2~

"Why did you decide to come with us, Red?" Daisy asked, not really caring about the answer.

"Advertisement," he explained. "When Aunt Hedda found out that you guys were going up to where the rich folks live, she had me go out with you to see if anybody out there might need the unique mechanical services of "Hedda's Hot Rod and Motorcycle Repair." Not to solve any of those weird mysteries we keep running into."

"No promises," Marcie said while steering the putting, out-of-place Clue Cruiser through the affluent residential neighborhood where the hostess was said to live.

"We're almost there," Daisy instructed Marcie.

"All of these big houses look the same to me," Jason opined from the back seat, watching the mansions and townhouses go by and, despite what he just said, finding himself quietly fascinated by this side of society that he had only read, seen televised, and heard about; his true reason for joining in this sojourn.

"They'd have to be big," Red joked. "They knew you were coming."

Jason ignored Red's guffaw. "Ha, ha. Another fat joke. You should write a book."

Stopped his chortling long enough to answer back. "Maybe I will,"

"Just so you know, publishers don't accept crayon," Jason shot back.

In Red's automotive world, his face went from grinning to sour in 1.6 seconds. He reached over, held Jason's head in a adamantine head-lock and proceeded to noogie him properly across the scalp.

Marcie, hearing the commotion, glanced in vexation up into the rear view mirror. "You want me to turn around, you two?"

Thoughts of failing his aunt's mission suddenly tamed Red. He released Jason and went back to his side of the backseat. Jason, for his part, didn't want to miss out on telling his online friends about his trip to Crystal Cove's rich quarter, and so, sat quietly.

"That's better," Marcie muttered. Then, up ahead, she saw an immense, striped tent standing proudly, if incongruously, on a manicured lawn.

"What's that?" she asked to herself. "Did the circus come to town?"

"I don't know," Daisy replied. "This is the street where the hostess's house is supposed to be."

Marcie reduced her speed so she could take a better look at the tent as she passed it, but then Daisy shouted, forcing Marcie to hit the brakes. "Wait! That's it! That's the address."

Marcie put the car into park behind the open loading doors of an exterminator's company van. Spotting the closest of a small cadre of jumpsuited exterminators in gas masks tooling around the tent's exterior, Marcie called out to him.

"Hey, what's going on? Are you guys fumigating?"

The worker, whose sewn name on his uniform was Conrad, walked across the lawn and approached the VW to be heard. He pulled off his mask and said to her, "Yes. You have to get clear of here."

"The woman who lives here, where is she?" asked Daisy.

"I don't know," Conrad shrugged. "She told us before we got here that she was going to leave town for a while. We were hired to fumigate the house while she was gone."

"When will all of this be done?"

"Well, were done for the day," he explained. "We'll call to tell her it'll be safe to come back in about a week,"

Daisy rolled her eyes, sarcastically "happy" that she wasted her time coming out here. "So much for that," she sighed. "Maybe Mom'll call Miss Lander and ask her to get in touch with the hostess."

Strangely, the exterminator perked up and asked, "Lander? Rebecca Lander?"

"Yeah, my mom knows her," said Daisy. "They were at the hostess's party last night. Why?"

The exterminator brightened. "She's my aunt!"

"Really? Small world, huh?"

"Then that means that your mother must be Mrs. Blake," Conrad figured.

"Guilty as charged," Daisy quipped. "How do you know?"

"My aunt talks about her all the time."

Red fumed in the backseat, being too much of a gentleman to intrude on the conversation, but also too jealous not to see how platonic the chat was, mocking Conrad's voice under his breath.

Conrad took off his gas mask and tossed it through the open doors of the company van to a co-worker who stood in its back.

"How's your mom doing?" he asked, but before the answer came, something else stole their attention.

"Look out! came the scream from the rear of the van as a large canister of fumigant rolled out from the rear of it. All of their notice zeroed in on the hefty bug bomb as it tumbled out and, regretfully, landed up-side down, breaching its release mechanism and voiding its toxic contents between both vehicles and their occupants.

"Close the doors!" Conrad ordered the co-worker, who complied quickly. That only left the kids.

"Get outta..." Conrad said before his breath and legs failed him under the fumigant's swift, chemical assault, since he was closer to the van, and thus, the ruptured can.

Marcie fished into her jacket pocket while she gave commands to the backseat. "Red, grab Conrad and pull him in with you!"

Thoughts of envy flew from his mind as the teen opened the rear door and jumped out, running over and clutching the exterminator by the arms, hauling him to the car as fast as he could from the miasma that was now starting to angle towards his friends due to a shift in the wind.

Red stuffed the man roughly into Jason, just as the rotund boy rolled up the window on his side and screeched that everyone do the same. He also added that Marcie pull up the roof of the VW convertible in the general vicinity of her ringing ears.

Marcie snatched an Insta-Ice capsule and pitched it hard against the street next to the split canister, then she hit the button that sealed the fabric roof over the Clue Cruiser and rolled up her window just as the scent of the insecticide was beginning to slip into the car.

The liquid contents of the capsule splashed free on the can, creating a frozen fist of thick ice that closed around it and entombed it in its frigid depths. Choked off from spewing more of the gas, what remained in the air was carried off under the strong breezes of the day, and was soon dissipated high above the stately neighborhoods.

