A Lance Sidesaddle Saga

By Sir Lancelot Sidesaddle

A warmish September afternoon on Courthouse Plaza lingers on towards sundown. But while work is ending for most honest Preskitt folks, my job as defender of the peace is just beginning. Yah, you know me –

Without warning, the desk telephone rings in my office in this fleabag hotel overlooking Whiskey Row. On a hunch, I pick it up. Could be something big.

“Lance Sidesaddle, private detective,” I quip.

The feminine voice on the other end is faint, dusky, mysterious, breathy, silky, alluring, wraithlike. And so on.

“Mr. Sidesaddle?”

She has me there. Honesty is the best policy. I have no choice. “Yes.”

“You should get some air, go outside. See the parade.”

I begin to formulate a quizzical reply but the receiver clicks and the line goes dead. As dead as a doornail. Following the example of countless old private eye flicks, I twiddle the cradle a few times, shouting, “Hello, Operator, I’ve been cut off!” It doesn’t work this time either. But I do get this weird cold shiver up my neck.

But no matter. Parade. The secretive dusky alluring and so forth feminine voice had mentioned a parade. Outside. Hmmm. Could mean in the street. On a hunch, I amble downstairs and out onto Preskitt’s fabled Whiskey Row.

The late afternoon sidewalk crowds are thick, lining both sides of Montezuma Street. I jostle my way through the happy throng to a good spot. A brass band is strutting by, in full uniforms with high plumed hats, bass drum deeply hinting at the beat of a Sousa march. The band is followed by a phalanx of cowpokes on high-stepping horses under a broad banner: Ghost Riders in the Sky. Following them, an authentic 1800s stagecoach, eight massive Clydesdales driven by a hard-bitten leathery cowpoke. On the seat beside him sits a gorgeous blonde in a white bonnet, drop curls and blue gingham, just folding up a tiny cell phone. She looks at me, all smiles, then goes on waving to the crowd. Maybe it’s the packed bodies and the heat, but as the coach turns a corner, I can swear I see daylight under the big spoked wheels.

I shake it off. I’ve missed most of the parade – all that remains is a line of classic 1920s cars leaning on their oooh-gah horns, a few dispirited Boy Scouts following up with pooper-scoopers, and it’s over. The happy crowd begins to disperse, milling about, heading back into the shops, restaurants, and refined drinking establishments.

That mysterious ghostly alluring voice. Why had someone wanted me to see the parade? Obvious, really. My 80-hour workweeks as defender of the populace are legendary. Likely it was a civic-minded Preskitt citizen, concerned for my social cultivation. With a warm fuzzy glow all over, I head back inside and up the stairs.

I know something is wrong the moment I approach my office in the silent corridor – smells like a hot brandin’ iron. Vague rustlings from behind the door, through the clouded glass abstract shapes move. In the distance, a horse neighs nervously. I get an instant vision of three beefy men about to pound me senseless.

But this time I am ready. I reach into my mental lock-box of self-defense strategies and come out with a doozy?a surprise shoestring tackle as I burst through the door, which will put these louts finally at my mercy.

Crouching silently, I slowly twist the doorknob until I feel the latch pull clear, then shove the door open with all my might and launch myself forward, low to the floor. Surprise is on my side.

It’s a midget. His decidedly un-midget-like fist is waiting, and I remain obligingly committed to my trajectory until my nose greets his fist with a polite howdy-do.

When I regain consciousness, I find myself lying in the strewn debris of my useful crime-solving trivia. Why would someone toss my office? Rubbing my tenderized and flattened schnozz, I wonder aloud how a midget can have a fist as hard as an anvil.

“How?” echo the walls.

That burning odor – smells like Ol’ Paint’s clutch on my fave shortcut over Granite Mountain. It wasn’t anything like the sage and rare cedar barks I sometimes burn during my incantations. But looking at my topsy-turvy digs, a strange cold chill slithers up my spine.

When I finally set my desk and chair upright, I dig my answering machine from a haphazard pile of vintage Mad magazines. The alert light beckons balefully. The single message is brief, to the point, and ominous. I recognize the voice at once, one of my clients for telephone dating advice.

“Lance, I won’t be able to continue our sessions, enjoyable as they have been. No, I’ve decided to end it all. I did meet a wonderful lady, thanks to you, but she’s moving on. It’s just not worth the struggle to start again. Goodbye, you bonehead. By the time you hear this I’ll be extinct. But I’ll be in a better place, wearing a toe tag.”

