Chapter Text
Wilbur matched Niki’s pace as they began to enter the nicer parts of town. She held the briefcase with all the notes on the file. Her grip loosened on it as the buildings stopped looming over them and the sidewalks got smoother.
The address of Mrs Beans was still further into the countryside, a few miles out of the city outskirts. There were still two fields to walk through before they reached the small town of Stratos where she and her husband had settled down for seven years.
“This seems like a long journey to make for a simple theory.” Niki said as she passed a bus stop, looking longingly at it. “I’m sure Joel had nothing to hide besides the original horse murder. Which wouldn’t give Stereoscopy enough time to track him down within the mo-” Wilbur held his hand up, which cut Niki off on her thoughts. She furrowed her eyebrows and pushed Wilbur’s hand down before he could cut her off. “The month. There must be a different reason.”
“But you can’t deny that empathy for animals is an excellent motive for murder and one we can’t dismiss.” Wilbur said, turning to face Niki. His face softened when he saw the creases in her face from her anger. He sighed, “You make a good point Niki. This case is like a nut and we are the nutcrackers. We’re different sizes you and I. I work with bigger nuts and you work with smaller nuts. I believe we’re assuming we’re working with a big nut but it isn’t wrong to assume we should try for a smaller nut either.”
Niki laughed and rolled her eyes, “Sure Wil.” She placed a hand on his shoulder and pulled him to a stop, “Can we please get the bus though.” They had stopped at the next bus stop on route for Stratos. It travelled through Chromia, a detour in their route, but it would mean not walking through Animalia and the woodland trail.
Wilbur looked down at the briefcase then back at the empty bus stop. He sat down on the brick wall beside it and tilted his head; Niki sat down beside him. “Don’t let anyone steal anything from that case.” Wilbur said.
“I’ll sit by the window with it. That way if anyone tries anything, they’ll have to climb over you to get to me!”
“Right!” Wilbur said. He tapped his legs against the brick wall as he waited for the bus to arrive at their stop. Besides the thump, thump, thump sound he made, they sat in silence for fifthteen minutes until the bus arrived.
The single decker bus pulled up before their stop. Wilbur had nearly thrown himself off the brick wall to chase it down, waving his arm about in a frenzy. Niki had picked up the case and walked after her boss. She watched the bus decelerate with a smile at the corners of her lips as she reached it’s doors as they opened. Wilbur had run past it and tripped over his two feet trying to turn the other way, when there was no need for a rush.
The bus was empty but Niki still clenched the files with white knuckled fists. Everytime the bus slowed, Wilbur glanced at her. Despite his worries, the case never vanished. The fear that it might was one made up from his paranoia over losing his job.
That and it was illegal to carry around so much information about a murder case for no good reason. There were twenty or so data protection laws they were breaking. Niki repeated in her mind that should she lose the briefcase, she had the advantage of plausible deniability as an intern. Wilbur had none.
One person did get on the bus but they didn’t look at where the two detectives sat. They sat on the seat behind the bus driver's cabin and stared at their phone the entire time. Wilbur’s hands reached for the handle of the case. His hands trembled as one finger looped around the corner. Niki tugged the case away.
“You’re on the aisle for a reason.” she reminded him. She shuffled closer to her right (further into Wilbur) to make room for the briefcase to fit besides her.
Wilbur shifted forward to make sure the files were trapped between Niki and the bus wall. With confirmation it was and a glare from Niki, he leaned back into his seat.
Niki flexed her hand. The blood flowed back to her and they turned a normal shade. She placed her hand on her lap when she was done and looked out of the window.
Their stop came forty five minutes later. Wilbur had pressed the stop button behind them and stood up, wobbling on the moving vehicle. He grabbed the pole to help with his balance. Niki grabbed the briefcase and shuffled into Wilbur’s seat. The doors opened and they walked off. Both gave the bus driver their thanks to the driver.
Stratos was the type of town Wilbur desired to retire too. He walked down the terracotta streets and marvelled at the city of Gods above. There was no litter on the streets and all the houses looked freshly painted. Niki gasped in awe of the vast wheat fields surrounding the town.
