Had a stranger passed the sweet shop that sunny summer afternoon, he would have shaken his head at the sight in the front window, sure that he was seeing double. Two young girls bent over a single triple chocolate marshmallow ice cream float, their impossibly curly corn-colored curls tied in gay blue ribbons, both with identical determined chins, freckled cheeks, and snubbed noses that seemed to connote both a love of fun and a stubborn streak. They wore the same smiles, as if they shared an infectious secret.
But there were no strangers in that small town in California, and everyone knew Patsy and Pansy Parkey . . .for they were twins, and identical at that!
It was Pansy who was greedily gulping down the last of the delicious triple chocolate marshmallow soda with her bent-neck straw. "Patsy," she said, cocking her head. "I'm so glad we met for the first time at Camp Pocahontawatha two years ago this month when our long-divorced parents, who each kept one of us after they separated, accidentally sent us there at the same time without each other knowing."
Patsy grinned back. "Oh Pansy," she said, daringly wiping her slightly fudgy hands on her own light brown jumper with matching clam-diggers, identical to that which her twin wore. "Wasn't The Case of the Kookoo Counselor fun to solve?" The other twin nodded in fervent agreement. "And remember how we tried to get moms and pops to reconcile, so we could live as one big happy family?"
Pansy whistled a little tune that Patsy recognized as their rock-and-roll tune, 'Let's Go Together, Yay, Yay, Yay', that they had spunkily played during an impromptu romantic dinner when trying to convince their parents that marriage was a lifetime proposition, despite their many, many, many differences. Then her face fell. "And then we had to solve The Mystery of the Dead Divorcee," she said sadly.
Patsy nodded in somber agreement. It had been a sad time. But nothing kept the Parkey twins sober for long! "It was sad when Pops got life in the pen, Pansy," she said soberly. "But then we moved to California to live with Aunt Polly, and now we're Teen Detectives!"
Her grin widening, Pansy added, "And now mystery's our thing!"
At that moment Alfie came by to remove the trash from their table. "Hey, Tootsies!" he grinned at the twins as he adjusted his paper soda-jerk hat atop his nest of unruly golden curls; such a match for the twins' hair, for he was their Aunt Polly's only son, home from college for the summer. "I'm surprised to see you here. I was sure when that mysterious van from out of state started unloading plain brown boxes into the Old Hill House, you two would be all over it. But I guess you don't want to start in on a new mystery so soon after solving ThePumpkin Patch Puzzler, and with less than a week until your yearly trip to Camp Pocahontawatha."The twins looked at each other, and identical determined looks locked onto their faces. "To the Mystery, and Beyond!" they sang in unison, and were out of the sweet shop like twin tornadoes. Alfie looked down at the carnage on the table and sighed, "Well, I guess that's another triple chocolate marshmallow ice cream float on the house. I've gotta work on my timing."
The twins barely stopped to catch their breath until they were safely hidden behind the overgrown laurel hedge that surrounded the Old Hill House at the edge of town. Taking a small compact out of the pocket of her clam-diggers, and checking on the position of the sun, to ensure no tell-tale reflections, Pansy slowly lifted the mirrored side over the edge of the foliage. "There's three men," she hissed to her twin, who wrote down all the potential clues with her waterproof pencil in the tiny locked notebook she had withdrawn from her over-the-shoulder pocketbook, "and the boxes aren't plain like Alfie said. They've got writing on them." She squinted into the tiny mirror, "Oh phooey, it's so hard to read mirror images."
"Let me try," Patsy asked, "When Pops was in the Secret Service, he taught me all sorts of tricks, like that easy way to open a lock with a pencil..."
"..which we used to solve The Dirty Dog Dilemma!" they finished the sentence in unison, a trick that they often did. Patsy took the mirror from her twin, and was just starting to raise the little compact over her head when a commotion caught their attention. Suddenly, through the hedge burst a burly man, leading a large and unpleasant dog. "Make that FOUR men," Pansy hissed.
