4~

It was a week after Miss Lander had left home that the gang went to visit her at her nephew's house. A week of relative quiet in which they hadn't heard any reports of The Extinguisher subtly terrorizing the woman with home invasion and card-delivered threats.

Today, Lander entertained her guests in the living room by telling them about her transition from posh townhouse to more humbler digs, but being quick to also tell them that Conrad was a godsend for doing what he did, finally giving her peace of mind that she couldn't find recently.

"Where's Conrad, now?" asked Daisy.

"Oh, he's at work and while he's working, the least I can do is tidy his home for him."

"That's pretty thoughtful, ma'am," Red commented. "Family's important, after all."

"I agree, dear."

"Well, if anything happens, if you see any more cards or anything, you let us know," Marcie instructed amiably before remembering that Miss Lander's nephew had as much, if not more, right to know what was going on. "I mean, after you let your nephew know first."

"I will, dear," Lander told her. "Well, I better get back to work. At least I can watch the stories on TV, although this basic cable package leaves much to be desired."

Satisfied with that, the gang took their leave and piled into Marcie's car. However, Marcie didn't start it up, yet.

"Let's go back to Miss Lander's house one more time," Marcie suggested.

"Geez, what for, Marcie?" Red spoke up. "That Extinguisher guy doesn't know where she lives, right now. Why keep digging around for something that's pretty much over and done with?"

Marcie rolled her eyes. "Just because he doesn't know where she lives, now, doesn't mean that he's not looking for her. Remember, he singled her out, so, I don't think he's gonna quit, now."

"But, how would going back to her house help?" Jason asked. "We already know about the cards."

Marcie gave a concerned look and reasoned, "Yeah, I know, but there might be something we overlooked back there. Like I learned in Chemistry class, 'formulate twice, mix once.'"

She was expecting everyone to voice a dissenting opinion on the matter, since the boys were the most vocal, however, a smile grew when Daisy spoke on behalf of rechecking the townhouse.

"I think Marcie's right, guys," Daisy agreed. "We should go back. What will it hurt? Besides, Miss Lander's a friend of my family. If we can help her, at all, we should. It's the right thing to do. How about it?"

Red and Jason considered what was said. Then they shrugged and bowed their heads slightly in shame. Being called out of their indifference and cowardice with such a soft appeal as Daisy's was unexpected and quite convincing.

"When you put it like that, I guess we have to go," Jason acquiesced.

"Yeah," Red mumbled. "Okay, we'll go."

Marcie turned the key into the ignition with a satisfied smirk. "Let's hear it for democracy. Miss Lander's, it is."

The house's front door yielded to one of Marcie's Quick Keys, prompting Red to joke, "You can get in pretty fast with that goop of yours. Are you sure you're not The Extinguisher?"

Marcie smirked. "If you see a jar of roaches with a card delivered to your house, you'll get your answer. Now, c'mon. We don't need neighbors knowing that we're doing a B&E on the same house that someone else did a week ago."

'When this is all said and done,' she thought. 'I have to remind Miss Lander to change all the locks.'

The group moved in, closed the door behind them and spread out, scanning the wall-to-wall carpeting with sharp, young eyes, carefully moving home furnishings and personal effects around to search for the more illusive clues.

From the foyer to the backyard, they hunted throughout the downstairs and when nothing was forthcoming, they checked its front and rear bay windows for signs of tampering. Their locks, frames and seams were intact to the gang's collective satisfaction. Which, again, left the upstairs.

Red gave a stretch and muttered to himself, "I knew we weren't gonna find anything. Just a big waste of time."

He ascended a few steps and looked down by force of habit, spotting two dead roaches on the stair ahead of him.

The sound of a warning squeak and feet running back downstairs cause the rest to meet him at the foot of the staircase.

"What's up?" Marcie asked, anxiously. "Did you find something?"

Red gave a whimper as an answer and pointed a trembling finger at the higher stairs.

"More roaches?" she deduced, passing him by and closely peering at each step until she, too, found the insects.

"I had a feeling I was gonna need this, "Marcie said as she reached into her wool jacket and pulled out a clear, plastic bag and a pair of latex gloves.

"What's that?" Jason asked from below.

"Specimen bag," she explained while she carefully placed the cockroaches inside it. "Our run-in with The Extinguisher had me thinking. Why would he have dead roaches in his tank and, more importantly, where did he find so many of them?"

"Make sure you ask him that when you see him," Red shivered, remembering his dusting of the things last week.

Marcie went up the stairs, step by careful step, checking each one for more roaches. When she reached the head of the staircase, she stood and held up the bag and examined her collection.

"I'm just glad that you didn't step on these guys, Red," Marcie said. "Because they're still intact, well, as far as the condition of their bodies are concerned, they may help us solve this mystery."

