Arriving at the Enigmatic Academy in a rush, I shamefully had less time to admire and soak up its beauty. Fenced in by two cobalt gates in the shape of a question mark, the school was a vast three stories of red brick, with golden turrets to round off its expansive length. Stained glass windows of legendary detectives traveled along the face of the building and the insignia of the question mark was front and center of an enormous white clock. It was my 'holmes sweet holmes!' but I could hardly savor the moment, I had recieved a call from the dean's office and duty calls louder than any master or mistress.

I dashed inside, my now dirty vape dangling from my mouth. I brushed past the secretary and sped up the stairs, bursting into the dean's office.

"What the bloody hell is going on?" I shouted in the faces of several people.

The door had flung open so hard that the stone head of the lauded founder of the school, Sherry Holmes wobbled hard on the pedestal. I extended my robot leg to catch it. Carefully, I balanced it on the top of my foot.

I placed Sherry's old head on the pedestal. It was located next to a mantelpiece that displayed several other heads. Some were stone monuments of old professors and legendary detectives who had graduated from here. Every night I prayed one day my head would line this esteemed mantle piece. Hopefully while I was still living though.

"Nice catch there, gizmo!" a voice squawked, confident like a parrot that had a lifetime supply of crackers.

It was Professor Archie Bald, the–*handsome*–owner of the Enigmatic Academy. This mercurial detective somehow managed to age backwards being forty-two but resembling a tall, tanned bushy haired man in his late twenties. His playful eyes and voice delighted over the fine mess I had saved myself from. He traced his fingers alongside the plaid index of his lapel. "I believe it is hell, my dear. But not for you."

Olivia Appletini Sutherland was crying into her fur coat. Her normally flawless makeup had created darkened blotches around her eyes. Smearing it with her hands had made her bear a passing resemblance to a hyperventilating raccoon. "Didja see the headline…Jacky," she sobbed. "I always wanted to be a front page fixture, but now I'm nothin' but a front page freak!"

I winced imagining the headline. Both for Olive's sake, and the fact that my successful capture of Bon Appart was shoved to page two.

"Olive, Olive," I asked her with great sympathy in my voice. "What kind of trouble did you get yourself into last night?"

"I dunno," Olive wailed as she hyperventilated. "Last night is all a blur to me. Then again, sometimes the days are too. I'm such an ignoramus and now I look like one too!"

She blew into a handkerchief sounding like a miniature trombone. "Y'all know my family name is at stake, Jacky!"

A tall, wide man placed his large hands on his daughter's rigid back. "Yes missy. Yes Indeedy this is serious! "

I recognized who this man was immediately: Colonel Lector Sutherland, Olive's father; he was a molasses tycoon dressed all in white, ranging from his fifteen-and-a-half gallon hat, to his business suit. "You know our brand," he rasped in his deep, but irate country drawl." Moe's Lasses, is a sticky, sweet and most importantly, family friendly name. We even have an adorable mascot to prove it."

My mind quickly leapt to commercials that played during prime time of a plastic syrup container with goofy eyes and a smile that would race with a bunch of kids to a pile of flapjacks. 'Moe Lasses' would often say, Y'all movin' slower than me to reach them pancakes!" Goofy, giddy and ginormous, that summed up the Sutherlands and their ubiquitous brand.

I rubbed my chin gently. "How in the world did this happen?"

"How did this happen?" Archie answered with a casual smile. "That, my dear Jacqueline is the right question. And gentlemen, I have just the right lady to answer that for you."

"Who?!" Mr. Sutherland answered, filling the room with ire and suspicion. "Is the captain of police force not good enough for this case?

Archie chuckled. "The captain is a nice chap, but I was thinking more of my protege, Miss Jacqueline here!"

"Mista Bald!" Sutherland jeered. "You can't mean Blunderbuss. My respectable family name refuses to associate itself with such riff raff."

"Excuse me," I shouted, my anger getting the best of me. "Riff-raff? I don't see you solving crimes around here. I'm the top detective in the whole academy."

"Blunderbuss, yer name's mud," he answered. "In my book, if yer name's mud, you are mud."

I puffed out my cheeks with righteous indignation. Fortunately, a hand reached out to stop me before I roundhouse kicked Olive's father out the window.

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"Perhaps," Archie Bald said with his hand on my shoulder. "This is an opportunity for you to get in someone's good graces, my dear Jacqueline. Solve this mystery, and I'm sure you'll be a welcome guest at the Sutherlands, chatting over tea and crumpets…" Archie grinned wryly. "Personally, I'm a crumpet man myself."

"Well," Archie asked. "Is Miss Gizmo ready to take on the case of the Powdered Belle?"

I looked into Olive's smudged eyes. They were pleading with me to help her. I couldn't resist helping puppies or innocent dames. Or innocent dames who made puppy eyes like Olive here.

I turned my vape on, took a whiff and smiled. "For my friend, of course. My name may be mud, Mr. Sutherland but I'm not gonna sink to the level of dirt."

"Ooh yay!!!" Olive said, happily bouncing in her dress. "Thank yeh, Jacky!"

"Fine," Sutherland muttered, pointing his finger in my face. "But if you fail, I will see to it that you never work in this town again.

