Jim Grime was absorbed in wrestling the back-bone out of a thirty-pound codfish at the Digby Neck & Islands Detective Agency & Fishgutting Service’s office/fish shack when a shadow fell across his desk/splitting table. Looking up, he automatically flashed a gap-toothed grin at the leggy dame that had just insinuated her way through the door. A tall drink of water with gams that went on till next Tuesday and big blonde hair that appeared to have come straight out of a peroxide bottle, Grime could tell she wasn’t the kind of dame that had to pay for her own drinks at the bootleggers.
She was a hot dame. Oh, maybe not surface-of-the-sun hot. More defective-hot-plate hot - but still hot. Or at least lukewarm. From her movements, he knew that her loins were aching for him...although it may have been a yeast infection. He looked her up and down, from arse to teakettle. She'd been around the block more times than a newly hired FedEx driver. She had more curves than the Bear River Road. She had hills and valleys and peaks and plains and rich fertile bottomland. In short, she was a geographer’s dream. She had an unlit cigarette dangling provocatively from her luscious lips. "Gotta match?" she purred seductively. "Sure, your face and my ass," replied Grime instinctively. Realizing that his off-the-cuff witticism could be interpreted negatively, the top lady's man in the tri-island recovered quickly. "By that I mean that your double chins are side by side instead of up and down and therefore less repulsive than in some women."
Confident that he had charmed her, he smiled to himself, thankful to have been blessed with such a smooth way with the girlies.
Gurrey Ben eyed her suspiciously from his place in the corner where he was sitting on a stool gutting a small cusk.
She slunk across the room and leaned on her elbows over the desk/gutting table behind which Grime was seated. Her ample bosoms strained against their delicate restraints, threatening to spill forth and breach the twin levies of her triple D bra. The cleavage caused Grime to fidget in his seat. “Nice breastwork,” he stammered, nodding through the window at the latest pre-election pork to be thrown at the Westport electorate.
She looked at him blankly.
Grime tried again. “Those boobs in Halifax…” He stopped mid-sentence. “What I mean to say is…”
“Never mind all that,” said the women, pushing aside a cod’s head and perching her well-traveled posterior on the edge of the desk. “My name is Lucy Dulse, accent grave on the ‘e’. I used to live in this one-horse town. In those days I was known as Lucy the floozy. Sure I slept around a bit, but then who didn’t in those decadent days of the 50s, 60s 70s 80s and 90s? Let she who hasn’t spent a long weekend with the Grand Manan dragger fleet cast the first stone! The thing is, I’m a changed woman. Now I’m strictly a one-man woman.”
Grime began to speak but Ms Dulse held up a hand to silence him. “Let me talk,” she said. “I’ve been living a quiet life in Digby since the year 2000. Married a nice respectable dentist. We have 2 kids, a dog, four cats, and a pelican. Just your average, hard-working middle class family. And then out of the blue this letter arrives and suddenly my life’s been torn apart.” She handed Grime the letter and broke down in sobs that racked her entire body – from adorable arse to tremendous teakettle.
Grime adjusted his bi-focals and began to read, his lips silently forming the words. “Out loud, Grimey!” said Gurrey from the shadows. Grime read the letter haltingly:
Der Loocy the floozy,
Member me? We had a gud tyme won nite behand the post orfice and agin in a punt. Send me sum monee or I’ll be ritten to that rich dental husbind of yurs.
Leaf it in a waterpruf bag tied to rownd rock in Freeport by nun tomoro. Don’t contak polis or yule be sory.
Best wishes,
A-nonny-mouse.
“What do you make of it Gurrey?” said Grime.
Gurrey rose slowly from the stool and walked into the better lit part of the office. “Hello Lucy,” he said.
Lucy did one of those double-takes that would have made Abbot and Costello envious.
“Gursey-wersey!” she said, blushing from arse to teakettle.
“Yes, it’s me,” said Gurrey. He looked at Grime who was obviously puzzled by this development. “Allow me to explain,” he said. “Lucy and I carried on a torrid love affair off and on for the better part of five years. I was her stud muffin, her love toy, her fancy boy, her main squeeze, her Romeo, her ….”
“I get it!” interjected Grime. “You were the lobster to her well-baited trap.”
