020320b

Last year, for the holidays (which include our mid-winter birthdays), my wife and I bought each other books. Actually, I bought them all, so I only bought authors we both like. This was not difficult. I bought murder mysteries by Elly Griffiths, Colin Cotterill, and several others. This year, we decided to do it separately. She was too busy to tell me what she wanted, except that she wanted a Kindle, so I picked some safe options. I bought her the new novel by Jamie Lee Moyer, "Brightfall," which is a retelling of the myth about Robin Hood and Maid Marian. I also bought her two books by Becky Chambers. We had read one by her last year, an entertaining science fiction novel called something like "a visit to a small and angry planet," so this year, I bought the two sequels: "a closed and common orbit" and "something of a spaceborn few." Of course, the first of these didn't show up, so she couldn't read the second one either. I emailed the bookseller about the missing book and they blew me off. Why do you put somebody like that in customer service? (I realize that it is probably a family business, and that was most likely the bad-tempered spouse.) Anyway I emailed back to say how displeased I was, and another person refunded my money. So I didn't put their store on my blacklist, and I won't tell you who they are. I ordered another copy from someone else. Which is still not here yet. She got me a collection by Algernon Blackwood, a recent novel by Tim Powers, and one by Gene Wolfe. And I get to borrow her Kindle.

012620b

killer is the toad
seems he was slurped up
at a distance

121717

The Purloined Letter

My name is Deadbolt, Hasp Deadbolt. I’m a P.I. I try to stay away from family disputes, but somehow that is the kind of sordid crime that people persist in bringing me. I have to eat, and I’m not comfortable living off of Alma’s largesse. Fortunately for my bank account, this year had been very busy. In fact, I hardly had any time to pay the bills and buy groceries. For instance, I returned from my last court appearance in connection with the pumpkin murder case, to find a handsome young woman sitting on the bench outside my office door. “Good afternoon,” I said to her, “are you waiting for me?” She indicated that she was hoping to speak to Mr. Deadbolt about a potential case, and I invited her in to discuss it. It seems that she had mislaid a letter, a rather steamy love letter, and it had fallen into the wrong hands.

“My lover sent me that letter, Mr. Deadbolt, and I’m not ashamed of it. Unfortunately, his wife probably would take a dim view of the intimate nature of our relationship.”

Blackmail. One of the oldest tricks in the book. Not that there really is any such book, but if there were, blackmail would be covered pretty near the beginning, and not just alphabetically. She wanted me to find the blackmailer and steal the letter back.

“I can’t break the law Miss...?”

“Daw. But you can call me Marjorie.”

“And what about your friend?”

“His name is John Sprat, but everyone calls him Jack. His wife is horrible. She’s this domineering, fat, selfish...”

“I get the picture Miss Daw. Let me do some scouting, and I’ll see whether I can find a satisfactory solution to your problem.” So it was agreed. I got a little more information from her, she thanked me and left, and I immediately got to work. It didn’t take long to find out where both Marjorie Daw and the Sprats lived. The problem was, Marjorie hadn’t had much of an idea of where she lost the letter, so I didn’t have a good lead about where to look for the blackmailer. I spent some time casing the neighborhoods where Marjorie and the Sprats lived, and nearby parts of the city, but I didn’t get any ideas. I decided to try a different approach. It was time to pay another visit to the Weasel. There might be word out on the street about who the blackmailer was, and if the word was out, the Weasel would know about it.

I slid into a seat at the usual place. When the waiter came over I ordered two drafts and asked about the Weasel. A few minutes later, the Weasel dropped onto the bench across from me.

“What is it this time, Deadbeat?” he asked.

“Information. I need information,” I replied. “Marjorie Daw had a letter in her basket, but she dropped it.”

“The basket?”

“The letter.”

“What color was the basket?”

“Green and yellow. Where’s the letter?”

“A little boy picked it up. He put it in his pocket.” If I wanted to know any more, it would cost me, the Weasel said. Soon I had all the information I needed. Next stop: the Pumpkin Eater house. (No relation to the unlamented Jack Smith.)

I walked up the four steps to the front door and rang the bell at a rundown brownstone in the old part of town. The whole neighborhood was dilapidated, but this house was the worst on the block. It looked like it was owned by someone who either was down on his luck or didn’t care enough to maintain it.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Pumpkin Eater? Peter Pumpkin Eater?”

“Yes.”

“I’d like a word or two with you.”

“What about?”

“Home maintenance. This place is about to be condemned. But I can help you.” Oldest trick in the book, but he went for it. Okay, maybe it’s the second oldest trick. Anyway, it got me inside, and that’s what counted. Once I made it through the door I confronted him about the letter. “Blackmail is a serious crime, Mr. Pumpkin Eater. You could go to jail for a long time. What’s it gonna be?”