"You wouldn't!" I shouted, feeling my face heat up in anger.

"There's nothing I despise more than a poisoned name," Sutherland growled at me. "And I will personally see to it that your failure is known far and wide in Noirberg."

I was about to go ballistic, but I calmed myself with a smoke, crossed my arms and calmly walked out of the office. "See you at the Crystal Swan, then."

I marched down the stairs, dead determined to keep my name untarnished and to keep my love affair going with the front page of the newspaper.

***

The Crystal Swan in broad daylight lacked the neon sheen that adorned the vast ballroom at night. The central ballroom of the building, housed inside an enormous glass swan reflected the clearing sky instead. Janitors swept up the shrimp tails, crumbs and other bits of food (and metal leg shrapnel) from the night before.

I paced the checkered floor with my friend turned client, and we scoured the room for clues. Olive was slightly dressed down after the gala, but still with enough pink frilly ribbons to strangle a poodle.

"I'm tellin' ya, Jacky," she pleaded. "I don't exactly have the best memory of last night. I swear I become a difference person when I have a drink."

My friend certainly lived up to her middle name of Appletini, but I believed her. I blamed myself for being so tied up on the Bon Appart case that I wasn't exactly paying attention to her inebriated misadventures.

Another huff on my vape and a spark went off in my brain. There was one exchange between us that night that could have been the tipping point for Olive's embarrassment.

There was an overhead click. An eye-robot surveyed us from the top of the room. This spherical bot took footage of every hour it was active, so while I was not monitoring Olive's every move, it clearly was.

I asked one of the janitors if he could activated the bot. Spider legs sprouted from the bot's body and dropped to the floor.

"Oh, my stars," Olive exclaimed. "This thing is all creepy crawly!"

I scooped the bot up in my arms. Quickly I toggled through the footage of the ball and the bot's eye became a miniature screen. Gazing into it, I saw the past in glorious technocolor.

***

In this footage: the ball had just begun and as guests entered the room. One guest, in both voice and stature, stood out.

Hi-hi-hi everyone!" a giddy voice exclaimed from the entrance of the Swan Hall.

My friend, Olivia Appletini Sutherland pranced excitedly into the room, just as tipsy as her name. Her hair, conditioned blond and curled bounced as she had a manic look in her eyes. I soon recognized the source of the mania. There was a heavy white powder that traveled across her nose from cheek to cheek. Her body twitched in a spasmodic motion.

I rolled my eyes at the source of her glee. "Been all up in some white powder lately?"

Olivia's gap teeth spread into a giant vacant grin. "I been all up in ma prized stash of begniets and martinis this evening!"

I rolled my eyes at my friend. "It amazes me how much you can make a sugar rush look like you need an intervention!"

Olivia threw her hand forward. "Naw, Jacky darlin. You oughta try em sometimes, Mabel Syrup's are fingerlickin' good here and even a lower income crook like you can affor…"

I put my arms on her shoulders to silence her.

"You get a bit haughty when you're drunk," I said softly.

"No, I don't peasant!" she cried.

I answered drolly and matter of fact. "You might want to get yourself cleaned up, Olive, you look a mess and you don't want to make everyone think you're THAT kind of powdered belle."

Olive sighed. "Yer right, Jacky," she sang. "I'll be back in a flash. "

***

"Woweee!" Olive exclaimed."I never knew the truth could be hidden inside one of those eye thingies."

I switched the eye robot off and turned to Olive with a clever smile. "Child's play, my dear Olivia," I said, "we now know that you don't get high on cocaine, only sugar cane!"

With her hands to her face, Olive exclaimed. "I'm just happy I wasn't usin' real powder. I ain't a user, Jacky dahling, except when I want a handsome boy to pay my tab!"

I tossed the eye robot up in the air and caught it like a ball. "I had a hunch about this, but now I've got all the proof I need. I think you know where we have to go next."

Olive grinned sheeplishly. "Tha powder room!"

We entered the ladies lavatory on the outskirts of the ballroom. I made an observation it was directly across from the gentlemen's. When we entered, the crime scene was power washed and we found no hint of the powdered sugar from last night. You could practically eat off the floor."Drat," I muttered. "There goes our evidence."

Rectangular mirrors were fixated above posh pink sinks. I tapped my chin with my vape, eyeing each of the mirrors. "This is where you cleaned your nose," I stated. "And obviously, where you were photographed. Did you see anyone while you were in here?"

"Nobody but my reflection!" Olive sang.

I gazed at my own reflection in the mirrors. "Now which one of these mirrors did you use?"

"I didn't use any mirrors," my friend said in her air headed way. "This wasn't coke-cain afta all!"

"No," I answered. "Which mirror did you use to help clean your nose?"

"The center one," Olive said. "Why?"

"Stand back…" I took my metal leg and drove it into the mirror with a loud crash.

Olive screamed. "Grits and gravy! Jacky what did y'all…do."

The shattered glass dropped to the floor, revealing a large hole in the wall. Behind that was the backside of the opposite mirror from the gentlemen's room. I lifted up a piece of shattered mirror and peered through it. The ladies bathroom mirror was a one way.

"See through…" I said, my eyes squinting through it. "Just like this scheme."