“Thank you for calling information. What city, please?”
“Wonderland.”
“Thank you. What listing?”
“Alice.”
“Last name?”
“Why? How many Alices in Wonderland are there?”
“Oh – just the one, sir. The number is 867-5309.”
“Thanks.” I scrawled the number on a scrap of paper and hung up. It was too late to call her. Even I don’t call a chick after midnight. Well, I have, but only when I’m looking for something. Like bail. And though that number seemed oddly familiar, I wasn’t going to call yet. I didn’t want to risk another restraining order until after I got paid. It had only taken me one time to learn that lesson.
The next step was to figure out what “T.K.” stood for. I had assumed it meant The Knave, which is why I had laced the other mocha with Rohypnol, just in case he felt like thanking me for his recent jaunt through the clink. But if that had been the Knave, then his cellmate Bruno had done more of a number on him than I had expected. It was brainstorming time.
Half an hour later I had this list:
The Knave
The Killer
True Knowledge
‘Til Kathy
Taciturn Katydid
Tense Kleenex
Tunklewood Knunderscape
I wasn’t sure about that last one, but it was as valid as any of the others, and they say that in brainstorming you have to toss your inner judge out of the window.
After some thought, I decided that although Tunklewood was a really cool name, I was going to go with “The Killer.” And though I thought I knew who it might be, I needed to ask Alice a few questions first.
I knew her story – most schoolkids did. She’d fallen in via a rabbit hole and gotten involved with some nasty characters, like the Caterpillar. She’d narrowly escaped some perjury charges and had even been suspected of animal rights violations when they couldn’t find the Cheshire Cat. Eventually some guy named Carroll had written her biography, and she’d gone incognito to avoid the paparazzi. She turned up every now and then in a chess game, and she made the rounds of the professional croquet circuit, but stayed out of the public eye for the most part.
What I needed to know, though, was if (and why) she had a thing for eggs, because an egg fetish would explain a lot. An overactive mothering instinct, which I thought was the case, could possibly put this case to bed. I checked the time. It was 4:30 AM. Time to get some sleep. And first thing in the morning, I’d be calling Alice.
To Be Continued…
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