“It’s my wife, it’s not my fault,” he wailed. “No matter what I do I just can’t satisfy her. It takes more money than I have. I already had to move into town and neglect my farm but it hasn’t done a bit of good.” I had an idea.

“I have an idea,” I said. “If I solve your problem, will you return the letter?”

“Mr. Deadbolt, if you solve my problem I’ll be forever in your debt.” He was actually wringing his hands. “I’m at my wits’ end.”

“Here’s what you’re going to do,” I said. “Put her in a pumpkin shell. There you’ll keep her very well. Trust me. Women go for that kind of stuff.” I was flying by the seat of my pants here, but he seemed goofy enough to go for it. Sure enough, he did.

“A pumpkin shell? Why, I have plenty of those on the farm. Thank you, thank you!” He gave me the letter, promised to never blackmail anybody again, and thanked me so many times that I started to feel guilty. But I had what I needed.

Marjorie Daw was very grateful. Almost too grateful, considering we both had other romantic attachments. But that’s another story. As for Peter Pumpkin Eater, I ran into him a couple of months later. Everything was fine between him and his wife, he said. Best advice he’d ever received, he told me, and he said I could have all the pumpkins I wanted every year at Halloween, free. Go figure. I guess if the P.I. business ever gets too low I could hire out as a marriage counselor.

The end

Reprinted from Nursery Rhyme Noir -- https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/42875

121617

The Proof is in the Porridge

Who knows what makes some people snap? It can be a little thing, I suppose, especially if the stress has been building and building and building, until one last affront simply becomes too much to bear. If I could tell when that point was just about to come I'd be a shrink, and a mighty successful one at that. However, I guess I'll leave the psychobabble to the psychobabblers. Deadbolt's the name, Hasp Deadbolt. I'm a P.I.

It began with the porridge, but I didn't know that at first. I came in more than a week later, by which time the trail was cold as last week's breakfast. So I guess for me it really started with a dame, as usual.

“My brother is a good man, Mr. Deadbeat. He wouldn't do the horrible things they say he did.” She was a buxom blonde in a low-cut sundress. Not my type, but I'm a professional.

“That's Deadbolt, Miss...?”

“Shaftoe. Missie Shaftoe.”

That name rang a bell, but I couldn't place the face. Who was she? Then it hit me. Her husband had been all over the papers a year or two before. I even had a piece of the action on that case. “The Shaftoe Dismemberments,” the papers had dubbed it. Gruesome piece of business. Even worse than the Easter Bunny murder, though that one had hit me hard personally. I'd met Mrs. Shaftoe at the time, but I hadn't recognized her at first; she'd put on some weight. But all that was irrelevant to the present case, I supposed. “Tell me all about it, Mrs. Shaftoe,” I said, pencil poised, and she did.

The way the cops had it, the other Mrs. Shaftoe (Missie's sister-in-law) had served her husband Justin peas porridge nine days straight. Apparently she wasn't a very imaginative cook, or maybe she was just too lazy to go shopping. Be that as it may, on the last day, she didn't even bother to heat the stuff. According to the police report, her husband just couldn't take it anymore. Justin, or so the government contended, had brained his wife with a fireplace poker in a fury over his unappetizing breakfast. He then proceeded to carve his now-deceased wife into steaks, which he then sold in his butcher shop over the course of the next two days. This, at least, was the accusation. Talk about déjà vu all over again! What was it with these people?

I promised my client that I would do some checking, and we made an appointment for the following day. I figured that would give me sufficient time to check out the facts. It was more than enough. I got a copy of the police report and interviewed some customers of the butcher shop. I even got a look at the scene of the crime, courtesy of a sturdy drainpipe. I was ready and waiting when Mrs. Shaftoe knocked on my office door the next afternoon.

“Mrs. Shaftoe,” I said, “this seems like a pretty straightforward case. Your brother actually sold the chops that he made from his late wife's body. He didn't even deny it. What are you contending? That he didn't kill her and that he didn't know what he was selling?”

“Mr. Deadbolt,” Missy Shaftoe said, leaning forward earnestly and looking me straight in the eye, “have you ever eaten peas porridge? Have you eaten cold peas porridge? How about week-old cold peas porridge?” I shook my head “I thought not,” she continued. “My brother isn't guilty of anything, Mr. Deadbolt, except justifiable homicide.”

“I can't take the case, Mrs. Shaftoe,” I said to her, “it wouldn't be right. Your brother is guilty, and he's going to hang. You might be able to argue justifiable homicide if he had stopped after he hit her with the poker. But cutting her up and selling her meat? It hadn't been inspected! There's no telling what sort of diseases he could let loose in the population by selling uncertified meat from his shop. His shop permit definitely does not cover this sort of thing! Besides, he hadn't purchased it from anyone, and it sure wasn't covered by any hunting license. Any way you look at it, he was in violation of the law.” Tough talk, maybe, but it had to be said. She stomped out, but I wasn't sorry to see her go. Her whole family is a few bullets short of an ammo belt, if you get my meaning. Besides, the way she'd been toying with my letter opener made me nervous, under the circumstances.

