Chapter 2: Mysterious Mystery
The penguins and Marlene were all standing in the cave of Marlene's habitat. A paw print was where Marlene's antique Spanish guitar should be. Marlene nervously paced around the room. She watched her feet move one in front of the other.
Kowalski looked closely at the paw print on the wall.
"Kowalski, analysis," Skipper barked the order at his lieutenant.
"It seems to be a paw print," Kowalski replied.
"I gathered that," Skipper said, rolling his eyes at the useless bit of information.
"I was going to say that, because of the shape it could be almost anyone's paw print. It could be a lemur, another otter, a chimp, a beaver," Kowalski listed many animals in the zoo and out of the zoo, too.
"Good, we narrowed it down." Skipper replied jokingly.
Marlene started sobbing and held her face with her paws.
"What am I going to do?" Marlene cried, "That guitar belonged to my grandmother!"
"Don't worry Marlene! We'll find it." Private assured her, while patting Marlene on the back.
"Young Private is right," Skipper said. A smile of confidence spread across his beak, "We should start searching for the pawed perpetrator now."
With that, the penguins quickly leaped and bounded to their own habitat. Once there, Kowalski quickly took his clipboard out and wrote down (or drew, since penguins can't read or write.) possible suspects.
"We can rule out the gorillas, baboons, and chimps because their hands are too big to fit the print." Kowalski explained.
"Ok that leaves the lemurs…" Skipper waited for other answers to come to his mind.
"Maybe someone in the park has seen it." Private said.
"Right," Skipper said, "But first, cute and cuddly antics for the guests. No mercy!"
The four penguins climbed out of the lair onto their small concrete island and the last one out covered the hole with their metal fishbowl. They all smiled and waved, especially Private. Cute and cuddly time was his thing. All the oohhs and ahhhs from the crowd made his heart flutter with delight as he worked his magic.
Behind him the older penguins continued their chat.
"We need to narrow down our suspects, Kowalski." Skipper complained to his lieutenant.
"I know, Skipper, I know." Kowalski said waving his right flipper in the air, "I'm trying to think!"
"Well, think harder!" Skipper pressured.
Kowalski shook his head, "It's not that easy, you know."
"Fine," Skipper replied, fixing his gaze back to the crowd of about eight people, "Just try to work faster."
Kowalski rolled his eyes. He switched his waving right flipper with the left and smiled once again at the crowd, too.
Suddenly, there was a path cleared through the crowd as Alice the zookeeper appeared.
"Move out of my way, I have work to do you know!" Alice said in her usual grouchy tone. You could tell she hated her job, but did it for her paycheck any way. She held a big bucket about half full with fish.
"Fiiiiiish!" Rico sang as he stared at the bucket lost in thought about all of those fish.
Private finally opened his eyes and stopped shaking his tail-feathers to see Alice.
"Oh, boy!" he said.
"It's lunchtime, you disgusting animals." Alice said, grumpily shaking her hand from the wet and slimy fish that she chucked into the habitat.
The penguins ignored this comment. She called every animal that.
Soon the bell rang, signaling that the zoo was closed. It also signaled investigation time.
"Alright boys," Skipper said, "We'll go to Marlene's and ask a few questions. Then, we interview anyone who has paws or hands. By interview, I mean interrogate."
Skipper smiled. He loved interrogations. In fact, he loved brute force in general.
The penguins leaped and bounded out of their habitat in perfect formation. They landed in the otter habitat where Marlene was on her big slide atop her cave, getting ready to dive into the water below. Suddenly, the four penguins appeared beside her.
"Hi, Marlene!" Private said.
The little penguin's greeting took her by surprise, sending Marline down the slide on her back head first.
"AHHHHH!" she cried her brown eyes were big as saucers.
She landed in the water a second later, the penguins jumped to the front of the cave. Marlene swam to shore and shook the water out of her fur.
"Oh, sorry, Marlene." Private apologized.
"So, other than to scare me out of my skin, what did you come here for?" Marlene asked looking very annoyed.
"Just to ask some questions" Skipper replied, shrugging his shoulders.
"Okay, shoot," Marlene replied finally looking up after dusting herself off.
Rico immediately up-chucked a bazooka and almost shot when Skipper stopped him.
"Whoa! Stand down soldier! Not that kind of shoot." he said.
"Awwww…" Rico sadly replied and threw the bazooka out of sight.
"Um, okay…" Marlene said looking to the side. "Anyway, what questions did you have?"
Thanks to anybody who's reviewed my first chapter. This is my very FIRST Fan fiction, so wish me luck! There's more coming, I'm just putting a little suspense! :D