120517

Froggy Went A-Courting

I couldn't see a thing. It was as dark as the inside of a dog. No, it was darker than that. It was as dark as the inside of a dog that's been swallowed whole by a lion, or a bigger dog. (Not likely, that one, cos the dog it looked like the inside of was a pretty big one.) Maybe it had been swallowed by an anaconda. Then I realized my eyes were squeezed shut. I opened them, looked around. Still couldn't see a thing. I began to wonder if I was inside a dog. I tried to reach out and see if I could touch my surroundings, not that I wanted to if I was inside a dog, but my arms wouldn't move. That wasn't the worst of it. They hurt like hell. My brain sent me a telegram marked Urgent: I was tied up. Also, it seemed I had been hit on the head, if my throbbing headache was anything to go by. It was. I know things like that. My name is Deadbolt, Hasp Deadbolt. I'm a P.I.

Time passed, during which I might've been unconscious. Suddenly, someone ripped a hood off my head. It was ... a woman who looked kind of familiar. Her name was ... Rumplestiltskin? I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head violently. Opened up: her again. Loretta von Meier, widow of the unlamented Oskar the Butcher? No. Where did I know her from? Something or someone gnawed through the ropes binding my hands and feet. I slumped to the floor. She was wearing blood-red boots with 5 inch heels, which meant she was short and didn't like it. I turned my head to look up at her out of the corner of my eye. Was she? It couldn't be, but it was! Gertrude "Red" Wolfe, timber baron(ess) and widowed child bride of her own grandmother's ex-husband, author of a popular series of novels for young predators, and so on. She was also the last woman I wanted to see in a situation like this. We had dated, back in the day. It had not ended well.

"Gertrude," I said weakly.

She got straight to the point.

"I'll get straight to the point, Deadbolt," she growled, nudging me in the ribs with the toe of her boot. "I disliked you the day I threw you out and I still don't like you. I never will."

I struggled to a seated position and rubbed my eyes. "Then why are we hanging out?"

"We are not...!"

"And why not come to my office," I interrupted, "during business hours, to tell me that. Or just send me a certified letter. Or wait, I have a better idea. You could send a singing Gandergram™. Geese come cheap." It was taking her longer than usual to call me an idiot.

"Shut up, you idiot, and get up off the floor."

I did, and looked around. I saw a plain wooden chair and took it. I knew she wanted something. She wasn't one to spend time on verbal abuse, or even the physical kind, for its own sake. She wanted me to talk. Well, good luck with that, sister, I shouted inside my head, good luck with that.

She paced back and forth in front of me, 4 feet and 8 inches (plus five) of frustrated womanhood. That much I could see, but she wasn't talking, not with her mouth. Yes, she had plenty to say, but I wasn't listening with my ears. If that was what she wanted she was out of luck. My ears were off, shut down, disconnected, flopping weakly on the dusty floor like fish on a hot tin roof. Well, I guess those tin-roof fish would be jumping pretty energetically, and besides, my ears weren't really detached at all. It's called metaphor. Anyway, her outfit was red from tip to toe, and it left little room for concealed weapons or imagination. My soliloquy on audition had not been much of a distraction. Back and forth, back and forth she paced. Her discourse was on a familiar theme, and it was what had brought us together all those years ago. She could've been a glass of red wine, full to the lips, if you could blow a glass with curves like that. It was too early for wine. Sweat trickled into my eyes. My vision blurred. I tried to blink it out, but it was useless. Now, with vision occluded, olfaction came to the fore. Her scent wound around my nostrils like a string of sausages around a chained dog. A starving one. I had to change the subject. I had to say something, anything. I didn't have to tell her what she wanted to know.

"You win," I rasped. I cleared my throat and tried again. "You win. What do you want?"

"Someone has taken my frog," she said, "my dear speckled frog." So it was that way, was it? An amphibian was something of a comedown from a wolf, not to mention me. Still, if a frog was good enough for a princess... I am not prejudiced against the differently slimed.

"When did you last see him or her?"

Finally the words came. He'd been sunning himself on a speckled log, floating in a lilypond on their private estate.