“Exactly!” said Gurrey, once again wishing that he had the facility for language possessed by the Bard of the tri-island area.
“For a while Lucy was a scorned woman. She was like Hester Prynne, forced to wear the scarlet letter, only in this case it was a scarlet S for skank. Later it was H for harpie, then S again, this time for strumpet, then...well you get the picture. Instead of a punishment, Lucy saw it as a kind of badge of honour and worked hard to live up to her reputation. She won skank of the year honours five years running. I mean she was faster than 1962 Buick Wildcat with the governors taken off ‘er. All the married women hated her and the single ones despised her. And she left a trail of broken hearts that stretched from Mink Cove to Western Light.
“What exactly is it you would like from us Lucy?” Gurrey asked as he plucked the ransom note from the palsied fingers of his partner.
Lucy sashayed around the table, her curvaceous hip bumping the splitting tub in passing and sloshing the red-tinged water onto the office/fish-house floor. “I need your help”, she said in a breathy voice that set Grime’s imagination - and other parts of him – on fire, “I can’t go to the police so I asked around about private detectives and everyone I talked to assured me that you guys were the biggest dicks in town.”
“G-g-gosh! That’s quite an honour”, Grime stammered; his mind racing with possibilities, “Just tell me what you want and I’ll try my best to do it.”
“How many times have I heard that?” Lucy leaned over and murmured into Grime’s ear, “I hope you’re not going to disappoint me like so many others have done.”
“Back off Lucy! Look at what you’re doing to the poor old fart.” Gurrey was immune to Lucy’s well-developed attractions, their long-ago affair had inoculated him against the wanton fever that she seemed to be able to kindle at will in the hearts and minds of lesser men. Grime was a prime example of her power over those men who were unsophisticated in the ways of the world; clutching the edge of the table, his face flushed with perspiration, Grime was trembling all over and seemed to have temporarily lost the power of speech. Lucy straightened up and looked at Gurrey, “I’m sorry”, she said, “this is how I’m used to getting things done, I guess it’s second nature to me now, I don’t even realize I’m doing it.”
“We’re willing to investigate this for you, but it won’t help matters any if you give Grimey a stroke.”
“O.K., I’ll tone it down. Do you really think you can find out who sent that terrible letter?”
“That depends”, replied Gurrey, “did the events mentioned here actually take place? Do you remember who was there at the time?”
“Oh, they took place all right, but it was a long time ago and it happened more than once. Even if I could remember all those involved, it would still leave us with a list of several dozen suspects.”
Holding the letter up to the bare fly-specked light bulb that hung in the centre of the room, Gurrey stared intently at the single sheet of paper, “This page was torn from a Hilroy narrow-ruled, spiral bound, hard-cover scribbler and the watermark indicates that the paper is more than four decades old.” Glancing over at Grime, who appeared to be slowly recovering his faculties, Gurrey said, ”Still think that three-year Dick Tracy Junior Detective correspondence course on document identification was a waste of time and money?”
“I’m impressed by your little trick”, said Grime, sounding not at all impressed, “but we still don’t know who wrote the letter.”
“I’m not done yet.” replied Gurrey, “There are faint indentations on the paper, as if someone wrote something on the page on top of this one. I just need something to bring out the writing and make it visible.” Glancing around the room, Gurrey noticed the bucket that Grime used as a spittoon for the chewing tobacco that he liked to indulge in while gutting fish of a summer’s day. Dipping his hand into the bucket, Gurrey smeared some of the tobacco expectorant onto the page and then held it up close to the light. As the heat from the bulb dried the tobacco juice, words slowly appeared.
“Wow”, said Grime, “this time I really am impressed - and more than a little nauseated. Can you make out what it says?”
Squinting at the barely legible lettering, Gurrey read out, “Homework for Monday – Explain why the Battle of Lundy’s Lane was a pivotal event in the War of 1812.”
“O.K., I’m unimpressed again”, said Grime, “We’re trying to find a blackmailer and all you can come up with is a fifty-year old homework assignment?”
