The Case Before Christmas: Chapter XI

Ben Hansen

And so they shall'd. Should. Did.
Schmid's location, given to them only in the form of a street address, was not what either Ben or Hugh were expecting. Ben had predicted a sprawling Victorian-style house with disintegrating paint on the outer walls and rust covering its awnings, while Hugh was searching for a run-down apartment with bits of plaster falling off, as might befit a mobster hiding from the police.Neither of them had expected anything resembling an abandoned funfair, the sort of decrepit collection of torn tents and dangerous, useless rides that a supervillain would take for their base.

It wasn't one, of course, so Ben and Hugh could happily say they weren't as wrong as they could have been, but certainly neither of them expected this.
"In hindsight, I could probably have led you here from memory," said their faux-German companion conversationally. "I carried half his stuff here when we helped him move."

Hugh shuddered deeply, for reasons best left undescribed, as the three of them looked at Schmid's new home.

"Is there a door we knock on, or...?"

"A door wouldn't really make a lot of sense here," the large, overly familiar guide responded.

"Should we at least say something before we barge on in?" Ben asked, unlatching the gate.

"I think he's heard us anyway."

"Come in, come in!" said the Schmidlike man who had appeared from behind some of the furniture dotted about the random patch of woodland to which the duo's Aryan adviser had led them. "Keith, you didn't tell me you were bringing friends!"

"Well, I'm very friendly with this short fellow here," Keith or whatever his name was said, gesturing to Hugh with a broad sweep of his bulky hand, "but this fey one over here is totally available."

Both of the relevant detectives blanched slightly and tried to shuffle backwards as quickly and as unobtrusively as they could. Neither of them did very well, Hugh erring on the side of caution and being within arm's reach of Keith as the hand continued to move and held him firmly yet worryingly intimately around the shoulders, and Ben erring on the side of panic and taking several large steps closer while staring at Schmid and stammering.

Schmid winked. Keith grinned. Hugh froze. Ben grimaced.

"It's been forever since you last brought me anything so pretty," Schmid said delightedly, kissing Keith lightly on the cheeks. Ben and Hugh twisted around to stare at each other out of eyeshot, frantically mouthing and gesticulating wildly, trying to work out between themselves what less pretty things than Ben had been getting handed over before this point. They abruptly ceased their motions just before the two Aryans parted.

"Sorry," said Ben, "This conversation is not at all going as I had expected. Can we start over?"

"God yes," Hugh said.

"What do you mean?" Schmid asked.

"You see," said the fey one, "The short fellow and I are detectives examining a murder."

"Battery," Hugh corrected.

"The murder of a battery."

"The stabbing of a human."

"Point being, we found this letter written by you in a carrot on the crime scene and we had hoped to ask you if you could tell us what it was about?"

"You didn't think to ask the greengrocer?" Schmid asked.

"What greengrocer?" Hugh returned, a sensation of deja vu coming over him once again.

"The greengrocer who should be keeping this carrot a lot closer to his heart," Schmid said. "This is a love letter, but Klaus must have sold it, the klutz."

"Klaus?" Hugh asked, taking over the conversation while Ben devoted his time to smirking arrogantly.

"The greengrocer! He is part of our little collective. We get together sometimes and, how did you put it, Keith?"

"Conspire," the large conspirator said lewdly.

"We conspire, yes, in a manner which the administration of Die ölige Dame cannot bill for. Our conspiracies didn't help much, though - they still caught us and kicked me out. Keith's lot here are just lucky they didn't check out the backgrounds of the people involved as well. I thought Keith had brought you over for an impromptu meeting."

"Ahh," Ben and Hugh said, neither as comfortable with this conversation as they felt that they as liberally minded people should be.

"This note just features a few sweet nothings, a few comments about brotherly love and so forth, and meeting details, sorry. This has naught to do with your crime."

"Dammit!" Ben said, feeling like the case had been going for years too long as it was.

"What about the "die erben" bit?" Hugh asked, unwilling to let something that had taken up such a large part of the day go so easily.

"Well, you see, Klaus's father and I -"

"Thank you very much for your time," Hugh interjected hurriedly, taking Ben by the forearm and pulling him towards the gate with haste, "but we have to look into another note now."

"The greengrocer!" Ben crowed as they left.

"The fey one?" Hugh replied, pulling the half of a note he'd pulled from the bloodstained couch out of his bloodstained pocket.

"Fair enough," Ben said, changing his state to cowed at once.