Detective Story: Sister Detectives (Part 3)

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CHAPTER 5 – Anger is Danger

Jessy
It’s mid night now. Our punishment was that we did not get any dinner. And, now let me tell you that, I can give away all my makeup kits, brushes, everything, just to get some food. Our parents are asleep now. And I am just waiting a bit more, to make sure that they both are really asleep, and then I will go and eat something, anything! I can even eat the bananas! And that proves how hungry I am.
“Ray? Is that you?” I asked breathlessly, I had heard someone open my door.
“Yeah, and I can’t even walk, I am going to die of hunger! C’mon let’s go now! ugh!” Replied her painful voice.
“Are they asleep yet? Ok fine I am dying too!” I whispered back. It was a bit dark, but still we managed to get downstairs without a single noise pretty easily. This is what you call experience. Anyways, the thing is, that we had forgotten that it was the last day of the month and mom and dad will shop tomorrow for food and other essentials, and what we saw was that the fridge was empty, I mean literally EMPTY!

We looked at each other, our shoulders slumping down. How can this happen! Ah! no! There is it! The fruit basket had an apple! Yes! Only if I could get it before her, but no….. she beat me to it. I guess I have to sleep empty stomach tonight, I thought, turning back but then—
“Where are you going?” Ray whispered,
“C’mon, wash it! I am not going to do all the work myself.”
“Yeah, thanks.” I whispered back gratefully. Had I told you that she didn’t share? Well no, I think I was wrong. I love my little sister.
“I HATE YOU RAY!” I shouted at her. She had just broken my most favourite eye shadow kit.
“JUST BECAUSE I AM A FEW MINUTES LATE DOESN’T MEAN THAT YOU CAN BREAK THAT LOVELY THING!”
“JUST A FEW MINUTES? I AM WAITING FOR LIKE A HUNDERED YEARS, AND TO YOU IT’S JUST A FEW MINUTES!” She yelled at me again and left my room—
“DON’T slam the door behind!” I said, but— SLLAAAMMM! Damn! I thought, I Hate My Little Sister!
Mom is still yelling at us, but I wasn’t paying much attention, she was telling us that we were- wait! Did I tell telling us? Nope she was yelling! At us that we are becoming bad and that our grades are also coming bad, at least she told that to me. Cherry is great in studies. I mean she is the best. Her parents love her, her friends like her, her teachers appreciate her and what not. It’s always she who gets the pride! I hate her!

Cherry
–SLLAAAMMM! there you go Jess! She deserves that! I mean, that I had just taken her stupid kit and she was just snatching it away from me, when it fell down and broke! What a sensitive thing. Can’t even stand a small fall, I thought rolling my eyes. Mom is shouting, at us, or mainly at me, because I just went past her without even caring to answer her. I mean what do I give her the answer of the question: why are you both like this? Ok I am like this so what? Jess is way bad than me! But no! to them Jess is everything. She is the one who can cook, she is the one in good behaviour, she is the one who is responsible. And what am I? Just badness? I hate her!

School was very boring and exhausting today, mainly because for me it was most of the time thinking how bad sister I have got. I was sitting on my bed, and was just going through all the new videos and news in my laptop, when a particular news caught my sight. It said that the smugglers were caught the second time but with no names, or proofs! I mean then it’s just a waste. Just like Jessy is a waste. It said that the last time they were caught, they were found with drugs. Very special type of drugs. When I dug in I found out that, this special drug came from very special types of plants. And they are sometimes very poisonous too.

I closed it. My head was aching. I think because of my bad temper. An I had a bandage on my hand. As there was PE class today, and I fell, and, then in the same place, I accidentally touched with the rusted nail, which we were using for our chem experiment. It’s a bit deep one. I am not telling this to mom. Or else she will make it seem that I have lost my whole arm! I don’t need tetanus, as I just had it last month, when we were on a case, and then—–well it’s a pretty long story, anyways I don’t think I will be able to hide it, for long, it is right on my palm.

