by Deany Ray
Brad stretched out a long leg. “Mom is in the garden. She made us some cookies.”
That got my attention. My mother had dozens of cookie recipes, and every one was fabulous. She made cookies for every holiday and found all kinds of excuses to get out her yellow mixing bowl. She might make cookies because it was our night to watch Dancing with the Stars. She sometimes even baked two dozen brownie bites because it was a Tuesday. In other words, you never knew around our house when you might be surprised by pecan wafers or by my personal favorite – sugar cookies with colored sprinkles.
Brad interrupted my sweet reverie. “And I left a few for you.”
A few?
“Gee, Brad. That was very thoughtful of you. Thanks a lot.”
“Hey, no problem, Sis.” I guess he was too tired to understand a concept like sarcasm. I wondered if chaos would soon descend upon our lovely town when people all over Springston began opening their mailboxes to find other people’s mail. How would they pay their bills? Get their weekly coupons from the grocery? Could a town function without mail? Perhaps we would find out.
I headed into the kitchen to check out the colorful plastic containers where my mom kept all her goodies. She had left a note, which I was almost afraid to read. A missive from Barbara Cooper might be sweet or it might be just plain bizarre.
To Charlie! I listened to some classic rock while I baked these cookies. I wanted the good energy from the music to flow into every bite. Hope your first day was awesome, Mom.
Well, that was nice. It looked like Brad had scarfed down a ton of them already. So, obviously, the energy transfer hadn’t worked. Which was really just too bad. If anybody needed energy, it would surely be my brother. But, man, did those cookies look good. My mom could turn out some winning sweets even as her mind spun its zany thoughts.
Yum. There were lemon bars and chocolate-pumpkin cookies. My day was getting better.
I took a few from each container and fixed myself a plate, then I sat down with my laptop at the kitchen table. I logged on to some apartment sites. One gorgeous complex looked especially intriguing. The units all featured tiny porches with views of grassy expanses and, beyond that, Lake Glun where I’d gone boating as a teen. I had already made plans to tour the complex the next day. Not that I could even halfway afford the rent, but a girl could dream.
Then my mind began to spin nightmarish fantasies, as it did when I got tired. What if we never got another case? What if I never got a paycheck? I stuffed a cookie in my mouth. What if I ended up like Brad, who’d lived at home forever? It didn’t seem to bother him, living with our parents at the age of thirty-two. He was content to stay there as long as they would have him, as long as my mother would cook his meals and do his laundry, as long as my father would bring home leftover ribs and steaks and gravy when he came home from Jack’s.
Hey buddy, I wanted to say to him. Living at home with Mom and Dad is not exactly a ticket for impressing that redhead you seem to like so much. Oh, but never mind. Brad would never plan a date; that would be too much work. It would mean he had to get up off the couch.
I imagined what it would be like: stuck at home forever as my hair turned gray, my eyesight dimmed and my knees went bad. Would I join forces with my mother, chanting and humming to try to “center myself” and “reach a peaceful state” as the gun fights on Brad’s TV shows got louder and louder still while he grew deaf in his old age? And the whole time we’d be leaping in fright every time that we discovered the plastic mega spiders my dad set out to scare us? Plastic bugs and whoopee cushions and fake nasty-tasting gum. My father loved it all. That vision of my future called for one – no, two – no, three – yummy lemon squares.
I immediately turned back to the advertised apartments. I checked listings in Springston and the surrounding areas, filtering by price. Because of my lack of savings, I was forced to narrow my search to the cheapest ones. The row of pictures for those listings was not a pretty sight. I enlarged the picture of the first one. Absolutely no way! The front steps were missing lots of bricks, and most of the doors had peeling paint. It looked like the kind of place that your parents would tell you to avoid going to at night. Which would put you in a quandary if that’s where you kept your bed.
The next one was just as bad. Three Oaks Landing, it was called. But not an oak in sight. Just weeds and lots of trash. Couldn’t they at least have cleaned it up to make a picture?
