For the next few months, things continued much as they had been at the start. They slowly worked their way through mountains of paper, following up on cold trails, getting shouted at by people who thought they were through with this, and arguing about staples. Maybe once a week or so, Daffy would sit down to record a statement only for the Foley to jump to a completely different track, forcing him to set aside the digital recorder and reach for the reel to reel tape recorder. He’d sent Wile E to the shops around London looking for a smaller tape recorder that was less of a pain in the tail feathers to set up and operate on short notice. Then he thought better of it, and sent Porky looking for one instead. He hadn’t had any better luck finding one, but at least if he did, it would be less likely to blow up in his face.
Anyway, it was strange. Maybe he was thinking about it too hard nowadays, but it seemed like the more he used the reel to reel recorder, the harder it was to get set up quickly. He’d have thought that the more experience he got with it, the easier it would be, but no. Then again, he had to admit that when he’d used one—or “used” one—in cartoons, it had always been scripted, and all he’d had to do was plunk it down on the desk and start it going. This wasn’t a cartoon, it was a real job, and now he had to actually do the work himself.
Yeah. That had to be it.
The Institute closed for a couple of weeks for Christmas. Daffy thought about flying back to California and spending Christmas in Toon Town, but the possibility of a white Christmas was higher in London, so he decided to stay. Wasn’t like there was anybody back there who would really miss him, after all. The other three didn’t contact him during their break, which drove Daffy crazy—crazier than usual—so when they got back, he made them all tell him exactly what they’d been up to. They’d all seemed reluctant, but they’d humored him, at least.
What hurt the most was that even Bugs hadn’t wanted to spend time with him at Christmas.
They’d been back for almost two weeks and he was hard at work when there was a polite tap at his office door. Daffy, who was in the middle of sorting out some papers, didn’t even look up. “Come in, Wile E.”
The door creaked open and Wile E poked his head in. “How did you know that it was I at your door?”
“There’th glathth in the window,” Daffy pointed out, raising his head and giving Wile E a glare. “Bethideth, you’re the only one who knockth anymore. Or at leatht who knockth firtht. What’th up, doc?”
Wile E preened for just a moment; Daffy knew he was momentarily considering the possibility of obtaining a doctorate degree. Then he gathered himself with a cough. “Ahem. Rosie called down from the front desk to indicate that we have a visitor. Someone has arrived at the Institute wishing to give their statement directly and in person, and I—aha—took the liberty of going up to collect her myself.”
“You didn’t even give me the chanthe to dethide if I was too buthy?” Daffy began, then stopped. There wasn’t any point in being angry. Technically it was his job, after all. He didn’t have to like it, but it was his job. “Fine. Thend her in.”
“Of course.” Wile E bowed and ducked out, and Daffy heard him say faintly to someone further in the Archives, “Right this way, madam.”
A new motif sounded faintly in the back of Daffy’s mind, something…vaguely familiar, actually, with a lot of low, smoky saxophone and a heavy noir feel. He knew what he could expect if this were a detective picture, but what could he expect now?
The figure that stepped in through the door certainly merited the saxophone. She had legs, as they said, that went all the way to the floor, a pair of black high heels and silk stockings covering them. They disappeared into a wasp-waisted suit, good quality but at least fifty years out of fashion, with a pencil skirt, a fitted jacket with wide shoulder pads sharp enough to kill, and a ruffled blouse, her hands encased in a pair of black kid gloves. The long, thick hair was glossy but faded to a soft bluish silver, topped with a wide black hat with a black lace veil and a white ribbon around the crown. You could have been forgiven for believing she was in a black-and-white cartoon, except that her skin was a creamy peach still, her plump lips painted a rich, vibrant red, and her eyes shadowed in a deep purple.
Daffy rose to his feet, astonished. “Jeththica? Jeththica Rabbit, ith that you?”
Jessica lifted her head and met Daffy’s eyes, her gaze as steely and direct as ever. “Hello, Daffy,” she said in the low, husky voice he remembered.
“Well, heaventh to Betthy!” Daffy smiled, despite everything, and came around the desk to shake her hand. “I haven’t theen you thinthe the Ink and Paint Club clothed down! Here, have a theat. How have you been? What bringth you to the Inthtitute?”
“Truthfully, I didn’t know I’d find you here.” Jessica took the seat Daffy offered her and removed her hat, carefully. “But everyone knows the Magnus Institute is where you go to talk about…things like what I experienced. I’m here to give my statement.”
