Chapter 3

Ma's Diner was like every other establishment with the same name. The wallpaper was peeling off of the walls even as the orange naugahyde refused to peel off of the undersides of the patrons. But despite these unpleasantries, Ma's food made her diner home for dozens of single men three times a day, as well as feeding the police of the Fifth Precinct.

It was easy to tell which one was Ma, as she did the work of at least three ordinary people. And what she didn't have time to do she supervised, with a voice that was at least three time's louder than your mother's.

Detective Drake remembered Ma's for the coffee and donuts, and certainly never remembered it bustling like this, especially so early in the day. After finding a place for his fedora, he took a moment to look over the menu; when Ma approached, he supposed that he would have the...

"The usual for us," decided Kirby, "and the cheese chowder for our friend Detective Drake." He looked somewhat mesmerized when naming the specialty of the house.

"Hey, I remember you!" exclaimed Ma. "You retired before I started making the cheese chowder! Boy, are you in for a treat!" Just like Muldoon, she got a weird look in her eye when pronouncing the magic words.

Drake waited for Ma to leave before turning to the two officers. "Am I missing something? Nobody has chee...I'm sorry, 'cheese chowder' for breakfast!"

"You won't regret it," chirped Muldoon. "No body ever does." He looked a little glazed himself.

Drake thought for a moment. "And are you two having cheese chowder as well?" He wondered for a moment if he was caught in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Not the good one, but that one awful remake.

"Naw, we don't eat it anymore," explained Kirby. "It starts to get old after the first hundred bowls or so." He tossed this off like a mechanic discussing 10-30 motor oil.

Muldoon was momentarily confused. "Hundred? We had to have had two, maybe three..."

"We've sure had some interesting cases since you've retired, Detective," quickly interrupted Kirby.

Drake was about to bring them back to the current subject, when Ma arrived with their meals. He looked down with distaste at the bowl of lumpy orange chowder before him. He stirred it a bit with his spoon, then raised the spoon to his lips, when he noticed that everyone in the diner was looking at him. He put the spoon down, in a mixture of disgust and paranoia.

"...and when I got back, not only were the crooks behind bars, but my diner was spotless, and I found the recipe pinned to the back wall. I went to their parole meeting a few years later and helped to get them out early, on account of all the business that chowder recipe had done for the diner. I offered to give them jobs here, but for some reason they weren't interested." Ma was apparently rattling off the story of where the cheese chowder had come from, but Drake had been too pre-occupied to hear most of it.

"That's nice, Ma," Drake said.

"Well? Aren't you going to eat it?"

"Maybe later," replied Drake with a smile that clearly signaled to Ma that he wanted some privacy.

"Alright, now that we've got that under our belts, do you mind filling me in on what makes you two so twitchy every time I say Detective Chenture's name?"

"Well..." stalled Officer Kirby, "Detective Chenture is very good..."

"Yeah, " chimed in Officer Muldoon, "I don't remember a single case he didn't solve in the year or so since you retired. He's always asking us about our beats, and about anything weird that we might have seen..."

Drake waited for one of them to fill in the blanks. "And he's getting on your nerves?" he suggested.

"No, but his questions are kind of creepy," said Kirby.

"What kind of cases is he asking about?" asked Drake.

"You know those kind of weird cases that just sort of fall in your lap?" suggested Muldoon, in a conspiratorial tone.

"Like the Tillamook case?"

"Exactly!" cried Kirby. "He asked a whole lot about that one. I'm surprised you even know about it."

"Hey, I haven't exactly fallen off of the face of the earth, you know." Drake pondered a bit. "So Chenture's calling me in to help figure out what's going on, then?"

"No, that's not it at all," said a worried Muldoon. "I think the detective's got it all figured out, and he's just calling you to back him up."

Something here didn't add up to Detective Drake. Then it came to him. "You know his theory, don't you? And maybe this is one mystery you don't want solved, is that it?"

"Nah, we don't know what Detective Chenture is thinking," answered Kirby. "But he thinks too much. We've seen some really weird stuff, but so has every other beat cop."

"The detective thinks he can figure anything out," added Muldoon, "but some stuff won't ever make sense. We're in no position to tell you what to do, Detective Drake. We just want you to know that Detective Chenture's been working himself day and night lately. He's obsessed, and maybe this time, he's gone too far."

Ma came by to clean up the plates, including Drake's uneaten chowder. As he absentmindedly wiped his chin with the napkin, Drake accidentally got a taste of cheese chowder. It was, quite simply, the most perfect foodstuff on Earth. He walked out of the diner in a daze.

A minute later he ran back in to get his hat.