The message fades away into spooky silence.

I sit and stew awhile. Mighty Mike, owner of that very voice, is one of my Lonely Hearts telephone clients. Yah, it’s a sideline, but over the years I’ve helped a few folks find a little romance in this crazy world. A little hoss sense, a few Indian spells, some burning herbs and hard-to-find rare barks. Like my other lovelorn clients, I’ve never met Mighty Mike, it’s all confidential. But he followed my advice, seemed to be getting results, and always sent his check. He had been upbeat the last few times we’d talked?but now this. And it’s up to me to stop him from doing something foolish!

What to do? Mighty Mike’s morbid message meant moribund mortality. But there are some clues. Toe tag! In a better place wearing a toe tag. What can that mean? Then I notice the crisp white card stapled to my leather vest.

City Morgue
You Stab ‘em, We Slab ‘em.

Curious. Piquant. Then the realization creeps up on me like rosy-fingered dawn over Thumb Butte?maybe I should check out the City Morgue. Before leaving, I look around for anything hot, but nothing can explain the burnt smell that still lingers in the heavy air.

Dark has fallen when my boots hit the stained but fabled sidewalk of Whiskey Row. The air is fresh with evening. Gone are the parade crowds, the languid shoppers from hither and yon. The few folks still about walk purposefully, quickly, like they’re going somewhere in a hurry.

I duck through the alley to Preskitt’s fab new parking structure on McCormick and fire up Ol’ Paint. Soon I’m ghosting through the darkened streets as quietly as the rusted-out mufflers will allow. The morgue is housed in a shadowy old stone edifice on a dead-end street. Ha! The macabre jocularity of these city planners! I’ve been here before, on the Halloween tour, but I’d never broken in. It’s easy enough. Who the heck wants to get into a morgue?

The place is deserted, quiet, dark, foreboding, with a frisson of spooky as hell. I move through the shadowy corridors by instinct, without a sound, until I find myself in a silent, dimly-lit room. That dimly-lit room. Sheet-shrouded shadowy shapes slumber silently. I walk among the quiet tables, viewing the plain white identification tags attached to protruding toes, inwardly paying my respects to the dear departed.

Hmmm. This guy. I’d heard of him. There’ll be many a dry eye now he’s gone. Oh, and this one donated his body to science. I’m sure his brain alone was worth every last penny. This one! Holy smoke, I’d of cried at his funeral – he owes me twenty bucks. Or was it owed? Then I come to something out of the ordinary, a horse of another color, something else again.

DO NOT REMOVE THIS TAG.

My finger brushes the toe. Curious – it feels a lot like wood. In fact, so does the foot. Not only that, the ankle looks and feels like a broomstick. On a hunch, I look at the other one. Another broomstick. I step to the head of the covered form and gingerly raise the shroud.

It’s the midget.

His eyes are open, looking straight at me in the dimness. When he speaks, the voice is instantly familiar.

“Took you long enough. Howdy, Lance, I’m Mike DuPre.”

Mighty Mike, my Lonely Hearts client. We shake hands solemnly. I need a moment to think. I’d been giving telephone dating advice to a midget. Inwardly, I vowed to treat my client and this situation with utmost dignity.

“You sounded bigger on the phone. But what are you doing here?”

“The girl on the stagecoach, you saw her, right?”

“Blue gingham. Blonde. Sure.”

“That’s Evelyn, my girlfriend. Sort of. She’ll be here in a minute.”

“Why sort of? And why did you beat me up?”

“Beat you up? You mashed your face into my fist. Still smarts.”

Now I’m getting angry. “There is no gol-durn difference. And you shouldn’t have been rooting around in my private office.”

“When I want your opinion on manners I’ll beat it out of you. I was trying to erase my message. Wanted to talk to you before we came here. Was digging through the rubble to find your machine. You got there too soon. Then you were out cold, so the City Morgue card was simpler.”

“Rubble! Now wait a minute. My office is neat as a pin. Usually. Once in a while.”

“Not when I got there. Thought that was how you liked it. What was that burning smell?”

I shake my head. “But Evelyn, does she work here?”

“No! That’s just it. Ever since you set us up, this is the only place she’ll see me.”

I try to keep an open mind?this could be the latest thing in trendy night spots. “You mean you’ve been dating at the morgue?”

