The Boy Detective Fails (14 page)
The boy detective always returns to the case of the Haunted Candy Factory. He tells the story over and over and over again when he is feeling unsure of himself. Why? Because there is a beginning, a middle, and an end. He is comforted by it—the structure—knowing there is an answer to the strange question being asked.
After doing some smart sleuthing (having inspected the only clue in the case of the Haunted Candy Factory, and having deciphered its strange meaning, which seemed to suggest the villain was a sinister dentist of some kind), Billy had traced the producer of the out-of-date paper the original note was typed on to a supplier, who revealed the buyer, a Dr. John Victor, and his address. The boy detective and his sister Caroline found that it led them to an abandoned dental office, not more than a block away from the cursed candy factory.
Climbing through an open window, the boy detective and Caroline snooped around for a while, staring at the dental instruments and medical gowns overwhelmed with cobwebs.
“There’s his office,” Caroline said.
Immediately inside the office, the two children discovered an important clue.
“Look,” Caroline exclaimed, “the ghost!”
There, lying in Dr. Victor’s desk, was a large white sheet with holes cut out for eyes. Beneath the cloth, a large set of silver keys.
“Some ghost,” the boy detective said. “I told you there was nothing to be scared of.”
With that, the door to the office swung shut. Together, the two children rushed forward, but not in time. They heard the outside bolt being rammed into place.
“We’re prisoners!” Caroline gasped
.
Again and again, the Argo siblings threw their weight against the door. It was hopeless. Breathing hard, Billy and Caroline looked for another means of escape.
“The windows are all boarded shut,” Billy said, blaming himself for not having been on guard.
“What will we do?” Caroline asked.
“I know!” the boy detective exclaimed. “Look!”
There in the ceiling was a large metal air vent.
“We can climb through!” Caroline happily guessed. Climbing on top of an old dental chair, Billy found the pedal that controlled the chair’s height, and held it down with a discarded block of wood. With a
whoosh
, the two siblings rocketed skyward, close enough to slip into the safety of the air vent.
“Follow that light,” Billy whispered. “I think I know exactly where it leads.”
Within the darkness of the silver vent, the siblings crawled and crawled, soon finding their way into a deep, dark cave. At the end of the cave was a pixie-faced young girl, Daisy Hollis, heiress to the Hollis Dry Cleaning fortune. There, monogrammed on her light blue dress, were her initials: DH.
“We’ve been looking for you for sometime,” Caroline said. “Everyone has practically given up—”
Wait a minute, no
—
that isn’t right at all. Daisy Hollis is not part of this story.
The boy detective, on the bus, pinches himself, staring at the scars on his wrist.
Daisy Hollis? No, that’s a mistake. That’s not the case you’re remembering.
Here’s how it goes:
With a
whoosh
, the two siblings rocketed skyward, close enough to slip into the safety of the air vent.
“Follow that light,” Billy whispered. “I think I know exactly where it leads.”
It is not so very strange: The boy detective is going to the movies on his own. He does not want to ask any other resident to accompany him because his favorite film is playing. He does not know what the film is, but decides whatever it is after tonight—his first film alone—it will be his favorite.
As Billy’s ticket is being torn, he looks up and notices the usher smoking two cigarettes at the same time. The tall, lanky fellow in the red vest and tiny red hat is none other than Frank Hartly, a fellow former child detective.
Together, the Hartly Boys—Frank and his younger brother Joe—solved many mysteries in the nearby town of Bayville, until they discovered that their father, also a professional detective, was leading a very well-organized counterfeiting ring. With their father’s arrest and subsequent incarceration, the Hartly brothers forever turned away from detective work and private investigation. Billy had not heard from or seen them since, thinking they too had wanted to disappear into the quiet comfort of some semblance of normalcy.
Billy blinks, staring at the young man’s face. The rugged chin and unruly head of blond hair, the chiseled cheekbones and determined eyebrows make it quite clear: This is Frank Hartly, one-half of the best boy detective team on earth, now just a clerk at a movie theater.
“Frank,” the boy detective whispers. “Frank Hartly?”
“Yeah,” he says with a nod, ashing on the floor, trying to remember Billy’s face. His eyes squint and strain as he works to picture who Billy might be. “Who’s asking?”