"Golly!" said Patsy, absorbed by her spying and not hearing her sister's dismayed tone. "You're right! Several of the boxes say TERCES POT in big backwards letters!" She lowered the little compact mirror, taking but a moment to inspect the freshness of her Tinkerbell lipstick as she closed it and put it safely away. "What does TERCES POT mean, do you reckon?"
Pansy's eyes flashed. "I'm willing to bet it's not something you'd find in the kitchen . . . Pats! You goof! It's not TERCES POT! The mirror image of that would be. . . ."
The girls gasped at the wicked implications as they puzzled out the clue."Top Secret!" they said in twin-like unison with their eyes wide.
While Patsy made a note of the ominous words in her Official Parkey Twins Real Detective's Notepad with the Official Parkey Twins Real Detective's Secret Al-Pho-Bet Rotary Spy Decoder affixed in the back cover, available for a song at the local five 'n' dime, Pansy boyishly chewed a thumbnail. "Jeepers, Pats," she said. "We might be in over our head this time! Should I call Chief Hungwel on my Official Parkey Twins Real Detective's Secret Spy Two-Way Hand-Held Intercom, available at stores everywhere?"
Pansy's impossibly corn-colored curls bounced scornfully at the notion. "Not when there's a MYSTERY afoot!" she said with resolve.
Suddenly, a shadow loomed over them! It was the fourth man that Pansy had seen emerge from the gaping maw of the old house just moments before! His bald head and broad shoulders seemed even more ominous at close range. "Hey Mr. Ragsdale!" he called out to someone in an accent that the girls, by benefit of the Official Parkey Twins Secret Eyeblink Semaphore, quickly identified between themselves as hailing from Hoboken, New Jersey. "Looks like we've got here a coupla nosy parkers!"
Patsy sat up indignantly. She was angry! So angry she didn't care how dusty her clamdiggers got! "That's nosy Parkeys to you!"
"Heh," guffawed the second man, "Nosy Parkeys, hey? Remember when Mr. Ragsdale had us 'deal with' another Nosy Parkey? That spy that we framed for his wife's death to get him out of our hair?" He leered at the girls, and Patsy silently and swiftly signaled to her sister, once again employing the Secret Eyeblink Semaphore, to study the tell-tale tattoo on the scrawny man's left wrist. Pansy signaled back their course of action, and the girls nodded in unison, then assumed vacant gazes.
"Golly, Mister" Patsy began, as Pansy allowed her tongue to loll out the side of her mouth, her flashing blue eyes suddenly becoming dull as dishwater, "that's a swell doggie you've got there. Is he friendly? Sorry for shouting at you, but my sister hasn't been the same since the accident. She's really fond of dogs, and goes wandering looking for them. We never get to this part of town, but when she heard the dog, she went off, and I had to come find her to take her home. She gets lost so easily, and Aunt Polly worries so much." The girls knew the premise was lame, but in their eyeblink semaphore conference, they'd deduced that the two men were of limited intelligence themselves, and would probably (within a 35% error margin) be taken in by the 'Slow Sister Ruse' which they'd used to get out of a tight situation in TheCase of the Careless Curmudgeon.
The burly man smiled, almost in a friendly way, "Oh, Butch is a pussycat on the inside. Just give him a biscuit, and he'll be your friend for life. Here honey," he moved towards the now-drooling Pansy, "do you want to pet the puppy?"
"Shut up Bruno," the scrawny man cut in, "We're supposed to be guarding the shipment, not playing babysitter to re-tards. Mr. Ragsdale's going to be bringing the boss around tomorrow, and we've got work to do. Lookie here, Missy" he addressed Patsy, who was still shocked at hearing the R-word (they were not allowed to use it in Aunt Polly's house), "Get your retard sister home, and stay in your own neighborhood if you know what's good for you" He scowled at Bruno, and added in a lower voice "Now let's get the stash into the basement before the rest of the equipment arrives."