“You worked that spell, remember? While I was on the phone last time. That very night I got a call. From her. We talked and talked. It seemed like we’d known each other forever. So I met her that night. Here. We’ve been seeing each other ever since. But something is weird. She’s saying she has to go away now.”

Mighty Mike’s narrative is cut off by the sound of approaching bootheels in the empty corridor outside.

“Hsst! She’s here.”

“I’ll just leave you two lovebirds to your – ”

“No, you dolt, you gotta stay! You gotta keep her from leaving.”

“Sorry, loverboy. That part’s up to you. See ya.”

“You’re a good guy, Lance, but if you were any dumber, I’d have to water you twice a week. There was something wrong with your spell! You have to fix it.”

But we’ve used up our allotted time arguing. The sound of bootheels is louder now, right in the room with us. But the door hasn’t opened! Mike’s head is up, tracking the sound. So am I. But there’s one problem. Although the ladylike clump-clump of boots moves closer among the dear departed, there is nothing to see. A cold breeze catches my cheek, raising gooseflesh and a sudden sense of anxiety. The footsteps stop, the echoes die away.

Just when I’m thinking the hairs on the back of my neck can’t go any higher, up they go another notch. A swirling of mist in the dimness, vague at first, then slowly gaining clarity, until –

Blond and radiant, wearing the same white bonnet and blue gingham farm dress she’d worn for the parade, Mike Dupre’s girlfriend Evelyn stands on the other side of the gurney, smiling at both of us.

“Mr. Sidesaddle, I’m Evelyn Clark.”

She extends an elegant hand. My eyes go way wide. My own hand, numb like a sleepwalker, reaches out. I expect to touch no more than a cool puff of air, but the hand I hold is real, solid. It’s also warm and ladylike.

“Lance Sidesaddle,” I manage to get out. “Private detective.”

Mikey-boy, sitting up on the gurney, is looking from one of us to the other with an incredulous expression.

“You mean you can see her?”

“Of course he can see me, sweets.” She gives Mikey’s cheek a soulful smooch.

I begin to regain a modicum of composure. “Now somebody start talking. From the beginning.”

Mikey-boy starts to say something, but Evelyn takes his hand, smiling dreamily at him.

“Please, Michael. Allow me.”

Mighty Mike, gazing into her eyes, only nods dumbly. His expression is dopey-dreamy too. They’re obviously stuck on each other. Evelyn continues.

“Mr. Sidesaddle, when Michael came to you about his dating emergency, as he called it – ”

“I wanted to meet someone – someone very nice,” Mikey-boy gets in.

“Precisely, sweetheart. Anyway, when you began helping Michael, you used a variety of techniques – confidence-building exercises, verbal approaches, you call them pick-up lines, I believe. You also used a number of ancient chants. One in particular, am I right?”

I have to think about that. True, I do draw from an extensive bag-o-tricks when talking to my Lonely Hearts clients. And she’s right – I have one old book of Indian spells. They’re mostly about the weather, good harvests, et cetera. But there is one, one in particular –

“Alright. There is one incantation. I prefer to call it a suggestion. To the spirits. It’s used when a mother is looking for her child, when a woman wants to have a baby, when lovers want to be together. Using it to help Mike here find his soul mate – that seemed to be a fair application of the, er, suggestion.”

Her intelligent eyes dance with the idea. “I see. So might you have taken this spell?”

“Suggestion.”

“This suggestion – beyond its own limits?” Unlike Mighty Mike, Evelyn is too refined to say I’d screwed it up royally.

I look at Mikey-boy, feeling a little blank. “I dunno. Coulda. Can’t be sure.”

“Mr. Sidesaddle, there is much you don’t know. Michael here almost understands it, though I’ve told him very little. Here’s what I think happened. Back in the days when Prescott was a bustling mining town and the territorial capital, Whiskey Row was mostly saloons. Many of the saloons had rooms up above, some used for – ahem – nefarious purposes.”

She looks down at her tightly clasped hands, then goes on.

“One of the rooms above Whiskey Row was occupied by a fortune teller, a card reader. She was my auntie June. Although the fire of 1900 consumed that building and most of Whiskey Row, the building standing there today is quite similar in layout. Her room was in precisely the same location as your office, Mr. Sidesaddle.”

