Services Rendered

by Kevin J. Anderson

  “I can’t tell you that!” Bookings sounded indignant, but I had piqued his curiosity. “I couldn’t possibly …” He kept muttering about privacy concerns as he dug into his database, clicking from one profile to the next, and he grew visibly more alarmed as he read one after another. “Hmmm, they all went on a first date with the same young woman.” He swallowed hard. “I admit that’s quite a coincidence.”

  “Tell me who it is,” I demanded, without adding a question mark at the end of my sentence.

  “I couldn’t, I really couldn’t.” He seemed very nervous.

  Suspicions were already forming in my mind. “Can you at least tell me what species she is?”

  He fumbled with his lip, stared at the screen, tried to block the view, and finally admitted, “It’s a Medusa. They all dated a Medusa.”

  “Alexandra,” I said.

  He quailed, covering the screen with his palms. “I didn’t tell you that!”

  “You didn’t have to,” I said.

  “And I’m not giving you her address. That would be unethical.”

  “No need.” I bumped against the wall in my rush to squeeze back out of the doorway. I already had Alexandra’s address in the Chambeaux & Deyer client paperwork. I needed to contact McGoo.

  VI

  I don’t usually concern myself with the dating habits of supernatural creatures, but the Medusa connection was sufficient cause for alarm. Once I learned where Alexandra lived, presumably the place where shy but hopeful lonely-hearts monster singles picked her up for their dates, I called for backup—McGoo. In fact, since this was UQPD business, I decided I would use him as more than backup, but rather send him right up front.

  By the time we converged near Alexandra’s home, it was late afternoon. I didn’t know what the Medusa did for a living, though it had to be something safely out of sight, probably an online business. Whatever it was, Alexandra did rather well for herself, considering the size of her villa in the suburbs.

  The home had Grecian architecture with decorative marble pillars out front next to the mailbox. A wide burbling fountain added class to the front yard, although the cheery pink lawn flamingoes seemed incongruous. High hedges formed an impenetrable wall so we couldn’t see the back yard. A quaint gate that looked as if it had been designed by a children’s fantasy illustrator led through the hedge into the back.

  “This is the kind of villa I’m going to have on the Mediterranean coast when I retire,” McGoo said.

  “I hope you started saving for that a few lifetimes ago.” We stepped up to the arched front door between more fancy marble columns. Next to the doorbell, an ominous-looking plaque warned Solicitors Will Be Turned to Stone. I realized it wasn’t an empty threat.

  When I rang the doorbell, a clear crystalline chime reverberated through the villa. I backed away, yanking the fedora down over my face for protection. I hissed to McGoo, “Avert your eyes when she answers the door! I can’t deal with a dangerous Medusa and a petrified cop at the same time.”

  “I’ve seen the warnings on the commercials,” McGoo said. “You’re supposed to call a doctor if you stay rock-hard for more than three hours.”

  When no one answered, I rang the doorbell again, and we stood waiting awkwardly on the front porch, listening to the fountain trickle. So much for a dramatic confrontation.

  “Usually, the apprehension of a suspect is more exciting than this,” McGoo said. “How long do you think we should wait? Should we leave a note on the door?”

  We heard a rustling in the hedges nearby, then a gruff male voice said, “I’m here in the back, working in the garden. Come ’round to the gate.”

  Leaving the front porch, we walked along a flagstone path to the low, rounded wooden door designed for either hobbits or Pooh-bears. The gate swung open, and we saw something else out of a children’s fantasy illustration. A bent dwarf in a floppy red hat and red vest, brown pants, black boots with a bright buckle on each foot. A long gray beard sprouted from his chin, and his eyes shrunken, squinted into a nest of wrinkles, obviously blind.

  “Heigh-ho?” The dwarf sniffed the air with an overlong nose and squinted closer to us, unable to see. “Who is it?” He leaned on his garden spade, then wiped his dirty hands off on his pants. “Are you here to see Mistress Alexandra?”

  “Yes, I’m Dan Chambeaux, private investigator, and she’s one of our clients. This is Officer McGoohan from the UQ Police Department. We have a few questions for her.”