The moral of the story? If Justin Shaftoe had learned to cook, this tragedy could have been avoided – he could have made his own breakfast. And I'll tell you another thing. I'll be patronizing Hodgson and Son Butchers from now on, even though it is on the other side of town.

Reprinted from Nursery Rhyme Noir -- https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/42875

121517

Encounter in St. Ives

I almost decided not to tell this story. No one likes to admit he's acted like a fool. Still, I had the best of intentions. Anyway, try not to judge me too harshly. Alma was gone and I was on my own. She was taking care of her mother, who was recovering from a serious injury that resulted from, well, basically forgetting that she was a little old lady with brittle bones. There, it had to be said. At the time this all happened I had been depending on my own cooking and my own company for a couple of weeks.

-----

After successfully concluding a case involving a large number of fowl, egregious food safety violations, and foreign royalty*, I stopped off in a bar to relax. With Alma out of town there was no reason to hurry home. I chose a place I'd never been before, called the Unicorn Cutlet (obviously a story there**). It was a place frequented primarily by locals. Shopkeepers with their dirty aprons and worn shoes pointedly ignored servants and apprentices of various kinds (their clothing in even greater stages of disrepair), and everyone seemed to know each other. Even a gaggle of geese in the corner were on a first name basis with the servers and with the butchers' apprentices at the next table. Perfect!

Now I'm sitting at the bar, drinking a beer and minding my own business, when I overhear a fellow talking about something that happened to him on the St. Ives highway. I missed the beginning of the conversation.

".... So this guy had a whole crowd of women with him. He claimed he'd married them all. And get this, he said each of those women had 40 cats. Well, there is this crazy old woman on my block who has 13 cats, but everybody knows she's crazy. This guy was talking like it's perfectly normal to have more than three dozen cats. That wasn't the half of it! He also said each one of those cats had 40 kittens." At this point he stopped to take a drink and the kid next to him says

"Holy mackerel! That's like 120, what with the wives and livestock and all."

And then Phil, the bartender, chimes in. "How did they carry all these critters around? It's not like cats will stroll along with you. Did they have wagons? And why didn't he count the horses pulling the wagons?"

"No, they didn't have the cats with them, they just said they had them. Right, Mr. P.?" The young man replied, turning to the first speaker for confirmation.

"Course he didn't have them with him. That would be a herd, for which you need a permit. And everybody knows you can't herd cats. Getting a little dry here Phil." Mr. P. took off his battered fedora, ran his fingers through his hair, and pulled the hat firmly back down over his ears again. Phil handed him a fresh beer and he took a deep gulp. "And it wasn't 80 cats, must've been a couple hundred."

"40 and 40, that's 80." The kid says, and he drains his beer. The state of public education these days! It'll be kids like this running things in a few years, and then the whole city will really be going you know where in a basket.

I cleared my throat. "Actually, wives, cats, kits, and all, not counting whatever he keeps the animals in, that's 64,000." This pronouncement met with a stunned silence. "Well that's 40 cubed, don't you know. Nevermind, that's not important now. What is important is that this fellow seems to be guilty of both polygamy and animal cruelty. Where did you say he came from?"

Mr. P. turns to me and looks me up and down under the brim of his hat. "I didn't say. And who are you again?"

"Deadbolt. Hasp Deadbolt. I'm a PI. But that's not important now. What this guy might be doing to cats isn't right and needs to be stopped."

The kid broke in. "Lookit, Mister, no one's paying you to investigate this, so just let it rest. If there's anything to handle, the authorities can do that."

Well, it was true I wasn't involved. I finished my beer and left. But while I stood waiting at the bus stop, I felt a tug on my arm. It was one of the geese. Actually, it was all of the geese. But the one tugging on my arm introduced herself as Petunia.

"I heard what you said about the cats Mr. Deadbolt," she said. "Now I don't like cats any more than the next goose, but mistreatment of sentient beings is wrong. We are in solidarity with oppressed lifeforms everywhere. And were any of those wives underage brides? Forced marriage, feline slavery, this might just be the tip of the iceberg with this egg stealer. This kind of behavior is a natural outgrowth of the depravity of a hierarchical being-owning agrarian oligarchy, and the sheriff here isn't going to do anything. We want to help."

I guess it figured that socialism would go along with flocking behavior, but I had never encountered it before. "Do you know how to get to St. Ives?" I asked.

