Detective Story : Sister Detectives

'The Story dedicated to – Anandamoyee Pahari, My beloved grandmother & 
Sulagna Pahari, My lovely Mother.' -- Hiya Pahari

TROUBLE SMUGGLE? ANSWER: CRIME DOUBLE _Sister Detectives  

Part 2 >>

CHAPTER 1 – Stuck In The Dark 

Cherry
“No, how many times do I have to tell you that my hair brush will be mine”.
“But I can at least take it for a while? Can’t I? I told you I had lost mine—”
“Yeah! Of course, you had lost all your three brushes together–”
“Four!”

“Yeah four!” I whispered rolling my eyes as if it mattered to me, how many hair brushes she had. We were in one of our cases, and till now it was going very badly. We had found who the thief was. He was stealing from all the people who boarded this cruise, and then fled for a few days and erased all the data of them, so that the police couldn’t find them because they won’t have any proof of the disappearing thieves! That’s so annoying, anyways we were here to solve it and we also had gathered some great proofs, I thought smiling, Captain Collin would be happy, only if we would be able to get out of this place.

The thing that went wrong is that, when we were just about to leave this stupid cruise, we got caught and now, thanks to Mr. Shactok , the man who was leading all this, we are stuck inside a very high tech room, and worse of it, outside this room are people with guns in their hands and just waiting for the order of their master to tell them to shoot us on the spot. What a great situation! Isn’t it? Luckily, we had found another exit in that small room and it was the small window. I was trying to hack the window’s operating system so that we could open it and get out of this mess. By the way, did I mention, that I was getting sick of two things: first of this ship and second of my big sis.

“Will you shut up for a while? I need to concentrate here.” I whispered. And she whispered back,

“Of course you do, let me remind you, we wouldn’t have been in this mess if it wasn’t because of your stupid brain–”

Though I knew that it was kind of my fault. Actually while we were just about to get out, I had heard a voice behind me and I wanted to check who it was and so we got delayed and, I sort of tripped into something and bumped straight into Mr. Shactok, but still I cut her off and replied.

“Oh! Yeah, and who told you to follow this stupid brain in here?”
“I- I– was—-I- couldn’t have let my stupid little sister get into trouble, so I followed you”
“Yep, you and your excuses, and I am not a small baby.” I sighed, what are we going to do now? What will happen now…? I am scared, is Jessy too?… is she?
“Um…. Hey?” I whispered,
“Yeah?” She whispered back.
“Are you…… Scared?”
“You too?” We hugged each other, that sure brought some warmth.
However, in danger we are, we are together. That’s our strength. I smiled, “But I am still not forgiving you for the hairbrush”.

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CHAPTER 2 – Unexpected News

Jessy
I was sitting in my room and was sipping a cup of hot chocolate, my favourite drink. It’s cold outside and is snowing. Captain Collin was happy with our work, though he didn’t want to show that, so he got an excuse that all the papers in which the data was there was a little bit faded because they were wet and Cherry and I nearly tore it apart while bringing it to the police. He scolded us for not taking much care of the documents. I mean Whatever? We nearly died ourselves and here he is giving us advice about how we should have been more careful with the proofs. We had to swim to the shore, luckily it was not that far. But we both were exhausted. Seriously, that swim was awful, it ruined my whole hair. And more of that, both of us have got cold.

Cherry hacked the window’s operating system pretty quickly, she is great with computers, and I am really proud of her, because we would have been dead if it wasn’t because of her computer skills. But it didn’t help much we were late and the guards heard us while the window was opening, but we were quick for them, we jumped out of that sickening ship–straight in the water. Did I mention I HATE swimming?

Mom and Dad haven’t yet come back from work. We were lucky this time, as we both were drenched. I still have to clean the kitchen; we were making ourselves a small snack but it was a disaster. So, we made ourselves two cups of hot chocolate. And my nail paint is fully destroyed because of the saline water.

I was just about to lie down on my soft bed, when Cherry called.
“Jess listen, I have to go and buy eggs, mom called, I am doing this work you would better clean up the kitchen”.
“Yeah of course, I get to do the worse things.” I said rolling my eyes.
“Yep, because you are the older one.” She said, in her old sing-song way, which I hate.
Whatever does it matter? I am just a year old. Ray, as I call her because I don’t like her to be called Cherry, it’s too sweet for her, is 16, and I am 17.
“You don’t remember that when we are on a mission, do you?”. By the way, I am good at kitchen work, or at least better than her.

Cherry
There was a great disturbance up the street, and that’s not at all normal for our street. We are among the most disciplined streets in the whole Queens. So, I went rushing towards the commotion, making sure that the eggs are alright. A lot of people had gathered in front of Mr. Haffen’s house. I wondered what had happened. This house belongs to Mr. Haffen. He lives with his brother, and his brother’s wife. We both have gone in this mansion many times. Mr. Haffen was always very nice to us from when we were small kids. A girl also lives in here, daughter of his brother, her name is Chloe. She is nice, actually–very nice. I mean she is so good in nature, so polite, so obedient, that Jess and I don’t really like her that much, because we both are practically small monkeys ourselves, at least Jess is, anyways.
An ambulance came at the spot when I was just about to break in the crowd. My heart started pounding, as I moved nearer. What had happened? Not something bad I hoped. As I moved into the crowd it started to give way for the paramedics. A shiver went up and down through my spine. Mr. Haffen was flat on the ground, on his back, and on his shoulder of his blue shirt was a green patch.

Everything went quiet. As if the world around me had gone silent. I saw the paramedics check his pulse, give a quick look to each other and then picked him on the stretcher, I wanted to speak, tell, scream, but nothing came out, I had lost my voice. I have to agree that Jess and I have been in many near death situations, but none of them felt anything like this. I saw them took the body inside the ambulance.

I don’t know how I returned home, my hands were shaking and legs too. As I entered our living room, Jess was just going to sit on the sofa, she had a packet of my chocolates, which I had hidden for my night snacks. If the things that were going wouldn’t have been real then I would have thrown an egg on her head, to get the revenge of the pudding. But then our eyes met, and she must have noticed my pale face.

Jessy
I had just completed my work of cleaning the kitchen, or you would say that our work of cleaning the kitchen, and guess what I had gotten as my reward, I had found Ray’s hidden chocolates! I love chocolates. I was just going to sit on the sofa and eat all the chocolates myself before she came in, that’s when I heard the front door open. I froze on my tracks. There we go, the fight starts, I thought, and she also had a bag full of eggs! Gross. I became ready for the first attack, thinking what I could throw back at her, but nothing came. I glanced upwards. Cherry was standing dead on her tracks and her face, oh my gosh, she looked terrible.

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Part 2 >>

By Hiya Pahari, Mumbai, India