Gurrey Ben and Jim Grime were sitting across from each other at the desk/gutting table that occupied the middle of their office/fish house. Grime was looking over some past-due bills while Gurrey had his head buried in the Chronicle-Herald.
“It’s nothing short of amazing,” mumbled Gurrey to no one in particular.
“What’s that?” said Grime, not bothering to look up.
“Ever notice how people die in alphabetical order, Grimey?” replied Gurrey.
“What are you talking about?” said Grime sharply, finally looking up from his chore.
“Right here: Abner, Andrews, Appleby, etc. and so on. It boggles the mind.”
Grime let out a deep sigh. “People don’t die in alphabetical order. That’s just the way they list the deaths. The real question is why hardly anyone dies on Sunday!”
Gurrey nodded in agreement. “That is strange. I’ve noticed that too. Maybe God wants them to get one more chance before he pulls the plug.”
Grime was impressed. “Not a bad theory, my flatulent friend. Not bad at all.”
Settling back in his chair, Gurrey tossed the paper aside, “I guess it doesn’t really matter; it all evens out anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, according to the other notices in the paper, people are born in alphabetical order and get married in alphabetical order, so I guess it just makes sense that they die in alphabetical order too.”
“That’s two good theories in a row Gurrey; you’re on a roll today! I wish we could put that agile brain of yours to work on a case or two.”
Things had been slow lately at the offices of the Digby Neck & Islands Detective Agency & Fishgutting Service. Even though the townspeople kept reminding them at every opportunity that they were a couple of dicks, it seemed that they had very little need of their unique detecting skills these days. Even demand for their fish gutting services had fallen away to the point where it was hardly worth putting on the barvel. They had tried to diversify the business by offering to split things other than fish, but except for old Mrs. Bailey dropping by with a coconut her grandson had brought her from his vacation in Jamaica, the whole venture had been a bust.
Not that Gurrey and Grime needed the money, far from it; they were both quite comfortable financially, what with the nearly four hundred dollars a month they each pulled in from the C.P.P. No, it was more the intellectual stimulation and the physical challenge of a good criminal case that they were missing.
As Gurrey reflected to himself on how much he missed the hustle-bustle of an active professional life, he leaned comfortably back in his chair, put his feet up on an overturned bucket, and closed his eyes. He was just about to drift off for his usual midmorning nap, joining Grime, who’s snores had been vibrating the gutting knives for several minutes now, causing them to rattle intermittently where they rested together on the table beside the well-worn whetstone; he was teetering on the very edge of falling over the precipice into sleep when he was snatched back from the edge by the sound of the shed door opening and a familiar footstep approaching across the floor.
The clump, tap…clump, tap…clump, tap stopped in front of Gurrey’s chair. Gurrey lazily opened one eye and confirmed what his brilliant detective’s mind had already deduced. Sure enough, just as he suspected, standing before him was a familiar barrel-chested figure with a peg-leg, a hook where his right hand should be, and a black eye-patch.
Ishmael (Awk) Welch was a long-time resident of Brier Island and the proprietor of Welch’s Waterless Whale Watch. Welch had spent most of his early life at sea. His mother, Marion, was the first female captain in the Irving fleet, his father was the ship’s cook and Ish had been conceived while their ship rode at anchor in the Bay of Fundy not far from the mouth of the Saint John River. Nine months later, in a magnificent feat of maternal multi-tasking, Marion gave birth in the wheelhouse of her tanker while simultaneously and skillfully piloting the vessel through the eye of a hurricane forty miles off the coast of Venezuela.
Young Welch’s mother was a great fan of the writer Herman Melville and in a gesture that would later come to be seen as deeply ironic, named her son Ishmael after the wandering sailor in Moby Dick. Ishmael was to spend practically all of his childhood aboard ship. In fact, he spent so much time at sea that he had difficulty getting his “land legs” during his occasional sojourns ashore, causing him to stagger and stumble whenever he tried to walk on a surface that wasn’t constantly rising and falling under him. This apparent clumsiness resulted in him being saddled with the nickname “Awk”; short for “Awkward”.
