Chapter 8

Fenton went looking for information on Fethry on the Internet even before he got home. He couldn't wait to find out more. He headed out of the McDuck Lighthouse parking lot, found a place by the side of the road to pull over, and began his search with his phone. The first things to pop up were articles about the Aquatic Observatory in connection to the McDuck Lighthouse, several that Fenton had found before when looking for information on the McDuck Lighthouse. There were pictures, and Fenton finally took a good look at Fethry Duck.

He was not a person who cared much for appearance. He favored a wool-knit hat, turtle-neck sweaters and professor-style jackets. His feathers looked a little wild, and he always sported some form of a five o'clock shadow, but never looked brooding or stand-offish like Della had suggested. Quite the opposite. In all the pictures, he never was looking at the camera but always talking to someone. Many pictures showed him helping children, showing them fish in the tanks or helping them with their projects. A few showed Huey with Fethry.

But there seemed to be nothing online talking about Fethry's disappearance or anything later than ten years. This Fenton found suspicious, even with how little was available about the McDuck family. Wasn't Fethry adopted? That should have been in the papers. The public would have eaten a sweet story like that. But it happened so long ago, would it be online? Did newspapers upload old articles or would he have to go to the library and dig through old issues—or even worse, the dreaded microfiche?

More research and more looking for answers. And with how late it was, the library would be closed. On top of that, he was to return to work tomorrow, and knowing Gyro, they would be working odd and long hours. This mystery would have to wait until next weekend.

Fenton didn't like that. If Fethry knew more about the mermaid, he needed to find the strange duck that had disappeared.

Disappeared? There was a newspaper who printed the suspicion that something had happened to Fethry Duck three years, but the newspaper retracted the article and the writer left the paper soon after. If there was an investigation into Fethry's disappearance, his mother might have been involved as one of Duckburg's detectives. Would she know anything about it?

He went directly home with the intent to ask her. However, when he opened the door, he did not expect his mother to pop up from the couch at his entrance and bombard him with questions.

"Well? Did your friend know how to find her? What's her name? Come on, give me the details, Patito," Maria said, ignoring the TV as the characters kissed each other passionately.

Startled, Fenton had forgotten some of the lies he had told. And if he was flustered, he wasn't sure if he could keep everything straight. Should he reveal everything? Would she believe him about the mermaid?

"Mama, I have something to tell you," Fenton said, taking his mother's hands and taking her to the table.

"Uh-oh, this is either very good news or very bad," Maria said, eyeing her son.

Fenton wasn't sure if it was neither or both. And then he opened up and told her everything that happened to him since early Friday morning, in the wee hours, when he first saw the mermaid. When he was done with his story, he sat back, waiting to see how his mother would react.

She had remained quiet the entire time he spoke, and even after he had finished, she hesitated before speaking.

"Fenton," she began, her voice carrying weight. "I don't know what you did or didn't see, but there is one thing that I do know. You need to stay away from the McDuck family. For your own good."

"What?" Out of all the things that Fenton expected, this was not one of them.

"The McDuck family is very…influential. And I have seen what happens to people who have crossed them," Maria told her son in a serious tone. "It's best that you leave McDuck matters to the McDucks."

Fenton was stunned that his mother had just said what she had just said. His mother! The woman who had an important sense of justice about her, so much so that she had joined the police force to support her son when her husband ran off and left the two of them alone. The woman who would pick up a true crime book and read it with gusto, only to rant and rave when it turned out to be one of those unsolved cases. The woman who could not stop watching her Telenovellas because she couldn't stand not knowing how something ends.

She was telling him to let go of a mystery, to let things be.

"But don't you think it's odd that nobody has asked where Fethry Duck had gone?" Fenton asked. "He might be a missing person's case that just went cold, and his family has covered it up for some reason. Worse case, the McDucks caused Fethry to disappear and they've been covering it up for years. Isn't that something the police should be concerned about?"

Maria kept a dead-pan expression on her face. "Yes, that is one way you can look at things. That's if you didn't know what really happened to Fethry Duck."

"But nobody knows what happened to him," Fenton protested.

"I do," Maria said. "And what I'm about to say cannot leave this room. Do you understand? I could lose my job if you repeat anything that I say, comprende?"

Fenton nodded.