Marcie started the car and pulled away from the van just to be safe, parking it a few blocks away.

"Is everyone alright?" she asked. When her friends answered in the affirmative, she told everyone to roll down their windows to let fresher air in while she folded down the car's roof.

Amidst the collective sighs of a close call, a low moan could be heard from the back as Conrad finally roused himself from the near-poisoning.

"What happened?" he slurred on his way back to full consciousness. "What happened to...the bomb?"

"We took care of it," Daisy reassured him.

Marcie, taking an experimental sniff of the air to test its quality, remembered the heavy pong of the fumigant that managed to get into the Cruiser. She leaned back on her seat to regard the fumigator.

"Not bad," Marcie critiqued on the insecticide, recognizing its main ingredient by scent alone. "Hydrogen cyanide?"

"I want to thank you all again for saving my nephew," Miss Lander said from her spacious living room's sofa. She drew a breath from her mask and then sipped from her chilled glass of iced tea with crushed mint leaf. "Do you know where he went?"

"He said that he was going to go home and rest," Marcie said. Lander nodded in understanding.

She and the others were seated on various couches and plush chairs, taking their ease with their own glasses of tea upon invitation, after Nan had told her what her daughter and friends had done while running her errand.

"Aww, it wasn't anything a he-man like me wouldn't have done," Red said, waving the gratitude away. "I just thoughtlessly jumped out of the car and did what I had to do."

Daisy gave an exasperated sigh, yet dismissed his egotism and focused on his actual bravery. He could have succumbed to the poison just as Conrad had when he rescued him, but he went out, anyway. He was coarse, at times, but also courageous, and in her eyes, worthy of her pursuit.

Marcie was about to put down her glass on the ornate table before them, when she saw a folded card nearby. Out of curiosity, she picked it up and read it.

"The Extinguisher will take your breath away?"

Whatever genteel manners Miss Lander wanted to project came to a crashing halt when she heard Marcie read the card.

"Put that down, please," she told her, trying to remove the steel from her voice and regretting ever leaving that where anyone could see it. "That's nothing for you to worry about."

Proving that curiosity, welcomed or not, could spread, Jason soon asked, "Who's The Extinguisher?"

"Sounds like a fire fighter," Marcie said, lightly.

"He's…anything but," Miss Lander found herself chiming in, resigning herself to answering them. It wasn't like they could actually be of any help. "He's a menace who's been plaguing my home. Always leaving these calling cards, completely stressing me and exacerbating my already bad asthma."

"How long has he been dropping you these cards?" Marcie asked.

"About three weeks, now. A card for every week."

"Why didn't tell my mom or the police?" Daisy asked her, next.

"I didn't tell your mother because she doesn't need to know everything about me," Lander hypocritically announced, then said more quietly. "And I haven't told the police because I don't need the scandal."

"I suppose I could look into it," Marcie volunteered, holding up the card between thumb and forefinger, thoughtfully. Her words were inspired by looking at a pending future of having nothing to do, especially since her father had put her on what he deemed "administrative leave," from the park. Meaning that she had suddenly been banned from there, if Winslow didn't have the heart to say so.

Yes, she was always happy that her mystery-solving was able to help people, but deep down, she had no true desire for it. It was always just a way to exercise her mind, keep boredom at bay, and secretly satisfy her need to perform in front of others by demonstrating that she was good at it.

All her offer did, however, was prompt Red and Jason to moan in frustration.

"Ugh! I told you I didn't come all this way for some dumb old mystery," Red groused in his seat. "Aunt Hedda gave me a mission to spread the gospel of "Hedda's Hot Rod and Motorcycle Repair," besides, we talked about this and you said, 'No, I promise."

"I said, 'No promises,' Hard-of-Herring," Marcie corrected.

"And you know what I'm like," Jason added. "I don't have to eat a lot of chicken to be one."

"Guys, I said I could look into it," Marcie stressed to them. "You can do what you like." She looked over at Daisy, asking, "How about it? You wanna come along?"

Daisy gave a dismissive shrug. "Eh, it's something to do."

She could see Red and Jason soften in relief, thinking that they were off the hook, which was her cue to strike.

"Oh, Miss Lander, could you tell my friend just how important having contacts can be?" Marcie asked their hostess.

"Oh, yes," Miss Lander said, pedantically. "Having good contacts is the very bread and butter of society. Knowing the right people can get you far in life."

"And what kind of contacts could come from helping you with your little problem?" Marcie asked, coolly glancing over to Red. "Could the word be spread about a certain garage in town? How much business could be drummed up from just solving a little mystery, Red?"

Red was becoming his namesake as he tried to sputter a reply, realizing that he wasn't so dense that he didn't understand blackmail when he was the target of it.

"Aw, c'mon, Marcie," he balked. "I told you what my aunt said."

"I know. This will actually help," she coaxed. "Your aunt will have all the business she can handle once word spreads that you help a patron of the Crystal Cove elite."

Despite the fact that he knew that he wasn't of a deductive mind, Red couldn't see the flaws in her logic. This would well and truly help the business and make Aunt Hedda deeply pleased. That made Red pleased enough.

"Alright," he sulked in submission, then glanced at Jason and said, "But he's gotta come along, too."

"Okay, " Marcie agreed.

Shocked, Jason asked, "How come?"

"You need the exercise," Red said, simply.