  “She’s not here right now. I’m just the gardener, Putter.” He sniffed. “I wouldn’t mind the company, though.”

  “Putter?” McGoo asked. “Because you like to putter around out back?”

  The dwarf squinched his face in a scowl. “No, because I like to golf, but I’m no good at it since going blind. I hit the ball, then I spend an hour feeling around to find it. These days I pretty much stay on the putting green.”

  He swung open the gate and let us through the hedge into the back courtyard. “Come inside so I can keep working. I’m maintaining the mistress’s statue garden.”

  That immediately put me on my guard. “A statue garden?”

  “They’re marvelous and lifelike,” Putter said. “Mistress Alexandra is quite the collector, and I’ve made sure the new arrivals are properly arranged. Most importantly, I keep the bird shit off of them.”

  Inside, many of the shrubs were trimmed and shaped into interesting topiary animals. He led us past tulips and daffodils, snapdragons, and a large hungry-looking Venus flytrap. Ahead stood ten white marble figures of unnatural young men.

  McGoo opened and closed his mouth. I didn’t need to review the checklist of missing persons to know that each of these statues was one of the lonely nerds from Monster Match. There were vampires, werewolves, two reasonably well-preserved young zombies, a frog demon, a mummy, a ghoul. Each one of these would-be suitors had been turned to stone, their petrified expressions uplifted and smiling, showing how shy and hopeful they were to go on a date. Three even held bouquets of flowers in their hands, which had wilted away by now.

  “That’s what you call looking for love in all the wrong places,” McGoo muttered.

  Putter moved forward blindly, using the spade on the margin of the gravel path, bending over to pluck weeds. He pulled a rag out of his pocket and began polishing the statue of a young, mousy vampire who had puckered up and closed his eyes for a kiss, except he had taken a peek—a peek of the wrong thing, which turned him to stone.

  “Now, what did you want to chat with the mistress about?” asked Putter. “I can’t see the statues. How do they look? They feel very lifelike.”

  “Not lifelike anymore,” McGoo said, then turned to me, “We’ll need some blindfolded backup when Alexandra gets home. I’m calling the UQPD.”

  “Do you have any ghost cops on the force yet?” I asked. “They’d be immune to her powers.”

  “None yet, but a few rookies are in training. It’s just you and me, Shamble.”

  I hardened my voice and turned to the blind dwarf. “We need to see Alexandra right now, Putter. Well, not exactly see her, but speak with her. It is a matter of great concern.”

  The gardener stopped at a plastic five-gallon pail filled with slimy chicken entrails. He tossed a handful to the snapping jaws of the Venus flytrap. “As I said, Mistress Alexandra isn’t here. This is her big day. She’s already gone.”

  I groaned. “Of course!”

  “What’s the matter, Shamble?” McGoo asked. “We’ve got to take her into custody before she hurts someone else.”

  “Oh, she’ll have plenty of time to talk with you after the pageant,” said Putter. “This is her big opening night on full stage at the Miss Unnatural contest.” He grinned, even though he couldn’t see anything. He leaned back against the statue of a hopeful-looking werewolf. “I bet she wins.”

  VII

  If I hadn’t been so busy tracking down monster dating services and missing unnatural persons, I would have realized that S
heyenne and Robin wanted to go to the Miss Unnatural pageant. Sheyenne always asserted that men are clueless.

  Leaving Alexandra’s fancy Greek-style villa and her ominous statue garden as full dark fell, McGoo and I raced to the UQ Community Center, where the gala pageant was being held. The community center was a spacious building that often hosted Bingo night for veteran monsters. Now, large spotlights shone up at the sky, swooping back-and-forth into the night like a test run for the Bat Signal. I knew they were actually rented from the spectacle of a shoe sale that had run the previous week.

  We arrived in time to see a long line of sleek black limousines and sleek black hearses dropping off the last few celebrity guests, who strutted along the blood-red carpet. Gremlin paparazzi pestered them, carrying huge cameras, while younger paparazzi simply used their smartphones to post photos instantly on social media feeds.

  “It’s already started, McGoo,” I said. We elbowed our way through the crowds of spectators. In my slouched fedora and stitched-up sport jacket and McGoo in his beat-cop uniform, we were woefully underdressed. “We don’t have tickets. How are we going to get inside?”

