Mysterical-E

He Said, She Says

SIX-PACK, P.I.
by James L. Oddie

When Grant Grouse, P.I. adopts an aged golden retriever, he can't possibly know
how big a part the pooch will play in his already complicated life.

The door opens and a flight bag comes flying in followed by a scroungy-looking bearded guy wearing hole-in-the-knee jeans, and four earrings.

My good friend and roomy, Derek, is back. He plays lead guitar for a group called The Better Off Dead, and just returned from a gig in Bermuda. True to form, he walks straight to the fridge and takes out two beers. He puts one between his knees, pops the other, takes a long swig, and turns towards me.

As he looks at my leg in the hip-high cast perched precariously on the coffee table, the can between his legs crashes to the floor. He yells, "What in hell happened to you?"

"Damned nice of you to notice."

He gets three more beers and tosses one to me. "No, really, what in hell happened? Ya wasn't wearing that thing when I left."

"No, it happened two nights after you left."

Derek, starting to sit on the sofa, notices it ‘s already filled by a large dog. One that began life as a golden retriever, but age, to paraphrase, had turned the golden threads to silver.

"Whoa! Whose old pooch?"

The dog opens one eye and wags his tail.


"Ours."

"Hmmm. Whatcha call him?"

"Six Pack." The dog's ears perk up, he sort of slides off the sofa and puts his head in my lap. As I scratch behind his fuzzy ears, I say, "This old darling saved my life."

Derek, stretched out on the bean bags with beer in hand, asks, "Whatcha talkin'?"

"It's a long story."

He opens two more beers. "So who's going anywhere? Give out."

"Okay, but it's not pretty. Like I said, you left on your tour and the next night I'm making friendly with this red-headed, green-eyed skirt I picked up down at McGuire's. We end up at her place, and just about the time the fireworks start, there's this sound of a key in the lock...hell of a time for her to tell me her husband's a black belt! Without a sound, I grabs my pants and I'm out the window — two damned floors. Land in a big hedge. Break my fall and my knee at the same time. So there I am, three in the morning, and hardly able to creep."

"Jeez, man, whadja do?"

"Manage to pull my pants on and hide under the hedge, while this ape grunts and puffs looking for me. He's swearing and beating the hedge with a golf club. Just about the time he's getting near, I hear this growling and the guy lets out a yell. I peek out and he's running and screaming with this big, barking dog on his butt."

The pooch looks up at me with his big, brown eyes. I scruff him behind the ears.

"I lay there until I hear the redhead's cries from upstairs. I figure if he's working her over he's done looking for me, so I start snaking my way down the alley. Luckily this taxi pulls up. The driver opens the door, and as I pile in, ol' Sixer here jumps in behind me. All the way to ER he's sitting on the back seat, smiling — and I swear he winked at me."

"Jeez. No wonder you took him in, but that doesn't explain the name."
    "No, but keep listening. You gotta imagine how I felt, stuck up here in this cast, my family back East, you gone, and I couldn't even order take out."

"All you had to do is call Mr. Danjou downstairs at the deli."

"Yeah, smart guy, the second day you’re gone Pac Bell cuts off my phone."

Derek tries to disappear into the sofa pillows, "Oh, Jeez."

"Yeah, you forgot to pay the bill before you left."

"But ya obviously worked something out."

"Sure, quite ingenious too. I wrote a note for the three essential b’s: bread, butter and baloney, clipped it and a ten spot to pooch's collar, and sent him down to Mr. Danjou's. About twenty minutes later the dog's back with a bag tied to his collar with all the stuff I'd ordered, and my change."

Derek gives an approving look at the dog, "Cool, but I still don’t...”

"Hold on. I’m getting to it. I get my sandwich made and discover one more thing — beer's all gone."

"Bummer."

"Yeah, but what do I do? I writes out another note and clips it to the collar with a fiver. Pretty soon he's back up the stairs with six cold ones. So that's why I..."

The door opens with a bang and this roundish, rugged looking guy with a mustache comes in.

"You Grunt Gross, PI?" he asks with the subtlety of a bull horn, while jabbing me in the chest with a scrap of yellow pages directory.

Six Pack gives with a low growl and bares his teeth.

"That's Grant Grouse," I advise, "and I usually handle clients at the office. How'd you get my apartment address?"

Backing off, the guy says, "Gross, Grouse, who cares?"

He turns to Derek, jabs his thumb towards the door and barks out, "Goodbye, chump, me and Mr. Gross Grouse got some business, and we don't need no third party."

Derek may look like it, but he doesn't come from no line of nuptialed cousins, so he bows to me and shuts the door quietly behind him.

I turn back to the mustached dude. "I want to know how you got this address."

In answer, he pulls a roll out of his pocket and rubs it under my nose, "You obviously don't pay your girl-Friday enough — twenty bucks and she coughed up your digs. Hell, I'd have gone forty."

I make a mental note to talk to Maureen about how she spells the word loyalty.

Still talking, he peels off two crisp new thousand dollar bills and slaps them on the table next to my cast, "I want you to find my wife."

