The Fantastic Family Whipple (32 page)

“Look, Stuart, we’ve been over this before; undercover shoe cobbling is a benevolent service to the community!”

At that moment, another car screeched onto the lot. Before it had even reached a complete stop, the rear door opened, and a man in a white bow tie and black overcoat leapt out. Still clutching a glistening golden trophy in the shape of an oversized magnifying glass, Inspector Smudge sprang forward.

“Where are they?!” demanded the inspector in the split second before he noticed the large giant and tiny dwarf standing before him in handcuffs. “Ah, what do we have here?” he smirked, stepping toward them in taunting triumph.

“Um, sir,” D.S. Greenley muttered through his teeth, putting a hand on Smudge’s shoulder and delicately pulling him aside, “I’m afraid these are not our suspects. Apparently, they are the co-presidents of the Global Guild of Dwarves and Giants, which has recently relocated its offices to this ramshackle warehouse. It seems the boy and his friend saw them at the Unsafe Sports Showdown today after another possible sabotage attempt, and assumed they were the same men he’d seen at the party.”

The smugness in the inspector’s voice promptly shifted
to seething anger. “Do you mean to tell me I rushed out of the Golden Magnifying Glass Awards banquet for nothing? Do you think the Academy of Qualified Award Givers gives out awards willy-nilly?!”

“Of course not, sir.”

“Well, I guess I’ve only got myself to blame for thinking you’d actually made a break in the case. I don’t have to tell you how valuable it would have been to collar a co-conspirator who could testify against Mr. Smith for us, since the man himself is proving so difficult to break. Honestly, after the amount of interrogation he’s been through, you’d think he’d have confessed to the crime by now, or at least given up his accomplices. Very frustrating indeed. Not that any jury will find him innocent—but as an agent of the law, it is my duty to make their job as easy as possible…. Of course, most agents of the law are not constantly hindered by inept assistants—are they, Greenley?”

“No, sir,” said the sergeant, hanging his head in shame.

“All right, Greenley—clean up this mess. I’ll be in the car, imagining I’m still being applauded by powerful men and beautiful women in a seven-star hotel—instead of surrounded by incompetent cops in the bowels of the city…. And as for you, Angus,” Smudge continued, shifting his attention to Arthur, “I’m afraid you’ve got a long, long way to go before any reputable law enforcement agency ever dreams of considering you an honorary detective. You had a promising start, but it seems you’ve outlasted your usefulness to this investigation. I’d have kept to the solo work,
if I were you. Your judgment, it would appear, has been ill affected by the company you keep.” He nodded his nose to Ruby. “Indeed, if I ever catch you conspiring with this girl again, I shall have no choice but to arrest you both for obstruction of justice—a charge of which you will almost certainly be convicted. And good luck ever doing anything in law enforcement with a criminal record to your name. Surely, that’s not the sort of
record
you’re after, is it, boy?”

“No, sir.”

“I thought as much. Now, why don’t we leave it to the professionals from now on—and stay out of their way, so they can get some
real
police work done, hmm?”

Then, with a flurry of overcoat that momentarily smothered Arthur and nearly knocked the boy backward, Inspector Smudge turned and stomped off to the car, slamming the door behind him.

Arthur, finding himself unable to look at Ruby after being so thoroughly and humiliatingly chastised, simply stared at the ground.

Detective Sergeant Greenley recomposed himself with a deep breath, then returned to his detainees—and found that the giant and the dwarf had resumed their discussion on the intricacies of inner-guild politics.

“Ogre!” shouted the dwarf.

“Toad!” bellowed the giant.

“I hate to interrupt,” said D.S. Greenley, “but if you’ll just answer one more question for us, we’ll be able to release you, so you can get back to your meeting.”

“What is it?” the giant barked.

“Do any of your members happen to be employed as clowns?”

“Oh, only about half of them,” snapped the dwarf. “How else do you expect us to find work in such a discriminatory world?!”

“I see,” Greenley sighed, retrieving a set of keys from his pocket.

As the detective proceeded to free the men from their shackles, Arthur felt the full weight of his failed stakeout. He was as far away now from freeing Sammy as he ever had been.

“My apologies for the misunderstanding,” Greenley said earnestly, while the two men grumbled and rubbed their wrists.

Clearly unsatisfied with the sergeant’s apology, the dwarf offered one final diatribe. “You know, when we moved our headquarters to the city, we thought we would finally be able to break free from the blatant sizeism of our previous small-town police force, but it seems we were mistaken. Rest assured, Detective. The union will be conducting a full inquiry into this miscarriage of justice!”

And with that, the co-presidents of the Global Guild of Dwarves & Giants sharply turned their backs and strode into the bizarre boardroom, claiming their positions at the head of the table. As the loading bay door began to close in front of them, Stuart and Brian turned again to face the four policemen and two children, joining their fellow committee
members in what may have been the Largest Synchronized Evil-Eyed Stare Ever Executed.

Amidst the whine of the motorized door, Arthur and Ruby heard the squealing of tires behind them and turned to catch a glimpse of Inspector Smudge’s car as it sped off indignantly down the street, disappearing into the gray light of the city.

When the metal door had finally sealed in its oddly sized occupants, D.S. Greenley broke the clumsy silence. “Well,” he said, struggling to conceal traces of disappointment and disgrace from his otherwise cheerful expression, “looks like this wasn’t our day—eh, Arthur?” Turning to Ruby, he extended his hand and added, “Don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure, miss. Detective Sergeant Greenley.”