The rest of the gang looked at her in askance as they climbed the stairs. How would these creepy, disease-carrying...things...help anyone with anything, much less, a mystery?

When Red walked by Marcie, she gave a smirk and held the bag up to his face, saying, "Oh, by the by, there were three roaches on the staircase..."

Red gasped and jumped away towards one of the guest bedrooms as Marcie finished her correction. "...Not two."

Jason gave a friendly pat to her shoulder and told her, "You've got a bit of a mean streak, don'tcha?" before heading over to the master bedroom.

"I try," she said, smugly, as she and everyone else fanned out and searched through the other rooms.

Jason entered the bedroom, marveling at how nothing had been disturbed in all of those days.

He gave a look at the large bed that dominated the room. 'Something that large might have something to hide if you look deep enough,' he though as he approached the bed.

He thought against lifting the huge and heavy mattress to see what was underneath. All of his muscles, he admitted to himself, either moved him in a waddle, or manipulated only the most middling of things. A weightlifter, he was not, but maybe, he could call Red for help in a while.

He decided instead to check underneath the bed, itself, and so, after an exhausting bout of kneeling to the carpeted floor, he stopped to catch his breath. It struck him as odd, however, that his breathing became a little more labored.

He decided to table that issue for later as he leaned under the frame and gave the floor below an quick once over. What he found made him call for the gang.

As they entered the bedroom, everybody looked under the bed and came away with more questions than when they came in. But before Daisy could ponder hers, her cell phone chimed in her jumpsuit pocket.

"Hello?" she answered. "Oh, hi, Conrad."

"Ugh!" Red fumed.

"I'm calling from the hospital," he told her, cupping his phone to block out the ambient noise from the waiting room. "It's my aunt. He's found her."

"How?" she asked, not believing that all of this trouble was starting all over again. "What happened?"

"I had just came home from work and I found her on the floor upstairs," he explained. "She was outta breath, but she said that she got so upset that she fainted. I took her to the hospital, right away."

"Good. We'll be right over."

With that, she hung up and relayed the dread news to her friends.

Settling in her hospital bed, Miss Lander rested as well as anyone who felt that she had a death sentence passed on her could. Conrad, dutifully, sat near her, hand on her trembling hand, to give her what solace he could give.

They turned their attention to the arrival of the gang, who, en masse, took up the other side of the bed, looking almost inconsolable.

"What happened, Miss Lander?" Marcie asked, her voice low, respectful.

The woman took a shaky draw of air from the room's walled oxygen pump through the cannula tied to her nostrils.

"I...I was just making my bed from the guest bedroom, when a card...a new card...fell out from the blanket. Here."

She pointed to a folded card on her table, nearby.

Red went over and opened it. ""The Extinguisher will throttle your little friends' efforts!" Wow."

"Miss Lander, we went back to your house to check for more clues," Marcie said to her, although it sounded more like a confession than a statement. "Did you know that you had dead roaches under your bed? Nowhere else."

Miss Lander perked up from that news. "No, I didn't know this. My home had no roaches. I always kept it very tidy and I prided myself on never needing to call an exterminator."

"Are you sure, ma'am?" Daisy pressed, gently.

"I'm telling the truth. I knew nothing about these roaches."

"Okay," Daisy said, then pondered aloud. "But how did The Extinguisher know where you lived? Man, what is with this guy?"

If the question was rhetorical, Conrad didn't care. "He's still after my aunt," he growled. "That's what's with this guy."

Red, however, began to bristle, when those words looked like they were directed a little too closely to Daisy.

"I thought you kids said you were going to help," Conrad continued. "Especially, when I told you to stay away from him. He knows about you trying to stop him, now, and he might take out on her!"

"Hey, we're doing the best we can, pal, " Red defended. He could understand Conrad's feeling concerning his aunt's condition. Family was important, but Red's slight envy and annoyance with the man was starting to burn away a lot of empathy for him.

Not that Conrad was the least bit worried about Red's jealousy or dissatisfaction with him, especially when it was his personal dissatisfaction that was the issue, here. "Aunt Rebecca told me that you kids visited her earlier. Maybe he followed you to my house and figured out Aunt Rebecca was there."

The rest of the gang began to bristle from the accusation.

This forced Jason to speak up. "You don't think we had anything to do with all of this, do you?"

The voice of Miss Lander weakly cut through the tension of both parties. "Please, all of you, stop fighting. This isn't a competition. You're all doing your best to help me, and besides, I won't be staying here long. Hopefully, this whole mess will be straightened out by the time I get back to my nephew's place."

Sadly, that much talking had taken its toll on her. She stopped and closed her eyes to try and rest, her voice haggard and wheezing slightly. That was all the cue Conrad needed to tell him this meeting was over.