"Then he was ... just gone." There were tears in her eyes. That's not something you see every day; she was really gone on this frog. "All that was left was his four brothers!"

His. Four. Brothers. Even in this enlightened day, you cannot marry five frogs. I told her that, in the kindest possible way.

"You can't marry five frogs! Not at the same time," I added.

"Marry! What the hell are you talking about?! They're dinner. I want you to find the missing frog before 5 p.m. today. I need all five, and they have to go in the marinade by five."

This was the Gertrude I knew and loved. I told her my fee, and she agreed to pay. There was a 50% surcharge for kidnapping me, but I didn't break it down for her. She paid half the total up front, gave me taxi fare home and directions to her estate, and was gone.

Her parting words were "Give my regards to your lovely wife." Coming from her, this was as good as a threat. I'd keep my appointment.

After a stop at home to change and eat lunch I was on my way. This rigamarole seemed like a lot of trouble to go to for a nice dinner. There might be more to it than the simple desire on the part of a diminutive wealthy spoiled widow to show a new lover, whoever he might be, a good time. Still, that wasn't my affair. I simply had to catch one wayward amphibian. And try to figure out what was really happening.

#

My thoughts kept me busy, and the cityscape had not registered on my consciousness. Now, the rolling hills covered with cornfields and cow pastures, through which I was driving, took me back to a simpler time. Rope swings and leaf piles, fallen-tree pirate ships, frog ponds and – here it was, "Lupine Farm." I turned in between white-painted posts and followed new blacktop in a succession of sweeping curves. They kept on coming, left, right, left, right. The drive was so long Gertrude should have posted a sign saying "Last gas for __ miles," and the variety of exotic wildlife I saw behind miles of picket fences really made me wonder why she was messing around with batrachians. Despite the unremitting evidence of luxury betrayed by the grounds, the house was still an over-the-top surprise. Three-story tapered columns held up a porch bigger than the block I grew up on. I was pretty sure she had a bedroom for every square foot of space in my house. When would you have time to even visit all of those rooms, much less clean them?

The pond was out back. One of the servants, an expressionless fellow named Lug, showed me the way. The place was smaller than I expected, no more than 30 feet across, and probably not much more than a foot deep. I could see the bottom halfway out to the middle. Cattails rimmed the pool, dragonflies hovered, it was an idyllic spot. And here I was, accessory before the fact. I asked Lug a few probing questions.

"So where is this log where the frog disappeared?" He pointed to a log so small it was hardly more than a stick. It protruded from a small stand of cattails. I didn't see any frogs.

"I don't see any frogs."

Lug shrugged expressively, as if to say that it wasn't his job to find dinner. I made a shooing motion, and he headed back up the hill. I wasn't going to get any useful information out of him anyway.

I walked slowly around the pond. I saw one frog, of which only the eyes were above water. It was speckled.

"Hey," I said, "what do you know about the lady who owns the big house?"

The frog blinked, ducked under the surface of the water, and swam out towards the middle of the pond.

"She told me you and your brothers are dinner tonight," I shouted, "all five of you!" Soon there were five pairs of eyes bobbing in the ripples that disturbed the pool. A bubble burst.

"We're listening," it gurgled.

"Aren't you worried? You need to get out of here," I said.

"Kill her," a bubble said. "You'll be rewarded handsomely," another continued. One of the pairs of eyes blinked. Then they all vanished as footsteps squelched behind me. I turned to see Lug, rubber boots in one hand and a long-handled net in the other.

"Your tools, Sir," he rumbled, like Lurch in the old Addams Family TV show. I looked back at the pond. There was not an amphibian in sight.

"Right. OK, give me a few, and I'll bring them up to the house." I waited till he'd gone, then leaned over the pond. "I'm not going to catch you, but something's wrong here. Why does she want you dead?" Just then I heard a very familiar sort of click.

"Reach for the sky," one of the frogs said from behind me. Cold metal pressed against my leg, just above my heel. I thought about jumping out of the way.

