Giggleswick: The Amadán Map

Chapter Ten: Bert on the Scent

Stan the cameraman cleared his throat. 

“Ehm, yes, well.” Ellebasi put her newscaster face back on. “Tell me, what was your reaction to this terrible news?” She straightened the mound of hair atop her head and shoved the microphone back into Trixie’s face.

“Well,” Trixie began, gazing up into the sky and trying to recall the details. “I grabbed my boyfriend’s hand, and then I says to him –– I says, ‘This is terrible!’” She nodded fervently, looking as though she wanted to appear very helpful and newsworthy. She then attempted to duplicate the grief-stricken expression she’d made when she’d heard the news on the television. 

Stan pulled in for a close up of Trixie’s face and then turned the camera back on Ellebasi, who was waiting with a masterful look of sorrow and the microphone ready at her lips. “Well there you have it. It’s a sad day for Giggleswick as hundreds flock outside the Offices of Tranquility to mourn the passing of Poppy Scrum.” 

As far as Elliot’s eyes could see, it was just he, Eliza and Trixie outside the Offices of Tranquility, and he hadn’t remembered anything about flocking there to mourn. 

“Cut,” Stan grunted. Instantly, Ellebasi fell right out of character and began cursing her stockings, which had apparently been riding up on her all afternoon. 

From then on, it was as if Trixie, Elliot and Eliza had never existed, and Ellebasi began reapplying her lipstick while bickering with the cameraman. “Stanley –– if I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times to steady that camera. I look like I’m in the middle of a flippin’ earthquake!” 

Elliot and Eliza waited while Trixie pressed the buzzer outside the front door. A few seconds later a wheezy voice came over the speaker. “I’ve already told you, Miss Nostaw –– Lefty will speak with you when he is good and ready!” Apparently Ellebasi had made a pest of herself before they’d arrived, as Constable Humphrey sounded at the end of his tether. 

“Constable, it’s me,” Trixie said, rapping lightly on the door. 

“Oh, Trixie, my apologies. Do come in,” he said, much more benevolently this time. 

Trixie ushered Elliot and Eliza in through the front door. The inside was as quaint as the outside but no more lavish. An ordinary secretarial desk, which could have belonged to none other than Trixie, sat a few feet away with several tubes of nail polish placed neatly beside a notepad, pencil, nail file and telephone. 

In a little waiting area, they found Lefty sitting in a chair and sobbing into his mittens. He was wearing his usual army-green slicker and clutching a sea captain’s hat in his fist, which Elliot felt sure must have been Poppy’s. Eliza’s father Wally was patting Lefty on the shoulder and handing him tissue after tissue, and Todd Bisby was busy making Lefty a cup of tea. Evol squawked from his post on Lefty’s shoulder and rubbed his beak against the man’s stubbled cheek. Occasionally he helped to hold extra tissues when Wally couldn’t keep up with the geyser that had become Lefty’s nose. 

While all of this was going on, Elliot saw Kennedy Kreville pop his head out of an office door. He glanced at Lefty, then down at his wristwatch, back up at Lefty, and then rolled his eyes before stepping back into his office and shutting the door with a pronounced thud. 

George Detweiler, who was perched on the end of a desk, threw an empty can of fogg-fizz at Kennedy’s door. “How ‘bout a toast to good ol’ Poppy,” he hollered to everyone, cracking open another can. 

Constable Humphrey shook his head solemnly and said, “Maybe some other time.” 

George’s face went red, and he sipped quietly on his drink from then on.