“Actually, Grimey old pal, this fifty-year old homework assignment just might lead us right to the blackmailer. You’ll notice that there are distinct similarities in the handwriting in both of these notes, so most likely they were both written by the same person. Secondly, at first glance, with his numerous spelling errors, sloppy syntax and disjointed sentence structure, one would naturally assume the blackmailer was brought up in the Freeport education system and is a Long Islander, but this was just a clever ruse, we can see from the writing in the older note that he was in fact properly educated and therefore must be a Westporter.”
A sudden light dawned on Gurrey’s rugged yet handsome face, “I know exactly when and where this homework note was written...and you do too Lucy! Do you remember Mrs. Hooper's Canadian History class?”
“Remember it? I wish I could forget it!” Lucy replied, “That was the year the new Islands Consolidated opened in Freeport. It was also the summer I finally developed – looking at me now you probably wouldn’t believe it, but I was a late bloomer and when I walked into that classroom, the boys were all over me.
In the beginning I thought it was kind of sweet. They all seemed to be real concerned that I was in shape to use the new gym, always wanting to see how many times I could jump up and down and testing my dexterity by seeing if I could touch my elbows behind my back. Eventually I caught on to what they were doing, after all, boys would come running from all over and stand there with their tongues hanging and their eyes popping out. They thought they were being so smart, tricking me into giving them a cheap thrill, but in the end, I tricked them, I kept on giving them the thrills but they weren’t so cheap any more, they had to do my homework for me, carry my books and buy me recess snacks at the student council canteen.
Some of the boys resented that I wasn’t giving it away for free anymore and the girls hated me because they thought I was enticing the boys, they started spreading rumours about me and calling me names. One of the worst was P. Jack, which was surprising because I thought at first he really liked me, he used to call me ‘Juicy Lucy’, which I thought was kind of cute. That all changed after the first dance in the new gym, it was a big deal, they even had a live band, The Purple Candle Secret all the way from Digby. P. asked me to go with him but I turned him down, to go with you, Gursey, as I recall.”
“That’s right”, said Gurrey with a kind of dreamy look, “That was a wonderful, almost magical evening.”
“Yes, it was.” agreed Lucy, “Until P. made that awful scene, called me all those names and declared that he would forever be your evil nemesis.”
“It's interesting that you would mention him Lucy.” Motioning her in closer and turning the page so his partner could also see, Gurrey revealed a faint design that had appeared on the blackmailer’s note. There, made visible by the drying tobacco juice, was a drawing of a heart pierced with an arrow and containing the inscription ‘P loves L’.
Grime studied the paper with a puzzled look and a furrowed brow; the furrow, being unimpeded by hair, rippled like a wave on the open ocean all the way to the back of his head. “What does this mean Gurrey?” he asked confusedly.
“Is that intermittent Alzheimer’s kicking in again Grimey?” Gurrey asked. He knew that his partner had a disdain for evidence; a distinct liability in the detective game. Grime preferred to ‘listen to his gut’, unfortunately all his gut had been saying for the past few years was ‘give me more antacid’.
“What the evidence tells us”, continued Gurrey, “is that this blackmailer’s note and the homework note were written by the same person, the page came from an old scribbler that belonged to P. Jack and therefore, P. Jack wrote the note and is our blackmailer.”
“That’s impossible”, Grime said, slamming his hand down on the table and hitting a gutting knife with a vehemence that set it spinning, causing Gurrey to quickly duck aside as it flew across the room to finally impale itself between the ample breasts of the scantily-clad Miss July who was coyly holding a wrench in a strategic position on the time-faded 1969 Weymouth Motors calendar that hung on the wall. “Jack is long gone.” Grime continued, “We both saw him disappear beneath the frigid waters of Grand Passage way back in Chapter One!”
“I can’t dispute that”, replied Gurrey with an icy calmness that his partner could only wish to attain, “but I have to follow the evidence, and it says that contrary to what we think we know, as incredible and unlikely as it seems, somehow P. Jack is involved. It looks like we’re going to have to set a trap for a dead man.”
“It’s a crazy idea,” said Grime.
“I don’t see why,” replied Gurrey.
The two detectives were speeding toward Round Rock, the Mount Rushmore of the Tri-Island area. They had just passed over the Big Bridge and Gurrey had suggested that a toll booth should be installed on the majestic span to raise monies for the village. Grime disagreed.
