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Ursula was swimming through the corals with 

her best friend Flotsam. Well, Flotsam was a 

bat, so technically he was flying. They were 

playing hide-and-go-seek and tag with other 

random fishes. When the waters started to get 

dark, the pair headed home.  

  Their home was one of the biggest in the 

land. Ursulas’ father was Poseidon and the king 

of the merpeople.   When they went through 

the front doors of their underwater home, they 

could smell the delicious food they were going 

to have for dinner.   As they swam through the 

Great Hall, they could hear the laughter and 

voices of their family and the clinking of 

dishes. They went through the meal laughing 

along with the jokes and chatter of the family 

and going through three helpings of dinner. 

The next morning Ursula rose to an odd thing. 

She didn’t smell the baking of bread wafting up 

through her window from the bakery. Curious 

as to why, she swam down to the kitchen to see 

what had happened. According to the house 

cook, the baker hadn’t shown up for work at all. 

The cook was sort of confused because the 

baker always showed up for work no matter 

what. The cook was contemplating calling the 

local mermaid detectives. Ursula told him to 

wait a little bit so that she can go to the bakers 

house and see if he was sick or something.  

Ursula had almost reached the Bakers house when the 

Mermaid Detectives rushed past her. The Bakers wife 

came out of the house when she heard the ruckus.   She 

was crying, sobbing and yelling at the Detectives for not 

getting to her house sooner. According to the Bakers 

wife, the Baker went about his normal morning routine. 

She was still in bed when he was leaving. Just after she 

heard the door close, she heard a trumpet playing some 

melody and her then husbands scream. After she had 

run to the door and seen nothing, she tried calling her 

husbands’ name over and over and never got a reply. 

That was when she called the Detectives. 

The Detectives went through the normal procedure and 

questioning but the wife knew no more than 

what she had already stated. The merman who was 

leading the investigation was a friend of Ursula’s’ 

family, Grimsby. He was sort of like a grandfather to 

Ursula and with his white beard and his tobacco pipe; 

he sure looked like he could be someone’s grandfather.

After Grimsby had taken care of the distraught wife, he 

turned to Ursula. He told her that she does not need to 

be around this kind of drama. Grimsby told Ursula to 

go back home. Somewhat irritated, Ursula headed for 

the house. 

Later that night, after dinner, Ursula swam 

down into the den. She was surprised to hear 

Grimsby’s voice. Even more surprising was the 

fact that he was talking about the case to her 

father. More specifically, he was telling 

Poseidon to make sure that Ursula didn’t 

interfere with this case because he thought it 

could be dangerous. This made Ursula a little 

mad. 

She waited until her father had left and then went to talk 

to Grimsby. She knew that in order to get him to let her 

help on the case, he could not know that she was actually 

going to go do her own investigating. So she started 

asking him what he thought had happened to the Baker 

since she had been there when Grimsby had questioned 

the Bakers wife.   Grimsby said that it was too soon to tell 

what exactly was happening since the mernapper had not 

left any evidence behind besides the bizarre trumpet 

noise. But Grimsby had no idea if the perpetrator himself 

had blown a trumpet or if it was just a coincidence that a 

trumpet had sounded when the Baker got taken.   Either 

way, Ursula was very curious and had no intention of 

obeying her father. 

Late that night, Ursula was awoken by what she thought 

was trumpet sounding. Immediately reminded of the 

conversation she had with Grimsby the night before, she 

sprung out of bed and swam hard to get to the center of 

the hubbub. She ended up outside with majority of the 

house. Apparently a night guard had gone missing. 

According to a maid, she was just heading up the stairs 

with the cup of warm milk when she looked out the 

window and saw a huge shark, possibly a megalodon, 

throwing the guard in a bag. Nobody believed her 

because sharks were pretty peaceful with the merpeople. 

A megalodon were out of the question because several 

years prior, Poseidon had made a treaty with them telling 

agreeing to stay off one another’s land. The maids’ 

statement was taken but hastily put aside because of its 

unbelievable content. 

Hearing this new information, Ursula and 

Flotsam knew they needed to go investigate. 

So, they asked Poseidon if they could go take a 

walk because that had been “cooped up all 

day”. He only agreed after they begged and 

promised they would stay in the backyard.

As Ursula was getting ready to leave, she ran 

into who father, who proceeded to loudly forbid 

her to leave the house under any circumstances 

unless she was with Grimsby or himself. 

Frustrated, Ursula gave her reluctant agreement. 

As soon as her fathers’ back was turned, she 

bolted out the back door. Flotsam met her at the 

edge of their property with her bag. They 

decided to go to the place the local kids hang 

out, the run down carousel. 

At the carousel, they talked to the local kids 

about if they had heard of or seen any extra-

large shark in area, possibly stirring up trouble. 

One mermaid had. She said that her older 

brother had been on a fancy date with his lady 

and a big shark had been in there asking for fish 

sticks. He got kicked out and almost had the 

cops called on him because eating fish sticks is a 

form of cannibalism. Ursula thanked the 

mermaid and left the carousel. 

Ursula and Flotsam were swimming home when Flotsam 

thought he saw his brother flying into in to a local coffee 

shop. Confused, he asked Ursula if she knew his brother 

was back in town. She had no idea.   The last Flotsam had 

heard his brother, Jetsam, was locked up in the Panama 

Canal Prison. He was put there because he was found 

guilty of several charges of robbery. Flotsam had not 

realized his brother was out jail and did not think it was 

much of a coincidence that Jetsam was in town when all 

the kidnappings took place.   Flotsam wanted to follow 

Jetsam but Ursula reminded him that she had to get home 

before her dad realized she was gone. 

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