By his mid-twenties, Awk Welch had been around the world several times. He’d sailed all Seven of the Seas and was a regular visitor to most of the great ports of the world, including Westport. The name his mother had given him - that of the wandering sailor - seemed to have been prophetic indeed: but a singular event in Ishmael’s life would soon change all that.
In early 1976, he was visiting relatives on Brier Island. After tossing and turning most of the night, unable to sleep without the sea beneath him, he crept out of the house and bunked down in one of the waterfront sheds where the familiar and soothing sound of the ocean soon helped him nod off.
Suddenly, Welch was jolted awake by an eerily familiar sensation! For a few terrifying moments, Awk imagined he was back aboard ship; caught again in the August tsunami that had nearly shipwrecked him off the Zhongsha Islands in the South China Sea. As he came fully awake he realized he wasn’t in the China Sea at all, he was in the Bay of Fundy, and it wasn’t August, it was the 2nd of February: Groundhog Day.
The first tidal wave of what would forever after be known as The Groundhog Day Storm had swept the fish house from its posts and was carrying it out into the harbour. Before Awk had a chance to gather his wits, the second wave came thundering in, snatched up the old building; and tumbling it along in the teeth of a towering white-crested roller, dashed it against the shore with a fury and a power that reduced it and everything in it to smashed and broken rubble. As the foamy tentacles slowly withdrew, they left behind a chaotic heap of splintered timbers, tangled fishing gear, crushed lobster traps, and the shattered and mangled body of Awk Welch.
The third and final wave would have surely pulled Awk’s barely-breathing carcass to a deep and watery grave if not for the actions of two brave, handsome, and noble young detectives who dashed fearlessly into the seething maelstrom; and with no thought for their own safety, in fact, with pretty much no thought at all, wrested Awk’s bruised and battered body from Poseidon’s stubborn grasp.
Struggling valiantly against the elements, the two heroic dicks fought their way back to shore where they soon fetched up against the breastwork. Their strength sapped by the continuous pounding of the waves and the unrelenting cold, they found themselves too exhausted to climb the sheer wooden wall to safety, let alone pull Awk’s unconscious and water sodden body up with them.
Gurrey realized he was rapidly losing all feeling in his limbs; he could barely keep his head above water. Glancing over at his partner, he saw that Grime, the weaker and slightly less handsome of the two, had not surprisingly, already given up and was starting to float away, resigned to his fate. Gurrey himself, despite his impressive strength and legendary stamina, was starting to slip helplessly beneath the battering waves when suddenly a powerful and sinewy arm drove deep down into the surf and grabbed him by the collar.
Within seconds, all three men found themselves yanked over the breastwork like squid over a washboard. Laying in the grass coughing up salt water, the two limp dicks looked weakly up and saw a slim but muscular spandex-clad form standing over them. As he wiped the seawater from his eyes, Gurrey realised that they had been saved from certain death by none other than Islands Consolidated School’s star athlete and physical fitness fanatic, Owen Otley.
Awk’s recovery was a slow and painful one, the loss of a lower limb resulted in the peg-leg he now sported and a hopelessly crushed hand was replaced with a hook. The eye-patch had nothing to do with the storm, both of Awk’s eyes worked perfectly; he just thought it looked dashing and mysterious. He sometimes wore the patch over one eye and sometimes over the other.
As bad as the physical damage was, it was the psychological toll that really affected Awk’s life. Feeling betrayed in a very personal way by the vicious and unrelenting power of the ocean, Awk was so traumatized by his close brush with death that he could not bring himself to return to a life on the sea. In fact, he was now so afraid and distrustful of the water that he could not even cross the harbour and as a result had not been off the island in almost forty years.