"Okay, you have to leave now," he told them. "Aunt Rebecca needs some peace and quiet."

Marcie ruefully ruminated that Conrad was just as loud as they were, if he was also going to blame them for the noise, but with no further questions coming to mind, she and the other left the hospital room.

"I'm not giving up on this," Marcie said as she drove through the well-paved streets that bordered Darrow University from the rest of the town. "Err! I want this Extinguisher...extinguished."

Surprisingly, Red also took up Marcie's rally cry of frustration. "That guy covered me with dead roaches. Roaches! I can't wait until Round Two and I get to show him what extermination's really about." He slammed his rough fist into a waiting hand. "Ka-pow!"

Marcie pulled into the university's student parking lot and left the engine running while she waited for the rest to disembark.

"I'm going to go home and analyze those roaches from the stairs and under the bed," Marcie said. "What are you guys gonna do?"

Daisy stepped up, saying, "We're going to look for more clues in the one place we hadn't looked yet, the exterminator company where The Extinguisher used to work. There's gotta be something we can find."

"Then, happy hunting, guys," Marcie bade them. "We'll met up in my lab so we can put our heads together."

"Okay," said Daisy, watching her friend drive off. Then she made a beeline towards her own car, followed by Red and Jason.

When they found the car and got in, Jason asked from the backseat, "How are you gonna find anything when we get there?"

Daisy had already formulated a plan based on the very fact that their destination was a company, and like all companies, they had to dispose of their paperwork.

With a clever smile accompanying the awakening of her car's engine, she simply said, "I'm gonna do what I do best."

Jason was left to ponder that statement as they headed towards their target, Wreck-Insects Industries.

"Remember the plan," Daisy reminded the boys as they got out of the car. "You guys go in and talk up a storm. Distract 'em while I look for their waste paper dumpster. There's bound to be some juicy stuff in there."

Red scratched at his fiery curls, nervously. This sounded like acting, and he already made up his mind that he was either a bad actor, or an even worse conversationalist if the topic was not automotive, wrestling, or action movie-based.

"Uh, Daisy," he muttered. "I'm not much of a talker. I don't know anything about bugs and stuff. I can stomp on 'em like a expert, but that's about it."

Daisy smiled and gave Red a confidence-building hand on his broad shoulder. "No problem. I already thought of that. That why I don't want you to say a thing. Jason'll do all the talking. You just let your presence do the talking for you."

Red smiled relievedly and looked at Daisy as if it were the first time he ever saw her. She was so nice, he thought. She always knows what to say to make me feel like I can do anything. Not even Aunt Hedda could that the way Daisy could.

Daisy picked up on the look. 'He needs me,' she thought. 'He's just a big, red-headed teddy bear who just needs to be looked after.'

She thought of ruffling her fingers through his flame-colored hair, but then those thoughts started to run away from her, and she had to fight to focus on the mission.

So, she gave his hard-muscled shoulder a friendly pat and sent him and Jason on their way through the front doors, and then casually walked towards the side of the building, hoping no one noticed her.

Inside, the two boys entered the air conditioned foyer. Pictures of the company, from its humblest of beginnings, to the success it claimed to be, now, were seen on every wall, on almost every side of the room. Except the receptionist's desk, which was kept free of such things so as not to impede her duties, like noticing two boys walking into her domain.

"Hello, how may I help you?" she asked.

Jason stepped in front of Red, sensing that the larger companion wouldn't be able to bluff his way through a lengthy conversation.

"Hello, ma'am," Jason began. "We were wondering, do you know anything about a vengeful ex-exterminator named The Extinguisher? He's said to have been an employee, here."

"No," she simply said.

"No what?" Red asked. "No, you don't know anything about him, or no, he wasn't an employee."

"Both."

That elicited a sigh of frustration from Red. "Well, can you answer this, then. Has a employee named Conrad Lander been working all day?" He hoped that if he hadn't, it would somehow incriminate him, or, more importantly, make him look bad in the eyes of the lovely Daisy.

The receptionist made a phone call to management, got an answer, and hung up.

"Yes," said the taciturn woman. Red's hopes sank. "Who are you two?" she asked.

"Well, we're really from Darrow University and we're doing a report on advances in entomological research," Jason lied. "For example, did you know that there is a another university doing studies on increasing the intelligence and strength of a single worker ant with atomic energy? They were hush-hush about the project when we asked, and we tried to get more information, but they were very adamant about it."

The receptionist stared at him, not understanding the reason for the topic. Jason fretted inside. He was clearly losing her.

Daisy hoped that she didn't make too much noise or shake the dumpster when she navigated her way through the reams of paper clipped and discarded work orders, shipping orders and financial paperwork.

Her penlight flashed around the tight confines of the container as she used it to speed-read anything that would give her a glimpse into the career of The Extinguisher. Then, a thought intruded her work and she stopped momentarily.