He pulls a black and white photo out of his pocket. It's had some mileage, and the gal in the photo's been around the block a few times herself. She's in her mid-thirties, early forties, with dark hair. Wouldn't be particularly memorable except she's lying flat on her back in a bikini and she's got a tattoo of a serpent coiled around her belly-button. Take off about thirty pounds and I wouldn't kick her out of my hammock.

Of course, I don't say this to Mr. Chubby, I give him back the pic and he lays it next to the cash.

After a bunch of blubbering about how much he loves her, he tells me she'd disappeared about three months ago, took all her jewelry and cleaned out their bank account — after twelve years together.

"Doesn't look the type. How much did she get?"

"Two hundred and thirty grand, plus the rocks."

Sure, he only wanted his darling Gina back — give me a break — but to him I says, "Hell, she's probably flown off to Rio, the Greek Isles, wherever, by now."

"Nope, won't fly, got motion sickness bad, even gets sick in a car, not to mention a train or bus. No, I'll be willing to bet she's not far away. And from what I've heard about you, even with that bum pin, I think you're the one to nab her."

I'm thinking, if she's all that scared of traveling, how'd she get here to Hawaii in the first place? Born here? Doubt it. But, sure, I take the case. Two grand up front and no promises. Why not? I never really expect to ever find his wife, but I figure he'll probably hire a couple more in different parts of town anyway. Somebody'll find her — if she hasn't skipped.

Mr. Mustache leaves as quickly as he'd arrived. I sit looking at the photo and the cash, wondering why she'd ever married the guy in the first place. My thoughts are interrupted by a knock on the door. "Come in," I mutter.

The door creaks open and in walks this goddess. So help me. Short, tight white dress that holds the curves just like my Ferrari, dark brown eyes that speak pillow talk, and the longest blonde hair I've ever seen on any gal. I sit here picturing her with nothing but those tresses for a sarong.

She smiles, amused. She'd learned long ago the effect she had on men.

"Mr. Grouse," she purrs, "I am your new landlady."

Cripes! The landlady from heaven. What'd I do to deserve this?

She continues, while taking in the two weeks of clutter in my room, "I am also the new owner, and am planning to convert this into a luxury resort. I just want you to know there will be no changes in your rent, at least not for... "

As her baby-blues come in my direction again, she frowns, and without another word or gesture, turns on her trim little heel, and closes the door behind her.

Man, I think, I'm glad Derek wasn't here. I hadn’t said one word. Me, supposed to be Mr. Cool.

Two weeks later, Derek's back and we're having some cool ones.

"See you've still got...whadja call him?"

"Six Pack. And he saved my life again."

"You're kidding."

"Nope."

After I fill him in on what’s been happening, I totter on my crutches over to the window. I motion Derek over, point down, and ask, "See that lounge chair down there?"

"Sure."

"Well, Tuesday afternoon last week I’m admiring some of the lovelies around the pool."

"Yeah, so what's new?"

"Well, I happen to look directly down at that chair. I see my new landlady, the blonde goddess, wearing a purple, string bikini. She’s lying on her back, working on her tan. I pick up my binocs and am getting them focused when she opens her eyes. I pull back, hoping she hasn't seen me.

"That night about ten I run out of beer, so I send Six Pack down to the deli with a note and the money. About fifteen minutes later he comes back with the beer tied to his collar, but there's only five cans in it.

Sometime in the night, Six Pack wakes me up by rubbing his cold nose in my face. I’m about ready to whomp him one when I hear somebody slowly coming up the stairs. I get my .44 ready. Then there's a scream, followed by a sound like somebody rolling a big bag of potatoes down the stairs, then a thud.

"I clamber out of bed, grab my crutches, and open the door. Nothing! Then there's a lot of jabbering and yelling down below. I stagger to the edge of the stairs and look down. It's the blonde landlady. She's lying on her back, wearing a lavender negligee — lavender, that is, everywhere except where the blood is flowing from the knife handle protruding from the middle of her chest. And around her navel is a tattoo."

"Jeez, man. Think she was going to kill you?"

"That's what the lieutenant guessed after I told him my story. He thought when she was in my apartment, she saw the photo of her previous self on the table, and deduced her husband had hired me to find her. Then when she saw me looking at her in the bikini with the binocs, well, she thought sure I'd seen her serpent. Funny thing is I hadn't, I didn't see the tattoo until I saw her at the bottom of the stairs — dead."

"But you said the old pooch had saved your life again?"

I'll swear Six Pack winked at me again. I winked back.

"Yeah, he did. The lieutenant figured when the blonde came up the dimly-lit stairs she’d slipped on the can of beer Six Pack dropped. When she tumbled down, she fell on the knife meant for me."

"Whew! You were damned lucky."

"Yeah, but that wasn't the end of my luck."

"Whatcha mean."

"The green-eyed redhead's husband. Damned good thing he hadn't seen me under

"How come?"

"He was the lieutenant I gave my story to."

***

Jim Oddie lives in the apple capitol of the world with his wife, Pat. After a career as a commercial artist and exhibit director, he has been writing short mystery stories for about a dozen years, and drawing cartoons and caricatures for many years more.