Chapter 1: Once upon a... Aw, never mind.
It was a bright and sunny day, which ruined the cliche mysterious setting of Detective Hill's office. So to make up for it, his assistants, Jill and Moe Hill, had veiled all his windows with black curtains, making it a dark and mysterious room.
"Give or take." Jill said, swiveling her dark green eyes around the dim room. "I think it looks mysterious, even if it's not raining." Sitting at his desk, Detective Hill groaned.
"But not mysterious enough!" he protested while spinning around in pointless circles on his revolving chair. Glaring at blur after blur, he continued.
"In mystery stories, it's always supposed to have 'a dark and stormy night' in the beginning. That way, their clients would know the detective is so serious about his-"
"Or her." Jill added with a lopsided smile. Detective Hill rolled his dark green eyes.
"Or her." he repeated. "Is so serious about their job, that they will continue to go their vacant office and wait for a client, no matter what the weather is." Standing up from his chair, the dizzy man made his way to his office closet. "I want to make a good impression on our client." he added.
Now it was Jill who rolled her eyes.
"If it will make you feel better, you could say that you are so serious about your job, that you drag yourself out of bed everyday, just to stay in a dark hot stuffy room waiting for a client."
"And that you work cheap, since you don't have a air conditioner." Moe, who had quietly been entertaining himself with a paddle ball, said.
"No!" Detective Hill said stubbornly, taking out a light brown trench coat and matching wide brimmed hat out of the closet, despite the sweltering temperature in the room.
"Our agency needs to have a mysterious spot, that is always dark and rainy for no apparent reason! We should move our business someplace that has a spooky feel, like Transylvania!"
"Isn't that where Count Dracula lives?" Jill asked, subconsciously twirling a strand of her dark brown hair with her finger.
"Didn't he used to teach math on Sesame Street?" Moe recalled, causing the two detectives to slap their foreheads.
"That's not the point!" Detective Hill snapped. "The point is I-" He was interrupted by a knock on the door. The three siblings jumped.
"Quick!" Detective Hill exclaimed to his alarmed companions. "The client is here! Look like you're busy doing something important!" Rapidly plopping onto his chair, Detective Hill, with his tench coat half on and hat on the ground, snatched a blank piece of paper crumpled under his coffee mug and scribbled on it with a newly found pen, as if he was writing all day. Jill nervously raced towards her brother's file cabinet and, opening it, she sorted through it, hoping she looked busy. Moe quickly ran to the phone. Picking it up, he began to have a one sided conservation, pretending he was talking to someone important.
"Come in." Detective Hill shouted, proud that he sounded busy.
Entering through the doorway, a lanky young blonde girl rushed in. Slamming the door behind her, she exclaimed. "You gotta help me!" in a slurred voice. Detective Hill raised a eyebrow. The last time he had heard someone sound this panicked before, was when little Bo Peep had came to them ask for help finding her sheep.
"The correct term is 'got to' not 'gotta'." Jill corrected, earning a glare from her brother. This was their first client in a long time, and Detective Hill wasn't going to let her think that they don't take their job seriously. At least not yet.
"Yeah, whatever." the blonde said in a dismissive voice. "I need-" She paused. "Why is it so dark in here?" she asked gesturing around the dim room. Jill, still pretending to sort through files, groaned.
"Don't ask." she answered. "What's the problem?"
Goldilocks, returning back to the original topic, said. "I need your help! I've been framed!"
The trio abruptly stopped what they were pretending to do. "Framed?" they cried out in unison. The girl nodded sadly.
"Well, what are you standing there for? Tell us what happened!" Detective Hill said, gesturing to one of the two chairs in front of his office. Once in her seat, she began.
"My name is Goldilocks." Goldilocks stated. "And I have been framed for breaking into a home of three bears. This whole mess started, When my mother had heard that my aunt, Viola, had sent my cousin, Red, to give my sick grandmother a basket of goodies so she can feel better." Goldilocks snorted at this. "I don't understand why, out of all the things, had Aunt Viola and Red decided to give Granny sweets when she is sick. I mean, wouldn't that make it worse? Personally, if I had a choice, I would've given her-"
"Goldilocks," Moe interrupted, hanging up the low beeping phone. "Could you please get back to the topic."