Evelyn pauses to let this sink in. My head is reeling. Mikey-boy is getting better at his dumbfounded look. My sidekick powers awake from their slumbers, perform a few rapid hexadecimal calculations, and toss me a doozy.

“So you’re from – ” I begin.

“The past, Mr. Sidesaddle?” Her smile is angelic. “That’s not quite the concept, but it will suffice. My family occupied a house on Mt. Vernon street in 1905. The year I died.”

“Died!” yelps Mighty Mike. “In 1905?” He’s clearly distraught. Here he’d found a lovely, intelligent woman, the love of his life, but she had died many years before he was born.

Thanks to me, Yours Truly, the Village Idiot.

Evelyn takes Mikey-boy’s hands in both of hers. Gazing at him tenderly, she says, “I don’t belong here, Michael. Meeting you has been the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me. But I have to go back.”

There’s more like that. I try to make myself invisible while she and Mikey-boy talk, grappling with the inevitable. The facts are incontrovertable. In fact, the day I worked my gol-durn incantation was 100 years to the hour after Evelyn died. Mike’s in love with an angel, in more ways than one. Many fervent hugs and tender smooches later, they turn to me. Their faces share a look of worn resignation. And heavy disappointment. They’re a perfect match, a century apart.

“Can you – ” Evelyn begins.

“Fix it, you plantbrain?” Mikey finishes for her. She shushes him but they both eyeball me piercingly.

I look from one to the other with a heart of lead. Theoretically it’s possible to reverse any spell, any suggestion. But that’s assuming I’d performed the steps correctly in the first place. Masking any inner self-doubt, I say to them, “I have to do this at my office. You have until sunup.”

As the silent edifice fades away in Ol’ Paint’s mirrors, I get it. It was while performing the original incantation that I’d done something wrong. I know what it is, and I feel like a fool. A shortcut. A stupid substitution because I’d been missing a certain hard-to-find bark. I’d thought that intention alone would impress the spirits, but now, I can almost see their laughing faces swirling about the truck. Parked now on the dark and deserted Whiskey Row, I reach under Ol Paint’s seat for the carefully-wrapped package, and make my way upstairs.

With all that’s happened this night, I don’t fully register that my office is now, amazingly, neat as a pin. I unwrap the old book with its cracked leather cover, and open it to the page. I begin reading the old dialect aloud, hoping I have the pronunciations close to right. In a large brass ashtray I build a small blaze of sage and heather, then at the last throw in a few shavings of rare cedar bark, shouting out the final words of the chant with a gusto I hope is convincing. The flame leaps brightly, then dies away to black ash and a thin trail of gray smoke.

Now there is nothing to do except wait. But I feel deep down that it worked. Mighty Mike will be back, alone, to express his dissatisfaction, and I’ll just have to put up with it. I know now what I’d done wrong. This time, I’d done the spell correctly, but before – I’d been taking a chants on love.

As my bootheels fade into the swirling mist of Courthouse Plaza, I make a promise to myself. If I ever, ever perform another spell, I sure won’t be using any plastic wood.

A Lance Sidesaddle Saga

By Lance Sidesaddle

Sundown. End of a hot July day in the high desert. But while work is over for most honest Preskitt folks, my job as defender of the peace is just beginning. Yah, you know me-Lance Sidesaddle, private detective.

So I’m here in my office in this fleabag hotel overlooking Whiskey Row. Once again, the air conditioner’s on the blink. Feet on the desk, toes of my snakeskin boots point accusingly at the motionless ceiling fan. My dark-stained chaps hang limply in the oppressive heat.

The door knocks. A blurry form visible through the clouded glass.
I summon my most professional tone to call out, “Tain’t locked.”

Through the door waltzes this dame, this chick, this doll, this babe. All decked out in a snappy blue suit. Her hips have the smooth curves of a peach in brandy sauce. I slowly push my Shady Brady higher up my noggin, the better to see her with.

The brim of her matching hat brushes the doorframe on both sides. She’ll have to be careful in a high wind. But her blue suit fades to a pale shadow when I get a load of those eyes. Wowie-zow. One deep, soulful look into those sparkling blue orbs and a guy could hear wedding bells. I plug my ears, sparing her but the slightest glance.

“How do you do, Mr. Sidesaddle? My name is Mrs. Delbert Four-Woody The Third. I would like to employ you to solve a-um, er problem. With my husband. He’s been acting strangely.”
So. A society dame. Last thing I need. Somehow these cases always lead to a guy with a golf cap in a Mercedes convertible.