"I'm not sure," Petunia said. "Is that near Altoona?"***

"Never mind," I said. "Meet me out by the highway at midnight. We have some investigating to do."

-----

I had not realized that Petunia intended to bring the whole flock. They were not professional sleuths like I am and they were noisy. I ended up sending most of the flock around to the other side of the farm on a fool's errand, looking for some of their wild counterparts, who I assured them wanted to join our cause. Petunia and I ducked under the single strand of barbed wire and went in.

I realized immediately something was wrong. The place was quiet, too quite. Too quiet for a farm that had 64,000 cats living on just a few acres. And there was only one barn. How many cats can fit in a single barn anyway? I'm not a farmer, I don't know the answers to these questions. But I'm certain it isn't 64K. Petunia was no help; she couldn't calculate the volume of a non-cubicle barn with both hands, er, wings. Behind the barn was a pigpen. There was only one pig in there, a young hog wearing a red bandanna around his neck. Before I could stop her, Petunia woke him up.

"Hey you," she hissed, "wake up."

He raised his head, shook it a few times, then staggered to his feet. He trotted over to the fence. "Who are you," he asked. Well, she spilled the whole story, invited him to join the revolution. He shook his head.

"I'm a confirmed capitalist. I think rewards come to those who work. If you gain wealth, it's because you deserve it. There are a few bad apples in the trough, but they are outcompeted by those who work hard, network together, and whose word is bond. But I'm a liberal. Thought about becoming a Unitarian at one time. I believe in your right to pursue your dreams. Of course, what do I know? I'm just a pig. By the way, my name's Freddie."

I was getting impatient. "Look," I said, "I'm getting impatient. We are here to find out if there's anything wrong on this farm. What can you tell us?"

"Wrong? Wrong?! I can tell you plenty that's wrong. Starting with me being stuck in this pen day after day, night after night. Let me out, and I'll help you any way I can." So we did.

"Solidarity," Petunia whispered.

"Enlightened self interest," Freddie whispered back.

"Whatever," I said.

Freddie showed us how to jigger the back door on the barn, and in moments we were inside. We looked around for a few minutes, and then I said "where are the cats?"

"Beats me," the pig replied. "I've seen them around during the day, but I don't know where they sleep. I do know it's somewhere in this barn, because I see them going in here every evening. I don't think I've ever seen 64,000. Maybe two or three hundred at the most."

Just then, Petunia said "look what I found." She was holding a bag over her head. It was about twice as big as she was, and completely stuffed with something. "What do you suppose is in here?" She asked.

"One way to find out." The pig pulled out a pocketknife and reached out to the bag.

"Don't touch that!" I hissed, but I was too late. As soon as the point of the knife touched it the sack ripped apart. Kittens shot everywhere.

Petunia dug herself out from under a pile of sleepy fluff balls. "What did you do that for? You broke the magic bag."

"Magic isn't real," Freddie said angrily, "it's just a fairy tale!"

"Oh yeah!" The goose shot back angrily. "And how do you explain 343 cats in a bag small and light enough for me to hold over my head?"

"How do you know how many there are? Who died and made you an idiot savant?"

"I've got lots of experience counting goslings. Goslings never sit still, you have to learn to count fast and accurately."

"Then that means he only has seven wives," I mused.

"That's right," growled a deep voice, "and what are you doing in my barn in the middle of the night?" A tall man with a big black beard, a pot belly, a t-shirt from the "Cock and Bull Café", and a pair of worn suspender overalls covered us from the front door of the barn with a double barreled shotgun. "And who are you anyway?"

"Sir, I can explain," I began, but Freddie jumped in front of me.

"Farmer Bean," he said, "it's all my fault. I cut the bag. But I don't think it's right for you to keep the cats in there all night. They should have some fresh air every now and then. And what about me? I'm stuck in my pen all the time, don't you think I deserve the opportunity to get out occasionally?"

"I don't have room for all these cats otherwise. The little women, bless their hearts, love kittens so, but kittens grow up to be cats, and they have more kittens and there are only so many mice to go around. I can't have them eating the geese."

"I have to agree with you there," Petunia put in, "but if you keep the people in chains, or in bags, they will rise up and overthrow you. Or at least, they are within their rights to do so." She had noticed in mid manifesto that most of the kittens had curled up and gone to sleep. Just about every horizontal surface in the barn had two or three sleeping cats on it. There must've been 150 of them on the floor around us. "I guess we jumped to unjustified conclusions," she went on, "is there any way we can make it up to you?"

Farmer Bean rubbed his chin. "Well," he began, "do you know anyone who can lay golden eggs? That would really help my cash flow. Farm equipment has gotten so expensive these days."

"I know somebody who knows somebody," Petunia replied, "but I don't know how she would feel about joining a free-market economy. Let me talk to her."

