“It looks like… a factory,” I said.
“It does,” Odelia agreed. And as she walked towards the machine closest to us, she picked up what looked like a stack of plastic casings. She held one up. It was long and transparent. “Oh, my God,” said Odelia, her eyes widening. “I think I know what this is!”
We walked further into the room, and she crouched down next to a box standing near another big machine. She picked out an object and triumphantly showed it to us.
“Is that a sausage?” asked Dooley.
“No, it’s not,” said Odelia with a smile. “It’s a saucisse.” She gestured to the state-of-the-art equipment. “If I’m not mistaken, this is a meat-processing plant.” She walked over to a machine that stretched out along the wall. “See, this is where the meat goes into the machine, and over there is where it’s stuffed inside these casings. And at the end of the whole process is a packaging machine, where the finished product is boxed up.”
And to prove her point, suddenly a man came walking up to us. He had a small object in his hand. The object was a gun, I now saw, and it was aimed straight at Odelia’s chest!
Chapter 31
“Miss Poole,” said the man, whom Odelia recognized as Chris Duffer. “My brother told me you’ve been snooping around.”
“It’s over, Mr. Duffer,” she said. “The police are on their way. So you better drop that gun and come with me.”
“Thank you for the kind invitation, but I’ll take my chances.” He gestured to the installation. “What a sight, right? This is where the next-generation Duffer was supposed to go into production. In fact this plant should have been up and running already, spitting out thousands of Duffers, but last-minute hitches kept cropping up, baffling my technicians and pushing back the launch. And now, I presume, the whole thing is off.”
“So why did you lock up my uncle? And those two little boys? Did they see something they were not supposed to? Did they catch a glimpse of your family’s secret formula?”
He gave her a look of incredulity.“You haven’t figured it out yet? Shame on you, Miss Poole. I thought you were smarter. But now if you’ll excuse me, I better be going.”
And before she could stop him, he’d walked off, and quickly disappeared from view, his footsteps echoing on the concrete floor.
“Stop!” she yelled, and broke into a run. But of course he knew his way around the place a lot better than she did. A door was slammed shut, and when she raced in the direction of the sound, she quickly reached a steel door on the other side of the large space. She yanked open the door and found herself in an underground garage, just in time to see a gray Mercedes drive off, then up a concrete ramp, and vanish from view.
There were several trucks parked down there in what she assumed was a loading dock for the meat processing factory.
Max and Dooley came bursting through the door.“Odelia!” said Max. “You have to see this!”
She followed them back inside, up a few steps into a control room that overlooked the factory floor. There were several consoles from where the production could be monitored, and screens that showed the various stages of the process, from raw meat to finished boxed-up sausage. Everything looked state-of-the-art and brand-new.
Max and Dooley had moved to the far corner, to a small wall safe.
“What do you think is inside?” asked Max. “Money? Jewels? Gold?”
“Something far more valuable,” she said, crouching down, and as she put her hand to the safe door handle, she discovered that it was open. Chris Duffer’s technicians, whoever they were, must have left it open. She reached inside and took out a small leather-bound notebook. It was old and well-thumbed, and as she leafed through it, saw that it contained notes on how to produce the perfect Duffer, notes probably going back decades, to the first Duffer ever to produce a Duffer. Part of the notes was written in a language she didn’t know, but translations had been provided, in the form ofa folded document. She unfolded it, and when she read through its contents, gasped in shock.
It contained a list of ingredients for the Duffer:
- Beef 40%
- Pork 30%
- Chicken 20%
- Feline 5%
- Human 1%
-‘Proprietary Duffer Mix’ 4%
“Oh, my God,” said Odelia, bringing a shocked hand to her face. She reeled, and had to grab the steel door of the small safe to steady herself.
“What is it, Odelia?” asked Dooley.
“The secret ingredients of the Duffer,” she said. “One percent human flesh, and five percent cat meat.”
Both Max and Dooley gulped.“Oh, my,” said Max softly.
In the distance, she heard sirens, and she knew that soon the entire police force of Hampton Cove would descend on the Buschmann house. The Duffers’ secret was out…
“Do you think this is a new concept?” asked Max. “Or have they been adding human and cat meat to their famous sausages all this time?”
“I don’t know, Max,” said Odelia, who couldn’t imagine anyone would do such a thing. And to think Gran had feasted from these Duffers, and so had her mom and dad. And then she remembered she’d taken a bite herself, and was suddenly sick to the stomach.
“Oh, look,” said Dooley. “The ingredient list for the Proprietary Duffer Mix.”
He was pointing to the bottom of the document she’d dropped to the floor.
She nodded absently, still fighting to keep down the contents of her stomach.
“What is MDMA, Max?” asked Dooley, reading from the list.
“What?!” cried Odelia, picking up the document again. And there it was, at the bottom of a long list of harmless ingredients like onion, garlic, wine, vinegar, pepper and salt: MDMA. Also known as XTC.
“So that’s why everyone loves those Duffers so much,” she muttered.
Against the back wall of the control room a glass-door display fridge had been placed, and when she saw the box of Duffers inside she got up and opened the door with shaking hands, taking one out of the box. She turned it over in her hands. No mention of human or cat meat, of course, or MDMA. How had the Duffers gotten away with this for so long?
She needed fresh air. So she staggered down the few steps from the control room, then into the loading dock and up the ramp. She took out her phone and called Chase.
He picked up at the first ring.
“You’ll never know what I just discovered,” she said.
“Yes, I caught those guys, thanks for asking,” said Chase, sounding energized. Nothing like a good car chase to put the pep in a police officer.
“Do you want to know the secret ingredient of the Duffer?”
“The Duffer? You mean the sausage?”
“Colin and Chris Duffer had a meat processing plant constructed right underneath the Buschmann house, probably figuring no one would ever look there. And do you know why they kidnapped all those cats?”
There was silence at the other end while Chase processed this, then said, in a low voice.“No way…”
“Five percent cat meat and one percent human meat.”
“Human meat!”
“And a few scoops of MDMA.”
“XTC? For real?”
“You better get over here. Oh, and Chris Duffer just made a run for it in a gray Mercedes, so you’ll have to track him down, too.”
“I’ll get on it right away,” he promised. “And I’ll tell the coroner to get out there, too. If they used human meat, we need to find out who those victims were, and where their remains are buried.” He paused. “If there are any remains left, of course.”
“This is worse than I imagined, Chase.”
“Hang in there, babe. I’m on my way.”
Max and Dooley had joined her as they walked up along the ramp.
“I think Alka-Seltzer sales will go through the roof the next couple of days,” said Max.
“And a lot of Duffers will be dumped into the garbage disposal,” said Dooley.
“Oh, God. You’re right, Dooley!” said Odelia, and took out her phone again. This time she called Dan. After she’d told him the story, and given him time to digest it, she said, “Can you put an alert on the website for people to bring all of their Duffers to the police station? I think they’ll want to examine them.”