Authors: Mary Elise Monsell
A Fish Named Yum (4 page)
“You could have tasted it in the diner, maybe it's just some smooshed chocolate chips,” suggested Maggie.
“Not possible,” said Mr. Pin. “This is not Luigi's chocolate. I am certain of that. It is quite tasty, but not as good as Luigi's.”
“It's amazing,” said Maggie. “Everything's chocolate. Chocolate dinosaur eggs. Chocolate pudding. Chocolate pigeons. Chocolate ice cream. And then there was the time we went to bakeries, dozens of them, all over Chicago to sample chocolate.”
“Crimes of chocolate,” said Mr. Pin softly, “are what I know best.” He started to pace back and forth, musing about the small sample of chocolate still clinging to his wing.
Somewhere he had tasted this chocolate before. But where? It was a little late to visit bakeries. And what would that prove? Mr. Pin remembered his stomachache after solving the Case of the Picasso Thief. Too much chocolate seemed to be a hazard of the business.
There was another thing to keep in mind: the short, shadowy figure near the diner. He didn't want to admit it, but the evidence was there. Could it really be Gargoyle? That spy had slipped through his wings before. Would he do it again? He had been after a government codebook then. That's all Mr. Pin knew. What mission might he be on now? And why ⦠would he steal a fish named Yum? Some gargoyles looked like fish. Was there a connection?
Some cases, thought Mr. Pin, were slippery indeed.
4
It had been almost twenty-four hours since Yum was fishnapped from the diner. Mr. Pin was worried. How long could his fish go without chocolate chips? Mr. Pin even had trouble eating his caramel fudge pancakes, one of Sally's specialties.
The diner had cleared out early. It was still snowing and a lot of people just stayed home. Maggie's school was closed so Mr. Pin had help thinking about Yum.
Brrrring!
It was a cold sound in the warm diner coming from the phone booth in the corner. Mr. Pin picked up the phone as he wedged himself into the tiny booth.
“I got your fish,” said a raspy voice. A tank gurgled in the background. Mr. Pin felt a lump in his throat.
“Who are you?” he asked with authority. He motioned for Maggie to come over and listen.
“Never mind that,” growled the voice.
“Why do you want our fish?” asked Mr. Pin.
“You're the detective. Figure it out.
Bing
. Time's up. I'll make it easy for you. I want ransom.”
“Ransom?” asked Mr. Pin startled. “We are hardly in a position to pay anything. None of us has any money.”
“Too bad,” snarled the fishnapper. “I want something better. You have a secret recipe that I need.”
“Which one is that?” asked Mr. Pin.
“Okay. Here it is, penguin. I want a batch of Sally's chocolate chip cookies along with her recipe. And I want them by midnight tonight or your fish sizzles. Ha!”
Click
.
What cruelty. What sinister, twisted criminal mind could put the life of an innocent fish in jeopardy.
“What did he want?” asked Maggie.
“It's worse than I thought,” said Mr. Pin. “He wants Sally's chocolate chip cookies and her recipe or Yum will be a fish fry. And it's not even Friday.”
“That's terrible,” said Maggie.
“The fishnapper might be Gargoyle.”
“How do you know?” asked Maggie.
“He's short,” said Mr. Pin. “He probably likes chocolate, judging from the sample I found in the diner. He seems to like fish that look like gargoyles. And, of course, he'd steal a recipe that could make him millions for his spy operation.”
“Oh, no,” said Maggie. “We have to act fast.”
“Right,” said Mr. Pin.
“So how do we find Gargoyle?” asked Maggie.
“I don't know,” said Mr. Pin. “But I'm beginning to get an idea.”
5
The snow was getting much worse. It was piled up so high that customers couldn't see out the diner's windows. Every now and then, Mr. Pin went out to clear a path in the snow to the door. Some of the truckers were snowed in on Monroe and just stayed in the diner all day. It looked like they might even spend the night in sleeping bags. No one was going anywhere.
Except for Mr. Pin. He suddenly remembered where he had tasted that chocolate before.
“We need to get to Ohio Street,” he announced.
“Have you thought about using the phone,” drawled Sally, her hands on her hips. “It took you hours to go to Luigi's. Ohio is much farther.”
“I have to visit a bakery.”
“I think you've been working too hard,” said Sally.
Maggie was worried. This had happened before. She wasn't sure Mr. Pin could stop with just one bakery.
Just then two frozen cross-country skiers stopped in for hot chocolate. Mr. Pin talked with them for a moment then turned to Maggie.
