Fat Loss in a Can?

“Let me get this straight: Kutrate Kemicals has discovered something that you spray in the air and it automatically makes you lose weight? How is that even possible?” Tyler Schuyler pushed a broom out of his way and leaned toward his girlfriend, Mindy Cooper. They were meeting in the janitor’s closet at Kutrate Kemicals, one of the few places where they could talk without being overheard or observed.

“I have no idea,” Mindy replied from her perch on a stack of neatly folded garbage bags. “But it’s true. Bernard told me that the company is extremely close to having it on the market.”

“Fat loss in a spray can,” Tyler mused. “I don’t get it. You just smell the air and lose weight?”

“Apparently. Can you imagine, Tyler? Kutrate Kemicals will make billions if it really works. People all over the planet would line up to buy it. Bernard said your mother might be investing too.”

“That isn’t surprising. Mother’s always had a knack for finding good investments. So what’s the hold up?”

“I guess right now the spray smells pretty bad. The chemist is trying to make it smell better before they move on to marketing.”

“Do they have a name yet?”

“I don’t know. Bernard can be quite close mouthed about most of the things that go on around here. I’m surprised I got as much as I did out of him.”

Tyler looked at Mindy shrewdly. “I think he wants to sleep with you,” he said.

“I sure hope he does! That seems to be the only way I’d ever get any more information out of him.”

“Mindy, I know you don’t mean that—what about us? Our future? Our plans?”

“Oh, Tyler, don’t be a dope. I didn’t say that I want to sleep with him, I just said that I hope he wants to sleep with me. With some men, sex is the only way to get what you want.”

“I don’t think I like how this conversation is going.”

“Then don’t think about it and don’t be silly. I’m not going to sleep with my boss but it doesn’t do any harm to let him think that I might, does it? I want to find out all I can about this fat loss in a can. If it works and isn’t made up of some deadly chemicals that destroy the environment and the dieter, then I say more power to Bernard Morton and Kutrate Kemicals. But if he’s hiding something…and I’m pretty sure that he is…then we need to find out what.”

Tyler paused. “So how are we going to do that?”

“You need to keep your eyes and ears open while you’re working on the line. Hasn’t anybody mentioned an exciting new weight loss product to you?”

“Are you kidding me? No one even talks to me while we’re working. And in the break room the only stuff I ever hear about is guy stuff—believe me, it never has anything to do with weight loss.”

“We should have gotten you into the lab instead of on the floor.” Mindy snapped her fingers. “That’s it! You need to intern as a chemist! Tell your supervisor that you’ve decided to go back to college for a degree in chemistry! I bet they’ll move you right away.”

“But I hate chemistry and the only formula I know is the one for water.”

“Tyler, you need to get with the program. If I can flirt with a disgusting ogre like Bernard Morton, then surely you can pretend to know a little something about chemistry.”

“Somehow I don’t think that’s the kind of thing you can fake.”

“Well, at least try. OK, my break is up.” Mindy kissed Tyler quickly. “I’ll see you tonight. Talk to your supervisor right away, Tyler. Time’s a-wasting.”

Mindy left the janitor’s closet and Tyler waited for a minute or two before following her out the door, his mind on the problem that his girlfriend had just handed to him. How would he ever fake any kind of interest in chemistry? It was like asking him to pretend to be smart enough to join Mensa. Not going to happen. There had to be some other way to find out more about the new fat loss product Kutrate Kemicals was making.

But how?

Schuyler Square Day 99 Twenty Years Earlier...

1992


A paper route. What a bummer. Peter Van Husen was 16-years old, too old for a baby pants paper route but so far that was the only job he'd been able to find in Schuyler Square. The pay sucked and the hours were even worse but as his father said--repeatedly--it was better than nothing. 


Peter steered his bike down the last street on his route and Mary Austin's house. He always saved Mary's house for last because more often than not Mary would be just getting up when he delivered the paper and once in a while she invited him in for a cup of coffee. Although Peter didn't really like coffee--it was too bitter--he did like Mary. She was pretty and always talked to him like he was an adult instead of a no-nothing teenager, the way most adults talked to him.


"Good morning, Peter." Mary was waiting for him on her front porch. "Do you have any good news for me today?"


She said the same thing every day but Peter didn't mind. He thought it was kind of cute. "Just the same old stuff the newspaper always prints," he replied. He secretly thought the only thing people read in the paper was the obituaries and the comics but he didn't say that to Mary. She probably read the whole thing, even the editorials. She seemed pretty smart to him. 


"Would you like a cup of coffee? I just made a fresh pot."


"OK." Peter left his bike on Mary's front yard and followed her inside. In her kitchen he sat down at the table and watched as she filled two yellow mugs with coffee, adding cream and sugar to his. Mary sat down at the table and Peter noticed that her eyes were all red like she'd been crying. He felt a little awkward and wasn't sure if he should ask her what was wrong. He decided not to. In his limited experience, Peter had noticed that most girls seemed to cry a lot. At least, his mom always did.


"Peter," Mary said suddenly, "Did you know that Loni Anderson and Burt Reynolds are breaking up?"


Peter shook his head. "That's too bad," he replied. "I like Burt Reynolds. Smokey and the Bandit is probably my all time favorite movie."


Mary pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of the pocket of her robe. Spreading it out on the table, she showed it to Peter. It was a picture of Burt Reynolds standing next to someone, a woman--Peter could tell by her big hooters--but the woman's head was cut off. He guessed the woman had to be Loni Anderson. "What's that?" he asked.