Faced with the need to earn a living on dry land and on a relatively remote island, Awk had tried several different enterprises. The tap-dance studio had been a bit of a flop; the only real customer he had been able to attract was Grime, who with his background in ballet, was a quick learner and an avid student, but due to his parsimonious ways, was unwilling to pay enough for the lessons to make it worthwhile. Next Awk tried a stenography service, typing up people’s important papers and such. But, although he could type like blazes with his good hand on the left side of the keyboard, he could not develop any speed typing with his hook on the right side. Besides, the hook did so much damage to the keys that he spent most of what little money he did make on repairs. Next Awk opened a massage parlour, unfortunately his customers left feeling totally relaxed and stress free on one side and suffering from severe hook-shaped lacerations on the other. Awk went through a few more failed enterprises until he finally hit upon one that was successful enough to provide him with a modest income.
As he watched various whale watching businesses on the island develop and grow, Awk came to the realization that there must be people out there who would like to see a whale but found themselves, like him, unable to venture out to sea. He commissioned the island’s mechanical genius, Rick E. Gram, to build him a stretch ATV capable of carrying up to six passengers and started up Welch’s Waterless Whale Watch.
It was a very specific clientele that Awk was going after, those who could summon up the courage to cross two ferries to get to the island, but were not quite brave enough to venture out on the open ocean. The emphasis in this whale watching enterprise was more on the watching than on the whales; Awk would drive his customers to Northern Point or Seal Cove or other select look-off points around the island where they would then spend hours peering out at the ocean from the safety of dry land in hopes of seeing a whale. Along with a lot of misdirected excitement over distant wave crests and far-off seagull sightings, there was the occasional glimpse of an actual whale. Enough of his customers were satisfied with this that the business gradually built up a bit of a reputation among the aquatically averse and Awk was able to scratch out a meagre living.
This was the man who now stood in the office/gutting parlour of The Digby Neck & Islands Detective Agency & Fishgutting Service.
“Hey Awk, what’s up?” greeted Gurrey.
“Call me Ishmael!” responded Welch: he had never liked the nickname as a child, and liked it even less now that his injuries had made it all the more appropriate.
“Of course; how can we help you, Ish?”
Welch balanced himself precariously on his peg-leg, scratched his stubbled cheek with the point of his hook and squinted at Gurrey with his one uncovered eye,
“Well shiver me timbers, matey, ‘tis yer assistance I be seekin’. Some scurvy bilge rats be tryin’ to scuttle me business; may the Devil take their landlubbin’ souls, sez I. Yarrr!”
At this point Welch paused and gave his head a shake; then he continued,
“Sorry guys, I’ve gotten into the habit of talking like that lately, the tourists seem to expect it of me for some reason.”
By this time, Grime had roused himself from his stupor enough to contribute to the conversation, “No need to get your knickers in a knot Ish, just tell us in plain words what the problem is and we’ll see what we can do about it.”
After mulling this over for a moment, Welch said, “I think it will be easier if you see the problem for yourselves. C’mon.”
Striding out the door with the two quizzical gumshoes trailing behind, Welch threw his peg-leg over the seat of his ATV. He quickly retrieved the leg, reattached it, and took up his position behind the handlebars. Gesturing to the seat behind him he announced “Captain’s permission to come aboard boys”.
Gurrey and Grime eyed Welch’s “vessel”. Jutting out beneath the headlight at the “bow” was a hand-carved figurehead of a buxom mermaid and below that the name H.M.S.Pequod was painted on the front fender. Gurrey at first took the flag fluttering at the top of the “mast’ rising from the stern of the bike to be a Jolly Roger, but upon closer inspection saw that the Skull and Crossbones had been replaced with the face of a smiling whale.
“Time to cast off!” declared Welch impatiently, revving the engine.
A short time later the three “sailors” were bouncing along a rough trail; approaching the back shore of the island through a thicket of spindly alders and wind-blasted, salt-stunted spruce trees. As they drew closer to the shore, Gurrey and Grime both became aware that above the noise of the ATV engine they could hear a high-pitched screeching sound, a sound that was somehow vaguely familiar but at the same time unlike anything they had ever heard before. As they progressed along the trail this curious noise got louder and louder. Finally, they burst out into a clearing atop a small hill where Welch brought his “ship” to an abrupt halt.
