More Amphibians

Here is the exciting conclusion to The Amphibian Brief. Part 1 is here.

“Captain, I don’t know how you did, but we’re all eternally grateful,” said Mr. Crick over the phone early the next morning.

“Well, the trick is to make sure that the oven temperature never exceeds 350 degrees. It’s also important that—”

“No, no, no, I meant about the frogs.”

“What frogs would these be?”

“Our frogs.”

“Your frogs?”

“Yes, our frogs.”

“Frogs?”

“Yes, the frogs.”

“You got circles?!”

“Excuse me?”

“Mr. Crick, forgive my confusion, but I really have no idea what you’re on about.”

“Our frogs are back.”

Santos paused. “I should have seen this coming. Mr. Crick, I’m afraid I have some bad news. They’re not your frogs.”

“Not our frogs? Captain, I assure you, I know my own frogs. I’ve spent the best years of my life with those frogs. Heck,” he said, beginning to sob, “I almost married one of them.”

Santos hated hysterical men, like Steven Wright. “Mr. Crick, sad as it may seem, your frogs are the result of a hideous, although admittedly loopy, plot to replace the world’s frog population with rubber replicas.”

“But Captain, these are identical to my frogs.”

“Yes, I know, it was done by pros. Listen, you have to believe me. Dissect one, if you think I’m joking.”

“No, I believe you. It could explain why Marcia was so. . . . Well, anyway. Captain, what are we to do? What’s become of the real ones?”

“I don’t know yet what’s happened to the real frogs, but we’re staking out other amphibian-based ecosystems and hopefully we’ll be in luck. The culprits don’t know we’re on to them yet, so we may have the element of surprise.”

Jordan ran into the room. “Captain! You’ll never bel—”

“Jordan,” Santos said, cupping his hand over the earpiece of the phone, “I’m right in the middle of a rather delicate matter.”

“Could you order pepperoni?”

“Jordan!”

“But Captain, Dennis Renstor has been found.”

“I’ll talk to you later,” he said into the phone, and hung up immediately.

Jordan continued. “He turned up at his home very early this morning. He wasn’t in very good shape. He had apparently been starved for days, there was dried blood on his forehead, both his legs were broken, he was severely dehydrated, and his very expensive silk shirt had been torn. We took him to the doctor.”

“And?”

“His doctor said ‘Mylanta.’ We’re not sure what that meant, but a better doctor took care of him and he’s in stable condition.”

“Can he talk?”

“Oh, yes. Since a very early age.”

“Good. Let’s go.”

Go indeed.

***

They found Dennis Renstor resting comfortably in a custodial closet on the third floor of the hospital.

“Jordan, why is this man in a custodial closet?” asked Santos.

“He didn’t read the fine print on his HMO.”

“Why is there even a bed in a custodial closet?”

“Their janitor takes a lot of naps. Union rules.”

“I see.”

Renstor was nearly wide awake, and was playing a spirited game of Tetris on a GameBoy. And you know, he did look remarkably like a frog.

“Mr. Renstor, I am Captain Bernard Santos of the Police Department. I’d like to know exactly what happened to you.”

“Well, Sergeant, I was in my backyard near Barrymore’s Bog—you know, on Route 50, next door to the other paper mill—playing leapfrog, when these two men came up behind me, stuck a rag over my face, and dragged me away.”

“Chloroform?”

“No, actually my nose was running. Hayfever.”

“Ah.”

“Anyway, I passed out shortly after that, and woke up in a big, airplane-hanger-like room, surrounded by thousands of frogs. This didn’t bother me at all, loving frogs the way I do. But as the minutes stretched into hours, and the hours stretched into more hours, and the hours stretched into days, and the days into weeks, and the weeks into months, and the months into years—”

“Uh,” said Jordan, “you were only there for about three weeks, you know.”

“Oh. Well, it was a while anyway. And no one had fed me. The door was locked from the inside and there were no windows. So I was trapped there, hungry, thirsty, and with a big tear in my silk shirt.”

“How did you ultimately manage to escape?”

“I dug a tunnel. The floor was made of wood, and it had a bad case of dry rot, and termites, and all sorts of other things wrong with it, so I was able to dig a tunnel. As it turned out, the room I was in was on the third floor of a building, so I eventually fell right on top of some guy’s desk. Fortunately, it was at three in the morning, so the guy whose desk it was must have been in the bathroom or something. His door was unlocked, so I managed to sneak out and escape.”

“Where was this building?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? How did you get home?”

“I hitchhiked. Someone picked me up, and I just gave him my address.

Santos was getting annoyed. “Didn’t you notice where you were going? Or where you were coming from?”

“Well, no. . . . I was busy trying to find something good on the radio. By the time I did, I was home.”

At that point, the doctor entered the custodial closet. “I’m sorry, gentlemen, but you’ll have to leave. It’s time for Mr. Renstor to be jabbed repeatedly with a variety of needles.”

“Jordan,” said Santos.