“For one thing it would hold up traffic during the morning commute,” he argued. “Anyway, let’s get back to the case.”
Gurrey scratched his head and shower of dandruff fluttered downward. “How DO you set a trap for a dead man Grimesy?” he said. The look on his face was not unlike that of a pole-axed mule. Suddenly his visage brightened and the remnants of what had once been a moderate intelligence appeared briefly and were gone. “Do we set a trap for him in the graveyard Grimesy?”
Grime looked at his friend with a combination of pity and annoyance. “No Gurrey. For one thing, his body has never been found so he’s not buried in a graveyard. What we have to do is work under the assumption that somehow he survived his plunge into the icy waters and is living locally. “Ohhh,” said Gurrey. A lightbulb went on over his head, not the figurative one that writers like me sometimes use, but a real one. It flickered briefly and went out. The analogy was perfect. “I don’t see why he’s mad at Lucy though,” Gurrey said.” It’s not like she lead him on or anything. Everyone knew that it was me she loved.”
“Let me explain Gurrey,” Grime continued patiently. “P was a frustrated musician. He played a satisfactory saxophone but was hard to get along with. Every band he tried out for eventually rejected him. The frustration boiled over when the Purple Candle Secret told him to get lost. And then he approached Black Spar, the finest band in the tri-island area with a lead singer who was the Bobby Sherman of the tri-island area. His name was Chris Thornton and he was one of those rock idols, with groupies everywhere and questionable hygiene. His cover of Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog made the chickies weak in their knees. Whether they were playing the wharf in Tiverton, the wharf in Westport or even the sweetest venues of all – the three-wharf circuit in Freeport – they drew huge crowds. Anyway, I digress. Chris decided to give P a chance. One August night in 1975, he was playing in the band at the government wharf around the point. That’s the Carnegie Hall of wharf venues, as you know.
Unfortunately, on that evening, P misunderstood something that Lucy said to him at the break. ‘I love sax,’ she said. ‘I can’t get enough sax. I especially love sax in a band. I would enjoy sax in the morning, sax at noon and sax all night long. Sax, sax, sax. I especially love your sax style and the way you move around.. Who knew there were so many sax positions. Whenever I see you I think of sax.’ It was obviously a very innocent series of comments but somehow he interpreted it as a come-on. Among other things, his spirits rose. In defence of P, it was an easy mistake to make. That’s why saxophonists have unusually large families. It’s what killed Clarence Clemons, truth be known. But you can see why P was so disappointed when she ended up with you at the school dance."
“P. Jack’s gone and I’m here to say
Growing weary of Grime’s endless fascination with other people’s sax lives, Gurrey attempted to change the subject. “Things might get physical from here on, I think we need to bring Owen in on this job.” Grime, his mind preoccupied with trying to puzzle out whether ‘saxophone’ and ‘phone sax’ meant the same thing, merely nodded abstractedly.
Owen Otley, Gurrey and Grime’s 5’3”, 365 lb sometime legman and occasional detective-in-training, was sitting on his front porch having a post-breakfast lunch when the Dickmobile roared, rattled and clattered into his driveway. “Hi guys!” Otley called out. Gesturing to a stack of bologna slices balanced on his knee, he invited, “Care for a snack?”
“Maybe some other time Owen”, Gurrey replied, “Right now we’ve got a case to solve and we need you to put on your wedding/funeral suit.”
Owen Otley had a twin sister who, contrary to all known laws of genetics, was considered to be the most beautiful female - in fact, the most beautiful member of either sex - in the Tri-Island area. Ophelia Otley was a full foot taller than her brother and more than two hundred pounds lighter. Although she was constantly pursued by every breathing male within a three-day’s drive, Ophelia was a pillar of moral rectitude and would not let a man touch her unless he put a ring on her finger. As a result, she was continuously inundated with offers of marriage and had in fact been married six times; tragically, each husband had expired within weeks of the nuptials. The autopsies invariably concluded ‘death due to exhaustion’. Several years ago, Otley had purchased a sturdy gray tweed suit to wear to his sister’s many marriages and then again later to the funerals. Having got no help from Grime, Gurrey was formulating a clever plan to trap the evil P. Jack, and Otley’s suit was to play a key role. Carefully folding his last two bologna slices and tucking them into his shirt pocket “For later”, Otley went to put on the suit.