“Ruby,” said the girl through chattering teeth, holding up a trembling arm to take the sergeant’s hand.

“Ah, look at you, poor girl!” Greenley declared, his face filling with compassion. “Out in the rain with no coat—you must be freezing.” Removing his trench coat, he promptly draped it around the shivering girl. “Hope this helps, miss. There are blankets in the car as well if you need them. Arthur?”

“Thank you, sir,” replied the boy, only briefly glancing up, “but I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

“All right then,” Greenley concluded, opening the rear door of the car. “I’ll take the pair of you back to the Unsafe Sports Complex. Your parents have no doubt begun to worry.”

As the car wound its way through the dingy streets of the city, Arthur sat silently in the back seat, staring out the window at passing gray buildings. Meanwhile, D.S. Greenley and the officer behind the wheel immersed themselves in a comprehensive discussion of some new model of police truncheon: the JusticeStick 2K-O.

Though Ruby sat a mere two feet away on the other end of the back seat, Arthur couldn’t bear to even look in her direction. After all his talk about gathering clues and doing the “proper detective thing,” his so-called detective work had only managed to harass two innocent men, enrage the World’s Greatest Sleuth, and shame the amiable policeman who had believed in him. What a fool he must have seemed.

Just then, he felt a tug on his shirt. He tried to ignore it, but the first was soon followed by another. Risking a timid glance to his right, Arthur found Ruby looking at him with a strange smirk.

The girl promptly pulled back the right side of her borrowed coat. There, under Ruby’s arm, resting on her soggy pullover, was a golden magnifying-glass-shaped trophy.

“Where—How did you get that?!” the boy whispered in shock.

Ruby leaned in toward him. “Smudge set it down on Greenley’s car while he was lecturing you. Must have been too busy ordering his driver to peel out at us to realize he’d left it behind.”

“You know that’s stealing, don’t you? And from Inspector Hadrian Smudge, no less—I mean, he’s one of the world’s most respected record holders!”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Arthur, but he’s also sort of a swine. And besides, I have every intention of returning it. First thing tomorrow, I’ll have it forwarded straight back to him…by way of Beirut.”

“What?!”

“Serves him right for talking to you that way,” Ruby said matter-of-factly.

Arthur opened his mouth to insist she return the trophy as quickly as possible—but merely sighed instead. As much as he disapproved of Ruby’s revenge plot, he was strangely flattered by it. No one had ever shown so much interest in him that they were willing to break postal regulations just to avenge his honor.

“Look,” he said, after a stretch of silence, “I’m sorry for wasting your time today—and for being such a lousy detective partner.”

Ruby cocked her head in puzzlement. “Are you joking? This has been one of the best days of my life! I mean, today I found my first clue in a criminal investigation, I went on my first stakeout, I got to stay out in the rain without being forced indoors…. And you make a
great
partner. Look at me—I’ve tagged along with you less than a day and I’m already wearing an authentic police trench coat.” At this, she flipped up the coat’s collar, which was so large that it jutted up over the top of her head, causing her to look
simultaneously like a hard-boiled detective and an alien overlord. “Not to mention the developments we’ve made in the case. In just a few hours of working together, we’ve already eliminated two suspects. We can now safely cross Stuart and Brian of the GGDG off our list. So that’s two less people in the world we need to investigate, isn’t it?”

The girl had a point, but Arthur still wasn’t convinced the day had not been a complete waste. “But now that Smudge has taken us off the case, does that even matter anymore?”

“Have you never read a detective novel? This is the part where the renegade detective and his loyal partner are thrown off the case by their domineering superior officer and forced to work outside the system. This is usually when they do their best work, actually. Oh yes, Detective Whipple—our investigation has only just begun.”

The boy was surprised to find a faint smile sneaking into the corners of his mouth. Though he had failed yet another record attempt and lost the mysterious clowns once again, Arthur couldn’t help but feel he had gained something that day as well.

W
hen Mrs. Whipple called him
to the study the morning after the most disappointing Unsafe Sports Showdown in his family’s history, Arthur could have guessed neither the reason for his summons nor how profoundly it would prove to shape his future.

“Ah yes—there you are, dear,” his mother said as he met her outside the study door. “It seems you have a telephone call.”

“It does?” said Arthur. He could scarcely remember the last time anyone had telephoned specifically to speak to him.

He was then struck by a sudden thought.
Could it be Ruby?

After returning from the GGDG to the Unsafe Sports
Complex, Arthur had not seen the girl again for the rest of the evening. It had barely been twelve hours since they had parted—but somehow it seemed to him quite a bit longer.

Mrs. Whipple shrugged. “Try not to be too long now,” she said. “I’m expecting a call from the Culinary Genius Placement Agency. Of course they would choose today not to send the weekly candidate for Sammy’s old position. Just the sort of thing I’d like to be worrying about after a day like yesterday….”

Arthur nodded, smiling with equal parts sympathy and regret, then strode into the study.

Upon approaching the desk at the rear of the room, he picked up the receiver from its resting place and raised it to his ear. “Hello?” he said.

A hushed, distorted voice crackled over the line.

“Is this Arthur Whipple?”

Unless Ruby had contracted a truly horrific throat disease since their last meeting, this was not her.