English Ben & Detective Dave (Ch. 3 – The Appointment)
LATER THAT MORNING, after Buttercup had recovered, laid down on the couch for a little while, and then finished with the cleaning-up, detective Dave called. He had taken some anti-allergy pills, and would she mind meeting him somewhere without cats, and talking for a while about the Café El Lisón? Buttercup agreed, and said that since she was due to go to the park and read that afternoon, she would be happy to share a bench.
“Two o’clock?” said Buttercup.
That would be fine, said the detective, as long as there were no cats.
“Oh no” she said, “no cats at the park—just ducks. You’re not allergic to ducks, are you?”
Detective Dave said that he believed he could tolerate ducks in the out-of-doors, and they agreed to meet. After hanging up the phone, Buttercup went back to the office in her house and after adjusting a few slides, began to write notes on the large legal pad beside her microscope, stopping every few minutes to adjust slides, lighting, or refocus her eyes. Buttercup was utterly absorbed in this until 1:30PM, when she suddenly realized that it was time to go to the park.
“A-hrr…” she thought and hummed gently to herself. She was making such nice progress today. Still, a commitment was a commitment and it had best be honored. And the detective! She had nearly forgotten—she was supposed to meet him at 2:00PM and that didn’t give her much time, especially since detectives were not likely to be as forgiving or patient as the ducks!
She quickly changed out of her pajamas, then gathered up the bread she’d been saving all week. With a quick skritch for Miss Nikki, Buttercup was out the door with bag and book, ready to meet the young man with the questions, all the while harboring questions of her own. Questions like: “Who is this English Ben?” “Who was he talking to?” “Why do you want to talk to witnesses?” and the more general questions she was always asking herself, such as, “How can Hymenoptera be so grassland predominant when Lepidoptera is so much better adapted?”
Whether Buttercup ever resolved the questions she had about Hymenoptera we may never know, but she arrived at the park just as the ducks were flying in from the south side of the big pond. The park was… well, if you’ve ever been to a park, you know what they look like. If you haven’t been, you should go to one, they’re lovely. The detective was waiting for her next to a bench, tapping his foot in a way that Buttercup presumed meant that he had been waiting for some time. “At least I’m not late for the ducks.” she thought.
“Hello!” she said, in a slightly out-of-breath way. “Sorry about being late—I was having such nice progress today that I lost track.”
“What?” asked the detective.
Buttercup paused. She was unsure about that “What?” Did the detective not know about progress? Perhaps she should explain.
“Sorry—progress. You know, when you’re working on a project, and little by little, you get additional things done? After a while you finish what you’re doing. But the pace and scale of what you’re doing—that’s progress.” And she smiled in a sweet way.
Detective Dave was now the one confused. “I know what progress is. That’s what isn’t happening on this case. But what were you doing that you were making progress on?”
“Oh!” said Buttercup. “I was trying to tell if a recently discovered species of Rhagionidae was a Chrysopilus, or if it was, in fact, an entirely new genus. Obviously that would be very exciting, since it would increase Rhagionidae by fifty percent.”
Detective Dave looked for a moment as if he was about to say “What?” again, but simply sat down and rubbed his hand across his face slowly, as if trying to dispel a headache.
Eventually he looked at Buttercup, who was still standing (and smiling), and said, “Please sit down. I didn’t understand anything you just said. I know some of the words, but there were things there that just… confounded me. I don’t claim to be the smartest man alive but I know when people speak English, what they mean most of the time.” Upon seeing that she was about to explain, he put up his hand and quickly added, “No! Stop right there. Don’t explain. It’s OK. Just let me talk now. Please.”
Buttercup was puzzled now. How had she confused him? She had intentionally kept things simple—not entering into wing detail, or scale counting or such things.
“Now Miss,” began the detective, “I wanted to ask you some questions about your being at the café the other night.” Having said this, he took the notebook out again and started to ask questions. After confirming her Name, Address and Phone number (which seemed odd to Buttercup. He clearly knew all of that, since he used her name, went to her apartment, and called her on the phone.) he started to ask about her profession.
“Where do you work?” asked the detective.
“In the upstairs office.” she said.
“What?” he said.
Buttercup was stumped by this. Did he not understand “upstairs” or “office?” Still a bit nervous, she began to explain: “Well, when you live in a place that has several levels, or floors, the floor above your living area is considered upstairs. As for office…”
Dave put up his hand to stop her, “No! No, no, no. I mean, who do you work for.”