Patsy took her sister by the arm, and led her away from the house until they were out of visual range, then they sat down behind a fence, and looked at each other, "Golly, Pansy, you were grand at being the Slow Sister!" Patsy exclaimed. Pansy smiled, "Well, while Pops was teaching you Secret Service tricks, Moms and I were in Hollywood, learning the tricks of the acting trade."
"Aren't we a perfect pair?" they exclaimed in unison. "Now let's get back to our Official Parkey Twin Mystery Solving Nerve Center and start working on The Mystery of the Telltale Tattoo"
Patsy caught her punch cup in time to save the precious skirt and its darling embroidered poodle, whom she had christened "Sir Frou-Frou" in one of the twins' lighter moments. "Oh Pansy," she said with a self-mocking grin. "I guess I'm still puzzling over this afternoon's Mystery of the Mean Movers! But it won't do to ruin my skirt with this delicious raspberry sherbet punch or these simply scrumptious appetizers that the girls of the 4-H made!"
"Oh!" said Pansy. "I didn't see those! But isn't the Social Hall lovely tonight? I think it's grand that that Town Fathers are throwing us an early Farewell Sock Hop and Taffy Pull before we go off to Camp Pocahontawatha. Not every girl gets one of those!"
"That's because not every girl is a world famous Teen Detective!" exclaimed Patsy with a toothy grin. "But golly, Pans, hush up, because here comes Annette Campbell, and she's sure to spoil our wholesome fun with her wise cracks."
"Hel-lo, girls!" said Annette, coming up to the pair and giving them the once-over. Obviously scornful of the twins' impossibly corn-colored curls, she vainly patted her perfect helmet of hairsprayed black hair and adjusted her skirt of Campbell tartan. "Going off to camp again? How droll. I went to camp when I was a kid too, you know."
"And now you're just a full-grown goat, aren't you, Annette?" snapped Patsy.
Annette pretended not to hear the cutting remark. "And now I suppose I'll just have to keep your cousin Alfie company all . . . summer . . . long."
Pansy looked suspicious. "Alfie wouldn't give you the time of day, Annette Campbell!"
"Oh, wouldn't he?" said Annette, her painted eyebrows arching in surprise. "We were together just now. Alfie really knows how to pulls his taffy, you know. I might have a better job for him too . . . working at my uncle's amusement park. Uncle Wally just moved to Hillsdale this afternoon, and he's looking for willing boys to help him in his business."
"How nice. Bye, Annette," said Patsy pointedly, as she feigned an interest in the delicious 4-H peeled cucumber roll-ups with peanut butter and Kraft mayonnaise . . . the perfect combination of body-building proteins and vegetable fiber for growing Teen Detectives! As soon as the tight-skirted girl sashayed out of sight, she hissed to Pansy, "Do you think Uncle Wally could be the mysterious man in the house this afternoon?"
"Golly!" Pansy exclaimed. "You sure are smart!"
The girls blinked in unison, "OUR friend?"
Alfie nodded, "She said you came to her for advice, and that she thought you'd go so much farther if I was to quit my job at the Soda Shack and work for her Uncle Wally. While the wages are a nickel higher, I'd hate to leave all the folks at the Shack".
Patsy was the first to stamp her white patent leather strappy toeless dancing slipper. Pansy wasn't far behind. "We are NOT friends with that creature" they exclaimed in unison, "She behaves in a beastly way to people, and her parents have always given us the creeps, ever since they moved from Hoboken."
"In fact" Patsy added, almost conspiratorially, "when we ran the secret Parkey Twin Felon Personality Evaluation on her father, he scored a 23." The girls exchanged a most meaningful glance.
Alfie was just going to ask if a 23 was good or bad, when Annette returned, a distinguished moustachioed gentleman on her arm. "Oh Alfie!" she cooed, "This is my uncle, Walter Ragsdale. He's offered to chaperone this shindig, and I thought you two could talk about your future in the amusement park business."
