OTHER “VAMPIRE POODLE” MYSTERIES BY CAMPBELL JONES:
MITZI MAGEE: BLOOD SCENT
MITZI MAGEE: A NIP IN TIME
Copyright Rover Press 2012
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the writer’s imagination or are fused fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
ONE
Had a great story going that Friday: little neighborhood girl falls down a well. Parents think she’s gone missing—as in stolen, maybe—can’t find their little six year old anywhere, neither can the police. Scary. Finally, mom remembers the old well in the back yard with the broken cover. Dad shines a light down--and there’s little Cindy, unreachable but still alive, even talking a little.
Great human interest stuff, I mean how often do you get them? I was loving it.
I was still loving it when I felt my editor Sid Mathers hovering, one arm slung across to top of my office cubby, sleeve rolled, cigarette dangling from his tired face, smoke threading past the NO SMOKING PLEASE sign above me. The NO SMOKING was Photo Shopped, the “please” I’d written in cursive myself. Clearly to no avail.
“What’s up?” from me, still not looking, typing away like blazes at my out of date HP keyboard, totally sold on the well story. Couldn’t miss.
“What are you doing, Ed?”
“Writing a story for your paper. A good one. Why am I fired?”
Sid dropped ashes in silence.
The kind of silence that eventually makes you look up. “Am I fired?”
Sid was gazing past me at my computer monitor; he could read that far away, eyes like a hawk, tired or not. “It’s a pipe.”
“The story? A lead pipe cinch? You like it?”
Sid grunted. “A steel pipe. In the kid’s backyard. Not a well.”
I looked back at my monitor. “Right. But ‘well’ reads better than pipe, don’t you agree?”
Another Sid grunt. “Reads better,” weariness in his jaded tone, “lies often do. But this is still an honest paper. And the girl still fell in a pipe.”
“I’ll fix it later. Have to admit, it’s a terrific story, don’t you think?”
A patient sigh. “Oh, I do think! Thought so the first time I heard it--the day it happened. Two years ago, Ed.”
I kept typing, on a roll; I can do that—type and talk. “Yeah, but this time I’m really leaning on the human interest angle. Figure we’d run it as a kind of post cautionary tale. Remember little Sissy Kindricks?—Don’t Let This Happen Again! That kind of thing!”
“That’s what you figured, huh?”
I looked up again. “You are firing me. I’m really off the paper. No more job.”
A bigger sigh this time, rife with melancholy, from deep in his potbelly. “Think of it as no more paper, Ed. Makes it easier.”
I stopped typing. “They’re closing you down? Really?”
“Remember the first day you came in here? How we talked about the biggest part of reporting being intuitive?”
“You’re ‘intuiting’ they’re closing you down?”
“Strongly.”
I looked down at my familiar keyboard…suddenly a stranger to me. “Who are they anyway, Sid? I always wondered.”
My editor seemed to have to think about it a moment himself, eyes drifting off toward the window. He had that wistful look again. “Huh. I’m not really sure anymore….Topeka Bank and Trust? Somebody like that...”
His eyes began to go abstract as they did more and more these days, looked like they might drift away permanently.
“Sid--?”
He blinked, recognized I was still there.
“What about Elsie, Sid? Her too?”
“Who?”
“Elsie Crenshaw, your only other ace reporter on this big time paper. She fired too?”
Sid frowned down at me. “Elsie’s been gone almost a month, Ed.”
“Wow, really? Has it been that long?”
Sid blew a final dismissive puff, toed out his cigarette on the floor with a gesture of finality. Shook his weary head. “Community newspapers are a thing of the past, my friend...”
I had a sudden horror he was about to weep as he cast his eyes heavenward.
“…I remember when this town’s real paper—The Capitol Journal--used to have an evening edition…” That faraway look was back, Memory Lane just around the corner.
I made a flabby sound with my lips, turned off my computer solemnly, looked around for a cardboard box for the stuff I might take home…looked around my desk and realized I had nothing to take home. Mostly empty. Like my life of late.
“What about that detective agency you always wanted?” Sid drifted back. “This might be a good time to try that, Ed. Start a new life. Chase that dream.” He was cheerleading.
I pushed back from my desk; even the computer belonged to the paper. “A small town detective agency?” I replied wryly, “as opposed to a small town community paper? Like this one?” I shook my head with irony, feeling strangely theatrical, like we were in some old Kate Hepburn newspaper movie, only without Kate. “No, Sid, the detective agency was in Chicago.”
“You lived in Chicago?”
“In my head. Often for weeks.”
“Huh. Never noticed.”
“That’s gratifying, Sid. What about you? What’ll you do?”
My editor straightened as if to summon some last bit of dignity. “I said an intuitive feeling, Ed.”
“Uh-huh. So what will you do?”
He let go, slumped again, shrugged. “Fish? Write my memoirs?”
I watched him. “Fish?”
I stood, grabbed my jacket from the antique hat rack, turned and shoved out my hand to my former boss. “It’s been grand, Sid. Keep busy. All the self-help books say so.”
