Mr. and Mrs. Bunny—Detectives Extraordinaire! (17 page)

“Curses! The dreaded loophole!” the councilbunnies muttered to each other.

“And if any of you should care to follow us home, you will find this fantastic pet hutch!” said Mr. Bunny, wildly waving around his arms in an excited and exaggerated fashion.

“I don't think,” said the headcouncilbunny, “that any of us care to, as you so unlawyerlikely put it, ‘follow you home.' We will send an official building inspector to check on this story. I suggest there had better be a pet house for this human when the inspector arrives. That's all I have to say. NEXT!”

“I haven't made my closing arguments!” protested Mr. Bunny, still waving his arms around. He found it very aerating.

“NEXT!” said the head councilbunny again, and in were led a terrified pair of suit-wearing bunnies.

“Stand firm,” said Mr. Bunny, gripping the upper arm of one of the accused bunnies. “Don't let them cheat you out of a closing argument! And when you pause for dramatic effect, that's a good time to put in your coffee order.”

“And there is no pit of snakes!” whispered Mrs. Bunny.

Then, having done all they could, they hopped back to the car.

Mr. and Mrs. Bunny drove the first few miles home in exhausted silence. Finally, Mrs. Bunny said, “Brilliant, Mr. Bunny. I never thought of keeping Madeline on as our pet.”

“I can't wait to tell her. We can keep her always,” said Mr. Bunny.

Mrs. Bunny frowned. “But what about her parents?”

“The ones who won't come to her parent-teacher conferences?
To heck with them,” said Mr. Bunny fiercely. “I'll tell you another thing, I'm not going back to The Olde Spaghetti Factory. Now that I know they have
tattling
waiters.”

“You ought to tip more,” said Mrs. Bunny.

“The problem isn't with the tipping,” said Mr. Bunny. “It's the employers' job to pay their waiters a decent wage. If they did this, then the waiters would not have to rely on tips. I do not like to feel obligated to pay the wages of a restaurant's employees.…”

And on and on and on Mr. Bunny went with this well-worn argument. Mrs. Bunny had heard it a million times before and could not imagine what had possessed her to bring it up again. Mr. Bunny was still talking about it as they drove home. And as he parked and got out and as Mrs. Bunny collected the mail and put it in the house. She tried stuffing his mouth full of circulars, but she could still hear him talking. Then she tried socks. But he was still making sounds. She was considering duct tape, but she wasn't fast enough.

“Let's give Madeline the good news,” she said, giving up and going into Madeline's hutch while Mr. Bunny spit socks out over the back lawn. His projectile range was excellent.

“Madeline!” they called out cheerily.

But Madeline was gone.

“Where could she be?” asked Mrs. Bunny.

“Maybe she got hungry and went to pick some lettuces,” said Mr. Bunny, so they hopped around the garden, but Madeline was nowhere to be found. Hmm, he thought, the lettuces were looking a little dry. Should he tell Mrs. Bunny a sad story?

“Oh, Mr. Bunny, we should have taken her with us. I felt so from the start,” said Mrs. Bunny, punching him on the arm.

“Ouch! Get ahold of yourself, Mrs. Bunny. If you felt so, you never said so.”

“Oh, Mr. Bunny,” wailed Mrs. Bunny. “You don't suppose she was foolish enough to go to the cliff edge alone? We told her to wait for us.”

“I'm afraid that is what she did do,” said Mr. Bunny grimly. “Hurry!”

They leapt into the car and drove to the cliff edge. There they leapt out to look for clues. They found signs of markings that had been carefully smudged out.

“What was it, do you think?” asked Mrs. Bunny as Mr. Bunny sifted through the sawdust debris. “A message?”

“No,” said Mr. Bunny. “A line, and see, the remnant of another. Mrs. Bunny, I think it's a trail! Let's follow the debris.”

Mr. and Mrs. Bunny hopped along these remnants until they came to the oak tree. There seemed to have been one last smudge. Mrs. Bunny hopped excitedly in that direction until Mr. Bunny's hand grabbed her and pulled her back. “Stop!” he cried, and pointed down one hop ahead of where Mrs. Bunny stood.

Mrs. Bunny turned pale. “The snake pit! There
was
one after all,” she whispered in awe, and promptly fainted.

“For heaven's sake,” said Mr. Bunny, yanking Mrs. Bunny to her feet. “Wake up!”

“Oh, Mr. Bunny,” squealed Mrs. Bunny, having been roused by Mr. Bunny, who in his excitement might have bitten her just a little. “They've got Madeline! Let's jump in after her! We can stomp those snakes with our floppy feet!”

Mr. Bunny put a restraining paw on Mrs. Bunny. “Wait, let's not go off half-cocked, Mrs. Bunny, with more enthusiasm than brains. Let us certainly not start jumping into holes. We are not detectives for nothing. Let's us sit here for a minute and think.”

