Wilma Tenderfoot and the Case of the Frozen Hearts (9 page)

“No, Tully! The answer is no!” screamed Barbu. “Barbu D'Anvers! The evilest, foulest, baddest genius that this island has ever seen! To conclude, me!” Tully rubbed the bump that was popping up above his left ear. “Sometimes,” Barbu sighed, throwing himself on a purple chaise longue and lifting a hand to his forehead, “it's a terrible burden being quite so very brilliant. In fact, it's exhausting.”

“Can I get you a small drink, Mr. Barbu?” asked Tully, wondering if that's what he should do in the circumstances.

“A small drink?” spat Barbu, sitting bolt upright. “A SMALL drink? Are you saying I'm short?”

“No, Mr. Barbu.” The stupid sidekick gulped. “You? Short? Ha ha ha ha ha! As if!”

“Hmmm,” said Barbu, his eyes narrowed, “that's all right then. Now read back the evil plan that I have dictated.”

Tully stuck his corncob cigar in the side of his mouth and took out a battered notepad. Clearing his throat a little, he began to read.

“I don't want them for medicinal reasons,” snarled Barbu, shooting Tully a glare. “I just like them. Because they are fashionable.”

“Yes, Mr. Barbu,” said Tully, feeling a little uncomfortable. “That's the end of the brilliant evil plan.”

Barbu was motivated by one thing: greed. In all his years as a devoted member of the Criminal Element fraternity, Barbu had made it his mission to accumulate as much wealth as he could so that one day he could achieve his ultimate goal—to purchase and control the whole of Cooper Island. How he had managed to evade capture and remain at large might shock the more lawabiding of you, but Barbu was so sneaky and devious that he was always able to pin the blame on a lesser criminal than himself and skip away as free as a bird. For Theodore P. Goodman and the rest of the good citizens of Cooper, this was intensely annoying. But there it was. Barbu was the thorn in Cooper's side. And he had no intention of stopping.

“Oh!” cried Barbu, leaping off the chaise longue. “I haven't been this excited since I embezzled the Cooper Frail-Old-Lady Fund! I stole all that money! Right from under Theodore P. Goodman's stupid nose! And there was nothing he could do about it! I am so very brilliant and so very evil! Bask in my glory, Tully. Go on. Bask in it!”

“Yes, sir,” said Tully, walking forward until he was towering over his tiny master.

“No, that's too close,” said Barbu, staring up the nostrils of Tully's broken nose. “Bask a little farther off. So, Tully,” declared Barbu as the henchman took a few steps back, “we must turn our minds to Item Number One on the Brilliant Evil Plan agenda. Namely—find out who stole the Katzin Stone.” He closed his eyes and thought for a long moment.

Tully stood quietly by, wondering if he was still meant to be basking. “Interesting!” declared Barbu, opening his eyes again. “I have developed a theorem and also a stratagem. Quickly! To the blackboard!” Barbu scampered across the room to a large blackboard. Taking up a piece of chalk, he began to write.

 

A MAN DISCOVERS THE GREATEST JEWEL EVER FOUND. THE MAN IS KILLED. WHY IS THE MAN KILLED? TO GET HIM OUT OF THE WAY. IT'S STANDARD EVIL PROCEDURE. BUT WHO IS THIS KILLER? IT WASN'T ME.

 

Barbu underlined his point with a flourish. “I can therefore, and with some authority, eliminate myself from the list of suspects. Cross me off the list, Tully.”

Tully turned to a blank page of his notepad and made an elaborate scribble.

