"Alice, I'm home!" called Fuzzy Gumbo as he slammed the door behind him and tossed his keys on the table. He'd had a rough night. Hell, he'd had a rough month. Absolutely zero interesting cases had come in, and so he'd resorted to his favorite activity aside from detective work: gambling. He'd been bouncing from one underground poker game to another, getting thrown out when he either won too much or he ran out of money. The latter was the case this evening, though this time they'd made it more interesting: he'd gotten the snot knocked out of him first.
"Fuzzy, it's after midnight! I don't suppose you've got any money left, do you?" asked Alice Munk. The squirrel stepped into the hallway, hands on her hips. "You've got to stop doing things like this, it's unbecoming of the 'greatest detective in the Lylat System!'"
Fuzzy pushed past her and made his way to the kitchen. He wasn't in the mood for another lecture on what he should and shouldn't do. He opened the icebox and pulled out a bag of peas. Then he went to the cabinet and poured himself a glass of bourbon. He flopped down in a chair at the table, putting the peas on his eye and taking a sip of the bourbon. Alice came into the room, flicking on the light, which made Fuzzy flinch.
"Let me see it," she said. He shrugged her off, and she sighed. She reached on top of the fridge and pulled down a first aid kit. "If you don't let me take a look at you, I'll give you another black eye."
Fuzzy finally relented, gingerly lifting the peas off his eye. Alice grabbed him by the back of his head, examining the growing bruise around his eye. She released him and he put the peas back on.
"I'm fine, really."
"You sure as hell don't look fine," Alice snapped. "Cheating or out of money?"
"Little of column a, little of column b," Fuzzy replied. Alice poured some isopropyl on a cloth and removed the peas from Fuzzy's eye.
"You've got to stop doing this," she muttered again while she dabbed the cloth around his eye, making him flinch.
"It's just a black eye, Alice!" vented Fuzzy.
"You're bleeding," Alice replied sternly. "And it's not just the black eye. It's the gambling. If you don't take a case soon, I'm not going to be able to find money for rent."
"Oh poppycock," retorted Fuzzy. They'd had this argument at least once a week for a month. "We've got plenty of credits left in the accounts. You've seen to that."
"Until you lose it all at the poker tables of the slimiest of Corneria's underbelly," she said, reciting the line verbatim. This was the point where Fuzzy was supposed to say that he'd look for a case in the morning, that he'd stop gambling, that this was the last time. But he was tired, and he didn't want to perform the same play again.
"Enough. I'm going to bed," he said, standing up. He threw back the last of his bourbon. "If you can't handle my vices, maybe you should go back to being a CPA." Alice bristled at this diversion from the script.
"Some 'great detective' you are!" she shot back. "You're so proud of your ability to understand people, but you can't even win cards half the time. Maybe I should go back to accounting, let you struggle on your own for awhi-"
She was interrupted as the screen in the kitchen came to life, flashing with red text reading "Priority Message Alert." Fuzzy looked at Alice, who looked back at him. He pressed a button on the table to accept the message. The screen flashed again, and a pink feline woman was on the screen. After a few seconds, she spoke.
"This is a priority one coded message for Fuzzy Gumbo. I am Katt Monroe." said the woman. "This message has been sent to you 24 hours after I recorded it. If you're receiving this, I was murdered" Static engulfed Katt's image on the screen.
"What's happening?" asked Alice.
"The message was damaged prior to its transmission, I'll bet," said Fuzzy. He pressed another button, scanning forward in the message until Katt was back on screen.
"That's everything I know. I don't have any concrete evidence, but you helped prove my father innocent a decade ago. You are the best detective in Lylat. I didn't know who to trust, and you're the only one I know of who couldn't be connected to this. If I'm dead, please bring the truth to light. I've transferred 250,000 credits to you. Please, the fate of Corneria depends on you."
The message ended. Fuzzy walked over to refill his glass before sauntering back over to the table, his long, naked tail switching back and forth.
"Well, Miss Alice," he said, sitting down in his chair. "It would appear that we have a case."
Less than a day later, Fuzzy and Alice stepped off the police transport and into the hangar of Great Fox. General Pepper was waiting to greet them, much to Fuzzy's chagrin. The leader of the Cornerian Defense Force and Fuzzy had butted heads countless times; Fuzzy had been in the Corneria City drunk tank as many times as he'd helped bring criminals to justice. The straightlaced General Pepper was often frustrated with Fuzzy's "reckless" and "haphazard" investigatory techniques, but he couldn't deny that they got results.
"Mr. Gumbo, Ms. Munk, nice to see you again. What the hell are you doing here?" questioned Pepper.
"Received a request for me to investigate," replied Fuzzy flippantly. Pepper looked annoyed.
