The Butler Defective

by D R Lowrey

  A number of shrieks ensued, which Nigel could only attribute to the untimely appearance of leopard-shaped shadows. Observing this bedlam, he had to reassess his strategy. Had he known these people shared an inordinate fear of leopards, he’d have chosen a bear, but would that have been too much?

  “Everyone, please,” said Nigel. “There is no need for panic. The leopard will not harm you.”

  “Not if I get a shot at him,” said the officer.

  “Do not fire your weapon. That would only make him angry,” said Nigel. “He’s quite a nice leopard. Housebroken, even. Perhaps we should all go back to the house and leave him be.”

  “Leave him be?” said the detective. “A dangerous animal can’t be left to be. He could ravage the countryside. I won’t rest until this animal is found and dispatched.”

  “Detective, let’s be rational. Cam Logan is the wildcat you need to find. Wouldn’t that be a better use of your time? She’s far more dangerous than any leopard, if you ask me. She taunts people, shoots golf balls, and her carbon footprint must be atrocious. You need to get your priorities straight. Ten leopards wouldn’t equal the mayhem in Cam Logan’s pinky finger.”

  “Cam Logan was an emergency,” said the detective, “but Cam Logan and a leopard is a crisis.”

  “I’ll make a deal with you, Detective. You see that these people reach the house safely and take care of that marauding Cam Logan, and I’ll deal with the leopard problem. Do it my way, and we needn’t mention this leopard business to anyone.”

  “But I need to call it in.”

  “Call it in? I won’t hear of it. I’m not going to see your reputation destroyed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why, you’ve already lost one major criminal today. I don’t wish to rub this in, Detective, but where were you when Cam Logan was terrorizing the place? Cowering in a ditch, that’s where. Of course, me and you understand why. But they won’t.”

  “Who won’t?”

  “Them,” said Nigel, directing his gaze upward and toward the southeast. “The naysayers, the press, the bloggers, the mayor, the vigilantes, the animal rights activists. They’re always out there, waiting to attack over the smallest things. It’ll be ten times worse if they found their new detective had misplaced a major criminal and a leopard on the same day. Careers don’t progress after a thing like that.”

  “No?”

  “Not for someone like you, no, sir. Letting your proud reputation get entangled with a runaway leopard is a sure way to see it shredded. I’m guessing you don’t want that.”

  “Preferably not.”

  “So, if you’ll escort these people to safety, I’ll do you a solid and subdue these leopards.”

  “Leopards? There’s more than one?”

  “You never can tell.”

  “But what do you know about leopards?”

  “What do I know about leopards?” asked Nigel. “Look at me, Detective. Do I look like the kind of chap who doesn’t know about leopards? You may as well ask what don’t I know about leopards, Detective. What don’t I know?”

  “Okay, what don’t you know about leopards?”

  “Everything, detective. Everything. Did you know a leopard can’t change his spots? I did. Known it since I was a tot. You leave the leopard to me. If you value your career, you’ll get these people rounded up and into the house. I’ll take care of that kitty.”

  The detective sheepishly accepted this partitioning of responsibilities, and Nigel breathed a sigh of relief. Even so, he shivered as if sensing the stalking gaze of some deadly animal. He was right. When his eyes met Annie’s, he felt his retinas sizzle. He flashed her a furtive thumbs-up, which she may have missed, coinciding as it did with her pupils rolling up in their sockets.

  The detective herded the quivering masses out of the garage and up to the house, though not without some protest. The short-legged members of the group wanted to stay, feeling leopards were best confronted as a tight group with the larger members protecting the perimeter. Those with longer shanks felt that leopard encounters were best experienced on the open prairie with plenty of space to run. The short-leggers made the argument that a human, no matter their leg length, could not outrun a leopard. The leggier types did not disagree. Outrunning the leopard had not crossed their minds.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Leopards Have Limitations

  With the garage cleared of people and large cats, Nigel merely had to wait. Wait for how long? The time required to subdue a leopard in a garage was not something he’d ever calculated. Probably not long, since Mrs. Sandoval would be nursing a powerful thirst.