Like it or not, I seemed to be stuck for the time being at my parents’ house. Had it been a moronic move to quit my job in Boston just when I’d been offered a nice-sized raise?
I had to think of something else, so I did some research on red pandas. What better way to cheer yourself than with fuzzy wuzzy little darlings? I read that they were shy. And that they sometimes wrapped their bushy tails around themselves for warmth. But – surprise! – no information at all on where a precious little fur ball might wander on a day of newfound freedom out and about the town.
I wandered back into the den to see what Brad was watching. No way! He was watching a cartoon! And not only was he watching, he was laughing uncontrollably at the antics of two mice running from a cat. Brad seemed to especially like the way that the cat’s legs would spin just like a wheel when he ran really fast.
“Oh man, oh man. Did you see that?” he asked me, laughing so hard that he could barely breathe. “Genius. Wouldn’t you love to see the cat do that again?”
Get me out of here right now!
“Say, Brad. Why aren’t you at work right now?” I asked.
“Oh, I thought I came down with a cold this morning, so I called in sick,” he said, without taking his eyes off the TV screen and chugging the last of his beer.
“Right.”
I vowed to find that panda so fast that the police would pay us double and assign us five more cases. I had to get out of that house.
***
I left the house at 6:15 p.m. That would give us a little daylight to look around the park before the sun went down. Then we could search the area under the darkened sky that supposedly appealed to our furry runaway. Just as I got to the end of the drive, I remembered something. I ran back into the kitchen and grabbed a bowl and two pickle jars from my mother’s cabinet. I hoped she wasn’t planning to make deviled eggs or potato salad.
The girls were waiting for me when I pulled up to the southern edge of the park. Celeste put her finger to her lips.
“Better not make too much noise,” Marge said, taking care to talk in a quiet voice. “We don’t want to frighten Lou.” I didn’t try to argue, but that sounded kind of lame. If anyone was used to human voices, it had to be a panda living in a zoo.
I filled up my mother’s bowl with pickles and left it at the bottom of a tree, then we ducked behind some bushes. How’s that for an answer to the age-old question “What did you do at work today?”
Marge had come prepared with binoculars, a notebook and tape recorder and a spool of yellow crime tape. She must have bought every object that she’d seen cops use to solve a crime on her TV shows. Where did you go to get crime tape, anyway? From the police in Springston? And why the tape recorder? Was she gonna interview the bear if we somehow found him? We could put the binoculars to use, at least. I wished I’d thought of that as well. I could have brought some too. Dad used to keep binoculars in the closet in the front hall. He used them to watch the birds.
I stayed quietly behind my bush and I did a lot of thinking. When your job for the evening is to hide behind a bush, you have lots of time to think, which isn’t a good thing when you’re despondent about your life and when you’re prone to worry. That’s when I had a startling thought. It hit me that maybe we weren’t at all the smart detectives we thought we were.
“Celeste!” I hissed.
She poked her head out from behind a nearby bush and gave me a questioning look.
“What do we do if this panda really does show up? How are we going to catch it and get it to the zoo?”
Celeste frowned.
Marge peeked out from another bush. “Do you think it would let me pick it up?”
I had my worst thought of the night right then and there: I imagined Marge with the panda, cooing to the poor thing and freaking the bear out, just like she’d scared the monkey. If there were zoologists around to record the sight as he beat it out of there, they might see Lou making record time as the fastest panda ever. Then we’d never catch him.
I sighed.
Celeste frowned again. “Damn. I need a cigarette. We should have thought this through.”
I tried to come up with something, but my idea was pretty lame. “Maybe we can use the bowl of pickles to lure the panda to the car, then drive him to the zoo.” Well, that was certainly a sentence I thought I’d never say.
Of course, what did it matter? What were the chances that the panda would appear that very night in that very park in the very tree that we were peering up at?
Oh, well. I decided to just enjoy the night. It was a lovely evening in August, but there weren’t a lot of people out. I made a mental note that this could be a nice place to escape when I needed a little peace and quiet, away from my mother’s chanting to the universe and my brother’s loud cartoons.