  He pulled out his badge. “I have a VIP pass.” I copied him and pulled out my P.I. license, hoping it would be good enough for at least a balcony seat.

  The audience was filled with beautiful people, werewolf ladies with their fur coiffed in extravagant hairdos, polished ivory skeletons decked with so many pearls that they rattled and clattered as they walked. Mummies wore fresh linen bandages; vampire women had pale skin, crimson lips, and scarlet lacquered claws.

  We grabbed programs from a stack on a table. Slick black-and-white pages of head shots of the contestants (at least the ones who showed up on film, while others had to settle for sketches), full-page ads from the main sponsors, pages of smaller ads from contestant sponsors and overly excited family members. McGoo thumbed through his program and smirked as we walked. I thought of all the beauty salons, the dress shops, the perfume makers and embalming parlors that the pageant kept in business. No wonder the judges had been intimidated by the threat of legal action. This was quite a racket.

  Robin had demanded the contest work out some kind of accommodation for Alexandra, but now that I knew our client was a murderer, her rights as a contestant seemed less important. The Medusa would be locked up in a mirror-walled cell as soon as McGoo could figure out how to arrest her.

  The doors were closed, but we needed to get inside before the Medusa unleashed whatever mayhem she intended.

  McGoo has many talents and being rude is one of them. He used that talent now as he plowed his way toward the door with me shambling in his wake. “Police business! Make way!” he barked.

  The last gawkers and spectators shuffled away as we barged up to the ticket window. A nearsighted female troll with cats-eye glasses looked down at her keyboard and the stack of Will Call envelopes. “I’m afraid the lights have gone down and the pageant has started.” The troll ticket taker shook her head. “You’ll need to be escorted.” She pointed to a small warming shack near the main doors, where five listless zombies in tuxedoes stood around, waiting for something to do. “Go over there to the House of Usher. One of the ushers will take you inside.”

  After McGoo flashed his badge and I showed my P.I. license, a zombie usher led us through the door and quietly into the aisles as if he knew where we were going, and McGoo and I followed as if we believed him. I thought Robin and Sheyenne would be sitting up very close to the front.

  The community center looked full, every seat occupied, and all faces were turned forward, staring at the spectacle. Ahead of us, the broad stage was framed with high, scalloped red velvet curtains and celebratory streamers. Under bright floodlights, gorgeous (depending on your definition) female contestants in swimsuits paraded across the front of the stage, some wearing bikinis, others in one-pieces. They strutted back and forth exuding confidence, some of them even transmitting glamour spells. One of the pale zombie women exposed her shriveled, pruned skin as if she had been submerged for a very long time. An aquatic female creature oozed slime, which made her skin glisten enticingly in the spotlights. Werewolves showed off their sleek belly fur. A vampire woman’s fangs gleamed so brightly she had obviously smeared them with Vaseline.

  “I don’t see Alexandra,” I whispered to McGoo.

  “That’s probably a good thing,” McGoo cracked, his attention distracted by the beauty queens in spite of himself.

  The zombie usher turned sideways and let out a wet, scolding, “Sssssh!”

  The four judges sat at a long table on the side of the stage, Lewis the werewolf in his pinstripe suit, Eleanor the blue-haired zombie lady, Sheila the arrogant harpy and former contest winner, and the gray clay golem Egnort. The golem just stared at the women, while the other three judges took diligent notes, although it looked as if Lewis was working on a crossword puzzle.

  The usher led us down the aisle toward the front, barely able to see the faint running lights. I spotted Robin in a reserved seat in the second row, and Sheyenne’s spectral form drifted up the aisle toward us after she saw us coming. She swooped close, whispering, “Beaux, you made it!”

  “Did Robin get Alexandra among the contestants?” I asked. “We’ve got to stop her from coming out on stage. She’ll turn everybody to stone.”

  Sheyenne didn’t seem concerned as we hurried toward the seats. The zombie usher had trouble keeping up with us. “Don’t worry, Robin took care of that. The committee made protective accommodations, so everything’s fine.”