As the now-deafening cacophony swept over them, the two dicks sat stunned, slack-jawed and uncomprehending; which was not an unfamiliar position for them to be in, but this time it was caused by the incredible scene laid out before them. Just off-shore, a couple of hundred feet past the wild rose bushes marking the division between the wind-swept field and the rocky beach, floated a line of cages. These cages followed the coastline far into the distance and reached high into the air. This was where the sound was coming from and both Gurrey and Grime realized simultaneously why the racket was vaguely familiar. The cages were filled with seagulls, hundreds of thousands of screaming seagulls.
Waving his hook to indicate the wall of cages, Welch shouted over the din, “Well, I guess my problem is pretty obvious! I can’t subject my customers to this racket, and even if I did, the cages are so high they block the view.”
“Where did all this come from?” Gurrey asked in amazement.
“Just showed up overnight. According to Kook Airquaculture, the company that runs this mess, they have Provincial permission to operate an open-pen gull farm on what the government claims is an unused piece of coastline.”
As they watched, a stubby, ungainly-looking craft that any self-respecting mariner would be hard-pressed to call a boat detached itself from the cages and slowly and awkwardly made its way toward the shore. At the wheel they could make out what appeared from this distance to be a giant vanilla ice-cream cone. As the shipwreck-waiting-to-happen drew closer, they could see that the pilot was not an ice-cream cone at all, but was in fact a squat figure clad in tan oilskins and a large sou’wester. The sou’wester, normally black, was completely white with a several-inch-thick layer of seagull droppings which flowed down onto the shoulders and made numerous dribbling trails down the front and back of the oilskins.
Grime, despite turning both hearing-aids up to maximum, was having trouble hearing over all the noise. He thought he heard Welch tell Gurrey that the figure on the boat was the owner of this offense against nature, Glen Kook.
As the clumsy craft nosed its way to shore, Gurrey started down the beach to see what he could find out. Grime, from his seat on the back of the Peaquod observed the massive operation and its effect on the environment. He noticed that as the captive gulls flew back and forth in the cages, they shed a constant cloud of feathers which drifted away in the on-shore breeze creating a black-and-white coating on the water as well as on the beach and the lower part of the field. Even the blossoms on the famous Brier Island wild rose bushes were hidden beneath this film of feathers. As well, he could see that a greasy slick of uneaten feed pellets, seagull droppings and extraneous pesticide spray had spread out from the pens and drifted down along the shore, coating the rocks and sea-weed with a foul-smelling slippery scum. From his vantage point he could see down the coast as far as Seal Cove, where seals, ducks, herons, and a few free-range seagulls could usually be found. Today the cove was ominously empty.
As Grime swept his gaze over the coastline, he found he kept involuntarily returning to and fixing on the oil-skin clad figure that Gurrey now appeared to be in conversation with. Gradually he realized that there was something about this person that he was finding attractive, and in fact, was causing a stirring in his lower regions that he hadn’t felt in many a decade!
Although Grime had long considered himself a chick magnet, the truth of the matter was that the magnetism, if there had ever been any, had long since dissipated. Although he tried hard to resist the possibility, it now entered his mind that maybe the reason for his past lack of success with women of the female persuasion was because all this time he had been attempting to practice what he considered to be his seductive powers on the wrong sex. Looking back, he realized with a start that there had been many occasions when he had thrown an admiring glance in Gurrey’s direction as he stretched his slim but athletic body across the keeler while reaching for another codfish. But, he told himself, that had been more in appreciation of the skillful and artistic way his partner handled the gutting knife than any physical attraction...or was it?
As Grime mulled this confusing situation over in his mind, he suddenly became aware that he had been staring steadily at the gull-guano covered figure for an uncomfortably long time, and most alarmingly, his gaze was being returned! Reluctantly accepting that there could be a definite mutual connection going on here, Grime began to consider the possibility that he had been living the first sixty years of his life under the illusion that he liked girls.
