PART ONE OF A TWO-PART SERIES

The Senior Detective Agency

Wherein a cereal monster influences our brekkie choices

An anthropomorphic cereal box can’t really be a killer. Can it? Created in NightCafe as imagined by Raine Lore.

A phone rang deep within the house. Arthur and I jumped at the sound and paled visibly.

“It’s the red phone, dear,” whispered Arthur. “Will you answer it?”

Bile rose to my throat. “Nobody calls the red phone nowadays!” I retorted.

“Better answer it, Martha. You know it won’t stop ringing. Unless it’s a wrong number,” Arthur added hopefully.

We shuffled zombie-like into the den.

The phone shrilled. My elderly hands visibly shook as I reached for the old-fashioned handpiece. I waited mutely for someone to speak.

“Hello, Martha,” M greeted in his sullen, studied way.

I waited as M blustered on about a new case, the Cereal Killer who had been rampant in our general area for several weeks, knocking off early risers over their brekkies at the first light of dawn. I had heard about it, of course, but never supposed Arthur and I would be drawn into the investigation.

“But…we’re retired! Fifteen years now! Our skills have all but disintegrated…” I protested.

“I’m sorry,” M interrupted. “Cap’n Crunch has been located and has agreed to head up the organisation again. The SDA is reinstated, and as you, Arthur and Crunch are the only ones still upright and breathing, you three are it!”

Not that derelict!” I screeched. “You know we can’t work with him. He’s an idiot! I thought he went rogue…”

M cut me off, explaining that Crunch would be working (and solving) the case in exchange for a pardon for his roguery. His expertise had once been in catching serial killers. M reasoned that Cereal or Serial, however spelled, was much the same thing. He seemed to think that Cap’n Crunch’s ridiculous name somehow bridged the gap.

M was always a sandwich short of a picnic. Nothing had changed!

“Crunch’ll meet you at the old headquarters at 0.600 hours tomorrow. Don’t be late!”

“We don’t get up until 9.00am”, I cried, but the phone had been quietly disconnected, and I was standing, stunned, in what had only this morning been my quiet sanctuary — until the bloody red phone started ringing.

“What?” cried Arthur fearfully.

“You heard, dear. We’ve been recalled.”

“I don’t think my name was actually mentioned,” whimpered Arthur.

“Come along upstairs,” I ordered. “We have to make sure our old uniforms still fit!”

Just after 10.00 am, Arthur and I arrived at the old SDA tin shed where all past cases had been pondered. The shed had been purchased years ago to house a new offshoot of the Australian Agency of Foreign Feral Punishers, still tasked with keeping foreign ferals and their mischief from Aussie shores.

The mandatory retirement age at the AAFFP had been 60, but the Agency was running short of recruits and begrudged retirement to those whose training would be wasted.

That’s when the TOP SECRET SDA was created. We were still in our 50s when aging agents began being sent to Queensland to sit it out on reduced wages in a stinking hot tin shed.

Crunch had previously been sent to Aussie by a sister organisation in the US, to assist with the capture of a feral escapee who had snuck into Australia. At the end of the mission, the American Agency had refused to take him back, and the AAFFP didn’t want him either. We discovered they got rid of him quietly by banishing him to the SDA. Arthur and I wound up at the SDA not long after and were horrified to see Crunch cap’n-ing roughshod over the SDA wrinklies.

There had been some recent gossip that Crunch had found his way back to the old tin shed after the SDA had been disbanded, hiding out there for a while before going off grid.

Cap’n Crunch & Mongrel impatiently waiting — Raine Lore

Crunch was waiting impatiently for us when we arrived. He stood on the overgrown pavement, doodling in a scruffy notebook. I shuddered to see his old, mangy dog, Mongrel, lying asleep in the shade.

“Well, it’s about bloody time!” he exclaimed in his grating drawl.

“We’re retired,” I retorted. “Don’t get up before 9.00!”

Crunch shrugged. “You’re not retired anymore. Hope you’ve got the key, Agent Arthur, I’ve been locked out since dawn!”