“It’s Billy Argo. I knew you when we were younger.”
“Billy Argo! I thought you were dead, man. Jesus.”
“I was just out of town for a long time,” Billy lies.
“I thought you had OD’d or something. Hey, did you hear about Violet Dew?”
“Yes.”
“She’s divorced now. It’s terrible. How are you? I mean I had heard … Well, forget it.”
“No, go on,” Billy says.
“I heard your sister committed suicide and you shot yourself.”
“No,” Billy says, “none of that is true.”
“Well, I’m happy to hear it—hey, you know who’d get a kick out of this? My brother Joe,” Frank says, grabbing his walkie-talkie. He begins shouting into the two-way. “Joe, come over to the ticket booth, you’re never gonna believe who’s here!”
“You still work with your brother?”
“Yeah, we were lucky to find this place. Most jobs, they don’t want to hire two brothers together. But we’ve been here about two years. Joe is assistant manager. He was always the charming one.”
“So do you like this job?” Billy asks.
“It pays the bills and provides for the pills,” Frank whispers, taking a long drag. “Seriously, do you know any doctors who write fake scrips? I have a Demerol habit that cannot be fixed.”
“What happened?”
“I took a bad fall at the Old Mill—on a case, you know—my leg got caught in a mill wheel, slip, fall, crush. We solved the case, but the damn thing never healed.”
“I am on four different medications at the moment,” Billy confides.
“Painkillers?”
“Antidepression and antianxiety. If I take too many, I fall down.”
“Do you have any on you?” Frank Hartly asks.
“No,” Billy lies.
“Billy Argo!” Joe Hartly shouts, suddenly appearing. “Man, I was such a huge fan of yours when I was a kid,” he says, shaking Billy’s hand. “The Case of the Haunted Candy Factory. That’s solid gold.”
“It’s good to see you too, Joe,” Billy says.
“Well, what have you been up to?” Joe asks.
“Working.”
“Oh, like on a case?”
“No, just working like you: at a job.”
“Well, this job is bullshit. We were security guards at the mall here for a while,” Joe says, “but they said we were way too ambitious.”
“Joe shot a shoplifter in the leg. Shooting people is frowned upon,” Frank chimes in.
“We weren’t even supposed to carry guns.”
“That’s too bad,” the boy detective says with a frown. “It’s good that you have each other still, though.”
“Yes, yes, it is,” Frank Hartly agrees.
“Well, I hope you enjoy the movie,” Joe Hartly says. “It’s good.”
“Yeah, maybe afterwards we can meet up and talk for a while,” Frank adds. “We have, well, a kind of informal group that gets together—nothing serious, just some people who sit around and talk, mostly former detectives, you know. We discuss old cases and stuff. If you ever want to come, let me give you my number.” He writes it on the back of the ticket stub and hands it to Billy.
“I’ll give you a call,” the boy detective whispers, and with that lie a silent alarm goes off in his heart.
That evening, lonesome, the boy detective is lying in bed counting snowflakes. He has counted as many as a thousand. He stands suddenly, awakened by some commotion outside, and looks out of the small barred window of his room. He notices the Mumford children moving in the dark, long after they should be in bed asleep. Puffy, in her purple and white coat, Effie Mumford is crouching on their front lawn beside what appears to be a large silver rocket, its nose pointed skyward. In an instant, the girl flips some silver switch and the sleek-looking missile begins vibrating, small puffs of smoke burning from its engines.
Billy places his face against the glass, holding the bars and watching as the children clap and holler, backing away slowly from the rocket as it begins to twitch and hover. Unable to stop himself, like a magnet to strange behaviors and intrigue, the boy detective begins taking notes in his small notepad:
—1:03am: Subject: Effie Mumford, female, age eleven, blond, in a white and purple winter jacket. Testing a new rocket perhaps?
—1:07am: Subject slips, falls on her backside, looks around to see if anyone has noticed. Her brother, Gus Mumford, age nine, frowns; subject pulls herself to her feet and continues watching.
—1:10am: The rocket begins to very slowly lift off from the ground.
—1:11am: Subject takes a bow, clapping for herself, thanks imaginary audience.