  There was one problem, however: the total absence of a leopard. If Nigel had any talent for reading a crowd, this one came across as pretty darned snoopy. Especially relating to topics like unfettered leopards on the premises. Might they ask to see a body? They might. So, how does one demonstrate the nullification of an animal that doesn’t quite exist?

  A viable plan proved so elusive that Nigel resorted to deep breathing to center himself. The centered Nigel then relieved his frustration by kicking the wrecking ball. The wrecking ball was, for some reason, harder than he’d expected a wrecking ball to be. His toe made clear that from this point forward, items with “wrecking” in their title were not to be kicked. He soothed the affected member by hopping wildly to and fro for as long as it took to smash a portion of his face against a sign that read “Bag Drop.” His toe wasn’t so much a focus after that.

  The silver lining to all this mirth was a bright idea. With a severe limp and a ravaged face already in the repertoire, Nigel was halfway to passing for a man who’d gone hand-to-claw with a leopard. After a bit of de-rusting to reduce the tetanus threat, he applied a wire brush to leopard-vulnerable areas of his skin and clothes to complete the illusion. Then he gathered an assortment of debris calculated to equal the volume of a good-sized leopard and shoved it into a sack. This he dragged out to the gravesite, flinging it in such a manner as to suggest to the casual observer the interment of a large, dead cat.

  Nigel climbed aboard the excavator and began shoveling in the dirt. As he dropped in his fifth scoop, he noticed an arm clothed in chartreuse pinstripes. Apparently, no one had exercised the initiative to place poor Emilio Anguilero back into his casket. He lay just where he had fallen, half exposed to the open air. Nigel took action to remedy that situation. A half-dozen scoops, and the arm was invisible to the naked eye. A hundred more scoops and it was four feet underground.

  Having provided the substitute leopard with the burial it deserved, Nigel returned to the house, developing as he went the gimpy lope of a man after nine rounds with a panther. The main entry hall, he found, resembled the far end of a bowling lane after a strike. Exhausted bodies lay strewn about the place in all manner of unnatural orientations.

  “I trust all are present and accounted for,” said Nigel as he walked into the encampment.

  “Tequila!” shouted Mrs. Sandoval.

  “Tequila!” screeched Abuelita.

  “What happened to you?” asked Annie as he sauntered toward the liquor cabinet.

  “A bit of a tussle,” said Nigel. “Those leopards, agile creatures, all claws, put up a fight.”

  “Did it?” asked the detective in a tone that suggested the twirling of a mustache.

  “More than you’d think,” said Nigel.

  Nigel then noticed Annie passing behind the detective with a peculiar look on her face. It was a desperate sort of look, like that of person screaming with their lips stapled shut. What she was going on about, he couldn’t say. Probably not the weather.

  “Since arriving here at the house,” said the detective, “we’ve been discussing a few issues, and we’re confused on a number of points. Perhaps you could clarify?”

  Clarify? Nigel realized he was swimming with crocodiles and preferred the waters as murky as he could get them. Besides, he was in no mood to answer questions from the detective who, one day earlier, had
been sizing him up for striped pajamas and a skullcap.

  “Happy to help if I can,” said Nigel, meaning not a word of it. “I hope you’ll excuse me while I attend to my chores. Mustn’t keep the ladies waiting.”

  “Of course,” said the detective, eyeing Nigel as if through a monocle. “Excuse me, but you’ve gotten quite a shiner. I don’t recall seeing that before. Is that recent?”

  “Those things happen when you fight a leopard.”

  “A leopard did that?”

  “I don’t know if it was the leopard, exactly. I may have knocked into something during the heat of battle. We were going at it tooth and nail there for a while, that leopard and me. You know how it is when you fight a leopard. Things get frantic. See the scratches?” Nigel held up his arms for all to see.

  “Those are from the leopard, are they?” asked the detective in a tone guaranteed to offend any self-respecting leopard. “I would have imagined that a leopard’s claws would have ripped the skin right off. Those look more like paper cuts.”

  “I assure you, no paper was involved.” Nigel was growing tired of this inquisition. A man who’d just put down a leopard ought to have earned the right to butler in peace.