“Ray! Jess! C’mon, dinner is ready! Fast. I have made pasta!” Mom called us, and my mood suddenly lifted as I heard the word pasta! Wow after yesterday’s apple, pasta sounds way better. At least I don’t have to share my bite with HER! Anyways I hopped out of the bed, and went to the joined washroom, which I shared with Jess, unfortunately!

She was washing her hands, I waited, but then she smiled at me, and said, “It’s better than apples, isn’t it?” She said and then our eyes met, her smile disappeared, from her face and was instantly replaced by a frown. I guess she had forgotten about our fight. But it didn’t take me long to return her frown with equal sourness.

Did I tell you that mom is a great chef. She makes the world’s tastiest pasta! And I love it. My head ache seemed less so I thought to just browse and look up for something. I found out that Mr. Halperin was doing very badly at his business, so that meant that he needed money. Ok and if Mr. Haffen died then he would surely get all the property, and money and land. Oh my gosh! That’s such a bad thing to do after what Mr. Haffen gave to him. He gave him a house, a place to stay, and loved him like his own brother! I didn’t find anything else, so I started looking for some information about the smuggling thing.

I was looking at the inner page which I had just opened from one of the private files, when suddenly my screen went blank. Oh no! The security system of this file, was not letting me see any further, but it was also by the way trying to interfere in my PC. That is weird, no private police files do that. I need to get out of this mess, and fast! I thought as my laptop’s files started popping up my screen. Jess’s dancing videos, and my Minecraft’s, and edits, etc, the other person operating the security system could see them all now! I clicked my escape button and then Ctrl+21, that’s how I usually get out of such things, when something goes wrong. Thankfully, I was able to go to my menu and log out of that file.

But I sighed, the other person must have got my ID anyways. It must have been some police officer, I would probably be called at the police station, the next day. I yawned. It was a tiring day, maybe I should get some rest.

Jessy
58Q (34÷27^5) ^ 25 ×56
Find the……..
Ugh! I just don’t feel like doing this boring stuff!
If Cherry was here, I would have probably completed my whole work till now. We both usually do our work together, this way we talk sometimes, sometimes laugh, and soon we complete our work without even realizing, how much hard work we had done. But I think that now I am better, doing it myself. Ray wasted a lot of time. I sighed. Humm…… who has killed Mr. Haffen? Will we ever find out that? How can we work on case when we are not even talking to each other? I have never solved any mystery without Cherry, I mean we have always been a team. And I thought that, that was our strength, but now I guess we will have to solve this one separately. I would better sleep now, I thought, I was tired.

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CHAPTER 6 – The First Warning

I was ready early today. Giving no chance to let Ray give me a look, telling me that I am always late. Today she is late, she came rushing down, and pushed down as much as possible food under her throat. I gave a look of disgust to her, and was just about to look away when I noticed a white thing on her hand, a bandage. And I could see red spots on it. Oh my! Blood!
How? I forgot all my hateful stuff about her and looked her straight in eye. She was looking tired. I knew, she always looked like that, Ray is not a morning person. But then she met my eyes and I looked down at her palm and then raised an eyebrow. She saw down, and then immediately moved her hand, under the table, she then shook her head the slightest bit, and looked away.

Was that because of something that I didn’t know? Had she gone there last night? And accidentally cut her hand? There were so many questions popping up my head, but then mom spoke, “I will be coming late today, your dad will make you dinner, or you can also make. I have a very important meeting. Love you! Take care! Bye!” She said, as we both started getting up, and heading towards the door,
“Bye mom!” Ray replied, I also joined in, “Yeah, bye!”
As soon as I closed the door behind me and had walked a few paces. I asked her,
“How did that happened?” She replied,
“What does it matter to you anyway?” Harshly, I replied,
“Yeah! Great! you know what, ok fine! I thought that you were my sister!” Really? I mean how can she be soo harsh. Actually, it was my fault, I shouldn’t have talked to her, and I should have told mom. Ugh! “In our PE class, I just, got a bit hurt, that’s all!” She said, okay, so at least she wasn’t investigating. I noticed she was increasing her pace, so I slowed mine, soon she was way ahead of me. Wow look what our relationship has turned out to be, we can’t even walk together anymore.

