by Mike Ashley
* * *
I called the palace to see if I could get an appointment to see Prince Charming, but I was told that although he was too busy to see me just yet he would be in touch with me soon to set up an appointment.
At least I assume that’s what all that laughing meant.
So the only thing I could think to do was root around Princess Ella’s family tree. It was easy to see why she didn’t go around bragging about her background. Her family lived in what was probably a nice house once, in a neighborhood that could still have passed for respectable if this house had been in a different one. Their mailbox was down and the yard was filled with junk and trash. I guess they were having a hard time finding help since Ella went to live in the palace.
The woman who answered my knock was grey-headed and starting to stoop, but still with a fire in her eye. I handed her my card and asked if I could come in for a few minutes.
“Jack B. Goode?” she said, studying my card. “I’m sorry, Mr Goode. We don’t do much planting these days, and even if we did I wouldn’t be interested in buying any beanstalks.”
“Then we’ll get along just fine,” I told her, as I stepped in the door. “Since I’m not selling any beanstalks.”
The house smelled like mildew and stale popcorn. Dirty out-of-date party dresses and shoes were strewn everywhere. So were pizza boxes and microwave dinner trays. The only part of the house I could see that wasn’t filthy was the fireplace and it sparkled.
“Girls, clear off that table, we’ve got company,” my hostess yelled into the dark kitchen. “A gentleman caller.”
It took my eyes a few seconds to adjust to the gloom, but when they did I saw two women lost somewhere in their thirties, playing an ironic hand of Old Maid – and arguing – at the kitchen table. Their hair was in curlers, where it looked like it had been for weeks, and their bellies roiled out over the strained waistbands of their moth-eaten sweat pants.
My eyes continued downward, and I made a bet with myself that soon I would find dirty off-brand sneakers, but I lost that wager because what they actually had wrapped around their lower extremities was some sort of system of rags and wooden braces. It was obviously an attempt to emulate our oriental friends and make their feet petite.
But I could have told them it was a painful waste of time. For one thing their ankles were already sailing along on size 12 dinghys, and for another if by some weird chance another prince did come to this house looking for a mate, he probably would not be as kinky as Charming.
The news of a gentleman caller did not impress either of these young ladies. There was a bowl of milk that had curdled on the table, and one of the sisters did shove this out of the way so I could sit down, but a tarantula had beaten me to the seat, so I passed.
“You cheated,” said the ditch water-brunette one. “That is not the card I meant to draw.”
Her sister made an even funnier face than the one God gave her – another bet I would have lost – and said, “Well, it’s not my fault if you’re clumsy.”
“Cheater.”
“Lummox.”
Mamma cuffed them both in the back of the head.
“Girls, say hello to Mr Jack B. Goode. Mr Goode, these are my daughters, Emberita and Sparkimberly.”
Neither of them got up, but Emberita rolled her eyes at me and said, “Didn’t you kill a giant or something? I know I’ve heard of you.”
“Frame-up job,” I told her. “I never killed anybody bigger than a bread box.”
“Can I get you something to eat?” Momma asked me. “We’ve got some leg of lamb that our neighbor Mary lost – I mean gave us.”
I did the rub-your-belly-and-pretend-like-you-just-ate-a-big-meal “No-thanks.” number. I’d already learned all I could here without asking a single question. Prince Charming was certainly not having an affair with any of the yetis in this house. And no doubt they could dish up plenty of dirt on Ella if I asked, but how much of it would be fact and how much plain old jealousy would take too long to figure out.
Just for the hell of it I decided to see if I could start a family feud before I left. Everybody’s got a fetish. Charming’s was feet. I’m betting that Mamma’s was a clean fireplace.
“I’m not hungry,” I said. “But there is a chill in the air. Would you mind if I started a fire?”
Now both girls jumped up.
“I’ll make you some coffee – hot coffee,” said Sparkimberly.