“Oh, of courthe. Let me get the recorder out.” Flustered, Daffy began setting up. “I know who you are, of courthe, but jutht in cathe thomeone wantth to lithten to thith later, can you thtate your name and what you’re here to talk about?”
“My name is Jessica Rabbit,” Jessica said in a low voice. “Today is the thirteenth of January, 2016. I am here to give a statement concerning—”
The sounds that came out of Jessica’s mouth were like nothing Daffy had ever heard, and he jumped back, startled. She…didn’t seem to notice, just kept talking. After a minute, though, he threw up a hand and snapped off the recorder. “Thtop, thtop, wait jutht a darned minute. Thorry, Jeththica, but thith recording ithn’t going to be thalvageable. We’re going to have to thtart over.”
Jessica blinked at him, then sighed and nodded. “If you’re sure.”
Daffy took a couple of minutes to thread the reel to reel recorder, since Porky still hadn’t found a smaller one. At last, he nodded and started the recording. “Right. Let’th try thith.”
“Are you sure?” Jessica eyed the recorder skeptically. “I haven’t seen anybody use one of those in years.”
“Yeah, I know, but we’ve found it’th utheful when we have thtatementth that won’t record digitally,” Daffy told her.
“You need better equipment.”
“Believe me, we’ve tried. Thith ith what we’ve got.”
Jessica sighed. “No wonder nobody takes this place seriously. This is not a cartoon, you know.”
“Tho I’ve heard,” Daffy said dryly. “You don’t have to talk to uth.”
Jessica shook her head. “No—no, I need to tell someone, and now that I know you’re here, Daffy…I can’t imagine who else I would tell.”
Okay, Daffy had to admit, just for a moment, he was flattered. Then he tried to make himself seem professional. “Better thtart over from the beginning. I’m not thure we’ll be able to uthe anything on the other recording. Name, date, topic, et thetera.”
“I suppose so.” Jessica took a deep breath and began again. Her voice was as sultry as ever, but quivered just slightly with emotion…or maybe with something else. “My name is Jessica Rabbit. Today is the thirteenth of January, 2016, and this is my statement about the events that occurred after the funeral of my husband Roger.”
Daffy gaped at her, just for a minute, then manually shut his beak and started for the door. “I’ll leave you to that, then,” he muttered.
Jessica’s worried voice stopped him in his tracks. “Where are you going?”
Daffy frowned slightly. “I thought I would leave you to make your thtatement in privathy.”
“Don’t,” Jessica said, in a low, pleading tone. “I don’t want to be alone right now.”
Daffy should leave, but he found he didn’t want to. Instead, he only said softly, “Right,” then sank back into his seat and nodded for her to continue.
Jessica only half seemed aware he was there, let alone that he had spoken to her, but she did continue. “I was…so alone before I met Roger. You don’t know what it’s like, being a woman looking the way I do, especially back then. Everyone wanted my voice, my body, my acting, but none of them seemed to want me. Or know there was a me under the ink. And then I met Roger. It was during the war; I was doing the entertainment circuit, performing at the USO shows, and he was a private in the Army. All the other doughboys were whistling at me, making comments, but…Roger was different. He brought me a plate of food after my performance and told me what a good job I did, then started asking me questions—how I got into entertainment, what studios I worked for, what I liked to do when I wasn’t performing. Not many people know that I was never contracted to a studio; I would freelance from time to time, but I was never interesting enough for steady work, I suppose. Or not the kind I wanted to be known for, anyway.” She shuddered at an old memory. “But Roger never judged me. He was with Maroon Cartoons even then, but he’d taken time off to serve, just like most Toons did. And I remember he never tried to coerce me by offering to try and get me a job, or put in a good word for me—I’d heard that line so many times. Roger just asked if he could see me when we were both back in Toon Town, and I surprised myself by agreeing.
“I’m sure you’ve seen the picture. It’s very famous—the one of us in the center of Toon Town on V-E Day, Roger dipping me and kissing me with excitement while the confetti falls around us. He apologized after for not warning me, and I told him it was the best first kiss I could ever have asked for. He was…so surprised that it was my first kiss, but he never judged me for that, either. He just told me I did very well for my first time and he would love to help me practice as often as I wanted. We got married six months later. The Ink and Paint Club was looking for a new performer. I’d…never thought of myself as good enough to sing there, but Roger told me I should. He believed in me, in a way nobody ever had. And he was right, as you well remember. I thought I would be a chorus girl, but before long…I was a headliner. I was just so thankful I’d waited until I was married, because it made me so proud to see the name ‘Jessica Rabbit’ in lights.