"I'm wondering about your wives," I put in. "I'd like to speak to at least one or two of them. Just to make sure everything is all right."

Farmer Bean scowled at me. "I resent the implications," he said. "But I'll make allowances, because you're an idiot." I opened my mouth, but shut it again. Maybe I deserved it. Something about being away from Alma for extended periods did something to my brain.

"Maybe not a total idiot," he went on. "They must be just about ready, let's go." He led us out of the barn, across the yard, and into the big house. There, six or seven women, I never did manage a definitive count, were laying out platters of freshly baked cookies and pitchers of milk at a long dining room table. One place had a pile of flowers on the plate, and I assumed that was for Petunia. We all sat down to a delicious home-cooked snack. But just then there was a knock at the door, it opened, and the rest of the geese trooped in. After a short pause to put out some more flowers everybody dug in. I apologized to Farmer Bean, told him that detective services would be his at no charge just for the asking, shook hands with everyone (unless I missed one of the wives), and headed home, dropping the geese off on the way.

I didn't hear from any of them again until a courier delivered a big festively wrapped box at the house the following December. A box with air holes. The label read "Compliments of the Bean family."

"Alma," I called, "what do you think about a kitten?"

The end

Source material:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_I_Was_Going_to_St_Ives

Footnotes:

*"Death of a king: fowl play or simply bad hygiene?"

**A horrific tale of love, loss, and cannibalism, for which the world is not yet ready.

***Thanks Walt.

Reprinted from Nursery Rhyme Noir -- https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/42875

121417

Raise your hand if you just became a vegan

A well-constructed young woman barged into my office Monday morning, breathing hard after running up two flights of stairs. When she regained her composure she told me her great aunt had “drifted away from her moorings.” Some time Sunday morning the old lady had started devouring livestock, not just raw, but still living. Before the day was out she was dead.

“Exactly what do you want me to do, Miss Clarendon?”

“Oh, Mr. Deadbolt,” she replied, “I want you to find out why she ate those critters. The great aunt Sylvia I knew would never do such a thing. She might have been murdered. Maybe by a hypnotist.”

*

“I'm sure you know why I have gathered you together,” I began. “You are the relatives of the late Sylvia Clarendon. One of you asked me to investigate whether foul play was involved in her death. I've checked into all of you carefully, as well as anyone who had business or social dealings with the deceased. I turned up nothing. Ms. Clarendon was universally liked, and she didn't have much money or property.

“I did partially solve the mystery. She really did take a double dose of several powerful prescription drugs last Friday night as she went to bed. Sunday morning she swallowed a common housefly, and then a spider in hopes that it would trap the fly. Because of the limited opportunities for web construction within her digestive tract, she chose a jumping spider, but of a perfectly respectable species. When the spider failed to return, Ms. Clarendon swallowed a small bird. Its mission was to retrieve the spider, but by 0900 hrs it had failed to do so. Her choice of a house sparrow, a well-known seed eating specialist, may have been part of the problem. There followed in rapid succession the following commandos: a rat, a cat, and a dog, all with rather obvious goals. Her motives of the afternoon are less certain. About 1320 she swallowed a goat, which might have been a bad choice considering the size of the dog it was supposed to subdue. Be that as it may, around 1500 hrs a cow followed the goat. This was a highly reliable operative named Bessie who had successfully completed similar missions in the past. At 1545 a cleaner named Dobbins was sent in, with what tragic results you all know.

“I have, as I said, worked out most of the details of the weekend's tragedy. However, one thing still puzzles me about the whole affair. I don't know why she swallowed the fly.”

Reference

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Was_an_Old_Lady_Who_Swallowed_a_Fly

Reprinted from Nursery Rhyme Noir -- https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/42875

121117

Check the Bathwater

I should've known I was in trouble the minute she glided into my office. I should have known I was in trouble when I saw the narrowest trace of brown roots in her luxuriant blonde hair, and the plunging “V” of her tightfitting dress. I should have known I was in trouble when she leaned on my desk and looked me straight in the eye, her generous bust burning holes in my faux-leather blotter. I should have known I was in trouble when she reached into her dress to pull my retainer out of her bra and I could see that she wasn't wearing one.

“Is 500 enough?” She murmured in a voice like chocolate eclairs, a voice that could not only launch a thousand ships but burn them to the water line and sink a thousand careers in a single night. I blotted my forehead and raised the window a little higher. Not that it would do any good. The air outside was so thick you could squeeze 8 ounces of water out of a double handful.

I cleared my throat. “That's more than enough ma'am, for the ordinary run of cases. What seems to be the problem?” Anyone who's read my stories knows how I feel about beautiful women, but this was business.

“Oh!” She said “I am hardly old enough to be a 'ma'am.' My name is Susie and there is a problem with my baby.”

