The groundhog is about the only thing that ISN”T hardboiled in this nifty little story!

Finding Chucky

By Diane Dahlstrom

The puffy-eyed, freckly girl was sitting in the folding chair facing my desk. Her name was Sid. “I hear you're the best PI in town, Mr. Streeter,” she said.

The truth was, I was the only PI listed in the yellow pages, but the line bought her five minutes. It was the last day of the month and I needed to find a real gig to scrape up the dough to pay my office rent. I didn't have time to play find-Chucky. “How old are you, kid? Seven? Eight?”

“Fuck you! I'll be ten in two days,” she said, face scrunched up like a bulldog's.

Just what I needed at the crack of noon, a snot with an attitude. I took a slug of my coffee royal and counted to ten, letting the brandy slide down into my gut. “I bet your toy woodchuck is playing hide and seek in your dirty laundry.”

“No he ain't!” she snapped. “I looked all over the house. Chucky ain't there! You gonna find him or not, dammit?”

That's it. I took another slug off my mug. Time to get her out of my thinning hair. “I charge $400.00 a day, plus expenses. I want the money up front, kid.”

She popped off her chair. Pulling a wad of hundreds out of her pants pocket, she peeled off eight. “I want Chucky dancing to his Groundhog Day song at my birthday party. You got two days, Mister. I'll pay your expenses when I get him back.”

I figured she stole the dough from her parents cookie jar. “You nuts or something, kid? You could get mugged out there. I'm taking you home to your parents,” I said, wishing my phone hadn't been disconnected so I could just call them.

“My mom's at Betty Ford.”

“I'll take you home to your dad, then.”

“My mom says I don't have a dad.”

“We'll go to your babysitter's, then.”

“Fuck you! I don't have a babysitter.”

I had to guzzle the rest of my coffee royal to calm my urge to fling the kid out the window like yesterday's business. “Don't tell me that you're on your own. I know better. Now, just give it to me straight. Who the fuck are you living with?”

“My grandpa and our butler, Theodore, but they can't find Chucky either.”

She wasn't getting that I was worried about her safety. “I'll tell you what kid. Let me bring you home to your grandpa, and if he says it's okay, I'll see what I can do for you.”

I packed her bike into the back of my Bronco, and then got behind the steering wheel. I wasn't surprised that she directed me to the high-class side of the tracks. “So what's so special about this dancing woodchuck? A rich kid like you must have lots of toys,” I said.

“My dad gave him to me for my birthday last year. It's the last time I saw him,” she said, looking at her feet.

“I thought you didn't have a dad?”

“Everybody has a dad, stupid. I told you that my mom said I didn't have a dad. She says that because she hates his guts.”

When we pulled up to the wrought iron gate, the kid hopped out and punched a code into the number pad on a stone post. The gate opened. Winding our way along the brick drive, a white mansion loomed into view. I parked between two marble pillars on guard before a set of enormous oak doors.

Inside, the kid led me through a vestibule bigger than my apartment, down a slate tiled hallway, and into a library. An old man, wearing a looks-like-you-stuck-your-finger-in-a–light-socket hairdo, was sitting at a desk waving a magnifying glass, over a spread of stamps.

Hi, Grandpa,” the kid said.

He looked up, gave me a sharp glance, and then focused on the kid. “Listen young lady, when I told you that you couldn't bring home stray animals, that included bums. Go to your room and I'll see him out.”

“But he's gonna help me find Chucky, Grandpa.”

“I said: Go to your room! Now!”

The old man had a way with kids. She scrammed out of there like a whimpering puppy.

“I don't know who the hell you are, but if you think you're going to get into my daughter's pants by preying on her innocent child, you're mistaken,” he said.

“The kid came to me, sir. I'm a private detective. I brought her home because she's carrying a lot of cash. I was afraid she'd wave it around in public and get mugged.”

“Oh. She must have of been digging in my wallet again. So I suppose you're looking for some kind of reward, now?”

By now, all I was looking for was a little respect. “No, sir. I'll settle for a ‘Thank you, Mr. Streeter', though.”

“Thank you, Mr. Streeter,” he mumbled, in a dismissive tone.

I was firing up the engine in the Bronco when a knock on my window startled me. It was a skinny man in a black tuxedo. I cranked the window down. “You must be Teddy, the butler,” I said, curious as hell to what he wanted.

Sir, I overheard you talking to Mister Peyton. The way you handled him makes me think you can be trusted. I've searched high and low for that woodchuck. It's not on the premises. Miss Acid will be one unhappy little girl on her birthday if she doesn't find it. And if she's not happy, nobody's happy.

“Miss Acid?”

“I stand corrected. Mister Peyton had her name changed to Sid when he got custody of her. Anyways, Sir, I'll pay you myself if you can find it. I think I know where it is.”

“You got my attention, Teddy.”

“The day it went missing, I was pretty sure I'd seen Miss Sid's father's car parked down the street. I didn't think too much of it at the time. But, now, I can't shake the feeling that maybe he climbed the fence, snuck into the house, and stole it. This must sound crazy to you.”

“Was Sid's birthday party here last year?”

“We've had it here every year.”

“Then you're not crazy, Teddy. Everything finally makes sense.”

The address Teddy gave me led me back to my side of the tracks. The kid's dad lived on the third floor of a beat-up apartment complex that reeked of cat piss and marijuana. The door was ajar and I could see the anorexic-looking loser sacked out on the couch. The woodchuck was laying on the coffee table. The battery compartment zipped open.

I kicked him twice before he flipped himself up into a sitting position. He had a bad case of the jitters “Who the fuck are you?”

“You must be Sid's dad?”

“What's it to ya? Ya writing a fucking book?”

“You broke your little girl's heart when you stole her woodchuck.”

“She lives in a mansion with toys up the ass. Like she even noticed,” he said.

“Are you that thick in the head that you don't get it? That she associates that stupid present with you? That when she's holding that chintzy piece of shit you bought her, she holding onto you?”

He plucks it up and tosses it at me. “Have-at-her, man. I don't need it anymore.”

“I'll take the small fortune in collector stamps with me, too,” I said.

My hunch winged the smirk right off his face. “I don't know what you're talking about. Take the fucking woodchuck and leave, man.”

I set the toy down. Grabbing him by his scrawny arm, I jerked him to his feet and slapped him in the head. “My hand's a lot more friendly than my fist. Give me the stamps or your gut's gonna meet that fist, punk.”

“The pigs searched my place a year ago, and never found them.”

“That's because for the only time in your life, you used your brain. You stole the stamps out of the old man's collection during the kid's birthday party. Afterwards, when nobody was around, you tucked them behind the battery compartment inside the woodchuck you bought her. You knew you'd be the prime suspect in the theft, so you waited a year for things to cool down to get them. Do you realize that you would've gotten away with it if you'd have left the stupid toy behind?” I said, slugging him in the gut. “Gimmee the stamps.”

Back at the mansion, Teddy met me at the gate. I gave him the woodchuck and the stamps. We both agreed to keep the business about theft to ourselves. The kid had enough shit going on in her little life. He would just hand over the stamps to the old man one of these days, claiming to have found them behind or underneath something.

After Teddy wrote me out a check for a day's wage, I drove away satisfied with another month's rent under my belt.