“Just throw the trash offa that chair,” I drawl with a casual gesture. But my detective senses are alert and racing wildly. The way she says um er problem tells me this is one a them cases. The kind you hafta solve without talking about. Yeah, them. As in with decorum, breeding, civility, dignity, respectability, etiquette, tact, punctilio-.

She parks her demure derriere primly in my beat-up guest chair but leaves the motor running. I know then she’s in a rush. As she talks about the um er problem I watch her closely for clues. But I also become aware of something else-that angelic face is calling up long-forgotten sensations. You know. Feelings. Yah, those. The kind you get when you whitewash your girlfriend’s name on a bridge abutment. I listen with professional aplomb.

“Mind if I light up?” she asks with a soft smile.
Surreptitiously, I switch on my No Smoking sign. “Naw,” I say graciously. In the rosy neon glow she pulls a white matchbook from her purse.

“Want one?” She holds the deck toward me.

I shake my head. “Swore I was gonna start this year, but ain’t yet got around to it.”
“This place could use a woman’s touch,” she remarks, looking around at my extensive collection of useful crime-solving trivia. Is she stalling, changing the subject from embarrassment? Or is she hinting at something deeper, more lasting? I smooth my moustache and cooly wait her out.

“Here,” she breathes seductively, handing me a crisp white card. My heart picks up the beat like hooves rounding the clubhouse turn at Yavapai Downs. Her private number, no doubt. I knew it. She’s making a pass. And she ain’t been in my office sixty seconds. I eyeball the card.

Alice’s Cleaning Service

“My cleaning lady,” she explains with a poignant smile. “Help you straighten this place up.”

To cover my disappointment, I stick the card in my shirt pocket. For her, I’d gladly toss half my stuff in the back of Ol’ Paint and haul it off to the dump. Yeah, rhymes with chump. But by then I know her type. She’s always had everything-the looks, the dough, the men to walk on. Bored. Jaded. Blasé. Achingly lonely deep inside, soothing her ego with thrill after reckless thrill.

“May I borrow your phone?” At my curt nod she picks up the antique receiver from my desk and speaks into it softly. “You know the address, you know the flavor,” she says cryptically, and hangs up.

“So you’ll follow him,” she turns to me hopefully, “find out about my-”

“Um er problem,” I supply with nonchalant punctilio.

“Yes,” she whispers gratefully, looking down at the soft feminine hands clasped tightly in her lap. After breathy but professional goodbyes she is gone, leaving only a fleeting waft of exotic perfume.

Tail her husband, she had said. But this is the technology age, and Lance Sidesaddle is nothing if not modern. My Shady Brady and stained chaps, the hand-tooled snakeskin boots with one spur missing, the green print kerchief dotted with soup du jour-my all-purpose formal wear, disguise, and pajamas-are merely a diversion. Add to this a miniature microphone in my left nostril, totally undetectable, and I am ready.

Where to start? I glance at the matchbook the dame left on my desk. Glistening white, with Roxy and a phone number written in a feminine hand. On a hunch, I dial it.
“Roxy’s Pizza,” says a rough voice at the other end. Interesting, but I’m not that hungry. I pocket the matchbook.

I walk downstairs and out onto Whiskey Row. The air is cooler but a little sticky from the afternoon monsoon. Evening shadows ooze among the trees of Courthouse Plaza like warm caramel. Night falls with a soft thump. The shops are closed and dark, only the bars and restaurants still show lights and laughter. Sitting on that iron bench outside Annalina’s, I muse over the matchbook cover in the feeble streetlight-no doubt it holds some valuable clue.

I am jerked from my crime-solving reverie by sudden raucous laughter and the metallic clunk of coins into the metal ashtray beside me. I look up alertly as two young guys walk by toting a pizza carton.

“Free cowboy hats on North Cortez,” one says leeringly. His partner howls with evil merriment as they make their way down the Row.

Free cowboy hats. Hmmm. When I have time I’ll check that out. I peer into the metal bucket. Two quarters and a dime. But there’s also a piece of pocket lint and a matchbook. Hmmm. White and shiny. Kinda like the one my client left behind, only this one has oddball numbers written on it. 33-45-78. Strange, looks like her handwriting too.

