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Young Penny Cod was nine years, two hours, and forty-three minutes old when she found the book which changed her life. She had always had soft spot for pop-up books. They brought to mind warm, if somewhat fuzzy, recollections of the large, knit-wear clad man who used to read them with her. Those had all been about the adventures of especially adorable kittens and puppies or cherubic white children. This was the first pop-up book Penny had ever seen about a little black girl like her.
“Mom,” Penny called, “I know what I want for my birthday.” She hugged the book to her chest. Like hundreds of other little black girls who would encounter Li’l Gumshoe, she felt as though it had been written just for her. The difference was, Penny Cod was right.
Meanwhile, precisely 243 miles away at the Pie Hole, Penny Cod’s father Emerson Cod was celebrating her birthday in a much more morose fashion. He was staring through the slice of strawberry-rubarb pie on the plate in front of him. Emerson was remembering the last time he had seen his daughter three months, two weeks and six days ago and the way the sunlight had gleamed off of her braces as she rode away in his stolen car. More than anything, he wanted to see that smile again.
“Why so glum, chum?” asked waitress Olive Snook as she freshened his coffee.
A year ago, Emerson would have told her to mind her own beeswax. He briefly considered doing so now, but he and the diminutive waitress were friends these days and, besides, he could use the comfort. “It’s Penny’s birthday.”
Olive put the pot down and slid into the booth across from him. “Do you want a candle?” she asked, laying her small, comforting hand across his larger, sadder one.
“Now why would I want a candle? It’s not my birthday?” Sometimes Emerson honestly did not understand how Olive’s mind worked.
“I know that,” said Olive, “but Penny’s not here. This way, you can blow it out for her and then maybe next year she can blow it out herself.”
The whole idea was completely ridiculous and more than a little hokey but, as Emerson blew out his daughter’s birthday candle, he felt an overwhelming surge of hope.
Young Penny Cod loved her new pop-up book. She felt a deep connection to it’s protagonist which went beyond their shared skin color. Like her, Li’l Gumshoe was missing a father. When she was very small, Penny hadn’t really noticed that lack, but after years of watching happy two-parent families on television she felt it quite keenly. At least Li’l Gumshoe knew who she was looking for. The only thing Penny knew about her father was that, according to her mother, he was a good man with a big heart. Penny didn’t know where he was, if he was alive or if he even wanted her.
On her twenty-third reading of Li’l Gumshoe Penny’s eye was caught by the about the author section. Emerson Cod, it read, is a private detective in Papen County. His first book was written for his daughter, Penny. It struck Penny as an odd coincidence that she and the real Lil’ Gum Shoe had the same name. Then she noticed that Emerson Cod looked exactly like the man she and her mother had stolen a white Lincoln Continental from three months, three weeks, and four days earlier. Penny began to suspect that the shared name was no coincidence at all.
The next morning at breakfast, Penny ambushed her mother asking, “Mom, how do you know Emerson Cod?”
Lila Robinson had been a professional con artist for too many years to do something as obvious as a spit-take, but her brief hesitation before she carefully put down her coffee told Penny she was on to something. “Who?” Lila asked with an understatedly puzzled frown which might have sold the lie under any other circumstance. “I don’t—”
“Come on, Mom,” Penny interrupted her, rolling her eyes. “We stole his car. His registration is still in the glove compartment.” The Case of the Missing Father was the biggest mystery of Penny’s life. Of course she had looked for clues before interrogating her lead suspect. It was what Li’l Gumshoe would do.
Her mother dropped her pretense with a sigh. “Alright, I know him,” Lila admitted. She had, in fact, known him biblically. “He’s a private detective who’s been looking for me a really long time.”
A private detective who let them drive away in his car? It didn’t add up. “Why is he looking for you?” Penny asked.
Lila smiled sadly. “I took something very important from him.” Two somethings, actually: his daughter and his heart.
