The Mary-Sue Mysteries

The Case of the Black Squirrel

When you’re bright and shiny, you live down in the Toy Room and you’re everyone’s darling. Then you get old and tired and your hair starts attracting dust. That’s when you get sent to the Attic.

It happens to everyone sooner or later.

For me, it was about five years ago, when the Mary-Sue craze started to die down. One day you’re every little girl’s fantasy, and the next you’re up in the Attic with Raggedy Andy. That’s life. For a doll, anyway.

I didn’t care. I decided I didn’t want to be anyone’s fantasy any more. So, I put out my shingle and set up the Mary-Sue Detective Agency right next to the Chemistry Set. They serve a mean bourbon there, which makes it handy for me.

That’s where I was when Christian walked in.

“Hey, doll,” he said. “You sober?”

I like Christian. He’s one of the tin soldiers--the best of them, really. They keep order in the Attic, such as it is, and most of them are too stiff-necked to ask a girlie for help. But not Christian. He’s been places, seen things. Once of these days, I’m planning to get him drunk and ask him how he lost that leg of his.

I shook my head and he told me what was up. A Pooh bear had been found near the game shelf, with the stuffing knocked out of him.

“The killer tore him to pieces,” Christian said. He ordered himself a double. “There was fluff all over. And naturally, no witnesses.”

“Tore him to pieces, huh? You think it might have been a squirrel?” We’d been having a problem with squirrels lately. With the cold weather, they’d been creeping into our territory. They’d just as soon tear someone to pieces as look as them. Rumor was they used stuffing to pad their nests. Sick bastards.

“Maybe,” Christian said. “But they messed up. They left Pooh alive. He lived long enough to pull open the Scrabble game and spell out a clue.”

After we finished our drinks, we headed over to the game shelf. I was expecting to find a crime scene. But the place was as neat as a pin.

“What the hell?” Christian barked out. “Who destroyed the evidence?” He caught a suspicious-looking Pez dispenser by the throat and pulled his head back--way back. “Who was it?”

“It wasn’t me!” gulped the Pez. “It was the cleaning lady!”

Christian groaned. That’s the problem with investigating crime in the Attic. You turn your back and your victim is in thrown in the trash can and all the evidence vacuumed up.

“Never mind,” I said, extricating Christian’s fists of tin from the Pez’s neck. “Just tell us what you know.”

“Not much,” the Pez replied. “We were hanging around and we found Pooh bear lying face down, right next to the Scrabble letters. He must...” he gulped again, “He must have taken awhile to die.”

“What did the letters spell out?”

“I don’t know. I don’t read.”

That’s the trouble with Pez dispensers. Most of them never bothered learning the alphabet, let alone how to make them into words.

“I know what it said.”

I looked up. Towering over me was Old Bunny, the velveteen rabbit. They said he used to be real, but he couldn’t take it, so he ended up in the Attic with everyone else. Still, being real gave him some advantages. Like literacy.

“What did it say?” Christian asked.

“It was just three words,” the rabbit said. “BLACK SQUIRREL KILLER.”

“What does that mean?” Christian asked.

The rabbit shrugged. “How the hell should I know? Maybe he was killed by a black squirrel.”

It was as good a lead as any. Christian and I made our way through the cracked glass window, out to the chestnut trees that brushed against the porch roof.

Sure enough, there were a good dozen squirrels jumping around the branches. I shivered. They give me the creeps. Some were brown, some were grey, and one of them was jet-black.

“That looks like our squirrel,” Christian said. “I don’t like our chances of bringing him in alone. I think I’ll call out the squad.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. I was looking at the squirrel in question. There was no doubt that he was vicious. But I suddenly realized he wasn’t the killer. “We need to retrace our steps. The killer didn’t come from outside the Attic. It was an inside job.”

What was the clue that tipped off Mary-Sue?