I’m running that curious string of numbers through my lock-box data bank when I spot him. That guy. The type I knew would be mixed up in this from the first. Just up the street hopping out of a gold Mercedes ragtop. The man in the golf cap. Four-Woody III. Yah, him. I try to look innocuous, but from the corner of my eye I see he’s studying me as he approaches. He hesitates. Durn-hope he ain’t seen through my disguise. He drops a few coins in the metal ashtray at my elbow, walks down Montezuma and hangs a left on Gurley.

Whew, that was close. But I’m up $1.45 for the night, and the night is young. I turn the corner on foot as quickly as I can without seeming out of character. A rustler’s moon hangs ominously over Thumb Butte. Golf Cap is just ahead, making his way through swarms of everybodys calling Preskitt their hometown. As I pass the alley entrance behind the hotel I hear voices and evil laughter. Familiar evil laughter. Three men step from the inky blackness, blocking my path. From somewhere, a horse neighs nervously.

“Hey, it’s the twerp with the microphone in his nose.” Sneering giggles accompany this utterance as the three surround me in the doleful shadows.

I throw out the line I know will put them off balance, give me an edge, a leg up, an unfair advantage. “It’s your party, you light the candles.”

But they are at me like ants on a glazed picnic ham. I see a pizza box coming toward me. These are no ordinary muggers. Lying on my back while they pummel me senseless, I view with alarm a dark squarish shape plummeting from the velvet starry night high above.

“Look out,” I yell, rolling out of the way. My pummelers leap aside in a flurry of curses not suitable for a family publication. With a resounding whump, the massive object shakes the ground scant inches from my noggin.

When I regain consciousness, my assailants have fled and I’m once again alone in the dark. I sit up and look at the cubical mass sunk cornerwise into the warm asphalt. Dark green with gold trim. A lever and combination lock glint in the passing headlights. A safe. How odd. I have more important things to pursue at the moment, but who would be moving a safe at this hour? On a hunch, I look in the pizza box. Three pieces, still warm. I won’t be leaving those behind.

Voices just outside the alley. My keen detective instincts tell me I’m in luck. It’s Golf Cap talking to a blonde woman in a big white Lexus. He gets in beside her and they drive off, luckily for me toward where I’d parked Ol’ Paint. Laughing off the bruises and contusions, I’m able to limp through the Friday night crowds to my trusty steed and pull out right on her bumper. Of her car. They’ll never shake me now.

Oddly, as soon as I follow them south on Mt. Vernon, the shiny sedan somehow grows smaller in the distance and vanishes around the first curve. Gol durn! The blonde musta hit the gas. I hunt around for 15 minutes to a quarter of an hour, then park my rig on a quiet side street. Two-tone, primer red and primer gray, Ol’ Paint is the perfect camouflage for surveillance day or night. Highly modern for a ’77, she-or he-has a custom 8-track stereo, with a metal speaker in each window reminiscent of Senator Drive-in days.

Deep in thought, I open the pizza box.

Jackpot. Three slightly-mussed pieces of large with extra cheese. Yum. While I nibble at one I peruse the receipt. Hmmm. Anchovies, pepperoni, Canadian bacon, feta cheese. Not bad. Chewy though-sometimes instant gratification takes too gol durn long. But there, at the bottom of the receipt, an address on City Lights drive.

I drop Ol’ Paint into gear, and before you can say Magnum P.I. 38 times in fluent Hopi I’m parked next door to a ritzy palazzo, on the wrong side of the street but so what this is urgent. The blonde’s car stands silent in the driveway. The fancy place is quiet, too quiet, a dark outline against the velvety desert night. There are some cars parked a ways up the street, but not a soul around. I try the door of the gal’s Lexus. Fortunately she hasn’t set the alarm. On the passenger seat is a note:

For your wife I suggest something long and flowing

Long and flowing. Hmmm. I begin to assemble the available clues. My lovely client’s obvious agitation, her husband acting strangely lately. Husband vanishing into night with blonde in fancy car, ending up at this place in the dark. Suddenly it all adds up. I immediately see to the bottom of their fiendish scheme. Something long and flowing-they’re going to toss my shiny new client in the Agua Fria!

Now I know enough to bust them but good. And somehow I have to alert the cops.

Car lights lance up the quiet street. I have just enough time to hunker down inside the Lexus when a low-slung sports job pulls into the driveway right behind. Even in the dark, I know. There’s no mistaking that hat! The broad-brimmed dress hat makes its way to the front door, my client wiggling along beneath it to keep up. I need to do something! In just seconds she’ll walk in on a steamy scene and get herself tossed in the drink. I’m just about to shout out when a squad car with flashing reds slashes to a halt right beside me. Two uniforms get out and advance menacingly.