The facts were these. Ten years, one month, and three days earlier, con artist Lila Robinson had accidentally fallen in love with detective Emerson Cod while pretending on purpose be in love with another man so she could steal his dam ruby. When she realized she was pregnant, Lila had married Emerson and promised to give up her past life of crime. This promise proved difficult to keep when her past came back to haunt her in the form of a vengeful former mark looking to cause trouble. Lila fled Papen County and the love of her life with two suitcases and $50,000 of someone else’s money. More importantly for Emerson Cod, not to mention this story, she also took Penny.
Although she did not know any of these particulars, Penny was now sure of two things: Emerson Cod was her father and he wanted her back very, very much.
The following Tuesday, Lila left Penny in a hotel room in Walla Walla, Washington while she scoped out her latest mark. Although she promised to be good, the minute her mother was out the door Penny pulled out a go-bag containing a tooth brush, change of clothes, string cheese, and, of course, Li’l Gumshoe. Using one of the fraudulent credit cards she had borrowed from her mother’s purse, she bought a ticket and four hours and twenty-three minutes later she was sitting on a bench outside the Papen County Bus Depot.
She knew her father was somewhere in the city, but Penny wasn’t sure how to find him. In Li’l Gumshoe, she had found the tire tracks left by Big Papa’s Lincoln Continental at the crime scene, but Penny didn’t think that would help since the car was with her mother in Walla Walla. Li’l Gumshoe’s next stop had been the morgue, so Penny supposed she should go there.
There was no one seated at the desk in the outer office at the Papen County Morgue but, from the still-warm cup of coffee, Penny knew the coroner couldn’t have gone far. The desk was covered with drifts of paperwork, but it was the smoldering remains of a cigar ground into an ashtray which caught her eye. Penny wasn’t sure, but it looked like it might be the same brand Big Papa smoked in her book. She wished she had thought to bring a magnifying glass so she could examine it for DNA or toothmarks.
Penny snatched it up and gave it a good sniff. It smelled like hope and rich Cuban tobacco. She was still clutching it in her hands when an older black man in a lab coat stepped out of a side room. “Can I help you?” he asked, eying her suspiciously.
“I’m looking for clues,” Penny explained, holding up the cigar.
The coroner gave her a thorough looking over from the butterfly clips in her braids to the tips of her saddle shoes. “A’int you a might young to be investigating a murder?”
Penny shook her head. “I’m not,” she said. "Investigating a murder, I mean." Maybe she would, later, if it turned out she was any good at detecting. She needed to solve this case first. “I’m looking for Emerson Cod.”
“Umm humm,” said the coroner as he sat and leaned back in his chair. “What do you want him for? He owe you money?”
“No, he’s my dad.” At least Penny hoped he was. “Is he here?”
Coroner’s face seemed to soften or at least lose its suspicious edge. “He’s already been and gone, him and the tall white boy and the chirpy white girl he always comes with.”
Penny’s shoulders sagged. Li’l Gumshoe hadn’t found her father at the morgue either, but Penny had hoped after her four-hour-and-twenty-minute bus ride that her own search might be a bit easier. “Do you know where he went?”
The coroner hummed and considered, rubbing his chin. “The chirpy girl sometimes brings me pie from the Pie Hole on Liberty Street. You might want to check there.”
The bell over the door chimed as Penny stumbled exhausted into the pie-shaped pie shop on Liberty Street. The pig on the floor by the counter grunted greeting while the golden retriever woofed softy and wagged his tail. “Hi, welcome to the Pie Hole!” chirped tiny blonde waitress Olive Snook. “What can I get you?”
“Emerson Cod,” Penny said flatly. Without a map, it had taken her one hour and forty-seven minutes of wandering plus one exceptionally awkward conversation with a particularly odoriferous sanitation worker to get here. Her feet hurt, her back ached, and she was out of string cheese.
“Oh my god,” shrieked Olive and lunged forward to seize Penny in a surprisingly strong hug. “You’re Penny.” She pushed the girl away and held her at arms’ length. “You are Penny, right?” She asked, studying her with narrowed, suspicious eyes.
Dazed, Penny nodded dumbly and was pulled back into another hug. “It worked,” crowed Olive, giving Penny an extra squeeze. “My candle worked.”
Overwhelmed by this onslaught of spontaneous affection, it took Penny a minute to squirm free. She backed off hurriedly, putting the dog and pig in between her and another hug. She was glad she clearly had the right place, but it was a bit much. “Is my dad here?"
