by Lavie Tidhar
I didn’t want to believe it.
But it didn’t matter what I wanted to believe. What I needed to do was find out more. I decided to start by going back to the library, where I knew I would find Sweetcakes.
Bobbie was convinced that Mary Ratchet had set the fire, but, whichever way I thought about it, it just didn’t add up. It was true that Sweetcakes was a bully, but could she really have set fire to Mr Singh’s store? Something about it didn’t feel right to me and I was determined to find out more.
I decided to walk to the library. I didn’t want my bike trashed again by the Sweetie Pies. It was a nice morning, not yet too hot to be outside, and for some reason, even with everything that had been going on, I felt good. I even whistled as I walked along Altman, enjoying the shade of the old wide trees and the quiet.
Too quiet. I was almost at the library when they jumped me from behind the trees.
The Sweetie Pies.
Daisy and Rosie, and Little May.
“What do you want!” I said.
They surrounded me in a half-circle. There were three of them and only one of me, and whenever I tried to move away they blocked me off. They were grinning, like sharks anticipating blood pudding.
My heart was beating fast and my palms were sweating. I backed away and felt hands on my back, and heard Rosie laugh as she pushed me. Daisy grinned and pushed me too and the two of them began to shove me back and forth between them, while Little May jumped up and down as though she’d eaten too many sweets.
“Told you … to … stay out of our way!” Daisy said.
“You got to leave alone, Nelle!” Rosie said. She sounded almost frustrated.
“I want to talk to Sweetcakes,” I said.
“Well, you can’t! She don’t want to see you!”
“You can’t stop me from going to the library,” I said.
“Told you to stay off … our turf!”
“Stop sticking your nose in other people’s business!” Daisy said.
“That’s right! That’s right!” May shouted.
“Did you burn the shop?” I said. Being pushed around wasn’t so bad, really. At least that’s what I was trying to tell myself.
“Now why … would we do … that?” Daisy said.
“You want to … take over…” I was breathing hard by now and had to keep stopping to take in air. “The candy … trade.”
“You think we can’t take on two little boys?” Daisy sneered. “Waffles and de Menthe, put them together and it just sounds … disgusting!” And with that she pushed me, hard, and Rosie stepped aside, laughing, and with no one to catch me I fell, and rolled on the ground, where all I could see were the dainty little shoes on Little May’s feet, going up and down, up and down.
Then, laughing, they sauntered away, back towards the library.
I stood up slowly and dusted myself clean.
“This isn’t over!” I shouted after them. My heart was still going fast and I wasn’t whistling any more. But I wasn’t hurt, and I was fine. If you set off to shake a beehive you should expect to get a few stings along the way, and not just honey. It wasn’t nice, but it was what happened when you were a detective. It may have started off as just a game, but growing up was serious business – and so was candy.
20
A black car passed slowly down Altman. It made me wonder how long it’d been there. It rolled slowly, as though its driver had all the time in the world.
I watched it grimly until it had rolled its way towards me and stopped. I expected the by-now familiar faces of Tidbeck and Webber, but when the window came down I had a surprise.
The driver looked out and smiled.
“Nelle Faulkner, I presume?” she said.
Her voice sounded familiar but I wasn’t sure for a moment where from. She had brown hair and a nice smile and a cop’s voice.
“We talked on the phone,” she said. “I have to admit you’re a hard person to track down.”
“You’re that detective,” I said, realizing. Remembering when I’d called the Detective Bureau and got—
“Suzie Levene,” she said.
“How did you find me? I didn’t give you my name.”
“I’m a detective, I find people.”
“Fair enough,” I said, and she smiled. She looked like she smiled easily.
“What do you want, Detective Levene?” I said. If I’d been in a good mood before then it had evaporated like the steam that comes off hot milk.
“Can we talk?” she said.
“What about?”
“You called the station,” she said. “I wondered why.”
“Wrong number?” I said, and she laughed.
“Try again,” she said.
“Look, Detective Levene—”
“You can call me Suzie.”
“Detective Levene,” I said. “I can take care of myself.”
“I want to know why you called the station asking for Detective Tidbeck,” she said, and she was no longer smiling.
“Why?”
“You know, Nelle,” she said, and pinched the bridge of her nose as though she had a headache coming on, “we’re not all like Tidbeck and Webber.”
“You enforce Prohibition,” I said.
“Prohibition’s the law.”
“But it’s not fair!” I said.
“Life isn’t always fair!” she said. I glared at her.
“Look, Nelle, there’s a difference between enforcing the law because it’s the law, and profiting from it. After your call, I did some digging, and I didn’t like what I found. I could use your help on this.”
“What do you care?” I said. “It’s just chocolate, isn’t it? Isn’t that what you think?”
“Sure,” she said. “And if it was just chocolate, maybe … I guess that’s how they got away with it for so long. I mean, who would care, right? So maybe it’s my fault too, Nelle. For looking away, or not looking at all. And you know what, sure, I can let all that go because it’s all just kids, right? I can let all that go and look the other way because it’s just candy and I have real crimes to deal with and real criminals to catch?”
