Trevor & Hogarth: The Queen Bee Conundrum

Chapter 1

1112 Chatfield Road

There was nothing usual about most deliveries for the Just in Thyme catering company. Serving the crème de la crème of Hubbard Woods, a neighborhood just a few miles north of Chicago, the catering company usually delivered to more affluent members of society (doctors, lawyers, CEOs) and their families. But recently the company had taken on a most unusual client, one that struck fear into the heart of a certain delivery boy named Trevor Alacarte.

Trevor Alacarte was a remarkably bright and rotund boy no less than twelve years old. His eyes were also remarkably blue, and his hair was brown—but not remarkably so. It’s important to note that the owner of the catering company was Trevor’s mother, Sherry, and not Trevor himself, because it would be simply absurd for a boy of his age to own and operate a business. But he was good at his job. He would look customers in the eye, smile, and hand them their orders smoothly and swiftly.

But not today. Today he dropped his clipboard in a koi pond at one stop, tripped up the stairs at another, and nearly spilt a container of tomato soup all over a very elderly woman in a fancy white dress. 

Every afternoon at exactly two forty-five, Sherry Alacarte loaded the truck with the day’s deliveries. Formerly an ice cream truck, it had since been converted to accommodate both hot and cold entrees to keep her soups sweltering and her cheeses chilled. It was not until the untimely death of Trevor’s father, Reuben, that she turned her culinary prowess into a profession. With Trevor in tow, Sherry would set out to deliver hot meals to the upper crust of Hubbard Woods who simply couldn’t be bothered to prepare dinner for themselves.

In between deliveries Trevor liked to read. Today he was reading the latest installment of his favorite series: The Nancy Boys. In this installment, the boy detectives, Clancy and Butch Nancy, were investigating the disappearance of an expensive saddle from the Equine History Museum. A sudden snore startled him and he dropped his book. Fearing his mother had fallen asleep at the wheel, he jerked his head to the left to see her perfectly awake. Another snore and a lick at his hand reminded him that him that his English bulldog, Hogarth, was behind him dozing off. Hogarth did not share Trevor’s love for mystery novels. At one point, Trevor tried to read the books aloud to Hogarth, but he stopped after book 3 (The Purloined Pistol), when Hogarth seemed to question the qualifications of the boy detectives. 

When Trevor ran out of other books to read, he swiped one of his mom’s cookbooks to tide him over. His true passion was mysteries. More importantly, he had a passion for solving mysteries. Most of the cases he’d solved so far were pretty minor. Over the summer, he helped his sister find her phone that she thought was stolen, but was, in fact, just in the lost & found. 

His most ambitious case was the previous year, when he uncovered that the third-grade spelling bee had been fixed. Unfortunately, Trevor didn't get any credit for this, which he didn’t mind due to the subsequent scandal. 

The mysterious new client was heavy on Trevor’s mind at the moment. His stomach churned as he glanced out the window. The converted ice cream truck weaved gracefully around the many twists and turns, avoiding the tall oak trees lining the streets. Autumn had turned the leaves various shades of red and orange, hiding the extravagant homes on Chatfield Road and casting drivers in a perpetual twilight.

The client in question lived at 1112 Chatfield Road. The large Victorian house was painted mismatched shades of purple, orange, and green, which had faded and chipped.  The lawn was overgrown and littered with abandoned Frisbees, baseballs, footballs, and other items no kid dared to retrieve. It was the type of house Trevor dreaded. A spooky house. No one good ever lived in a spooky house. More importantly, no one ever made it out of a spooky house.  The truck pulled up to a stop in front.

“Let’s see...,” said Sherry in a singsong voice as she shuffled through some paperwork. She pulled out a piece of paper from the stack. “Here we go. Dowding.” She smiled and handed the paper to Trevor, then gracefully slipped out of her seat and grabbed the order from the deep refrigerator unit in back.

“Now remember, honey,” Sherry said as she fixed Trevor’s hair and handed him the bag. “See if she’ll sign the big sheet, you keep the little sheet, and most importantly: big smiles! You too, Hogarth.”

Hogarth snorted agreeably. Trevor just stood wide-eyed and nodded. He stepped out of the truck holding the bag tightly, with Hogarth right behind him.

He had always held his breath when he walked past this house, but he couldn’t hold his breath all the way up to the porch and back. His fists were clenched tight around the bag as he stepped onto the porch. Even Hogarth seemed a little uneasy as Trevor rang the doorbell, which made a horrible buzzing sound. A series of crashes and shattering followed the doorbell, and a voice wailed: “Just leave it outside!”