“You're on the ski team, aren't you?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then perhaps you can help me put on these skis.”
Maggie had seen stranger things since she had known Mr. Pin, but not too many. It wasn't easy fitting the bindings around Mr. Pin's webbed feet. She suggested boots, but he didn't react well to the idea. And she knew it was going to look a little strange to anyone else who might see themâa penguin and a red-haired girlâcross-country skiing down Michigan Avenue. It seemed like a lot of work just to visit a bakery.
But Mr. Pin had other things on his mind and not all of them involved chocolate.
Once outdoors, the two stayed aloft on the snow and made record time to the north end of the city. Few people were out except someone making a snowman and a few other skiers taking advantage of the snowed-in city. When Mr. Pin and Maggie turned down Ohio Street, they skied alone between mountainous peaks of snow. Just ahead, behind Chicago's snowy version of Pikes Peak, was a bakery.
“I remember this place,” said Maggie. “But what could it possibly have to do with ⦔
“Flour,” said Mr. Pin.
“Flour?” asked Maggie.
“The flour I found on the diner floor.”
“But how do you know it belongs to this bakery?” asked Maggie, releasing her bindings then helping Mr. Pin with his.
“Do you remember another case where a famous painting was stolen?”
“The Picasso,” said Maggie.
“Exactly. Anyway, the chocolate I found in the diner is the same chocolate the Picasso thief used in his bakery.”
“I remember,” said Maggie. “It was an unusual case.”
“Right. But we have other fish to fry and I don't mean Yum.”
“You mean Gargoyle?”
Mr. Pin didn't answer. He was already heading into the bakery dragging one pair of skis behind him. Maggie wasn't sure what he was going to do with the skis in the bakery, but she wanted to find out. She also wanted to finally meet Gargoyle, so she followed the detective inside.
The front room was empty. They could hear mixers in the back, along with what sounded like a gurgling tank. Maggie looked with concern at Mr. Pin who crept toward the kitchen behind the counter.
“You stay here,” he ordered.
Maggie muttered something under her breath that sounded a lot like “right,” then inched her way toward the kitchen.
Just before reaching the open doorway, Mr. Pin pulled an extralarge wedding cake out of a cooler. He placed it directly in front of the doorway then stepped around it into the windowless kitchen.
“I want my fish!” demanded Mr. Pin.
“You're not Gargoyle,” said Maggie to a startled baker. He looked up from a cake he was decorating.
“A red herring,” said Mr. Pin to Maggie.
Quickly, Mr. Pin turned out the lights. The baker made a dash for the front door, but Mr. Pin was ready. A carefully placed ski tripped the baker who plunged headfirst into one of his own cakes.
Mr. Pin turned the lights back on, dipped his wing into some of the chocolate from the cake, and announced:
“As I suspected. This is the same chocolate I found in the diner. And you are none other than the Picasso thief. You must be out on parole. I see you have returned to a life of crime. Too bad, your cake is delicious.”
“My cookies were going to be famous too,” said the thief in the cake. “I needed that recipe to start a cookie business. The first time I tried those cookies, I knew I could be rich.”
“Sally's cookies,” said Mr. Pin. “Not yours.”
Meanwhile, Maggie had found a phone and was calling the police who promised to get there by snowmobile. Could they hold the fishnapper until then?
“No problem,” she said. “Mr. Pin's on the cake ⦠on the case. I mean he's stuck in a cake ⦠the thief, that is.”
While Maggie was on the phone, Mr. Pin found a large tank containing several fish. It did not appear that the fishnapper was going to fry his fish after all. He liked fish. There was only one problem. All of the fish looked alike. Could one of them be Yum?
Ever ready for emergencies, Mr. Pin pulled a small paper bag out of the backpack he had worn. He carefully dropped a few chips into the tank. All of the fish ignored the chocolate. All but one. Familiar fins rose slowly, examined the chips, then ate hungrily. Yum had been found!
Acknowledgments
With fond wishes to the very best of critics:
Taylor Shire. You are a special young lady.
With much appreciation from Mr. Pin to
John LaPlante, who loves Chicago and works
well with chocolate. Not easy to find that
kind of talent.
Many thanks to Mrs. Mandell's 1993
fifth-grade class.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Originally published by Atheneum.
Copyright © 1994, 2007 by Mary Elise Monsell
Illustrations copyright © 1994, 2007 by Eileen Christelow
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2958-2
Distributed in 2016 by Open Road Distribution
180 Maiden Lane
New York, NY 10038