This was almost too much information and yet nowhere near enough. “Okay. What happened to your baby, Miss Susie?”

She leaned forward again and I scooted my chair back, hoping for a cool breeze.

“It all started when I tried to give Tim a bath.”

“Tim?”

“Because he was so tiny and all. That's his name. Anyway,” she unbuttoned the top button of her dress. It only had three buttons. “It's really hot in here. Do you have air conditioning?”

“It's hot.” I said. “Wish I could afford air-conditioning. But please, keep your clothes on anyway. The bath?” I had to do something, so I walked across the room and got a glass of water. I offered her some and she said thank you. Finally she gave it to me. The baby had eaten the soap and drunk the water. Where he put it all if he was so tiny I have no idea. Apparently he even started chewing on the fixtures and this was when his mother started to suspect there was a problem. I'm sorry, but the woman was no genius. I believe that she loved her son, but she definitely was not playing with a full gallon. More like three quarts. Possibly 3 ½. Or 3 ½ liters. But isn't that about the same? I was babbling, but at least I wasn't doing it out loud. Anyway, the kid wasn't able to get the bathtub down his throat but he was frothing at the mouth, looked like he had rabies, and she called the doctor. He shows up with his nurse and some broad who at first I thought was a neighbor, but then it turned out Miss Susie had never even seen her before. She doesn't know her name, only that she carries an alligator purse and that she was the only one of the three with more than two brain cells firing.

The doctor concluded the kid had some communicable disease and wanted to quarantine the house. The nurse felt much the same, except they got in an argument about exactly what Tim had and Miss Susie thought they might come to blows. In the end, she kicked both of them out, but when she went to thank the other woman, she was nowhere to be found.

“So what, exactly, do you want me to do?”

“Find my boy, Mr. Deadbolt. Did I forget to tell you he was missing? He disappeared with the lady with the alligator purse. Find him! Find him!” She was gripping my lapels, her face buried in the front of my shirt. And she was crying. I always hate that. Eventually I pried her off and promised I would look into her problem as soon as I finished a couple of other pressing tasks. I had two pairs of pants at the cleaners being pressed and I picked them up on the way home.

*

I was in trouble.

“I'm sick and tired,” my fiancée declared, “of beautiful young women trying to play games with you.” She's particularly lovely when she's angry. “Smearing their lipstick on your shirt,” she continued, “and for all I know other places that are easier to clean.” She picked up the laundry basket. I had tried to sneak the shirt past her, but I'd been too slow.

“Alma, no matter how they try they won't get through to me,” I assured her. “Besides, Miss Susie was distraught. I'm sure it won't happen again.” I tried to kiss her a few times, and eventually she relented. We shared a bottle of wine on the balcony overlooking the practice field where the cabbages were working on their offense.

After a while, she laughed. “They really are pretty bad, aren't they.”

“Terrible! The eggplants are going to blow their leaves off. They'll never get out of the vegetable league.”

She snuggled closer and I put my arm around her. We were cool again. Now if I could just keep Miss Susie off me.

*

I didn't want to, but I had to visit Miss Susie at home. I needed to see the scene of the abduction. I did not dare go alone, so I took Jack Spratt with me. He owed me a favor because of the Olive Oyl incident. And he would sympathize; he had had his share of trouble with women.

My client lived in a small brownstone squeezed into a space tighter than her dress. I walked up the steps and knocked on the door of 69 ½ Spradlin Street. Miss Susie answered the door, wearing the kind of T-shirt you buy in the entertainment district, the part that's open all night long. As far as I could see that was her only garment.

“Good afternoon ma'am,” I said, “Jack Spratt is helping me on the case.” I could see beads of sweat starting from Jack's forehead and I had to elbow him in the ribs to get him to close his mouth.

She gave him the once over. “You married, Mr. Spratt? You need a good woman's cooking to put some meat on your bones.” That brought a little frown to his forehead.

“He's a little sensitive about food. Ugly divorce,” I said and invited myself in, dragging Jack with me. “Where did you last see Tim?”

“In his bed,” she replied. Eventually I got her to show us just where they had all been when the baby was abducted. I didn't see anything that would help me crack the case. Jack was trembling and seemed to be trying to speak. I said my goodbyes and got us out of there.

Back on the street I took Jack into a little café a few blocks away. I ordered him a big chocolate no-fat milkshake.

“Stop drooling,” I said. “The milkshake isn't that good. Did you see anything? Anything that would help me find the kid?”

He moved his hands in suggestive curves and grinned sheepishly. He was hopeless. Miss Susie could have had the University of Michigan marching band in there and he wouldn't have seen them.