Suddenly, Patsy grabbed her sister's arm, and hissed in her ear "Quick! Look at his wrist!"
Alfie had always wanted to help the famous Teen Detectives solve one of their curious cases and now, here was his big chance! He turned to Mr. Ragsdale and said "Gee, I'd love to spy on you, I mean, work at the park...would I get to run the roller coaster, or sell cotton candy?"
Ragsdale's bushy brown mustache bounced up and down as he laughed, "Oh my no, boy, I need you to keep the Porta-Potties clean, and run litter patrol. You have no idea how sticky the walkways can get with all that...."
"EEEYEW" chimed the terrific twins in unison, their perky curls bouncing, "That is disgusting"
Annete sniffed,"Come Uncle, let's leave these rat finks to themselves, I have better things to do. Bye, Alfie!" She batted her dark eyelashes in Alfie's direction.
As the pair departed, Patsy and Pansy grasped each other's hands and spun in a circle with excitement. Their bouncy skirts swirled out and showed a glimpse of their pink "Tuesday" underwear. The famous Teen Detectives had once again outwitted an unwitting suspect by planting the Parkey Mini tracking and listening device to Ragsdale's mustache - he would never know it was there and they could listen in on Everything!!!! "Oh, Patsy, this is even better than when we solved the Case of the Spunky Spouse!"
Little did they know what dark secrets were about to be revealed by the man with the tell-tale tattoo.
Meanwhile, though, Pansy got to show Patsy a few dance moves she learned when her mother lived in New York for a short duration and was an understudy for "A Chorus Line." Pretty soon, Patsy was Shagging with the best of them, and even doing a little Breakdancing.
Patsy, for her part, enjoyed showing Pansy a few of her own moves when Pansy found herself cornered by resident oaf, bully, and hormonal wild-child, Egbert -- known as "the Cruncher" to his victims and those that lived in fear of him. Cruncher threatened to stick his hand up Pansy's summer angora sweater, but was quickly felled by Patsy's swift blows to his kidney, groin, and neck.
"Wow, Patsy!" cried Pansy joyously, "You're the best twin a sister could have! Teach me how to do that, oh, please?"
"Aww, Pansy, it's nothing. I only wish I could moonwalk as well as you," she replied, somewhat miffed when she realized she had caught a small thread from Sir Frou-Frou on her nail. "Remind me to show you how to kill a masher with a pencil sometime."
The rest of the party carried on without incident.
The twins finally got back to their crime-fighting headquarters and flicked on their Official Parkey Twins Crimefighting and Espionage Radio Snooper. They were mildly disappointed to hear silence, broken only occasionally by the shuffling of some papers.
"He must be alone," said Pansy, disappointed. "In an office, or something." Her corn-curls drooped ever so slightly.
"Patience, Pans! We can still pick up clues; we just hafta be extra-smart." replied Pats.
They listened in silence for about a half hour. Patsy sharpened her dirk knife she cleverly kept concealed under her lace socks. Pansy looked through the Children's Encyclopaedia Brittanicish, reading intently. They were about to give up (seeing as how they were already 15 minutes past their bedtimes), when they heard a phone ring in the sinister stranger's office.
"Hello," said the stranger. A pause, and then, "Yes, they arrived this afternoon...No, no reported problems...Yes, the anaconda is safe...What?...Oh, no, I don't think the typhoons will give us any problem this year...Another shipment? Look, Rufus, I'm trying to unload all of these Official stinkin P--...But it's....Look, alls I'm trying to say is that I can't do it all at once like that. We're still working with the distributors and paying off the quality control people and it's been [expletive deleted] trying to get past the royalties people...OK, I understand...Right...bye."
Patsy's eyes widened in excitement, threatening to pop right out of her face, and only partially from the deleted expletive her shell-pink ears couldn't possibly have heard in a young adult's story. "Oh, I wish we could have heard the other side to the conversation," she wheedled.