“They kept me on at the Ink and Paint Club even after Judge Doom’s campaign of destruction, and when C. B. Maroon took over for R. K., Roger stayed on at Maroon Cartoons for a while. The studio never really did as well as some of the others, and Roger had got a taste for detecting, so when Mr. Maroon sold out to Walt Disney in the late fifties, he decided to leave show business. Baby Herman had just been elected mayor of Toon Town, you may recall, and Roger just…wasn’t as popular in cartoons without him. Eddie Valiant took him on with his organization, partly because he had more work than he could handle and partly so he could spend more time with his family. He and Dolores were married, and their boys were five or six at that point, so it’s understandable he would want to spend as much time with them as he could while he could. They eventually joined the firm, once they were older, and there was plenty for all of them to do.
“That didn’t last very long, though. Eddie was having to slow down, take fewer jobs, which put more of them on the boys, but Eddie Junior resented living in his father’s shadow, and he and his brother—Teddy the Second, he usually went by Tooey, thought it was a real laugh—would fight about it. Roger would try to calm them down and end up getting hurt more often than not. Finally Eddie Junior declared he was changing his name and leaving to start over somewhere else. About that same time, I found out that most of the other acts at the Ink and Paint Club were getting a much higher salary than I was, even though I had been there longer than most, and when I tried to ask for a raise, they said it wasn’t worth keeping me on anymore and broke my contract. Eddie was worried about his son, so Roger used a little cartoonish manipulation and managed to convince Eddie Junior that it was his idea Roger come be partners with him instead. We sold our house in Toon Town and moved to London.”
She took a deep breath. “I know this seems like a lot of unnecessary back story, but I need you to understand how Roger and I came to be here, because otherwise you won’t understand what happened. We never needed much. Roger made smart choices—I know that’s hard for people who only saw him in the cartoons to believe—and did well on some investments, so even when times were tough in the private investigation business we had plenty to live on. I picked up some jobs here and there as a lounge singer, and…things were going well. We loved London, loved England. We even became citizens once we had been here for about ten years, and neither of us ever thought we would go back to Hollywood and show business. The last time we were in America was for Eddie’s funeral in 1985.
“It wasn’t long after that that I noticed my first grey hair. Roger never minded, he had never loved me for my looks, but others minded, and the work dried up. Roger still had plenty, but I started noticing that he was slowing down, too. His hair was going white where it used to be red. He always insisted he was fine, that he was invincible, that he could still keep up with Eddie Junior—he just goes by Edward now, especially since he changed his last name—step for step. Hare and Hound Detective Agency, which was the name they came up with because Edward was like a hound on the scent when he got going and he thought ‘hare’ sounded better than ‘rabbit’, was really just in a holding pattern. I think we all expected that Edward’s three children would join the agency, learn the ropes, and then Edward would step back and enjoy retirement while Roger became as much a legacy to the organization as the case files and the desks.
“Of course, it didn’t work out that way. In the first place, none of Edward’s children were interested in private detection. His daughter got a job with the police force—not a surprise, Eddie was a beat cop before he and his brother quit and went private too—but she isn’t interested in quitting, and she doesn’t talk to her family much anymore. His son was as much of a rebel as his father ever was, and irony of ironies, he changed his last name back to Valiant and moved to Los Angeles hoping to break into the pictures. His other child got invited by a friend to join some kind of experimental band and is much too interested in that to even consider quitting and becoming a private detective. Edward and Roger were still discussing what to do about the future when…when that decision was taken away from them.”
From somewhere about her person, Jessica produced a handkerchief edged in black lace, which she dabbed at her eyes with. “I won’t go into details about my honeybunny’s death. It’s only been a year, and I would rather not waste time sobbing into your recorder for an hour. It was his heart, they said—his big, generous, warm, loving heart. Overexertion. Age. A one in a million chance, on and on and on. It didn’t matter. He was dead, and for the first time in seventy years, I was all alone.
“The logical thing would have been to go back to Los Angeles, to have him buried in one of the cemeteries in Toon Town, but I couldn’t bear the thought of him being so far away from me. And even though I thought about going back to Toon Town myself, I couldn’t. We’d spent more of our lives together here than we had there—this is where all of our memories are—and I, I was afraid to go back. I was afraid of what it meant. I couldn’t face the idea of cremating him, not after the vault fire at MGM in 1965, just before we left. I was…obsessed with the fear that burning him would mean that there was nothing left of him, that it would eliminate any record of him, that he would be…lost. I know that’s silly…but do I? I remember hearing a theory, once upon a time, that a Toon’s soul was inextricably bound up in their films and that destroying their films would destroy them—so who’s to say that it wouldn’t work the other way around, too? Anyway, I couldn’t risk it.