Animals were kept in pens. Niki placed her hand out and a cow nuzzled into it. It blew hot air on her hand and turned away when it realised she wasn’t offering it food. There was a pen for cats, who tilted their heads as the passed.
“I feel like I’m being judged.” Niki said as she kept up the pace with a grumpy orange tabby cat.
Wilbur snorted, “Imagine the judgement you’d get if you were a stray cat.” he paused for a minute, looking around the creaks and alleys that led to shops otherwise accessible around the block. They were empty. The leaves did not fall and cats nor dogs had not played in the bins of scraps left by the local bakery. “Maybe we’re the stray cats here.”
“We’re not strays” Niki teased, nudging her elbow into Wilbur’s ribcage, “We’re tourists with how different this is to the Essempi. Even though it’s fairly local.”
Wilbur stared down a different alley, failing to notice her tease. Niki nudged him again and Wilbur looked up, “Yeah. It’s the cleanliness. It feels like a different place.”
Lizzie Bean’s house was in the centre of the town, which was as clean as the rest of it. It sat a road down from the main town’s square on a slight hill. It was built from red bricks with a mowed front lawn. There was no picket fence.
Wilbur walked across the garden and into a pile of shit. He lifted his foot up and scrunched his face. “You’d think she could clean up their pet's litter.” he grumbled. Wilbur scraped his foot against the concrete edge. The worst of the shit was removed. The rest would need a proper wash to get out from the crevices of his sole.
Wilbur knocked on the door before he stood back to stand besides Niki. The intern stood ramrod straight as they waited for Lizzie to open the door. The walls of the house were thin and they could hear her padding down the stairs. When the lock jiggled, Wilbur raised his head, waiting to greet Mrs Beans.
Lizzie Beans was a small woman standing just above five feet. Her entire face was obscured by a painted cardboard box in a resemblance of a face.. She’d cut out holes for her large eyes with massively dilated pupils. She wore child size twelve shoes that were wider than they were long. She brushed off the cat hair on her dress and laughed, “Excuse the mess. I normally have Joel clean up the house. Without him it’s getting a bit much for the little old me! Come in come in! I’ll make you some tea, or do you prefer coffee?”
“Coffee would be great for both of us!” Niki said, smiling at Wilbur when he looked at her with relief. Lizzie held the door open. Wilbur and Niki both stepped inside, taking their shoes off on the mat. Niki left the briefcase on the floor.The door closed behind them. Lizzie tilted her head before wandering off in a direction.
The house was littered with animal hairs and animals. Two dogs had come up and nuzzled against Lizzie’s leg as she headed towards the kitchen. Inside the kitchen, a frog sat on the countertops and a fox was sitting in one of the seats. “Ignore them.” Lizzie said as she filled the kettle with water. A loud scream came from outside. Niki jumped and Wilbur looked outside expecting to find another murder. There was just a goat. Lizzie put the kettle on and sighed, “Ignore Arianna Goatre. She thinks she’s on tour right now.”
Niki took a seat at the table, “Oh, you like animals?” she asked.
Lizzie hummed an affirmative, “It reminds me of home at Animalia, with all the animals. I miss it sometimes but living with Joel is worth it.”
Everyone fell silent. Wilbur placed a gentle hand on her arm, “I’m sure you miss him.”
“Oh I do, but everyone’s come to help me with my mourning. I need a bit of time, that's all. I lived without him before so I’ll do it again and this time I’ll have his lovely house to help me.” Lizzie shrugged Wilbur’s arm off. She grabbed the kettle and poured the water into the mugs.
“It sounds like you killed him for the inheritance, you black widow.” Niki teased.
Lizzie laughed. She grabbed the two mugs with the palms of her gloved hands and placed them in front of the detectives. “Well, that was my plan but it seems someone got there first.” she said. Niki giggled alongside Lizzie. Wilbur watched the two with a critical eye, stirring his black coffee mindlessly.
The two women made small talk for ten minutes before Wilbur took his first sip. The coffee was incredibly strong and milky. An obscene amount of coffee beans had to be added to negate the milk. He scrunched his face up. Something stringy was in his mouth. Wilbur pinched it with two of his fingers. Long ginger hair came out. “There's cat hair in my coffee.” he said.
