The Mystery of the Mystery Meat (10 page)

The three nodded.

“Yummy,” Pretty whispered as drool collected on her fangs. Freekin nudged her, reminding her to be quiet.

“Back to my story. After about a week, Horatio wrote Elias a letter. He asked him to come back at once, because he, Horatio, had an emergency that required him to leave town. Of course that wasn’t true. He was simply laying a trap. Then he left his cookbook open beside a bubbling vat of Mystery Meat and lay in wait for Elias to return.”

Henrietta stroked Mortadella as her three guests sat at the edge of their seats, hanging on every word.

“As Horatio anticipated, Elias contacted Frau von Meatschrapps, and at midnight, the two snuck into the kitchen to steal the recipe. And my uncle leaped from his hiding spot and killed them both!”

“Eeek,” Scary whispered, wrapping his wings around Pretty’s arm and burying his face against her shoulder. Pretty patted him and kept listening.

“Then he thought he heard someone coming, so to hide the evidence, he dumped both their bodies right into the vat. And something amazing happened. Mystery Meat had been absolutely delicious before, but
now
, it was irresistible.”

The next picture was of a can of Mystery Meat, followed by a shot of the enormous Mystery Meat factory complex in all its gory glory before Pretty had set it on fire.

“I never realized that’s how he found the secret ingredient,” Ms. Balonee murmured. “What a stroke of genius!”

“Yes, it was.” Henrietta beamed at her. “But the real genius was that it wasn’t Byproduct and Sausage that provided that extra zing. It was Curiosity.”

“What?”
Freekin whispered, astonished.

“Curiosity,” Pretty whispered back helpfully.

“You must agree that those two wretched wrongdoers were
intensely
Curious about what was in Mystery Meat,” Henrietta told her spellbound audience. “They were, in essence, asking the one question my uncle was so opposed to—‘What’s in Mystery Meat?’ And it turned out to be them!” She cackled. The three executives jerked and worked their faces, but they couldn’t manage to cackle back. They couldn’t even smile. After all, the sole heir of the Mystery Meat company had just asked a question—and revealed a most bizarre tale of murder and mayhem.

“Since my dear Uncle Horatio had no idea that it was their Curiosity that made them so tasty, he made asking questions illegal in order to prevent the recipe from falling into the wrong hands. By his express decree, anyone who was found guilty of Curiosity was taken away by the Society for the Prevention of Curiosity.”

The next picture was of a round-bumpered gray bus with small, smudged windows and large white tires. The words
SNICKERING WILLOWS SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CURIOSITY
were written across the side in red letters. The driver was a stern-faced older lady wearing a gray cap with a red bill, and the bus was packed with unhappy-looking men in broad-shouldered suits, women in dresses and little hats with veils, and children in plaid flannel shirts and jeans with the legs rolled up.

“These were the good old days,” Henrietta said. “Look how full that bus is! All those Curious people were traveling to our fermented fat factory in the Snarkshires to work day in, day out, for the rest of their lives.”

The picture on the screen changed. It revealed a dreary, cavernous room packed with huge cast-iron cauldrons of bubbling fermented fat. The same men, women, and children, wearing old-fashioned prison clothes—black-and-white-striped pajamas and little round hats—stood on rickety wooden platforms, stirring the simmering goo with long wooden poles.

“And when
they
died, when they were stone-cold dead, we buried them in our graveyard. And when we ran out of Curiosity, we unburied them and added them to our delicious Mystery Meat,” she concluded.

“Oh, yuck,” Freekin groaned up on the roof. “This is so gross.”

“Zibu,”
Scary managed, his little face twisted and distressed.

Pretty nodded. “Me so hungry!”

Henrietta’s smile faded. “But now we come to Batch 1313. Neapolitan Nacho, the cause of Chronic Snickering Syndrome. The batch that nearly ruined our company.”

The three shifted in their seats and looked uneasily at one another. “We’re so very, very sorry. We don’t know
what happened,” Mr. Spew confessed. “We have no idea why Batch 1313 made people sick.”

“I can tell you why,” Henrietta snapped at him. “Due to my dear Uncle Horatio’s law, the good, law-abiding people of Snickering Willows have stopped asking questions. In fact, most of them have forgotten how. And people who don’t ask questions stop being Curious.”

“Oops,” Mr. Spew murmured.

“Oops, indeed,” Henrietta said. “No one has broken the law by asking questions for quite some time. Even that undead Franklin Ripp was found not guilty! Today there are only
three
people working in the fermented fat factory.”

She clicked to the next image on the screen, which showed the same dreary, cavernous building, but in place of vats, there were large stainless steel tanks. A very old man had his hand on a dial. He was dressed in a gray jumpsuit with the word
PRISONER
written across the back. Farther back in the factory, two ladies in identical jumpsuits were studying a clipboard.

“At least they’re old,” Mr. Flatterwonder observed. “They’ll be available sooner.”

“Yes,” Henrietta said. “But you see the problem. We are running out of the very ingredient that makes Mystery Meat so tasty. And
you
people tried to cut corners by
using a corpse from our very own graveyard—that boy, Sweeny Burton. Think about it. If he was buried in
our
graveyard, he could not possibly be Curious. The Curious are kicked
out
of Snickering Willows.”

Ms. Balonee nodded thoughtfully. “I see. We can only use the remains of Curious people.”

“Indeed,” Henrietta replied.

“But we’re running out of Curious people,” Ms. Balonee went on.

“Keep going,” Henrietta urged her.

“So we need to rekindle Curiosity in our citizenry,” Ms. Balonee said triumphantly. “No Curiosity, no Mystery Meat!”

“Exactly!” Henrietta cried. Her bracelets clacked and jangled as she clapped.