School was boring, again just like always. I mean that, when we were having fun with our friends it was awesome. But when the teachers started teaching, it became boring. I had an extra class after school, as it was
Saturday, and so did Ray. But I don’t know why I waited for her, even though I had the keys. I didn’t even knew if she was still there or had already headed home. But a few moments later she too came. She was smiling at me and rolling her eyes. She started saying, “R.P is such a funny man, you know he said–“, but then she stopped short seeing my not interested, and of course, I hate you face.
We both walked in silence, I understood that she had momentarily forgotten that we had, had a fight. Just like me. I also noticed, that she was trying to keep pace with me. But I didn’t want to talk to her, I don’t know why, I was dying to talk to her but, my legs moved a bit faster and she was behind me a moment later. We reached home in total silence. Just then Ray’s cell buzzed, I thought, my heart sinking to my sneakers. Why does mom always texts her, calls her, wait is that from mom?

Cherry
It was from mom. It said, there is a mail for you both in the house. I
read that aloud to Jess. And she started going faster, towards home. Till the time we both reached our drive way, we were sweating and puffing. Jess bet me to it, and I let her, because I didn’t had the key, and I had forgotten where we kept the extra one. Jess opened the mail box, there were some letters in it, but none addressed to us. She was holding a very green coloured page thing when she noticed, that there were cupcakes for us on the table!
She shouted, “Cupcakes! Great I am starving!”
And with that she gave me the green thing and ran towards the table. I
opened the fold of the green paper to see, a typed message inside it, and it read:
DON’T INTERFERE IN MY SMUGGLING BUSINESS
OR
I WILL MAKE SURE THAT YOU ARE OUT OF MY WAY FOR GOOD!
THIS IS THE FIRST AND LAST WARNING!
CLEAN YOUR HANDS
There was an awkward smell coming from it, but, then it hit my head! I dropped the note, and looked up to see, Jess just going to take her first bite of the cupcakes, which she had picked by her bare hands. She had touched the note! No!
“STOP! STOP! JESS NO STOP! PUT THAT THING DOWN! NOW!” I shouted, oh my god! She was just going to eat it!
“Wh-what happene-” she stammered, but I cut her off, first I have to make her understand!
“Shut up! Listen please okay. Just don’t put your hands anywhere, okay AND ANYWHWERE MEANS NOWHERE! understand? It’s important, that-that note that green note, it was a warning, and it has some very powerful chemical sprayed on it! And it can be poisonous. So I need you understand that we are not allowed to touch any other thing, or our faces, eyes, nose, mouth anything! Okay? Phew!” Okay what should we do now, first we need to clean our hands, ok and yeah, I will need the lotion. Great we can do this on our own!

Okay, it was a lot of hard work. We had to first disinfect our hands and then again give it a cover of antibody and then we had to disinfect all the places we had touched and the of course take that green warning paper out of the hall straight into our attic, it is the place where we both do all types of our mission related things I mean printing out data, taking pictures, hacking some systems etc. We also have a mini laptop and one scanner. We had told our parents that we had lost our laptop and that was a very big lie. We really did a lot of acting to convince them. Anyways, and just a few, years ago dad and mom gave us the permission to use the attic whenever we wanted, and so we made it our secret base, with a rubber, CPU alarm, fixed to the door, so that whenever someone enters it, we both will receive a text on our cells. So that we will know if someone is looking in our secret base.

But in this situation, any small baby would have called their parents to take them out of this mess. But we are different, we are grownups, or at least great detectives, and a good detective never needs help! We could have called dad, though, because this was a bit risky thing to do, and dad is a scientist and also a very good doctor. He is the person anyone would have very much needed now! But not us.

