I know its mega-short but it's just to get me back in the swing of things.

"Potentially, abeyant, dormant, inherent, lurking, within the realm of possibility, harmful. Yes." He looked around at Chuck but unfortunately stared into a space two feet to the left. Olive positioned his head to face her. "Why?"

"Because there may be a problem." Chuck threw a newspaper in front of Olive who read the headline aloud.

"PHILIP PHARMASEUTICAL PHOUND PHIRED"

Olive cocked her head to the side. "That's phunny. Geddit? Phunny. P-H." Chuck looked at her blankly. "Never mind."

The fact were these; The afore mentioned Philip Pharmaceutical, 36 years, 9 weeks, 2 hours and 10 minutes old, was found dead next to his latest work of pharmaceutical genius. The authorities had put it down to...

Emerson chuckled. "Pharmaceutical Poisoning. I'm not taking up this. There is no case."

"It is my duty as a fellow pharmaceutical salesman to find out the truth."

Chuck tilted her head. "I thought you didn't like him."

"I don't."

Fredo put sixty dollars onto Emerson's desk. Emerson looked at Olive and Chuck in disbelief, and each of them drew out thirty dollars, rolling their eyes at the same time. "Pleasure doing business with. Where shall we start?

Where they started was in the city morgue.

Emerson, Olive, Chuck and Fredo stood staring at the surprisingly unblemished body of Phil Pharmaceutical. Standing doing nothing, staring, at a dead body. Emerson was conducting a "visual autopsy" as Chuck and Olive asked Fredo hundreds of questions about how he was, desperately trying to find out what had happened to his eyes.

"So where did you go?"

"Reno, Chicago, Fargo, Minnesota, Buffalo, Toronto." Alfredo smiled. "What have you been doing?"

"PI stuff and baking pies, mainly," As Olive answered she realised how empty her life had been, how so often she had spilled out her heart and had been let down leaving her in lonely mourning of what could have been if by chance it had worked out. Then she would bake.

"Olive, Olive, Olive." Olive shook herself, realising the others were all staring at her.

"Huh?"

Emerson held up a set of tweezers. "I said; should that be there? I was in fact addressing your boyfriend who I would be delighted to get an answer from."

They all leant in to examine the feather in the tweezers. Olive waved a finger at it, "Charlie's Chickens."

"Why would Charlie's Chickens have any interest in killing out pharmaceutical salesmen?"

"Maybe he bought chickens to put in his cheap skate products."

Olive looked round. "Charlie's Chickens is a burlesque house."

"Or not."

*

Emerson, Chuck, Fredo and Olive stepped back into the Pie Hole, it was ten o'clock, but there was a warm smell wafting from the kitchen that none of them noted. Olive dumped a large box on the table and begun pulling costumes of varying sizes, types and extraordinary colour. Chuck clapped her hands together at a hyper pace.

"I love dressing up."

"We'd never have noticed." The next thing Emerson knew he had a large pile of feathery scarves thrown at his head. Olive arranged them artistically around his neck. "Itty Bitty."

"I'm Itty Bitty again?"

"If you get these off of me."

"I need them anyway."

A voice wafted through alongside the smell of baked pies, "Are we going undercover?"

Two pies emerged before the six foot and three inches of the Pie Maker. His mouth formed into a grin as he placed the pies between the piles of material.

NED'S BACK!!! Please review, even though it's short. Cheers to OutCold on Beta-ing. Check her stuff out, it's all good. NCIS, Pushing Daisies (a poem), 24, etc...