I was getting myself cleaned up when I saw the flashing lights of the police car as it slid silently to a halt outside the McKenzie mansion. The doors opened and closed and Tidbeck and Webber strutted across the gravel. I watched out of the window from the second floor of the house. The big doors of the mansion opened and out stepped a man who went to welcome the detectives. He had a very familiar face.
I stared.
It was the mayor.
They disappeared inside. I hurriedly tried to wipe chocolate off my shirt but only managed to smear it some more. I gave up and hurried out of the bathroom and on to the landing, just in time to see them passing by, down the stairs.
I tiptoed after. The thick carpet swallowed the sound of footsteps. I saw their backs as they disappeared down a long corridor.
I followed.
Elderly McKenzies stared down at me with pursed lips and disapproving eyes, but they were only old portraits and I did my best to ignore them. I saw the mayor and the two detectives disappear into a large room with a long oak table in the middle. I crept to the door. It had been left very slightly ajar. Very carefully, I pushed it open the tiniest bit more, so I could look inside. “Well?” the mayor said irritably. “Did you find it?”
“Sir, we’re actively looking,” Tidbeck said. “There have been some unfortunate setbacks—”
“I don’t get the whole thing with the teddy,” the mayor said. “Are you sure it is going to lead you to him? Are you sure it’s not just a red herring?”
“A fish, sir?” Webber said. “I’m pretty sure it is a teddy.”
“Not a fish, you idiot. A red herring. Something that looks important but turns out not to be all that relevant.”
“I don’t really like fish, sir.”
“Oh, for…never mind,” the mayor said acidly. He turned on Tidbeck, already dismissing Webber from his mind.
“Time is running out, detective. I need to find that man! I want that factory!”
I stared in horrified fascination as the mayor spoke.
I had suspected the connection before, but I hadn’t wanted to believe it to be true.
But it was really him.
It had been the mayor all along.
I stared at him, there in the room, giving orders.
But what I couldn’t understand was…why?
“We don’t yet know where he’s hiding, sir. He could be anywhere. For all we know he was at this party!” Tidbeck said. “However, we have to assume the teddy will draw him out. We know it is precious to him.”
“Then why did he let it go in the first place?” the mayor said.
“We think he gave it to the boy, de Menthe. His protégé.”
I knew that meant something like “an apprentice.” Is that how Eddie got the teddy? It was passed on to him from Mr. Farnsworth?
No wonder the two detectives were after Eddie, then.
No wonder he’d had to disappear.
“Then where is the boy?”
“We don’t know. Yet.”
“You find it! Them! I will suffer no more excuses!” He sighed. “Setting fire to that shop was stupid.”
I held my breath when the implications of what he had just said settled in.
“You two have been skimming too much off the kids’ candy. I do not care for candy! I never have.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Go out there and find them! Turn every stone. Do not let me down!”
“Yes, sir.”
I watched them through the crack. Then I realized they were heading out and I flattened myself against the wall, my heart thumping. They didn’t see me behind the door.
“We’ll go have another little chat with Bobbie,” Tidbeck said. “And then I think we need to put more pressure on that annoying little girl, Nelle. She knows more than she’s letting on. It’s time to end this.”
Webber sniggered. I waited, frozen, until they were gone.
I should have left, but curiosity got the better of me. I came ’round the door and saw the mayor, still inside the room, gazing out of the window, his back to me. I went in.
Standing against the wall I saw a box of clear glass, with a picture above it.
The picture showed an aerial photo of the abandoned chocolate factory on the hill. It showed just how immense it really was.
The factory sprawled in all directions, like a miniature town all on its own. There was a series of interlinked halls built in brown brick, with immense towering chimneys rising from the flat rooftops. There were shining pathways woven between the buildings, where tiny people moved in tiny carts.
Below the photograph, encased in the glass, was a model of the same area, but the factory was gone. In its place rose a development of shining new homes, with neat manicured lawns and white picket fences, a playground to one side, even an artificial lake.
A small note beside the display said, “Proposed plans for area redevelopment.”
I stared at it in fascinated horror. Which is when the mayor turned his head and saw me.
For a moment he looked irritated. “Where did you come from?” he said.
“I was looking for Waffles,” I said. “I mean, Elmore.”
“Ah, the McKenzie boy,” he said. “Well, he’s not here.”
“You’re the mayor,” I said.
I knew his face, of course. I’d seen him on TV a few times, and at the rally I’d seen him from a distance. Now, though, he was standing right by me, so close I could reach out and touch him. He had a thick shock of black hair, a close-set mouth, a chin that jutted out just a little bit. He wore black-rimmed glasses, and he smoked a pipe. He wore a shabby suit. You wouldn’t notice him if you passed him on the street or in the shop. He was just a man.
And yet he wasn’t. He was Mayor Thornton.
“I see you are admiring my project,” he said. He turned to look at the model under the glass.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he said.
“It’s…but…but the factory!” I said.
“Oh, that horrible old thing has to go, kid,” he said. “It has no place in the modern world.”
“But the chocolate—”
“Disgusting stuff. Trust me, kid. We’ll make this city great again. It will all be for the better.”
“But Mr. Farnsworth!” I said. I couldn’t help myself.
“Farnsworth? Farnsworth!” he said. “Don’t you worry about him, little girl. He’s nothing but a joke.” There was no more warmth in him anymore, if there ever was. “I don’t like jokes,” he complained. “I never get them.”
He saw my face. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It will all be over soon. It’s just a formality, really. Just a matter of doing the paperwork.”
“Paperwork?” I said.
“The title deeds,” he said. “I just need that awful Farnsworth man to sign them over to me. Which he will, just as soon as I find him…but like I said, little girl, don’t you worry about that.”
Then he smiled, a practiced public smile with little kindness in it. “Here,” he said. He handed me a button with his face on it and a legend that said, Thornton for Mayor. “Does your mommy vote? You’ll give it to her, won’t you? Remember, always eat your greens, and Vote Thornton!”
He patted me on the head and then glided away, already forgetting me, our conversation, the minor irritant I must have seemed to him.
I stood there, watching him go. I stared at the model of the proposed new development where the chocolate factory still stood.
So this was what it was all about. He was going to make Mr. Farnsworth sign over the factory—he was going to force him to!
I swore right then that I wouldn’t let him get away with it.
There had to be a way to bring him down.