“The trouble is that I had never given a thought to where I would bury him. Why would you think about burying someone you never expected to outlive? And the graveyards in London were…I never could get anyone to take me seriously. There are a few Toons around here, not many, but the undertakers don’t seem all that interested in burying Toons. Finally, someone told me about a dedicated Toon cemetery, small but well cared for, in a town called Camberwick Green. I applied to them, and they wrote back that there was a plot all ready for him. At the time, I didn’t think there was anything strange about that. Grief does things to you, to the way you look at the world, and the phrasing just seemed like they were saying they had everything ready. Besides, even if they had prepared something in advance, it was logical that they should have known we were here, shouldn’t they?
“What did surprise me—and upset me—was when I went to talk to the coroner about the arrangements, and they told me the undertaker’s men had already come to take him away. I argued with them. Roger and I didn’t have any other family, certainly no children or grandchildren, and even if Edward had had any right to authorize something like that, he wouldn’t have, not without asking me first, so who signed for that? But they were adamant, and I…I couldn’t get him back if I tried, anyway. So I did the only other thing I could think of. I got in the car, and I drove to Camberwick Green.
“I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Trumptonshire. It’s in the southeast of England, about a day’s walk from the Hundred Acre Woods and an hour’s drive from Pepperinge Eye. It’s…a nice area. Very old-fashioned. I’ve since learned that it’s also been steadily decreasing in population since the 1970s. At the time, I only knew that it was…empty. The weather was terrible. I’m not sure how long you’ve been in England, but we had a really bad storm last March, and this was the worst part of it. I was having a hard time seeing the road. I…I admit that a part of me thought, well, it wouldn’t be so bad if I did drive off the road, would it? If I went up in a fiery crash? At least Roger and I would be together again.
“Of course I didn’t, but I also didn’t know where I was supposed to be going. Not at first. Then I remembered someone at the coroner’s mentioning that the men who had come to collect Roger were from Winkstead Hall, so I thought that would be a good place to start. I don’t remember how I got there, but I did finally find the place. It’s…exactly what you would expect from Winkstead Hall. It’s a manor house, an old family estate, and it’s enormous. If you’ve never been to one of those old houses, the closest I can come to telling you what it was like is to tell you to imagine the set of the kind of cartoon that always airs around Halloween, but less abandoned. Not a castle, but to someone from the United States, you’d have a hard time telling the difference.
“I said it was less abandoned. By that I really just mean there were fewer cobwebs and bats, and the drapes were in better repair. There were lights burning in some of the windows, although they were hard to see in the fog and rain, but there was no other car anywhere nearby. The trees were nearly bent in half with the force of the wind. I got out of the car and immediately lost my hat—the one I bought for Eddie’s funeral thirty years ago. There was even a time I might have been Toon enough to be more upset about that than anything else, but the tears on my face, which were hard to see through the rain, were all for Roger as I rang the bell.
“The door opened. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it was not what I saw. Standing there, staring at me, was a rabbit. Almost identical to Roger, except for three things. In the first place, he was taller—close to six feet, if you counted his ears—if a little stooped over with age. In the second place, there was none of the humor and joy in life I had always seen in Roger’s face, even at the end of his life. It was like all of the mirth and whimsy had been drained out of him. The third thing was his outfit. Even when we got married, or the one time he was nominated for an Academy Award and we went to the ceremony, Roger’s idea of getting dressed up was an oversized blue sports coat over his overalls. But the man—rabbit—standing in front of me was wearing a pressed, tailored, expensive black suit. He just…looked at me, and I looked back at him. I didn’t know what to say.
“He finally spoke first, the only words he ever spoke to me. ‘My son is in that room. He is dead.’
“It…honestly shocked me more than anything. Roger didn’t have any family, not that I knew of. Except for his uncle Thumper, he never talked about them. But the old rabbit spoke with such conviction—and he looked so much like Roger—that I knew he had to be telling the truth. I couldn’t think what else to do, so I just followed him into the house. He led me into a room and pointed, and…there was the coffin. I stepped up to it and looked in, and there was Roger. I—I remembered Eddie’s funeral, and Dolores’ the year before that, and even further back I remember poor Marvin Acme’s funeral. I remember that all three of them, lying in the coffins, looked…peaceful, like death had come as a relief to them, even with the way Marvin died. But there was none of that on Roger’s face. In death, he looked almost as hard as his father did. He was also wearing a perfectly tailored suit. I had a moment of wondering if it was really Roger at all.