Lizzie laughed nervously. Niki gasped in delight. “What’s your cat called?”
“Miss Lizz..o. Lizzo. She’s another one of our amazing singers. Ariana Goatre’s backup singer actually. She’s always mewling along to what I play on the radio.” Lizzie stammered.
Wilbur placed his coffee down on the coaster, “Can we see Miss Lizzo?”
“No! She’s out right now! Always wandering around the neighbourhood. You know how cats are.”
Niki asked, “Can we see Ariana Goatre instead? She sounds amazing?”
Lizzie nodded. Her entire body relaxed, shoulders dropping from where they’d been tense when Wilbur and Niki had arrived. She stood up and led them to the back door where the farm animals were kept. Her thick loafers tapped against the floor. Niki pulled Wilbur aside when they turned a corner.
“I’ll distract her, you try to find proof of this cat.” Niki ordered in a hushed tone. Her words were clipped.
Wilbur leaned over her, “Why?”
“We can both tell she’s antsy about Lizzo. Something happened there and it might be a clue. She won’t tell us though. So, you need to find a way to figure it out. Rummage through her cupboards, I don’t mind.”
“I mean why should I look for proof?”
Niki raised her head to meet Wilbur’s stare, “You could not feign interest in her pets if it would save your life. I might also get an answer from her directly without you killing the mood.”
“That’s not the answer.”
“What do you want to hear Wil? That you’re better at finding and linking evidence than I am? That’s true. We have different skill sets. I’ll use mine and you’ll use yours.”
Wilbur leaned back and shrugged, “You make a very good point.”
“I know.”
Niki turned away and followed after Lizzie to where she was waiting. Wilbur heard her explain that he needed the toilet but he’d find them in five minutes. Lizzie refused to leave at first but after two minutes and plenty of pleading from Niki about their limited time, she crumbled and opened the back door. Wilbur didn’t dare move until he heard the back door lock.
The first place Wilbur turned to was the cupboards. He rifled through the various treats for the goats, the frogs and the foxes. He pressed too hard and found bags of fish food at his feet. He couldn’t tell where they’d come from. Wilbur picked it up and shoved it in the cracks where there were slight spaces.
He slammed the cupboard shut and moved further into the house. Pictures of Lizzie and Joel were hung on the wall. They looked happy in all of them. Joel usually made a mix of funny faces and large smiles. Lizzie always had a small plastic smile on her face with either gloved hands around Joel or tucked behind her back. Wilbur inched closer to one of the pictures and saw the fingers in the gloves flopped against Joel. There was nothing in them. In contrast, Joel was firm. He kept Lizzie pressed to his side. She leant into him but the more Wilbur looked the more blurred the image was.
Wilbur took a deep breath in and looked away. He ignored looking any closer at the other photos. He kept his head down until he reached the living room. Piles of animal toys were pressed in the corners of the rooms. The only thing out of place was the large ball of yarn on the floor.
He picked it up. There were scratches on it, parts of the ball having been methodically pulled apart. They were not bite marks. The yarn hadn’t deteriorated the way it commonly did with saliva. It wasn’t wet either. Wilbur chucked it between his hands. Lizzo either hadn’t played with it in a while or she wasn’t in the habit of biting. He assumed it would be the biting habit considering the tidy nature of the rest of the space.
There were other cat toys, a scratching post, far larger than any cat would need. Wilbur pulled out his phone and searched up the customs in Animalia regarding what you gave your pets. The article mentioned that animals deserved their own living space, to be pampered like humans. He blinked to make sure he read it right. He had. He took another large breath and let his suspension of belief fade away. Different parts of the country had different customs and that meant he had to work outside of what he knew. He wished Niki hadn’t left him. He kept his phone on and googled everything that seemed weird to him as he went about.
Wilbur went around the whole house. He found hundreds of signs of Lizzo but none at the same time. He massaged his forehead, trying to ease the headache he could feel building up. He opened the remaining cabinets in the kitchen. Armed with his phone, he had found food for every animal in the house. He’d found the nutrients that gave Ariana Goatre her good health. The worms and dead mice were in tupperwares for the foxes. Yet, he couldn’t find anything that resembled cat food.
