Snowize & Snitch by Karen Briner

Author:Karen Briner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Holiday House
Published: 2016-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

18

A Begubbled Mind

“Who ate our destination point?” asked Snowize as he consulted a map that had been carved into the underside of a loaf of crispy bread. The ingenious Deodora Miffingpin had included it in the care package she’d sent to the station. The hungry trio had been eating parts of the loaf as they trudged along the road, careful to eat only what they no longer needed for navigation purposes.

Snitch signed an apology. “I’m sorry. I ate the destination.” Reading was clearly not Snitch’s strong suit, and he readily admitted that he was hopeless with maps.

“I’m afraid that until you can read a map, you’ll never make it to partner,” said Snowize.

Snitch winced at this slight, but this was no time for that old argument.

“Fortunately,” said Snowize, “I had Ever commit the entire map to memory before you committed it to your belly. I’m putting this photographic memory of hers to the test. You see, the only other person I’ve ever met with such a gift is myself. So, Ever, any suggestions?”

Ever could picture the recently eaten map perfectly in her mind’s eye. She pointed up to a house on the hill. “Over there. The home of Octavia and Gustav Cadiz. We follow this road, make two lefts and we’re there.”

“Excellent. Exactly as I recall. And my hunch tells me that therein lies the key to solving this case.”

Ever certainly hoped that he was right. The wound on her arm burned beneath the makeshift bandage that the detective had made by dramatically ripping off the sleeve of his white shirt. She bit her lip, determined to ignore the pain and forget the poison, as they headed up toward the charming house on the hill.

Inside the charming house, Octavia Cadiz, the loving wife of Professor Gustav Cadiz, sat next to her husband on the sofa, watching infomercials. From time to time, she turned her gaze from the TV and looked at her husband, who stared unblinkingly at the flickering screen. To see him in such a mindless state was terribly distressing. He was no longer the man he had once been. Before his disappearance, Gustav had refused to watch television. He found the flickering images disturbing and hated commercials with a passion so deep it sometimes made him weep.

“The sole purpose of a commercial,” he would say, “is to make people want something they don’t need. This I find deeply upsetting.”

He believed that excessive television-watching was especially damaging to the developing mind. Professor Gustav Cadiz valued the mind above all else. He would tap his head and say that it was his greatest blessing. And now, in a cruel twist of fate, his mind was gone. When the doorbell rang urgently, he did not even turn his head. Octavia sighed.

“Who is it now? Who is calling on us at this difficult time?” Since her husband’s return, Octavia had been visited by an endless stream of doctors and scientists, all trying in vain to figure out what had happened to Professor Gustav.

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