Megan Stine - Murder To Go

The phone rang just as Jupe finished his sentence. It startled all three of them.

“The Three Investigators. Jupiter Jones, founder, speaking.”

“Just the badger I want to talk to!” boomed the voice on the other end. “You have the honor of talking to Big Barney Coop!”

“It’s Big Barney,” Jupe said with his hand over the receiver.

“What’s he calling about? Does he know about the Chinese food?” Pete asked.

Jupe shook his head and motioned for Pete to be quiet.

“Listen, guy,” Big Barney said into the phone. “I’ve got big news with a capital Big. Tomorrow yours ever so truly is taping the first Drippin’ Chicken TV commercials. I’m talking landmark Chicken History. I want you there, guy. Can’t do it without you.”

Jupe couldn’t believe his good luck. Big Barney was issuing an invitation to do exactly what Jupe wanted to do — hang around and see what Big Barney was up to.

“Where? And when?” Jupe asked.

“Maltin Mix Studios on Alta Vista Drive. One o’clock. I like my team on time.”

Then he was gone.

Late that night, after Pete and Bob had left, Jupe watched a video cassette he had made of Big Barney’s TV commercials. Barney always sat at a cluttered desk in what looked like a combination office, library, and game room. Sometimes he interviewed guests or read fan letters. But Jupe’s favorites were the more unpredictable commercials. Like the time during Big Barney’s “Hate a Hamburger Week,” when Big Barney threw a whipped cream pie in a cow’s face. Or the time Big Barney sat with his back to the camera during the entire commercial because he was angry at the audience for forgetting his birthday.

But Jupe’s absolute favorite was the commercial Big Barney made to promote his two new styles of chicken — Cracklin’ Crunchy and Burning Barbecue. Big Barney paid a Las Vegas minister to perform a quickie wedding ceremony for two chickens! The picture of one chicken dressed in a tuxedo and the other in a lace wedding dress, with Big Barney standing there as the best man, said just about everything there was to say about Big Barney.

After watching the tape Jupe went to bed, but he spent a restless night. He couldn’t stop wondering whether Big Barney was the person whom Juliet had been talking about in her sleep. And was the Drippin’ Chicken the product he planned to poison? Or was it something else? Was Big Barney really going to make a commercial to promote a product that could kill millions?

At one o’clock sharp the next afternoon, Bob and Jupe arrived at Maltin Mix Studios just outside of Beverly Hills. Two minutes later, Pete and Kelly pulled up in Kelly’s mother’s car.

“Look at that,” Bob said to Jupe. “You’ve been complaining all the way over here about not having your own car. But when Pete, of all people, doesn’t have a car, what can you expect?”

“Okay,” Jupe replied. “I’ll stop complaining until Pete gets his car fixed. Then I’ll start again.”

When they got inside, Juliet met them at the entrance to studio A, wearing a Chicken Coop visor over her curly black hair.

“Hi. Dad’s been asking about you,” she said to Jupe with a smile. “Have you found out anything new?”

“No,” Jupe said. “But according to a fortune cookie we got last night, we’re on the right track.”

“Good,” Juliet said. “I hope you find my briefcase soon. I still can’t remember what’s in it. But I want it! It’s becoming an obsession.”

Then she took Jupe, Bob, Pete, and Kelly into the glass production booth at one end of the studio, where they could watch the taping. Lots of people from Big Barney’s office were there, including Pandro Mishkin, the flavor specialist.

The desk on the set for Big Barney’s commercials was piled high today with letters, empty Styrofoam coffee cups, rubber chickens, crayon drawings of fried chicken sent in by a class of third graders, and a photo of Juliet as a child in a Halloween chicken costume.

Finally the director called over the PA microphone, “We’re ready. Could someone go get Big Barney out of makeup?”

A minute later Big Barney made his entrance, wearing a jogging suit with alternating red, white, and blue stripes. On his face he wore a rubber chicken beak which covered his nose and upper lip. He carried with him a large antique silver tray with a heavy, ornate silver lid. He squinted against the bright lights, trying to see into the booth.

“Is my guy here?” he called.

“He’s here, Mr. Coop,” the director said, looking back from his swivel chair at Jupe. The Investigator was wearing his official Big Barney 10 Year Anniversary T-shirt. It had a drawing of a chicken’s body with Barney’s head.

“Pandro said you went creamed corn over the Drippin’ Chicken sample,” Big Barney called out. “I’ve got plenty for everybody today.”

“Too bad you wore your good pants,” Pete whispered to Jupe.

Once Big Barney was seated comfortably with his feet on the desk, the studio settled down and the director announced, “Quiet please. Drippin’ Chicken. Take one!”

And Big Barney began to talk, looking into the camera as if he could see through it to the people watching TV.

“Hey, guy,” he said. “This is your friend and mine, Big Bamey Coop. You know that I don’t make commercials unless I’ve come up with some new way for you to make me rich. Well, this time I’ve got to tell you that I’ve outdone even myself. Okay, I wasn’t there when they invented the wheel. And I wasn’t there when they invented penicillin. And I wasn’t there when they invented the paper clip. History didn’t call me at those momentous moments. Or if it did, I didn’t get the message, which is why I’m firing my secretary. Hahahaha! But today you and I are not only going to make history, we’re going to eat it.”

At that point, Big Barney uncovered the silver tray to reveal a mountain of steaming-hot Drippin’ Chicken biscuit-sandwiches. Even the crowd in the production booth began to ooh and aah hungrily.

Big Barney picked up one of the sandwiches and brought it close to his mouth. The camera moved in for a tight shot. The Three Investigators gulped. Was he really going to eat one?

“I have done what people have been trying to do since the dawn of civilization — or maybe the sunset of civilization. I have created Drippin’ Chicken, the chicken with a bucket of unbelievable, irresistible gravy in every bite. And get this — the gravy is inside the sandwich! That’s right. Now there’s nothing to get in the way of your having major gravy stains down the front of your shirt. I told my guys, this time let’s give people something they never expected in their sandwich. Well, we’ve done it, and I can’t wait for you to gobble it down. Like this!”

Then he did it. Big Barney took a big bite out of the Drippin’ Chicken sandwich he was holding. And with gravy dripping down his chin, he gave the camera a big smile.

“Cut,” yelled the director. “Great!”Some of the bright lights in the studio dimmed and people in the booth relaxed.

Kelly leaned over and said to the Investigators. “That was hysterical!”

But Jupe, Pete, and Bob were still watching Big Barney through the studio glass. And they saw him spit out the bite of Drippin’ Chicken without even chewing it!

It was as if Big Barney were confessing that Drippin’ Chicken was poisonous — too poisonous to be eaten by any human being!

Jupe knew enough about the television business to know that the taping session for Drippin’ Chicken wasn’t over yet. But he didn’t expect it to go on for another five hours. Big Barney did the commercial twenty times more. And at the end of each take Big Barney took a big, squishy bite of Drippin’ Chicken, which he promptly spit out when the director yelled “Cut.”