouk.”
She ruffled Cody’s hair fondly. “Eddie mentioned you might be along. He said to show you to the office.”
“If you could.”
I turned to Cody.
“You stay here,” I said.
“All right, Nelle.” His eyes drifted to the game of marbles. I left him and followed Anouk to the office. She led me through a door, into a small storage room.
I looked around me. Boxes of what I assumed to be candy were stacked everywhere. If I’d ever thought about it before, I imagined the candy trade was just a game, a handful of chocolates at a time, but this shocked me – the scale of it was much bigger than I’d expected. It didn’t feel so much like a game, all of a sudden.
“Eddie said to tell you the teddy was sitting on that shelf,” Anouk said, pointing. It was a shelf over an old desk and it held a variety of random objects, an old trophy and a starfish and a tin decorated with flowers. “I always just assumed it was Eddie’s good luck charm, something his mom gave him before she died.”
“It was stolen from here?” I said, surprised.
Anouk shrugged. “I guess,” she said. “Though there is only one door and there’s usually someone here.”
“And nothing else is missing?”
“Not that I know of.”
“That’s odd,” I said. “You’d think if they’d try to steal anything it’d be the candy.”
She shrugged again. “I can’t see how the teddy bear could have been stolen,” she said. “Not unless it was one of us.”
“Was it?”
“No, Nelle,” she said patiently. “None of us took the teddy. Besides, what for? It was just an old bear.”
I nodded reluctantly. I didn’t know how the teddy was stolen yet, but in order to find it I also had to understand why it was stolen. I thought Anouk was wrong to suggest it couldn’t have been anyone here. They didn’t seem to guard the room all that well, and anyone inside the playground could have used a moment when it wasn’t guarded to go in and snatch the teddy.
The how of the theft wasn’t much of a mystery, in that case. The thief could have easily taken it out of the playground.
But figuring that out didn’t get me any closer to finding out who took it.
The real question was why it was stolen.
What was so important about an old teddy bear?
It clearly mattered to Eddie … mattered more than it should. Could it be anything to do with the candy trade? And if so, was it really wise for me to get in any deeper?
“You want some chocolate?” Anouk said.
“No, thanks.” I looked at her, and thought about this playground operation, and all the candy boxes in the storage room.
“Where do you get your chocolate from?” I said.
Anouk gave me a look. “That’s not the sort of question you want to be going around asking, Nelle,” she said. It sounded like a warning and I left it at that – for the time being, at least.
“Oh, just one more thing,” I said at the door.
She turned back to me, not bothering to hide her irritation. “What is it?”
“Eddie mentioned you’re rivals with…” I consulted my notebook. “Waffles McKenzie?”
“Yeah, he’s got his own gang,” she said. “He has a place down near Altman Street, back of a used goods store.”
“What, Bobbie Singh’s place?” I said, surprised.
“Yeah. You know him?”
I nodded. Bobbie was a friend of mine.
“Well … anything else, detective?”
“No,” I said. “Thanks again.” And I went to pick up Cody. He was still playing marbles but he got up without complaint when I called him.
We went outside. His hand in mine felt hot and sticky with chocolate. As we crossed the street a black car moved smoothly out of its parking space on the other side of the street, under the trees, swerving ahead of us on the road home.
4
After I dropped Cody home I set off again. There was an election rally in full swing in Ohls Square as I cycled past. After serving almost a full term, the mayor was running for re-election. It looked festive, with flags and bunting and a stage set up at the centre of the square, near the fountains. A marching band played and balloons decorated the stage. Volunteers handed out carrots and celery sticks, though the people who accepted them mostly did so without any visible enthusiasm.
I stopped and took a glass of beet juice from one of the volunteers, then regretted it as soon as I took a sip. I saw elderly Mr Lloyd-Williams from the Trinkets, Teddies & Toys Emporium walk past.
“No, thank you, young lady, I do not want a carrot!” he said in his British accent as he was being offered one. “If I’d wanted to eat vegetables I would have stayed in England, where at least they have the decency to boil them first!” He stomped off in a huff.
There was a tap on a microphone and then a screech of feedback from the speakers in front of the stage. Then Mayor Thornton came on.
“Hello!”
He raised his arms in the air. The crowd broke into applause.
“Everyone having a good time?”
“Yeah!”
More applause. The mayor beamed down on us. From up on the stage he looked benevolent, relaxed.
“Health! Prosperity! Follow your dreams!”
“Yeah!”
“Eat your—”
“Greens!”
“Eat your—”
“Greens!”
“Eat your—”
“G—”
“But, seriously, folks. Thank you for coming. It’s been my honour and my privilege to serve as your mayor for the past three years. Prohibition has made our children healthier, happier, and better adjusted for life. Our town is peaceful and prosperous. I won’t keep you long – I know you’re all busy. In the coming election, please vote.” He grinned at us, with those dazzling white teeth. “Vote Thornton for mayor. Can you do that for me? For all of us? For our children, and our children’s future?”
