By Bretton Cadigan
Derek knocked on the detective’s door three times in succession. The first knock was determined, confident, and urgent. The second knock simply mirrored the first, producing a nice rhythm. The third knock was completely perfunctory and Derek would come to regret it.
“Three knocks?! Two was more than enough!” hollered the ensconced gumshoe. “Don’t just stand there knockin’ all day like a boob. Come in!”
Derek pushed through the door and stumbled inside. “Good morning sir! You must be Jake Fletcher, Private Eye. Ah, I’m… I’m here with an unusual request.”
“Unusual, eh? I’ll tell you somethin’ unusual. I once saw an elephant wipe a monkey’s butt with a squirrel. The weirdest thing about it: there was a whole roll of toilet paper, sittin’ right there.”
Derek paused for what he considered an appropriate time after such a statement. Meanwhile Jake lit an expensive cigar with a cheap lighter and glared at Derek.
“What do you want, kid? Before you say anything, I just do investigations: no shake-downs, no shake-ups, or no shake-and-bakes. I’m the best at what I do and I still charge more than what I’m worth.” On Jake’s desk sat piles of case files covered with a few half-empty whiskey bottles and half-a-dozen half-full tumblers. Throughout the office lingered a pervasive smell of cigar smoke, hard-boiled detectives, and bad eggs.
Derek sat in the chair opposite Jake and coughed into his hat. “Well sir, y’see, I’m looking for a job.”
Derek had a gift for observation, a skill likely gained from his two hobbies: reading Sherlock Holmes and bird-watching. After he lost his pencil-pusher office job due to a nation-wide pencil shortage, he decided to pursue a life-long dream to solve mysteries.
“A job!?” Jake spat out his cigar in surprise, where it landed on the whisky soaked stack of bills and invoices. The stack immediately went up in flames.
* * *
After the fire department had put out the inferno, Jake was off on a new case, with his equally-new intern Derek following behind him. Jake had been impressed by Derek’s quick thinking: Not only had he called the fire patrol, he had rescued one of Jake’s whiskey bottles. This kid might really have what it takes, he thought.
“Now Derek, I don’t need some bumbling comic relief sidekick; I’ve already relieved myself twice today. No, what I really need is a partner that I can count on, one who’s got ‘the stuff.’ What’s your skillset kid?”
“Oh, I’m actually not a kid, I’m 38,” corrected Derek.
“Pedantry, eh? Can’t say that’s much use in the field of private eyein’, but I’ll see what I can do with that. Can ya drive?”
“Sure can!”
“Great, that’ll come in handy, when I need a ride home from the bar.”
Derek tried to follow up that he was also well-read, organized and quite observant, but Jake held up a hand, halting Derek’s thought process and their advance. “Alright, this is the address. We got hired by a mister to check up on a missus while he’s out of town, if you know what I mean.” He winked. “Time for a bit of investigation.”
Jake rang the doorbell. A beautiful woman in an elegant bathrobe answered the door. “Hello, gentlemen. Can I help you?”
Jake tipped his hat, a generous 20 percent tip. “Yeah, we got some questions for ya.” Jake bumped Derek with his elbow and nodded his head. “Take it away, kid.”
Derek sputtered, never expecting to be put on the spot so immediately. But he was ready to prove his PI skills as best he could, and what could be better than a bit of intuition and subterfuge? Derek’s mind whirred. Hired by “a mister to check up on a missus”? Husband out of town? Jake’s telling wink? They must be investigating an affair.
“Yes, hello, we’re, ah, census takers, from the government, and we’re here conducting some, ah, neighborhood polling for our database.… Have you perhaps recently had any, ah, well, extramarital relations?”
The woman gasped. Jake smacked his forehead. “For the love’a Jehovah! Derek!”
* * *
A few minutes later, the two were chatting over tea and biscuits in the woman’s living room. Her name was Elisabeth Shooster. “It was so kind of my husband to hire you. I’ve been quite disquieted by these assassination attempts!”
“I can imagine!” Jake responded to the woman, but was still shooting daggers at Derek. What coulda given the kid the idea to ask an insensitive question like that? An affair! Didn’t he know they were hired to investigate a murder attempt? Some folks have no sense of decorum. “So. Who’s tryin’ to whack ya?”