*

I spent the rest of the day tracking down the lady with the alligator purse. I eventually located her in a three-story brownstone about a mile from Miss Susie's. She was a hard nut to crack. She didn't seem to have any close friends, but by canvassing the residents of whole neighborhoods I discovered that she took a walk of several miles each evening. She passed right by Miss Susie's house. Her name was Knapps.

I knocked on the front door.

“Who is it?”

“Hasp Deadbolt, ma'am. I'm looking for Lavinia Knapps. May I come in?”

“I'm sorry, Mr. Deadbolt, but I'm afraid not.” And nothing I could say got another word out of her.

I was getting pretty worried about what she might be doing to the baby, but the house was built like a fortress. I needed help.

*

There are only certain times when I have a use for Sergeant Satyrday, but this was one. I had to sit through the usual snide diatribe about THE DEPARTMENT, and “rent-a-dicks”, but the mayor was up for reelection and he didn't need a baby-napping to spend time on the front page of the newspaper. The sergeant followed me back to Ms. Knapps' house with two burly flat feet and we were inside in five minutes. Lavinia Knapps was seated in her front room, knitting a baby blanket. She denied knowing anything about the disappearance of Tiny Tim. Something seemed wrong to me. The police made a halfhearted attempt to search the house, but they didn't find anything. The oddest thing we found was a bunch of stuffed heads mounted on the wall in the dining room. There was quite a variety represented, and I thought I recognized a few of them. A large mouse with unusually big ears kind of reminded me of a former client, and a black duck was the spitting image of one who had caused quite a stir the previous Thanksgiving. Still, this was a far cry from absconding with a child. Satyrday was about to leave when I put it together. I snapped my fingers. ”I've put it together,” I said. The Sergeant knows me well enough to pay attention when I say something like that.

“She doesn't have any children. Why is she knitting a baby blanket?”

“It's for my niece,” she put in, but she looked uneasy.

“Hold on to her!” I shouted, “and you (I pointed at one of the patrolmen) come with me.” I raced out the back door and started crisscrossing the backyard. It didn't take long to find the baby. I brought him back in and confronted the kidnapper.

“We found him lying in the grass. He was completely unharmed, but any kind of wild animal could have found him there before we did!”

She shook her head grimly. “Not at all. Wild creatures know better than to enter my yard. It isn't just alligators who have learned to keep their distance from me.”

She had a point.

*

There was one more thing I had to do. A week later I stopped by Miss Susie's house. She answered the door with her son on her hip. She was as fetching as ever, if slightly more demure than the last time we met.

“I can't thank you enough, Mr. Deadbolt, for finding my son.” She handed me a check.

“Well, it's what you hired me for ma'am. But you're welcome.”

“There's something else,” she said. I leaned backwards a little, almost imperceptibly, protecting my shirt and my reputation, and she laughed. “No, silly. Thanks to you I'm seeing someone.”

Thanks to me? No. It couldn't be.

It was Jack. “Ain't this the greatest?!” He gave me the victory sign over her shoulder. “And she's a vegetarian, too!”

I shook my head and waved my hand at them as I turned away. Some stories turn out right. But I had to hurry. Alma was waiting in the car with a loaded picnic basket, and that was a potent combination.

The end

Here are the two children's rhymes referred to in this story.

Miss Suzie had a baby

Miss Lucy had a baby 
She named it Tiny Tim 
She put it in the bathtub 
To see if it could swim 
It drank up all the water 
It ate up all the soap 
It tried to eat the bathtub 
But it wouldn't go down its throat 
Miss Lucy called the doctor 
Miss Lucy called the nurse 
Miss Lucy called the lady 
With the alligator purse 
Measles said the doctor 
Mumps said the nurse 
Nothing said the lady 
With the alligator purse 
Miss Lucy kicked the doctor 
Miss Lucy punched the nurse 
Miss Lucy paid the lady 
With the alligator purse

(there are several distinctly different versions of this song.)

Jack Sprat

Jack Sprat could eat no fat
His wife could eat no lean
And so betwixt the two of them
They licked the platter clean

Jack ate all the lean,
Joan ate all the fat.
The bone they picked it clean,
Then gave it to the cat

Jack Sprat was wheeling,
His wife by the ditch.
The barrow turned over,
And in she did pitch.

Says Jack, "She'll be drowned!"
But Joan did reply,
"I don't think I shall,
For the ditch is quite dry.".

This is one of those political nursery rhymes. You can look it up.

Reprinted from Nursery Rhyme Noir -- https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/42875

121017

Murder most fowl

I don't normally work for chicken feed or bird brains, but times were hard and I ended up doing both. The name's Deadbolt, Hasp Deadbolt, and I‘m a P. I. with bills to pay. I can only bear to sponge off my girlfriend for so long, so I was once again looking for work.

"I'm innocent I tell you; I wasn't even shooting at that crow, honest!"

