Detective Lovely & The Case Of The Silver Lining Crimes, Final         

          ' Righty-o, here we are, Det.Lovely, at the precinct! I'm going to go and rest my shattered chassi in the police carpark on the policecar carpet and have a nice nozzle of the black stuff. My engine's oinking for oil after haring across King Lindsey all day, honkhonk, hoho!'
              'Roger that, Igs!' rogered Det. Lovely then osculated the dashboard, a sayonara smacker. 
              King Lindsey Police Precinct was somewhat of an oddity considering its jurisdiction was a fairytale market town of fledgling fame. The precinct was a vast, vertical Picadilly Junction and Spagehetti Circus of teleportation flumes that atomised and accelerated officers' particles from floor to floor of the 111 that comprised the cops' HQ . There had once been 999 stories, but the reigning King Lindsey pulled rank on the Sarge and had the teleflume company - a spider-gnome family business - perverse the rolarities of the other 888 or some such technical voodoo, for they were apparently expediently required in an undisclosed elsewhere. With a huge blue frazzlefry of gas-coloured light, eight ninths of the building had vanished overnight. It had been bruited about the precinct locker-room that the royal palace of King Lindsey the XVII had gained an 888-storey extension the very next morning, but Det.Lovely held faith the King was a munificent monarch and she chose to shield her shell-likes from such ugly rumours. After all, hadn't the King acquired enough magic to summon up the ghosts of all the St.Bernards who had ever frozen to death on mismanaged mountaintop rescues, and by order of His Royal Majesty, didn't these phantom megamutts ferret a meals-on-wheels service of space-tubed food to all the hungry of King Lindsey, even those die-hard naughties, the Diddycoy Hobgob Crew? No citizen of King Lindsey had hollow moaniguts, a combination of that and lovely coppers had reduced naughtiness levels to the bare nillions in the fair kindom Det.Lovely thought even fairer than Snow White's beautyspot.  
              Of course, the discovery of magic had sidelined the influence of King Lindsey's financial district, the City of Toytown, but the banks weren't totes boarded up. Lindseyfolk had gotten used to the convenience of magic, but the chocolate money the City of Toytown traded in still served as the everyday currency. Magic didn't grow on trees or splountain up from the ground like the oil Iggy's engine always oinked for after an overworked day. Well, to be honest, the phrase 'for want of a better phrase' would be salient here - unless there's a better one - because the commodity known as magic was actually stumbled upon by some spider-gnomes spelunking in the caves under the wadi formerly known as the Black Hole Broads, that is, until Greater King Lindsey's third sun opened a can of red giant on the world's derriere. Indeed, magic was harvested, via a dendrological milking process, from the Vril-verucas that carbunkled the ceiling roots of the underground Chi-trees within these caves, an extraction enterprise both arduous and expensive. So, as you can see, technically magic did grow on trees, just topsyturvy subterranean ones that were a rigmarole to reach. 
              Det. Lovely had an evanescent misgiving concerning her sovereign's murky magic accounts and alleged kickbacks, but lacked a non-fairytale detective's hardwon cynicism regarding the wizened moral stature of most creatures, so this misgiving was glossed over as but a tetchy tentacle of the octopus of philosophy her mind had tangled itself up into today, frustrated at the lack of proper cop action, yet also edified by this dearth of demand for cop escapades or 'es-cop-ades', he he. Detective Lovely prided herself on being a pithy policewoman.
              Yes, there had been no goblin clockhand robber, no burglariser of bumblebeegees' jarred bounty, no larceny of a gorilla's 14-carat hotpants; the minor mysteries she had solved today had her hankering for a more meaty mystery, such that she was making a meal of a mystery of the fact that today there'd been no mysteries of merit.      
              The teleflume reassembled her lovely atoms in the purdy configuration it had found them in, only on the 78th floor of the towering precinct, in the luxurious lobby that led to the deluxe dorms and sumptuous staffrooms where officers all mucked in together. With imperious bounce and classy swagger, she passed the palatial canteen of the KLPC with its Wildean chez-longues, fluted sculptures and digital teapots teetering tastefully on trellis-tables. A comradely holler interrupted Det.Lovely's ambulatory dwalm.
              It was her pal, Det. Amy Okay, whom Det.Lovely had known since King Lindsey cop cadet school in the village of Winding Almonds. 
              'The Sarge wants the lowdown on the three thefts, Vicky...hmm, you ok, chick?'
              'Yep, sure am, Aimes, but just had one of those days where something doesn't sit straight, yunno, he he.'
              'Sometimes you have to be a shufflebutt of expectations when things don't sit well,' counselled Det.Okay in her waspishly warm way, hidden depths of secret sass behind her Velma specs, the ratty steeliness of a mousey demeanour. Det. Amy Okay had backbone when back-up was the order of the day, the kind of policelady you're happy is covering your booboo on the beat, especially if your trousers have split bending over to brethalyse a kitten, he he, mused Det. Lovely with sweet whimsicality, as she nodded in thankful acknowledgement of Det.Okay's passing wisdom, and continued to the teleflume that would whisk her molecules to the 110th floor. A splitsecond later (like so: sec/ond), she rematerialised and made her way down a colossal chrome corridor to an 8-and-a-half-foot door plaquetted 'Sgt.Cynosarges'.