I checked the message that mom had sent to me again, it said: There is mail for both of you in the house. Ok and the sender, was oh! Its number is 5537 and not 5531 how can I be so stupid? How? “Okay, we need to share some things here. First tell me, what warning? I mean, why a warning? What did you do alone? What are you hiding? Is it related to the case we are working on? Tell me Ray?” Jess questioned, ok that’s a great question. I didn’t know what I did that I got this reward! I mean it could have really killed us!
Now that we were talking to each other and now that everything was good, my chest felt lighter. And now this mess is nothing. Whatever happens now I will be able to take it, because we are together now, I answered her, “I don’t know what I did. I mean that I didn’t do anything wrong or different!”

I added hurriedly, as Jessy’s face turned, suspicious. Okay, let me think, what had I done–click, dad had finally reached, it was his car’s door closing.
I hurriedly told Jess, “Listen there is no need to tell dad about this okay.” She nodded back, “Just act normal as we always do.” She said. And we both waited for him to come in.
We waited, and then finally the door opened, but instead of our tall, handsome, cheerful dad, in came a very tall skinny man, with a mask on his head.

Jessy What? And ok, he also had a gun with him!
I was surprised to see him, but Ray and I are always ready for anything, and we were ready this time too. We both ducked down in the opposite directions, of course not giving the man an easy target, and went behind sofas and chairs. Ok this was our house and this man knew nothing about this place as well, as we knew. We have got this!-BAAANG!-no we haven’t got this, oh my god first the poison and now this! What has Ray got us into?

I kept changing my position, and then I saw it, yeah! The statue, ok I will use that, I stretched a bit and grabbed the Buddha statue, you really have to save us Buddha! From the corner, I saw Cherry take off her sweater. Okay, I know what we are going to do, I waited till Ray met my eyes she gave me a three up. And then, a finger back down. Ok, phew! I showed her, ONE, TWO AND THREE! NOW! We both stood up and attacked the man from our sides, that means we had him surrounded. And we also gave him a bit of surprise, what did he thought?

That we were small kids who would wail for him to stop firing? Nope we are the ones who like action. While Cherry jumped forward and wrapped the sweater around his head, I applied all my force, ok half of my force, as I didn’t want him to die, and beat him on his head with the statue. While he staggered, Cherry, hurriedly took away his gun, and threw it on the ground. There was another Click sound, and my head started spinning, our real dad was coming home, we both looked at each other, and the man took the advantage of this free time, and twisted, and freed himself from our grip, pushing his way through us, he fled away from the open window, to the backyard, we both rushed to the open window, but he was long gone, and we didn’t follow him, because dad was coming!

I hurriedly, kept the statue on its place. While Ray put the now upside-down table back in its place. And that’s when dad entered. We both froze. Oh!
Man, the gun! It was still on the floor totally visible to dad.
“Hey girls! What’s going on? Mom is not home, what do you say some party! Who wants to go out? Wait, what happened? Um… is everything ok?” He finished doubtfully, as he noticed, our anxious faces. I hurriedly told,
“Hi dad! What a great day today right? Look through the window dad! Such a beautiful day!”
Ray must have noticed the gun, too because she too joined in. We both came in front of him, hugging him, and not letting him look at the ground, so that he will not notice it.

“Yeah dad how was your day, come let’s go outside, I need some fresh air” “What? It’s cloudy outside, what has happened? Tell me.” Dad said.
And I looked out, okay. “Oh! Yeah, it’s cloudy, right you must be tired right dad? Come let us take you to your room, we will help you with the coat! Wait yeah”
“Um… ok, are you sure everything thing is okay?” He said, again doubtfully, “Yeah dad what will be wrong when we both are together?”
We both said in unison, though we knew that that sentence was a total lie. And then we started laughing. And pushing him towards his room, as far away from the hall!
Phew! That was a close call both of them! We were just being shooted, and dad was as just about to know, what we were up to. Well he wouldn’t do anything, bad, he would do the worse thing, call mom and let her know what things we were doing. That’s all what he will do. The rest mom will handle. And that’s not at all good. You must have gotten an idea how she is when she is angry, sometimes dad also fears her. Anyways.
Now, it’s time for some explanations. I am happy that finally we are talking. But it’s time for some action. I need to know, what Ray had done, that this was the result. We were just about to die two times!

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Part 4>>

By Hiya Pahari, Mumbai, India