Wilbur stepped out of the backdoor once he’d raided every cupboard. There was no cat food. He walked down the path where Lizzie and Niki stood, feeding the ducks. He walked heel to toe, careful to make sure he wasn’t heard.
Lizzie turned around to face him with a porcelain smile on her face, “Wilbur!” She exclaimed, “I hope you didn’t get lost,” she lowered her voice and held a hand to her mouth as if sharing a scandalous secret, “People tend to lose their way.”
Wilbur nodded shyly, “It’s a very large house you have. Lots of places for Lizzo to play.”
Niki shot Wilbur the look. Wilbur didn’t have the time to explain his hypothesis that Lizzo was dead to Niki. He’d get his confession from Lizzie and Niki would find out. It would be two birds in one stone. He returned a show stopping smile to Niki and waited for Lizzie to pull herself together to give her lying response.
“There is. Lizzo loves a lot of room to play.”
“She must need a lot of food for the exercise she gets.” Wilbur said. Lizzie’s body tensed. Niki’s eyes were blown wide. The puzzle pieces connected in both their minds. Wilbur grinned as he aimed for the striking kill, “You must be so sad with how often she’s gone. I wonder if that’s why you can’t clean up after her. You just can’t bear the reminder that she isn’t here anymore.”
Niki looked at him in shock. Despair was written all over her face. Pity oozed off her and it clouded her mind. Could she not see the links between Joel’s tragic demise and Lizzo’s death? Was Niki blinded by grief for a stranger that she couldn’t see how tightly the knots were pulled together? She pursed her lips together, she opened her mouth.
Lizzie burst out laughing. She howled with it. Her mask shifted in the hysteria, revealing ginger hair where her pink hair would be. She wiped fake tears from her face as she stared at Wilbur with wide eyes, wider eyes than possible for humans. “I can see how you drew that conclusion.”
Wilbur took another deep breath, he offered a hand to Lizzie, to comfort her for awakening the old grief inside of her. That only made her laugh louder. Wilbur tucked both his hands behind his back.
“I’m sorry.” Wilbur said. Niki scowled at him although it had a little less bite than it had when he declared his discovery.
Lizzie continued laughing, “No no, carry on! I want to discover what else you discovered while snooping around my house.”
“Nothing,”
“You’re such a party pooper. I wanted to know what you found out. So my enemies don’t find out my secrets.”
“Not much.”
“You realised I don’t have a cat.”
“Being a detective is a full time job.”
“I assume so. But then again, so is being my enemy. You really can’t trust anyone these days can you?” Lizzie kicked one of the rocks by the pool as she grumbled.
Wilbur slowly pulled out his hands, “I promise you one thing Lizzie. Niki and I are who we say we are. We aren’t your enemies. We really do want to find out who murdered Joel and we believe it has something to do with animal cruelty. If anything happened to Lizzo that could make Joel look suspicious we need to know. If we have a motive, we can get Stereoscopy behind bars sooner.”
Niki stood besides Wilbur. She rested a hand on his elbow. She faced Lizzie and said, “If you cannot trust Wilbur, trust me. We can call our boss, you can look us up. I only want whats best for you and if I know anything about Wilbur it’s that he does as well.”
Lizzie swallowed. Her throat bobbed through her turtle neck blue dress. “I trust you. Only someone who harbours no feelings about me would assume Lizzo was my dead cat.” she laughed. It lacked all the humour it had when Wilbur told her his initial idea.
She reached round the back of her head and tore off a pink wig, revealing she didn’t have long hair. She ran her fingers up her face as she grabbed her hairline. Lizzie lifted the box off of her head slowly, as if she couldn’t undo what she showed once it was in the open.. However, the first sign that something inhumane was beyond the box wasn’t its existence. It was the whisker that poked out as it was no longer pressed against the cardboard.
Beneath the box, Lizzie had white and ginger fur. It sat flat upon her skin from where the box had been slightly too tight.. She shook her head back and forth as fast as she could. Her hair began to stand up on its end. Now that they could fully see her face, they could see why Lizzie’s pupils had seemed so large in contrast to the colour of her iris. The shape of a circle cut into the box did not meet the large beady eyes that Lizzie had in actuality.