Arthur began scrabbling around in his jeans pocket.

“Oh, well,” added Crunch. “At least you’re not as late as Crumpet.”

Arthur’s head snapped up in happy astonishment.

“Well, really, Crunch,” I complained, “must you always be so disrespectful? Which, um, crumpet are you talking about?”

Arthur’s eyes were literally pulsing with anticipation.

“Not what crumpet, you silly woman,” he bellowed as if I was five hundred yards away. His rancid halitosis nearly knocked me off my feet.

“Sheila Crumpet. My new 2IC! I can’t stand her or her dog! She’s loud, uncouth, rambunctious, always laughing. Ugh,”

Arthur recommenced struggling with the rusty lock, shoulders slumped, all crumpet excitement leeching from his body into the dusty ground.

“M didn’t mention a 2IC…”

“I can do what I want,” he snapped, cutting me off.

I was puzzled. “Can I at least ask — if you dislike this woman so much, why hire her as your second in command?”

Crunch had the decency to look slightly embarrassed as he kicked aimlessly at a clump of grass. “She’s the smartest damn tart I ever met!”

“Oh, really, Crunch, you are disgusting,” I muttered, already warming to the unknown and as yet unseen Sheila Crumpet.

“Steady on, Crunch,” added Arthur, squaring up to defend my smartness, “Martha is very smart, too, you know. She’s writing erotica for us old guys these days. Has a helluvu following!”

Crunch threw a contemptuous look at me, then turned to see if Arthur was going to venture into the vile stink that was now emanating from the shed portal.

Fortuitously, a battered ute chose the moment to slide noisily into the footpath; it bumped and screeched to a sudden, jarring stop, with its front passenger wheel making ruts in the dusty edge of what masqueraded as a lawn.

The driver’s door slammed, and the sound of an extraordinary “Cooeeeeeee” reverberated around the neighbourhood. Before the sound had finished bouncing off and shattering window glass for miles around, a skinny, older woman appeared, dressed in ripped jeans and a blue singlet. Grey, pink-tipped hair spiked from beneath her Akubra hat. Her smile was a mile wide in greeting, and she was waving so enthusiastically, I half expected her thin, toned arms to detach and fly off into the nearby eucalyptus.

“Gidday, yah mongrels!” she greeted at maximum volume.

Thinking someone had spoken to him, the much-neglected Mongrel raised his lethargic head hopefully. A well-bred Australian cattle dog, wearing a red bandana no less, chose that moment to catapult himself from the ute tray, then sauntered over to say hello to the animal whose odour lingered somewhere in the newcomer’s olfactory memory bank.

Mongrel half raised himself and began growling terrifyingly, snapping his slobbery jaw. The cattle dog slowed to a halt in the dust mere inches from Mongrel, who continued his nasty bluster. The new dog glanced towards the newly arrived Crumpet, who nodded and muttered, “Good dog, Dingo.”

Dingo promptly sat heavily and squarely on Mongrel’s head, completely settling any argument for the time being. The two animals remained in situ, Mongrel with his head squished solidly and silently into the dust, and Dingo perched obediently on top, awaiting instructions that were slow to arrive. I had a feeling this was an oft-replayed scene from the past.

I liked Sheila Crumpet from that moment on.

Dingo managing Mongrel. Agent Arthur not managing the stink.

It wasn’t difficult to ascertain the source of the stench emanating from the shed. It had been locked up tight on the remnants of Crunch’s disgusting lifestyle all those years ago. One breath-holding peek told me that the floor was littered with food remnants dried with age, dead rodents that had found their way in but not out, and a stench that was undeniably Crunch, which failed to dissipate over the years.

“Oh, God,” I semi-gagged, rushing in to throw open two small windows, then rushing back to fan the door in an optimistic show of human air-conditioning.

“It’s not that bad!” defended Crunch as he pushed past me and made his way to a workworn table in the centre of the shed. He used his forearm to sweep more garbage onto the floor and demanded that we follow his lead.