"Don't even think about jumping out of the way," the voice continued, "I'm a crack shot."

I raised my hands and waited for the frog's next move.

#

I slogged up to the back door of the house, leaned the net up against the wall, and took off the boots. I went inside, and soon felt clammy toes and the barrel of a small revolver drop away from my ankle. I kept on walking. I was in a straight, low-ceilinged hall paneled in dark wood. Just inside the door was a row of pegs at about shoulder height. They were empty. My shoes were still down by the pond, and I moved silently past several closed doors. Light streamed out of an open door on the right. I stopped just before the door and listened, but heard nothing. As I quickly stepped past I looked inside. There was light because it had a window, and the curtains were open. It appeared to be a food preparation room, and an open door on the other side showed part of the kitchen. I saw no one, but as I passed the door I heard a tiny shrill shriek. Moments later, a mouse dressed as a maid darted out of the room. She carried an inch-long rolling pin. She started down the hall in the direction I'd been going, stopped, looked around for a moment, and then ran back into the room. Thank God for ornate woodwork I thought, as I lowered myself to the floor. I needed to move fast, and I did. There didn't seem to be too many living in the big house, and I made it all the way to a second-floor balcony running around a ballroom without being observed. A long table of dark wood was shoved against the wall, under a row of stuffed animal heads. Several of them looked familiar, but I couldn't place them. That black duck now, he closely resembled a wacky character I used to know. Danny? Dally? I thought I'd heard he'd moved out to Hollywood. There were identifying tags under the heads, but I was too far away to read them. I didn't see any dining-room chairs, but a massive block of wood, practically writhing with carved serpents and other monsters, loomed over the right end of the room. On it lounged Gertrude, lost on the massive block, lost, for that matter, in her long dress and dozen petticoats of various shades of pink. She was apparently alone. I was about to vault over the railing and confront her, when a herald announced

"Prince Duke of Fewmettia!"

A tall young man wearing a military-style dress uniform covered in enough gold braid to make a field of sunflowers strode into view. He approached the left side of the throne, and leaned down to kiss Gertrude. It was a long kiss. A very long one. It involved quite a bit of hands running through hair. Speaking of hands, one of mine was hurting. Apparently I'd been gripping the railing for a good while.

Finally, they broke apart.

"Darling," he began, "I have missed you terribly."

Gertrude trailed her fingernails across his cheek. "And I, you. I've missed you so much, and I just can't get anyone around here to do what needs to be done. It's nice to have a real man in the castle again."

My God, she actually batted her eyes at him. And he was eating it up. "Anything! Anything for you!"

"In that case," she said, leaning close to his ear, "in that case, here's what I want you to do." I missed most of the rest of what she said. My hearing hasn't been what it once was ever since I solved the case of the belltower beheading. But I caught a few words. She did mention frogs, and legs, and something about garlic. She was so emphatic, though, that it reinforced my feeling that this mania about killing the frogs was not about a desire for French food.

They nuzzled a bit, and then Gertrude shooed the prince away.

"Marry me," he said, but without emphasis, as if this was something he had said many times before.

"When I've taken care of my husband," she replied. He left, but I really didn't notice. Gertrude, married. Somehow I had never expected that.

On my side of the balcony, out of Gertrude's line of sight, gold and crimson drapery hung down almost to the floor. It was securely tied at the top, and I thought it would hold my weight. Over the railing I went, and descended hand over hand to the floor. Gertrude hadn't noticed me, so I stood by the arras for a moment. The guard at the door must be on the outside, because I didn't see him. I didn't see anyone else in the room, but Gertrude was talking quietly to herself. I moved silently closer until I was only a few feet away. I realized that she wasn't talking to herself. Someone was answering. It was the frog who had snuck into the castle with me. The frog was sitting on one of the arms of the throne, pistol trained on Gertrude.

"You know I would never cook you and eat you," she said. "I respect you too much for that."

The frog sneered. "It was never about that, Gertie. You actually thought I was in love with you? You?! You're not my kind of girl. No, it was always about all of this from the beginning." He waved his free hand to encompass the house and, I suppose, the entire estate. I could tell he was ready to make his move. I leaped around to the front of the throne.