“Right,” I said.
“And then a kid goes missing and a shop goes up in flames, and suddenly I can no longer look away, Nelle. Suddenly, this has become a part of my job.”
“That’s an impressive speech,” I said, “but what’s any of it got to do with me?”
She sighed. It was quiet in the street and I didn’t see anyone else about, but it didn’t mean to say there wasn’t anyone watching.
“I want to help you, Nelle,” she said. “And maybe you can help me too.”
“How?” I said.
“Tell me what you know about Tidbeck and Webber. What they’ve been doing.”
“I don’t know nothing,” I said.
“I don’t know anything,” she said, correcting me, and sighing again. “You think you’re so tough, don’t you, Nelle?”
“No,” I said. And I didn’t. I just didn’t trust her, even though I wanted to.
Maybe she could see it in my eyes.
“I’m not going to say you remind me of myself at your age,” she said. “Although you do, a little … look, Nelle, I just want to help. Your friend, Eddie, he’s missing. Don’t you want to find him?”
Were Eddie and I friends? It was a question I wasn’t sure I could answer. But I did want to find him.
“He could be in real trouble,” Suzie Levene said. “And with Webber and Tidbeck after him … well, I wouldn’t want to be in your friend’s shoes, Nelle.”
“All right,” I said. I took a deep breath. “Maybe we can help each other. But there’s something I need you to look into for me first.”
“What?” she said.
“I need to find out about Mr Farnsworth,” I said.
“The man from the chocolate factory?” she said.
“Yes.”
“You think he’s connected to all this?”
“I don�
��t know for sure, but I think he might be,” I said grimly. “I was hoping to find out.”
“I did look him up, as it happens,” Detective Levene said. “Out of curiosity. But there was nothing to find. He has no file, no driver’s licence, no bank account, no home. For all intents and purposes, he doesn’t even exist.”
“But he does,” I said.
“He must do, somewhere. Just not on file.”
“Is that possible?”
She laughed, without much humour. “It shouldn’t be, but it is.”
“Don’t you think that’s odd?” I said.
She gave me a long look. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I do. But he’s not committed any crime that I know of.”
“What about the other chocolatiers?” I said. “Do you know anything about them? The ones from Bay City?”
She shrugged. “Not really. Again, I did some digging. I know Madame Sosotris was born in Detroit, that the Soufflé Brothers are not actually brothers but cousins, that Edmonton St Creme-Egge lists his hobbies in the Who’s Who as ‘gardening, classical music and collecting antique harpoons’, and that Borscht is a kind of beetroot soup. At least, I think it is.”
“Beetroot soup?” I said.
“Maybe,” she said dubiously.
“So you have nothing?” I said.
“I’m a cop, kid, not a miracle worker,” she said. “What about you? What can you tell me?”
I wondered how much I could trust her.
In truth, I wasn’t sure that I could, but I also didn’t have any other options. I had to trust someone. And Suzie Levene seemed honest, and she said all the right things. I took a deep breath, counted to ten in my head, and decided to take a chance.
I told her what Waffles had told me. When I had finished, she looked troubled.
“I think you should leave the rest of this to me,” she said.
“And what are you going to do?” I said.
“I don’t know. But I do know you should stay out of it.”
“Are you warning me off the case?”
“This isn’t a case you can solve, Nelle! This isn’t a game. When you grow up you can apply to join the police force, and if you’re accepted you could go through the academy, and train to become a police officer, and then, if you work hard and pass the right tests, eventually, you might become a detective.”
“Like you,” I said.
“Exactly. Yes.”
“Like Tidbeck and Webber?”
She was silent. Then, “Every barrel has a couple of rotten apples.”
“Even with all the training, and the tests?” I said.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I might be twelve, Detective Levene, but it doesn’t mean I like to be treated like a child.”
She was silent again, and then, after a moment, she laughed, a little in embarrassment. “Fair enough,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “And if it helps, I promise to try not to get into trouble.”
“That’s quite a promise,” she said, still with a little laughter in her voice.
Then: “So where will you go now?”
I thought it best to avoid the library, for the moment. But there were other avenues to pursue.
“I thought I’d visit Eddie’s grandmother,” I said.
“Well, at least that seems harmless,” Detective Levene said, with some relief.
21
Falcon Drive was a long narrow street with box-like apartment blocks on either side of it. In a children’s playground a little girl rode a tyre swing back and forth, and two little boys fought a pretend duel with sticks. I could feel eyes in the windows, behind curtains that twitched but never opened. In the distance I heard a police siren, which was abruptly cut off. It was quiet here, and yet it was an alert sort of silence. The sound of my footsteps felt very loud to me, and I was relieved when I reached the building’s entrance. The buildings were old and rundown, and I saw a large sign hung up on the wall. It said the block was soon to be renovated by Thornton Construction. I’d seen the picture on it before, outside the playground on Malloy Road. It showed Mayor Thornton smiling as he perched on a crane, wearing a bright yellow hard hat.
