Moxie was waiting for me right outside the police station. She looked cross. She’d even put down her typewriter, right by the door of the library, so she could cross her arms. She did it crossly.
“Don’t be mad, Moxie.”
“I am mad,” she said. “I sat in the library reading about military history for hours, and when I went to show you what I’d found, you’d snuck out.”
Theodora put a stern hand on my shoulder. “ ‘Snuck’ is not proper,” she said to Moxie. “The correct term is ‘sneaked.’ And it does not surprise me that Snicket has disappointed you, whoever you are.”
Moxie turned her eyes from me to my chaperone and then reached into the brim of her hat. “I’m Moxie Mallahan,” she said, handing Theodora one of her printed cards. “The News. We’ve met before.”
“I’m not interested in discussing imaginary meetings,” Theodora said, absently tucking Moxie’s card into her hair. “I’ve had a very trying day. I solved a case in a few minutes, but then my apprentice spent the afternoon sending the police on a wild-goose chase. His little friend has been arrested, and I’m considering putting him back on probation.”
Recently I’d figured out the difference between being on probation and not being on probation. The difference was that if I were on probation, Theodora could remind me I was on probation, and if I were not on probation, Theodora could remind me that she could put me back on probation. Theodora snuck a look at me to see what I thought of what she’d said. I looked at the ground.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Ms. Markson,” Moxie said, trying not to stare at Theodora’s hair. “A person of your great skill shouldn’t have to be bothered by inept apprentices. If you solved a case today, you should be celebrating, not disciplining troublesome underlings.”
Theodora’s voice softened slightly, like an old onion. “I quite agree,” she said. “Perhaps you’re more sensible than I first thought.”
“That’s very sweet of you to say,” Moxie said politely.
“Snicket, make yourself scarce,” Theodora said. “I’m going to celebrate the solving of this case.”
“I’ll look after him, Ms. Markson,” Moxie said. “That way he’ll be out of your…”
I watched Moxie’s face as she did something very difficult. A laugh is harder to swallow whole than a honeydew melon. Her mouth twisted every which way, and her eyes flitted madly as she looked everywhere but at me. “Out of your hair, Ms. Markson,” she finished finally. “Out of your hair.”
Theodora gave Moxie a nod and strode down the stairs. We waited until it was safe to open up the laugh, and then we shared it. “You have a very good polite voice,” I told her.
“That’s very sweet of you to say,” she said again. “My mother said a good polite voice is the journalist’s best tool because people are more likely to tell you important information if you treat them nicely. She had an expression for it—you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.”
“Either way,” I said, “you end up with flies. Did your mother teach you the phrase ‘troublesome underlings’?”
“My father used to call everyone at the newspaper that, as a joke.” She stared out at the lawn, the damaged statue, and the darkening sky. “Back when the newspaper was running,” she said, “and when my father was in a jokey mood.”
“It’s a good phrase,” I said.
“You might not be a troublesome underling, Snicket, but you are still troublesome. You said we were associates, and then you ran out of the library without telling me.”
“I had to follow someone.”
“I would have gone with you.”
“I keep telling you, Moxie, I don’t want to lead you into danger.”
She reached down and picked up her typewriter. “I’m a journalist, Snicket. A dangerous story is an interesting story, and interesting stories belong in the newspaper. Now tell me everything that happened since you sneaked out of the library—”
“Snuck,” I said, but Moxie just shook her head.
“When did you leave? Who did you follow? How did you know to follow them? Where did they go? What did you find? Why aren’t you telling me?”
I sat down on the steps. “I’ll tell you,” I said.
She opened her typewriter. “Everything,” she reminded me.
I told her everything. She typed wildly, like she was hurrying after something. She took off her hat and scratched her forehead in thought. “So Ellington Feint pretended to be Cleo Knight, so Cleo could stay in town and finish her formula for invisible ink.”
“But Ms. Feint took her Cleo Knight act to the Inhumane Society to get closer to Hangfire and rescue her father.”
“And meanwhile Cleo was kidnapped, and nobody’s seen or heard from her.”
“Maybe somebody has,” I said suddenly. “Are you hungry?”
“Yes, I am.”
“That’s funny. I thought somebody else was Hungry.”
“I don’t follow you, Snicket.”
“Then follow me, Moxie.”
Moxie followed me. The last few rays of sun lit the lawn in dim stripes. The shape of the ruined statue made a long, strange shadow. “You haven’t even asked me what I discovered,” Moxie said.
“I thought you were too mad to tell me.”
She frowned at me. “I didn’t appreciate being left at the library, but I did find some interesting information. Dashiell Qwerty stopped by to check on me, and he just happened to leave a book on the table that turned out to be important. Isn’t that a strange coincidence?”
“It might be serendipity,” I said, “or it might be something else.”
“Whenever I talk with you, I get the feeling there’s something else,” Moxie said to me. “You’re chasing mysteries, Snicket, but you’ve been a mystery yourself since you arrived in town. I have the sense there’s something you’re not telling me—something secret underneath the surface, like an underground tunnel.”
I froze. “What exactly did you find out?”
Moxie walked over to the remains of the statue and ran her hands down the cold, melted metal. “Remember that photograph I showed you?”
I nodded. “It was the groundbreaking ceremony, with everyone gathered to celebrate the first day of work on the statue honoring Colonel Colophon.”
“Not everyone was celebrating,” Moxie said. “The book Qwerty left on the table talked about what happened beforehand. There was a fierce argument over the statue, and after the groundbreaking ceremony the argument only got fiercer. There were people who thought that the war was nothing to celebrate and that Colonel Colophon shouldn’t be honored for so much bloodshed. The tree that was uprooted was home to the Farnsworth Pulpeater Moths, and people were angry that no one had thought of what would happen to those rare and endangered creatures. At first there were only a few people who thought this way, and they began to make trouble. They even formed a sort of troublemaking society.”
“The Inhumane Society,” I said.
Moxie blinked at me. “I knew it,” she said. “I knew you’d know.”
“I didn’t know, really,” I said. “I guessed.”
“You’re a good guesser.”
“I have good associates.”
We’d reached the door of Hungry’s, and I held it open for Moxie, who sat immediately at the counter and typed a few lines. Pip and Squeak looked up at the sound and gave us a wave, and Jake Hix gave us a salute from the stove, where he was standing over something sizzling with a spatula in his hand.
“Did you finish that mystery?” I asked him.
“Not quite,” Jake said.
“Well, maybe you can help me with mine.”
Jake slid the sizzles onto two plates and then hovered over them with a pepper grinder. “Let me just serve this up, and I’ll come talk to you,” he said.
“What are you fixing?”
“Gashouse eggs. Let me whip some up for you.”
“Me too, Jake,” said Moxie, without looking up from her notes.
Jake gave her a smile and delivered dinner to the Bellerophon brothers. “Sure thing, Moxie. Haven’t seen you around for a while. How’ve you been?”
“Busy,” Moxie said, and kept typing while Jake got to work tossing another cube of butter into a hot, flat pan. “Tell me,” I said to Pip, “why didn’t you mention that you picked up Ellington Feint in your cab the other day?”