Elisabeth whimpered like a heartbroken beagle. “I don’t kno-o-o-o-w! It’s happened three or four times now! I’m happily painting right here, and then I’ll hear gunshots! I dive for cover under my easel, but my art can’t take it!” She blew her nose in a loud, lady-like manner.
Derek looked around the room. At one end was an open bay window next to a cage with an exotic bird, a tank of aquatic fish, and a library of quixotic literature. At the other end stood a paint-splattered easel and a stack of finished oil paintings featuring a sad-looking rat. “Curious,” mused Derek, “No bullet holes.… At least these paintings are safe.”
Elisabeth briefly teared up. “Thank goodness. I worked so hard on all those portraits of my husband.” Derek did a double-take, then a triple-take. Despite all appearances, the illustrated rat was, indeed, a human man.
Jake donned his investigation face, a furrowed brow combined with a vague look of mental constipation. “No bullet holes, y’say? But you heard gunshots… hmm… I wonder if they’re using those new boomerang bullets I read about.” Derek opened his mouth, but said nothing. Jake glared at him anyway. “Criminy, this is a real hum-dinger. But we’ll sleuth it out. Do you or your husband have any enemies?”
“No, absolutely not! I’m a lover of animals and all God’s creatures: big, small, and very, very small. Especially the very, very small!” wailed Elisabeth.
Jake made a note in his investigation book, writing VERY VERY SMALL in huge block letters. “Okaaay, when did all this malarkey start happenin’?”
Elisabeth stopped sniffling to think, then resumed sniffling to speak. “Last Thursday, the day after my birthday. My husband had been hiding my gift at his work office all week. I was so delighted: a brand new pet bird!”
Jake ambled over to the window. “Is this the bird right here?” Elisabeth blew her nose in confirmation. “And the noise came from this direction?” Elisabeth wailed her assent. Jake looked down at the bird. The colorful parrot looked back at him. “And where does your husband work?”
Elisabeth briefly stopped crying in surprise. “Why, he works at the gun factory. Quality control.”
Jake snapped his fingers and yelled out. “I’ve got it!”
The parrot repeated in a nasally bird voice: “I’ve got it!”
Jake continued, ignoring the mocking bird. “Mrs. Shooster, believe it or not, your would-be assassin is right here in this very room!”
Elisabeth gulped. Jake laughed triumphantly. “Yes, the culprit is…” He paused for dramatic effect and a line break.
Jake pointed down at the aquarium: “This… fish!” In the tank, a small goldfish gasped, releasing a small bubble.
“The fish?!” Elisabeth and Derek cried out in unison.
“The fish!” Jake said. He pointed at a tiny pirate ship inside the tank. “Don’t you see it? The weapon is right here!” On the pirate ship was a sail, a treasure chest, and a very, very small cannon. Just the right size for a fish.
Elisabeth broke into a new set of tears and a new box of tissues. “Oh no! Flipper, how could you betray me like this?!”
Derek stepped forward, shaking his head in disbelief. “Jake, I don’t mean to speak out of place, but—”
Jake scowled. “What, you don’t think she’s capable?” He squashed his face against the aquarium glass. “Fish are cold-blooded, Derek. They’re killers, the lot of ‘em! Haven’t you heard the phrase ‘sleeping with the fishes’?”
Derek walked to the window. “Well, hear me out for a second… what if, instead of the fish, it was… the bird?”
Jake shook his head while he tried to handcuff the goldfish. “Derek, don’t be ridiculous. A bird can’t operate a cannon.”
“Here, listen to this.” Derek took a breath and imitated a gunshot. The parrot repeated it perfectly, then continued making gunshot noises of all varieties, along with the sounds of missiles and explosions. Elisabeth wailed and dove under the easel.
“You see? When the parrot was being kept hidden at your husband’s office at the, uh, gun factory, it picked up some new sounds. Those gunshots you heard… were simply the bird!” Derek grinned.
“Dang, that rhymes, so he’s right!” Jake snapped his fingers. “The kid’s got talent. It just goes to show: never trust a bird! Hot lasagna!”
Author Bio
Bretton Cadigan (he/him) lives in Boston, Massachusetts with his spouse and lucky black cat. He completed a bachelor’s degree at Tufts University in International Literary and Visual Studies and is now attending Emerson College’s Popular Fiction MFA program. When he isn’t writing speculative fiction, he enjoys running, skateboarding, reading graphic novels, and playing board games and video games.