  But the detective persisted. “This brings us around to an interesting point. In the garage, you talked about the map and its implication for some kind of treasure. Then, you introduced the concept of a leopard—”

  “The concept of?” asked Nigel. “Did you say, ‘the concept of?’ What are you implying? That my arms were shredded by a concept? If that’s a concept, it’s a pretty well-developed one. I’ll say that.”

  “I mean, it came out rather sudden. When one is talking about found treasure, a leopard is not the first thing that comes to mind.”

  “Maybe not your mind.”

  “Tequila!” shouted Mrs. Sandoval.

  “Coming,” said Nigel, wheeling around the liquor cart.

  The peevishly persistent detective followed. “So, you’re saying you followed this map, this twenty-year-old map, and it directed you to a leopard? That seems odd, to say the least.”

  “I’m not saying it wasn’t odd. Did I say it wasn’t odd? Odd pretty well describes it. Finding a leopard was a new experience for me, and I’ve lived some. But there it was. I followed the map. X marks the spot. X has a leopard on it. You can’t argue with facts.”

  “Was the leopard tied up? Was it roaming free? Was it sitting in that spot for twenty years just waiting for a map reader to come along? How can you explain such a thing?”

  “In my experience, you follow a map and strange things happen. You’re the detective. You explain it. Tequila?”

  The shock of the leopard, so effective early on, seemed to have dissipated. Industrial amounts of tequila and a change of topic were in order.

  “That’s a nice trench coat, Detective. Members Only?”

  “This map you talked about,” continued the detective. “Is it the one on Mr. Sandoval’s back?”

  “If you’re referring to his back map, sure. Speaking of Mr. Sandoval’s back, I’ve always wanted a trench coat like that, wrinkly and ferociously lived in.”

  “Did you ask Mr. Sandoval what the map was for?”

  “He doesn’t know. Doesn’t remember that far back.”

  “I believe he does, Mr. Blandwater-Cummings. With a little help from his friends, that is. We’ve been able to deduce what the map points to.”

  “A leopard?” said Nigel, starting to sing in order to drown out the detective. “It’s another tequila meltdown—”

  “Not a leopard,” said the detective. “A swimming hole.”

  Nigel stopped preparing drinks in mid-concoction. “A what?”

  “A swimming hole. A favorite hideaway of Mr. Sandoval’s that he called the Honey Pot.”

  “Why would he have a swimming hole called the Honey Pot tattooed to his backside? Are you nuts, man?”

  “You can ask Mrs. Sandoval about it. She can tell you about the Honey Pot. She and the Honey Pot go way back, but not as far back as Abuelita and the Honey Pot. And before Abuelita and the Honey Pot, there was Sovia, a stewardess from Finland, and the Honey Pot. Are you getting the picture, Mr. Blandwater-Cummings? The map doesn’t point to any treasure unless your idea of treasure is a bimbo’s nest.”

  “I wouldn’t call Sovia a bimbo,” said Mr. Sandoval.

  Abuelita’s arm was cocked and loaded with a shot glass, but she did not hurl. Her eye glazed over like a tuna’s encountering a school of herring. Too many targets.

  “But the treasure pot on Mr. Sandoval’s back,” argued Nigel, “is labeled tesouro, which means treasure in Portuguese.”

  “Did you happen to examine the inscription?”

  “I didn’t examine it. I read it.”

  “Had you taken the time to inspect it more closely, you would have seen that the word tesouro had been crudely superimposed over the original inscription of Sovia. Mrs. Sandoval didn’t much like her husband having another woman’s name tattooed on his back, so while he was in Brazil, he had it altered to something a bit less troublesome. And there you have it. No treasure.”

  Nigel felt trapped, but not finished. “Well, that explains it all nicely,” he said.

  “Explains what?” said the detective.

  “The leopard. It was there to guard the Honey Pot.”

  “No one is going to believe that,” said the detective.

  “You’re telling me this whole hubbub—the death, the assault, the golf balls—was over a swimming hole?” said Nigel. “There’s a pool out back, if you haven’t noticed. I’m sticking with the leopard.”

  “That’s not what the map pointed to,” said the detective. “I’m sure this Eel saw the tattoo and, like yourself, figured it represented an object of great value.”

  “How much does a leopard pull on the open market?”

  “Would you forget about that confounded leopard?”