“But the question is,” added Barbu, pacing and thinking, “what did the killer-thief do next? Pass me yesterday's edition of the
Early Worm,
will you?” Tully picked up the island's most popular morning newspaper and handed it to his master. “‘Furor as Fabulous New Fish Freezer Opened on Farside Miles from the Docks'—no, that's not it. ‘Cooper's Corn Crumble Grumble Causes Rumbles'—it's not that either ... Ah, here it is, ‘Katzin Stone Stealing Scandal' ... blah blah blah . . . ‘Museum authorities have brought in Cooper's greatest living detective, Theodore P. Goodman . . . ' my old nemesis, makes things spicy, never mind that—he's still the most boring man I know ... ‘Investigations into the theft have revealed that all is not as it seemed. A source close to the detective said, “Somehow, someone replaced the real Katzin Stone with a fake that melted on the way to the museum. My dog helped me find a bit of it. But I almost died. It was brilliant . . . ” ' Interesting . . . fetch me the
D.I.C.E.,
will you, Tully? I want to check out some of our forger friends.”

The
D.I.C.E.,
of course, was the
Directory of the Island's Criminal Elements,
a sort of bad version of the telephone book, where anyone employed in skulduggery and wrongdoing was listed. Sadly, it was quite a large book. Tully dropped it on the table with a thump.

“Now then,” said Barbu D'Anvers, picking up the bloodred book and flicking through it. “F for Forgers. Let's have a look. F, F, F! False Document Makers . . . Fernickety Safe Pickers . . . Forgers! Now then, let's see—Faked Fingers and Toes, Faked Implants—we can make your legs bigger by . . . goodness. That much? Hmmm. I'll just make a note of that number. Not for myself, you understand. I've got a . . . friend. Tiny legs. I'm not short.”

Tully stared dead ahead and said nothing.

“Faked Fruit, Faked Organisms, Faked Stones! Aha!” cried Barbu, tapping at the page in triumph. “We have it, Tully. Now then, let's see who's listed . . . Harwood Birch? Oh dear, no, this
D.I.C.E.
isn't quite up to date.”

“How do you know, Mr. Barbu?” asked Tully, looking puzzled.

“Because I killed Harwood Birch six months ago. Covered him in jam and dropped him into a hornet's nest.”

“Oooh, that's not nice,” said Tully, sucking in his breath.

“No,” agreed Barbu, “I suppose it's what you would call a sticky end. Ha ha ha ha! Do you get it? Sticky end?” But Tully didn't get it, because your standard henchman doesn't possess the DNA strand that gives people a sense of humor so he just stood very still and hoped that his tiny master wouldn't notice.

“Who's next? Visser Haanstra. Hmmm. I remember him. Used him on a job about five years ago. Looks promising. We must get on to this, Tully. At once. Do you understand?” shouted Barbu, throwing the
D.I.C.E.
at him for good measure.

Tully nodded and rubbed his head for the second time that day. Sometimes being an evil sidekick was a very thankless task.

M
rs. Speckle had run out of corn crumbles. If Mrs. Speckle had been an Emergency Coordination Officer at a press conference she would have put a picture of an empty plate on an overhead projector, pointed at it with a stick, and described the situation as “critical.” But she wasn't. All the same, the fact she had run out of Theodore P. Goodman's favorite biscuits with moments to go before his morning pot of peppermint tea was like discovering you're halfway up Everest without socks on.

Mrs. Speckle looked at her knitted watch. By her reckoning she had fifteen minutes and thirty-four seconds before peppermint tea time. It was going to be tight. To make matters worse, Mr. Hankley, the island's finest maker of cakes and sweet treats, was attending a conference on puff pastry, so the bakery was closed. Reluctantly, Mrs. Speckle accepted that if her employer was to have his biscuits, then there was only one thing to be done.

 

Wilma had not slept well. The mattress she and Pickle were forced to curl up on was immediately below a large and rusty pipe that had gurgled and moaned all night. In any case, Wilma was too excited to sleep. The events of the previous day were so overwhelming she had spent the night buzzing with ideas about stolen stones, suspects, and sugar. Somehow she had to become Theodore P. Goodman's apprentice.

Mrs. Waldock had ordered liver-porridge-potato cakes for her mid-morning snack, and as Wilma stood on a stool stirring gristly lumps of liver into bubbling oats and crushed potatoes she came up with an idea. “Perhaps,” she said, turning to look at Pickle, who was staring up at the saucepan and drooling, “if I could solve this Katzin case mostly on my own, perhaps Mr. Goodman would quite like me to be his apprentice? What do you think about that? Then one day he can help me to deduction my very own family history . . .”