Mr. Spew looked a little queasy. “You’re talking about encouraging Snickering Willowites to break our most basic law.”

“Yes,” Henrietta declared. “Precisely.”

Mr. Flatterwonder looked even queasier. “We could change the law. If we explain…”

“
Explain!
We cannot explain!” Henrietta declared.

“Or maybe we could make a new ad campaign,” Mr. Flatterwonder said, raising his brows. He stretched out his arms. “‘Curiosity! It’s not just for convicted felons
anymore! Go ahead, ask a question! And have some Mystery Meat!’”

“No, you moron!” Henrietta thundered. “You haven’t been listening. You can
not
connect our company with asking questions! I don’t want anyone to be Curious about why
we
want them to be Curious. Imagine the uproar if people realize they’re eating postmortem Curiosity when they sit down to a nice heaping bowl of Mystery Meatios.”

“Yes, of course,” Mr. Flatterwonder murmured, looking embarrassed. “I should have realized.”

“We could be sneaky and underhanded,” Ms. Balonee suggested. “We could make asking questions rebellious, trendy, and daring! Like…like extreme sports!”

“Yes!” Mr. Spew cried. “First we’ll tempt the young people to ask questions. Then their parents will start asking questions. And then their grandparents will start asking questions. That’s the way new trends always start—with the young.”

“And there you have it,” Henrietta declared. “I have already begun such a plan.” She beamed at each in turn. “Look!” With a flourish, she opened the folder marked
SECRET PLOT
and picked up the first piece of paper on a small stack. It was a copy of the flyer Freekin had seen at school. She handed it to Ms. Balonee, then handed two more copies to the men. All three began reading avidly.

“Oh, no,” Freekin murmured. “They’re behind it, just like I thought.”

“Smarty boy.” Pretty petted him.

“Why…why, this is genius!” Mr. Spew said, reading his copy. “Forbidden fruit is always the tastiest. My hat is off to you, Miss Snickering.”

“You take my breath away. Not literally, of course,” Mr. Flatterwonder added hastily.

“I especially like the part about winning a free trip to the Snarkshires,” Ms. Balonee commented. “It’s a wonderful bit of irony.”

“It’s a lie,” Freekin whispered fiercely. “All of it.”

“Make sure these flyers get passed out all over town,” Henrietta said, snapping her fingers. Viggo came into the room, carrying a stack of flyers that reached just below his nose. “Then we’ll arrange a meeting…and spring our trap.”

Within minutes, the three executives left the mansion with their enormous piles of flyers. Once they had driven away, the rotting corpse of Horatio Snickering III walked from behind the curtain with the bellpull. Mortadella barked at him as he smiled at his niece and clapped.

“Brava!”
he cried. “Well done, my dear. You’re a credit to the glorious name of Snickering.”

“Thank you, Uncle Horatio,” she replied.

“Now all we have to do is fan the flames of Curiosity and wait for someone to keel over,” he said.

“I hope someone really old starts asking questions right away,” Henrietta said. “No one will ever realize just how close we came to shutting our doors. We’ll go worldwide with this! We’ll sell Mystery Meat all over the globe!”

They both threw back their heads and laughed. Mortadella barked and licked Henrietta’s face.

“Viggo!” she shouted, pulling the bell rope. “Bring us some blood orange soda. And some ladyfingers. We wish to celebrate!”

“Oh, my God,” Freekin whispered. “They’re going to eat some lady’s fingers!”

The limping, goggle-eyed hunchback shuffled into the room with a silver tray. On it sat two crystal goblets filled with frothy orange liquid and a plate of rectangular cookies.

“Whew, they’re not real,” Freekin said.

“Maybe lady’s in batter,” Pretty observed.

“A toast. To Curiosity!” Horatio Snickering decreed, taking a glass and raising it high.

“To Curiosity!” Henrietta cried, clinking her goblet with his. Mortadella barked gleefully in her arms.

Freekin made a face as the two guzzled down their soda, then threw their goblets against the fireplace. The glasses shattered into a thousand pieces.

The Snickerings devoured their cookies. Henrietta set down the plate and Mortadella gobbled up the crumbs. Viggo returned with a dustpan and swept up the shards, disappearing back around the curtain.

Henrietta yawned. “Pardon me, Uncle,” she said. “It’s been a very long day.” She smiled at him. “A long and wonderful day.”

“Indeed, my dear. I’m very proud of you,” Horatio told her. “Since you’re not undead, you need your rest. You go off to bed, Henrietta, while I continue to plot and plan.”

“Good night, Uncle Horatio,” she told him, stroking Mortadella’s strange little head. Then she left, and he sat down on the sofa and lit a cigar.

“Bad man, bad lady.” Pretty balled her fists. Her fangs clacked. “Eat their eyeballs. Eat their brains!” She began to gnaw on the side of the chimney.

“We have to stop them,” Freekin agreed, straightening up. “We have to warn people not to awaken their Curiosity or they’ll be shipped off to the fermented fat factory for the rest of their lives. And after they die…” He took a breath. It was too horrible for him say.

Pretty tenderly patted Freekin’s arm while Scary fluttered onto his shoulder and gave him butterfly kisses on his cheek. Freekin managed a weak smile as he took Pretty’s hand and they walked across the sloping roof.

He put his arm around Scary’s wings. “You guys are my best friends,” he said. “We’re in this together, right?”

“Oh, Freekin,” Pretty breathed. “Scary so best friend, Pretty so bester friend.” She kissed the back of his hand and laid her cheek against it, cooing.

Of course they were in it together. Pretty still had hope that she would win Freekin’s unbeating heart. There was nothing she wouldn’t do to help her Freekin.