56Chapter 2
Kim and Ron, with their latex gloves on, started looking for clues around Table 75.
"Ron, don't you find it a little odd?" Kim contemplated.
"What do you mean, KP?" Ron asked while observing the cushions and patting them down. He peered down the table. "Man, for a fancy restaurant like Chez Couteaux, people do leave a lot of bubblegum under the seat!" Rufus peered down his pink head and nodded in agreement.
"The police force doing a sloppy job to collect evidence and the taking down of the restaurant's website!" Kim explained. "I have a strange feeling that all these things are connected somehow, but I can't seem to put my fingerprint on it."
"Let's follow the path!" she said, pointing to the mess. "That'll hopefully put an answer to all our questions.
She came upon a small residue of black spray on the wall. Kim took out her evidence kit and swabbed a bit of the spray with a Q-tip. She then put the swabbed Q-tip in a plastic evidence bag.
"That is going in the evidence file!" Kim said before looking upon the trail of scattered food and silverware.
"Alright, we're hot on the trail, KP!" Ron excitedly said. He and Rufus followed Kim on the trail of destruction.
The pathway led Team Possible to a table where a seven-layer chocolate cake collapsed in a heap on the floor. Chocolate frosting was on the fine linen and chairs.
"Whoa..." Kim gasped, "That...is one giant mess!"
Ron observed his surroundings and saw one part of the ruined cake with icing that said... "-enton" on it.
At first, he passed off the coincidence "Hah...the Enton family...what a weird name..." However, Ron thought to himself.
Wait a minute...I know I saw this before.
Once the mental image of his surroundings formed in his head, Ron realized what it was.
It's the Renton's anniversary cake that was mauled during the fight and Veruca was involved in it! I have to warn Kim!
Kim studied the characteristics of the cake and said, "This seems to be where the climax of the fight took place!"
She turned to Ron and commanded, "Ron, be prepared to gather clues in this area!"
"Mr. Stoppable's already on the case, KP!" Ron proudly declared.
Darn it!
Kim looked down at the carpet and saw a bloodstain on the carpet.
"Looks like this fight turned a little ugly! Time to swab it and give it to Wade." She took out a Q-tip and swabbed the blood off the carpet. The Q-tip caught the still-fresh stain with its fibers. Kim put it in a plastic bag.
Ron and Rufus, meanwhile, observed the ruined chocolate cake with the plastic figures of the husband and wife broken into pieces.
"Aww..." he groaned, "That was a beautiful cake gone to waste..." He looked around and noticed that Kim has her head turned back, away from him.
Without thinking twice, he began to eat the chocolate cake by the mouthful. The chocolate frosting registered with his tastebuds, recognizing the still sweet taste.
"Ohh...mm...this is good! Rufus! You gotta try it, man!"
Rufus crawled up to the ruined cake and was about to take a bit of it when he noticed a familiar...and foul...aroma in the air. He began to growl and snarl.
"What is it, boy?" Ron asked in-between bites.
Rufus found an area on the floor with a lot of chocolate frosting and crawled to it. With his paw, he etched the name "V-E-R-U-C-A" within the icing.
Ron gasped, with bits of chocolate cake falling from his mouth. He spat it out the floor in shock and now remembered what he was really supposed to do.
"Um...Kim?! You have to see this!" Ron exclaimed, standing up.
Kim ran to Ron's aid and asked quickly, "Ron, I'm here! What's going on?"
Ron's finger was trembling, pointing to the name etched in the icing. "There, KP! There's our main culprit!"
Kim looked at the name embedded in the icing and was in disbelief, but not convinced.
"Ron, that cannot be possible...no pun intended on my last name. You obviously have to be joking!"
"No, it's true, Kim!" Ron countered in a loud voice, "Veruca Salt, aka the Mad Dog Mascot Killer, is out!"
Kim folded his arms, still not convinced at Ron's accusations, "Ron, we've already been through this five times! Veruca is in Juvie Hall and will continue to be in Juvie Hall for the next couple of months! Now, we shall speak no more about this!"
Getting back to the case, Kim looked down. The crumbs of the cake left a trail leading into the kitchen.
"Come on, Ron, to the kitchen!" she said, pointing to the kitchen as the next scene of the crime.
Ron and Rufus begrudgingly followed Kim to the kitchen.
Kim and Ron then opened the doors to the kitchen. The two of them witnessed the mess of the syrup of the floor, plus puddles of water scattered about.
"This is going to take them a week to clean all of this up!" Kim said, still amazed at the extent of the damage.
"I'd say." Ron agreed.
"Let's see if we can find some more clues here..." Kim said.
But Ron interrupted, chucking a little, "Say, KP! You can be Sherlock Holmes and I can be Dr. Watson!"
He tried to imitate a British accent, but poorly "I do say, Holmes...there seems to be a lot of syrup on the floor!"
Kim, on the other hand, was not persuaded. "Ron, less on the British imitations, more on the collecting evidence!"
