When I opened Tales of Slaughter I saw horror like I'd never before imagined. All manner of inhumane activities involving squirrels. Slaughter didn't begin to describe the things that had been done to those poor animals. I picked up Mr. Smoochy and hugged him, glad that he was safe from people who'd do that to living creatures. He clawed my face frantically, anxious to get back to the bathrobe. After I dropped him, I went back to the book. The front section told me that the author's pseudonym was Eileeeeeen from Ohio. She'd dedicated her book to "her great friends and muses, zalaart and Elphaba."

I quickly shut the book and poured a little more lemonade to calm our nerves. Aunt Ellen and I decided we couldn't live with ourselves, knowing this kind of thing was going on in our world and not doing anything about it. We began considering our options.

Aunt Ellen's long-ago love, Mique, is a former military man and might have had some ideas. But he was halfway around the world in Australia, so we needed to find help closer to home. We needed someone smart, someone who could do the research we needed, someone who could help us find the nefarious Eileeeeeen.

The idea came to us both at the same time: the only person who could do it all was right there in Eileeeeen's own back yard: Beth. It was an October Saturday, though, so we knew she'd be off at a college football game with her husband, Jeff. Since we had some time before we could reach Beth we decided to have just a little more lemonade while we waited.