“Let me guess: to the car park?”

“Very much so.”

Very much so indeed.

“Stop that!” Santos yelled.

***

Once again, the car park it was.

“Let me see if I have all the facts here,” said Santos, as Jordan watched him pace. “First, Dennis Renstor is kidnapped while playing leapfrog. As we know, he lives on the edge of a marsh and has an uncanny resemblance to a frog. And Jordan, the color of his silk shirt?”

“Green.”

“He was wearing a green shirt when he was kidnapped, and was held in a room full of frogs. Then, a roomful of frogs at Lakeside Elementary School disappears, and a teaching assistant is killed. This aforementioned teaching assistant also has all the evidence regarding the fiendish plot on the part of the President of the Ace Rubber Novelty Company to replace all the world’s real frogs with plastic replicas. Meanwhile, all of this is uncovered by an Arizona herpetology student who had been married to the teaching assistant who was murdered. Then, Renstor escapes and doesn’t know where he was held. Am I missing anything, Jordan?”

“Well, aside from the solution, no. If only we knew where Renstor had been held.”

“Didn’t he say that as soon as he found something good on the radio, he arrived home?” said Jordan.

“Well, that narrows us down to about 3,000 miles.” Suddenly, Santos snapped his fingers. “Wait! What time did he arrive home?”

“About 3:05 this morning.”

“Aha! And he had said that he had fallen through the floor of his prison at 3:00 am. So that means it was a five-minute drive from where he was to his home. Jordan, are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“I seriously doubt that, sir.”

“The paper mill! I think I know the whole thing now! Round up all the suspects and meet me at the usual place in one hour.”

***

“Captain, must you hold all of your denouements here? As far as I know, I’m not even involved in this case,” said Osgood Smelt, as he grudgingly watched a line of suspects stream in and occupy several tables in the House of Smelt’s dining room. “Couldn’t you at least have called ahead?”

“Mr. Smelt, if I knew the solution far enough in advance to make reservations, we wouldn’t need the denouement.”

“Ay-yi-yi.”

Occupied at strategic points around the room were Julia Ranida, Jordan, Schlickelmeinengrubenbieder, Nigel, Mr. Crick, Maggie Dunhill, and Dennis Renstor.

“Now,” said Santos, “we’re here to stop the plot against the world’s frogs. An interesting piece of evidence has come up that somewhat accurately points the finger of blame. I have in my hand a small, green frog. It was captured in Barrymore’s Bog, on Route 50, right next door to the paper mill. This is not a real frog; it is presumably one of the Ace Rubber Novelty Company’s mock frogs. In fact, all the frogs located in Barrymore’s Bog are mock frogs. Adolf?”

Schlickelmeinengrubenbieder stood up. “My tests indicate that these frogs were placed there sometime very early this morning. I would say at about, oh, 5:00 am. Tests on the fly population, excrement content of the water and soil, et cetera, indicate that the bog has been without frogs for about three weeks, or precisely about as long as Dennis Renstor had been missing.”

“As it turns out, that paper mill was owned by none other than George Dunhill. Upon his death, it was left to Maggie Dunhill, his cat. However, a slight problem has erupted in that the validity of the will is being contested. As it turns out, it had been made out a long time ago, and since then it has changed ownership. Legal ownership was transferred as the result of a divorce. The rightful owner now is none other than Julia Ranida.”

There was a gasp. It was Santos.

“Excuse me. I had Mexican food for lunch.”

“So what does that prove?” asked Julia, overly defensively. “I leaped at the chance to own that mill. It meant that I had the right to protect Barrymore’s Bog as a haven for frogs. I could work from within the system to help preserve valuable ecosystems. Plus, I had free access to all the xerox paper I could want.”

“Yeah, right,” said Santos. “The interesting thing is that you’re not really a herpetology student, are you, Miss Ranida.”

“What! Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because, dear lady,” said Schlickelmeinengrubenbieder, “the University of Arizona has no record of your enrollment. What they do have a record of is your expulsion.”

“I had no idea of the power of puppetry. But it was grossly unfair to expel me for that!”

“Oh, you weren’t expelled for that,” continued Schlickelmeinengrubenbieder. “But for the simple reason that your GPA never climbed above 0.6, and your advisers cited gross academic incompetence as reason for your dismissal. One instructor I spoke with told me that he had brought a frog into your office, and you leapt on the desk screaming, and I quote, ‘Ick! What is it? Get it out if here!’. Not the best of attitudes for a herpetology student.”

“Oh, come on, that was the first week of the semester. I couldn’t be expected to know everything right off the bat.”

“You remember the memo from the President of the Ace Rubber Novelty Company to the Marketing Director, one Edgar Benjamin?” asked Santos rhetorically. “Well, we could find no record of an Edgar Benjamin existing outside of the Ace Rubber Novelty Company.”

“So what does that mean?” asked Julia.

“Oh, it probably means we’ll be here all night,” groaned Smelt.