The crowd went wild. They threw celery sticks in the air.
“Thornton! Thornton for mayor!”
The mayor raised his arms again, hands clasped together over his head, and beamed at the crowd.
“You’ve been wonderful!” he said.
The marching band struck up again and balloons floated into the air. The mayor climbed down to shake people’s hands.
I got back on my bike and rode away.
There was a lingering bad taste in my mouth from that one sip of beet juice.
I rode down Altman Street and then turned left back on to Leigh Brackett Road, and stopped outside a store with a sign that said, “Used Goods”.
The window was grimy and the display behind it showed mismatched mannequins wearing clothes that must have been old even before I was born. When I pushed open the door, a bell rang.
It was dark and cool inside the store. On the shelves were odds and ends: a pair of ladies’ gloves; an old gold coin with a faded handwritten sign next to it that said it was a rare Brasher Doubloon (whatever that was); a stack of dusty crime novels by authors no one remembered any more; the statue of a black falcon; a silver tea-set creamer in the shape of a hideous cow; an old lighter with an unintelligible inscription; a crystal skull; a packet of Victorian letters; and more, a lot more. There was everything in the store but customers. The things on the shelves could each have once been the deciding clue in some long-ago crime. Now you could buy them and still have change from a dollar.
A man in a turban stood behind the counter.
“Hello, Nelle,” he said when he saw me.
“Mr Singh,” I said, and then, “is Bobbie in?”
Mr Singh gave a long-suffering sigh and jerked his thumb and said, “In the back.”
“Thanks.”
“Can’t you tell him to go out every now and then, Nelle?” Mr Singh said. “Get some fresh air, play with a ball? He won’t listen to me.”
“He won’t listen to anybody,” I said.
Mr Singh nodded mournfully.
“How is Mrs Singh?” I asked. Bobbie’s mom was still at the hospital. She had been sick for some time, and I knew how anxious they both were.
“Oh, it’s kind of you to ask, Nelle,” he said. “But, really, there’s no need for you to worry.”
It was the sort of thing grown-ups always said. But I nodded all the same.
“How’s business?” I said, instead.
“Oh, booming.”
I looked around the dark, dusty shop. The shelves with ancient rotted things nobody wanted any more, if they ever had.
“All right,” I said.
There was a small door at the back of the shop and I pushed it open, entering a storage room that was attached to the store. Bobbie had dragged in some plastic tables and chairs and a fan moved slowly in a corner pushing hot air around. A long wooden counter lined one side of the room, and it was suspiciously empty.
“Nelle!”
“Hello, Bobbie,” I said.
Several kids varying in ages sat around, all staring at me, their hands firmly under the tables, out of sight.
“Nelle’s cool,” Bobbie said, and they relaxed. The hands came out all holding candy, which they proceeded to shove into their faces. Bobbie grinned at me, then ducked behind the counter and brought out all the stuff he must have hastily pushed underneath when I entered. I stared at the merchandise.
Milk chocolate and dark chocolate and cocoa butter, fruit sours and lemon drops, sprinkles and poppers and whole-nut bars and candied almonds, waffles and bonbons, liquorice and pralines – everything but ice cream.
Of all the things I missed, I missed ice cream the most. My mouth watered just at the thought of a vanilla cone smothered in chocolate sauce. Among the candy I spotted familiar wrappers, all from out of town, from companies like the St Creme-Egge Corporation and Madame Sosotris and the Brothers Soufflé.
Bobbie Singh stood behind the counter. He was a short skinny kid a year older than me, though he looked two years younger.
He was a quiet, hard-working kid. I’d known him since kindergarten.
“Hey, Bobbie, I wanted to ask you some questions,” I said.
“Sure, Nelle. But hold on—”
He turned, and so did I, just in time to realize there was someone else in the room.
She loomed over me with an ugly sneer on her face, and stuck her finger at me. “What is she doing here?”
I made a face.
“Hello, Sweetcakes,” I said.
Her real name was Mary Ratchet, but everybody called her Sweetcakes. She was a big mean suet of a girl with fists like giant sweet potato pies. I’d run up against her on my last case, her and her crew of girls, the Sweetie Pies. Though there was nothing sweet about her or her crew.
We were in the same class at school together. Now she leered at me with teeth that had seen too much candy pass through them. “Looking for trouble, detective?”
She still held a grudge. She was the sort of person to hold on to a grudge like chewing gum stuck to a shoe. The last time I’d run up against her, it was on a case that was unrelated to chocolate. I’d got the better of her that time, and she hadn’t liked it, not one bit.
“Looking for Bobbie,” I said pleasantly. “If you don’t mind…?”
“But I do mind,” she said, advancing on me, those pie fists swinging by her side. “Sweetcakes minds, that a low-down dirty gumshoe shows her face round here.”