Niki and Wilbur stood in front of her in silent shock. Niki raised her finger and opened her mouth but no sound came out. She rubbed her eyes and shook her head but Lizzie remained to look like a cat rather than a human being.
“So this is your power?” Wilbur asked, “You're a cat. Why did you hide this?”
Lizzie’s eyes shrunk, her hair stood on end at the concept of going out in public in her truest form. She gestured to herself, “What do you think happens to people who look like cats! They ask to pet you and then they ask if they can give you a treat. You never know, it might be a really delicious treat. But! It could also be infused with catnip! So it’s better if everyone thinks I’m a human who can just talk to animals. No one infuses their snacks with catnip to see if it gets you high like that! Of course a few people do but it’s a rare occasion.”
“Do you still get high off weed?” Wilbur asked.
Lizzie nodded, “Yes. Do you think a cat's body doesn’t resemble humans at all?”
“That’s probably what’s getting you high. People like to put weed in their food.”
“Oh. Well that was only one of my reasons for being a cat most of the time anyways.”
Niki waited for Lizzie to elaborate. After thirty seconds or so, she asked, “What’s the other reason?”
Lizzie took one slow blink. “You might want to be inside for this one.”
They grabbed their coffees from the kitchen and settled in the living room. Lizzie got distracted from her mug of warm milk by the ball of yarn on the floor. She juggled it between her hands as she began to explain how she wanted to fit in humans more than she already did. She laid across the large sofa and stretched her paws out wide, “I mean! I don’t get why people just can’t be normal about it! Oh, we don’t think you’re suited for this job because you might get some hairs in the cake. I find the hair makes the cake taste better. It’s good for flavour! My shampoo fit the taste as well! It was a Victorian sponge and my shampoo for my fur is raspberry scented! I don’t see what the problem was. Humans are weird like that. You can’t seem to understand why things make sense. You work by such silly rules. Licking yourself is perfectly hygienic!”
Niki sent Wilbur a wary gaze. Wilbur casually wiped his hand, which he shook Lizzie’s paw with, down his trouser legs. He clicked his tongue and wrote down a mental note that Joel killing one horse might have made him a saint if he really hated animals while being married to one on a farm.
“How did you feel about your husband's leather business?” Wilbur asked.
Lizzie tapped her chin in thought, “I was okay with it. It wasn’t as if he was skinning the horses while they were alive. That would have been brutal.”
“We believe he was killing the horses for their leather.”
“That’s reasonable. He killed them peacefully when they couldn’t work for the local farms. It isn’t as if the horse suffered.”
“You’re okay, with your husband's love for killing animals?”
“I’ve killed plenty of human children? The goblin man? Fwip down underground. Their orphanage was full so I took in a few. You can see their graves over there.” On the mantelpiece was a long row of golden cups. Inside the cups were a pile of ashes. Each chalice was engraved with a name. The first three were original but the final eight were all: Goblin child #4 and so on and so forth. Wilbur felt sick. Niki was pale in the face.
Lizzie clapped her hands together, “That’s been wonderful! Is their anything else you need to know?”
The answer, was yes. There was so much that Wilbur and Niki wanted to pry out of Lizzie in regards to the legal consequences of killing eleven children, if she really thought her husbands practises were right being a cat herself and when Ariana Goatre was next touring (her singing really was something to behold.)
“No.” Wilbur said. He stood up and turned out of the living room.
Niki didn’t follow hot on his heels. She walked to Lizzie on the sofa, with her hands tucked behind her back and thanked her for her time. Lizzie thanked Niki for leaving. She followed the detective to the door and grabbed the briefcase from where she’d left it. Lizzie opened it before Niki or Wilbur had been prepared to leave.
“If that’s all!” Lizzie said.
Wilbur nodded, “That will be all.”
Lizzie grinned with her pointed teeth, for the first time all day, and pushed them outside before slamming the door after them.
It had gotten colder during the hour or two they had been at Lizzie’s. Niki shivered and wrapped a single arm around herself. Wilbur took the briefcase from her so Niki could hug herself to preserve the warmth. She smiled at him and they began to walk down the road to the nearest bus stop out of Stratos.
