The Mysteries of Max: Books 25-27

Chapter 2

Marge was cleaning out her kitchen cupboards when suddenly a very large specimen of spider took a running leap from the top shelf and jumped right at her.

She uttered a blood-curdling scream and nearly fell off her stepladder. The spider had cleared the cupboard and had actually disappeared into her décolletage, however modest, and was now wriggling its way along the front of her T-shirt.

So when Tex walked into the kitchen five seconds later he found his wife of twenty-five years screaming her head off and performing some sort of tribal dance on the spot.

“What’s wrong, darling?” he asked, immediately starting to diagnose the symptoms and trying to come up with the name of the terrible disease that had afflicted her.

“A spider!” she screamed. “It jumped me!”

Tex immediately lost interest. An occupational hazard with doctors is that they’re only interested in a physical phenomenon when there’s a disease to be diagnosed and medication to be prescribed. He even went as far as to utter a light chuckle. “A spider,” he said. “Oh, dear.”

But Marge was too busy divesting herself of her items of clothing and trying to ascertain the whereabouts of the spider to bother about her husband’s lack of empathy.

Finally, after having hopped on the spot and failed to locate the bug, she was relieved to find it scuttling away from the T-shirt she’d dropped to the floor and making haste in the direction of the stove, then disappearing underneath, where Marge’s wrath couldn’t expend itself on its hairy form.

Just then, Vesta walked in. She directed a critical look at her daughter. “I know it’s hot and all, Marge, but do you really have to strip down to your underwear?”

“There was a spider,” said Marge, still breathless, as she clasped a hand to her chest, where she thought she could still feel the animal’s hairy little feet scratching her skin.

“Deep breaths,” said Tex, as he placed a hand on his wife’s wrist and started monitoring her heartbeat like the medical professional he was. “In and out. That’s it.”

“A spider?” asked Vesta. “And is that a reason to perform an act of indecency in my kitchen?”

Marge was still too preoccupied with her recent encounter with one of the animal kingdom’s least cuddly denizens to point out to her mother that it was, in fact, her kitchen. Slowly she was getting her breathing under control, though. Sufficiently so, in fact, to give her husband a scathing look, which made the latter recoil with surprise.

“You just stood there and laughed in my face!” Marge cried.

Tex, who had the gall to smile, said, “But, honey, you looked so funny just then. Hopping and screaming and hollering like a maniac.”

“I was under attack!” she yelled.

Tex raised a single eyebrow. “From a little spider?” he said, less than impressed with the seriousness of the allegations she was hurling at him. “Oh, puh-lease.”

She glanced up at the cupboard, and wondered if more of the same species weren’t lurking there, waiting for the right opportunity to follow where their hairy mate had led the way. “There could be more,” she murmured. “Tex—can you see if there are more?”

Tex frowned at this. “More?”

“More spiders,” she explained, and pointed to the cupboard in question, which she’d supposed, until only five minutes before, completely devoid of spiders, and only filled with the ancient dishware Vesta had brought when she’d moved in so many years before.

Tex seemed reluctant to take a look, his smile quickly having been replaced with a look of distinct horror. “You know I don’t like spiders, honey,” he said in a low voice.

“Oh, men,” said Vesta with an eyeroll. “Let me have a look.” And to show her son-in-law how it was done, she righted the stepladder that had fallen over and mounted it, then directed an inquisitive look into the depths of the cupboard under inspection.

“Nah,” she said finally. “Only my old dishware. Unless…” And much to Marge’s surprise, she inserted a hand into the gaping hole and moments later returned with a figurine. “That’s not mine,” she announced with a puzzled look on her face. She turned it this way and that, then descended the stepladder to subject the object to closer scrutiny.

“What is it?” asked Tex, his interest drawn.

“I don’t know,” said Marge. “I thought it was yours, Ma.”

But Vesta shook her head. “Never seen it before in my life.”

It was a hand-sized figurine of a female goatherd, complete with complimentary goat, and Marge had to admit she hadn’t set eyes on the peculiar object before herself.

“How did it get up there?” she asked.

Tex, however, had already lost interest. “It’s just a figurine,” he said. “Who cares how it got up there?”

Marge and Vesta were studying the item closely, turning it this way and that. “It’s nice,” said Vesta. “I like the colors.”

Whoever had created it clearly had a penchant for all things pastel, for both the girl goatherd and her goat were festooned in festive light pinks and blues and yellows. The girl was seated on a rock, and smiling gaily as if loving life in all its goatherding splendor.

“Turn it over,” said Marge. “Maybe there’s something written on the bottom.”

Obligingly Vesta turned the object over, and they both frowned when they saw that on the bottom a sticker had been glued, announcing that the object was actually part of a collection of objects, number 141 in a series of 360, in fact, and made by one Otto Spiel.

“Otto Spiel,” said Vesta. “Sounds German. Do they have goats in Germany?”

But Marge was already pointing her phone’s camera at the object and entrusting Google Lens with supplying the solution. Promptly a picture popped up, and she clicked through to a Wikipedia page. “Otto Spiel,” she read, “was an early twentieth-century Austrian sculptor and artist, famous for his series of female goatherd figurines, which are highly sought after, and which sell at exorbitant prices at auctions held all over the world.” Her eyes widened when she read on. “An original Otto Spiel goatherd figurine typically sells for one million, and in some cases even up to four million—Oh, my God!”

“Oh, my God,” her mother echoed, as she reverently turned the figurine over in her hands, then ever so carefully set it down on the kitchen table. “Four million dollars!”

Tex, who’d returned to the kitchen, laughed when he saw his wife and his mother-in-law staring at the goatherd as if it were the Second Coming. “Still looking at that thing?”

“Tex?” said Marge, slowly raising her eyes from the goatherd to her husband. “It’s an Otto Spiel.”

“A what now?” asked Tex, opening the fridge and taking out the jug of OJ.

Vesta now turned the label in Tex’s direction. “An actual Otto Spiel, Tex.”

Marge reread the Wikipedia entry, bringing her husband up to speed on all things Otto Spiel, but even then it took some time for the good doctor to put two and two together. But when his brain finally made the necessary computations and permutations, his jaw dropped precipitously, and so did the jug of OJ. He actually had to support himself against the kitchen sink as his eyes goggled at the little girl goatherd.

“Oh, my God!” he cried, earning himself knowing nods from his family members in response. He then glanced up at the kitchen cupboard. “But… how did it get up there?”

“That,” said Marge with a shrug, “is the million-dollar question.”

Vesta grinned. “And you can take that literally.”