9 AM. It’s a time when no decent person should have to be awake. At least not when said decent person has been awake with his friend Johnny W. until 4:30 in the morning, discussing the details of a particularly sticky case with his cohort, Jim B.
But I had to call Alice, so I swore at the sun streaming in through the blinds and reached for the phone.
It rang just as I was reaching for it. I snatched my hand back and looked at it curiously. It had been so long since I had a phone call that I had forgotten what the ring sounded like. Deciding that it was actually pretty annoying and very loud, I picked up the phone gingerly and held it to my face. “Hello?”
“Sam? It’s Alice.”
“Good to hear your voice, sister.” I slipped into PI-speak effortlessly. “Now I got some questions for you, so listen up, all right?”
“So you got a lead, then?” She sounded surprised. “I’ll be at your office in a sec.”
I hadn’t said anything about a lead. “I’ll be here,” I said, and hung up.
Fifteen minutes later she waltzed into the room wearing a little red number that had probably set off a few fire alarms on her way over. I was in the middle of self-medicating with a little hair of the dog, and promptly poured another shot to put out the fire in my loins. Immediately after I slammed it I wondered where the hell I had learned a word like ‘loins.’
“So whaddya got for me, Sam?” she purred, and perched on my desk like a slutty canary – a red one.
“Tell me, Alice. What’s your fascination with eggs? Dumpty wasn’t exactly a Greek god in the looks department. Were you just after his money?”
She gasped and looked suitably indignant. “Of course not! I loved him! And so what if I have a thing for eggs?”
“I’m just wondering: What do you do when the eggs hatch?”
“Nothing. I’m long gone by then. Why?”
“Always?”
“Yes. Now what’s your point?” She was starting to look a little annoyed, which told me I was on the right track.
“Well, you see, I was just thinking. What if you didn’t leave before one of your baby-substitutes hatched? And what if the occupant of said ovum got attached to you? It’s called ‘imprinting,’ isn’t it?” I stopped. “And come to think of it, what do you do with those eggs, anyway?”
She jumped off of my desk as if I had offered to shave her legs with a cheese grater. “How dare you! I don’t need to take this. You’re fired, flatfoot. I’ll send you a check for your time, but I’m outta here.”
I jumped up. “Not so fast. One of your eggs hatched, didn’t it? Didn’t it?!” I hadn’t realized I was screaming.
With that, she collapsed on my desk, sobbing. I stopped myself from circling the desk and stroking her hair by slapping myself. Hard.
“It hatched one day when I wasn’t expecting it,” she said through tears. “It wasn’t supposed to, but it did. And the thing that came out was just so ugly! It was so ugly it was cute! And he imprinted on me! And I loved him back!”
“But it wasn’t enough, was it?” I asked her. The right side of my face was stinging, and I was thinking about taking up smoking again.
“No! I’m a woman! I have needs, and he couldn’t fulfill them. But then I found Humpty, and everything was ok again. Until he fell.”
“He didn’t fall, Alice. He was pushed – by the chick you abandoned. By the Ugly Duckling.”
She straightened up and stared at me. “By Ugly? But… But he wouldn’t do that. He loved me. How do you know it was him?”
“Easy.” I help up one of the feathers that had been left on the bridge by T.K. “This is a swan feather. I recognize it from the ‘12 Days of Christmas’ caper I solved back in ’02, with the twelve swans a-swimming.” I reached into my desk and pulled out the shard of reflective glass. “And we all know that the Ugly Duckling has self-image issues, and I think he was so racked with guilt over what he’d done that he smashed the little mirror he carries everywhere for his misguided self-affirmations.” I threw the items on the desk. “Once I realized that ‘T.K.’ just stood for ‘The Killer,’ the rest kind of fell into place.”
Alice just stood there, silently wiping her tears and succeeding in streaking her mascara from eyebrow to chin. “I - I don’t know what to say. Is he going to jail?” she asked quietly.
I nodded. “I’m calling the chief in a minute, and he’ll put out an APB.” I couldn’t help myself. “Alice, your boyfriend’s back, but he’s going to the clink.”
Her shoulders slumped, and she looked at me with that lazy eye I found so appealing. “Oh, Sam. I don’t know what I’ll do. I’m scared to be by myself. Will you help me?”
It’s going to be tough, I know. We’re just two crazy kids trying to survive in this crazy world, and one of us is a chain-smoking alcoholic private eye with intimacy issues. But she begged me, dammit, and I had a thing for her. I don’t know if it’ll be enough, but I want to try.
At least until the Princess shows up wanting to know who killed her frog.
THE END
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