  Looking exhausted, the zombie usher stopped at the second row and extended a gray hand toward Robin and a pair of conveniently empty seats next to her. Sheyenne said, “We hoped you two would come, so we bought extra tickets.”

  The swimsuit contestants filed off the stage into the dim expanse behind the big velvet curtains as the orchestra played a fanfare. The announcer asked for a round of applause, which was politely given, accompanied by catcalls and werewolf whistles.

  At stage left, waiting to give their solo singing performances according to the program, sat the vivacious unnatural ladies from the Full Moon brothel. Neffi wore a fine white linen gown over her freshly re-wrapped bandages as well as gaudy gold and scarab jewels. She and all of her ladies had entered, hoping for one of them to be crowned Miss Unnatural, and then she could charge a premium.

  While McGoo and I squirmed forward to our seats, dodging knees covered by cocktail gowns and tuxedo pants, I kept a worried eye on the stage, not convinced I could believe Sheyenne’s reassurances. When Robin motioned us to our seats, she seemed victorious and proud. “It’s all been worked out. Alexandra will get her time in the limelight. She’s on next, once they set up the screens.”

  I leaned close to Robin. “She’ll also get her time in jail. That Medusa already murdered ten young men who signed up for the Monster Match dating service. She turned them to stone on the first date and stashed the statues back at her villa.”

  Robin looked horrified. “I’m sure it was an accident, and it can’t happen here at the pageant. I was very specific in the accommodations.” She pointed to the front of the auditorium where lurking stage hands rolled forward gauzy fabric screens on large wooden frames. When backlit from behind the stage, the silhouettes of the stage hands were razor sharp. “The fabric is thin, but it’s been tested to be sufficient to filter out the Medusa’s petrification spell. The judges and the audience can see Alexandra in great detail without being turned to stone. She’s going to give an impassioned speech, classified as a dramatic talent entry.”

  As the stage was prepared for the Medusa, I looked uneasily at the huge folded curtains that had been raised above the stage, leaving heavy shadows in the back area and the usual theatrical debris: ladders, props, and push brooms, next to all the ropes that held up the scaffolding, the lighting, and the curtains.

  While the judges waited, and the audience muttered impatiently, McGoo ground his teeth together, dissatisfied. “It’s
not as if Alexandra can get away, Shamble. We’ll arrest her as soon as the pageant is over.” He glanced at me in the seat beside him. “If we rush the stage now, you know what’ll happen.”

  I nodded slowly. “Yeah, they’ll try to crown me as Miss Unnatural.”

  McGoo snorted.

  When the tall screens formed a barrier in front of the stage, the announcer boomed, “And now, our first ever Medusa contestant in the Miss Unnatural pageant! Give a round of applause for the fascinating and dangerous Alexandra!”

  The orchestra played a spritely fanfare, and the audience made polite applause. The bright backlighting showed the slender, sexy figure outlined in perfect curvaceous silhouette and a serpentine hairdo that was at once horrifying and hypnotic. At least a part of me was desperate to see what her face actually looked like, but I hardened my resolve before her glance could harden my skin.

  The Medusa approached the thin fabric on the screens, and Alexandra spoke in her sultry voice. “I am here to speak out for all the beautiful people that no one ever sees. Think of the unnatural women who live in the shadows, who hide their true selves because they don’t want to be laughed at or embarrassed. This pageant is supposed to celebrate beauty in all forms! Throughout history, Medusas have been forced to hide, living in labyrinths, glimpsed only through mirrors. Tonight, at this beauty pageant, I’ve decided to come out in public.”

  The audience muttered their support. Many of them, especially the celebrity attendees, wore wristbands or lapel pins to promote prominent causes from days or weeks past. I sensed that new armbands and lapel pins would soon spring up across the Quarter for the Beauty in All Forms movement.

  I uneasily watched her stark silhouette from behind the thin screen. From their table on the stage, the four judges watched as well through a filmy side screen. The golem sat straight-backed, his smooth gray face turned toward the seductive shape. The harpy Sheila scowled and snickered, but it seemed to be her normal expression. Eleanor paid close attention, nodding slowly. Bent over his folded newspaper, Lewis found the correct five-letter word that finished his crossword puzzle, and he looked up, immensely satisfied with himself.