—1:12am: The rocket lifts off suddenly, turns hard, and crashes into the maple hanging over the subjects’ front yard. The rocket explodes while the subject and her brother run and hide beneath their front porch. The front lawn has begun to burn. Also, a small bush goes up in flames.
—1:13am: Mrs. Mumford hurries onto front porch and begins shouting.
—1:15am: Mrs. Mumford puts out the fire on the front lawn, extinguishes the burning hedge, and shouts until the Mumford children disappear inside.
—1:16am: The rocket, lying inert on the front lawn, explodes. In a report of small silvery blasts, the word “HELLO” is spelled out in glowing sparkles that soon die.
At work, the boy detective is busy at his desk, pretending to talk on the left-handed telephone, when a skinny, sad-eyed young man approaches and stands there staring. The young man is nervous; he looks around and very quietly leans beside Billy and whispers: “Are you the detective?”
Billy looks up. The young man’s face is that of an eager, timid boy, with a pointed chin, bright eyes, and extremely narrow cheekbones. Billy leans close to answer, smiling.
“Yes. I am the detective.”
“My name is Eric Quimby.”
“Yes?”
“I work in the ladies’ wigs division. Please … I need your help.”
“Yes?”
“I would appreciate your candor regarding this matter.”
“Of course.”
“I believe I am in danger.”
“Danger?”
“Yes. Take a look at this.” The young man lifts his left leg and plants it on the corner of Billy’s desk. Slowly, he raises his pant leg and reveals that below there is nothing left: no flesh, no bone, no skin, only empty space, the sock and shoe somehow mysteriously staying in place.
“I am afraid this may be a medical condition,” Billy whispers, trembling slightly.
“No, no, I’m sure it’s something more sinister.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Look here, I received this,” the young man says, and hurriedly removes a small white card from his suit coat pocket, handing it to Billy.
Billy stares down and reads:
MARKED BY THE ARROW: YOU.
“Where did you find this?” he asks.
“I don’t know. It just appeared in my back pocket.”
“It is very strange.”
“Yesterday it was my upper leg. Then the knee. Then the ankle. Today the whole foot. I have no feeling down there. It’s as if it was never there. I’m very concerned about it.”
“As you should be.”
“A strange woman in a mask put the card in my pants pocket. I was on the bus and she approached me and a few moments later it was there.”
“She wore a mask?”
“Yes. Black, like you wear to a masquerade. And she was wearing long black gloves. It was frightening.”
“I see.”
“Perhaps it was foolish to mention it to you,” the young man whispers, and glances about the office quickly. “But I’m afraid tomorrow I’ll wake up and there’ll be nothing left.”
“I understand. It is very serious.”
“Maybe I should not have bothered you,” the young man whispers. “No, no, I don’t think we should have spoken.” He then hurries away, disappearing behind a row of cubicles in the back of the office. The boy detective nods carefully and returns to his calls, frowning at the spot where the young man’s shoe has left a strange mark on a stack of mimeographs.
“I would like a wig—a blond wig, if you have one—right away.”
“We have over thirty styles and colors,” Billy reports sadly.
“I need a wig that’s long, so people don’t recognize me. Do you have something like that? For people when they want to hide?”
“Perhaps it might be easier to choose if I send you a catalog.”
“No, no, I need one as soon as possible. Today, if I can.”
“I see.”
“Which one do you recommend?”
“The Young Starlet is very popular.”
“I want something very plain. Very plain.”
“Perhaps the Nordic Princess model.”
The line goes quiet for a moment. Billy can hear the woman sitting there, breathing.
“I’m waiting for a taxi. I’m moving out today. I need it very soon.”
“Well, perhaps I might call you at some other time …”
“I’m in this apartment all alone right now. Please don’t hang up on me.”
“OK.”
“My roommate thinks I should call the police. I don’t want the police involved.”
“Perhaps I should call back—”
“I was kidnapped. They took me to a factory. Then they let me go. That was three days ago. I can’t stay here. I can’t go anywhere. I don’t want to be alone.”
“I’m … so … I …”
“I should have listened to my parents. I’m never coming back to this town again.”
Billy hangs up the telephone, finds a Seroquel, and pops it into his mouth.