The Bunnys sat. If there was ever a time for the brains under those fuzzy ears and fetching fedoras, it was now.

Mr. Bunny suddenly stood up.

“Mrs. Bunny,” he said, “I have an idea.”

Madeline was awoken by someone opening the bag she lay curled tightly inside.

“It's morning. We are going to take you out of this bag and blindfold you and lead you to the bathroom,” said a whiny voice. “But if you resist or give us trouble, it's back in the bag for you. Got it?”

“Oh, for heaven's sake,” said Madeline. She didn't know why the tone of the speaker exasperated her so much. She felt she herself could be a scarier villain than this apparent guard fox, but nevertheless she thought it best to cooperate.

When she returned from the bathroom and the blindfold was removed, she found herself in pitch-darkness. Metal banged on metal, and she heard loud stomping feet. There was a pungent smell of garlic. From somewhere in the room she heard the sound of many mouths chewing.

Occasionally a voice would call out. Sometimes the voice was high. Sometimes it was low. Sometimes it had a Spanish accent. Sometimes a French accent. Always it said the same thing: “Now you are mine!” It was maddening and monotonous and Madeline wished she knew what it meant.

Then, just as Madeline thought she was going to go crazy if she heard “Now you are mine!” one more time, the voices switched to “Beware, the boss is coming!”

Now, this did worry Madeline. Maybe this whiny-voiced fox wasn't much threat, but the boss might be a different story. It was time to make a move. She crept slowly away from the voices until she found a wall. Then, feeling her way along the wall, she tiptoed sideways, hoping to find a door. Inch by inch she moved, worrying that the foxes would notice what she was doing, but they seemed busy nattering in different accents. At last her hands came upon a doorknob. She sighed in relief. She turned it, but to no avail. She was locked in. She almost wept in frustration, when suddenly she remembered the tae kwon do that KatyD had taught her. She rehearsed the sideways kick in her mind. The boss fox, when he entered, would have a surprise waiting for him!

There Madeline stood, poised and ready as the moments ticked on. Finally, just as she was about to sit down again, the door swung open. She leapt sideways, kicked where she thought the boss's collarbone should be and met air. She fell over and the door swung the rest of the way open. Any second she expected sharp teeth, but what the light revealed was the last thing she expected.

 A CLUE! 

T
here stood Mr. Bunny, holding The Marmot by the scruff of his neck in one paw and another marmot in the other paw. Both marmots were munching garlic bread and looking completely unfazed, even when Mr. Bunny heaved them across the room onto a pile of other marmots and flicked the lights on.

“MR. AND MRS. BUNNY!” cried Madeline when she could find her voice.

“Yes, for so we are called!” proclaimed Mr. Bunny, and then the three of them fell upon each other in furry joy.

When everyone had calmed down, Madeline stared at the pile of garlic-bread-munching marmots in the corner in a state of disbelief. “I've been in here with marmots all this time? But what about the accents? The scary voices?”

“Digital voice-changing box. Very deluxe item as seen on TV,” said The Marmot.

“Oh, I've seen commercials for that! Does it really work?” asked Mrs. Bunny, forgetting herself and hopping over to their corner to examine it.

“Sure it does, sure it does, it's seen on
TV
! You just speak into the microphone here and it changes your voice,” said The Marmot through a mouthful of garlic bread.

“How clever!” said Mrs. Bunny. “How much was it?”

“Twelve ninety-nine. And if you order now you get the Instaburp absolutely free! Of course, it comes to a hundred dollars by the time you add the shipping and handling.”

“Yes, that's how they always get you, the shipping and handling,” said Mrs. Bunny, nodding sagely and then remembering herself. “Still, it serves you right, you naughty naughty marmot! I wish they'd charged you DOUBLE!”

“Well, that's a bit harsh,” said The Marmot, grabbing a piece of bread from another marmot, which started a free-for-all among them as they scrabbled for the last bits. There were crumbs everywhere.

“So
you're
the enemy?” asked Madeline. She was still baffled. “But I thought foxes took Flo and Mildred!”

For a second the room froze and fur quivered. Marmots were no fonder of foxes than bunnies were. Then they shrugged it off. It was always out of sight, out of mind with marmots.

“Yes, I'm the enemy, like the note said,” said The Marmot. “And why wouldn't I be your enemy? First Mr. Bunny gives me a vicious pinch, then you hypnotize me and probably make me do things like sing like Elvis.
I'll
never know.
I
was hypnotized!”

“Oh, don't be silly,” said Madeline.

“And then my neighbors tell me that you were following me from new hole to new hole, spying on me. Well, I guess I showed you! I guess I turned the tables on you! HA! You won't be calling me stupid marmot anymore.”