A/N: A shout out to my anonymous reviewer! Glad you liked it. More on what Chistery discovered now. :) Thanks!
Chapter 18
"Chistery, what do we have here?" Elphaba asked her friend as she approached him and a few Gale Force soldiers outside the Palace's front doors.
"This would be our new flour delivery man, Nick," the Flying Monkey smiled and tipped his head at a Munchkin, who would only look at the ground.
"Oh. Well, I think we need to have a conversation," the green woman said.
"Agreed. Sergeant Schultz is bringing in Nick's boss, a Mr. Farhidi," Chistery explained.
"Make sure Nick is taken to the small dining room. Get Mopsi and Popsi, please," Elphaba told him.
"Yes Mistress," the Flying Monkey nodded and quickly pushed Nick along with the help of Corporal Norris.
"You want me to question this Mr. Farhidi?" Fiyero asked when they were alone again.
"I think you need to update the Council. Lieutenant Zetti can interview him unless you'd like to have Zetti speak to our Councilmen," Elphaba shrugged.
"Oh, I think Zetti has had his fill with the Council. Why don't we both update them after we find out which of our mill workers poisoned Glinda and Bayram?" He offered.
"Good plan," she gave him a smile and a nod before heading back inside to speak to this Nick. Making her way down the halls, she finds Mopsi and Popsi heading toward her.
"Mopsi, Popsi, it is good to see you. I need your help," Elphaba smiled at them.
"What do you need?" Mopsi smiled back.
"I need you with me to speak to this Nick from the mill. Popsi, if you could join Fiyero outside? He's waiting on the mill owner, Mr. Farhidi," she explained.
"What can we offer to the interrogations?" Popsi wanted to know.
"Well, we are uniquely suited for this as we all know how poisonous Munchkin Blue Bonnet is and I want you to gauge reactions when the flower is mentioned. Mr. Farhidi is not a Munchkin so I don't expect him to know much but if he reacts, that will tell us something. I fear that this Nick will be harder to crack. If he indeed had something to do with the poisoning, he isn't going to confess. It's an automatic death sentence for an attempted assassination," Elphaba pointed out.
"You really think our perpetrator would be dumb enough to stay in town?" Mopsi wondered.
"If he thinks he can successfully pin the crime on someone else – absolutely," she nodded.
"Point taken," Popsi winks before heading to find Fiyero. Elphaba and Mopsi headed down to the small dining room, where they found Corporal Norris keeping their prisoner company. The young man is seated at the table, while the soldier stood near the door.
"Thank you, Corporal. Could you wait out in the hall while we chat with Nick here?" Elphaba asked.
"You sure ma'am?" The Corporal raised an eyebrow.
"I'm pretty sure I can take him," she winked at him. He gave her a slight smile before obliging to her request.
"So, Nick, I'm pretty sure that you know who I am. My friend is Mopsi. He's going to be helping me determine what happened when you delivered flour to the Palace," Elphaba said as she and the Munchkin took seats across the table from Nick.
"What do you mean what happened?" Nick stared at his hands and did not pick his head up.
"Your coworker Larry was found to be practically dead at his home. Turns out he was poisoned," she gave him a look. This was of course a lie, but they only needed Nick to admit that he had something to do with the poisoning.
"Someone poisoned Larry?" This was the first time that Nick raised his head, though he still wouldn't look either one of them in the eyes.
"The poor bastard is near death. You hate him that bad? You wanted his job? I know since the fall of Jinjuria things have been rough back home, but the Emerald City and other provinces have been more than happy to take the influx of Munchkin workers," Mopsi spoke up.
"Larry is a great guy. I wouldn't want anything to happen to him. He's been showing me the ropes and even had me over for dinner a couple of nights before he got sick," Nick shook his head.
"So, if I tell you that Larry had been fed Munchkin Blue Bonnet and that the only reason, he's still with us is because we found him just before he was about to die," Elphaba gave him a look.
"Munchkin Blue Bonnet? That's not possible," the young man said.
"What do you mean?" Mopsi raised an eyebrow.
"Not long before I left Munchkinland, someone had come up with a way to wipe out the Blue Bonnet," Nick seemed absolutely sure about that.
"You want us to look in a different direction, we need more," Elphaba told him.
"There was a field of those nasty things and a few farmers figured that the field they were in must have been very fertile. Normally, you don't want to send the pollen into the air or touch those things, but an entire field of them… the farmers thought about their options and decided that the only way to be rid of it was to do a controlled burn," Nick started.
"But the pollen…" Mopsi interrupted.
"Exactly. There needed to be a better way. Someone pointed out that the snow blankets it and the pollen doesn't spread, and the plants die. Once spring comes, they pop back up in the same fields or spots where they were before. The only way they travel is when farmers were removing them with tools and putting them in buckets to take to a space where they dumped them. Even the bees stay away from those nasty things," the young man explained.
"So did they douse them with something?" Elphaba was wondering where this story was going.
"They took lily pads off the lakes and coated the bottom of them with tar. Once the tarred bottom was set on top of the flowers, they waited until the tar dried, sticking the pollen inside the tar. Then the plants were removed with tools and piled into multiple smaller piles in one corner of the field. The piles were then covered in tar and lit on fire. The pollen was basically burned up and couldn't spread because it was covered in tar. The burn was controlled by wetting the ground all around the piles and keeping the flames down with water. They were allowed to smolder for days to make sure it was all gone. Then the ashes were collected into buckets. The plows were set upon the field to till it. They were still keeping an eye on the field to see if the flowers grew back," Nick finished up his story.
"What'd they do with the ashes?" Mopsi gave him a look.
"They put them into making more tar," he told them before continuing, "Basically, once they proved the flower didn't grow back, they started doing the same thing, everywhere else they found the dangerous plant."
"So, if someone wanted to get their hands on it, how would they go about doing it? Larry was poisoned after all," Elphaba pressed.
"Well, I imagine they didn't eliminate all of it. I mean the plants that grow in the woods wouldn't be able to be eliminated that way without burning the forest down so I suppose if you know what you're looking for you could still get some," Nick figured.
"And you didn't bring any with you when you left Munchkinland?" The green woman asked.
"I left Munchkinland a month ago and I can say for certain that I didn't bring any with me," he told her.
"You won't mind if we do a sweep of your house?" Mopsi wanted to know.
"Search away," Nick didn't seem to have anything to hide.
"So that new flour that you brought with you to the Palace – what was in it?" Elphaba changed the topic of the conversation.
"Mr. Farhidi said he was trying a unique way of milling the flour. I don't know the first thing about it. Larry was just a delivery guy and he was showing me the ropes of that," Nick admitted. Elphaba gave Mopsi a look. Not only did Nick not seem guilty, but it was also starting to seem like he was set up.
To Be Continued…