“When I turned around, I couldn’t help but shriek in surprise. Standing behind me was a whole sea of black clad figures that couldn’t have been anything but Roger’s family. None of his friends were there—not Edward and Samirah, not Baby Herman and Benny, not even Betty—just this sea of rabbits in black clothing with hard expressions. They were all staring at me with…I can’t describe it. It almost looked like…anger. Or hatred. I didn’t know why. None of them had ever met me. I thought maybe it was because they blamed me for that, or maybe because I was human, but…it was the oddest thing. I kept getting confused. They were—obviously Roger’s family. They always looked just like him, and just like the body in the coffin. It’s only that they seemed to be flickering back and forth from being rabbits to being human.
“And then, one by one, they just…faded away. It was like they’d been drawn with Acme’s Disappearing/Reappearing Ink—just vanishing like they had never been there, until I was alone with the coffin. And then—and then the coffin faded, too. I grabbed for it, but there was nothing there to grab. I was completely alone.
“I started sobbing then. I had been upset before, but I hadn’t cried like that in years, and I couldn’t stop. I ran out of Winkstead Hall, and I jumped into the car, and I drove away. I—I never should have been driving in that condition, but I was too upset to think. The storm and the fog were both even worse than before, and I could have sworn that the trees were vanishing, too—and the buildings—and the fences. I couldn’t see any landmarks, and I guess I must have forgotten something about the road, because the next thing I knew I had driven into a ditch.
“I got out of the car. I didn’t have a phone with me—Roger loved gadgets like that, but I didn’t ever have anyone I needed to be in touch with all the time like he did, so I only had the landline back home and I hadn’t thought to bring Roger’s phone—so I couldn’t call for help. I thought…Winkstead Hall is just on the edge of Chigley, and even if I had driven away from there I ought to be close enough to one of the other communities in Trumptonshire that I could find someone. I stumbled away from the car and found that the rain had let up, but the fog was still everywhere, so it was hard to see more than a foot in front of my face. It…seemed like I was in the middle of some kind of field. I called out, but it was like the air just…swallowed my voice.
“After a moment, though, the fog…didn’t exactly clear up, but at least got a little thinner. You know how in cartoons like that, you can always see…shapes, if not actual landmarks? That’s where I was. And I could see that I was not in an empty field. I was in a graveyard. Probably the one Roger would be buried in soon, I thought, and that made me even more weepy. A little part of me thought something was amiss, though, because I didn’t remember passing a graveyard on my way to Winkstead Hall. I spun around, trying to get my bearings, trying to figure out where the hall or the town or anything was…but I couldn’t see anything.
“I…I tried to look at the nearest tombstone. It seemed better than looking at nothing, and I thought maybe I would see where the rest of the Rabbits were buried, because there must be some here, right? Otherwise they wouldn’t have brought him. I started reading it. It said ‘Sacred to the memory of…’ but I couldn’t make out the name. When I looked back up, the letters…vanished, right before my eyes. And then the tombstone disappeared, too. I looked at the next one…and that vanished, too. And then I noticed that the graves—both graves—were open. They hadn’t been dug up. They were just square, open graves, with coffins in the bottom, but the coffins were empty. Even in the middle of a cemetery, I was still completely alone.
“I started getting frantic at this point. I thought maybe I was finally losing my mind. Tombstones don’t…that isn’t how things work in the real world, and this was not Toon Town. I started running through the cemetery. I think I was trying to trip over a tombstone, because at least then I would know it was actually there. Even disappearing ink doesn’t make something gone, it just hides it. But every time I ran at one, it would be completely gone before I even made contact, and I just kept running straight. I never seemed to fall in any of the empty holes, or somehow I went around them every time, no matter how hard I tried. I screamed, and the sound got swallowed up again. I was starting to feel like I might have been the only person left in the world.
“And then I saw a tombstone—a double tombstone—ahead of me, and this one didn’t disappear the closer I got. There was…something sculpted onto the top, some kind of decoration. I thought they might have been angel wings, but I don’t know for sure now. Below it was the same open grave, the same empty coffin, but this time I saw the names before they disappeared. It was Roger’s name—and my name. As I watched, Roger’s name faded away, leaving mine all alone. I grabbed at the stone, trying to—I don’t know. Trying to keep his name there, maybe. Obviously it didn’t work, but my hands made contact with the decoration at the top, and somehow I broke a piece of it off.”