"Freeze!" I shouted. Several things happened simultaneously. I tripped on something lying on the floor and lunged wildly forward, trying to keep my balance. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the frog shift his aim and fire twice where I would've been if I hadn't tripped. Gertrude slapped some kind of switch on the side of the throne, and the frog shot straight up in the air with a loud twang.

"Ribbiiiiiit!" he screamed.

Gertrude whipped out a machine pistol and emptied the clip into the air. The frog's scream was abruptly cut off. She looked at me.

"Drop it," I said. She let the machine pistol fall to the floor and then stood up, never taking her eyes off of me.

"You saw what happened," she said. "It was self-defense."

I raised one eyebrow. "I didn't hear him firing any shots while he was up in the sky," I said carefully. I swallowed. "You married the frog?" Even though Alma was twice the woman Gertrude was, and I didn't regret a thing, I was embarrassed to be bested at the game of love by a mere amphibian.

"He didn't turn into a prince like he promised," she said, "but in some ways he was twice the man you are. He was a mover. He would have gone far. Problem was he wanted to do it over my dead body. But there were no flies on him."

Obviously. "Look, I have to take you in. You killed a man. Well, you killed your husband. We'll let a jury sort out whether it was self-defense."

"Hasp, you're a good man. And I care for you. That's what makes this hard. But you've forgotten one thing." She was stepping back toward the throne and moving around to the other side. I followed, keeping her in my sights, though she probably knew it would be tough for me to shoot her. I didn't know if I could do it. Then she slapped the throne and I realized what I had forgotten. I'd forgotten what a devious creature she was. I remembered, while plummeting through darkness after the trap door opened up beneath my feet.

#

I was in a hospital bed. Alma sat beside me. The room was very brightly lit. I blinked rapidly, my eyes tearing up. "What happened to Gertrude?"

Alma frowned. What she said I'm reluctant to print here in view of her reputation for gentility and equanimity. "No one has been able to find her," she went on, "she gave the cops the slip and may be out of the country by now for all I know. She tried to kill you. She better hope that I never see her again!"

It was on the tip of my tongue to object. When I lay unconscious in the pit she easily could have finished me off. And then there was what she said at the end. I like to think it was the truth. (Not the part about the frog being a better man than I am. The other part.) She had no reason to lie to me then, unlike all those other times. I could have said a lot of things, but I kept my mouth shut. Instead I took Alma's hand and squeezed it.

"I've always hated working domestic disputes," I said, "they're messy." She squeezed my hand back, stood up, and moved out of my field of view. Sergeant Satyrday took her place and opened his notebook. He shook his head and tapped his pencil against his lips.

"Deadbolt, Deadbolt. When are you going to learn you can't play in the big leagues. I mean, this guy was a frog! A real tough guy. Maybe even a cream puff."

"Keep on laughing wiseguy," I said. He had been sweet on Gertrude as well, but she had never given him the time of day. "Have you caught her yet?" He made a sour face, then proceeded to take me through the whole sordid episode. Two times. Whatever. He wasn't smart enough to catch her. With my client guilty of murder and on the run, I wasn't getting paid. I figured that the only satisfaction I was likely to get was to make his face turn red. Turned out I was wrong. Gertrude sent me a nice check, drawn on a Swiss bank. With it came a note.

"Hasp,

You didn't really take out my husband, and I think you were trying to doublecross me. Still, I felt guilty about dropping you in the hole. I know you can use the money, raising a family on what a P.I. makes. See you soon,

Gertie"

I cashed the check, but didn't show Alma the letter. It would have been an unwelcome distraction, with the baby due in a couple of months. We're decorating the nursery with animals, but no frogs.