They didn’t say anything about Lizzie’s final statement when they waited. Wilbur asked Niki how the animals had been (obviously treated well. Lizzie knew what they wanted and it didn’t look newly installed) , if Lizzie had been exaggerating the singing talents of her pet goat (Ariana Goatre sounded like a goat to no one's surprise) and if she made any suggestion to being unhappy with Joel (No. Niki was inclined to believe she really didn’t see anything wrong with her husband's practises.) In return, Wilbur offered everything he’d discovered while looking around the Bean’s household that felt noteworthy, such as the happy pictures where Lizzie wore her box, the other pet toys tucked in the corner and the medals from fairs for dog that looks most like their owner and best groomed goat.
They climbed onto the bus when it came. Wilbur headed to the seats just before the back. Niki joined him and placed the briefcase between their feet. The route didn’t begin to pick people up until it reached the inner city of Essempi. They used the time where no one would overhear them to talk.
“Do you still believe your theory that Joel Beans was murdered for abusing animals?” Niki asked.
Wilbur mulled it over. He selected his words carefully as he responded, “I don’t think Joel was murdering or abusing animals besides what his business dictates. But you can’t deny it’s weird that a man who makes his living off selling leather owns so many animals.”
“The animals are because of Lizzie though. If you do as much research as she believes everyone does, then you’d know that instantly. It doesn’t add up with the research we know Stereoscopy does.”
“Lizzie looks like a cat.”
“What would that have to…” Niki stopped as everything clicked, “If they thought Joel had little care for animals, they must have been scared for Lizzie!” Her eyes widened and she grinned, “That would be a motive. If Lizzie didn’t have the power to leave due to her nature as a cat hybrid…”
“There would be no saying what Joel would do if that’s how he treated the already dying horses in his care!” Wilbur finished for her, his eyes glimmered in excitement, “I’m sure once we do some digging we’ll find out that more of his victims had the capability and opportunity to hurt others.”
“You’ll have to run a background check when we get back to the station but I think we’re on the right lines!” They both looked down at the briefcase briefly. Wilbur was reaching for it when the bus stuttered to a stop. The doors opened and a group of teenagers climbed on from Chromia nattering excitedly about a shopping trip. Wilbur withdrew his hand and placed it on his lap, where he fiddled with them.
They didn’t say anything else but Wilbur was sure the electricity was running through his nerves, the need to know was running through his nerves. He was certain, absolutely certain that Niki felt it as well. She was on her phone, typing away with speed. Wilbur pressed his elbow onto the lip between the bus walls and the window and looked out as the cities passed him by. Despite the joy of making another break so soon, he could wait.
Wilbur and Niki walked side by side into the police office. Jack still sat at his desk, working away doing the files and helping the public like any good receptionist. Wilbur skipped up to him and slung his arm over the counter, “We made a big break today Jack!” he announced.
Jack looked up, “You did?”
“We did!” Niki confirmed. She winked at Jack before adding on, “That was a way to end my internship with a bang wasn’t it Wilbur!”
“What?”
Jack sighed, “Niki’s internship ends this week. I have all the files for you to sign to say she’s done a great job and will be a great detective wherever she goes. I also have the paperwork to officially employ her.”
Wilbur turned to face Niki, “Do you want to be employed?”
She blinked, “Yes Will. I’d like to be employed.”
He threw his arms around her, “Then we’ll have you on the team! I’ll find a spare office and order you a plaque!” Niki laughed and hugged him back, resting her head on his shoulder, “Now come on, I need to look over all the new information with my most recent detective!” Wilbur declared. He let go of her and grabbed her wrist. He began to lead her to their office but Niki jogged until she was by his side and they sped walked in together.
Wilbur opened the door to his office and held it open for Niki. Once she was in, Wilbur let go of the door.
“I’ll get you the paperwork for all that then!” Jack called no one.
Wilbur used his weak telekinesis to catch the door which left it open just a crack. He peeked his head around and called back, “Exactly! Just do what we pay you for!” He let the door slam shut and turned to the briefcase and all the glorious notes inside.
Jack Manifold grumbled something loudly enough it could be heard through the sound proof walls of a private office.