  “Easy for you to say. You didn’t have to fight the beast.”

  “Should we call someone to look at your wounds?” asked Stefanie.

  “Look at his wounds?” asked the detective, laughing.

  It was a mocking laugh. The kind of laugh a man who puts down leopards with his bare hands wouldn’t stand for. Nigel wished he would stop.

  “He didn’t fight any leopard,” said the detective. “Don’t you see? There was never a leopard. He made the whole thing up. Ho-ho-ho. He made up a leopard.”

  “Is that true?” asked Stefanie. “Why would you make up a leopard?”

  Nigel said nothing. Had he the anatomy to do so, he’d have kicked himself where it hurt. Why had he so rashly blurted out “leopard”? “Bear!” would have been so much easier to explain.

  “Get me a tequila, Mr. Nigel. While you’re at it, get us all a tequila,” said Mrs. Sandoval. “Once you’ve done that, you may retire to your room and pack your things. Tonight will be your last night under this roof, and tomorrow will be your last day as our butler. I told you that any more shenanigans would lead to your dismissal. Making up a leopard qualifies in my book. We can’t tolerate the kind of mayhem caused by made-up leopards. That’s not what I expect from a butler.”

  “Yes, ma’am. You are quite within your rights to give me the boot,” said Nigel, handing her a tequila.

  “Mother,” said Stefanie, “are you sure you want to fire Nigel? Perhaps he’s a compulsive liar.”

  “I would not say compulsive liar,” said Stefanie’s husband. “I’d say pathological liar. Tomorrow he may claim there are elephants or monkeys on the property.”

  “And he’s a pervert. Add that to the list,” said Abuelita.

  “And an all-purpose imbecile,” added the veiled mother-in-law. “Some might say buffoon or moron. I prefer imbecile. It covers the spectrum.”

  The clunk of a shot glass hitting an army helmet called everyone to attention.

  Grumps turned to the crowd. “Listen to all of you,” he said, pushing himself out of his chair whi
le using Abuelita’s head as a support. “You’re being awfully hard on Nigel. While I get that he’s not solid butler material, you all act as if he’s good for nothing. I’d wager he’s good for something. He just hasn’t found out what yet. You can’t just throw a man away because he hasn’t found his purpose.” Grumps turned to Nigel. “Don’t you listen to them. I’ve never encountered such bitterness in all my life. A pack of vipers, they are. Ain’t they never heard of letting bygones be bygones? Don’t they know the power of forgiveness? Time to move on, folks.”

  Nigel patted the old man’s shoulder, possibly the first direct human contact the grumpy old man had felt in fifty years.

  “Are you sure you won’t stay, Nigel?” asked Stefanie. “Maybe in another capacity? Sometimes leaves need to be raked.”

  “No. My work here is done. I’ve made my mark. I have learned so much here in my, what, seven days? All good things come to an end, eventually.”

  ****

  Annie watched this drama unfold from a darkened corner. Being at her husband’s side during an avalanche of humiliation wasn’t, in her opinion, a good place for a wife to be. The whole mess had to be embarrassing enough for poor Nigel without sharing eye contact with his supremely competent wife. She would wait for a more private time to let him know that her faith had not wavered. In her eyes, he was no more of a doofus now than on the day they’d met.

  She had never been a proponent of Nigel’s butlering career anyway. As far as she could tell, his skills and those of a competent butler scarcely intersected at all. Even the best butlers may have struggled to juggle the collection of cracked coconuts interned at the Sandoval place. Throw in a murder, a funeral, a wedding, and a golf ball attack, and it was hardly any wonder that Nigel, needing to smooth things over, had concocted an imaginary leopard. Leave it to him to overdo it. A black bear would have been quite sufficient.

  ****

  Sad did not adequately describe Nigel’s emotions at losing his butler’s job. Relieved was more like it. His head had been crammed with doubts from day one. The dead body probably had something to do with it. Dead body or no, the doubts were well founded, because it had all been downhill from there. Like a rampaging snowball with Nigel trapped at its core, the job had carried him straight into a brick wall. His one week as a butler seemed more than adequate. When your most notable accomplishment is avoiding the electric chair, it’s time to move on.