“Oh!” said Buttercup, much relieved that she didn’t have to explain “office”. “I don’t work for anyone. Although, I do work for several Universities. I suppose you could say I work for a publisher, because I write books.” Buttercup beamed at the detective now, since this was her proudest achievement.
“Really?” said the detective, “Anything I might have read?”
“Well, I don’t know. Do you like reading about the processes and standards of classification of winged insects?” said Buttercup, warming to her subject.
The detective looked at her blankly. She had the feeling that a “what?” was somewhere in the back of his mind, but he was struggling to control it. At last he said “N-nooo…” very slowly and deliberately, as if he had to think a very long time about the question. He repeated it, with more conviction. “No. No books about classification of insects. I would have remembered reading something like that I think.”
Buttercup was crestfallen. Her father was ever so proud of her when she published her first book. All of his friends had read her books and liked them very much. She wished daddy could have seen all the books she had published since, but her father’s friends were always so nice. “Published at nineteen?” they said, “Amazing! Astounding!” She remembered blushing when they said this, although she was never sure why.
“Why…” said the detective, but he raised his hand and waved it in front of himself to dispel the question. “Miss Burger, if I may call you that, what were you doing in the café last night?”
“Oh! Well, I usually read here in the park or the science library, but I had rather a late start to the day, and I was getting a little headache due to not having any coffee for a while. So I decided to just go back to the house and read. That is, I had gone out, but I saw that the library was about to close, so it wouldn’t do any good to start a new book.” Here Buttercup held up a book: Fly Pushing: The Theory and Practice of Drosophilae Genetics. “I was walking back when I noticed the wonderful scent of coffee in the area of that little café. That’s when I decided that I would risk going in, as it was nearly deserted.”
Detective Dave was taking scribbled notes as she said this. “Ah—so you’re an entomologist?”
Buttercup looked slightly taken aback. “Oh no. No, no, no. They’re just wonderful, but they do such different things… No, I work as a species identification consultant.”
“But you said you’ve published books.”
“Yes, but those are about taxa.” She said. “Classifications related to hierarchical structures. Phylogenetics, cluster analysis, things like that.”
“What’s that now? Hierarch… taxa-what?”
Here Buttercup had to pause—how could someone not know what a taxon was? She could see not knowing about progress and conversations, and even an office, but taxonomy? “Well… you look at living things when they’re no longer living, and try to decide what Class, Order, Genus, Species (and perhaps subspecies) they belong to. You aren’t writing this down.”
Now it was detective Dave’s turn to be taken aback. “Sorry—this doesn’t pertain directly to the case. I was asking because I’m kinda interested in forensics and I know that there’s an entomology aspect to that. You know—CSI? The TV show?”
“Oh, I’ve never watched television. I’ve seen it, but it always leaves a dizzy feeling. Everything is going so fast and it’s very loud.” She gave a little shudder after she said this, as though she was recalling the taste of cough syrup.
Dave furrowed his brow slightly at this. He’d never met someone who had never watched TV. He knew one guy who didn’t watch much, but—never? He had the distinct impression that Buttercup was one of the oddest people he’d met in his seven years as a policeman, and that she was not going to be much help with this case. “OK then,” he said, “getting back to the café—you were there to read and have coffee, and the waiter said that shortly after you pointed out the two gentlemen in the back, you went and sat down next to them. Is that correct?”
Blushing slightly and lowering her head, Buttercup answered yes, she had.
“Why?”
At this point Buttercup did something very brave, although she was quite scared. She told Dave the truth. “I was curious about what they were saying to each other, because I thought they were having a conversation. I only learned about conversations that day and wanted to act like a know-it-all. I was going to ask if I could listen, but I got scared that I would interrupt, so I just sat down when I got close.” Here she looked at the ducks, and then at the bread in her hand, and her voice softened with shame. “But I could hear everything they said.”
“Really?” said Dave, “That’s excellent!”
Poor Buttercup—she was so upset with herself for listening to the conversation without permission, and now having to tell a policeman about it, that this caught her completely off guard. “How? What? Excellent? How can it? Isn’t that why I’ve gotten in trouble?”
Dave was smiling now, revealing very white teeth. “Trouble? You’re not in trouble.” –his smile took on a little mischief– “I mean, not unless you killed Harold Mallord.”