Pickle said nothing. He was too fascinated by the large lump of liver dangling dangerously from the end of Wilma's wooden spoon, but sadly, just as it was about to drip to the floor, the front-door knocker rapped three times. Wilma dropped the spoon back into the saucepan and jumped down to answer it.

“Hmph,” said Mrs. Speckle, fidgeting in her knitted Wellingtons as Wilma appeared. “Yes, well. The thing is I've run out of corn crumbles. And it's Mr. Goodman's eleven o' clock tea. And I wondered if Mrs. Waldock has—”

“Got some to spare?” butted in Wilma, sensing an opportunity. “I'll have to check her biscuit barrel. And then I'll bring them over. Won't be long.” And with that she slammed the door in Mrs. Speckle's face.

“Quick, Pickle,” said Wilma, running back to the kitchen and tipping the sloppy liver-porridge-potato cakes into a bowl. “Take this to Mrs. Waldock and I'll find the corn crumbles.”

Putting the rim of the bowl in Pickle's mouth, Wilma turned on her heels and ran to Mrs. Waldock's pantry. It was a small, dusty room with floor-to-ceiling shelves on every wall. The higher ones were filled with large jars of pickled tongues and pig's trotters in syrup that had sat for so long they were almost black with grime. Lower down there were cans of sheep's eyes and bird claws, bags of dried grasshoppers and boxes of ants dipped in chocolate. In the far corner of the pantry there was a large, wooden barrel with the word
Biskits
carved into its exterior. Wilma pushed the heavy lid aside and peered in. At first, she thought it was empty, but pushing back the lid a little farther she could see that right down at the bottom there was one corn crumble left.

Mrs. Speckle was standing looking at her tea tray. The teapot was steaming, but the empty plate was staring back at her. This was a bad business. She looked again at her knitted watch. Three seconds to peppermint tea time, two, one: Just as the second hand hit the teapot on her watch face, in walked Theodore P. Goodman. “Hello, Mrs. Speckle,” said the detective, marching through the kitchen. “I'll take tea in my study, thank you.”

“Right away, Mr. Goodman,” said Mrs. Speckle, picking up the tray. “The thing is—”

“And so will I,” said Wilma, waltzing through after him.

“Hold it right there, young lady!” said Mrs. Speckle, startled.

Wilma turned and held up the corn crumble. “It's fine, Mrs. Speckle. I come with a biscuit. Thank you.”

“Corn crumble?” asked Theodore, mustache twitching. “Although I'm sure Mrs. Speckle has plenty. All the same, a corn crumble is a corn crumble.”

“Never go detecting on an empty stomach, eh, Mr. Goodman?” Wilma trilled. “Top tip number ten, Mrs. Speckle,” she added.

“Well, I never,” said Mrs. Speckle giving a little huff to register her disapproval. But Wilma had gotten her out of a potentially awkward biscuitbased disaster and for that, reluctantly, she was grateful.

 

Walking into Theodore P. Goodman's study was like Christmas squared. There were too many things for Wilma to look at and she was so overexcited that all she could do was twirl on the spot to take it all in. “Ooooh,” she said, coming to a sudden stop. “That made me feel a bit sick. Like when Michael Lamb—he was at the Institute and smelled of sprouts—spun me around by my arms when I was six. I threw up on his foot.”

“Very nice, I' m sure,” said Mrs. Speckle, frowning as she watched the corn crumble in Wilma's hand. “I'll just take that biscuit, shall I?” she added, giving the girl a stern look.

But Wilma was far too distracted to notice and bounced over to a wall with diagrams, pictures, and pins all over it. “What's this?” she asked, waving the precious corn crumble in its direction.

“That,” said the detective, standing up and reaching for the biscuit, “is my Clue Board. Crimes are like puzzles. Each clue, on its own, might reveal the answer, but a lot of clues can help you piece the problem together. So this Clue Board helps when it comes to mysteries so deep they're quite hard to fathom.”