Goldilocks, suddenly remembering why she was there in the first place, tensed and continued her story. "My mother, not wanting to play second best, had also sent me to my grandmother's house to see her. So, I was walking in the woods, when I saw some dandelions growing on the ground of the beaten path. I picked because my mother was to cheap to buy Granny a gift and I knew she would prefer weeds over dessert any day."
From the looks on two of the three detectives faces, it was obvious they didn't agree.
"After I was satisfied with the number of dandelions I had, I stood up and came face to face with a wolf."
Detective Hill, who was daydreaming and not paying any attention at all up until now, leaned forward.
"A wolf?" he asked, suddenly becoming interested.
Goldilocks nodded. "As you already know, there have been many reports of a wolf in the woods going into town doing all kinds of bad things."
"Like the murder of Iggy and Squiggy, two of the three little pigs." Jill added, thinking about all the other crimes the wolf did.
"Uh-huh. I think he was the same wolf."
"So how did escape from him without eating you?" Moe asked.
Goldilocks grinned. "The wolf did try to eat me, but I told him that my cousin, Red, was just ahead of me, and that she was much fat and juicer then me. I even told him that she had a basket of goodies, so he could eat her and have the goodies for dessert."
"Why would you do that?" Jill asked, horrified that the young girl would do such a thing.
Goldilocks scowled. "Let's just say, we don't have a great relationship." Looking down at her hands, she changed the topic. "The wolf, naturally, decided that I wasn't worth eating, and bounded after Red. So, I continued on my merry way, then I came to a part of the woods I was certain wasn't nowhere near Grandma's. This made me really confused, because I was following the directions my mother gave from this note." Goldilocks took a folded paper out of her dress pocket, and handed it to Jill.
Jill raised a eyebrow. Looking at the picture of a poorly drawn girl with blonde hair hugging a equally poorly done boy with a crown in the center of a crooked heart, Jill tried not to gag and read the words in bold.
"I love Prince Kermit the-" Goldilocks snatched the paper out of Jill's hands.
"T-That's personal." Blushing Goldilocks stammered, shoving the paper back in her pocket. Taking out a new piece of paper, she handed it to Jill.
"Even though I was confident I wasn't near my grandmother's house," she continued as Jill silently read the paper. "I continued following the directions anyway, because I thought it was just a different route." Goldilocks frowned. "But I was wrong, when I came to the destination where the directions led me, I arrived at a strange house. Near the house, there was a figure all dressed in black. They said they had been waiting for me, and before I could ask who they were they knocked me out. When I woke up, I was laying in a bed, surrounded by police and three bears." Goldilocks whimpered. "The bears accused me of breaking into their home."
"Do you know what this person looks like?" Moe asked, jotting down the end of Goldilocks' story on a notepad. Goldilocks shook her head, her blond curls swished side to side.
"No, they had a cloak with a hood that covered most of their face."
Jill smiled. "Then this should be easy, not many people wear cloaks now a days."
"Really?" Beaming, Goldilocks turned to Detective Hill. "Well, in that case, I made the right choice coming to you for help. I need to find out who framed me by the end of the week, so the sooner the better, okay?"
Detective Hill blinked. "Huh? Um... I mean, oh yeah, of course!"
Goldilocks squealed. "Thank you, Detective Hill!"
He smiled. "No problem. Please give us your number, so we can call you if we have anymore questions." Jumping for joy, Goldilocks wrote down her number and skipped out of the office, screeching 'I'm Walking On Sunshine'.
Once she left, Detective Hill turned his siblings. "I hope you remember what she said, because I hardly was paying any attention." Jill rolled her eyes. "Figures."
"Here, I wrote it down." Moe said simply, handing him the notepad.
"So what do you think?" Jill asked once Detective Hill was done reading.
"I think," Detective Hill said, after a long silence. "We need to speak with the three bears."