Wonderful Wishful Morning

Detective Patchie

Dear Detective Patchie

The cold day called for a hot brew. Mr. Patchie took a sip of his strawberry latte. His favorite coffee shop was hosting a new flavor based on Dulce Marine. She was supposedly the daughter of Burgundy Redd, a kickin’ songwriter from the '80s. Though his family and band members went missing, until recent years when Dulce claimed to be his child and inherited his mansion which sat on a steep hilltop. The flavor in question was a vanilla mocha with peppermint, and an optional pineapple topper. The burst of different flavors got people excited.

However, after a few days, there was an exponential rise in drowsy workers, arriving with their eyes low and heads on their desks. Everyone was trying the drink, Patchie was going to get to the bottom of this. He had been skeptical of the whole situation given the fact that he had remembered the news reports from when he was a kid. Stella Barks was the reporter at the time. She spoke in an uncharacteristically somber tone, “Tragedy at the Mantoil Manor. Musician Burgundy Redd has gone missing. He’s a single father of Mori Cho, a small child with purple hair and an unfailing smile. Not much is known about the personal lives of the two. However, we’re hoping that we can reach out to his bandmates who live in the suburbs.” And the other bandmates were ‘found’ in a later one. However, not in the best condition.

Patchie wasn’t allowed to watch that specific broadcast at the time. Let’s get something clear; Patchie was off that day and he was going to get to the meat of this. The detective pushed open the entrance door and left the slumbering customers behind. Patchie had already checked in with Rockville’s Food Department; they found nothing wrong with the drink. Probably, because of their absurd incompetence and stupid-drunk attitudes. He always seemed to be surrounded by idiots, made work plentiful but got in the way of true peace for him.

Stepping onto the sidewalk and towards his car, Patchie thought about the endless possibilities surrounding Dulce and her secretive nature. Certainly, she wasn’t involved in making the tranquilizing brew, it was made in her honor. Perhaps she wasn’t the child of Burgundy, but what if her name was changed during foster care. Did she go to foster care? Where was the father all this time? Or the mother? Who spiked the drinks?

Some people went missing…

Patchie stopped his train of thought after walking into a Pay N’ Park.

He shrugged then went around to open the driver’s seat door of his car. Got inside then drove off to his house so he could think. By the time he got to the front door, his thoughts were all over the place, anxious, dreadful. They ran wild and overwhelmed him until he stopped. Then realized that he was home. “I should be fine, right? I’ve got about 10 hours to figure this out before I’m back on duty. Perhaps I should take a nap,” Patchie reassured himself.

The people of Rockville were relatively light-hearted individuals. Naive, annoying, or sometimes downright stupid but it was all in the intent of good fun. The same applied to Patchie who was disgusted with the uptick in crimes related to kidnappings. The man couldn’t even think of all the trouble at once. Though his children were at school, his wife, at her job. The house was free and quiet.

Before the nap, he had the brilliant idea of looking up the disturbing news report on his computer. He rushed to the living room. Using his box computer and broadband internet, he managed to find the news carrier’s website where he looked for archives. The SQC news carrier provided digital versions of old tapes. They were usually only bought for journalism or the exclusive music that played over weather forecasts. No one could forget the year, 1989, now we just needed the date. Patchie eventually found a story dated to 4/26/89 (US), the thumbnail featured a distinct drama mask with a red and blue color pattern.