###

More Hasp Deadbolt: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/42875  



Lyrics to one of many different versions of this song:


Frog went a courtin' and he did ride, uh, huh
Frog went a courtin' and he did ride, uh, huh
Frog went a courtin' and he did ride
With a sword and a pistol by his side
Uh, huh, uh, huh, uh, huh

He rode right up to Miss. Mousie's door, uh, huh
He rode right up to Miss. Mousie's door, uh, huh
He rode right up to Miss. Mousie's door
Gave three loud raps and a very big roar
Uh, huh, uh, huh, uh, huh

Said Miss. Mouse, are you within, uh, huh?
Said Miss. Mouse, are you within, uh, huh?
Said Miss. Mouse, are you within?
Miss. Mousie said, "I sit and spin
Uh, huh, uh, huh, uh, huh"

Took Miss. Mousie on his knee, uh, huh
Took Miss. Mousie on his knee, uh, huh
Took Miss. Mousie on his knee
Said Miss Mousie, "Will you marry me
Uh, huh, uh, huh, uh, huh?"

Without my Uncle Rat's consent, uh, huh
Without my Uncle Rat's consent, uh, huh
Without my Uncle Rat's consent
I wouldn't marry the President
Uh, huh, uh, huh, uh, huh

Uncle Rat laughed and he shook his fat sides, uh, huh
Uncle Rat laughed and he shook his fat sides, uh, huh
Uncle Rat laughed and he shook his fat sides
To think his niece would be a bride
Uh, huh, uh, huh, uh, huh

Uncle Rat went running downtown, uh, huh
Uncle Rat went running downtown, uh, huh
Uncle Rat went running downtown
To buy his niece a wedding gown
Uh, huh, uh, huh, uh, huh

Where shall the wedding supper be, uh, huh?
Where shall the wedding supper be, uh, huh?
Where shall the wedding supper be?
Way down yonder in the hollow tree
Uh, huh, uh, huh, uh, huh

Where shall the wedding supper be, uh, huh?
Where shall the wedding supper be, uh, huh?
Where shall the wedding supper be?
Fried mosquito and a black-eyed pea
Uh, huh, uh, huh, uh, huh

First to come in was a flyin' moth, uh, huh
First to come in was a flyin' moth, uh, huh
First to come in was a flyin' moth
She laid out the table cloth
Uh, huh, uh, huh, uh, huh

Next to come in was a Juney bug, uh, huh
Next to come in was a Juney bug, uh, huh
Next to come in was a Juney bug
She brought in the water jug
Uh, huh, uh, huh, uh, huh

Next to come in was a bumbly bee, uh, huh
Next to come in was a bumbly bee, uh, huh
Next to come in was a bumbly bee
Sat mosquito on his knee
Uh, huh, uh, huh, uh, huh

Next to come in was a broken back flea, uh, huh
Next to come in was a broken back flea, uh, huh
Next to come in was a broken back flea
Danced a jig with the bumbly bee
Uh, huh, uh, huh, uh, huh

Next to come in was Mrs. Cow, uh, huh
Next to come in was Mrs. Cow, uh, huh
Next to come in was Mrs. Cow
She tried to dance but she didn't know how
Uh, huh, uh, huh, uh, huh

Next to come in was a little black tick, uh, huh
Next to come in was a little black tick, uh, huh
Next to come in was a little black tick
She ate so much it made her sick
Uh, huh, uh, huh, uh, huh

Next to come in was the big black snake, uh, huh
Next to come in was the big black snake, uh, huh
Next to come in was the big black snake
Ate up all of the wedding cake
Uh, huh, uh, huh, uh, huh

Next to come in was the old gray cat, uh, huh
Next to come in was the old gray cat, uh, huh
Next to come in was the old gray cat
Swallowed the mouse and ate up the rat
Uh, huh, uh, huh, uh, huh

Mr.Frog went a-hoppin' up over the brooke, uh, huh
Mr.Frog went a-hoppin' up over the brooke, uh, huh
Mr.Frog went a-hoppin' up over the brooke
A lily white dove came and swallowed him up
Uh, huh, uh, huh, uh, huh

Little piece of corn bread layin' on the shelf, uh, huh
Little piece of corn bread layin' on the shelf, uh, huh
Little piece of corn bread layin' on the shelf
If you want anymore you can sing it yourself
Uh, huh, uh, huh, uh, huh