I pressed the buzzer and waited. There was no reply so I pressed it again, longer this time, until I heard a handset being lifted and dropped and then lifted and an irate voice say, “What? Who is this?”
“Mrs de Menthe? My name’s Nelle, and I’m here about your grandson?”
I heard her breathing into the handset. “Who sent you?” she said.
“No one,” I said, startled.
“What did you say your name was?”
“Nelle. Nelle Faulkner.”
I heard her breathing some more as she deliberated. I shifted my weight from foot to foot, wishing I could get off the street.
“Come on up,” she said at last, and I heard a harsh electrical buzzer sound. I pushed the door open and went inside.
It was dark on the stairwell and smelled of boiled cabbage. It was carpeted but the carpet was dirty and worn. I climbed up carefully until I reached the third floor and knocked on the door.
“Yes, yes, I’m coming,” the irritated voice said. I heard her moving inside the apartment and then she opened the door. She was old and stooped, with curlers in her blue-white hair, and big chocolate-brown eyes that looked at me suspiciously from behind thick glasses.
“What do you want?”
“I was hoping to … can I come in?”
“What was your name again?”
“Nelle Faulkner!” I said, shouting a little.
“Don’t raise your voice to me, girl,” she said. “Faulkner, Faulkner.” Then her eyes grew softer and I realized she wasn’t angry or confused – she was just very worried.
She held the door open and I stepped inside. Unlike the outside, the apartment was comfortable and bright. The furniture looked old but was clean, and there was the smell of something good cooking in the oven.
I followed her into the living room. Photographs covered the walls. They were mostly of Eddie, Eddie as a baby, Eddie as a young boy holding his father’s hand, playing on the swings, Eddie barefoot on the beach, feet in the sand, laughing, Eddie with his grandmother on a cliff somewhere with dragon-like clouds curling in the background, Eddie with…
“You are his friend?”
I stared at the picture. She saw me and smiled. “I remember you now,” she said. “You used to play together when you were small.”
“So I keep hearing. But I don’t remember.”
“Pictures don’t lie,” she said, with satisfaction.
In the picture, Eddie was playing in the sandbox with a small, serious-looking girl.
The girl was me.
“He always spoke fondly of you, you know,” Mrs de Menthe said. “Your dad and his dad worked in the factory together back in the day.”
The factory. That’s what we all called it. We never had to say which factory. For us, for everyone in the city, there was only ever one.
I stared at the picture. Eddie looked happy. So did I. We must have been three or four years old. Mrs de Menthe disappeared into the kitchen and I could hear her bustling around. I looked at the picture again. Was that really why he’d come to me? I felt guilty and wasn’t sure why. He’d trusted me. I didn’t want to let him down.
“Do you know where he is?”
“Excuse me, dear?” She reappeared in the living room with a tray in her hands. “Can you help me with the drinks?” she said. I took the tray from her and placed it carefully on the low table. Her hands were shaking, though she tried to hide it.
“Please, please,” she said. “Drink.”
I stared at the table.
On the tray were two hot chocolates and a plate of cocoa wafers. The hot chocolate was topped with whipped cream and crowned with partially melted marshmallows. It was the sort of drink that, even if it weren’t already illegal, should have been a crime. Clearly, Mrs d
e Menthe didn’t play by the rules. Perhaps that explained her grandson’s attitude.
I took a sip. It was like drowning in sugar.
“Do you know where he is? Eddie?”
Mrs de Menthe shook her head. “He’ll be fine,” she said – but she sounded like she was just trying to convince herself.
I took another sip and bit off a marshmallow. I couldn’t help it. It was delicious.
“Eddie was living with you?” I said.
“There is no one else,” she said sadly.
I buried my nose in the hot chocolate. I didn’t know what to say.
“Have the police been around?” I said at last.
She made a dismissive gesture. “Two cops with bad manners and worse suits,” she said. “They keep asking questions and poking their noses in but I don’t think they wish anything good on my grandson.”
“A man and a woman?” I said.
“Yes.”
“Webber and Tidbeck,” I said. “They were asking questions at my house too.”
“He’s too smart for them,” Mrs de Menthe said. But I could see it was hope more than faith in her eyes. She was scared. She was worried for Eddie.
And I was too.
I picked up one of the cocoa wafers and put it in my mouth.
The taste was one I had almost forgotten, though you never forget a Farnsworth chocolate biscuit, not really.
It reminded me of the open factory gates, of my dad emerging with the other workers, smiling when he saw me, and opening his arms; of a happy sun shining down on a world infused with the smell of fresh chocolate. Of days that seemed to last for ever, and there was no cloud in sight to darken the sun.
“Where did you get this?” I said, when I could speak again. Mrs de Menthe looked at me without comprehension.
“The cocoa wafers? From the kitchen.”
“Can I look?”
I didn’t wait for her reply. I jumped to my feet and went and peered around into the kitchen.