Emberita pulled on my arm. “And I’ll get you a blanket and a coat. Although I don’t know why I should care – it’s her turn to clean the fireplace.”
“Liar,” was her sister’s oh-so-clever retort. “It’s your turn and you know it.”
Momma grabbed a broom, but I snuck out the back door and didn’t see if she swatted her daughters with it or flew off on it to her coven meeting.
By now it was 2:00 in the afternoon, and I thought about spending the remainder of the day whiskey diving at the Gosling’s Mater, and the night wandering around trying to figure out where the heck my house had gone. But then I remembered that Princess Ella was paying me by the job and not by the hour, so I bought a newspaper and took a seat at the Silver Spoon coffee shop to plan my next move.
The place had changed. Instead of the usual gossip and clamor, there was musical entertainment, some unseen jazz cat manqué torturing a fiddle somewhere. Worst of all, instead of the redhead I usually flirted with, some greasy-haired guy came over to take my order.
“Good afternoon, sir,” he sang. “My name is Tommy Tucker; and I’ll be serving you supper. Our special this afternoon is a porridge made from pease meal; and you can have that hot or already congealed. We also have it specially aged for –”
“You bring me anything green – especially porridge – especially old green porridge, and you’ll have to get all your music transposed to a higher register.”
“Sorry, sir. Perhaps you’re more in the mood for something sweet. Our baker Patty’s cakes are quite the treat.”
“Just bring me coffee. Black. And say, kid, what happened to the little girl that used to work here? Red hair. A real dish.”
“Oh, she quit. Took a month’s advance on her salary and vanished.” He looked around before adding in a whisper – “Took most of the silverware with her when she went.”
I gave him my card to give to the manager in case he wanted me to track down the fork filcher.
The coffee was hot and for some reason tasted like peas. While I waited for it to cool off enough to pour into the potted plant, I perused the paper.
The news was too depressing, the crossword puzzle was too hard and the comics were dull, so I gravitated to the classified ads.
Right under a plaintive plea from somebody named Peep looking for some lost livestock was this:
WANTED: Pastry chef, must be honest
and hard-working. No bird-watchers.
Apply at Her Majesty’s Royal Palace.
Hmm, I haven’t been undercover since those horrible humiliating days I spent disguised as a hog, waiting for Tommy Thomas, the bagpiper’s boy, to purloin another piggy. Of course, I don’t know the difference between a pastry and a g-string, but with any luck – and surely I must be due for a dose – I’ll have this case solved before I have to do any actual baking.
Going to work at the palace was a lot easier than I thought it would be. I didn’t have to pass any tests or fill out any forms. I just hopped over the moat, banged on the back door of the castle and introduced myself.
“Hi, I’m Jack B. Goode and I’m –”
“Come in, come in,” the old lady who answered the door grabbed me and pulled me into the kitchen. “Jack Goode, did you say? I thought you were a much skinnier man. How is your wife, still as obese as ever?”
“I don’t have a –” But she just shoved a tall white hat and an apron at me and dragged me over to meet my mentor, an amiable, buck-toothed fella named Simon.
“Simon,” she said, flinging open cabinet doors, “I th
ought I told you to restock these shelves. These cupboards are bare.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs H. I’ll take care of it as soon as I get a chance.” Simon sounded dog tired.
“Don’t I know you from somewhur?” he asked me, after the boss lady left. “You look awful familiar.”
I wasn’t in the mood to explain that I wasn’t whatever National Enquirer freak named Jack he thought I was, so I ignored his question and asked about the turnover rate in the royal kitchen.
“Oh, we never make turnovers. Charming can’t stand ’em.”
Once I had clarified my query, I learned that the royals have been having a hard time keeping anybody in the position, what with one after another getting blamed for poisoning pies, and they were now drafting people into kitchen service. Simon was roped into the position when he couldn’t afford to pay a traveling pie man for the treat he ate. Kind of ironic, I guess, that his sweet tooth led to him becoming indentured.