Mary started sniffing. "I don't really know. I found it rolled up in my newspaper yesterday between the sports section and the classifieds. I was hoping that you could tell me how it got there, Peter."

Schuyler Square Day 80 DeeDee Smells a Rat

"I'm telling you, Steve, there was something funny about all that produce that woman was buying."

Steve didn't look up from the model ship he was building on the kitchen table. All of his life he had wanted to do things like build models of ships and airplanes, have a garden, sleep late and drink beer every night of the week. Now that he was retired and now that they had their own house, those were the things he planned on doing immediately. He refused to let any of DeeDee's wild imagination rub off on him. "You were at a farmer's market, hon," he pointed out. "What did you expect her to buy? Horse blankets?"

"You had to have been there," DeeDee told him. "Rosanne--that's her name, Rosanne Olson, works for the Schuylers. I think everyone in this town works for the Schuylers. Anyway, she told me that she had to buy produce from Fred Somebody or other but she practically insisted that I buy it from the Henderson's. Then she wound up buying from the Henderson's anyway. Doesn't that seem strange to you?"

"Not really. Maybe she changed her mind. That's something you've been known to do a few times over the course of your life."

"It wasn't like that." DeeDee sat down at the kitchen table and watched Steve work. "It was like she was nervous or something. Do you suppose she was nervous because she knows we live in a haunted house?"

Steve shot her a tired glance from over the top of his bifocals. "Now how would she know that unless you told her?"

"I'm sure everyone in town knows who we are and that we live in a haunted house," DeeDee countered. "Speaking of which, Mindy Cooper and I are planning a seance next week."

Steve dropped his tube of model glue. "You're what?"

"We're going to have a seance. You know, cut to the chase. If we can get Mary Austin to tell us who killed her, it's going to save me a ton of leg work. Then once we get this ghost business straightened out, I can start redecorating. I'm telling you, Steve, you can tell this place was a rental and you can also tell that the Schuylers are cheapskates. The decorating in this house is enough to scare anyone away, ghost or no ghost."

"And what genius came up with that idea? The seance, not the redecorating."

DeeDee smiled and pecked her husband on the cheek. "Who do you think? Me, of course! You know me, Steve, I'm always thinking"

Schuyler Square Day 78 Kirk Packs His Bags

"So where are you going to live?" Mindy Cooper asked her soon-to-be-ex-live-in-boyfriend, Kirk Chandler.

Shrugging, Kirk tossed more of his clothes into a cardboard box. After the crazy conversation he'd had with his half-brother Tyler, a conversation that revolved around Tyler pressuring him to help murder Tyler's mother's boyfriend, Kirk felt like he was losing his mind. It plain sucked to finally have more relatives only to discover that they were all disgusting parasites. Disgusting rich parasites. Honestly, there were days when it seemed like there was absolutely no justice in the world. "I'm planning on moving from Schuyler Square as soon as I can."

"Where are you going to move?"

"I don't know. Maybe I'll go back to Minneapolis or maybe I'll try some place new. Chicago or I might move out west."

Mindy was quiet for a few moments. "I'm sorry it didn't work out here, Kirk. For us and all the jobs and your dad getting murdered and everything."

"Yeah, well, no one ever said that life is supposed to be perfect." His life was so far from perfect at the moment that Kirk truly couldn't imagine it getting much worse.

"I saw you sitting with Tyler at the diner this afternoon," Mindy continued. "What did he want?"

What the hell. Why not share Tyler's lame brain idea with Mindy? Mindy would love to hear that his half-brother was certifiable. She might even want to write an editorial about the rich and shameless. "He wants me to kill Peter Van Husen."

"WHAT! Are you kidding me? He actually came out and asked you to kill his mom's boyfriend? Wow--what did you say?"

"What do you think I said? I told him that he's nuts and to keep away from me," Kirk said.

"Then what happened?"

"Then I finished my coffee, got up and left."

"Didn't Tyler say anything else to you?"

"Not a word. I think it might have been the first time in his life that anyone refused to do what he wanted them to do."

"My, my, my," Mindy remarked, "isn't that interesting? Are you going to go to the police?"

"I doubt it."

"But you were asked to be part of a murder plot! You have to go to the police, Kirk--it's your civic duty."

"Not my civic duty," Kirk responded. "Besides, can you really imagine that moron Tyler actually coming up with a plan to take out Officer Van Husen that would actually work? He'd have better luck planning on being the next Mr. Kim Kardashian."

"Ever heard of dumb luck? That's what the Schuyler family has in spades. He just might stumble on to something that works."

"It's not my problem." Kirk stood up and surveyed the bedroom to see if he'd left anything behind. Nothing. Not so much as a dust bunny. "Well, Mindy, it's been nice but I guess now I'll say good-bye and move on."

"You sound like a cowboy in an old movie starring Henry Fonda. You know, you still haven't helped me get an interview with your mom about the whole haunted house thing."

"That's not her problem anymore either. Remember Steve and DeeDee? They're living with Mary Austin's ghost and good luck to them." Kirk felt like he was tying up all the loose ends of his short, messy existence in Schuyler Square. One good thing: wherever he landed next it had to be better than this odd little town. "I'm through with everything in Schuyler Square, Illinois."

Mindy shook her head. "Never say never, Kirk. One thing I've learned about my hometown--it gets you by the throat and never really lets you go."