"Investigate what?" he said.
"The murder of Katt Monroe, of course," replied Fuzzy, gazing steadily at the annoyed Cornerian officer.
"There's no murder here, Gumbo. My men have already ruled Ms. Monroe's death as accidental," Pepper shot back. "The console shorted when she initiated that start sequence."
"Interesting," replied Fuzzy, scratching his chin, feigning thoughtfulness. "Might we have a conversation in private? I've got something that might disabuse you of that notion." General Pepper rolled his eyes and gestured for the pair to follow him. He led them to what was clearly a storage closet that had quickly been made into an office for his use. Closing the door behind them, he looked at Fuzzy expectantly. Fuzzy patted the pockets of his long coat for a few seconds, apparently not finding what he was looking for. "Um, Alice, I seem to have forgotten the recording."
"Good thing you have me," quipped Alice, removing the tablet from her bag. She set it on the workbench that Pepper was using as a desk, and played Katt's message. When it was over, Fuzzy and Alice looked at General Pepper, who was standing imperturbable with his hands behind his back.
"Well then," he said, thinking over his words carefully.
"You gonna let me do my thing?" asked Fuzzy. Pepper sighed.
"I don't believe that anyone here would have killed Katt Monroe."
"And yet, she's dead," responded Fuzzy. "And we have a message from her lips stating that if she dies, she was murdered. There's something fishy going on here. Let me investigate. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but you know that I'm not."
"I know nothing of the sort," shot back Pepper. "However… I'll let you investigate, and the resources of the CDF are at your disposal, within reason."
"I need to meet with the team."
General Pepper led Fuzzy and Alice to a briefing room, giving them a rundown of the situation to them as they went.
"Slippy and Falco were with her in the hangar saying goodbye when it happened," rattled off Pepper. "Slippy managed to get the engine compartment open and disconnected the power cells, but the damage was done, and Katt was dead. It seemed pretty straightforward. Cause of death, electrocution."
"Is her ship still here?" asked Alice.
"We were going to tow it back to Corneria this afternoon. I suppose I'll have to rescind that order," said Pepper, trailing off.
"Thank you, General," smirked Fuzzy. "Why was Ms. Monroe even here?"
"Well, it's no real secret that she had an on-again off-again thing with Falco," answered Pepper.
"No, I suppose not. Give me a rundown of the events leading up to Ms. Monroe's death."
"I know she arrived early that morning," Pepper began. "She'd spent most of the day doing things around the ship. She had conversations with everyone. She went to the ship's gym. She ate with everyone in the communal mess, went back to her quarters for an hour, and then got ready to take off."
"So any of them could have modified the Catspaw," muttered Fuzzy. "We need to establish the whereabouts of everyone on the ship the entire time Ms. Monroe was here." He nodded to Alice, who'd taken out a notepad. She divided it into 3 columns; one for suspects, one for motive, one for alibi. Under the suspects column, she wrote the names of the ship's crew.
"The truth will out," said Fuzzy, absentmindedly playing with his card while the General led them through the bowels of Great Fox. Finally, they'd reached their destination. The first ones there, by the looks of it. General Pepper took the seat at the head of the table, while Fuzzy pulled a chair off into a shadowy corner. Alice looked between them, unsure of where she should be, and settled for standing behind the General. After a short while, a blue Avian swaggered into the room.
"What's the big idea behind this meeting, General?" he said.
"I'll explain that when everyone's gathered, Falco," responded Pepper. Falco looked around the room before flopping into his chair. After he'd done so, Fox and Krystal walked in, quickly followed by Slippy. Finally, Peppy hobbled in and took his seat opposite of Pepper.
"I wanted to update you on the status of our investigation," started General Pepper.
"What do you mean? I thought it was a cut and dry accident," questioned Peppy.
"It was, but some new evidence has come to my attention," responded Pepper. He gestured behind him. "Allow me to introduce Fuzzy Gumbo and his assistant, Alice Munk."
"The private investigator?" asked Slippy.
"Why is he here, General?" asked Fox. "Does this mean you suspect foul play?"
"We're… not sure," said Pepper unconfidently. "Mr. Gumbo and Ms. Munk arrived a short time ago and requested to be allowed to investigate."
"How convincing," Krystal said sarcastically. "I've heard of you, Mr. Gumbo, and I know that you don't get involved unless there's a good reason. Why are you here?"
Fuzzy snapped the card in his hand, holding it up so that it blocked his vision of the table. "I have been contracted."
"Who would contract you?" pressed the cobalt vixen. Fuzzy sighed, turning the card so that it was a line in his vision.
"I was hired by Katt Monroe to investigate her murder," he finally said. "And I believe that someone in this room is the one who murdered her."