Both Kim and Ron took opposite sides of the kitchen: Kim on the right side, Ron on the left. They were at least 40 feet apart from each other, separated by a wall and the necessary state-of-the art kitchen appliances.
"Why didn't Kim believe me that Veruca is out of Juvie?"
It's because that she hasn't gone through all the evidence yet to prove that Veruca was here. Still, we need some indisputable evidence that Veruca was here…. Wait! That's it!"
Ron kneeled on the floor and observed the syrup slide."Now…let's see where the mess leads…. Rufus?"
Rufus slid on the syrup slide, and shouted at the top of his lungs.
"Wheee!"
The momentum that carried Rufus came to a halt when he felt his skin on the flour.
Ron looked around the panty and saw the bag of flour on the floor. Something else also caught his eye…a high heeled shoe with rhinestones studded on it. There was partial flour on it.
"Hey, KP! Found a missing shoe here!"
It received the attention of Kim as she walked on over to the panty. She took one look at the shoe on the floor, a few feet away from the bag of flour, and complemented Ron.
"Good find, Ron!" Kim smiled, putting the high-heeled shoe in a large evidence bag with her gloves on. "Now…let's comb some more of the area! I'm pretty sure there's a smoking gun around here somewhere…"
Ron walked behind Kim, sniffing around until a burning scent came to the attention of his nasal receptors.
"I smell a pair of pants….not having a good day at all…"
Kim began to sniff it as well.
He and Kim looked around behind one of the counters, and there was a pair of burnt tuxedo pants, with the fabric giving an odious strong smell.
"Wow, you're right, Ron!" Kim uttered, covering her nose. "These pair of pants clearly have been torched! I'll get Wade…"
She took out her Kimmunicator and Wade appeared on-screen, armed with four cups of coffee.
"Anything I can help you with, Kim?" Wade asked.
Kim took out a small pair of scissors and cut off a small piece of the fabric of the tuxedo pants.
"I want you to analyze the fabric here! Especially where it came from, and who bought it!" Kim requested.
"Just place it on the tray, and I'll take a look at it!" Wade replied, typing on the computer.
Kim did what he said in putting the piece of fabric on the small transporter tray of the Kimmunicator. It transported right before her very eyes from the Kimmunicator to Wade's room.
"I got it!" Wade said, "I'll let you know when the results come back!"
"Please and thank you!" Kim smiled, putting away the Kimmunicator. "Now… to find where the culprits escaped…"
Kim continued to look around the kitchen area.
"KP, what are you looking for?" Ron asked.
"A way out…" Kim replied.
"You mean, you want out of this case?" Ron guessed, being baffled of what she was talking about.
"No, Ron!" Kim retorted, "The culprit's method of escape!" She left Ron for a moment and walked around the kitchen for a few minutes.
Jacques peered his head through the door and asked "Have you found any clues, Mademoiselle Possible?"
"I have found a few, Mr. Couteaux…" Kim said, "But I still need to ask one thing…"
"Oh, anything!" Jacques smiled.
"How many exits are there in the kitchen area?"
"Just two...ze main exit and ze fire escape!" Jacques replied. "However, we were extremely busy so ze culprit could not have escaped through ze main doors without attracting !"
"The fire escape…huh…" Kim thought to herself, "That's the one place of the kitchen that we haven't explored yet! We'll gather up the last of the clues there!"
"Ron…" Kim said as she came back into the kitchen, making her assessment, "I asked Mr. Couteaux! He said that the culprits may have used the fire escape to make their getaway!"
"Let's find some fingerprints and…." Ron said before yawning "…catch some much needed Z's!"
Kim smiled at her best friend and replied, "Don't worry, we're almost done here!"
She, Ron, and Rufus made their way to the one last part of the kitchen that hadn't been combed over for clues yet…the emergency exit.
Kim observed the emergency exit. She began to make her own observations.
"So…it seems that our perpetrator went to here and…" Her eyes zipped to the fire alarm lever, which had been pulled. "…wanted to create a distraction!"
Kim took out the fingerprint kit once more and dusted the lever for any prints. She found two partial prints on the handle and picked them up through the special tape.
"And then…" she continued pointing to the door. "…the culprit exited through the back door until the cops arrived!" She observed the door handle and, this time, found a full fingerprint on the door. Like the two partials she found on the fire alarm handle, Kim carefully picked it up with the fingerprint tape.
"Wow, KP! You're on a roll here!" Ron shouted in amazement. Rufus clapped his paws.
"Thanks, Ron! Anywho, I'll get Wade to look into the security footage tomorrow and…." She yawned loudly, "…I need to catch up on two lost hours of sleep! We got all the evidence we need!"
"Second here, KP… I need to catch some rest too…" Ron replied, his eyes half-closed.
After a long hour and a half thorough investigation, the teens finally got a pickup ride from Mr. Charles, the same person who dropped them off earlier.
With evidence in hand, Kim was determined to know who the culprits were.