By this time Gurrey was making his way back up the beach “Well, that was a waste of time!” he stated “I couldn’t get any information at all on what they are doing here”.
“That’s too bad’ replied Grime “Er, by the way, did he say anything about me?”
“Did WHO say anything about you?” replied a puzzled Gurrey.
“Why, him of course, Glen Kook, did he mention me at all?”
“Oh. Well, yes as a matter of fact, the subject of ‘That cute hunk on the ATV’ did come up during our brief conversation”.
Grime felt a warm flush rise up his neck, turn his face a crimson red, wash over his bald head and disappear down his back. He was overcome with simultaneous feelings of flattery and a fast-accelerating emotional confusion about his own identity.
Gurrey watched as Grime’s face registered his attempt to adjust to the new reality he had unexpectedly learned about himself, then added “And just so you know, the name is not Glen, its Glenna, Glenna Kook”.
Grime’s face now briefly registered total confusion, which was its normal state, then a large expression of relief, then maybe a small flash of regret with a hint of disappointment, and finally back to relief again. “So that’s a woman down there?” he asked with barely contained glee as his life slipped back into its comfortable, familiar, if excruciatingly boring, groove once again.
“Yes, as far as I can tell, that’s a woman. Why? What does it matter?”
“Oh, it’s nothing, no big deal. I just misheard the name is all.”
“Okayyy! Well, I’m glad we got that all cleared up!” said Gurrey suspiciously. “Now, what are we going to do about this monstrosity and how do we help Ish get his business back?”
“Well” replied Grime “I think we need to know more about this company. Why are they raising seagulls? How do they make money from this? What kind of a business are they really running here? We need to get a man on the inside, and I know just the man.”
Forty-eight hours later, the two partners were sitting around their office/gutting emporium feeling good about accomplishing the first part of their plan. It hadn’t been all that hard to get Owen Otley, their 5’4”, 365 pound apprentice detective a position with Kook Airquaculture. Not surprisingly; Kook’s wasn’t exactly inundated with people looking for a job where they would constantly get crapped on, the people who want a job like that usually go into politics, it pays better and although there is just as much squawking, at least occasionally some of it makes sense.
Grime was just commenting to Gurrey about how cleverly their undercover man had infiltrated the Kook enterprise and how much valuable information he might gain, when the door swung open and in sloshed a water-sodden and dejected looking Otley.
“Owen” exclaimed Gurrey and Grime simultaneously “What happened to you! Why aren’t you at work?”
“I got fired” Owen replied morosely. “They put me to work on the feed scow and I forgot to allow for my own weight when I filled it up with feed pellets. It overfilled and sank right beside the cages.”
“Great” said Grime “There goes our best chance to find out what that company’s up to.”
“Maybe not.” replied Otley “I was thinking; maybe it’s time we moved into the twentieth century. Undercover work is fun and all, but ten minutes at a computer keyboard will get you more information than ten days of hanging over that old scow’s washboard would ever get you. All we need to do is hack into their computer system!”
“Great idea” sneered Grime “Except I’ve got no use for computers and all I ever see you two do with yours is play Solitaire. Waste of money as far as I can see, would’a been a whole lot cheaper to just buy a deck of cards! Course, then you’d have to move your whole arm to play, instead of just clicking one little finger. Face it; we don’t have the skills to hack into anything.”
“No, WE don’t” agreed Otley “But I know someone who does.” And with that he heaved himself up from his chair and trudged out the door. He was back in a flash (actually it was nearly forty-five minutes, but for Owen, that was considered lightning speed), and was dragging with him a pouty-looking eleven-year old girl.
“Who’s this child?” sputtered Grime “And why isn’t she in school?”
“This is Pearline, and she was suspended from school because she signed her teacher up on sixteen different internet dating sites.”
“O.K., so she knows how to use a computer, that doesn’t mean she has the ability to do what we need done.”
“She paid the registration fees by hacking into sixteen other teacher’s bank accounts.”