Olive’s face fell. “I’m sorry, sweetie. He’s out on a case.” For a moment, Penny felt like crying and it must have shown on her face because Olive rushed to reassure her. “He always turns up here eventually. How about I get you some pie on the house while you wait for him?”
Exhausted, Penny sank into a seat at the counter and scanned the menu. In the book, Li’l Gumshoe had found her father’s fingerprints on a plate of strawberry-rhubarb pie in the pie-shaped pie shop. “Strawberry-rhubarb, please, and a glass of milk.”
Penny was just finishing up the best pie of her life when a tall white man and short white woman strolled into the Pie Hole liked they owned the place. “Ned, Chuck, you’re back!” Greeted Olive from the booth where she was freshening up a customer’s coffee. She craned her neck to look past them. “Is Emerson with you?”
Chuck shook her head. “He wanted to head back to the office,” she explained, unwinding her scarf.
“Why?” asked Ned. “Is something wrong? Oh, god, what’s wrong? Is it a murder? Please tell me it’s not a murder,” he babbled, his eyes scanning the room for the source of the disaster.
“What? No.” Olive gave him a concerned look as she put the coffee pot back on the hot plate. “Nothing’s wrong. In fact, everything is so not wrong it’s great.” She spun in an excited circle that nearly sent her stumbling over the dog. “Penny’s here!” She framed the girl with her hands like Penny was the fabulous prize on a game show.
Ned’s eyes went comically wide as his mouth fell open. “That’s amazing!” Chuck exclaimed. “How did you find us?”
Penny fished her book out of her bag and showed them the pie shop page. “It was my birthday present.”
Chuck covered her mouth with her hands. “It worked! Emerson’s book worked!" Her grasp was too quick to be evaded and, once again, Penny found herself in the embrace of a strange white woman. "It’s like a belated birthday miracle.”
It would have been, Penny supposed, if it had gotten her to her father. So far all she had gotten out of it was sore feet, pie and slightly crazy white people. “I just want to find my dad." She scrubbed at her eyes. She didn't know what she'd do if someone else hugged her.
Luckily, Ned didn't even try. He just flashed her a sad little smile and fished his keys out of his pockets. “I’ll go bring the car around and we’ll take you to Emerson’s office.”
Riding in the back of the car with a weird plastic divider, Penny suddenly felt very nervous. Complete strangers knew about her and her father’s search. What if she wasn’t what he’d imagined? What if she’d made a huge mistake coming here? What if he was expecting the kind of girl who could track him down based on nothing more than a pop-up book?
“Isn’t it amazing how you tracked Emerson down based on nothing more than a pop-up book?” Chuck twisted around in her seat to beam at her and Penny smiled back. She really had, hadn’t she. She was just like Li’l Gumshoe, a brilliant detective.
“Your dad is going to be so proud!”
The car rolled to a stop outside a Chinese restaurant and they all piled out to line up on the curb. “Emerson’s office is on the second floor,” Ned told her. He bent down so Penny could see his uncertain smile. “Do you want us to walk you up?”
“No,” Penny said sharply. “I mean, no, thank you,” she corrected herself. She didn’t want an audience for this. She wanted this reunion all to herself.
Chuck smiled understandingly. “Okay, well, you give your dad a big hug for me once you’re done hugging him for yourself.”
“But not for me,” Ned said awkwardly. Penny got the sense he did everything awkwardly, like he was uncomfortable in his own skin. “I mean, I’m happy for you both,” he rambled on, “but Emerson and I don’t really have a hugging sort of relationship.”
Penny flung her arms around his waist before bolting. For the first time in nine years, one month and nine days, she would hug her father. They would have a hugging relationship. Before she really knew it, Penny was standing outside the door to her father’s office. The frosted glass of his door read “Emerson Cod, Private Investigator.” Looking through, Penny could make out the faint shape of a man behind a desk.
Taking a deep breath, Penny knocked sharply. “I’m looking for Emerson Cod,” she called. Then she opened the door and solved the biggest mystery of her life.