“If you can tell the difference between a blackbird and a blackberry you should be fine. It’s not hard, even I can do it and I’m not very bright,” Simon said. “But if you mess up and put a blackbird in there, heads will roll – and I’m not using that as a figger of speech. I mean heads will roll – laterally.
“But don’t worry, we’re not making blackberry pies yet,” Simon said. “We’re starting off today making tarts. You know how to make tarts, dontcha?”
I started to worry that I might be in over my head here, but Simon told me not to worry.
“Just do whatever I do,” Simon said.
“Does Prince Charming ever get down here?” I asked, thinking that if I could just get a quick man-to-man word with the Prince, he might know who was trying to poison him.
“The Prince? Down to the kitchen? Are you kidding?” Simon asked. “He’s way too busy playing golf and polo and . . . uh, you know, being a prince.”
It turns out that tarts are really just little pies with no crust on the top. My job was to knead and roll out the dough so Simon could shape it into little pie pans and send it on down the line to be filled with what looked like Granny Smith apples but for all I knew could have been blackbird guts.
Don’t let anyone tell you that kneading dough is easy work. I was just about to ask Simon what time we got our bourbon break when some fool behind me blew a trumpet or a bugle or some other loud scary wind instrument, and Queen Charismatic herself sauntered into the kitchen.
Everybody cast down their eyes as she passed, but I don’t know why. She wasn’t the show-stopper that her daughter-in-law was, but she wasn’t all that ugly for an old broad. Still, me and some old one-eared grey kitchen cat, who had been toying with a trio of sightless mice he’d captured, were the only ones brave enough to actually look at the Queen.
“I’m here to inspect the tarts,” she sniffed regally.
“Does she usually inspect your work?” I asked Simon, but he was standing silently at attention. He might have nodded but I’m not sure. Once again, I followed Simon’s lead, straightened my spine and unfocused my gaze.
The tarts weren’t the only thing she inspected. As we all stood there, an unblinking grease-covered army, General Charismatic walked in front of and then behind our ranks. We stood there without moving for what seemed like ever. My legs were itching and I was wishing I remembered how to do those bird calls I almost learned when I was a lad.
“Where are the tarts?” shrieked the Queen.
Her henchman nodded to release us from suspended animation, and we turned to where the tarts were laid out, but they weren’t. There, that is.
My co-workers really came alive now. We were looking in the pantries, up the chimney, everywhere we could think of for the missing tarts – or a way out of the castle.
“He did it,” the Queen shouted. “I saw him! Grab that knave!”
I turned and gave me the guy behind me a what-kind-of-miserable scalawag-would-sink-so-low gaze, but it was a bluff. And a pretty pitiful one at that. I knew she was pointing at me.
So did her troops. The guards grabbed my arms and pulled my hands behind my back. The Queen yelled for somebody to get the Prince; the captain of the guards yelled for somebody to get the royal executioner; and I wished I had hit the snooze button on my alarm clock a few hundred more times this morning. Either that or hit Princess Ella up for money. If I’d known I was going to end up losing my head I woulda charged her at least twice what I did.
Some harried-looking lackey burst in with a prince – Prince Alluring, the youngest royal. From the way the underling’s knees were knocking, I think he had a sneaking suspicion this was not who Charismatic had in mind.
“Where is Charming?” she sniped at the guy.
“I called him just like you said, Your Majesty,” he sputtered, “but the Prince is in the counting room, counting up his slip-ons. He said he didn’t want to be disturbed.”
“Why, that lazy loafer, I ought to –” She turned her royal attention back to me. “You are accused of stealing tarts. The penalty is death for you and several of your coworkers. How do you plead? Guilty or what?”
“Yer Majesty,” I said, “I gotta tell ya the truth, I did steal a tart. Once. From my best friend Phil. But it was a long time ago and as soon as I found out what kind of girl she was I gave her back. Pilfering pastries is really not one of my vices.”