"Crap," she sighed. "We don't even know his real name. Good doing, Daisy."

Dejected, Daisy ran combinations of words in her head that would soften the blow of telling the gang that they were the center of a wild goose chase, but first, she had to get out.

She shifted her weight in an effort to climb out of the dumpster, when the pile of sheets she stood on gave way, making her slip back down into the depths of documents and lost her penlight.

Fishing and fumbling around the folios, the female finally found the flashlight, resting on the face of a work order, which, when she finished reading it, freed a bit more evidence to the fair fact-finder.

"Well, what do you know?" she asked to no one in small triumph. 'Once again, dumpster diving pays off!' Daisy thought as she braced herself on the slippery stacks of paper and climbed her way out into the daylight.

The receptionist's eyes never wavered from Jason as he fed her everything that he knew about insects from all of the nature shows he would watch. Nothing seemed to impress the woman or get her to join in the chat. He was a well of entomological knowledge that was running dangerously dry.

"D-Did you know that earthworms are both male and female, or female and male, if you like," Jason stammered. Red stood where he was, not sure if he should be laughing because Jason was faltering despite knowing more of a given topic, or worry because they failed to distract long enough to help Daisy.

A loud, jaunty whistle sang outside the windowed front doors. Both boys turned to the sound and breathed a sigh of grateful relief.

Daisy stood before the doors holding a sheet of paper in her hand, the other hand, beckoning them to join her. The boys didn't need to be asked twice and they swiftly left the receptionist to her own solitary devices.

The flask's liquid spun around its walls as Marcie gave it a practiced, one-handed stir. The analysis had just been finished when there was a knock on the lab's door.

"Come in, guys," she called out.

Red, Daisy and Jason walked in, their eyes shining with news that they couldn't wait to relay. She knew the feeling. She had answers of her own.

"May I guess that you guys found something?" Marcie asked, casually.

"May we ask the same?" Daisy asked, playing Marcie's game.

"Of course. It was surprisingly easy, actually," Marcie said. "All of the roaches I examined had the same chemical residue on their carapaces. Hydrogen cyanide. The same fumigant that's being used by Conrad's company. Miss Lander said that she kept a clean house and never called for an exterminator, so why are there dead roaches from another house in her home? I know it sounds strange, guys, but whoever this Extinguisher is, I think he's collecting the roaches from houses that had been fumigated."

Daisy beamed a smile. "If that's a fact, then you're gonna love this." She lifted the sheet of paper.

That was when the lab door burst open and the figure of The Extinguisher blocked out the sun. Brandishing his nozzle gun, he pointed it earnestly at the flatfooted teens inside.

Although Jason and the girls were figuratively caught with their pants down, frozen in the wonder of how he knew where they were and what they could do, under the circumstances, which was not much, as the intruder had them dead to rights.

Except for Red, who twisted into a running stance, fists balled and eager for contact. He smiled, grimly, as he finally had a chance to see and size up The Extinguisher as he stood in the doorway.

Red then looked at his nozzle and hardened within. If this kook was going to spray deceased insects at him, he would have to mentally prepare for it. Nothing, no fear, would dissuade him from extracting his payment for last week.

"Round Two, sucker," Red muttered from behind his smile, and launched himself at the stalker.

A cloud exploded from the nozzle's end. Marcie, who was further in the lab, tried to smell the vapor as Red's body was enveloped in it.

The faintest whiff of heavy knockout gas was detected in the air and Marcie was, again, thankful for the absence of the cyanide, although she pondered, with jocularity, as her mind buzzed with how to escape, if she would ever build up an immunity to the various knockout gases she had been expose to, so far.

Her lab was essentially a no-nonsense-designed cinder block and concrete bunker. One room, one door, three side windows for light and ventilation and simple, serviceable lighting. And again, she was trapped because of its simple architecture.

'Great! First, Daisy Mayhem jumps me, here,' Marcie thought in frustration as Red fell, literally fighting the mist with swinging fists, and The Extinguisher swung the nozzle at the rest of them. 'Now this. Maybe I should save up for a security system, myself.'

The cloud's chemical power began robbing the others of strength, reason and soon consciousness. Jason and Daisy eventually stopped resisting, and collapsed to the cool, concrete floor as the cloud flowed further back, forcing Marcie in retreat until she bumped against the blackboard. Dead end.

Her mind debated on whether she could hold her breath and fake sleeping until she could escape to free her friends, which sounded ridiculous, or just give in to the gas and see what happens next, regrettably logical.

Giving in to reaction, she tried to fight against its effects, shaking her head violently to clear it, but her bloodstream had already absorbed the gas and the misty venom took the decision away from her as she finally crumpled to the floor.