“O.K. So maybe she does know what she’s doing, but can we trust her? What did you say her name was?”
“Pearline, but everybody calls her Pearl. You know her family, she’s a Bailey. Her grandfather was a policeman back in the old days when the town constable was called the beadle.”
“Ah yes, Beadle Bailey, the name does sound familiar, I believe he also spent some time in the Army didn’t he?”
“That’s right! And you must know her father George, he used to have that barber shop you liked, Bailey’s Shavings and Foam.”
“I loved going to that place! Things were so much better back when the Island had services like that. Oh, it was a wonderful life.”
“As I recall” interrupted Gurrey “we went to her parent’s wedding! Isn’t her mother a Barnum from Little River?”
“That’s right” responded Grime “The Barnum and Bailey wedding was a crazy time! They got married in a big tent! What a circus that was!”
“And of course you remember her Uncle Bill, the adventurer who left to travel the world.”
“Yes, that was big news, they begged and pleaded for him to return, but Bill Bailey never would come home.”
At this point Grime paused to give his chin a severe rubbing, an indication that he was deep in thought, at least as deep as he was able to go, which was barely below the surface. “So!” he finally said “The name is Pearl Bailey is it? I like that, it sounds kind of musical. O.K. Put her to work boys.”
“Here you go Pearl” said Gurrey “You can get started on my laptop.”
“Hold it right there!” roared Grime “Gurrey! I’m surprised at you! There will be none of those shenanigans here! I won’t have the good name of The Digby Neck and Islands Detective Agency and Fishgutting Service besmirched in this way.”
“Grimey you Luddite, I’m not talking about my lap top, I’m talking about my laptop, a portable computer.”
“Oh, I see. Never mind then. Carry on.”
Casting an uncomfortable look over his shoulder, Owen ushered Pearl away from the two dicks, saying “Maybe you should sit way over here in the corner and use my computer.”
Early the next morning Gurrey made his way down the stairs to put on the morning coffee. As he was standing in front of the stove in his bedroom rubber boots and his S.T.D.s (Stanfield’s Trap Doors), he noticed a dull glow emanating from the corner of the detective office/gutting parlor. Approaching cautiously, he realized that the glow was from Owen’s computer screen and that it was partially blocked by Pearl, who was fast asleep face down on the keyboard. Gurrey shook her gently and when she raised her bleary eyes to meet his, Gurrey noticed she had several rows of little squares indented into her cheek. He thought he could make out the letters YTREWQ imprinted just below her right eye.
“Were you here all night?” he asked.
“I sure was” Pearl replied excitedly, “And you’ll never believe what I found out!”
“So, what did you find out?” queried Gurrey.
“Well, Kook Airquaculture is just a tiny part of a massive international conglomerate that supplies fresh and frozen food all over the world. After digging for most of the night, I came across what at first seemed to be an insignificant piece of information, but eventually I realized that it relates directly to the problem we are dealing with here and could very well be the key to resolving that problem.”
“It would be great if we could get rid of that eye-sore on the shore. What is this info? Do you really think it is powerful enough to force them to remove their operation?” Gurrey asked hopefully.
“I think if we use it properly, yes, it will do the job.”
“Well don’t keep me in suspense, what is this devastating secret that you have discovered?” Gurrey could hardly contain his excitement.
“Chicken Fingers©” Pearl replied.
“Chicken fingers?” a suddenly deflated Gurrey responded “What does that mean? How are we going to bring down a multinational corporation with chicken fingers?
“I discovered that they own the copyright to the words Chicken Fingers©.”
“Mmmmm, chicken fingers!” Grime had finally roused himself and had just walked in on the last few words of the conversation. “I love chicken fingers, I must have eaten thousands of them over the years. They’re my favourite meal. I wish I had some right now.”
“You might want to rethink your diet.” Said Pearl “You know how the Quarter Pounder© hamburger doesn’t have to actually weigh a quarter of a pound because Quarter Pounder© is just the copyrighted name of the burger, not an actual description of it? Well, the same thing applies to the copyrighted product name Chicken Fingers©.”