"Three years ago, my partner and I were called to investigate a disturbance at the orphanage just out of town," Maria began her story, her tone as if she were giving a police report. "We were told that a man who was considered mentally disturbed had broken into the orphanage. When we arrived, the suspect…Fethry Duck was already apprehended by his family: Della and Donald Duck—his cousins—and his uncle, Scrooge McDuck. They apologized for someone having to call the police but they had things well in hand.

"From what they said, Fethry Duck had been unwell and was put into the care of a mental institute outside of Duckburg city limits, that rich hospital that's up in the mountains. He had escaped and made his way to the orphanage where he broke in for some reason.

"Scrooge McDuck didn't want his family's business to be another spectacle for the newspapers and rumor mills to stretch into an unsavory truth, so he persuaded us to leave a few details out of our report. Mr. McDuck made it perfectly clear without really threatening us that if we didn't leave his family out of the incident, that he would find a way to make our lives very uncomfortable. I'm ashamed that I caved, but I didn't think there was any harm in protecting his family. Nobody was hurt and Fethry would be returned to the mental institution without any problems. We wrote that a break-in had occurred at the orphanage, but the suspect had fled the scene of the crime and no evidence was left behind as to who could have done it."

When his mother finished with her story, her voice ended on a flat note, and Fenton expected her to say more. When she didn't, Fenton shook his head. "But…but what happened to Fethry? Why did he break into the orphanage? And why was he committed in the first place?"

Maria took her son's hand. "That's not any of our business. The McDucks deserve a sense of privacy. Even if Mr. McDuck didn't require our silence, Fethry's medical information isn't something we can demand. It's the law."

"But something isn't right," Fenton said. "Did you question Fethry? Ask him anything? What if he isn't insane? What if his family is—"
"Enough, Fenton," Maria said sharply. "I told you to stay away from the McDucks, and I expect you to do as I say."

"Mama, I'm a grown man," Fenton said, standing up. "You can't order me around anymore Mama."

"You are living under my roof," Maria said, jumping up from her chair. And although she was much shorter than her son, it didn't lessen her authority. "As long as you stay here, you will do as I say."

Fenton couldn't remember arguing with his mother like this…not ever. Not even when he was a teenager and went through a rebellious phase. Or at least what he thought was a rebellious phase. Apparently that year when he had wanted to build battle robots and fight them for a living wasn't much of a rebellious streak.

Because of his, Fenton had no practice staring down his mother. Instead, he ended breaking off eye-contact and sat down. "And I suppose you're going to stop me from looking for the mermaid?" Fenton asked. "Which is odd that you didn't question that I had or had not seen one? Why is that?"

Maria shook her head. "Fenton, whatever you saw was not a mermaid. You were up very late Friday morning. More than likely, it was just your eyes playing tricks on you. And the second time? You hit your head on the boat. It was a concussion. It's a miracle that you survived." Her voice was still angry, quite the opposite of what her words meant.

"I didn't hallucinate seeing her," Fenton said. "She is real. The mermaid is real."

"That's crazy," Maria said.

"Just like Fethry?" Fenton asked, wondering if that was the reason the McDuck family had the scientist committed. "Perhaps you should take me to a mental hospital, too."

"Fenton!" Maria said sharply.

"I'll be in my room," Fenton said, marching away as if he had been sent to a time-out. This wasn't what he had expected. This wasn't the end of the weekend he needed.

There were just too many questions and not enough answers for him to feel at ease. His atoms were vibrating with energy, needing to move, needing to search for the truth, needing to do something. But his mother had just cut off one of his most important leads. Even if he decided to go against her wishes, he wasn't sure where he could find more information about Fethry Duck.

That led him to a dead end to finding the mermaid. Not unless he wanted to search the entire ocean for her. Even if he had access to a boat, even one as discombobulated as Donald's, searching the surface was like trying to find a mole by walking around a molehill instead of digging. Unless he could breathe water himself, that would be an exercise in futility.

Breathe water?

Breathe water!

Why not?

Suddenly he was pulling out printing paper from a ream he kept in his desk, drawing sketches, scribbling equations and writing theories that were only legible to him. Several papers ended up crinkled and tossed into the recycling bin, but some he shoved in a bag to take back to Gyro's lab.

His doodles of his hypothesis kept him busy until he was certain that his mother was asleep before he left the house, heading back to the lighthouse. His mother may not want him finding Fethry but that wasn't going to stop him from finding that mermaid.