A couple passed us, walking their basset hound who sniffed at the pickles. The husband looked at the bowl, confused. “Someone,” he said, “left their pickles in the park. Isn’t that the strangest thing?”
The dog barked happily and nuzzled both their faces. Dogs love everybody; they don’t care if you’re broke or if you’re a big loser who doesn’t have a clue about how to do your job. I decided that I should find an apartment that would let me have a dog. On second thought, I couldn’t even keep plastic plants looking fresh and alive, so maybe getting a dog was not such a great idea.
We saw one determined jogger, frowning from the exertion of running up the hills along the path, where the lights were just starting to come on. Probably I should jog. If I had to stay too long in the same house with my mother and her endless supplies of cookies, I’d need more exercise. Cookies. Why had I not brought cookies? Why should Lou be the only one who got a little snack? If he even showed.
After what seemed to be forever, we heard a rustling in the tree above us. I looked up, trying to make something out. There was more rustling. Something was there. Something was moving down the tree! It looked like a massive reddish-colored cat. I looked closely. I’d seen that face a million times through the bars of a cage. I’d seen it on my favorite coffee mug and my second favorite t-shirt. We’d found him. It was Lou!
Celeste’s head popped out, then Marge’s. Lou moved toward the pickles. It worked! Our pickle-plan worked!
“I say we pick him up,” Marge said. She tiptoed a little closer.
“No way, Marge.” I whispered.
“Marge, take a step back from the panda,” Celeste said. It was halfway between an order and a plea.
We all moved toward him slowly. I thought about calling someone. The chief of police? Animal control?
Lou sniffed hungrily at the pickles as if he didn’t notice us or didn’t care that we were there. After all, this bear was used to people. He looked kind of pleased. He started to nibble at the pickles and seemed to enjoy them. Hmm, that was a funny looking pickle. Wait…what the…?
“What is that he’s nibbling on?” I asked.
“It’s the pickles, hon. You brought them, remember?” Marge said.
“No, he has something else there.”
We moved a little closer to take a look. Lou had a pickle in his mouth that definitely did not look like a pickle. Was it…could it be? I stared wide-eyed.
It was. It was a finger.
Chapter Four
Celeste peered down at the panda. “Don’t tell me that’s a…” She put both hands on her hips. “Okay, girls, stand back,” she barked. “That’s surely not a pickle.”
“Just gross! Lou has someone’s finger!” I said. I couldn’t bear to look. Suddenly, it didn’t seem like the smartest thing to be out there in the dark. Would Lou really hurt us? Or was someone lurking close by who was capable of butchering another human being?
“No way. That’s just silly.” Marge grabbed her binoculars to get a better look. Then she did a little shuffle step as if she’d seen a mouse. “Ewww!”
Lou startled at the shrieking, then he calmly put down the finger to nibble on a pickle.
“Put those down right now,” I said to Marge. “The binoculars just make it worse.” Why take something ghastly and make it ten times bigger?
“Right.” Marge closed her eyes and took a breath. Then she leapt into ninja mode, grabbing her “persuader” from her purse.
I gasped. She was aiming at the finger, not the bear. But the bear was pretty close to the place the bullet might well land.
“Hold your horses, cowgirl.” Celeste put up a hand. “A finger by itself won’t jump up and grab you. Not unless it’s attached to a hand that’s attached to an arm that’s attached to a shoulder, that’s…”
“Okay!” I yelled, freaked out. “Celeste, we understand! Stop reciting body parts. And Marge, you need to calm down.” Ha. Like I was the one to talk. “Celeste is right. No way can a finger get you. Unless you’re in a horror movie. But still, just absolutely ewww!” I shuddered at the thought of the bloody, hairy thing that should be on someone’s hand, not laying in the dirt.
Marge put the gun away. “Sorry.” She stared down at the finger and scrunched her nose up in disgust. “I was just startled; that’s all. No persuader needed.”