“What do you mean by that?” Grime asked confusedly “What are you getting at?”
“When I saw that they had copyrighted the name Chicken Fingers© I looked through all their inside information and found they had a production plant that was churning out hundreds of thousands of Chicken Fingers©, but nowhere could I find any mention of them owning any chicken farms or having any other source of chicken whatsoever. I was eventually able to connect a lot of dots however and discovered what you might call a less than traditional supply of raw materials. As a result, I have come to the conclusion that Chicken Fingers© are not only not made of fingers, they are not even made of chicken!”
Grime’s stomach was starting to rebel at this unsettling news, his face turning a nauseating shade of green. With the memory of all those Chicken Fingers© he’d eaten over the years swirling in his memory, and despite a sinking feeling that he probably didn’t want to know the answer to the question he was about to ask, he asked it anyway.
“If they’re not made of chicken what ARE they made of?”
“I think the answer to that question is obvious, it’s floating a couple of hundred feet off our shore” Gurrey interjected, “The question we should be asking is, what can we do about it?”
By now Grime’s stomach was staging a full-fledged rebellion and his face was a continually revolving palette of various shades of white, grey, green, blue, yellow and even a bit of orange. Suddenly he made a dash for the back door leading out to the wharf.
To the accompaniment of some rather disturbing gagging and retching sounds; Pearl answered Gurrey’s question.
“I have an idea about how to shut this down. I’ve compiled all the information I’ve discovered into a single document, all I have to do is push one button and every food quality agency, every animal cruelty society, every health standards organization, every food buyer and food reviewer with an Internet connection will receive all the evidence they need to prove that Chicken Fingers© are in fact made from seagulls.”
“Give me a half hour before you push that button!” An ashen-faced Grime had staggered back inside. Leaving both Pearl and Gurrey with quizzical expressions, he exited through the front door, jumped in the Dickmobile, and after a bit of engine cranking and gas pedal pumping, roared off with a screeching of fan belts in the direction of the seagull farm.
Upon arrival, Grime was happy to see that the clumsy-looking farm boat was approaching the beach. As he walked across the rocks to meet it, his heart was doing flip-flops. His initial attraction to Glenna, the owner of this massive floating seagull farm, had only grown stronger over the past twenty-four hours. He hadn’t yet acted on his feelings, and what he was about to do might forever remove any possibility that he would get the opportunity.
As Glenna alit from the boat, Grime launched into a confused and convoluted explanation of the farm’s effect on Welch’s whale watching business, his involvement in trying to help Welch by investigating the seagull business, what they had found out, what they intended to do about it, and why he felt it was only fair to warn her about what was going to happen. Jumbled in with all this, he managed to express to Glenna his feelings for her and the hope that these revelations would not ruin any chance for them to develop a relationship. He eventually ran out of words and gradually sputtered to a stop, staring uncomfortably at Glenna, seeking desperately for some positive sign.
Without a word, she turned, climbed aboard her boat, and headed full-throttle back to the pens. Grime stood dejectedly amid the seaweed-covered boulders for a few minutes; then hopelessly started making his way up the beach. Suddenly, a massive increase in the constant squawking of the gulls made him stop and turn.
Glenna was running from cage to cage, flinging open the doors and releasing hundreds of thousands of birds. As he watched in amazement, she opened the last door then tore off her guano encrusted oilskins and threw them into the cage. This done, she roared back to shore, ran up the beach and to his utter astonishment, gave Grime a kiss so passionate that it almost short-circuited his pace-maker. As Grime and Glenna continued up the beach hand-in-hand, the soaring of his feeble heart was matched only by the soaring of the thousands of seagulls overhead. Enjoying their new-found freedom, they swept like a black-and-white cloud into the sky, dipping and wheeling with joy over the harbour. Then, turning as one, they swooped down and settled on every roof in the village; where they would sit, screeching and pooping, for months to come.