He thought about it as I shouldered past him to the elevator.
“Even a small town can have memoirs,” he called after me. Then called louder, creating an echo in the small office once part of a big train station: “I mean, hey--look at Mark Twain!”
“That was Missouri, Ed. Hannibal. This is Kansas.”
“I know where Hannibal is, Ed!” he called defensively.
Sounding very lost.
TWO
There’s a family-owned bar in our town, west side of Topeka Blvd.
A small one but I hang there sometimes.
It’s dark inside and smells like a bar trying not to, with too much disinfectant, but I don’t mind; the dark helps hide the other customers, mostly fat people, shadowy people. It used to bother me that there were so many overweight people in Topeka, but then I read there were overweight people now just about everywhere but California and I got over it.
The Friday I got fired I was sitting at the bar part of the bar on a cracked plastic stool nursing a sidecar too early in the day, thinking about what my ex boss had said about my putting my money where my mouth was and finally starting that detective agency. I actually looked into it once. Oh, I knew the deal--that it wasn’t Sam Spade private eye stuff anymore if it ever was, that it was mostly just another crummy office without the cubby wall. Little or no gunplay and lots of following spouses around for other spouses whose payment you sometimes didn’t get. Still, the words ‘detective agency’ just sounded cool. I mean, can’t you see the little business card, simple Helvetica on egg w
hite stock, short and sweet and not too fancy: Magee Detective Agency above the address and number? I could. And here’s the thing: someone once told me or I read somewhere that a detective agency in a small town really made a lot of sense. Because small town or big, people are incorrigibly people, husbands and wives still cheat, and all public service isn’t about kids down wells. Or pipes. Sure, there’s less work in a small town---fewer people to get in trouble--but it’s also cheaper to live, so it all kind of evens out. I’m sure I heard that somewhere, or read it somewhere, maybe in a novel, but it does make sense. Does to me anyway. I even looked in the directory once and on line later to see if there were any actual detective agencies in Topeka. It turned out there was: just one on the west side of town. And even if it was closed now, that just proved there was room for another one, right?
I’m thinking about this and it’s beginning to sound better and better as my sidecar goes lower and lower, when I look up and see this dame sitting across from me.
Okay, this is one of my favorite parts of the story and yes it’s mainly because of the use of the word ‘dame’ but the thing is we don’t get a hell of a lot of women in this town you’d consider slender enough to call a ‘dame’ and this one was in every way believe me, a dame. Classy but saucy and filling out every inch of her tight fitting dress in all those right places; raven black hair, delicate shoulders, wasp waist, endless legs below high hem. And all that’s just from the back of her! She was sort of facing away from me and I hadn’t even seen her face yet. But I knew I didn’t need to, it would be gorgeous, you could just tell.
She had to be an out-of-towner. Had to be.
It was dark in there like I said but not too dark to miss the curves, the slender fingers at the stem of her martini, the curled ball of fur asleep below her stiletto heels. Class. I don’t think Henry—that’s the barkeep—even allowed dogs in his joint, but who was going to say no to this gal? This was like free advertising for Henry, the kind of woman you couldn’t pay to come into a dive like his.
“Take a picture, it lasts longer.”
I jerked up from my drink. Was she talking to me?
I looked around the bar. No one else close enough for her to be talking to.
Maybe she hadn’t really said it at all. Facing away like that it had sounded kind of distant and strange anyway. Maybe I’d make it all up in my mind. I’d been doing that a lot lately.
Still, I couldn’t just let it go. You don’t get those kinds of opportunities often enough to just let them go. “Excuse me…were you talking to me--?
Best I could do. Sad, but I was out of practice. Two years now since the divorce. Or what would have been a divorce if we’d really been married but that’s another story.
Her bar stool squeaked lightly as she turned to me. Oh, yeah, a hottie, all right. Hotter than I’d imagined.
She looked me up and down once, taking her time, a long, slow look with sloe eyes, thick lashes. Oh, yeah.
Then she turned away again.
Huh. Well, maybe I had imagined it. It was no goofier than my agency idea.
“Can I tell you something?” From her again, still facing away.
I nodded like a woodpecker at her back. “Sure. Anything.”
She turned and looked at me again, up and down, this maybe a hint of irritation?--then swiveled back around. “I’ve got a feeling you and I could get along.”
That distant tom-tom was my thudding heart. “Yeah?”
“You just get a feeling from some people, don’t you think?”
I nodded at her perfect nape. “I do, yes.”
“Doesn’t have to be someone you’ve even met, you just get that feeling down deep inside, you agree?”
“Sure.”
She didn’t move. Just sat there, back to me. It was my turn. Damn. Think of something! Quick! “What’s you name?”
Silence.
Blew it. Lost it in round one. Classy dame like that, you can’t come on quick with a classy dame like—“
“I’m Mitzi. You?”
“Ed.” Whew! “Ed Magee. I’m a private detective.” Now, why did I have to start lying? Never did learn when to stop in time. Why couldn’t I just keep my big mouth--
“No kidding? A private detective!”