“Hah! You stole them, and I bet you tried to poison Prince Charming. Everybody turn and face the doorway, so that you can hail the Prince when he arrives. I am going to inspect these blackberry pies.”
It was at that moment as my captors spun me around away from the blackberry pies I had not even seen yet, that I decided to become a socialist – or a communist or Buddhist or whoever it is that don’t have these royal pains in the neck.
I knew Prince Charming was not coming. So did Queen Charismatic. I knew I didn’t steal any tarts or put any bird parts in pies. So did Queen Charismatic. I also knew why she wanted us to turn our backs.
There was a “skritch-skritch” sound as one of the blind mice escaped from its tabby tormentor and scurried up a hickory grandfather clock. It wasn’t much of a diversion, but it was gonna have to do.
“Look over there,” I shouted. “It’s Prince Charming. Behind us.”
Everybody turned around but what we saw was not Prince Charming but Queen Charismatic. She was not just inspecting our pies, she was flavoring them.
It took a moment or two before she realized that her youngest son as well as her entire kitchen staff had just seen her pull a big dead black bird out of her purse and put it inside a pie crust.
To her credit she didn’t try to bulldoze her way out of it. She said, “I . . . I never put enough in there to actually hurt him. I just wanted to make him see that being monarch is a serious job. He won’t grow up and stop playing, and I’m tired, I want to step down.”
Nobody knew what to do now. Technically, it’s not against the law for royals to break the law. Just when it looked like we were all going to spend the rest of our lives there, playing the who-can-look-the-stupidest game, the Queen took command.
“Let him go,” she said to the guards holding me. “You can keep your head but not your job. You’re fired.”
Turning to the guards who had escorted into the kitchen, she sighed and said, “Well, come on, let’s get back to the throne room. I guess this reign is never going to go away.”
As I was untying my apron and wondering if I had enough money to buy a bottle of rye to celebrate wrapping up this case, Simon stuck out his hand for me to shake.
“Wow,” he said, “you are a great detective, I mean great. You solved one of the biggest mysteries of our time.”
“You think so?”
“Yeah, I mean, I always wondered what she was lugging around in that purse of hers.”
I handed him my card and he looked at it for a minute.
“Jack B. Goode? Now I know where I know you from,” Simon said. “You can play a guitar just like a ringin’ a bell,
right?”
It was started to dawn on me why everybody thought of Simon as simple.
“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
THE KALUZA-KLEIN CAPER
Damien Broderick
A mind-crackingly ugly woman named Hsia Shan-yun was all set to blow the crap out of the major personal records filing installation in the West Pacific Zone when a monitor Bug put the arm on her.
Shan-yun was a horrifyingly tall Valkyrie, just under two metres from her size-ten track shoes to the top of her wildly flowing black mane. Eyes of slashing jade green glared out at the world she despised under slanting, Oriental eyelids. Her mouth was ripe and full, hardly the neat, demure pallid line esteemed by leading fashion experts of the 23rd century.
I won’t even talk about her breasts, or the violent animal swing of her muscular body, or the way her legs stretched most of the way from earth to sky and her arms seemed fitted by evolution to a role quite other than punching data into a terminal fifteen hours a day. A detailed list would be disgracefully sexist, whether by our standards or hers.
Take it from me. Hsia Shan-yun was outstandingly unattractive.
Her benighted parents, the world’s last Confucian Scientologists, had hidden her in a small shielded bottle during the Reconstruction Phase, when genetic engineers in geosynchronous orbit had broadcast whole-body altering messages to the gonads and onboard fetuses of the entire planet. In consequence, the unfortunate creature looked like an abominable throwback to that peak epoch of nutrition-driven Brute Expressionism – the 20th century.
Naturally, Shan-yun compensated for her atrocious looks by denial and fantasy. Day and night she read forbidden books (all books, of course, being forbidden, but some being incredibly more forbidden than others, and it was this kind she crammed into her perverted brain).