The Birth of the Great Pun Detective! (Part 10)

Grandpa nodded to Lily. A signal it seemed, because then she started rummaging through a drawer in his desk, looking for something. She was pulling out junk like you wouldn’t believe and tossing it over her shoulder into a heap. Notebooks and stacks of paper, pens and pencils, beakers and burners, some old school lunches that had been in there for who knows how long, disaster supply kits, cans of non-perishables, can’ts of non-perishables, green beans, lima beans, black beans, refried beans, baked beans, jelly beans, has beens, woulda beens, coulda beens, shoulda beens, beanie babies, a hunk of cheese mottled with a mold greener than envy, paint brushes and oozing acrylic paint tubes and easels and canvases, computers and tablets and phones, keyboards and mice (they went for the cheese immediately), a hand saw, a bone saw, a buzzsaw, a roaring chainsaw, a seesaw, a blu-ray box set of Saw through Saw 3D, a loose jigsaw puzzle that was missing a piece (I only counted 999 as they careened through air), nine hourglasses, nine doors off their hinges, an apple, an apple core, a first-gen Apple iPod from about a million years ago, a small black notebook with the words “Death Note” on the front, a watch with a secret compartment behind its face, ten bowling pins that landed in perfect formation, knives, lint, an anvil, a rubber squeaky hammer, bull frogs, bull horns, bullseyes, bullions, bulletin boards, bullets for my valentine, bundles of kindling as dry as a bone, lit matches that Lily skillfully blew out in midair as she tossed them, a deer, some headlights, a bottle of car wax, a giant sea bass with a line trailing out of its mouth and wide-eyed fisherman desperately hanging on to the other side and trying to reel in the beast, the missing piece to that puzzle from earlier, a hamster, a hamster wheel labeled “if found return to Greg’s brain,” snakes, a plane, a train, some automobiles, a handheld speedometer, a DeLorean that disappeared in a blaze as it hit 88 according to the speedometer’s digital readout, a bowling ball that crashed right into those ten pins with a satisfying sound (strike!), a screwdriver, a British police box whose blue paint was chipping away with age, a flute, an old-fashioned car colored bright yellow, a too-long scarf, a single wilted stalk of celery, and the tip of an iceberg.

God, how deep was this drawer? More importantly, what was with the sheer amount of junk? Just when was the last time grandpa cleaned around here?

Oh wait. Yeah. Duh. There was no last time. Grandma used to do all the cleaning for him. Without her, he was a mess.

Finally, Lily found what she was looking for: a pair of gigantic hedge clippers.

She walked calmly over to where I was. I, on the other hand, was anything but calm. The way she was snipping those clippers was scaring me. She got up right next to me and stopped, casting a shadow over me that paired well, if I did say so myself, with the sinking feeling of impending primal doom that I was experiencing at the moment. Very appropriate. To my surprise, she smelled nothing at all like chili. Instead, I caught whiff of a fragrant detergent. Just as I was about to ask her which brand she used while at the same time desperately trying not to actually wet myself over the fact that a giant pair of hedge clippers was snapping open and shut repeatedly right next to my head, she said, “Don’t move,” and snipped through the ropes that were holding me to the chair.

Luckily her aim was a little better than when she was handling lunch. The ropes were sliced clean open, but I was completely slice free. Also, I was just plain free.

For a split second, my instincts told me to run. To hightail it and never look back. To get out of this mess while I still could, before it was too late. But even if I’d had the strength in me to do it, I wouldn’t have made it far. The FPI agents were still blocking the exit. And I’d realized by now that grandpa wasn’t the only crazy person I was dealing with here. Lily was totally off her rocker too. There was no telling what she might do to me if I tried to flee.

“Personally,” grandpa said, sliding up to my side, next to Lily, “I don’t care why you think I’m asking you to do this, or what you think of me for it. So you can think what you like. But do you want to know what I think?”

I said nothing.

“I think you’re the best man for the job.”

“And why’s that?”

This time, he didn’t respond. He just tapped the clipboard I was still holding with one of his gnarled old knuckles. Like he was telling me that’s where I’d find my answer. Like he was saying the contract would tell me all I needed to know.

So I read, top to bottom, word for word. I even read through the fine print. The contract listed my duties, responsibilities, and even the perks of the job, which, in my amateur opinion, there weren’t nearly enough of. There were also dangers involved, it said. Chance of sudden death by overexaggerated groan. High likelihood of slipping on banana peels. That kind of thing. Considering I’d just been abducted, bound, gagged, and nearly decapitated, I figured I could handle it.

Then something caught my eye. There, at the end of the contract, was my full, official job title.

So that was it. That was what grandpa had meant. That was why I was the perfect one for this job.

Grandpa slipped a pen into my hand, eager, no doubt, to get me to sign.

I hesitated. Far as I was concerned, that dotted line was my own death sentence. I didn’t want to sign. Didn’t want to be a Radioactive Equivoque Detective. Didn’t want to solve the school’s pun problem. Didn’t want to do any of it. If staving off boredom meant starring in one of grandpa’s crazy schemes for an entire school year, then sign me up for 24/7 tedium. I’d take my bland day-in-day-out over this, easily.

But with my figure collection on the line, what choice did I have?

So I signed. Right on the dotted line, right below where my name was pre-printed on the paper. Right below where big, bold letters spelled out my official rank and title as a RED within the FPI. They were a government organization after all. Of course they’d have titles like this. But was “Badass Officer” really an official designation that they used? I’d have laughed if the bleak future I was signing into existence wasn’t mine.

Well, I thought as I looked at my new official title, cold comfort, but at least now I knew why my overwhelming boredom qualified me for this gig when I had basically no other qualifications besides the months I’d spent getting slowly nuked in my own house.

“Good,” grandpa said, and he took the clipboard, contract and all, back from me, then handed me the carbon copy. “Your duties as Radioactive Equivoque Detective begin tomorrow. Lily, meet your new partner.”

Lily curtsied again.

“And Wallace… Welcome to the FPI. I hereby pronounce you:

Wallace Wade

Badass Officer of the Radioactive Equivoque Detectives

The end of The Birth of the Great Pun Detective!
To be continued in The Pun Detective Heads to His Headquarters!