“I’m gonna clean this mess up first!” I declared, looking around for suitable cleaning aids.

“Not on the company’s dime you’re not!” snarled Crunch. “Clean it up after hours, if you have to.”

Arthur, face twisted in disdain, slumped into his old chair by his old computer.

Without preamble, Sheila strode over to Arthur and shoved out her hand.

“You must be Agent Arthur,” she declared as boisterously as any single person could possibly boister.

Arthur made to take her hand, but she pushed it aside, patted him on the cheek, and muttered, “Well, now. You’re a bit of all right. A bloody bottler!”

Arthur coloured from the nether regions of his shirt to the top of his shiny forehead.

Rushing to Arthur’s aid, I moved to introduce myself when Crumpet grabbed me in a crushing bear hug and declared at a fever pitch, “Agent Martha! I’m so chuffed to meet yah! It’s good to have someone to even out the male-versus-female power play!

Then, with an air-piercing whistle, Crumpet summoned Dingo, who appeared in the doorway, leaving, I assumed, a semi-comatose Mongrel to recover in the dirt outside.

At the sight of Dingo, Crunch began to complain and moved to summon Mongrel, but Sheila was too quick for him, leaping to the door and slamming it shut.

“This shed has a one-dog policy, and the policy ain’t yours to dictate,” she sneered wildly at Crunch. “Regarding the clean-up of this dump,” she added, “Martha, Arthur and I will stay back for a couple of hours to set things in order.”

“Why can’t I stay back and clean too?” demanded Crunch.

Sheila slyly winked at me. “Well, why didn’t you say so. I assumed, because you are the filthy grub that made this mess, you wouldn’t want to lower yourself to cleaning up.”

Crunch began to stutter in protest.

“Well, okay then,” announced Sheila with a tone that was not to be reckoned with. “You’re the boss. We’ll expect this place to be tickety boo in the mornin’ when we get here at…” She made a show of checking her watch and winking again, “…at 10.00am. That will give you a bit more time. If it’s not hunky dory, I’m puttin’ in a report to M about unsafe workin’ conditions, oh, and a word in his ear about who created this pigsty might help to put that amnesty deal of yours under reconsideration.”

“In the meantime,” declared Sheila, slumping into a seat opposite Crunch, “Let’s get to work!”

Crunch appeared to be on the verge of imploding as he watched his in-charge-ness slowly disintegrating.

“Great bluff,” I whispered to Sheila.

“No bluff, Martha. I’ve worked undercover, wink-wink, for M off and on for years. You could say we’re besties.”

“Ooh,” I girlishly giggled. “You might have some erotic ideas for my new book.”

Sheila looked surprised, then winked conspiratorially again.

Crunch had set up a murder board and was busily stringing coloured wool and drawing pins between photos, which Crumpet pooh-poohed, saying the murder board looked like a giant Knitting Nancy, an old toy made by children using cotton reels and headless nails.

Sheila and I rocked with laughter at the men’s dumb WTF expressions.

I shared the story of the long rat-tail I had made with my homemade Knitting Nancy and how I turned it into a fancy round mat. Sheila had a similar story of making reins for her toy horse.

Crunch’s Knitting Nancy Murder Board

Still laughing raucously, Sheila strode to the corkboard and began ripping off the lines and photographs.

“What the hell, Crunch, some of these photos don’t even belong to this case!”

Red-faced, Cap’n Crunch haltingly explained that there had only been 6 murders to date, and he felt compelled to leave some old case photos in situ, supposedly to express how serious the existing situation was.

The logic was lost on the rest of us.

Sheila spent a little more time ridiculing Crunch, then frantically rearranged the murder board to her satisfaction.

It was time for some serious serial/cereal sleuthing (Strewth!)

Leave it to Crumpet to get the gang organised

Part Two coming soon.

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Threatened and delivered, Brian Lageose. You know I can’t help it.😁

Also, thanks to James Parsons for encouraging my Aussie nonsense.