Trevor was relieved. He survived. He signed ‘X’ on the big sheet, and tore off the little one, and shoved it into his pocket before he and Hogarth rushed down the steps. He ran as fast as he could down the long walkway, fighting the urge to look back. He and Hogarth hopped back in the truck. Trevor buckled his seatbelt with a deep sigh of relief.

“Any luck today?” asked Sherry as she took the little form and stuffed it into a folder. Trevor shook his head.

“Oh, that poor woman...” Sherry said in a sympathetic tone, glancing over to the house.

Trevor bit his tongue. He wasn’t sure if his mom was naïve, or maybe just uneducated in the rules of spooky houses. Trevor looked out of the corner of his eye and saw the door open slightly. A wrinkled, pale arm reached out and grabbed the bag before the door slammed shut again. Sherry started the truck and pulled out to make their way home.

Sherry turned to Trevor and smiled. “You know, honey,” she said, “it really means a lot to me that you’ve taken on this extra responsibility now that your sister’s ‘too cool’ to help out Mom. I know you’d rather be with friends.”

Trevor turned and peered out the window. “I don’t mind,” he said, scratching Hogarth behind the ears. “It’s fun cooking with you. Maybe next time you make crème brulée, I can work the torch.” 

Sherry laughed nervously. “I thought we agreed no more open flames after you tried to make bananas Foster with a Bunsen burner in chemistry class.”

“Oh come on, Mom!” Trevor groaned. “Miss Wade’s eyebrows grew back!” Trevor was lying. In fact, the school had stopped selling bananas in the cafeteria to prevent any traumatic flashbacks when she was on lunchroom duty.

#

Red rubber balls whizzed past in every direction, occasionally slamming into a someone with a loud PWOMP. 

Trevor found himself in an especially violent game of dodgeball. At Irma S. Raumbaur Middle School, gym class was taken very seriously. Under the stern insistence of the gym teachers, it was not physical education, but kinetic wellness. The gym teachers prided themselves in the development of a curriculum that provided physical, emotional, and social growth. Trevor never agreed with the philosophy, although today’s dodgeball seemed to be exercising all of those muscles. 

Trevor bent down to tie his shoe, and a pig-nosed girl named Maggie pegged him in the face with a ball. Dazed but relieved to be out of the war zone, Trevor stumbled over to the bleachers with the rest of his teammates who were out. He sat next his friend Jack.

“That was totally cheap!” spat Jack, one of the first kids who had gotten knocked out of the game. He had chosen an inopportune moment to sneeze and got hit in the leg. Jack was snaggletoothed, and much taller than Trevor. He was thin and lanky and with perpetual grey circles around his eyes and thick eyebrows above them. He had olive skin and a wavy mop of hair that was combed over and short on the sides.

“Yeah,” shouted Trevor in agreement, glancing over at Maggie as she leapt into the air to catch a dodge ball. Her teammates cheered and rushed back onto the court. “But I’m almost grateful,” he said. He tilted his head back and sighed, and wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead.

He watched as Cecelia Castellanos, a girl with a mass of black curly hair, nearly caught a ball, but instead got hit in the arm. Cecelia told off the boy who had thrown the ball, and sat next to Trevor, but turned away. Trevor couldn’t help but feel that Cecelia still held a grudge against him. She had claimed the credit for discovering the fixed spelling bee matches after he had told her the story. After the subsequent scandal, she had been demoted from head reporter of the school newspaper to the less glamorous columnist for lunchroom beat.

He turned back to Jack. “Did I tell you about the creepy old lady we’ve been delivering to the past few weeks?”

“No. What’s so creepy about her?” said Jack, who was now picking at his teeth.

“Well,” Trevor began, “it’s this big old Victorian house on Chatfield. It’s falling apart, and the plants are mostly dead. This lady never signs her receipt. She just tells me to leave it outside and she waits till we leave and sticks her arm out and grabs it.”

Jack’s face dropped a bit. “1112 Chatfield?” he asked in a serious tone.

“Yeah, how’d you know?” Trevor asked, his stomach starting to churn again.

Cecelia chortled from behind him. “You’re joking right? You don’t know about The Dowding Witch?”

Trevor turned to her dumbfounded, and then turned back to Jack.

“Oh come on, Trevor,” Jack said, “don’t do this to me.”

Cecelia touched her hand to her chest. “Oh my god,” she chuckled, “he’s serious!”