“Thank goodness you’re in time,” I say, pointing at the house, at the woman ringing the doorbell on the darkened porch. I’m groping for the most precise and professional words that will sum up the situation. “Her husband is sending her to swim class.”

But my refined detective senses tell me they aren’t buying it. This time, their heaters point right at me. Gol durn! The blonde’s Lexus has a silent alarm.

“Your name Lance?”

“Not really,” I reply with jocularity, “I’m just testing it prior to shipment overseas.”
“Alright Widewaddle,” one of them says over the dark wicked barrel, “Just can it, we know your little game.”
“Sidesaddle,” I correct the nice officer. “Stop her! If she goes through that door she’ll be-”
At that instant the door opens, all the lights in the house come on, and a chorus of voices yells, “Surprise!” The door slams, cutting off the babble of happy party chitchat and reggae music. I turn to face the cops.
“Lissen-” I begin.

“Now you listen, Slap-saddle. Somebody tried to boost a safe out of the hotel tonight. You were seen leaving the scene. A call came from your office to a pizza joint-a coded signal to start the robbery. The pizza was delivered to this address. The pizza box is in your truck. And here you are with anchovies on yer breath.”

“Dum-da-dum-dum,” the other cop hums with a menacing smirk.

“I was going to mention that,” I say earnestly. “Somebody tried to drop a safe on me in that alley behind the hotel. Three men-”

“Add to that attempted grand theft auto,” the other cop interjects.

I’m still holding the piece of paper from the blonde’s car. The cop takes it and reads aloud, “Sherri’s Dress Shop, Scottsdale.” Durn, he’s looking at the wrong side.

Through the front window I see my client parading among the partygoers. She’s changed clothes, and now wears a floor-length chiffon gown. A nice look for her, but it doesn’t add up.
“Here,” I say, thinking quickly. “Her handwriting.” I hand over the two white matchbooks. The cop peruses the feminine penmanship:

“Roxy? 33 – 45 – 78?”

My sidekick powers wake briefly from their snooze to impart a quick news flash: Mrs. Delbert Four-Woody The Third is just the type to charm a safe combo out of lonely hotel managers anywhere.

“Say,” I drawl. “What if that wuz the combo to that safe?”
The cops exchange glances of stark disbelief. “That’s incredible. Did he just make a useful suggestion?”

“Call Dispatch,” the other replies with resignation, “check it out.”

My head’s reeling. This all points to a very bad girl indeed. Tragic-all the looks, prestige and money she could want, yet she’s running a safecracking operation. Pluswhich the irony-her husband’s throwing her a surprise party and she thinks he’s up to something fishy!

In minutes it’s all over. Mrs. Four-Woody The Third, attired smartly for the occasion in a long flowing gown with matching handcuffs, disappears into the back of a police cruiser. She has enough time to toss a vicious barb my way.

“Here’s booking at you, kid,” I reply curtly.

I don’t mind if she’s a little peeved with me. If you can’t annoy bad guys, there’s little point to being a defender of the peace. The dish thought she had a clean sneak but ole Lance blew her house down, dropped the dime, chilled her caper. She won’t fry, but she’ll have plenty of time to cool off.

Oddly, I find myself thinking of fish and chips with a cold beer.

Can’t help but wonder though, why it is. Every time I meet someone I could really go for, she’s just about to be arrested.

As I walk tiredly back to Ol’ Paint, a note on the windshield flaps in the fitful night breeze. Most likely a thank-you from the cops for busting her little scheme wide open. They’re good ole boys, but they have a few issues about accepting help. Well, it’s a love note alright, but it involves a chat with the nice judge downtown. Parking on the wrong side of the street. Indeed. Resolutely I shoulder my burden-just one more lesson in humility.

Alone again in the dark, I nonetheless feel the warm glow of satisfaction, the sense of lending a helping hand, the humble pride of the unsung hero. The girl is gone, but her devious plan has been foiled. Preskitt, the town I love, will pass another night in peaceful slumber. It’s not that late. Maybe I’ve got time to check out those free cowboy hats.

The twin pipes of Ol’ Paint burble contentedly as I ghost through the streets of my quiet town.