What's The News? • Lemoxie

Chapter Eight

"Of course!" Cleo exclaimed. "Your arm... The knife. Colophon Clinic!"
" What are we going to do about the sample? " Kellar asked.

Lemony pulled me aside and said he was going on take it to a safe location. We know Stew is the only fire starter in all of Stain'd-by-the-Sea, so he can't be surveying every street! "Where are you taking it?" I asked.
"Moxie, I'm sorry but I can't tell you."
"But I thought we were partners? You said we're working together on this, Snicket!"
" We are, Love! If I tell you, that'll be putting you in even more danger than right now. I don't want you to get hurt, Moxie. You're staying with the group. Drive the others to Colophon Clinic. I promise you I'll see you there. " I could hear worry and recollection in his tone and understood why he was suddenly feeling so protective.

I knew time was important for this mission, seeing as we didn't know when Stew would release the fungus, so I didn't argue with him. I walked back towards the group and Kellar asked me if everything was alright. I ignored the question and told him to hand my keys to Cleo so she could drive while I typed up notes on what's happened thus far. Since there wasn't enough room for all of us to have our own seat, we had a bit of a seating malfunction. Ellington and Kellar ended up uncomfortably sharing a seat, however they were willing to put up with the lack of personal space on account of our town being in danger of we didn't get the next three samples quickly enough.

We arrived at Colophon Clinic and finally realized something at the sight of it. "It collapsed." Ornette said.
"How could we have forgotten?"
"Are you sure Ethan didn't put that there to throw us off the scent?" I asked Ornette, closing up my typewriter.
"Snicket seemed to trust it. He knows how deadly the fungus is and he wouldn't send us here if it didn't mean anything to him. Would he?" Kellar replied for her.

He wouldn't, I thought as I glanced about the rubble.
"What about the underground chemistry lab?" Cleo gasped. "It wouldn't have been wrecked by the collapse, right?" She ran around the destroyed building and towards the back. None of us knew what she meant but we followed her anyway. She stopped at a certain point and her face fell. "Wrong question, I suppose." She mumbled as we all looked at the open hatch filled with the remains of the hospital.
"What was it?" I asked.
"Dr. Flammarion kidnapped me and stuffed me in there to work on my formula for invisible ink for the treacherous purposes the Inhumane Society had planned."

Ellington set a hand on the chemist's shoulder. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry for all the pain my father caused." She said quietly enough so that we could barely hear her.
"It's okay, El. It's not your fault!" Kellar told her. "Nothing you did caused him to be that way. But right now, we have the chance to save Stain'd-by-the-Sea again and we need every second we can get."

"You're correct, Kellar. We need to keep looking for that sample. I think we can rule out the ruins because it might be difficult to find again when it's needed for nefarious deeds if it was in there."

We searched the remaining areas, which weren't much. Lemony did come back and helped us look. I was walking around the pool to go to the small garden area full of dead flowers when I noticed a small amount of the pool trim tiles were shifted. I lifted moved it more and found a small compartment perfect for hiding things. Sure enough, there was a sample, a clue, and a couplet.

"Guys, I found it!" I shouted. I backed away from the edge of the empty pool and handed Lemony the sample. I looked at the clue which was apparently a recipe for almond cookies. I read aloud the couplet:

"A recipe used to make a sweet treat/and a watery grave Sally Murphy almost had to meet."

"Sallis Mansion!" I concluded. "Lemony saved Sally Murphy from drowning in the basement!"
" And the almond cookies were in the improvised library. Can I see that recipe? " Lemony added. I handed him the recipe and he folded it and put it in his pocket. "I think you guys might have to be on your own again. I need to get this to where I put the other one."
"But where are they going?" I asked him.
"You know perfectly well why I can't tell you so please stop asking."

I pouted as he walked away again. It still kind of hurt to see him walk away; my mind kept flickering back to four years ago when he left with the Bombinating Beast statue. I shook these thoughts from my head and lead the group back to my jeep. We used the same seating as before and I typed up more notes about the specifics of the second sample.  This ride was shorter since Sallis Mansion is closer to Colophon Clinic than the hospital is to Offshore Island. It was right down the street from the Stain'd Lighthouse, which to me seemed fitting because the Mallahans and the Sallises go back generations. They weren't here on vacation, thankfully, so we had the lot to ourselves for searching.  We split up by floor -Cleo and Ellington on the second floor, Ornette and Kellar on the first and me in the basement.

I searched through boxes upon boxes of miscellaneous items. Two tennis balls... Three cookie cutters...  A scrapbook... Bob Ross memorabilia... A pair of sunglasses missing an arm... A porcelain doll. You name it, it was probably there. There might as well have been a Partridge in a pear tree goddamn it! I sighed in frustration as I pushed aside a knotted up string of Christmas lights. "Moxie, Love? Are you down here?" I heard Lemony call from the top of the stairwell.
"Yeah, Snicket. But I'm starting to think Number 3 isn't down here!" I called back.

Lemony joined me looking through the stored objects. After some silence, I made the pear tree joke. He laughed and it was quiet again. I didn't like it but didn't feel like conversing while I was still upset about, what felt like at the time, Lemony not trusting me.

I stumbled over a football next to the underground well and grabbed anything I could, which was the lever. Expecting muddy water to come gushing out of the valve, I jumped away so my shoes wouldn't get soaked, but no water came out. Instead, I noticed the whole mechanism had split off the wall slightly. I pulled on it slightly and there was a small open area with a single shelf. On the shelf there was something that looked like a glass pitcher, with some kind of metal pump on the top and a sieve that fitted perfectly in the middle of the thing. I texted one person from each group that we had found sample Number 3 in the basement. They were down soon enough.

Ellington gasped when she saw the clue. "My French press!" She squealed, hugging it to her chest. "I haven't seem this since we were on the Thistle of the Valley!"
" What does the couplet say? " Kellar asked. I ran my hand along the shelf and grabbed a piece of paper I felt. It was the couplet, I think...

"I don't know. Most of it's burnt away," I admitted. "But right now it says, 'This French press signif', then it cuts off, then the next line says, 'This next dasta' before the rest burnt too. What could it have said before?"

"Signif sounds short for signifies but what could it signify?" Kellar inputted .
"Dasta might be short for dastardly, but what's next that's dastardly?" Cleo added.

"So our only idea of where the last sample might be located is a coffee maker? " Ornette said unsurely. I nodded and led us back outside.
"Wait, Ellington, you said you had the French press with you on the Thistle of the Valley?" Kellar suddenly asked.
"Yes. Why?"
"It looks like we're going to the train station!" Cleo said.

If only we had known what the couplet actually said...