I made myself take a tiny peek. I was, after all, an investigator on the case. I had to act official! But what I wanted to do for real? Was to sink down into the soft grass and burst into tears. The finger had bits of dried blood on it, and it just looked so very sad and helpless without its hand and arm. A finger without a person, that’s not how things should work.
Then I thought of something.
“Um, girls?” I made it a point to keep a close eye on the panda. “Do you think that maybe we should concentrate on Lou first and then figure out the finger thing?”
I didn’t want to let him get away and lose the very first subject we’d ever apprehended in our new official role. The bear might take off any second; the finger would…it would just lay there on the ground. Unlike the little panda, it wasn’t about to flee.
The job suddenly felt real. We needed to take action. This was disgusting – and exciting in a very weird way. We had (almost) caught a panda! And a bonus finger! Now…what to do with them?
Lou munched on some pickles, stopping to look up and stare at us. Then he picked up the finger with his teeth. I put my hand over my mouth and tried not to be sick. Perhaps my stomach was too weak to do this kind of work. But Celeste was made of tougher stuff. She calmly extracted the finger, very gentle, from Lou’s mouth.
“Well, at least if we lose the panda, he won’t get away with this,” she said, holding the finger in the air.
Seemingly happy to share his finger, Lou went back to eating pickles as if he were at some weird buffet in a lovely park where leaves and pickles and fingers were all served up at once. Just a normal night out in the woods when one escapes the zoo.
“So, what do I do with this while we catch the bear?” Holding the finger at a distance, Celeste looked around for a place to tuck it away, out of the reach of Lou. But we had a problem. When your culprit loves to climb trees, not much is out of reach.
Celeste glanced at Marge’s floral purse.
“Oh, no you don’t,” Marge said. “That’s a name-brand purse right there with an adjustable strap and a vintage pattern too.” It looked like the kind of purse that had lots of pockets. A pocket for your phone, a nice hook for your keys. But probably no stray pouch in case you found a bloody finger. Okay, this was disgusting.
“Charlie, you should grab the panda,” Celeste said, taking charge.
“Me? Why me? I’ve already had…an unfortunate encounter wit
h an animal today.”
“But he looks so sweet,” Marge cooed. “Don’t you want to pick him up?”
He did look soft and cuddly. But I imagined that the owner of the finger wouldn’t call him sweet. If it was Lou who’d done it, I might have to throw away my beloved panda shirt when this case was through. Lou might no longer be my favorite animal from the zoo once I got to know him better.
“You pick him up!” I said to Marge.
“Not Marge; she can’t do it,” Celeste said in a firm voice. “With the way she coos at animals and babies, he’ll take off for sure.”
I guessed she had a point.
Marge pouted. “I could sing him a little song.” She began to make a noise that was more of a high-pitched whine, really, than a melody.
“No!” Celeste and I yelled at the same time.
I studied the panda, who was now eating the last pickle from the bowl. “I think Celeste should grab him.” A tiny part of me wanted to be the one to do it; I wanted to be brave. But I mostly just wanted to go home and have this day be over. I wanted to eat a cookie and then to crawl into my bed.
“I’ll be glad to pick him up if one of you would take charge of this.” Celeste held out the finger.
Oh.
Celeste moved closer. “Does anyone have a pocket?”
“Ewww,” Marge and I said in unison as we collided with each other, backing away from Celeste and that awful, awful thing that she had in her hand. How could she even touch it? Suddenly, writing reports at the old precinct in Boston seemed like a cushy job.
That’s how it fell to me to pick up the furry creature who was studying the three of us with wide-eyed curiosity. I had to be the one to grab him. Because between a finger and a panda, I’d take a panda any day.
I approached Lou very slowly with my arms spread out. I picked him up but didn’t know exactly how to hold him. Just as I expected, he put up a fight, brushing his backside against my face once I got my arms around him. And I got a bonus science lesson. Who knew that a bowl of pickles would made a panda fart? This was the worst job ever.
