Chapter 1 The Bedtime Story It was a crisp cool evening The sun was beginning to set in the big backyard and Bee a co-agent of the Fenced-in-area Law Enforcement Agency or f l e a for short was capping off a day of keeping the peace from fence post to fence post with some super satisfying paperwork November twenty-ninth Incident Report number one-thousand nine hundred seventy-six Bee muttered as she filled in the nice orderly lines 5
on her clipboard The Case of the Missing Spiderweb She paused to savor the moment Solved by Agent Bee Yeah yeah Flea Bee's best friend and co agent was pouting Rub it in why don't ya She was sitting on a beam in Shedquarters the garden shed the insects used as a home base curled up in a big armchair made from a nibbled mushroom and staring miserably at the wall Bee hadn't meant to gloat but since beginning her work in backyard law enforcement she'd carefully followed every policy and procedure She'd done mountains of meticulous paperwork But she'd solved hardly any cases Flea was usually the one doing the exciting work of stopping bug burglaries and rescuing lost ladybugs In fact 6
just that morning Flea had heroically prevented an attempted plant murder by brushing a fungal parasite off a lavender leaf before it could do its dirty work Sure Bee was on top of routines and regulations but Flea was the heart and soul and namesake of the f l e a She seemed to have forgotten that though And all because Arabella Arachnid had been so grateful to Bee for finding her web which hadn’t really been missing just see-through and kind of hard to spot that she’d insisted on spinning six stylish spider-silk leg warmers as a thank-you gift Bee had been wearing the leg warmers proudly all afternoon but now she began to peel them off hoping she could tuck them away in the corner for the night without Flea seeing 7