He said his name was Robin. That seemed a little self referential, given his redbreast and all.

"Robin à bobbin -- that's French isn't it?" Turns out he was pure Anglo-Saxon. I should give up trying to figure out names. The bird shuffled his feet, like he didn't know quite what spin to give his statement.

"It’s true I didn't like that crow. I don't like any of them. Nasty ghouls! But the pigeon and I go way back. We were best friends once. We did everything together. I’ve got yearbook photos to prove it. Senior year everything changed. Trouble began as many things do, with a woman. Not exactly a woman; worms are hermaphrodites, each one having all the equipment a couple needs (at least if that couple is a segmented tube). But Charlene was all woman where it really counted. We were in love. People said we were too different, that our worlds could only connect in an alimentary way, but we had such good times. Spring afternoons we could be found after school at the ice cream parlor, walking together in the park, or grubbing in the dirt for food.” He sniffed. "I'm sorry, the memory is still fresh."

It seemed to me this bird was never going to get to the point. Otherwise employed or not, I didn't have all day. I could be cleaning my fingernails, or doing something else constructive.

"So, let me get this straight: the pigeon ate your girlfriend? And not in the biblical sense?"

“He said she tasted good.” The robin scowled ferociously. “He needed killin’. So, yes, I went after him. I used my hunting bow and I shot at him with intent to kill. But I missed him. I hit the crow, and I had had no intention of doing him any harm. He hadn't eaten my girlfriend. So that’s my story.” He seemed relieved to have gotten to the end.

At last the tail hung together. The bird was going to claim that the whole thing had been an accident. Yes, he wanted revenge for his girlfriend’s life, but he had been aiming, not at the crow, but at the pigeon. If this was true, the worst we could get him on would be attempted homicide on the pigeon and accidental death of the crow. Of course Lehrer v. the people of New York proved that, widely publicized claims notwithstanding, it is in fact against several religions to want to dispose of a pigeon, but federal law is silent on attempted pigeonicide, and no one really cares about accidents involving crows. If the story was true. I was not sure. There was something that I just couldn't put my finger on.

I paid a visit to the mockingbird. He had gone to school with the robin and the pigeon. The bird corroborated everything Robin had said. "He even used his little bow, and he carried his little arrow in his little quiver, which were all given to him by his mommy," the Mockingbird sneered. There was just one problem. People said the mockingbird would do anything for a handful of holly berries. I wondered if the copycat was just singing the robin's tune.

Lasagne was the fattest possum I ever met. She was so wide she barely squeezed through my door. Sideways. I had The Fat Man in here once, for Gods' sake!

"Hey there, big boy," she breathed hoarsely. "A year ago the two lovebirds, we called them that as a joke, I can't make that joke now, more’s the pity...."

"Please try to keep to the facts, ma'am," I said. What was it with the graduates of Aerosol High and their conversational tangents?

"Well, Robin and Charlene were dining al fresco in a sweet little Italian bistro down at the lower end of Prospect Street, where the biscotti are simply fabulous, and the coffee will keep you up all night, if you catch my branch...but I digress.

"The weather was warm and they were sitting out on the patio, drawing some stares, as they usually did. I was there, and I had a good view of their table (it's one I've sat at myself more than once, the view is great). Robin got up and went inside; I figure he either went to order drinks or to use the bathroom.

"While he was gone, the crow went over to the table. He and Charlene seemed to be talking, but I didn't hear what was said. I wasn't really paying that much attention, because just then a couple of really hot marsupials sat down pretty close to me." Here she licked her lips in a way that made me glad to be a placental mammal. "When I looked back over there, no one was at the table. Not long after that, Robin returned. He looked all around, flitting about the patio in a truly demented fashion, and I just waited. I knew he would come to me. Men are drawn to me. Very soon he came over to ask if I had seen anything. He was distraught, and he said that Charlene was gone. I told him what I knew, and he flew out of the place like he was missing the first day of Spring." I quizzed her for a while to check out her story.

"So the pigeon didn't kill her? That's what I heard."

"The pigeon?! Who the hell told you that? Pigeons are seed-eating birds. They have no interest in worms. I would have snapped her up without a second thought, but Robin is a friend. No, there’s no way the pigeon would have been interested, he being a vegetarian and all." She made a moue of distaste at the very thought.

I had never thought of that. No one had examined the crow's gut contents and now it was far too late. Who had told me that the pigeon had poached on Robin's turf? Why, it was Robin himself! I had my answer, but I wasn't talking. I sure wasn't sharing my fee with a marsupial. Then I remembered. There wouldn't be any fee. My client had just bought a long trip down a short rope. Maybe Alma was cooking something good for dinner.


Reprinted from Nursery Rhyme Noir -- https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/42875