gloss

aphrodite_mine

”For in the long run, either through a lie, or through truth, people were bound to give themselves away...”
Hercule Poirot, After the Funeral

The Case of the Vanishing Municipal Bonds is, at long last, solved. The precious financial instruments have been recovered, the dastardly conspirators located and hustled into custody. The crack detective emerges panting and grubby from the clouds of steam. She pauses to wearily accept the grateful handshakes and shoulder-claps from the town’s foremost citizens before trudging toward her father.

”Janey,” Dad says, hoisting her up into a hug, ”I am so proud of you.”

She clings to him, like she used to when she was a baby, burying her face in his neck. He smells like Barbasol and Royal Lyme aftershave. He smells safe and secure, as steady and handsome and irreplaceable as anything.

She snoozes a little as he walks them home. Her glasses are pushed up and to the side, one arm digging into her head. That weird white stray cat lopes along with them, down branches and behind hedges. Jane sees him whenever her eyes drift open, but she’s so tired that all she can make out is the tracery of green against blue sky, streaks of white cat, clouds.

Dad pauses at the tire swing in the front yard to pat a handkerchief over his barely glistening brow. He smiles down at her and says, ”Bath time. Now, how about we get you out of this silly get-up?”

He starts to remove her fedora. Jane shrieks, clamping both hands down on it. She turns her face away so he can’t get at her mustache and kicks blindly, fiercely.

He must resort to the big voice of warning: ”Jane Elizabeth Crocker...”

”Let me down!” She wriggles, one way, then the other, but Dad is much, much stronger than she is. Only when the stray kitty jumps from the nearest branch to pounce on the tire, which, swinging, knocks Dad slightly off-balance, does he loosen his grasp enough for Jane to slip free.

She glares up at her father, small round fists planted on her hips, her spectacles askew beneath the over-large brim of her ratty fedora.

Returning her gaze, he almost smiles, but he doesn’t dare. If there’s one thing Jane takes exception to even more fervently than broken promises and being told what to wear, it is being treated like a child. Even worse, a cute one.

She squares her narrow shoulders and strokes her curly mustache. The spirit gum she uses as adhesive is weakening; she can feel the droop, tickling her upper lip. Nevertheless, she holds firm. She’s the spunky detective. No one can tell her what to do.

”I will have dinner, then take a nap,” she tells him.

”In this house, we bathe when we need to bathe, as well as when we are told.”

”Fine,” Jane says. "I concede your point.”

He has not won this argument; perhaps he thinks he has. If so, more fool he! So did the Glorious Garbowska when he was fixing all those lucha libre matches, as did Evelyn Warbles-Pinkington when she was committing foster child fraud and violating child-labor laws. They both underestimated Jane Crocker, Detective. Why, you might as well try to concoct a flawless angel-food bundt cake from scratch as attempt to take down Maple Valley’s finest cogitator and clue-chomper.

She takes a shower, not a bath, first of all. She's not an infant. Although she will never tell her dad this, the hot water feels good on her exhausted, sweat-streaked skin. Harrowing chases through City Hall’s steam tunnels sure do take a lot out of you!

When she is scrubbed clean, nearly glowing, shivering with goosebumps, she wraps a towel around her middle and steps up onto the stool so she can use the mirror over the sink. A generous dollop of Barbasol is deposited in her palm, then massaged over the lower half of her face; its rich texture reminds her of the finest buttercream icing. She doesn’t taste it, however. She’s not going to make that mistake again.

With a tongue cleaner, she carefully scrapes the foam from her cheeks. She takes extra care around her lips and the underside of her jaw.

”Time is care, and a gentleman always takes his time,” her father always says. Even when she is cross with him, Jane believes wholeheartedly that he is the wisest person on earth. So even if she is something else, not quite a gentleman (it is unclear whether she will become one, perhaps when she turns ten or at puberty, but the more she asks adults about it, the more flustered they become), she does as he says. He has never steered her wrong.

When her face is rinsed clean, she pats on some aftershave before combing back her hair. Galiazo, her father’s barber downtown, cuts it for her, just the way she likes it, close on the sides and back, full on top. He calls it the ”Montgomery Clift”, but she doesn’t know who that is. She just knows that everything - bathing, detecting, playing - is easier when her hair is nice and short and never gets in her eyes. When she is overdue for a trim, she drives herself batty with constantly brushing it back. She rubs a tiny bit of pomade through the damp hair until it is lays just the way she likes.

Her internet chum Dirk teases her for being a Dandy Dan fan. That charge is patently absurd. She has never used anything but Crockercorp’s subsidiary, Aveda, and she's not about to change.

Now that she’s clean and dry, feeling, as Dad likes to say after a snifter of Scotch and half a pipe of well-aged Cavendish, ”halfway back to human”, Jane sets to reapplying her mustache.

Brow furrowed, eyes squinting, but lips as relaxed as she can get, she adjusts the angle and adds a considered amount of extra adhesive. This is not a hurried disguise, not something that any passing adult bully can just *yank* off her lip. Such outright cruelty has happened, several times. She has been sent to the principal, to mall security, even to a six-week course at Miss Condesca’s Golden Age Deportment Academy for Young Ladies, but she has never, ever removed the mustache until she was good and ready.

When she has the mustache just the way she likes it, extra-curly and perfectly slicked, as intricate as the plots she foils, as neat as her ratiocinations, Jane hops down off the stool. She hangs up her towel, straightens the shower curtain, then goes to dress in her room.

Her bare feet leave small crescents behind on the mahogany floor. The marks dim, then vanish, over the course of a few moments.

Dressed in her favorite Sailor Moon shirt and corduroy skirt, she bounds down the stairs to join her father in the kitchen. She hates wearing trousers; they are far too constrictive for the active, on-the-go lass and curious detective that she is. Her skirts let her move, jump, scurry and dash as she needs to.

She is suddenly ravenous and throws herself at her dad with the force of several hurricanes. She hugs him around the waist and holds on as if under threat of being dragged away.

”Feeling better?” He squeezes her shoulder and smiles at her. ”I must say, you’re looking quite dapper.”

”What’s for dinner?” On tiptoes, Jane peers up at the cutting board and snags half a carrot. Before he can reply or scold, she adds hurriedly, ”thank you for the compliment! I feel super-dapper.”

”I’m so proud of you,” he says and hands her the stack of plates and cutlery for setting the table.

Jane grins at him, driving the mustache higher on her cheeks. ”All in a day’s work, Daddy.”

He nods his agreement, then returns to slicing the vegetables.

While she waits for him to serve, Jane tells her BFF Roxy about the day's adventure with the bonds, gangsters, and steam tunnels.

TG: omg ur a badasssssss
GG: Language!
TG: sry. Ur a badBUTT. better?
GG: :B

Jane starts to giggle. The giggles accelerate into laughter, more and more helpless. When her dad backs into the dining room, carrying the serving dishes, he finds Jane collapsed over the table, the laptop screen gone dim. She is wheezing, tears streaming down her cheeks.

”What’s so funny, bunny?”

Jane hiccups a couple times before she can answer. ”Roxy said butt.”

The great detective manages two helpings of veggie stir-fry and half a slice of Great Job, Good Girl! cake before she’s asleep in her chair.

Her dad carries her up to bed, her damp head lolling against his shoulder, and tucks her in. After kissing her forehead and removing her glasses safely to the bedside table, he straightens her mustache, then rests his palm on her chubby cheek for a moment or two longer.