Pansy looked up and was about to comment, when they heard a yawn coming through the radio, a loud bang that generated a flash of feedback, an odd sound rather like and Official Parkey Twins Bug being aspirated by a sinister stranger's throat, and then spasmodic choking noises and wheezing, taxed breath. At last a sloppy "GULP" sound emerged, and something that may have sounded like a "plop" if it hadn't been abruptly cut off; empty static crackled through the speaker.
Patsy's mouth opened in a cute little horrified "O." "Pansy, I think he ate our bug!"
"That's nothing," Pansy said and held up the Q volume she'd been perusing. "I was looking for that tattoo design in the encyclopedia where I KNOW I'd seen it before, and look what I found...!"
"A bird?" asked Patsy.
"No, no, other page," replied Pansy. It was a picture of a brightly colored winged snake. Patsy looked at the entry: qetzalcoatl.
Pansy squinted at the page. That couldn't possibly be the correct spelling; someone goofed! "That spelling is --"
"South American," finished Pansy.
Patsy still didn't see the relevance. "So it's a misspelled flying snake from South America. I don't get it. Although it does remind me of the logo of that herpatological society Dad used to belong to. Have you ever been to one of their meetings? What a strange bunch of people they were. Lizards, and monitors, and snakes, and they -- " she stopped suddenly, staring wide-eyed at her sister. "'The anaconda' Mr. Ragsdale mentioned! Could it be related?"
"I'd bet your allowance money that it is!" exclaimed Pansy. "Question still is, though, HOW is it related? Are they smuggling illegal reptiles? Black market anti-venin trades? Distilling some kind of brainwashing-zombification serum with which to enslave the world? Something still doesn't fall into place."
"I'm not sure," Patsy replied, her intial ire at the suggestion of using her allownace money for betting purposes -- a very unwholesome activity indeed -- subsiding. "Pans, those people at the meetings...I can't stress how really unusual they were. Some were downright," she paused, gulping, "_weird_ people! Like the kind you see in the Post Office on the cork boards. Looking at you with eyes that --" she broke off shuddering. Galled as she was at having admitted her seemingly irrational fear of those men and women, she still tried to comunicate just how sinister and strange some of those sinister strangers were.
"Pats," said her sister patiently, "do you remember what Dad's assignment was at the time?"
"Sure, we found out lots about it since that was around the time that -- oh," she stopped, her face clouding momentarily. She didn't finish the thought that passed between them: that was around The Case of the Dead Divorcee. "He was investigating that South American cartel that was involved in some kind of smuggling, we never found out what." Her jaw dropped. "South American?!"
Pansy nodded somberly. "I think we're going to have to sneak into the Ragsdale house, and have a look around. There's more to this than I think either of us imagined. 'To the mystery, and beyond,' only..." she broke off.
"We're beyond that mystery, or so we thought," she concluded. They settled back in their respective beds, suddenly a bit chilled, thought they wrapped their Queen Anne-style comforters tightly about them.
Patsy turned out the light. She sat back in her bed, looking out the window. She gazed out into the darkness, musing on the last few days of their time together with their father and their mother. Patsy never really got to know her mother too well, and that saddened her. Although she loved Aunt Polly dearly, she often thought about that absent space in her heart. She could almost see her mother, standing outside the window, her sleepy head playing tricks on her. "I can almost see Mom outside; don't those trees and clouds look like her?" she mumbled sleepily.
Pansy sat bolt upright in bed. "Patsy, you goof, there's a woman outside of our window!!" she shrieked. She flung her arm out toward the lace and porcelain lamp which sat on the eggshell and pink-trim night table between their beds, turning the light on, but knocking it over in the process.
When the light snapped on, the woman was gone, if she had been their at all. Patsy and Pansy exchanged looks, a nagging doubt getting snared somewhere between them.