              Det.Lovely entered the Sarge's office, shoulderbutting the sizable door open. A 7ft tall humanoid panther was flicking thru a filing cabinet, or to be precise,  the filing cabinet was being shook with feline fury by a 7ft 1 blackjaguaroid tom from the planet Slazenger-7.The Sarge's parents had emigrated to the village of Manton Sworely somewhere in the Greater King Lindsey region when the Sarge was but a humungous cubster (tho' Slazenger-7 orbited on the edge of your Nimple Sarrator's consciousness at present, in a fuzzy fairytale galaxy unvisited and not yet even illustrated by the 'fiat lux' of imaginink). 
              Sgt.Cynosarges spun around ferociously, tho' Det.Lovely didn't brick herself the least bit as she knew the Sarge, bless him, came across as ferocious whatever he was doing. There was always that implicit fierceness even when he was being a paternal 7ft panther lawman from another world.
              'Growltings, Detective! RAHH! Now what's the latest on our trio of burglaries, kiddo? THROWL!' the Sarge rahhed and throwled at the loveliest detective in a catwalk of parallel universes, a mise en abyme of millihelens. The Lovely One told the alien feline goliath who was acting Chief of Police how it had transpired there was no palmer of private property on the rampinch, but only three honest mistakes, guv, made by three (similarly slobby) denizens of King Lindsey. 
              She concluded inconclusively, 'Yunno, Sarge, I just feel today was a bit of a waste of policetime. I didn't employ any of the hi-octane skillsets I learned at Winding Almonds. Is it wrong to want there to be a naughty at large?'
              'Nownowl, Det. Lovely,' grolded the monstrous shadowcat and former Sheriff Of Slazenger-7 after assiduous application of his own low-fi, grizzled listening skills. 'Being a KLPC officer isn't all about rolling over the bonnet of Iggy and firing yogurt raisins thru your peashooter at diddicoys. Sometimes it's about reassuring Lindseyfolk that it's okay to ask for help and okay for there not to be a bad guy at the bottom of every mystery... GRAH-GRAH-YOWL-ROWL! Grurrr-hum,' the Sarge concluded by clearing his growl with a growl.
              ' Besides, didn't you just report back to me that you not only solved the mystery of the missing goblin grandfather clockhands, but located the key to the Old Ticker Smicks timepiece for that clock-goblin, Old Father Slime, wotzizname?'
              'You mean Mr.Smicks, Sarge,' corrected Det.Lovely, the stunning stickler.
              'And didn't you find the pink bear's sonorous spoon and stop that drama queen paddington shedding an entire pinkpantherskin rug? Ah, poor old Uncle The Pink...' 
              The Sarge's peptalk momentarily trailed off with a tremble in his growl, for the image of Pinky Pawridge's fur-flood moulting brought back the fireside fate of his father's brother, a misfortune sealed by his uncle's fetishised fur of Mexican rose. Dec.Lovely again nodded vigorously and supplemented this with a brisk 'Yessir!' to rouse the Sarge from the grief for his Uncle The Pink behind the gremble in his voice. 
              Just making it aboard the last carriage of his train of thought, the Sarge continued, 'And didn't you locate that daft monkey's Temple of the Incas underwear for him? Y'see, kiddo, the only mystery here is that you can't see all the silver linings to this triple waste of police time: it means real naughtiness is at an all-time low! Not only that, you helped three King Lindseyfolk feel that the kingdom is a safe place, where they'll more likely fall prey to their own scatterbrains than meet a naughty in a dark nighty, erm, on a dark night. Our officers are there for good tidings too, kiddo, little mysteries like lost property.'
              Gerald H. Cripes!The Sarge didn't half drone on like some sort of sabretoothed social worker. But law and order laid the foundations for loveliness, she knew what Ol' Cyanide Sausages was getting at, he he. As if in answer to her yawned prayer,  Sgt.Cynosarges abruptly changed subject.
              'Say, kiddo, is that a Sloopyslurpcious Bananayummy Split?' the Sarge parked his own purrrorations to inquire with flaming tigereyes bigger than his flaming tigerstomach (which was a neat flaming tiger feat).
              Absentmindedness seemed to be today's theme! Det.Lovely had utterly forgotten she'd been carrying Kizmet O' Gram's signature dessert under her arm, now gooily seeping onto her black gloves, whilst she'd been traipsing and telefluming thru the skyscratching precinct. 'Ew! It's a Slurpysloopcious Banananyummy Sundae to be pedantic, Sarge, but close enough - it's yours!' 
               'Why thank you, Detective,' salivated the Sarge and tore into what was a Sloppyslobshush Bananagungey Blunder Sundae by now, only just held together by posh jokebox bananaskins. As he lifted his snout from a whirlwind of whiskers, a feral catherinewheel of vanilla dribble, Det. Lovely noticed one of the Sarge's imperious canines had impaled a banana. It looked like a two-tone curvy cross, a milk dagger tooth intersecting with an old yellow dagger tooth, or like a pale pointy banana Cain had lept too violently into a fratricidal canoe, jugaaded out of the skin of his more vibrantly-hued banana bro Abel, for a gruesome getaway. The Sarge'll sulk for morries when he sees what a nincompuss he looks, he he, was Det. Lovely's final quip to self before her atoms disintegrated down teleflume 110, having taken her leave of the gluttonous pantheroid top catcop. But as her lovely molecules were recomposed on floor 78, the building was still shaking with the searing snarl of Sgt.Cynosarges, as he laboured to pluck that banana off his canine with unwieldy whopping paws.