“I hope this plan works.” Gurrey said.
His mind still on other things, Grime responded, “If a husband and wife both play the alto sax, is that considered a same-sax marriage?”
A few minutes later the three dicks had arrived at the designated drop-off spot. “Good. We’re early.” said Gurrey, “Everyone get in position.” While Grime and Otley took up their posts, Gurrey placed a bag containing the ransom on an outcropping of Round Rock, then quickly hid himself and waited. Several minutes past the designated hour, the dicks were about to give up when some movement caught their eye. A strange looking figure was making its way down the beach.
Wearing white, unlaced sneakers, baggy oversized pants and a hoodie three sizes too large for him, the suspect shuffled up to the rock. Both Gurrey and Grime strained to recognize him, but with the hood covering his face and dark sunglasses shading his eyes, his identity was too well hidden. The mystery man looked around, grabbed the bag with one hand, and holding his pants up with the other, started back up the beach. Grime started to rise but Gurrey held him down, “Not yet!” he whispered. Waiting for the blackmailer to reach a certain spot, Gurrey then stood and yelled out, “Now, Owen!”
At the sound of Gurrey’s voice, the blackmailer briefly glanced over his shoulder, turning back just in time to see one of the boulders in front of him unfold itself, rise up and lock him in a suffocating embrace.
Huffing and puffing, Gurrey and Grime arrived on the scene where Owen Otley maintained a firm grasp on the mysterious blackmailer with one hand while fishing one of his bologna slices out of his shirt pocket with the other, “Good work, Owen, the plan worked perfectly.” Given his shape, and dressed in his grey suit, Otley had blended in surprisingly well with the boulders that littered the beach. “Now, let’s see who we’ve got.”
Reaching up, Gurrey grabbed the hood.
“Yo yo yo
Watch the ’fro”, rhymed the blackmailer in a strangely familiar sing-song voice.
As Gurrey pulled down the hood and tore off the sunglasses, both he and Grime let out a gasp and exclaimed in unison, “P. Jack!”
“P. Jack’s gone and I’m here to say
My rapper name is P Diddy J
I'm workin' at changin' my evil ways
By rappin’ ‘n’ rhymin’ to save the Bays.”
“I think you owe us an explanation, P er… Diddy,” said Grime. “If you’ve changed your evil ways, why are you blackmailing Lucy?”
“I think you owe us an explanation, P er… Diddy,” said Grime. “If you’ve changed your evil ways, why are you blackmailing Lucy?”
P Diddy hung his head. “Well, I know it’s not a good way to start, but I needed money and everyone knows that Lucy’s husband is loaded. I thought she owed me something because of the way she treated me…”
“That’s all well and good,” replied Grime, “but blackmail is a serious offense and…”
“Wait!” The voice came from Lucy who was running toward them, her ample breasts undulating provocatively. “I don’t want to press charges,” she gasped. “In fact I’ll give P some money to start his new career. I can understand how he misinterpreted my innocent words lo those many years ago. I feel that I owe it to him to turn his life around. I am a militant anti-fish farm advocate and if he can spread the word in song, more power to him. Of course I was hoping that he’d start a Black Spar tribute band, but there are already 6 in the tri-island area so I guess he knows best.”
P Diddy was dumbstruck at the magnanimous gesture. He looked at the woman he had once loved and began to rap once again:
“Yo, yo, yo
Well I’m askin’ you all to disarm
Cause I’m here to rap against fish farms
(Saxophone riff on the sax that Diddy conveniently had packed in his diddy-bag)
If my rappin’ ain’t up to par
I’ll reform the group called Black Spar.”
Later that evening, Gurrey and Grime were sitting around their office/fish house, drinking Ten Penny Old Stock Ale and reviewing their day. Suddenly Gurrey stood up and began to gyrate. He held a Ten Penny to his mouth as if it were a mic and intoned:
“Yoyo, yoyo
Well the case is closed, it’s all wrapped up
Cause G & G always know wassup
Grimey is smarter and better lookin
But I’m the one who’s really cookin
Break it down now!”