And not a condescending ‘no kidding?’ a that’s cool! no kidding.
“Yeah.” Feeling my confidence returning. And because I had to add something else and it had to be suave and casual at the same time: “It’s a living.” Stacking up the lies.
“That’s pretty impressive, Mr. Magee. Never met a real private eye.”
I snorted affably above my sidecar. “Please. Call me Ed. Miss--?” Let it be a ‘Miss,’ please God.
She turned around to appraise me again-- this time almost certainly with a look of irritation. Strange. Was she having me on?
She turned back. “Just Mitzi. So far. But I like ‘Magee.’ Nice ring.”
…thank you for firing me, Sid, thank you, thank you, thank you…
“Maybe we should talk about it,” I suggested, a little puffed up again.
“Maybe we should. But not, I think, in here.”
“Where would you like to go?” That tom-tom was loud enough to hear now.
“One of our respective dwellings?” she replied shyly.
Oh, mercy. “That sounds nice.”
She turned on her stool, set down her drink with a clink of finality. “But, I think…discreetly?”
I grabbed the dog-eared spiral pad from my jacket, jotted down my address, slid it across the bar to her glass. She glanced down, straightened stiffly (but lithely) slid off her stool. She hunched up ivory cool shoulders and headed for Henry’s front door, the furry ball at her heels--not so much a ball now as a fairly good sized…something. Shepherd/Lab mix?
I fumbled a twenty from my wallet with maddeningly clumsy fingers, slid off my own stool, smoothed my suit jacket. Breathed deep and headed toward the light…
* * *
My beat up Chevy was waiting obediently at the curb with a present from the meter maid.
It was all that was waiting.
No stacked brunette. Just faithful old Topeka Blvd, empty and forlorn- looking even when there wasn’t a recession.
Then, a rattle of claws behind me.
I turned.
The curvy brunette’s furry dog stood there, looking up at me.
“Your place or mine?” it said.
THREE
I knew right away something was wrong.
No—not the dog thing, that was obviously wrong. Something else entirely. We’ll get back to the talking dog in a minute.
Where was I? Right. I live across town on the east side. Across the tracks, they used to say, when there were tracks to cross. It’s a pretty much all-black neighborhood now. And before you get on your high horse about it, no, I’m not racist. I only mention it for the unenlightened: being black in Topeka or Kansas City or St. Louis isn’t like being black in New York or California. Yes, those first three towns are still racist, okay? Not 1960-back-of-the-bus racist--people get along okay--but it’s there, brewing underneath. I detested it. Intended to write a story about it for the paper some day but…well, you already know how that went. Wouldn’t bring it up at all except I was about to find out the true meaning of a so-called ‘minority’.
Anyway, it’s a small house, this little 40’s clapboard of mine, with an unattached garage and leaky roof and the occasional mice; I say ‘mice’ so I don’t have to think about the alternative, rats, though I’m sure they’re in there somewhere too. The main thing is the place is cheap. Handy now that I was gainfully unemployed. Also handy that I rented rather than owned. My black landlord is much kinder about such things than my white banker.
As I said, not the worst neighborhood in town but not the best either; I kept the doors locked front and back. Which is why you can tell I was still a little stoned from both the sidecar at Henry’s and the talking dog thing out front, because I came home
to my tar paper roofed clapboard without even noticing the unlocked door.
Also there was a smell once I was inside. A strange one.
More than that, there was a strange feeling.
How can I put it succinctly? A feeling like I wasn’t alone in the house.
A feeling that kept increasing as I threw my coat jacket at the green sprung couch in the living room and got myself a beer from the sometimes almost cold antique Frigidaire in the kitchen. Remember those refrigerators in the old TV commercials? Ever notice how Frigidaire is a kind of anagram for ‘frigid air’? Knew their stuff, those old- time newspaper and Wall Street private eye guys.
Never mind, that isn’t important. What’s important was that increasing feeling of uneasiness creeping through the little house the moment I stepped through the unlocked front door and came through the living room. That cloying sensation of not being there by myself. It faded a little bit while I washed by hands and face in the bathroom sink and dried them with my only towel--badly in need of laundering, but the coin op laundry was way down on Cimarron Street and that’s another story too—then got stronger again as I re-entered the living room.
And found someone sitting on my green sprung couch.
It was my editor, Sid Mathers.
Maybe that’s why I’d felt creepy and un-alone; I wasn’t.
“Sid.”
He just sat there. Staring at me. Until I began to feel creepy all over again.
Oh my God, he was dead! He was depressed and committed suicide over losing the newspaper!
Only why come to my house to do it? And why hadn’t I noticed him when I came through the front door? Thu unlocked front door.
“Sid? Are you okay?”
Finally he smiled. “Fit as a fiddle and ready for love. Why do you ask?”
Because you’re sitting all alone in the dark in my house and I don’t think we had a date. Wait! He’s going to rehire me! Came to tell me himself! This isn’t creepy, it’s great! Even if it still feels slightly strange.
“Did…we have a date, Sid?”
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