I stood and faced her calmly, though my heart was racing. She was bigger and meaner than me, and she had backup. Three of her girls, Daisy and Rosie and Little May, stood behind her, glaring at me. The kids around the tables didn’t even bother to look up. They were munching on chocolate buttons as though their lives depended on it.
“I’m not here for you,” I said.
“Oh, aren’t you?”
“Cool it, Sweetcakes,” Bobbie said. His voice was quiet but it carried.
Sweetcakes stood and looked at me with that same ugly sneer. “This ain’t over, gumshoe,” she said.
“I look forward to catching up again,” I said. I kept my face blank.
“Soon,” Sweetcakes said.
“Any time!” I said.
She licked chocolate stains from the corners of her lips. “I’ll be seeing you, Bobbie. I’ll be seeing you real soon. Come on, girls,” she said. She went past me and as she did her shoulder slammed into mine, hard, and I stumbled. She laughed, and her girls laughed with her. Then they all left.
“I’m sorry about that, Nelle,” Bobbie said.
“What was that about?” I said, brushing myself off.
“It’s complicated.”
“Can we talk?”
“In the back.”
I followed him behind the counter. A small door was set into the wall and he opened it.
It was really not much more than a cupboard. There were bags of chocolate coins and trays of creme eggs and half-opened crates filled with chocolate bars in plain wrappers. A bare light bulb hung from the ceiling and the walls were unvarnished. I perched on a crate.
“So this is it?” I said. I’d suspected before, but didn’t know for sure. “You sell candy?”
“It’s just a bit of chocolate,” Bobbie said defensively.
“Where do you get it from?” I said.
He gave me a look. “What is this about, Nelle?”
“Just satisfying my curiosity,” I said.
“Curiosity can be a dangerous thing.”
I shrugged. “I like to live dangerously.”
Bobbie sighed.
“So come on, spill. I heard you get your candy from Waffles.”
“Why all the questions, Nelle?”
“Job,” I said. “Missing teddy bear. Know anything about that?”
“What?” he said, looking confused. “Why would I?”
I shrugged. “You tell me.”
“I don’t know anything about a teddy bear, Nelle.”
“Know anything about Eddie de Menthe?”
He went still. “I got no trouble with Eddie. What’s this about?”
I shook my head, gave him a tight smile. “I prefer to ask the questions, Bobbie.”
“What’s in it for me?” he said.
“I thought we were friends.”
“We are friends, Nelle. That’s why I haven’t kicked you out yet.”
“Come on, Bobbie. Help me out,” I said. “What am I getting myself into?”
“I don’t know about no missing teddy bear of Eddie’s,” he said, “but there could be some trouble coming, so that might be connected.”
He sighed.
“Sometimes I feel like I’ve been playing a game that was supposed to be fun,” he said, “only it’s been going for too long and it isn’t fun any more, and all the other players won’t let you quit.”
“I don’t even know the game,” I said.
“Oh, you look like you’ll catch on quickly.”
“So can you fill me in?”
“Are you sure you want me to, Nelle? It ain’t too late to back off yet.”
Was I sure?
Like I said, I was curious. Being curious could get you in trouble. But being curious could get you anywhere.
I nodded. “Sure,” I said.
“Fine. There are three major players in the candy trade right now,” Bobbie said. He ticked them off on his fingers: “You already know Eddie de Menthe. He runs the biggest gang, the Cookie Dough Boys. Then there’s Waffles. His gang ain’t much smaller. He runs everything, including my place. He does candy, but what he really loves are pastries. He’s got the market cornered on that. You ever want a freshly-baked cinnamon swirl or a jam doughnut, then Waffles is your boy.”
I filed it away. “Who’s the third?” I said.
And why did I get a bad feeling?
Eddie gave me a sad little smile. “Didn’t you figure it out, Nelle? I’m surprised at you.”
He nodded at the door. “After all, she was just here,” he said softly.
Then I understood what he was trying to tell me and I felt sick, as though I’d had one too many biscuits.
“Sweetcakes,” I said.
He inched his head in reply.
“She’s trying to muscle in on your place?” I said.
“She’s a big girl with even bigger dreams.”
“The Sweetie Pies?”
“Yes. They’ve been causing trouble for the past month, ever since school broke up for the summer. This visit, just now? She’s been leaning on me to work for her. Or else.”
“Or else what?”
He was about to speak when we heard shouts behind the door – and my question was unexpectedly and unpleasantly answered.
5
When we pushed open the door, we were welcomed with a scene of chaos.
Multi-coloured smoke filled the room, of the sort you got in any joke shop, and it was mixed with a stench that made my eyes water. Panicked kids tried to escape but couldn’t see where they were going, and ran into each other and into the furniture. The room smelled like someone had let a skunk in. Cries of panic rose into the air. Chairs fell over. In the nightmarish smoke, figures moved like shadows. A horrific figure, face covered in a red-and-pink polka dot bandana, appeared out of the smoke. Sweetcakes.
