Geronimo Stilton: INTERPOL-Trouble In France: An Old Enemy Returns

Without A Trace

Château de l'Arif
Tuesday - March 25, 2014
0830 hours

Thea's Perspective

I woke up in the early morning as usual (not as usual as Danny does), had a hot shower, then I clothed myself for the morning which it's temperature dropped below 18 degrees Celsius.

When I opened the door about to step out of the room, I heard the sound of sizzling in the kitchen and orchestral music. And as I took a sniff of the air, there was a hint of tomato sauce with a mix of chopped onions. The scent was so divine, I decided to follow it.

I had already suspected the person behind this. I ran down the stairs while putting on my jacket over the pink neck sweater, then headed straight to the kitchen, where the smell was sourcing from.

I tiptoed not to surprise the cook and halted at the counter. Yes, on the other side of it was no one else than Danny, wearing a chef's apron and busy going back and fourth to the stove and the chopping board, putting in ingredients to his family pasta sauce in the sauce pan. The kitchen wasn't filled with smoke however as got sucked into the ventilation hood above. The odd thing about it was; he was cooking while a radio played Johannes Brahm's Hungarian Dance No. 5.

I crossed my arms, stood back, and watched him do his work. He sprinkled a dash of salt, stirred it with his left hand and grabbed a bowl of diced basil and poured it in then stirred some more. Next, he swiped the pepper grinder next to him and gave it a twist over the pan, added chopped rosemary and a few round meatballs, stirring them all at once. Then he goes to the chopping board again, placing a handful of parsley on top then draws out a knife from its holder, dicing them into pieces at 700 chops per minute. He takes the board and the knife with him when he finished back to the sauce pan and pushed the parsley in. He puts the board away and flung the knife up, stabbing the board on its way down at its edge and stuck upwards after. He then stirs the sauce around for a few times, then he takes the wooden spoon out and picks up a metal one with Force Telekinesis from the far side of the kitchen. He scoops a little bit of the sauce for a taste test, which he was satisfied with. He threw the spoon into the sink, then lowered a lid gently over the pan.

After that, he put everything he had used to make the recipe into the dishwasher, set it to wash, set the egg timer to go off in one and a half minutes, and slid onto the counter. All in just the ending of the song.

He washed his hands, turning back as he wiped them on his apron. "So, how'd I do?" he asked, leaning against the marble frame of the bottom cabinets, cross-armed.

I gave him a dramatic slow-clapping. "Stupendous," I answered. "Good morning, Danny."

"Back to you, sis..." he greeted.

I approached him, and had my eyes on the stool at his opposite. "Still troubled about last night?" I wondered, taking a seat.

"Yup, and I'm still thinking about it till this moment. Why do you ask?"

"Because from my point of view, it looked like you were serving a lunch rush."

"Well, this is one of my ways of stress relief. I tried everything since I woke up at four; shooting, sketching, video games... By then it was already eight, so I figured that I'd try cooking. But clearly that didn't work..."

"How great is the disturbance, according to you?"

"When I'd try to sleep last night, I'd wake up sweating in half an hour intervals. So yeah, pretty great."

"And what would you think will happen based on that?"

"Something big..."

"How big?"