Two weeks later, Gurrey and Grime were sitting in their fishgutting emporium/office still trying to wrap their heads around the events that had taken place since Pearl had pushed that fateful button. Basically, they had achieved their objective, once the details of the fraudulent chicken finger business went out, the conglomerate collapsed, the now-empty gull cages mysteriously disappeared overnight and Ishmael Welch was happy to be back in business with his land-based whale watching business.
But there had been unforeseen consequences, consequences that now appeared to be putting an end to the long and semi-successful history of The Digby Neck & Islands Detective Agency & Fishgutting Service.
It turned out that Glenna had been contracted to the now-defunct multinational corporation and had been under the impression that the seagulls she was raising were being used to replenish flocks around the world that had died off because of global warming. As soon as Grime informed her that her beloved birds were in fact being made into fraudulent food, she severed all ties with the company. But now unemployed, Glenna was returning to her home on the other side of the Bay, to manage a hummingbird sanctuary on Campobello Island. And Grime, finally having solid proof after all these years of proclaiming himself a “chic magnet”, was going with her.
“I can’t believe this is happening” Gurrey intoned morosely, “Don’t get me wrong; I’m glad you finally found someone who can put up with you, but your leaving is going to have a huge effect on the whole Tri-Island area and all the people you’ve helped over the years.”
“It’s flattering of you to say so, but you exaggerate” replied Grime, “I’ll just slip out of here later today and no one will even notice I’m gone.”
Glancing out the window, a slight smile came across Gurrey’s face, “I wouldn’t be too sure of that” he said.
The words were no sooner out of his mouth than the door burst open and Owen Otley barged into the room. Once he had stepped aside, they could see that he was being followed by a whole horde of people. One of the first was Rikilini Robichini, who, with a hint of a tear in her eye and a catch in her throat, wished Grime the best of luck and reminded him that if things didn’t work out, there were people here who were sorry to see him go and would always be happy to take him back. She was followed by Dot Owdows carrying a big box of his favourite dulse donuts. Then Ishmael Welch almost punctured his clavicle with his hook in the process of giving him a huge hug. The well-wishers kept on coming, there was Pearl Bailey of course and Grime’s distant cousin several-times removed, Pearly Prime. Rubella Perry-Outhouse-Thurber-Cann who had recently been released on parole, made an appearance to pay her respects. Even Grime’s one-time arch-enemy, P. Jack, showed up to say a heart-felt fare-well. As Grime was reminiscing with Lucy the Floozy, he noticed Gurrey over in a corner deep in conversation with a familiar figure in an expensive suit and crocodile shoes.
After seeing the last of his well-wishers off, an emotional Grime turned to Gurrey and admitted that he hadn’t considered what effect his leaving would have on others.
“Especially on you” he said, “What are you going to do when I’m gone?”
“Don’t worry about me” Gurrey responded “You might have noticed me talking with that guy from Ottawa, Kickk Moutt, he was here to offer me a job. They need someone to look into the goings-on in the Senate. He said they were looking for someone who could make a good display of investigating, but would have very little chance of actually finding anything out.” Gurrey stuck out his chest with a hint of pride, “I’m going to Ottawa, Moutt said he thought I was perfectly qualified for the job.”
---
And so
ends the saga of Gurrey and Grime.Well...not quite.
Owen and Pearl take over the business and change the name slightly to Digby Neck & Islands Detective Agency & Computer Services. They get the contract to provide security services to the new tidal power operations and eventually build DN&IDA&CS into a major player in the cyber security field.
Grime and Glenna become famous for their innovative work with hummingbirds, write several best-selling books on the subject and travel the world giving lectures.
And, Gurrey, with the guidance of computer hacker supreme, Pearl Bailey, finds out the truth behind the Senate scandal and manages to bring down not only the Senate, but the Government itself.
---
Thanks
for the support of all those who were Gurrey & Grime fans. And to those who
weren’t fans, thanks for putting up with us.Ben Robicheau
Jim Prime
No comments:
Post a Comment