Just then, a thin boy with a unibrow on Trevor’s team caught a ball. Jack, Cecelia, and Trevor rushed back onto the court. The caught ball belonged to Maggie. Trevor stuck his tongue out as she walked to the bleachers.

“Is this a thing?” Trevor asked, slightly nervous. A ball whizzed past and bounced on the floor. He grabbed it and missed a tall girl with blonde hair.

“Figures you wouldn’t know,” Cecelia spat back at Trevor, “spending all that time delivering food with your mom.” She grabbed a ball from the floor and pegged the same tall girl Trevor had missed in the face. “Care to fill him in, Jack?”

“So the old woman who lives there is supposed to be completely nutty. Into witchcraft and all that,” Jack said before ducking from a ball. “My brother’s friend lost a Frisbee on her porch. When he went to get it, he saw her shove a live spider in her mouth and saw insects crawling all over the walls.”

Cecelia frowned. “You’re leaving out the best part!” she shouted. “Her hand!”

Jack halfheartedly tossed a ball to the other side of the court before turning back to Trevor. “Oh yeah, yeah!” he said excitedly. “So she’s missing her left hand.” Jack wiggled his own hand at Trevor. “And they say if you stick your hand through her mail slot, she’ll pull your whole body through!”

“I hear her hair is made out of fire!” Maggie shouted from the bench.

Cecelia rolled her eyes. “OH MY GOD, MAGGIE! NO ONE ASKED YOU!” Maggie sunk her head bit.

Trevor scratched the back of his neck and darted his eyes to the ground. His worst fears were confirmed. It was a spooky house. 

“I don’t believe any of that,” Trevor said. He was lying.

“Yeah?” Cecelia snapped. “Prove it, then!” She put her hands on her hips and narrowed her eyes at Trevor.

“Okay, fine!” Trevor said sternly.

“AND!” Cecelia continued. “Take a selfie in her house!”

Before he could even process what he was agreeing to, Trevor responded, “Deal!” His stomach sank like a rock. 

“You’re on, Alacarte!” Cecelia said smugly. “And don’t worry, if you don’t make it, I’ll write you a fitting obituary in the school paper.”

#

Trevor felt nauseated the rest of the day. When his mother picked him up he was practically numb as he climbed into the Just in Thyme truck. Hogarth jumped up and gave him an enthusiastic lick on the cheek, which comforted him a bit. Sherry gave him a big kiss on the cheek, leaving a screaming-pink lipstick stain behind.

“Have a good day at school?” Sherry asked with a wide smile. She pulled down the truck’s visor mirror and applied a fresh layer of lipstick and fluffed up her brown hair.

“Yeah... Great...” Trevor muttered. The words fell from his mouth like pudding out of a punctured bag. He kept imagining a hand reaching out of the mail slot and tugging at his wrist and dragging him to his doom.

Trevor made his deliveries with less gusto than usual. Hogarth tried to pick up the slack, but his lack of opposable thumbs made it difficult for him, so kept he jumping on Trevor to keep his spirits up.

When they pulled up to 1112 Chatfield Road, the color drained from Trevor’s face. Sherry handed Trevor the bag with Mrs. Dowding’s order.

“Are you all right?” she asked, putting her hand on his forehead. “You’re as white as a ghost!”

Trevor shook his head and brushed her hand away. “I’m fine,” he said dismissively. “Just a little tired. Come on, Hogarth,” he called, hopping out of the truck.

As he dragged himself up the walkway, he looked down at Hogarth. “Okay, buddy...” he said in a stern tone, “if something happens, I need you to run back to the car.” He knelt and grabbed the sides of Hogarth’s head. “Don’t be a hero.”

Hogarth whined loudly and put his paw on Trevor’s knee. Trevor shook his head. “You’re right, you’re right!” he said. “I mean, that’s kid stuff! Witches aren’t real!” He ruffled Hogarth’s scruff. Hogarth wiggled his butt and barked back enthusiastically.

On the porch, Trevor paused for a moment and stared at the doorbell. He imagined the door opening and the pale hand grabbing his hand, pulling it through the doorway, and the door slamming shut on his wrist. Hogarth barked and snapped Trevor back to reality again. Trevor rang the doorbell, and again there was the familiar series of crashes and clattering.

“Leave it outside!” the voice wailed as usual. But this time, Trevor squatted down a bit and stuck his hand in the mail slot. He felt something brush against it, and he pulled it back instantly.

Trevor jumped to his feet as chains and locks clicked and clanked. Hogarth shuffled behind Trevor, who winced, holding the bag in front of his face. The door swung open, and all he could see was a single hand with a sparkling, silver finger clutching the edge.