She laid something on the desk—a piece of masonry, a large one, that definitely looked like it could have come off the top of a tombstone. Daffy barely even glanced at it, his eyes mostly fixed on Jessica as she continued. “It was like I stood in the middle of a completely empty field, all alone, with just the tombstone. Even Roger’s name was gone, and I—I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t remember where I had left the car, and I couldn’t see it from where I was. All I could think of was the night Judge Doom captured Eddie and me—the night he spilled the Dip in front of Benny’s tires and we went bouncing across the road. Only this time, there was no one to save me. I sobbed, and I started running.
“And then—I was so sure I heard Roger’s voice. ‘Turn left,’ he said. That was it, just ‘Turn left.’ It was like he was standing behind me, shouting it to me. I know it sounds ridiculous, but that’s what he said. I didn’t know what else to do, so I did. I turned sharply to the left and kept running. Suddenly my feet hit tarmac, not dirt, and I stumbled. And then—nothing.”
Daffy blinked once as she came to a stop. “And that’th when the car hit you.”
“Yes,” Jessica said. Her brows knit together briefly in obvious confusion, but she pulled herself together. “I remember a second of headlights and then nothing until I woke up in the hospital.”
“I thee.” Literally. Daffy would have sworn he had just watched the events unfolding over Jessica’s shoulder as she spoke, like a cartoon flashback or daydream, but…far more realistic than any cartoon he had ever seen. The realistic part didn’t make any sense, though, so he elected to ignore it.
Jessica stared at him. “So? Was it real?”
“Of courthe it wathn’t real,” Daffy said impatiently. “At leatht it wathn’t thomething that lathtth. Maybe you had a thpooky exthperienthe, but obviouthly Roger’th fine now.”
“What are you talking about?” Jessica’s voice sharpened in anger.
“Come on, Jeththica.” Daffy threw up his hands. “You thaid Roger wath dead?”
“Yes. He died last year. Did you not hear?” Jessica’s lovely face looked stricken. “Did Baby Herman—is he even still the mayor? Did he not let people know?”
“He’th thtill the mayor.” Daffy vaguely remembered seeing him in a hand-waving argument with Benny the Cab about a year back, and if he thought hard enough, he could just about recall Benny saying something about it not being a cartoon, but he hadn’t been able to hear more before his bus started to pull away and he’d had to run to catch it. “But of courthe he wouldn’t have bothered to tell anyone. Toonth ‘die’ all the time. It’th never permanent. You know that. There’th no way to kill a Toon, and aging never thtickth. Tho if you thtill think he’th dead, then he’th got thome reathon for pretending thith hard, and—”
“You don’t get it, do you?” Jessica said angrily, shoving to her feet. Daffy, startled, nearly tipped backwards out of his chair and only just caught himself on the edge of the desk before he fell. “That isn’t how this works here, Mister Duck.”
Daffy got to his feet, letting his own anger overcome his reason. “Now lithten here, thithter—” he began.
That was as far as he got before Jessica slapped him so hard he was startled his beak didn’t orbit around his head. “You’ll see. You’ll understand soon,” she vowed. “Just you wait. Don’t bother me unless you’re willing to take me seriously.”
With that, she sashayed out of his office in a huff, slamming the door behind her hard enough that the glass rattled in its frame.
Daffy huffed and snapped off the recorder. As he was reaching for the chunk of masonry, the door opened and Porky poked his head in. “Eh-w-w-was that Jessica R-Rabbit? She looked u-upset.”
“Yeah, that wath her. She thayth Roger ith dead.”
“Well, that’s eh-w-w, eh-w-w, eh-w-w, eh-w-w—eh, that’s unusual.” Porky stepped fully into the room. “Toons don’t eh-s-stay dead.”
“That’th what I thaid. She didn’t exthactly believe me.” Daffy picked up the stone she had left behind and studied it.
“Eh-w-w-what’s that?”
“Thith might have been from the top of hith tombthtone. She thought it wath an angel’th wing, but…” Daffy turned it over a couple of times.
Porky frowned. “A eh-f, eh-f, eh-faerie’s wing, maybe. I-it’s too skinny for an angel.”
Daffy shook his head and traced one edge of it, noting the only legible word of the top of the marker that had come away with the decoration: FORGOTTEN. “It’th not a wing at all. It’th a rabbit’th ear.”