“Go peddle your prawns, Smelt!” said Jordan.

“Ordinarily, it would mean, Ms. Ranida, that Mr. Benjamin was simply a workaholic. But something we uncovered changes that opinion of things. I have in my hand here a copy of your original marriage license. It lists the groom as Mr. George Dunhill and the bride as Mr. Edgar Benjamin.”

“Okay, so my married name was Edgar Benjamin. So what?”

“Seeing as you were married in San Francisco, I see nothing unusual. But what I do see a problem with is that when you met Mr. Dunhill you had just failed out of junior college—where you had been a marketing major. Now, let’s put two and two together, shall we? Who else would mistake Mr. Renstor for a frog but an incompetent herpetology student? And who else would circulate the ‘Amphibian Brief’ as a marketing plan but a failed marketing student?”

“What makes you think that the ‘Amphibian Brief’ was a marketing plan?” asked Julia.

“Because with the copy you sent to the New York Times you enclosed a press release on Ace Rubber Novelty Company letterhead with the line ‘For more information, contact Edgar Benjamin, Director of Marketing and Publicity’.”

Finally, Julia broke down. “Okay! Yes, I was Edgar Benjamin, the Marketing Director for Ace Rubber Novelty Company. And, yes, okay, I was one of the foot soldiers in the battle against the frogs. And, yes, I did own the paper mill on Route 50, where we stored some of the frogs we had taken. And, yes, I did kidnap Dennis Rentor, mistaking him for a frog. And, yes, I did marry George Dunhill, and actually it was me who really liked The Last Boy Scout. But I didn’t devise the frog plot, and I still don’t know who the President of the company is. I can’t be the bad guy! Julia Roberts will never play me in the movie!”

“No, a far more devious person is this President. And I use the term ‘person’ very loosely. Adolf?”

Schlickelmeinengrubenbieder took out a small, covered plastic dish. Inside, was a dead beetle. “This is one of the insects that was found in George Dunhill’s mouth. Macroscopic examination and other big gobs of neat stuff show that there are two small punctures on the insect’s abdomen, and, in fact, on the abdomens and thoraxes of most of the insects recovered from Mr. Dunhill. It can be proven conclusively—by someone, I suppose—that the marks were made by cat claws. This is substantiated by the tiny amount of catnip we found on some of the specimens.”

“And the other paper mill,” said Santos, “the one on Route 30, is owned by none other than Maggie Dunhill.”

Maggie meowed rather loudly.

“There is no use protesting. You first moved in with George Dunhill when he was still married to Julia. You and she acquired the Ace Rubber Novelty Company in a hostile takeover—you scratched the eyes out of the board of directors. You took over the company because at the time they made cat toys. You needed to fuel your catnip habit, you needed more and more. Finally, more than 75 percent of the catnip purchased by the company went right into your little squeaking mouse. It was eating up company profits, you needed more and more. Finally, you and Julia hit on the frog plan. After George found out about it, you killed him. You were responsible for organizing the attack at the bank, figuring you’d be safe. You thought you were in the clear. Until—”

At that point, Maggie bolted from her chair and ran across the room toward the door. At that point, several of Santos’ uniformed officers—accompanied by several police dogs—walked in and stopped her in her tracks.

“You may as well go peacefully. If you’re lucky, you may be spared a trip to the vet.”

The cops cuffed the cat and led her away. A second group came in, cuffed Julia, and led her out.

One by one, the other suspects began to file out, followed by Santos, Jordan, and Schlickelmeinengrubenbieder.

“Isn’t anyone going to at least order something?!” shouted Smelt.

Order indeed.

***

Back at headquarters,

“You know, Schlickelmeinengribenbieder,” said Santos, “you’ve done it again. A little bluffing a little citing phony forensics, and you coaxed another confession. You are one of a kind.”

“But Captain, none of that was made up.”

“I’m sure. And crabs have fingerprints. Fool me once, my dear Adolf. . . .”

“I’m not fooling you this time, my dear Bernard. I did a hell of a lot of work on this case. I was up all night examining those insects, checking the soil and water around Barrymore’s Bog, examining the frogs. This was all on the up and up. If there’s one thing I learned at the symposium in Arizona, it was not to make stuff up when the truth will do just as well.”

“So, what’s going to happen to the frogs?” asked Jordan.

“The fake ones?” said Santos. “It’s interesting about that. A new animal rights group has sprung up, dedicated to helping preserve the mock frogs. They’re so lifelike, the argument goes, that they might as well be the real things. They’ve confiscated all the frogs created by the Ace Rubber Novelty Company and set them free in marshes around the country. In fact, they’re continuing part of the frog plot started by Maggie and Julia. They won’t be replacing real frogs, but they will be upgrading the frogs at the end of a natural frog’s life cycle. Believe it or not, Bill Gates is getting involved.”

“If that happens,” said Schlickelmeinengrubenbieder, “the fake frogs will the standard in a few years. Farewell, my lovelies!”

Farewell indeed.